The lady duck and her fellow are back today. Yesterday, when the creek was raging, they were nowhere in sight. It was not a safe place for mallards. But now they are nestled down into the swampy grasses that are a little flatter than before but otherwise thriving. I've been watching these ducks for a while, hoping that they can have a family here in this little basin of wildness in the city...I want our little spots of wildness to be big enough for animals to live and create in our midst. For frogs live in our front yards and for ducklings to grow up in our creeks. There are salmon here, which is why I keep Sunshine the dog out of the creek. He is a Bigfoot among the wild things here; his impact is large. I keep my yellow galoshes on the trail and he keeps his paws mostly close to mine.
Old things to seem to be clearing away. I have three friends whose relationships are ending, and another who is beginning new love. The Spring flood has washed away much of winter's debris. This morning I faced my sprawling octopus of a novel. When I wrote on that napkin that I realized that I believe utterly in the power of stories to transform, it seemed obvious that next up was actually to finish the story of my own. Not the columns, not the narratives of change not the working of someone else's myth-- yes, I love those works. Yes, I will keep doing them for clients and witch camps and for pure love. But my own... My three act woman-on-a-quest, fire witch, shape-changer with the dark lover political romance with steamy sex scenes and kitchen fights and magical back room deals? I have been working on this fucker for… Seven years? No, nine. Over and over I have let uncertainty defeat me.
But now, as I try to recover my ability to sit at a desk, putting post-it’s on my three act = poster board is something I can do standing. I am replacing the old notes with new ones that honor the story above all, color-coded for each subplot. Every time I rip off an old note and replace it with a new one, I am washing away the old and welcoming in the new.
Three days until spring equinox AND the new moon.