September 4, 2017

I recall when I was at the studio Saturday, I was filled with such deep and perfect pleasure being there and working. The painting was going well, too. Will try to get back today and look. Received my new lease which I may have immediately lost.

Turned a dispiriting heap of red and yellow tomatoes into a soup delicious beyond my imagining. Nothing in it but bacon, tomatoes, onion, garlic, a tiny film of olive oil. Note to self: Open a guy restaurant, where you throw in whatever you have without measuring.

Read the Moses and the Burning Bush passage in church. Love that. God is such a tease. Shocked by a letter from RS in Houston–still submerged Houston-- saying my book is on track, and that it is I, actually, who am holding it back a little, having not received an earlier email with instructions in it. Need to do that. Need to clean the pond filter. Need to deliver imagined paragraphs of my Portage County story onto paper. Need to dig the fall gardens. Need to give thanks for days each of them better than its corresponding day last week. That’s how we measure in an imperfect world. Maud watches Trump on TV for a minute, lays her head against my arm in a gesture of sadness and exhaustion. Even the cats--