The leaf blowers blow. The dog goes nuts seeing another dog. My sister announces she is going back to bed. Twitter turns unbearable. Coffee cools and I need to get going.

But before I head to Salem, I just want to say THANK YOU to all the readers of this blog and those of you producing your own work and posts because I am so, so grateful for this circle… how it holds me, informs me, and helps me to grow. This community stretches across national boundaries and feels particularly worthy when the world reveals how fragile and fraught with hate it is. 

I wish my pace and rhythm here were more sustained, but — you know — stuff keeps getting in the way. Happily, one of the things taking my attention right now is reading through the 400+ pages that I’ve written over the last three years for my fiction project (single spaced!!). Someone said (Natalie Goldberg?) that when she gets a student writing a novel she just wishes them a good journey, because it is like sailing out into the wide, wide ocean alone. Yes. And seeing two binders full of printed pages has provided an island for me to step on for the moment. I can turn and see where I’ve been and I have a little less panic about getting back in the boat and continuing toward the far shore.