A friend online asked a question that gave me this post. How does my gardening go with my love of travel? And writing books also takes a little time. Gardening, like writing or cooking, takes coordination. A good cook gets all the food to the table at the same time. A writer, a gardener, lays out the plot in the same way. If not done correctly, the garden dies, the book withers.
I love to travel. Maggie likes castles and cathedrals, I like great food and fluffy beds in great hotels. While traveling, I'm aware that my 135 year-old farmhouse abides, my cats and dog are in the care of friends (mostly one. Greg.) and my garden is alone with the weeds, insects and animals. That's the contract. I can't change who I am and will never stop gardening, or having animals around. We've had horses, cows, chickens, innumerable cats and dogs across the years. I hope these three last forever. They should, as much as they sleep.
My two deadbeat black kittens sprawl across the laziest black Lab ever born (she plays like a maniac in the rain, in terrific thunderstorms with lightning popping in the yard, yet she's manically afraid of flying beetles).
Stories come from life. Life feeds the imagination. It's why a memoir from a famous 18 year-old does nothing for me. Why listening to an 80 year-old ranch hand in dusty clothes captivates me. Writers are not the center-of-attention kind of people. Where that cowboy's charm is just ‘out there,' the writer manufactures it in his head and is never glib. I've been in the company of great novelists and, with the rare exception, they're all the kind of people you hear about after a crime:
"I dunno....he seemed so quiet. You barely knew he was there."
The writer seems glib, if you only know his/her work. Knowing the writer is all together different.
But a writer is always writing. And, that's the difference. A writer at dinner or a movie, or riding in a car, is writing. It's just what we do. We ignore those we love and we miss appointments because we saw a flash of color somewhere. We can spend all night with a beautiful woman (from this man's point of view) and remember the sweep of her hip, the way her hair falls across her shoulders, the flash of her eyes and the way her lips make crescent shadows when she smiles. But that doesn't mean we'll remember her name, or would remember her again out of context.
We're always filing things away, and it irritates the hell out of people. Especially those close to us; but it's what a writer does. It's the same care a chef takes with food. He, or she, may never stop to taste what they've prepared, but they know it's right. By the smell, sometimes....by the color and blend and the way spices swirl around inside.
Gardening takes time. Preparing the soil, potting the seeds and adding nutrients and water. Treating them right. It's all the same, whether we garden, quilt or paint. The cowboy just ‘is,' the artist, usually, isn't. Charming, that is.
