SAN DIEGO in the Spring. A Book on My Mind
Octopus Bloody Mary or as it’s known on the menu: One-armed Mary.
NOTE: I could remove this post before my new Blog-Book is published because I Did Not Do What I Said I Was Going to Do. But it was a worthy plan so so the post gets to stay. More classes and ideas have followed and a different book is in the works for 2017. Better too many good ideas than none. (December 29, 2016)
My Geography (working title) is a book. I am writing. It will dominate my life for the rest of 2015. I’ll write this book as I traverse that very big geographic event called Eurasia, from Norway’s Atlantic Coast to Korea’s Pacific Peninsula. The journey’s in August and September; the preparation is well underway. The book starts now. My Geography is a starter title intended to make me think I’m Karl Ove Knausgaard (My Struggle!)—just another Norwegian (American) writer, bound to be brilliant and successful.
Simultaneously, I will post here, to Time and Place, to record the odd and/or mundane details of the weeks as Big Travel and Big Travel Writing are implemented. Time and Place has mostly been in limbo as I’ve perused a most enjoyable and stimulating UCLA class called “The Lyric Essay: Writing by Associative Leaps.” It is just completed with an essay titled “Geography.” Doesn’t that somehow gave me ownership of one of my favorite nouns—geography—as my writing guide for the immediate future?
If writing before during and after travel is to, as long threatened, take over the core of my life then I must acknowledge and accommodate that and not dilute it with sundry unrelated projects. How to do that? Life intrudes.
Work demands a share of me of course. I am lucky because it is good work. I am unlucky in that it is intense worthwhile work that cannot be relegated to a corner. It must share center stage.
Besides work, there’s the time-consuming stuff of everyday lived life: showers to wash my body, murder mysteries to cleanse my mind, groceries to keep me strong, toilets and floors scrubbed to keep me humble. The time for all that is constant; the place for all that is here all around the desk where I write. Sometimes cutting off my access to inspiration.
Focus Marjorie. You know pronouncements are easy. I’m very good at them. I will do this until then, for that many hours, from this time to another time, and, as a result, X will happen. It’s clearly time for less of that and more of this—fingers around the pen, fingers on the keyboard, fingers turning pages. Doing, not pronouncing.
So My Geography: The Book. It was actually born this week, a raggedy first chapter called “Bosque.” To be edited 100 times. Each week new landscapes and waterways will join this first chapter, always extending its terrain in new directions.
That’s the BOOK, here’s the BLOG. Which this post is intended to re-energize. So wake up, perk up, word up Time and Place. You’re back on.
From sunny SoCal I bring you the returned, fully-rested Time and Place (just in time for Easter) with the requisite photos of food and rhythm of family life. It’s all good.
Me and my California kid…
Way to Brunch.
I am happy to see words coming from Albuquerque. You sound so organized, and I am feeling disorganized this evening. Not a new feeling for me. The anticipation of your upcoming adventure/trip is mouth watering. Travel lust is happening to me as well, although you do something about it. I watched you tube today: Capital Limited and Southwest Chief…I want on the train again…I think that is how you are feeling as well.