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Sometimes it’s as if frames from two different films overlap. For a moment. Sometimes longer. Occasionally the overlapping images complement one another, but often the experience is jarring. Confusing. Unsettling.
Seasons bleed into one another playfully, testing our agility, our resilience. Far-flung geographies, domiciles, and life stages muddle, merge, and drift apart again. Our worlds intermingle. For a moment. Sometimes longer.
October Rain, Wordy
Tell me a story of prism pocks on pears. Sing me a song of raindrops on apples. Pen me a poem of flickering daylight, flirting with nightfall; of sleepless longing for toil-oiled muscles and limber limbed spring; of sauntering through my cherished orchard in sultry summer, still oblivious to the dreary drama of October rain.
October Rain, Visual
Sometimes poetry leans on language, word bricks and word mortar, to sculpt a song or a story. Sometimes vision is enough to free the singing underneath…
https://www.instagram.com/reel/CjYQvj3AtKY/
October Rain, Singalong
Another perspective on October Rain just might wiggle it’s way into your mental repeat. I happened upon the subtly hypnotic jingle by Robin Jackson, and now it’s continuous looping like a subconscious 8-track tape in my graying gray matter.
Mostly October is crisp and clear along the Adirondack Coast. Quintessential autumn. But exceptions and rules are made in mysterious ways…
I remember, as a boy, seeing a mature bald eagle sitting in this oak tree. It must’ve been 1984 or 1985. My mother was driving us from Rock Harbor to Plattsburgh, where we went to school. It was less common to see bald eagles back then. They were present in the Champlain Valley, but less abundant than today. So it was a big deal to come upon one unexpectedly. My mother slowed the car and pulled to the side of the road, cautious because there was very little room to pull out of the lane without getting stuck in a ditch that divided the road from the adjoining field. We sat a few minutes — my mother, my brother, my sister, and I — observing the majestic bird. Substantial in size and commanding in posture and intensity. It may have been the first time I saw this iconic raptor up close, and it made an enduring impression on me.
It was late winter, as I recall, and the monumental oak was bare, damp from rain, imposing. It seemed the perfect perch for such a majestic bird. A tree with dignity, with gravitas. And yet, I yearned for the eagle to spread his wings and soar. We asked my mother to honk the horn. She declined, reminding us that the eagle had been there first, that startling him would disrupt him unnecessarily. I suspected that she too wished the eagle would fly. But she slowly pulled back onto the road, and we continued our commute.
Since returning to the Adirondack Coast in 2003, I’ve made a point of stopping to appreciate this handsome tree during jogs, in the early years, and bike rides, over the last decade. I’ve never spotted another bald eagle presiding over its gnarled limbs, but some day I might. In the meantime I honor the tree — vibrant leafed, laden with acorns, rusting in autumn, bare but for snow frosting — enduring across decades but otherwise virtually unchanged.
Lone Oak Haiku
Dripping after rain, a vast acorn nursery, lone oak towering. — Geo Davis
Sally & Sentry
When I shared this lone oak photograph and haiku on July 23, 2021, our friend and Essex neighbor, Tom Duca, surprised me with a previously unknown detail about this tree.
“You know Sally Johnson saved that tree. Look close. She had a cable strung between the two big limbs so they would not split apart.”
I had not known. But knowing has added to my affinity for this lone oak. A quiet, timely, essential act of kindness by an admirable woman to honor and preserve an iconic tree, our Adirondack horizon’s sentry.
Whether hummingbirds or butterflies or honey bees or bats or scores of other pollinators accidentally doing the work of fertilizing flowers from generation to generation, the appetite for nectar powers progeny. A sweet song of perpetuity. A dulcet dance engendering poppies aplenty.
Papaver Bee-ing, Haiku
By coincidence a poppy pollinator, the bee nectaring.
I wonder, in our quest for mythological nectar, if we ungainly landlubbers might inadvertently be pollinating poppies. Occasionally. Let’s hope so.
It’s time for a tumble into tempest and terroir. And so I return to storms and dirt. To dirt and storms. More specifically I revisit that sudden, destructive blast that crashed through the Adirondack Coast between Westport and Essex back on August 30, 2022. (See “Storm Damage” for the gory details.) And then I fast forward to our recent dirt work, sculpting and regrading a portion of the almost century old clay tennis court back closer to what it *might* have looked like two centuries ago. (See “The Art of Dirt Work” if you’re undaunted by dirt and clay and raw site work.)
Tempest & Terroir
A derecho, they said. A straight line blast, they said. A microburst, they said in the hours after. I'd watched at the front door forehead hard against sharp-edged muntins pressing elliptical tattoos into flesh above my brows. Moments later, panting, I stood in the screen porch looking west toward the barns, filming the angry minutes, prolonged, distorted minutes, while the sky blackened and rain blurred horizontal and leaves — at first, just leaves and then clusters of leaves and then whole branches — streaked horizontally, southeast to northwest, no gravity just a fierce force ripping through our lake life as crazed and decisive and mesmorizing and efficient as a runaway subway train. Later, still spongy earth gaped in the failing light like a mute maw anguished, roots unanchored, failing, drip-dripping muddy tears in a disinterred void. Silence now except for moisture's music drumming, a chorus of water drops and weeps and seeps, melancholy melody foretelling the dirt work now underway, today, two months after the storm. Excavator guided by imagination, plans, words, hasty field notes, and the dexterity of shrewd operators slicing precisely and scraping layers of sod, then soil, then clay away. Worry wells within for savage scars unsettle, whether microburst rought or man and machine made. But Rosslyn's fertile ground — robust, resilient, and memory of ages — will nourish and nurture, lifting lofty notions and simplest seedlings from rudiments and seeds to safe sanctuary and towering glories.
Goût de Terroir
Let’s chock this post up to poetic license. Sometimes poems (and sometimes stories) are more effective than nonfiction prose, I find. Hopefully some of you will grasp what I’m grappling with, the tenuous connections I’m making, the profound faith in this healing property that has, since 2006, guided us through transition after transition.
Why poetic license? Well, for one thing the French idea of “terroir” (literally soil or earth) is usually used in reference to wine, specifically the aroma and flavor profile as derived from the environment within which the grapes have been grown and, more loosely, the wine produced. So the idea as used by those of us who enjoy wine usually encompasses the geographic location and characteristics such as soil composition, climate, and topographical siting. I think it’s fair to extrapolate from this usage a broader albeit agricultural application of the term, but I’m trying to amplify the idea a bit further. Needless to say, this poem is still a work in progress…
I’m fond of the French word, “robinetterie“. In English the translation is “fixtures”. Not quite as intriguing a word, in my opinion. Nor are “plumbing fixtures”, “faucets”, etc. But “spigot“, now that’s a fine word! It conjures the drip, drip, drip… of a leaky spigot.
I know, pretty subjective, and perhaps a little esoteric. But I’m an unabashed connoisseur of words. I appreciate words the way others value gems or cigars or heirloom apple varieties or single barrel bourbon. Ok, I’m pretty fond of the last two as well, but words are my currency. I collect words, romance words, share words. And so far as I’m concerned “spigot” and “robinetterie” are in a class apart.
Leaky Spigot Haiku
Sometimes the soap dish,
sometimes the [leaky] spigot,
always drip, drip, drip,...
Spig’spiration
It’d be tough to be an old house enthusiast without appreciating antique and vintage plumbing fixtures. Fortunately Rosslyn’s kitchen, bar, bathrooms, and hose hydrants have undergone years of rehab, replacement, and TLC. But I live a peripatetic existence, and travel taps into my drippy robinetterie nostalgia from time to time. That leaky spigot in the photo above was photographed on July 21, 2014 in coastal Maine. Even now, I recollect my relief at not being responsible for fixing it!
But the seed for this micropoem was planted by another, Matthew Aaron (@_matthew_aaron_), with the following Instagram post. Thanks, Matthew!
Per Matthew, “the soap dish is everything”. Per me, the spigot is everything. It may not even be a leaky spigot, but I’ve exercised some poetic license. After all, the layers of life patinating the oh-so-very vintage robinetterie speak in drips. Can you hear it? Drip, drip, drip,…
The soap dish is everything (Remixed from photo by Matthew Aaron)
Poetic license bled into the visual domain. I’m not 100% able to explain why Matthew’s photo grabbed me the way it has, but I’m grateful for his permission to include both the handsome original and my derivative remix. A wonder-fueled wabi-sabi water faucet. A visual poem of a leaky spigot.
Most of our icehouse rehab updates have focused on the historic building itself, but today we look at progress on the new deck being constructed west of the icehouse and north of the carriage barn. First we carved out the new grade changes, and then we installed the helical piers. Today hefty carrier beams (aka girders) were installed on top of the steel piles.
In the photo above Tony and Jarrett are securing an adjustable steel base to the top of the helical pier. They’re tightening a 1” bolt down through a slotted hole (allowing for alignment adjustability) into the steel post. Once the base is aligned and torqued tight, a 1″ steel standoff is added, lifting the carrier beam above the bolt, allowing for air circulation, and reducing the likelihood of rot.
While Garrett (background) secures carrier beams, Tony (foreground) heats the wood to facilitate installation of adhesive flashing that will isolate joists from beams and — most importantly given our weather extremes along the Adirondack Coat — will reduce the deleterious effects of moisture, snow, and ice in the coming years.
Carrier Beam Installation Mashup
In the spirit of previous progress reports, here’s a quick zip through the day’s carrier beam installation.
Removing Clapboard Siding from Icehouse (Source: Hroth Ottosen)
Preparation for historic rehabilitation of Rosslyn’s icehouse is underway, and the photo above captures progress as of this afternoon. On the third day of removing clapboard siding from the icehouse we are now officially 3/4 of complete. And top of the good news list was confirming that the old cladding is in excellent condition except for a little dry rot on NW corner. Per Hroth, “Overall everything looks really good!”
Tabula Rasa
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s rewind about a week, back before our priority shifted to removing clapboard siding.
Rosslyn’s ice House was chockablock, not with ice, but with a decade and a half of architectural salvage, building supplies, woodworking projects, etc. Step one was emptying everything from the interior of the icehouse, inventorying the materials, transporting them to the rental storage container, sorting and storing the materials in a secure and orderly fashion do that we can retrieve as needed in the months ahead.
Mission accomplished! Pam and Tony moved mountains of material, and this is what the inside of Rosslyn’s icehouse looks like now: a true tabula rasa ready for reimagining.
100% Empty Icehouse (Source: BP Murphy)
Removing Clapboard Siding
With the icehouse now 100% empty, attention turned to the exterior. When we purchased Rosslyn back in 2006 the icehouse was in pretty rough shape. The north and south walls were “corn cribbing“ (falling outward, top plates literally leaning away from each other), and the roof was collapsing in. I posted a recap of our structural stabilization of the icehouse that will get you up to the present.
In some respects, the way the icehouse looked when we purchased the property was pretty similar to the Jason McNulty’s photos that zip posted in “Icehouse on Ice”. We patched in clapboards where windows had been, where a large section of the Southwest wall had been cut open, where animals had compromised the walls, where rot had damaged the structure, etc. The result was a charming patchwork of clapboard siding that resolved itself a bit once we primed and painted the building. Remember, that this was a temporary measure, intended to last long enough for us to stabilize the structure and complete the majority of the house and boathouse rehab. but months turn into years, turned into a decade and a half. At last we’re ready yo resume the project yoo long deferred.
Hroth and Justin began removing clapboard siding from the west facade of the icehouse first (see the later new installation here). Since this side of the building is not within the public viewshed it made sense to experiment, troubleshoot, and fine-tune the process here first. The photo above is early in the process, and the photo below is after completion.
Justin finishing up siding demo on west facade (Source: Hroth Ottosen)
So, yes, I fumbled the chronological sequence be featuring that first photo at the top of this post. I really should have been here at the bottom since it’s the most recent update, but it looked too dramatic to bury at the bottom!
As for the black-and-white images in this post, chock it up to experimenting with “ways of seeing” and ways of redacting (ie. culling and crating the story). If you prefer glorious technicolor, or you’re just curious, here are the color versions.
Removing Clapboard Siding from Icehouse (Source: Hroth Ottosen)
Removing Clapboard Siding from Icehouse (Source: Hroth Ottosen)
Removing Clapboard Siding from Icehouse (Source: Hroth Ottosen)
The Voice of Redacting Rosslyn (Source: Rosslyn Redux)
What do James Early Jones and Rosslyn have in common? Precisely nothing. Unfortunately. But more on that in a moment.
For the last few weeks I’ve been working on Redacting Rosslyn, a solo performance of vignettes, monologues and storytelling from Rosslyn Redux. I hope you’ll join me on Wednesday, August 3 at The Depot Theatre in Westport, NY. (Did I mention there’s a cocktail reception?)
Lights, stage, audience, action! I’ll morph from storyteller to author right before your eyes. With a little help from the audience…
I love to perform, but I always apologize for my voice.
It’s funny. When I rehearse — aloud or in my head — my voice is Bourbon and caramel. Resonant. Enveloping. It’s the secret weapon of a guerrilla storyteller!
But then I hear a recording of myself or watch a video, and I’m certain the sound isn’t working properly. Bad mic? Is the equalizer busted? Probably the speakers are blown. I don’t have that pre-pubescent, one-dimensional voice that scurries for the rafters every few minutes. Really, I don’t.
Only, I do. It’s me. That voice is my voice. And though I’ve come to terms with it, I do have moments when I’m rehearsing and begin to fantasize… What if I woke up sounding like James Earl Jones?
What is the most important thing you want, that you didn’t grow up with?
I’ve always longed for a deep, velvety radio announcer voice. A disk jockey voice. An actor voice. But no dice. Or wrong DNA. Or something…
After almost four decades of vocal shenanigans I’ve accepted my lot, but if I wake up tomorrow with the voice of Darth Vader instead of Luke Skywalker, well, let’s just say that I’d be okay with that!
Is Home a Place, a Feeling, or a Relationship? (Source: Geo Davis)
In the days since publishing “What Makes a House a Home?” I’ve been fortunate to enjoy follow up exchanges with many of you. It seems that we all have some compelling notions of homeness! Thank you for reaching out and sharing your often personal stories. I’ve mentioned to several of you that I’d like to dive in a little deeper if/when you’re inclined. This inquiry is foundational to Rosslyn Redux, and I believe that the objective is less to answer the question and more to propagate more questions, to seed wonder and reflection.
There are so many little forays into this residential quest, that I’ve decided to follow up with three follow-ups posts that intrigue me and that have been percolating with renewed vigor since sharing the previous post. I’ll jumpstart the three with a preliminary introduction of sorts, maybe more of a welcome, today in seeding the three questions as one. Is home a place, a feeling, or a relationship? I’m hoping to intersperse more narrowly focused posts on each of the three questions with progress reports on the icehouse rehab (It was a big day today!) and the boathouse gangway. And I’m hoping to hear from you if you feel moved to share your thoughts on any of the three. I suspect that many of us consider all three to be connected in some way to our ideas of home. More one than another?
Two weeks ago I shared a tickler for this post on Instagram, a short reel offering an aerial view of Rosslyn that I filmed with my drone last summer. It feels meditative to me. Like a soaring seagull wondering, wandering…
https://www.instagram.com/reel/ClB-1F8AFiK/
I think for now, I’ll leave the question of home as place gently gyring in the updraft to be picked up again soon in another post.
Is Home a Relationship?
In the digital sketch / watercolor at the top of this post, the almost abstract blue green wash hopefully feels a little bit like a dream. Maybe a memory. Something fuzzy and abstract in my memory. It’s a barn, actually a barn quite near Rosslyn in the hamlet of Boquet. But it’s not necessarily that barn I’m depicting. It’s many barns including the barns at Rosslyn (carriage barn and icehouse) the barns at The Farm where I spent a few formative early years, and the barn(s) that I hope to one day, same day build or rebuild. In short, for reasons I’m still unraveling, homeness for me includes a feeling of an old, perhaps even an abandoned farm, with barns. More at that anon.
Is Home a Place, a Feeling, or a Relationship? (Source: Geo Davis)
Is Home a Feeling?
Sticking with digital sketches / watercolors for a moment, that black and white image above was actually made a few years ago to represent Griffin, our Labrador Retriever before Carley. But like the barn, my rudimentary skills at representation allow it to merge into all of our dogs including Tasha, who we had before Griffin, and even Griffin-the-1st, a long ago predecessor and the namesake for our more recent Griffin. That’s a bit jumbled, but it’ll do for now.
Why dogness as a way to explore homeness? Well, frankly, for me, part of the feeling of home is that it’s where my dog is. And when we’re migratory between the Adirondacks and the Southwest seasonally, our dog is with us, maintaining a sense of home even though we’re temporarily nomadic. More on that now soon.
Is Home a Point of Overlap Place, Relationship, and Feeling?
I’ll leave you with this follow-on because I find that it’s surprisingly challenging to tease apart the elements of homeness. Intrinsic to all three, is my beautiful bride, Susan. She is my home in a way that embodies place, relationship, and feeling. What about you?
Carving out a space for stillness amidst the throng will open up the possibility of stillness. But there must also be room for chance, for stumbling accidentally upon these somewhat paradoxical interstices, and then honoring them… an invitation to wander into the unfamiliar. (“A Cadence of Choice”)
I accepted the invitation, and I wandered into the unfamiliar. For seven weeks I wandered and stumbled in search of stillness. But it eluded me.
As the weeks tumbled past I dipped into the bucket of feedback cards I received from the audience after my August 3 Redacting Rosslyn Redux at the Depot Theatre performance. I discovered that almost universally the audience enjoyed the “Just Google It!” video, and that generally speaking the vignettes that wandered into storytelling and performance trumped those that were read. Long, read vignettes were the hands down least favorite.
I’ve been simultaneously honored and flabbergasted with how much feedback I’ve received. Thoughtful conversations and telephone calls, lengthy emails, and comment cards so filled with handwritten notes they’re difficult to decipher. As much enthusiasm for oral storytelling, digital storytelling, and performance as for a written book. Interest in video and multi-modal narrative, more even than I’d anticipated.
Almost two months later, I’ve sequestered myself in Taos, New Mexico for a week of stillness. Comment cards are scattered over the horizontal surfaces of a small adobe pueblo style home at the tail end of a dead end road where I’m living, writing and revising.
Stillness and solitude.
I’m making inroads, adapting Redacting Rosslyn according to audience feedback, culling material which failed to engage and adding new vignettes that answer questions left unanswered. I’m liberating stories from the page, and tightening the passages better suited to reading.
I’m typing in the backyard, seated beneath a viga and latilla porch, a coyote fence to my right and left reaching clear to a tan adobe wall at the back of the yard. Earlier I headed inside to pace (jumpstarts my brain!) and recount stories to a challenging audience: a kiva fireplace, crepe paper poppies, a collection of Native American pottery, an ancient wooden bowl.
There are siren calls aplenty: uninterrupted blue skies, sunlight that emanates from everywhere at once, the smell of roasting green chile, the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, artistic and culinary temptations in all directions. But the stillness fortifies me.
Each new work is unique, and its creation may well require different routines, different methods and habits and rhythms than previous creations. This will to adapt the creative process per the needs of each new creation is not only more realistic than the systematic, procrustean assembly line model, it’s more exciting. Each new creative experience should be an adventure. A journey. An exploration. This is what makes creating and telling a story so damned interesting! (“The Need for Flexibility)
Renovating Rosslyn was an adventure. Writing and editing Rosslyn Reduxis an adventure. And Redacting Rosslyn is an interstitial adventure tucked into the folds of both, at once familiar and unfamiliar. And it demands new methods and rhythms, new risks, new exploration. In storytelling and writing, silence and white space are as important as voice and words.
Thank you for enduring the ellipsis while I found my way. I’ll be back. Soon. To continue my story…
Sometimes the universe rhymes. Have you ever noticed that? As if there’s a poetry underneath our everyday lives, and sometimes — when we’re lucky — the poetry floats up to the surface.
“Dueling Banjos” à la Adirondacks
This morning I was lucky. My thanks go out to friend and North Country enthusiast Steve Malone who shared Mark Kroos‘s “Dueling Banjos” video on Facebook.
Inspired by Mark Kroos
I’ve loved “Dueling Banjos” since I was a boy, but there’s another less obvious reason that this song, synonymous for many people with John Boorman’s Deliverance, strikes a chord. (Forgive the pun!)
I was reared in the rural Adirondacks, and as an adult I returned to the Adirondacks with my bride. And while many express envy for our nature-centric, outdoorsy lifestyle, I’ve become accustomed to Deliverance jokes when people wonder aloud what it must be like to actually live and work “in the sticks“. Geographic disparity aside, whistling or humming a few bars of “Dueling Banjos” has become a sort of universal reference to back-country social backwardness.
I suspect that this may have bothered me when I was younger, away at summer camp or boarding school, but specific memories of feeling slighted haven’t stuck with me. I do recall feeling excited to come home to the Adirondacks, and I do remember how much visitors enjoyed playing in the Adirondack Mountains and Lake Champlain and the Boquet River. For me “Dueling Banjos” became a sort of insiders’ anthem to all that was good about rural living.
“Dueling Banjos” à la Mark Kroos
That belly-button gazing aside, the merits of Mark Kroos‘s solo rendition of “Dueling Banjos” need no propping up from me. This guy’s a genius! I headed off to his website to learn a little more.
Mark Kroos plays 2 guitar necks at the same time… His primarily instrumental style is characterized by open harmonies, polyphonic textures, incredible tapping technique, and is as entertaining to watch as it is to listen to…
In May of 2010, Mark embarked a sparsely-booked road trip, giving up his apartment in Williamsburg to play coffee shops and bars, relying on donations, human kindness and the grace of God. This road trip blossomed into a year-long concert tour filled with performances, clinics, and a multitude of new friends. (Mark Kroos)
If his gifted plucking, strumming and finger tapping weren’t already enough to earn him place of honor in my personal pantheon, his quixotic adventure turned success story confirmed my admiration for Mark Kroos.
Follow your dream, even when it means turning your back on the safe and familiar, and plunging into risk and uncertainty. Create beauty and share it with those who appreciate beauty. A great start to this early spring week! Thanks, Mark Kroos. Thanks, Steve Malone.
“If you lose your purpose, it’s like you’re broken.” ~ Hugo
Everything has a purpose, even machines… They do what they are meant to do… Maybe that’s why a broken machine always makes me so sad, they can’t do what they are meant to do… Maybe it’s the same with people. If you lose your purpose… it’s like you’re broken. ~ Brian Selznick (spoken by Hugo Cabret in The Invention of Hugo Cabret)
In the summer of 2006 my bride and I set out to repair a broken house. Rosslyn, a stately but crumbling old home, boathouse, ice house and carriage barn needed us. We could save them. We should save them. We would reawaken a property that had lost its purpose. We would pump our passion, our time, and our limited loot into repairing the broken property.
If You Lose Your Purpose
But over time we came to understand that we were at least as broken as Rosslyn. We had both lost our purpose, and we were both foundering. Leaping into an adventure as feckless and risky as moving our lives and work from New York City to the Adirondacks while renovating four buildings many decades past their “best if used by” dates nearly destroyed us. Emotionally. Economically. Physically. And yet, little by little we discovered that Rosslyn could (and eventually would) repair us. The broken, purposeless wreck we set out to rebuild ultimately rebuilt us.
Two years ago I holed up in a remote abbey in the New Mexico desert to sort through my recollections and artifacts from the years of renovation. A month alone reading and revising. One night I watched Hugo for a refreshing distraction. A children’s movie. Sort of. Sort of not. I was enchanted. Something happened to me that had never taken place before (nor since). As the movie ended, I restarted it and watched the entire film through a second time. Double header. Better the second time than the first. It resonated profoundly with the book I was trying to write, a memoir about the years spent rehab’ing (aka “historic rehabilitating“) Rosslyn.
It’s Like You’re Broken
Hugo is one of the best films i’ve seen in a long time. Be forewarned though, this is not your typical fantasy movie… The movie reveals the darkest times and how fear can be the driving force in everything we do… Also the fragile nature of human beings can be at any age and the limitations we have are only the ones that we put on ourselves. ~ Melissa Arditti (Windsor Square)
I’m not sure that Hugo is one of the best films I’ve seen, but it was the perfect narrative at the perfect time. And I will watch it again. Soon. I need to, in part, because I’m still grappling with this idea of a what it means to lose your purpose. I’m still working on repairing the broken machine. Rosslyn. And within. I’m reawakening purpose. Thank you for assisting me along the journey.
If you haven’t seen Hugo yet, here’s a teaser, the passage that still appeals to me two years after first experiencing it.
Purpose Lost & Purpose Found
As a storyteller and writer I’m conscious of the temptation to “find” purpose where it isn’t, and to ascribe purpose where and how it fits best. How I’d like it to be. Not always how it is. Or how it should be.
Over the past decade I’ve been trying to unlearn the habit. More curiosity. Fewer assumptions. And if/when I alter the original purpose, when I repurpose, I’m striving to realize the difference. To own it.
Rosslyn Redux, marriage, small town life, the joys and woes of midlife, and the rapidly evolving world of publishing have served as my tutors. I’m confident that I’m beginning to make headway. Two final quotations from Hugo offer the optimistic note I’m hoping to achieve in my closing, and they both offer a glimpse into the view from where I am lately.
I like to imagine that the world is one big machine. You know, machines never have any extra parts. They have the exact number and type of parts they need. So I figure if the entire world is a big machine, I have to be here for some reason. And that means you have to be here for some reason, too. ~ Brian Selznick, The Invention of Hugo Cabret
In that moment, the machinery of the world lined up. Somewhere a clock struck midnight, and Hugo’s future seemed to fall perfectly into place. ~ Brian Selznick, The Invention of Hugo Cabret
The machinery is still aligning, but I’m confident that soon it will all fall into place.
Word to the wise? If you lose your purpose, hold off on plunging into the sort of adventure we undertook. First watch Hugo. And then… plunge!
