Hedgebrook, Day 13

Beet Soup, Couscous Salad with Vegetables and Plums
Lunch at Hedgebrook on the 13th day

Don't big apartment and office buildings skip the 13th floor, call it the 14th? Is this something done worldwide still or only in the apartment buildings of New York City? I think of elevator doors opening into emptiness, the charade of living on the 14th floor when it's really the 13th.

I think about chance, good fortune, what is deserved, what falls in your lap. I think about being mindful of each day as it comes, letting it open and entering it.

It's the 13th day of my writing residency at Hedgebrook. It's relevant to the elevator thing only as much as its assertion of superstititon's hold on us. Maybe I should just speak of me. I can't get enough of using just one bowl, one plate, one fork, one knife, one spoon, one water glass and one coffee cup for my breakfast and lunch here in Willow Cottage. I have a tiny square of sponge onto which I squirt one tiny drop of concentrated dish soap and wash each utensil and plate before placing it in the drying rack beside the sink. I have two vases that I fill with water every two days or so and some flowers that I've cut from the garden --  daisies, bold-faced rudebeckia, a purple coneflower, something from the onion family, a gawdy hollyhock. Each morning, I wake to silence and birds and each night I fall asleep to silence and frogs, the wind through the pines that stand calmly outside my cottage. Each day is an idyll of idleness and work. Radical hospitality received. Exquisite simplicity.

I  too much look forward to the next day which will be one less day. Today. I'm not skipping the 13th day. I'll live through it, not depend on the 14th to define it.