It stopped raining yesterday and I went on a small hike with the dog. He’s very protective, and ran on the trail ahead of me to survey the terrain. The woods were mush from the rain, so we didn’t last long, maybe an hour. I thought about going to the summit but then we ran into a couple coming down from it, and the woman, who was probably six months pregnant, looked pale and said, “The ground is much worse up there than it is up here. It’s treacherous.” Treacherous! Her husband said nothing, he was unsmiling, and barely met my eyes. I could not tell if he had been terrified for her, or had fallen himself, or if she had just been yelling at him for the last hour, and he had nothing left to give, not even a smile for a fellow hiker. Whatever they had left in their path, I had no desire to encounter it. The dog and I mucked around near the waterfall while I took pictures. He was unhappy when I stood too close to the edge and ran around in circles and barked at me until finally I acquiesced and returned deeper into the forest.
I’ve just a few days left here and am mortified to report I have gotten a surprising load of nothing accomplished, considering the painful amount of thinking I have done. I only finished reading one book, and it was a short one, The Magician’s Nephew, by C.S. Lewis. There are lots of halfsies left to read, laying around the house with ripped out bits of journal paper as bookmarks.
I also wrote a couple thousand words of the new book, if that. I sorted out that in some way it has to be about my flaws and regrets and insecurities, that all of my characters could represent what I have done wrong with my life, even if it is only apparent to me. This isn’t going to happen – - because how much would this SUCK to do? – but I had the idea I would make a list of everything fucked up I’ve ever done and then invent a character to take this action. A neurotic fictional memoir. A memoristic neurotic fiction. Fictional neurosis. A novel. Duh.
I wrote in my journal: You better know what you believe by the time you get to the end of this book.
