Theodora Goss's Blog, page 49

Thinking about Muses

One of the most difficult things about this period is that I'm not writing.

I know, I was supposed to update you on how the novel was progressing, and I haven't. I almost don't want to talk about it right now, because I'm so uncertain about where it's going, whether that's the right place for it to go. But I also haven't even looked at it for a while. I think Ray Bradbury is right, there's a way in which I get sick when I'm not writing. It's as though the world is too much with me. Late and soon, getting and spending, I lay waste my powers, and there I am, longing for Triton with his wreathed horn. Or something like that. (Wordsworth, she said, pretending to cough at the same time. Just in case you weren't sure.)

But what can I do? There's so much else to get done, and writing will have to wait for now. I'll just try as hard as I can to stay healthy.

I was thinking about muses, and of course my muse looks very different from Stephen King's (remember, the guy smoking a cigar, with his feet up on the desk). As I mentioned, mine looks like North Wind from George MacDonald's At the Back of the North Wind. Something like this:

She has long black hair that flies everywhere, and she soars through the sky. Like a sort of bird, borne up by the winds. I feel as though she helps me soar too. Morgan, in some of my stories, is modeled partly on her, and partly of course on Morgan le Fay.

Have I ever mentioned that MacDonald's books were some of my favorites, when I was a child? I especially loved The Princess and the Goblins and The Princess and Curdie. There are images in both that stay with me. The Princess Irene's great-great-grandmother with her long white hair and flock of pigeons. The goblins with their hard heads and delicate feet. The ring Irene is given, which will always lead her back to her great-great-grandmother's tower. Curdie's magical ability to tell, from shaking a man's hand, whether it really is a hand, or some sort or hoof or paw (if the man is really a beast inside).

But my point is that I feel as though I do have a muse of sorts. I can imagine her, I can almost hear her speaking. And I've never believed that a story comes completely out of my conscious mind, that it conveys only what I intend it to convey. That's not my experience of writing. For me, it's almost as though writing is listening. I have to hear what something – whether another part of myself or something outside myself – is telling me. When I don't listen, I find that I don't write as well. And then, whatever I hear, I have to shape: that's my role, I'm the shaper. Perhaps that's why all the rules I was taught about writing are useful only to a limited extent. If you listen to the rules, you're going to ruin the story. You have to listen to the story itself. It will tell you its own internal rules.

I know, all of this sounds so nebulous. I realize that. What I'm trying to do is describe the sense I have of a muse, a something that inspires me and speaks to me. Part of my problem with the novel, I think, is that I'm trying to write a more conventional novel than my own instincts are telling me to write. I think I'm at the point where I have to reevaluate. Is that always the case – that when we're stuck, it's a message to us (from our muse, perhaps), telling us that we need to stop, think again? That something is not right?

Perhaps one thing I'm trying to say here is that writing consists not just of speaking, but also of listening. To something beyond ourselves – or someone, who at least in my case has long black hair. I'd like to curl up in it, as Diamond does in the book, and be carried through the night, over the cities. No, she's definitely not King's muse. But I need to get back to her, stop putting her on hold, get back to writing again. Soon, soon.

Going to Innisfree

I'm having flashbacks to the New York State bar exam. I know that's ridiculous, for two reasons: first, a dissertation defense is nothing like a bar exam. It doesn't even involve snakes. Second, I didn't actually stress out all that much about either of the bar exams I took, New York and Massachusetts. In a way, the dissertation defense will be more stressful, because although it will be half the length (only three hours), they will be three hours of speaking in front of people I know and respect. The process will be more active than sitting and filling in bubbles (which I'd gotten very good at, by that point in my career).

Tonight, I'm going to make a list of the books I want to look over again before the defense. Tomorrow, I'll go to the library. I'm not sure it's a matter of being prepared, because I think I am prepared. I just need to make sure I feel prepared.

In the meantime, I'm going to deal with the stress as best I can. Which involves creating sanctuaries of various sorts. (I'm glad I came up with that concept. It's coming in so handy just now.)

So here is a sanctuary:

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,

And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;

Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,

And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,

Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;

There midnight's all a-glimmer, and noon a purple glow,

And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;

While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,

I hear it in the deep heart's core.

That's W.B. Yeats, of course: "The Lake Isle of Innisfree." When I was a child, I used to fantasize about going away somewhere, a magical valley or island. There I would have a cottage, a garden, a hive for the honey bee. (Well, actually I think there were magical trees from which I could gather food, sort of like in the Oz books. After all, I could gather food from the magical refrigerator . . .) Would I actually want bees? Sometimes I think about having chickens, like my friend Cat Valente, and gathering eggs. But I don't know how well chickens would go with the writing life that is, fundamentally, at the heart of all the plans I have for the future: a life in which I can spent a lot of time dreaming and writing, and doing all the things that go with writing. Like traveling to conventions. I'm not sure how well bees and chickens fit with that, no matter how romantically bucolic they sound! But I will have the garden, and the cat on the windowsill. Those are non-negotiable.  (And honestly, although as a child I fantasized about being completely alone – I was such an introvert – now I would want a place where friends could gather, writers and artists sharing their work, connecting with each other.)

Here is Yeats, as an old man, reading his poem:

What I would also like to do, one day, is go to Ireland, where I've never been. Better yet, go to the British Isles and spend a few weeks wandering around, going to Devon where friends like Terri Windling live. And going to all sorts of other places, seeing Wales and Cornwall and of course Ireland. I even have a practical reason, because for a long time now I've had an idea for a children's book that takes place in an alternative version of the British Isles. It is, in a way, my response to the Narnia books, as Phillip Pullman's Dark Materials series is a response to the Narnia books. But a very different response. So, you know, it would be research.

Can you tell how tired I am? I'm rambling terribly. I think that in a way I still haven't recovered from completing the dissertation. I'm not sure I will recover completely until after the defense. That's why I need those sanctuaries: the dance classes, the music, the poems. They, and the knowledge that this process will eventually end, keep me going.

In the meantime, I'm going to dance, and listen to music, and read poetry – and of course try to get some sleep, because I don't do enough of that either. And I'm going to dream of Innisfree, with those nine bean rows, and maybe some honey bees, and maybe some chickens. But definitely a desk and computer, and time to write.  And friends around me.

Getting Organized

This morning I woke up, terribly worried about how things are going to go between now and the end of October (you know, the defense and all). When I'm worried, there's really only one thing I can do, which is organize. So I organized.

This is what my desk looks like now:

Those files are labeled with all the things I need to do in the next month and a half: teach, defend the dissertation, etc.  Then I have my calender, my to-do list, and some papers I need to mark on top of my teaching binder.  Notice what's no longer there: the dissertation chapters!  Those are now all together, in a large binder on the shelf.

And here is my other desk, with the computer on it.  Some things on the right that I still need to sort through, but otherwise it's bare.  Ready for typing.

Oh, there it is, the dissertation binder.  It's the large one on the top right shelf, to the right.  At least it was there this morning, when I took these pictures.  Now it's by my bed, ready to go through so I can prepare for the defense.  (The magazine rack to the right is holding my Locus magazines, one of my writing notebooks, and some pictures that I may never get around to hanging up.)

When I go to the university, I sling these two black bags over my shoulder.  But notice how neat everything looks.  Do you see what's missing?  No piles!  No books or manuscripts piled up on the floor!  Oh, there are still manuscripts piled on top of some shelves, but those are stories and essays that need to be sorted, and I probably won't get to them for a while.  Not until after the end of October.

Predictably, my printer broke just before I had to turn in my dissertation, so I brought up the downstairs printer, which works better anyway.  I put it on a rather nice shelf I found in one of my favorite antiques stores (for $28, I think).  So you know, my room isn't exactly neat yet.  It won't get there until after the dissertation is defended and I can really organize.  (This is temporary organization, just to get me through to the end of next month.)  But it will do for now.

Once the room was organized, I felt as though I could breathe a little more easily. And then I started working.

All the work I need to do has been so stressful lately that I'm consciously holding on to certain things. Dance is one of them, and I'm endlessly grateful that I've gone back to ballet just now. Music is another, so I'll give you my new favorite song by Mumford and Sons, "White Blank Page":

I love great lines, and this song has two of them:

"But tell me now where was my fault, in loving you with my whole heart?"

"Lead me to the truth and I will follow you with my whole life."

The way they're sung in the video, they're romantic but in a way that is also raw and powerful.  And I love the half-rhymes: fault/heart, I/life.  (You'd expect the second line to end "until I die," but it doesn't. That's what makes it interesting.  How do you follow someone with your whole life, exactly?  It sounds like a choice, something intentional.  As though you're consciously taking your whole life, putting it in a basket or backpack, and following – like in a fairy tale.)

And going into the woods, to the extent there are woods here, walking around under the trees, sitting on the rocks. Those are the sorts of things that get me through. Also, a story by Isaak Dinesen that I remember reading, about a prince who, when he becomes king, is given a ring with an inscription on the inside. He is told to read it in good times and in bad. The inscription reads, "This too shall pass."  (And it will, because dissertation defenses do.  As do difficult months filled with way too much work.)

Getting Back to Work

This morning, I felt restless, so it's good that I had a ballet class. It was a combination Beginner/Elementary class, except that it wasn't. It was really an Elementary class in which the teacher showed more of the moves. (As opposed to just marking them for you.) It was perfect: difficult because I no longer have the strength and flexibility I used to have, but I remembered all of the vocabulary. My body remembered how to move, what a développé or a grand battement felt like.

(My pirouettes? Terrible. But I can still jump.)

I'm feeling it now, the fact that my muscles did unaccustomed things this morning. But I think I'm going to get used to taking classes fairly quickly. In some ways, I'm in better shape than the last time I took ballet.

One of the nicest things about the ballet class is the live accompaniment. The teacher tells us how she wants us to move, and the piano player starts playing whatever is appropriate, a waltz or polonaise. Once you've had a class with an actual piano player, it's difficult to imagine dancing to music that is recorded, rather than produced on the spot so the teacher can change the tempo in the middle.

So I had a productive morning, and then, still feeling restless, I went to Concord and wandered around the antiques shops. I bought a wicker chair. It needs a little cleaning, then some paint. After that, it will belong to Ophelia. Here it is, with some pillows I sewed for her, ages ago:

And then I went to Helen's and had a slice of apple pie with maple walnut ice cream.

I'm still feeling restless, even as I write this, but it's time to get back to work. I have so much to do before the end of October. Most importantly: defending my dissertation. So today I'm going to sit down and strategize about how to study for the defense. I think I'm going to start by reading some books my first reader recommended, and then go through the dissertation, looking at the most important sources again. And thinking about what sorts of questions I might be asked, which will almost certainly have to do with the greater significance of the project. (Professors being who they are, you know.) I have a nice fresh notebook to makes notes in.

And then there are all sorts of other things to work on. I tried to remember when I had handed in the dissertation, and couldn't. It feels as though it happened ages ago. And yet I think it was only last week. Somehow, I don't think my sense of time is going to go back to normal until it's all over. November is going to be such a relief.

So, I'm going back to work, to do all the things I need to get done. But before I do, I'm going to leave you with a short clip from one of my favorite ballets, Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake. This is how to make ballet beautiful and frightening and relevant.

The Ballet Class

I wanted to take a ballet class on Tuesday, but it didn't fit into the schedule, and I thought I would need to wait until Saturday. But I actually got some time tonight to go off for a couple of hours, to the Boston Ballet School studio in Newton. And I took the first ballet class I've taken since – well, certainly since Ophelia was born.

Because I had not taken a ballet class in so long, I took the Beginners class. Which was not a mistake, really. I mean, you always learn a lot by going back to the beginning. I was able to work on placement, on how I was standing, the positions of my arms and legs. The teacher explained all the moves, how they were supposed to both look and feel, and it's been a long time since I've gotten those sorts of explanations, so it was a good reminder.

But the class was too slow for me. And less than a half hour of floor work, with no jumping. The jumping was always my favorite part of class. And I like to move fast, to be challenged. So this weekend I'm going to a Beginners/Elementary class, which will transition me to the Elementary class next week. And we'll see how that goes. I suspect it will be my level for a while, since I'm just starting again.

I wonder if I'll ache tomorrow? I suspect not, because we didn't do a lot of the things I used to.  Still, the class made me realize how tight my muscles have gotten. The thing about ballet is, it's the most difficult and athletic of the dance forms. There are no loose, resting sorts of positions. You have to move so that everything looks easy, but in every move, all of your muscles are engaged. So tonight I'm feeling the small of my back, the muscles under my feet. But it was lovely to be there – I felt, for the first time in a long time, fully physically alive. As though my whole body were engaged.

And another thing about ballet: it's all about the patterns. So in class the teacher tells you what the patterns are, which moves you're doing in what order, and you have to remember them. Often a long string of them, after being told once. I used to be able to do that, but my brain is out of the habit. It's as though I've lost a muscle memory. But I think after a few more classes, it will start coming back.

I've posted pictures of Dissertation Dora, so today I thought I would post one of Ballet Dora. She doesn't look quite as bedraggled, does she?

And this is just for fun, a video of what looks like a class of professional dancers doing part of George Balanchine's Serenade. I actually think it's more fun to see it this way than in a staged performance.

After the class, I pulled my jeans on over my leotard (dancewear: leotard, footless tights, ballet skirt and shoes), changed into sneakers, and drove back through the darkness, with nineteenth-century music blasting on the car radio. Feeling alive.

Thinking about Fairies

On my bookshelf, the one that stands by my computer desk, there is a copy of John Crowley's Little, Big. It's almost time to reread it. I heard, somewhere or other, about a couple that read it out loud every few years, and I thought, what a wonderful way to pass the time. Because Little, Big really is poetry. It just happens to be poetry in novel form.

I was thinking about fairies today, about what makes us so interested in them. I think they  represent the possibility of magic itself. Fairies don't make magic, they are magic. They show us an alternative magical reality that we desire, but that also frightens us, because it's both more beautiful and more dangerous than ours. We want to dance in the fairy hill (who wouldn't dance in the fairy hill?), but it might mean losing a hundred years, all of our family and friends. Fairies give you everything and exact a terrible price. (They give you the gift of poetry, but you have to serve the Fairy Queen for seven years and then tell the truth, even to attractive women.)

I think that aspect of the fairies is captured in one of the iconic fairy poems: W.B. Yeats' "The Stolen Child," which I'll include below. I'll also include a musical version of it by The Waterboys. I listened to that version over and over again, when I was in college.

Here is Yeats' poem:

Where dips the rocky highland

Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,

There lies a leafy island

Where flapping herons wake

The drowsy water rats;

There we've hid our faery vats,

Full of beriess

And of reddest stolen cherries.

Come away, O human child!

To the waters and the wild

With a faery, hand in hand.

For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wave of moonlight glosses

The dim gray sands with light,

Far off by furthest Rosses

We foot it all the night,

Weaving olden dances,

Mingling hands and mingling glances

Till the moon has taken flight;

To and fro we leap

And chase the frothy bubbles,

While the world is full of troubles

And anxious in its sleep.

Come away, O human child!

To the waters and the wild

With a faery, hand in hand,

For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wandering water gushes

From the hills above Glen-Car,

In pools among the rushes

That scarce could bathe a star,

We seek for slumbering trout

And whispering in their ears

Give them unquiet dreams;

Leaning softly out

From ferns that drop their tears

Over the young streams.

Come away, O human child!

To the waters and the wild

With a faery, hand in hand,

For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

Away with us he's going,

The solemn-eyed:

He'll hear no more the lowing

Of the calves on the warm hillside

Or the kettle on the hob

Sing peace into his breast,

Or see the brown mice bob

Round and round the oatmeal chest.

For he comes, the human child,

To the waters and the wild

With a faery, hand in hand,

From a world more full of weeping than he can understand.

And here is the musical version:

Tonight I am very tired, and I'm still thinking of the concept of sanctuary.  Both Crowley's novel and Yeats' poem function in that way for me. They are sanctuaries, telling me that there is more to the world than I can understand: there are magical possibilities in it.

By Tidal Pools

I've been so busy lately that it's been difficult to keep up with blog posts. And I'm particularly tired tonight. So I thought that instead of trying to write something, I would post a poem I wrote a long time ago, "By Tidal Pools." I'm posting this one because several days ago I posted "Circe" by H.D., and this is another Circe poem. Now, I am not H.D., nor was meant to be. But reading her poem reminded me of my own, which originally appeared in Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, back in 2001, the year I went to Clarion.

By Tidal Pools

At first she watched in case he should return,

By tidal pools where iridescent snails,

Tyrian and cochineal, crawled about,

Saltwater glistening on their subtle shells.

"He was like you," she'd whisper, kneeling down,

One knee, and then another, on wet rock.

"Like you he wore his house upon his back,

Carrying Ithaca." She would lean out

Over a tidal pool's now-shadowed depths

And see, below, the snails, their shells gone dull,

Above them her reflection, dull as well.

Eventually her knees would cramp and ache.

She'd stand and each ridged whorl would glow again,

A demonstration of the dyer's art.

Where she had knelt, her dress clung to her shins.

She'd whisper then, "Does he lie on some shore

Where snails leave glistening tracks upon his eyes,

Or has he found his home?" She'd turn and walk

Over the rocks while wavelets lapped her feet,

Wondering when the sea had grown so cold.

My Circe is less an enchantress than a woman walking by the seashore, thinking of all the things that have happened, wondering what will happen. Things are so busy, still. But I'd like to write poetry again, when I have the time. And the concentration.

I found an image for this poem too, but it's not really a painting of Circe. It's really Miranda, by John William Waterhouse. But I think this is what my Circe looks like.

Sanctuary

I have always found sanctuaries. Once, I lived in a house that had a sort of closet under the stairs. No one used it, no one went into it at all – except me. I created a sort of place for myself there, with cushions and books.

Places in the forest behind the house were sanctuaries. Particularly where a stream ran by the roots of a large tree, and there was a sort of island where we used to play Robinson Crusoe and Swiss Family Robinson. Putting acorns on leaves for food.

A sanctuary is any place where you can rest. Any place where you can feel at peace with yourself and the world. It's a place where you breathe a sign of relief.

People can be sanctuaries too, I think. There are people with whom you can sit back, say to yourself "Yes, this."

I'm writing about sanctuaries because this is such a busy time, and that's exactly what I need: a sanctuary. A place where I can put down my head, rest for a while.

But I don't think I'm going to get one, not a real one, in the suburbs of Boston, Massachusetts. So I'm going to create one inside my head, imagine one. The imagined sanctuaries are sometimes the most useful, because they cost nothing and are fully portable. You can be walking along a busy road, hurrying somewhere, and suddenly you're thinking:

A cottage by the sea, and the sound of the waves, and at night lighting a fire to warm yourself. And a mug of tea, and perhaps a friend and conversation. Or no conversation. And the sound of the waves all night, and the gulls in the morning.

Books are sometimes sanctuaries (again, portable). Even poems I find in random places can take me away, for a little while. Tonight, I found Mary Oliver's "Wild Geese," and that's a sort of sanctuary in verse. It goes like this:

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

People can be sanctuaries, and places can be sanctuaries, and the whole natural world can be a kind of sanctuary, a place where we can rest, where we can feel at peace.  I started by writing that I find sanctuaries, but I think the truth is that I create them, whether in my head or in my life.  Or sometimes even in my writing.

At the Great Meadows Wildlife Sanctuary (some time ago, but memories can be sanctuaries too):

Getting Caught Up

Because I turned in my dissertation shortly before classes started, I didn't have much time to prepare. So this weekend I've been doing what I usually do before the semester starts, the initial planning and preparing. I'm slowly getting caught up. I'm still very tired, but hoping to recover in the next few weeks.

Today I planned for Monday, re-reading "The Great God Pan" (which is the story we'll be starting with). And I read through the first writing assignment, in which I heard my students' voices for the first time. Each semester I realized why I do this – because I genuinely love teaching, love the transformation that college students go through, particularly in the first year when they begin to discover themselves. Who they are, what they want, apart from what they've been told all their lives. (By their voices, I meant of course their writing voices – I've already heard their actual voices, since I always get them talking on the first day, so that the class is a genuine discussion throughout the semester.)

I've never once regretted leaving $100,000 a year and wearing suits and drafting contracts to do this. There's such satisfaction in doing what you love and know you're good at. What you're meant to do. I'm still a writer first, but who I am as a writer is woven into who I am as a teacher, and my teaching helps me understand my writing. I think of myself as one of the fortunate ones of the earth in part because I have the ability to do what I love, all the things I love, and integrate them into a whole. It's required sacrifices along the way, but doesn't anything worthwhile?

I still have quite a lot of work to do tonight, so I'm going to post two videos that you might like, by The Band Perry. I like the first one because of the Lady of Shalott imagery, of course. But there's also a sort of brightness and freshness to the music, an originality to it that I like a lot. It sounds individual, not manufactured. It has a quality to it that I'd like to capture in my writing.

The second video is more recent, but again I like the images, the aesthetic. (All right, the clothes. I like the clothes.) And it's intensely romantic, and of course that's good, right? "I don't want the whole world, the sun, the moon and all their light . . ."  And all that.

Oh, and I want to walk around in a field like that, with tall grass and a stream running through it, in a gypsy skirt.  (Which brings us back to the clothes, doesn't it? As always.)  With a man in a top hat who can pull a flower out of my hair . . .

Dancing Again

Earlier this week, after I turned in the copies of my dissertation, we all went to Helen's in Concord. I had a Patty Melt, which is a burger with onions and swiss on rye, and sweet potato fries. A lot of food, for me, but I was starving. While we were eating, a woman with gray hair sat down at a table nearby, within view of ours. When we were done, Ophelia and I walked toward the door. Kendrick was still back at the table, leaving a tip. When he caught up with us, he said, "That woman who was sitting close to us asked me if you were a dancer. I told her that you had taken dance classes. She said, 'Tell her to go back to dancing. I can tell she misses it.'"

I said, "You know what just happened, right? One of the Fates came down to have dinner at Helen's." When one of the Fates tells you to do something, you'd better do it. So I'm going to take dance classes again. Or at least try – I'm not sure yet whether it will work with my schedule. But yesterday I took out my ballet shoes.  (I know, it's silly to photograph them on a table.  But I was in the middle of cleaning, and it was an available space.)

Luckily, they're almost brand new, just a little worn. (The previous pair was in tatters when I bought this one.) I also found my footless tights and the wrap skirts I usually wear for classes. But I couldn't find any leotards. What in the world happened to them? I think I must simply have worn them out. So today I went to Patterson's to buy new ones. The store was filled with girls trying on ballet shoes for the new semester, doing pliés and relevés at a barre.

To be honest, I'm a little intimidated every time I start dancing again. When I was a child, I stopped taking ballet before going en pointe, and since then I've only done it for exercise. I always envy the girls who took it all through their teenage years, who are far more graceful than I will ever be. But I can't think of anything that challenges me physically the way ballet does. I suppose that's why I take it. It's the same impulse that makes me want to learn classical Greek.

(Can I mention that there is nothing like shopping for leotards to make you realize exactly how unfit you've become? Or I've become, in this instance, unfortunately.)

The Boston Ballet School has a studio about a half-hour drive away. I think I'll take lessons there, rather than in the city, although I love the main studio downtown. It has classes that are called Beginner, Elementary, Intermediate, and Advanced. The Advanced classes are for current or former professional dancers, which is a level I'll never achieve, of course. So really there are three levels for me. I'll need to go back to the Beginner classes, to start with. It's been too long since I've danced. When I tried on my ballet shoes, I realized just how much I've lost: those strange things ballet develops, like muscles under the foot and flexibility bending the foot. I remember how it used to feel, to move each muscle separately, to have that sort of control. I don't have that anymore.

So this is an experiment, to see if I can still do it. If I can dance again.

In the afternoon, I went to Concord, to one of the antiques shops there. I bought a Meakin transferware pitcher ($18).

I also bought a silverplate serving fork with one of my favorite patterns on it ($12).

And then I drove back to the house and began to prepare for winter. I can already feel a chill in the air, especially at night. So I put creamy flannel sheets on my bed, replaced the fan with a heater. But I'm not doing the things I usually do, planting bulbs for instance. This is a transitional period, so instead I'm preparing for the transition, however and whenever it comes. Sorting through books. Making sure I have what I need, giving away what I don't. I think that's a good thing to do, in autumn, which is a transitional season anyway.

I'm looking forward to dancing again – literally and metaphorically.