Imbolc Waxing Bloodroot Moon
Finished a rough draft of Redefining the Sacred. As usual, my ambition outstripped the space I had, so I had to leave out several things I would rather have included. I’ll also have to strip out some things that are in it now, because at 8 pages, it’s a couple of pages too long. When it’s edited, I will post the long version and the edited version here under Ge-ology.
Heading to the treadmill.
Imbolc Waxing Bloodroot Moon
Every once in a while. Awake. At 4 am. After an hour of trying to go back to sleep, I’m still awake so I’m down here, making use of the wake time. I’m going to write on Missing.
This means, of course, that I’ll have to pick up the sleep later in the day. Insomnia is an infrequent problem for me, though getting to sleep is sometimes difficult. A large part of this is a habit, developed a long time ago, of using those quiet just before sleep minutes (hour) to ponder some philosophical or political or creative idea. Not conducive too slumber, but very ingrained at this point.
I do enjoy the night, its monastic silence and the feeling of being the only one awake, especially acute in our exurban cul de sac where lights don’t go on until 6 or 6:30. There is, too, with a morning bout like this the opportunity to get a jump on the day, illusory as it is.
So, Good Morning. Now to that novel.
Imbolc Waxing Bloodroot Moon
We went to the St. Paul Grill tonight for our anniversary dinner. Our first date was coffee there after a St. Paul Chamber Orchestra Concert. I learned Kate was a physician and she learned I was not a lawyer, but a clergyman. Both surprised.
Tonight the place was hopping, full of an odd mixture of opera buffs and hockey fans. The state high school hockey tournament is in town at the Excel Arena and the Opera is at the Ordway Theatre, both next to each other only a block away from the St. Paul Hotel, location of the Grill.
In addition, just across the block on the diagonal is the Landmark Center, where, in 1990, on this day, Kate and I tied the knot and stomped on a glass in a silken napkin.
Over the meal tonight (lamb chops, medium rare for both of us with a creme brulee for dessert) we talked about the South America cruise to which we committed yesterday. 37 days, an Inca discovery theme, with ports of call all along western South America and up the east coast as far as and including Rio. This is a retirement present for Kate, a thank you for all her years of hard work as a doc. I’m just going along for the ride. (Ha.)
Marriage has a palpability, is a third thing in and of itself. When two come to anniversary, the thing they celebrate is not themselves, but this third thing they have made together. It is, in every way, as precious and significant as a child, as difficult and rewarding, too.
Imbolc Waxing Bloodroot Moon
Two tours today, a long time on my feet. Hamstrings quivering when I came home. Gotta back to the resistance training.
Gave a quick tour of the Mourners after the last Titian. These are remarkable works of art.
Ate lunch with Joy, Tom and Morrie, all three had attended the Seven Days in the Art World lecture.
In just a few minutes Kate and I head out for our 21st anniversary dinner.
Imbolc Waxing Bloodroot Moon
Still adjusting to this early rising, write, then do the rest of the day which included, today, my 2 hour mentoring session with Leslie, more writing, the legcom call, then doing a quick study on the mourners for a brief tour of them tomorrow.
So, I didn’t have much time to get here today.
Here’s an idea I had before going to sleep last night. What if our dream life is our real life and the process of this embodied life is the aberrant condition which death resolves? Actually, the Mexica had a similar idea. Crazy I know, but maybe worth a story or two.
Imbolc Waxing Bloodroot Moon
OMG. I can’t count! I did about one-third the number of words at Blue Cloud as I thought I did. A silly arithmetic error. Have you ever seen that Gary Larson cartoon with Hell over the door and a bookcase containing books titled: Story Problems, More Story Problems, Story Problems the 11 edition? That’s me.
It doesn’t change how hard I worked, not at all. Or, the value of getting back to the writing. Just deflates my overall sense of accomplishment. Which, come to think of it…
On my last night at Blue Cloud I met an unusual guy, Lawrence Diggs. Lawrence is a bald headed Africa-American about my age, a Buddhist and refers to himself as the Vinegar Man. Lawrence and I had a two hour long conversation about reality, economics, racism and writing. It was strange to meet a fellow flat-earther as far as divine metaphysics go on the last night of my stay at this Benedictine Monastery. Strange and exhilarating.
When the Woollys go back to Blue Cloud in September, I’m going to set up a visit to the International Vinegar Museum in Rosslyn, about 40 miles to the west on Hwy. 12, toward Aberdeen. I mean, how many chances will you get to see it?
As I now calculate it, I have about 60-65,000 words done on Missing, counting the Blue Cloud work. That’s about 2/3’rds of the way. Just gotta keep plugging away.
Imbolc Waxing Bloodroot Moon
This video, made by the House DFL caucus, casts an odd light on the current debates about gutting environmental review and pushing back standards for coal pollution, the nuclear moratorium, and softening the sulfate standards for Polymet.
Imbolc Waxing Bloodroot Moon
This journey has begun to bend toward home. I”m more eager know to go home than I was to come here when I left. That seems good to me. Home is the place you know you’re away from when you’re gone. No place else on earth has that lodestone attraction for me.
Home is where the heart is, yes, and my heart is with Kate, with Vega, Rigel and Kona, with the raised bed and the garlic, the asparagus, the strawberries, with the bees and the grandkids play house, with the flower beds and the woods, with our house which, in exactly the same way a church is sanctified, has become sacred. The life and the love,, our history there, has made it a sacred realm, a realm of the heart and a sanctuary for our life.
I have two yellow pads, one full, the other on its way, scribbled with this story of another world and these people I’ve come to know over the course of writing it. Brag, Constance, John, Aeric, Gullen, Arton, Isaac, Cern. Well, maybe a couple of these are speaking animals and one is a god, but they’ve come alive for me over the months I’ve spent on Missing. Their journey, I see now, has only just begun, will only finish its first phase as this novel draws to a close in another 30,000 words or so.
This writing is and has been such a strange act for me, virtually solitary save for Kate, who has stuck with me in my up and down moments, my more confident moments and, most important, in my melancholy. Otherwise, I’ve written these novels, these short stories and they go in a file or in a box and sit, George Plimpton once called an unpublished work of his, A Monster In A Box. This will be my sixth or seventh monster.
Not complaining just observing that’s been strange.
Imbolc Waxing Bloodroot Moon
I’ve had visitors now for lunch every day. Father Chris and I discussed being hard of hearing. When I mentioned saying something inappropriate occasionally in noisy places, he recounted a time when a parishioner said he was going to his sister’s funeral. That’s nice! Father Chris replied.
Brother Paul presented me with a pound of Blue Cloud Abbey honey, from one beekeeper to another.
I’ve gotten to know more of the monks on an individual basis, mostly through lunch since I spend most of my time here in the room writing and when I finish in the afternoon no one’s around. Dinner is in silence and afterward the monks retire.
Breakfast is usually in silence although Sunday morning is not, I learned today. The rhythm goes silent breakfast after morning prayers, then day prayer and eucharist followed by a lunch when talking is ok and a silent dinner not long after evening prayer held at 5 pm. Vigils come at 7:30 and after it, at 10 pm, the night or grand silence.
The silence at regular intervals and the quiet in general make this a wonderful place to write. The only noises here are bells, singing and chanting, howling wind and the occasional train.
Imbolc Waxing Bloodroot Moon
Snow has begun to come down in earnest. I like the view out of my window here in the Bishop’s room. Snow falls between the two pines that frame the central pane and I can see across the service road toward what I now know is the Monastery orchard. This is a wonderful piece of land, wooded in parts, with two lakes and ample space for agriculture. The Monastery did have a large farm at one time.
I’ve decided I’ll head home tomorrow afternoon. I’m a bit lonely here now and I want to see Kate and the dogs. Since I get my writing done in the morning, sometimes a bit after lunch, I can write tomorrow morning, eat lunch and head out. That way I can be back at my desk on Tuesday morning, ready to keep on writing.
So ancientrails will hit the road around 1 pm tomorrow, driving east on Highway 12, then north on 494.
Breakfast today is at 8, not 7:30. Feels pretty soft, writing here at 7:50 instead of dining in silence. The Monastery is a great place to focus on writing and I think I’ll return when it comes time to revise one of my earlier works, perhaps in January. Once I finish the first draft of Missing, I’ll have Kate read it and comment on it, perhaps Lydia, then I’ll set in a manuscript box on the shelf in my study. 6 months or so later, I’ll take it out and read it like a stranger, making the first cuts and revisions.
Though I’ve not practiced it, they say writing is in the re-writing and I believe it.