Hedgebrook, Day Eight

Full moon over Deer Lagoon, Whidbey Island

the devourers of books, who exhaust themselves 
only by reading, should desist as soon as they find 
their comprehension more than commonly slow, 
their sight moaty and dimmish, or their eyes hot and watery.

Samuel Tissot, from his Essay on Diseases Incident to 
Literary and Sedentary Persons (1769)


Don't think I haven't felt chagrin, even guilt. I woke this morning and peered over the railing next to my bed, a loft that you reach by ladder. The sun slanted through the small, paned window over the kitchen sink and fell on the floor in a rainbow. Each part of the Hedgebrook cottage is perfect, perfect and sufficient to each moment. My mind might wander to the future, the end of my stay, finger the sore of re-entry, but the solitude here, the birds, the wildflowers gathered from the garden and placed in a jar on the windowsill, one plate, one bowl, one fork, one spoon, one cup to hold coffee conspire to keep me here, now.

Hedgebrook, Day Six

Fish tacos for dinner last night

Observations:

Structuring my day around food and company comes as naturally to me here in the magical queendom of Hedgebrook as it does in the big shitty.

Taking oneself seriously as a writer is directly proportionate to thinking that it's all a farce and you're boring, even yourself.

A nettle sting, even to the tip of the pinky, is powerful. Surely that was a spider bite, I thought as the pain radiated out from the base of the nail and into the tip. It tingled, pins and needles for twelve hours.

The distance between being a woman respectable in appearance and well-spoken, to being a harridan with damp hair in the woods, haranguing herself, is short.

Hedgebrook, Day One

This is my little cottage in piney woods. Light slants through the pines, birds are chirping, breezes blow, there's a vegetable and flower garden with opium poppies, holly hocks and sweet peas, and the rugged beach is less than two miles down the road.

I feel like someone slipped a mind-altering hallucinogenic into my water.