Beans and Rest

I’ve been in a writing slump. Like a batting slump, a writing slump doesn’t mean I’m not writing. It doesn’t even mean that I’m not having moments of being “into it.” Okay, minutes of being into it. Sixty here, sixty there. Then a sort of dullness. Part of it is probably the launch of The Given Self. A lull after that storm it is to get a book out…the kind that’s followed with one of those periods when you feel stagnant and you try to remember it is natural. You’ve got to have a rest in the way fields need to be rested – rested or rotated, or both. All right – enough corn in this field – let’s plant beans this year.

I’ve got my rotation. My beans. A change not only in my writing life but my working life. A new period.

I’ve got the yen for rest too, and I’m going with it.

It was cold in the house last night. Henry bursts into my sunroom and says (as he does frequently), “Umma, where are our cats?” I say, “I don’t know. Do you want to find them?”

Last night the hunt led to my bedroom where we found Simeon on the bed. I told Henry I was cold and got under the covers. I never got back up. We read and played telephone. Then he carried in his whole box of dinosaurs. Then he examined everything on my dresser.

“What’s this Umma?” My glasses are off, so I say, “Bring it over.”

“Those are some rocks you gave me Henry.”

He puts those back. Brings the next items: a rosary, a wallet, a finger puppet.

He examines a tin box of his grandpa’s. Taking things out. Naming them. Putting them back in.

His mom comes to get him about 9:00. I turn out the light and fall right to sleep.

I get up early, still in yesterday’s clothes, and come out to my room where the shades are still drawn against the bitter cold of a week ago. It’s not so cold anymore. I think, ‘Maybe I’m not feeling inspired because I can’t see out.’ I pull the cord and raise the heavy weave on a fog of pre-dawn non-light; the air full of the change of snow meeting warm air.