First, a quick repeat of the intro to yesterday’s post, in case you missed it:
I’ve been off Substack for just over a year now, because I’ve had bigger fish to fry. By fish, I mean essays, and it’s not so much frying as lots of stirring and mixing and baking and defrosting and baking again and baking again and slicing and dicing and simmering. One of those essays is becoming a fully fledged book, and I just arrived a few days ago at a one-week writing residency, where I’m immersing myself in working on it. I’m keeping a daily journal as a kind of warm-up practice, and I figured, why not share it?
You can read yesterday’s diaries of days 0-1 here. And now, onto day 2. (It’s long, so day 3’s coming next in a separate post!)
DAY 2.
My body wakes me up at 5am, before the sun, before even the roosters. Could be excitement or anxiety, which I hear are practically indistinguishable on a physiological level, but proper rest would probably be more useful. I lull in and out of half-sleep until past 9am, then tug open up the cabin’s sliding door to see the gentle morning light.
The trees glow gold and warm, and I’m feeling fresh this morning. Optimistic. Looking out at the woods, I pull two of the little word cards from the handmade deck I inherited from my grandma, each one hand-lettered and illustrated by my aunt decades ago and tucked into a purple velvet pouch. “Delight” comes first, then “creativity” — optimistic indeed. I hold them up against the backdrop of bug-humming foliage for a photo, then assemble a tote bag of necessities to carry to the house for the day’s first real order of business: coffee.
On my way out the door and down the pebbled path, I stumble into a patch of honeysuckle I hadn’t noticed before. It’s a pure delight of a plant, with its unmistakably sweet-scented perfume. Carefully, by which I mean both carefully and full of care, I pluck one of the blooms, snip off its little green sepal with my fingernail, and then lift the tiny straw of the flower to my lips to sip the nectar, like I’ve done since I was a kid. And then I place the petals gently on the ground, smile at the shrub, and instinctively say, “Thank you.”
The day before, I had been noticing how a farm without a flourishing garden does not feel much like a farm to me. I noticed myself feeling a way I can only describe as “metaphorically thirsty,” missing the medicinal herbs and sun-fatted vegetables I see as allies to my own creativity. This morning, it seems Mama Nay is listening. Then again, She always is.
I smile at the cheery frills of goldenrod all along the hillside. I say, “Hi, buddy!” to the neighbor’s unleashed dog, an energetic and love-hungry puppy who comes bounding towards me whenever he hears my feet, and I give him a big scratch on his muddy head. I watch the light following me through the trees along the edge of the road, splitting through the branches in sparks.
It’s almost 10am, so I’m the last one to arrive in the kitchen, where the French press is already occupied. I dig around, find a pourover dripper, grind some beans, select a mug — the giant one, straight black and simple. I carry it out front and sit on the porch swing, sipping coffee and thinking and listening to all the chirping insects and then sorting through piles of digital photos I’ve been hoarding for months and months, placing them in folders with shared themes to inspire related captions. This right here is peak luxury. I savor the spaciousness of it.
I’m tempted to also redo all my Spotify playlists and tidy up the 312 — oh god, 312, really? — loose files and folders on my desktop, the other sorts of soothing organization tasks I can’t normally find time for, but I lose an argument with myself. I cannot justify these things as related enough to writing. So I open Substack. I start editing the bullet-pointed “residency diaries” on my phone into actual paragraphs, working until I’m starving. It’s time for a 1pm brunch.
I heat a can of refried pinto beans on the stove with a swirl of veggie broth and scramble tofu with turmeric and assorted other spices from the communal rack, then scoop a heaping spoonful of each onto a bowl of quick-steamed garlicky spinach. I go heavy on the salsa and the vegan queso, because I have to make it through both jars this week anyway, and scatter a hefty handful of sliced green onion on top. On the side, a quick and dirty guacamole, and a steaming corn tortilla.
It is all as delicious as it sounds.
I have a meeting with my writing teacher at 3:30, so I decide on a walk beforehand. I start off the same way as yesterday, hiking up the steep hill towards the bigger two-lane road, and then realize I want to jog, so I do. I weave back and forth across the street, dodging the hornets in the flowering brush, but otherwise continue following the same familiar path. Mostly, I want to use this residency for creative experimentation, but creative experimentation requires the scaffolding of safe and familiar routines.
Besides, there are new surprises with each redo. Like today, I notice a plywood sign propped outside the house just past which I turn to jog back. Hand-painted in big, black block letters that drip like blood, it says GO AWAY. Actually, there are two GO AWAY signs.
I avert my eyes, and they catch a yellow butterfly fluttering off to the left. Swallowtail, says my brain, naming and identifying things instinctively like it often does with plants. I wonder if it could be my grandma, a zany artist who loved butterflies and even hatched them on her front stoop in her final years. And then I notice that all today’s delights have been yellow — the swallowtail, the tofu scramble, the honeysuckle, the goldenrod. I am seeing yellow everywhere. I’m pretty sure Grandma loved yellow, too, but then again, who doesn’t?
After I rinse my sweaty limbs in the shower and meet with my writing teacher, I’m warm and soft and settled. I’m ready to work on the big project I came here for. I know what to do. I mean, I don’t know how I’m going to do it, but I know what I’m going to do. If I can.
I make a fancy snack of pickles and peppers and olives to celebrate, and I take it back to the front porch to eat while I mark up my printed essay draft with a pen. It’s pleasant until a few too many mosquitoes start to make a fancy snack of me. So I carry my bag back to my cabin, where my bug spray is, and where I can watch golden hour go down on my lofted deck.
I sit in the porch chair, looking out at the trees again. A pair of owls are playing a game of call-and-response, and I just listen, mystified, turning my head back and forth in their different directions. I think about the owl I saw a couple times last year at the true vegetable and herb oasis that is Myrtle Glen Farm — the one that watched me from its perch in a tree I jogged under, in between writing and farming sessions. In broad daylight. Twice. I stopped to look up at it there, and it just looked back, the white moon of its face angled right at me. And then I never crossed paths with it again. It felt like a positive omen, but I never figured out for what.
I have to walk back down to the house eventually, to pick up my dinner, which is a big serving of pasta leftovers I’ve already assembled in a tupperware in the fridge. I’m beginning to savor this walk — the ritual of it. On the way, I look up and see a cloud that’s shaped exactly like a seahorse. I don’t have any personal association with seahorses, but I’m guessing they’re good luck.
Maybe I’m making too much meaning of absolutely everything. But that’s exactly what writing is for. And besides, I’m now feeling loved and protected from each and every direction.
I’m back in the cabin at precisely 8:08pm, when the light has gone blue but not black. I light candles and switch on the strand of twinkly lights for which I’ve now acquired batteries. I write until I’m too tired to write anymore, eat my cold pasta leftovers, and go to bed.
At 12:15am, I jerk awake to three things occurring simultaneously. The first is a low blood sugar — the sweaty, heart-pounding kind. The second is a loud coo from one of the owls, just outside my door. The third is an essential “aha” that clicks my entire writing project into place.
I chug a juice box, jot down some garbled notes, and then find myself unable to sleep for the entire rest of the night. I toss and turn as if wired with too much energy . If you could see it, I bet it’d be electric yellow.
Love reading about your very interesting day… I am able to picture a lot of it from your writing.… Lovely. Love you!