San Benito Monastery
Dayton, WY
At last. No more speaking and traveling for awhile. I’m here for the summer to write my book. Haven’t touched it since last summer, so now I get to descend into writing. It ought to encourage me that I have already written and published two books, but it’s a funny thing, writing. When I sit in front of the blank page to write this book, it’s like the first day of creation.
I put up the map, the terrain I will cover in the book, up on the wall by my desk.
I’m in a postage-stamp-sized room at the end of a trailer. I look out at towering cottonwood trees and behind them the Big Horn Mountains. But when I descend into writing they fade away, and when I glance up I might see the lamp on my night table or my watercolor of the sunflower and pears and one plum and one mottled goblet that took the most work of all when I painted the picture.
But mostly it’s the descent into the current of writing.