Currently I’m surrounded by little stacks of books. Great covers hold the beat of the moment. Admired authors flood my mind with emotion. Titles —the showy influencers of the book shelf strive to illicit a reaction. I’ve rediscovered stories from my childhood {Clan of the Cave Bear}, the anxious days of adolescence {Flowers in the Attic}, the insecure early days of motherhood {Anna Karenina}. My TBR list is growing endlessly.
A partially complete manuscript sits on my blotter, fanning for attention. It’s conclusion in my mind, swirling. While the beta phase of a new project fills my inbox, task list and foreshadows the next decade. I’m not sure who will eventually prevail, but I do know it’s transition time once again.
January 2025. Five years since Covid altered our world. A year after I published my last title. A month beyond my daughter’s graduation from Cornell. Fires ravage the visceral memories of our home state. A new charred reality steals the playful, golden moments of youth.
Joan Didion described it best, “…the weather of catastrophe, of apocalypse, and, just as the reliably long and bitter winters of New England determine the way life is lived there, so the violence and the unpredictability of the Santa Ana affect the entire quality of life, accentuate its impermanence, its unreliability. The winds shows us how close to the edge we are.”
We are on the edge, each and every one of us. But the question hovers, on the edge of what? I’m struggling to find an answer in my mind and at my writing desk…maybe you, in your space, have already found yours.