Sundays

Wherever you go, there you are

Day with sun and blue sky

“I think the sirens in The Odyssey sang The Odyssey, for there is nothing more seductive, more terrible, than the story of our own life, the one we do not want to hear and will do anything to listen to.”

—Mary Ruefle, “Deconstruction”

T.S. Eliot was wrong—April is not the cruelest month. That honor falls to March. And on the Cape it was March perpetually since the beginning of January. (I took the picture, above, on one of the handful of sunny days.) For that reason, among a few others, the Cape may not have been the best place to retreat in order to write. But I had a couple of deadlines I’d been struggling to meet (in other words, to paraphrase Douglas Adams, I was enjoying the whooshing sound those deadlines made as they flew by me) and hoped a change of scenery would help shift things.

It turns out that voluntarily removing myself from the field in order to focus on writing may not have been the best idea I’ve ever had. I’ve been, to varying degrees, on lockdown for over six years, starting with the November 2016 election when the real world became a rather tricky place for me to negotiate. But even introverts are social beings and no matter where you are, if you have a phone and an internet connection, the big news always has a way of breaking through. So, the stay turned out to be the least ideal of many worlds—my least favorite month lasted for ninety days and my withdrawal from society didn’t do anything to shield me from the current events that are usually best avoided.

I confess, news of the indictments a couple of weeks ago derailed me a bit. But, because I reject the idea that the only way to survive our current crisis is to hide out in a cave for 500 days, I decided to head back to New York.

Suddenly it was August—ninety degrees and humid, the sun blindingly bright. (Oh, how I miss the smooth transitions between what used to be the four seasons in the northeastern United States.)

Heat wave aside, in the last week I’ve been to a concert; the cherry blossoms have begun to bloom; I had lunch with a close friend whom I’d never actually met in person before; and I had the honor of joining my friend Judy Gold for a talk back after her incredible show, Yes, I Can Say That. Based on her best-selling book of the same name—which I highly recommend—the show was brilliant, moving, and very, very funny. She and her wife invited me to join them for dinner afterwards and I almost declined because being out in the world is still more stressful than invigorating. But I ended up going and had a wonderful time with them.

Still, the effort to be among people takes a toll. Being social is a muscle that has atrophied. While I try to strengthen it, I’ve found that it’s really important to find a balance in other ways. I work a lot. Too much, probably, and often at the expense of other things. So I’m trying to get back into some old habits. When I go for a walk or exercise, I do so in silence instead of listening to a current events podcast or an audiobook that is research for one of the projects I’m working on. I’m getting back into the habit of reading novels. A couple of months ago, I started re-reading the complete works of Henry James. I’m up to The Portrait of a Lady. The plan is for William Faulkner, Toni Morrison, and Marcel Proust to be next. Just thinking about it makes me feel like my brain cells are recharging.

Speaking of which, here are Linden and Cap positively glowing.

I hope you are all finding ways to heal and reconnect with things that and people who matter to you.