Dreaming the World

This morning the overnight snow as changed to freezing rain and now a wintry mix. The forecast is for heavy rain later.

I’ve just finished Donald Hall’s A Carnival of Losses. The book is a blend of memoir and ruminations about the everyday world of one rapidly approaching ninety. It is an immensely pleasing read, funny, heart breaking, profound, and mundane.

I’ve also been reading the letters of Seamus Heaney which often touch on the rythms and rituals of everyday life. A significant portion of the letters were written during The Troubles in Northern Ireland, giving them a disquietingly contemporary feel as he navigates a world gone mad. Last night I also read some of his poems from that period, work that is complex, largely non-judgmental and filled with rich metaphor.

Both Hall and Heaney write the human: beauty, mystery, and loss, challenging topics in the best of times. Another writer who grapples with these themes, in both books and her blog, is Brett Ann Stanciu. (Her blog may be found here and is well worth a visit.) Each of these writers frequently touches upon the rituals, large and small, of their days, everyday rituals that give life shape even in turbulent times.

Yesterday we had lunch with a young relative who is in the early stages of his college career. He is a writer and felt hurt by a teacher’s comment that he wrote like AI. This brought us to a conversation about how we write what we read, an idea that clearly was new and resonated. This got me to thinking about how reading excellent writing undoubtedly influences both what and how I write.

Speaking of daily rituals, Nori the cat and I have a morning ritual in which she goes upstairs to my office/sound studio where I now sit, and waits for me to arrive. We then play chase the kibble briefly and sometimes play with string, after which she curls up and naps until it is time for me to go downstairs to prepare her lunch. (She eats breakfast around 6:15 so by 10:30 is ready for lunch and a long sleep.) This morning she curled up on my large lens bag which is her new preferred spot, far from my reach, and napped.

I was responding to personal e-mail which unusually took a good two hours, so I did not work on sound which may have seemed to her an absence. She often curls up on the sofa behind me and cat naps and listens as I work. I figure that if she gets up and leaves unexpectedly that she may well be commenting on what she is hearing. Fortunately that seldom happens.

Looking out the window towards the wood and field I see that the rain has picked up. This is shaping up to be an inside type of day, inviting time to write and be in the studio, and at some point requiring a fire in the hearth. I imagine my reading companions would approve.