{my topography}

She walks out the door ahead of him; long white hair blowing into her face as a truck barrels past. I watch as she turns back toward the door, and at first her face is carelessly content; then she sees him and her features soften almost imperceptibly. She looks up to where he’s paused there on the landing, readying himself to tackle descending the stairs. Does she know that he is dying? Does he?

He has the same sparrow like grasp and yellow skin my father had when he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. The same hunched shoulders in a flannel shirt. The same slow deliberate effort to carry on with the minutia of the day. Coffee in a paper cup; the laces of his leather boots tied in double knots.

He holds the metal rail and takes each step at a time. Then he puts his palm on her shoulder, and they turn, go.

Unbidden, there are tears.

Across the street I watch a man in a wool jacket gather small bouquet of chrysanthemums and yellow leaves. At the edge of the park he pauses for a moment, then tucks them into the slats of a metal bench and walks on.

I feel like a part of me is suspended above myself somewhere, caught among the helium balloon strings of my heart. Can’t quite seem to find solid ground, yet, again. It’s become a pattern for me lately.

Everything is gold and rust here: the light, the leaves, the barns bathed in late afternoon sun. Trying to catch my breath and find a rhythm today.

In my molskine quickly scribbled quotes. Together, they’re where I’m at right now:

“I believe in everything that has not yet been said.” ~ Rilke

“I write to discover what I know.” ~ Flannery O’Connor

“The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as a part of the process. Ask different questions.” ~ Bruce Mau

“It is as if mothers have two hearts and two bodies–one heart loves the babies, the other heart attends to the world; one body feeds the babies, the other body moves through ttime and space.” ~ Elizabeth Lesser

Zoom!
That was just the entire month of August flying by. I cannot believe how quickly it has gone. One week until September. Already there are fallen leaves on the lawn.

I wanted to share a few things I have been crushing on today:

This darling little clock project.

This glorious sketchbook series and this lovely inspiration wall.

And this list of stories. Good to listen to while doing the dishes.

The past week has been a blur of copy-edit days. Every scrap of time spent close to the thesaurus and the delete key. I miss my book. I miss talking to my characters in my head in the shower. I hope they’re waiting. It terrifies me that maybe they have slipped away. A page of events and scenes languishes in the top drawer of my desk. It cracks me up that I professed big plans for this story by the end of the month and here I am at end of the month. And I am not even close.

But there is something to this that I’ve been learning and learning again this summer. Things come and go—and really, you can’t hold on to anything too tightly.

I’m starting to get that it’s okay to just ride the waves. To be greedy with sleep and joy and creativity when they find you—and to sink into work and fast-paced days and tiredness on the days that those things hit hard. Each will return, and leave, and return again. There is something in this of faith, I think.

Whatever today is, tomorrow will be different. Yet there is a thread that loops through the fabric of both with its promise. Continuity somewhere. Balance, eventually.

It’s scary though to feel a surge of creativity, only to have it plundered by more practical things. There are moments where it feels like having a blindfold yanked down over my eyes, and I’m just bumping into things, fingering the shape of each moment with hands as unknowing as the blind eyes of potatoes.

Are you doing the life you want daily?

Hmm.

In the pale crook of a birch a robin threading its song through the fluttering green of newly furled leaves makes my heart tremble.

Things are up in the air, and I’m holding my breath waiting for unrecognized brilliance. It’s like I’m occupying the thin space between air and water in a drinking glass, where the whole world is reflected in a line.

I spend whole days skimming, flitting, careening. In my molskine I’ve started writing again, finger bones gripping in quiet concert, the lead becoming a rush of loopy js and ys, answering the same questions each morning: what do I feel? What do I want?

Today I don’t know how to get myself started with the rest of my life. Today I am trying to catch up with myself. Trying to be something.

Across the sky clouds the color of cinnamon remember the fiery circle of the sun,
then draw together close like stitches over a wound; gathering indigo, gathering twilight, gathering the night.

***
What do you feel? What do you want? Right now. Today. Right this moment.