Unbleached White Brain Matter

I have no profound thoughts left today.  If I would have had time for more, I would have washed my dishes and finished my laundry.  Instead, I washed a load of clothes in the early afternoon, then forgot about them.  When I checked on them, they already had the musty smell of clothes forgotten in the washer, so I rinsed them again with a few scent beads.

“What happened to your maid?” my neighbor Mary asked me when I explained that my house was in a state of emergency…again.

“Are you making fun of me, Mary?” I asked, laughing.

It started at the writer’s conference in Madison, under the dome of Wisconsin’s capital, when an agent from New York asked to see the memoir I was telling her about.

I was sitting across the table from her her, in a curtained-off section of a large room, surrounded by other white-knuckled writers like myself, who had practiced for an hour in front of the mirror.

The problem is, I had just become aware of huge holes that need to be patched and repaired in my work.  I wasn’t even sure why I was pitching it.

“When do you want it?” I asked her in a panic.

“When it’s tight and clean,” she said.  “You decide that.”

“A couple of months?” I asked.

“Sure,” she said.  “Just write in the subject of your email that I met you at Madison.”

On the way home from the conference, I got an email indicating that the Syrian refugee book project that had maybe fallen through was suddenly picking up steam.   Could I go to the middle East in June? the email asked.

No.

But my brain is dusty and heavy from hours in front of my computer, overhauling my memoir so I can get it to the agent and forget about it so I can research the Syrian conflict and prepare for an exhausting trip in late summer.

These are the days that I know I’m a writer, that I know I’m living at the edge of my abilities, when I look at the clock, and four hours have gone by without notice, or the laundry has stopped and I’ve completely forgotten about it.

It is always my hope that someday, these days will bear fruit, by the grace of God, in the life of someone who has my book in their hands.   Even if this agent is not the one, or if my manuscript is not good enough yet, I have nothing to lose except the neatness of my house. Maybe someday I’ll figure out how to be a writer and a nurse and a housekeeper.

Good night folks.  I have this wild dream of trying to wash my dishes yet before the Sabbath.