I've been back on the road since Feb, and I've written some drafts about housesitting, but I just cannot generate enough interest in my life to write more than my short daily checkins and my longer letters. If I can't be bothered, why would anyone else be interested?
So, I spent January pulling together the medical and tax information. Then I went to Florida to celebrate Mom's 90th birthday. She's awesome and it was great. Then, off to England for 3 weeks at a Shropshire estate, a week in Wales, and time in London on either side. I had an exhausting week of travel, leaving at 6 am from London on March 26 and arriving in Edmonton at 5 pm on March 29. I had one full day in Albuquerque to pick up drugs, deposit my IRA rollover check and get a hair cut.
And now I'm in the wilds of Alberta, living in a log cabin on a lake, walking the dogs, building the fires. It sounds idyllic, but instead I am lonely. My contact is either furry or virtual: both good but not enough. My work seems small and boring. If, as Carlo Rovelli says, every day is time travel, then I'm in a loop. Make coffee, feed dogs, play Scrabble, tutor, read, go for a walk, take a picture, write a checkin or a letter, knit, binge-watch Netflix shows, practise piano, practise Norwegian (via Duolingo), wash dishes, go to bed. Repeat. As I walk, I write scenes in my head, none of which get typed up. I do share the photographs I take, but only because I have to connect somehow, and that's the easiest way. I don't edit or process them beyond a little cropping and light fixing.
I think of George Sand, who wrote 30 pages a day for her entire life. I think of Jane Eyre reminiscing contemptuously about her cousin Eliza, who had a rigid routine that sufficed for her; nothing put her out more than the interruption of that routine, and in the end she enters a convent where things will be done with order and precision. "The vocation will fit you to a hair," Jane thinks, "much good will it do you." But, how is Jane's regimented life any more meaningful? Is it her art that puts her above her cousins? or her passion, tamped down and controlled though it is? One sympathizes with St.John, who wants her to put her talents to use, who himself writhes in the claustrophobia and mundanities of the country parsonage.
As I walked today, I thought about Virginia Woolf and her prescription for the woman writer. I have money and a room of my own, but I still don't have that incandescent mental freedom to write things that are worth reading. Woolf picks out a "slim volume" of letters and finds the writer to be skilled in fashioning a scene while describing the small details of her daily life.
But here's the sort of letter I write:
I'm glad things are rosier for you: they are greyer for me. Yesterday it snowed and today it is chilly and cloudy. My only real activity is taking the dogs out for 40-60 minutes. I turn around when Chloe stops pulling, as I don't want to be dragging her back, and it seems that I only have a short window between the pull and the drag.
Yesterday my new glasses arrived. I'm not sure I like them. They are progressive lenses, and I just don't get the hang of finding the right place to look. They also have some sort of a tint to prevent the excessive screen time from straining my eyes, and I'm not sure that's working either. But, since I just got them, I'm going to give them some time. At any rate, the correction is better.
It's been a bit of a trial getting these glasses, since it's all mail order. I'm using a service that E suggested, and I had to measure the PD, and it took longer than expected so I had to arrange to have them mailed here in Canada. What's PD? I asked, when they said that, due to my high prescription they needed that number. It's Pupillary Distance, of course, they said, and sent me a video describing the process for measuring it. I was in Wales at the time. I got no fewer than 6 different measurements, squinting in the mirror, so then I took a picture of myself with the ruler below my eyes and I got 44 different measurements. I sent the pix to the company and they declined to make a determination, suggesting I see my optometrist. I don't HAVE an optometrist, so I waited until I got to London and had R measure, and she got YET ANOTHER measurement and E got a final measurement of 65, which is what I went with because he seemed absolutely sure about it, and he's ordered glasses online before.
Still, I'm not sure that my problem isn't the PD, rather than the progressive lens.
The number usually ranges from 55-65. While I'm in range, I'd feel more secure with a middle number. I do have a large head, though.....
You can see that my life is not very exciting, if I can obsess over such mundanities.
Mundane, indeed. I think I prefer the time loop.
