Journal of a Sabbatical

November 30, 1999

still nothing to say

Today's Reading: Autumn: From the Journals of Henry David Thoreau edited by H.G.O. Blake, Writings and Drawings by John James Audubon

It gets dark much too early now. I'm not Henry David Thoreau. Nor could I be. I'm not even Carol Burdick. The mistake I make is reading journals with the idea that I can simply fashion my own after them and have it be a decent read. A way long time ago, I learned in English class that you should never become a writer because you have something to say but rather because you like to hear the sound of words interacting. Or something like that.

I don't have anything to say. I don't have anything to say. I still don't have anything to say.

What time will the snow start? Should I look for my mittens before I go to bed tonight? Will FileMaker run on the ancient Mac in the MRFRS office? Will I ever get Netscape 4.7 to work right? Why did they take away the "sort bookmarks" feature? Does piping plover really taste like chicken? What about the brant?

Why is my screen wobbling? Is the monitor about to conk out? I had a monitor catch fire once a zillion years ago at one or another of my former places of employment. I remember the smell but I don't remember which company I was at. The wobbling stopped for now. Maybe the monitor is OK.

I don't have anything to say. Or is it that anything I do have to say is meaningless? Or incomprehensible?

So, on this Carol Burdick book. Woman Alone: A Farmhouse Journal.

The phone keeps ringing. I keep answering. It's some guy who speaks only Spanish looking for a woman named Eliza. It takes several tries before he understands this is not Eliza's number.

Back to Carol Burdick. I finished the book last night. It's the journal of one year in the life of a recently divorced middle-aged woman whose children are grown and flown. She's caring for aging parents. She's trying to be a writer. Midway into the book her father dies. Her descriptions reminded me of how my father looked just after he died.