May 16, 2010

Fan letter from a woman in Oregon. Always gratifying, of course, but also baffling, how someone I don’t know has heard of me, and followed my work, when I can barely do it myself. She hopes I will continue to publish. From her lips to God’s ear.

What strange energy has been upon me of late! I don’t know how to describe it (because it is unsettled, various, slightly different from day to day) and I certainly don’t know where it came from. After a few days of such languor I could barely move, I have been up early and active late, writing, painting, gardening, the days so (blessedly) long that what I did in the morning seems as distant from what I did in the evening as the far side of the moon. Inventiveness, too, hits the roof. This idea. . . that idea. . . and when I sit to put them in effect, the power to do so. I remember this from graduate school, but after? If so, the memory has sunk into the general blancmange.

The garden a blaze of orange after night rain and the explosion of ranks of poppies. Golden columbine and the white wild rose volunteer in the shade in front of the cottage. On the front terrace, the roses and the honeysuckle bloom at once– gluttony, parody, voluptuous excess.