Inside My Head

morning fog

That's what I see outside the back window today, which may as well be a portrait of my mind.  I'm utterly foggy and bogged down and not dogged enough to slog through it.

"This time I want to find my way, explore my way, take my time. I want more than I have ever asked of myself before. Maybe it requires a silence and a centering that I have not yet--in my whole life really--given myself."

That's from Pat Scheider's book How the Light Gets In: Writing As A Spiritual Practice, which sounded like something I should read, even while the cynic in me says that the more time one spends reading books on writing the less time one spends actually writing.

Our 26-year-old daughter, visiting from England, just borrowed my car and my cell phone and is heading into town. I tried to resist the impulse to remind her to make sure she drives on the right side of the road, and also to be careful making that left turn onto Highway 101. But I'm afraid I said these things out loud, maybe more than once, a mild form of Tourette's common in mothers.

And now I'm sitting here in the fog. I can hear Monte tapping at his computer, Doug-the-carpenter sawing and hammering as he fits a door, and now and then the canyon wren. But mostly it's just quiet, a muffled kind of day when everything seems paused and waiting but I have no idea how to proceed.