I'm starting from scratch, I said. Isn't that wonderful, she answered

I'm starting from scratch, I told a friend the other day. She on her phone, me on mine. I had walked a few miles during our conversation. We'd traveled to Montana and back in time, through clay work and literature, through architecture and family woe, and now I was still walking and we were still talking, and I said, J: I'm starting from scratch.

I meant that I had been sent back to very birth of things in my art and my career. That everything was a very brand new. That nothing was sure, nothing was predestined, I had no sure writing home, no sure writing brand, nothing sure at all, except the stories in my head.

It's like I never published before, I said.

Isn't that wonderful, she answered.

Isn't that wonderful. Starting over, starting fresh, taking nothing for granted, asking questions I haven't asked for twenty years. Twenty-one books are twenty-one books, but I dwell in the here and now. I make for the sake of making. I push (can push) too far. And where I am, and how it's been—I'm starting all over again.

Isn't that wonderful.

Yes, J. It is. I am afraid, I am raw, I don't know, I'm on my own, and it is wonderful. It is brave and uneasy and I'm alive with it, alert to it, figuring it out. Again.

Yes, J. It is.

But so are you, for saying so. And so all the many friends who have accompanied me in this summer of questions, of starting over again. I stepped back and took it slow. You've been there. I thank you.