One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple. (Jack Kerouac)
We’re still at the Shore, altho Mr. Peeps made the choice to return to the farm, where he could continue his misadventures in trying to become part of the farm cat gang. Twelve week old Pickles misses him badly, and is having to devise her own mischief rather than following in his worthy footsteps. Her very favorite of late is running nighttime laps around the rather cramped bed, which usually earns her time-out in her crate. Hank, of course, is above it all, with the far greater concern of having to carefully mark and re-mark the bazillion spots he has carved out as his own here. Today on our early morning walk on the beach, we found that the gusty winds of the last few days had driven the water far out beyond the usual tidal flow area and oh! — the new places that Ole Hank found seemed to be truly savored and appreciated — land where no dog had gone before, a pioneer journey.
Husband and Hank are heading home to check on things, so Pickles and I will have some girl time. I am considering laying in a supply of peanut butter pretzels and ice cream, and chicken and gravy baby food (Pickles got hooked on it during her post-hollow-tree-diarrhea bout). Still got plenty of beach reading, so I should be all set.
Right now I’m reading John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charlie, his account of his 1960 solitary cross-country journey with his old dog Charlie, a French poodle. The richness of his writing makes me fall in love with words all over again. About the truthfulness of his perceptions of America, he writes: “On the long journey doubts were often my companions . . . There are so many realities, and what I write here is true only until someone else passes that way and rearranges the world in his own style.” A man after my own heart . . . I think I’ve written that myself — if not, I should have!
When I was growing up, my father had two pithy remarks designed to halt the ongoing flow of chatter, giggles, and questions with which his two daughters could inundate him — “don’t talk if you don’t have anything to say” and “don’t talk just to hear the rocks in your head rattle.” Now, lest you think my father was a mean, abusive man, let me hasten to assure you he wasn’t; he was just a product of his time (children-to-be-seen-and-not-heard ilk) and probably overcome at times by the “girlie-ness” of his home. But the unintended consequence of this was for me a remarkable lack of facility with the spoken word. I can be so inarticulate that my mind has been known to go completely blank when asked my name. While those of you patient enough to read these babblings may find this hard to believe, it is sad but true. I am not a terribly gifted verbal person.
But write?!! Journals spill out of every drawer and closet in my home. I am in love with the written word, and I read and write voraciously. Notice that I don’t say “well,” just voraciously!
So to all of those of you who are reading this (and I think there are only a small handful of you, a select group to be sure, but very small), I want to say thank you. Thank you to cyberspace and thanks to all those of you who have so generously sent comments at times. What a gift!
My hope continues to be that the words you read here may also gift you at times, perhaps with a smile, or a chuckle, or a recognition of a commonality of experience, or even a new thought or reflection that you might want to commit to paper yourself. When I ask myself why I’m doing this writing, the answer still comes that I hope that it might be a place where you can stop for a moment to refresh yourself. I probably flatter myself greatly in saying that, but as long as it keeps giving me joy to do it, I’ll keep cranking it out. Thank you for reading it!