In Tidal Flats, Cass’s father loved his leather-bound edition of Rumi’s poems, Rumi who was born in Afghanistan. Instead of bedtime stories, he read to Cass from Rumi. And Cass would lie in her closet underneath her dresses and think about elephants tearing the darkness to shreds. The Essential Rumi has been on my shelf since I met Coleman Barks back in 2005, but I read it cover to cover, more than once, as I was working on this novel.

Cass works at Howell House, the home to three unusual women referred to as the Fates. One of them, May, loves The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers. Cass reads to her from this book that I did not like when I read it in high school. But I fell in love with it when I read it years later after moving to Columbus, recognizing the red brick buildings of both our worlds.

Although Cass had a lonely childhood, early on it was full of a pleasant darkness that gave way to imagination. As an adult, her best friend, Vee, gives her The Journal of a Solitude by May Sarton in an attempt to help her become comfortable with being alone during Ethan’s long absences.

There’s something about Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote. It has inspired me with other books I’ve written too. Here, in Tidal Flats, it has a small part near the end of the novel when a stranger mentions it to Cass.

I’m grateful to every book I’ve ever read. And at this moment in time, to these in particular.

I don’t keep (as in maintain) a journal. I do have a journal–actually I have lots of gorgeous journals (all blank)–but I do keep (as in hold in a given place) a journal in my purse and occasionally I write things in it. What I find that I do more often, though–especially now that the iPhone takes such amazing photos–is take pictures.

Which means that often when I want to write about something here, I start with my photos. What did I take a picture of–and why?

I began this site in September of 2008 and I’ve written at least once about how I chose the photo at the top and the Annie Dillard quote. I had bicycled by the Days’ Cottages in 2006, 2007, 2009, but never stayed in them. They are outside of Provincetown, and my visits to the area always had to do with P-town.

The first week in June, I headed north to stay in these cottages, and over the next couple of months, I’ll be periodically posting about the six days I spent in my little cottage.

I also have lots to say about all the great books I’ve been reading (yes!)–not a bad one in the bunch. Is this because I’m tossing the ones that don’t grab me instead of finishing them? Interesting….

So pull up a chair and get comfortable : )

Other posts in the series:

• cottage fixtures
• cottage writing room
• different ways of seeing: the cottage
• light-from the cottage
• the day the sun came out: at the cottage

Polly Thayer's portrait of May Sarton owned by the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University

There is nothing to be done but go ahead with life moment by moment and hour by hour–put out birdseed, tidy the rooms, try to create order and peace around me even if I cannot achieve it inside me.

As the last days of summer float by, I feel like I’m swimming upstream against them, periodically climbing onto the river bank to put out the next fire. I don’t really think that’s what May Sarton meant by going “ahead with life moment by moment.” And, unfortunately, I’m not even in the same universe with putting out birdseed and tidying rooms. How can I have so much to do?

I’ve been printing blank weekly calendars from the internet and making lists, thinking about the best way to shape the mornings, afternoons, and evenings. On one of my lists from yesterday was “schedule time for reading.” You’ve got to be kidding, I say to my list. It’s come to this?

“That was what I was after–a daily rhythm, a kind of fugue of poetry, gardening, sleeping and waking in the house.”

I like fugue for its sense of interweaving of parts, for its writerly rhythm.

But at the moment I’m not sure fugue is going to get it done. In fact, what I need is a general to command the troops, to whip all these to-dos into shape. And less sleep. Maybe if I get up an hour earlier…

Just so you know, Eleanor Marie Sarton was born in Belgium in 1912. All of her quotes in this post can be found in  Journal of a Solitude, published in 1973.

How about the rest of you–how are your summers going?

I wondered how other writers managed to focus at this time of the year. So I reached for May Sarton‘s Journal of a Solitude, written from September to September–1970 to 1971, I think. And guess what? As far as December, there’s an entry for the 2nd and then nothing until January.

It’s like falling into a black hole. In December, most of all, it’s a struggle to claw through the must-do’s, the should-do’s, and the do-nows to find something real. In December, it definitely takes both hands to catch a day. So I’m going to aim for a minute here and there. Maybe an hour. I’m not going to give in. I’m going to take a deep breath. Read a few words. Write a sentence.

In her January 2nd entry, May Sarton writes,

“I can understand people simply fleeing the mountainous effort Christmas has become even for those, like me, without children. Everyone must feel revolt as I do about the middle of December when I am buried under the necessity of finding presents, the immense effort of wrapping and sending, and the never-ended guilt about unsent cards…”

In an attempt at a real thought for today, I leave you with this. In her last entry in the book, she suggests that writing is a “messenger of growth,” that from where we are, “we write toward what we will become…”

[Something about my desk this morning felt familiar, hence this re-post from December 19, 2008.]

Polly Thayer's portrait of May Sarton owned by the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University

“There is nothing to be done but go ahead with life moment by moment and hour by hour–put out birdseed, tidy the rooms, try to create order and peace around me even if I cannot achieve it inside me.” May Sarton.

As the last days of summer float by, I’m thinking about reclaiming control of my days. I want to read more and write more, lose fewer hours to Twitter and Facebook, the internet in general.

Social networking does have a place. It helps me stay current with the latest articles on writing and books. It helps me feel connected to the writing community. And it’s a way to let others know what I’m doing. As Lori A. May pointed out in a recent post I discovered on Twitter, “For a writer, it’s not only about writing.”

“I am in a limbo that needs to be patterned from within….this problem of ordering a day that has no pattern imposed on it from without.” Again May Sarton.

Last week a friend and I were brainstorming about how to order our days. First we made a list of deadlines and everything we wanted and needed to do. Then we made daily, less-than-daily-and-more-than-weekly, and weekly lists. Finally we talked about what shape we wanted the mornings, afternoons, and evenings to take.

“That was what I was after–a daily rhythm, a kind of fugue of poetry, gardening, sleeping and waking in the house.” Yes, May Sarton.

Lori May eschews the word schedule as antithetical to writing. She refers, instead, to a plan of attack. I like that. I also like fugue for its sense of interweaving of parts, for its writerly rhythm. So yes, I am working on a plan of attack, in order to create my daily rhythm–a kind of fugue of reading, writing, blogging, connecting, and living.

Eleanor Marie Sarton was born in Belgium in 1912. All of her quotes in this post can be found in  Journal of a Solitude, published in 1973.

“Travel brings out my need for order.”  Picturing the Wreck by Dani Shapiro

Boarding passes, passports, confirmations.  

Scarves, coats, coffees, carry-ons. 

Phones, laptops, ipods, kindles.

Chargers, adapters, converters.

And then there are the liquids separated from the case that usually holds them, that holds the rest of their little friends.  The brusqueness of the plastic ziplock bag. 

“Yesterday was a strange, hurried, uncentered day.”  Journal of a Solitude by May Sarton

The time to be at the airport, the time to board, the time the plane pulls back.

And finally, the time to go home.

I wondered how other writers managed to focus at this time of the year.  So I reached for May Sarton‘s Journal of a Solitude, written from September to September, from 1970 to 1971, I think.  And guess what?  As far as December, there’s an entry for the 2nd and then nothing until January. 

It’s like falling into a black hole.  In December, most of all, it’s a struggle to claw through the must-do’s, the should-do’s, and the do-nows to find something real.  In December, it definitely takes both hands to catch a day.  So I’m going to aim for a minute here and there.  Maybe an hour.  I’m not going to give in.  I’m going to take a deep breath.  Read a few words.  Write a sentence. 

In her January 2nd entry, May Sarton writes, “I can understand people simply fleeing the mountainous effort Christmas has become even for those, like me, without children.  Everyone must feel revolt as I do about the middle of December when I am buried under the necessity of finding presents, the immense effort of wrapping and sending, and the never-ended guilt about unsent cards…”

In an attempt at a real thought for today, I leave you with this.  In her last entry in the book, she suggests that writing is a “messenger of growth,” that from where we are, “we  write toward what we will become…”

And it felt like fall this morning.  Canada geese flying over.  The first leaves changing color.

It’s no surprise that in two of my all-time favorite books, the authors write of fall.

In Journal of a Solitude, May Sarton wrote of a September day, “The sun is out.  I woke to lovely mists, dew on spider webs everywhere, although the asters look beaten down after the rain and the cosmos pretty well battered.  But these days one begins to look up at the flowering of color in the leaves, so it is easier to bear that the garden flowers are going one by one.”

In Light Years, James Salter wrote, “In the morning the light came in silence.  The house slept.  The air overhead, glittering, infinite, the moist earth beneath–one could taste this earth, its richness, its density, bathe in the air like a stream.  Not a sound….Autumn morning.  The horses in nearby fields are standing motionless.  The pony already has a heavier coat; it seems too soon.”

And then there’s Edith Wharton in The House of Mirth:  “The afternoon was perfect.  A deeper stillness possessed the air, and the glitter of the American autumn was tempered by a haze which diffused the brightness without dulling it.  In the woody hollows of the park there was already a faint chill…” 

That’s what we had in Columbus this morning, a faint chill, presaging the lovely fall days ahead.  Only one hundred days left in the year.  Here they come and there they go.  Catch as many as you can.