Thursday, July 24, 2008

overhang (and some notes on being at Sage Hill)


All photos Lumsden, SK. July 23 & 24, 2008.

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I've had three full days in Lumsden as I participate in the Sage Hill Writing Experience. The tumult of choices (sit and think, sit and read, go for a walk, work on this poem or that poem, edit this poem or that poem, consider the manuscript, consider the contents of my belly, contemplate dinner, eat dinner, socialize after dinner, retreat to my room after dinner...) is, well, tumultuous, but I am calmed by the rolling hills of Lumsden and environs and my continually renewed pledge to myself to be content with what gets done here, no matter how much or how little that is.

I have fallen into walking before breakfast and nearly trod on a fawn in Lumsden's high grasses the first day. Subsequent days have seen me crouching in damp leaf litter, having discovered mushrooms behind St. Micheal's low-key labyrinth. Having discovered the mushrooms...I am content.

Also sort of wonderful was the mushroom pot I discovered in St. Michael's basement rummage sale, the first night I arrived. Two dollars in the kitty and it was mine...

Speaking of which, I have decided to try a radical 'salvage exercize' on parts of the travel manuscript I brought with me to work on. This has been necessitated by the great age of the poems (some of the first I worked on in a concentrated manner as a young poet) and my concurrent resistance to revising them yet again. If it works, great. If not, I am content to let them drift away...

This decision would have been much harder to come to if I hadn't recently completed Hump, which consists mostly of poems the same vintage as my daughter (who, thankfully, seems to have accepted that I'm 'at work').

More later but I hope you enjoy the photos (and, since the wireless network at Sage Hill has been actively hostile to Macs, the effort involved in posting them. Many thanks to Paula Jane for the loan of her PC, especially as my Paperchase deadline draws near...)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Funny we should both be doing mushrooms!

Hope you're having a wonderful Sage experience!

Ariel Gordon said...

Hey, T...nice to hear from you (of course nicer still is the prospect of seeing you this weekend.)