Hallelujah! My new book is born. The Farm at the East Cove Hotel is now available as a handsome paperback. Copies may be ordered from your favorite actual bookstores and found at your favorite online bookselling sites. I will append a few viable links at the end of this announcement. In a few weeks various e-book editions will become available, and shortly thereafter the scintillating audio edition starring Yours Truly will debut.
For regular readers of my blog, the first few chapters of The Farm at the East Cove Hotel may ring some bells because earlier iterations of these chapters appeared on my blog a year or so ago as freestanding short stories. However, when the characters from one story began to bump into characters from another story, I realized a novel was being birthed and so took the project offline and allowed the tale to unfold with no thought of showing the opus to anyone until the story was done.
What is the novel about? The first thing that comes to me is kindness. The second is mastery. The third is self-forgiveness leading to adventure. And now I hear emotional improvisation.
Writing the book was my antidote to the terrible goings on in the world and in our country, and I hope that reading the book will provide an antidote for you.
Here are some links to a few of the places where the book may be purchased.
Spring forward. Set all clocks an hour later than what they were previously set at. Henceforth one is two, seven is eight, and so forth.
Einstein said many thought-provoking things about time, and because Einstein said these things I am predisposed to think they are true. He said, “The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.” And “The distinction between past, present and future is only an illusion, however persistent.”
Did he know these things were true or was he just guessing? Or was he just messing with our minds?
Certainly how we divide up the days time-wise is an arbitrary construct. We might have divided a day into twenty hours or eleven hours, and those hours would be longer than the twenty-four hours we currently agree on. And weeks? Why seven days? Many a Monday feels like a Sunday. Right? Who thought of seven? Why not eleven?
I get months. The moon doing her thing. I get years. The ride we take around the sun. But hours, minutes, seconds? Sure they have their uses, but they bug me, as do weeks.
The people who lived in Mendocino for thousands of years (and are apparently still living here according to Einstein) had days and months and years, but not hours, minutes, or seconds. They had Dawn, Morning, Afternoon, Dusk, Evening, Night. And seasons. They definitely had seasons because seasons are not arbitrary constructs.
I wonder if the absence of seconds, minutes, and hours made life less stressful. I like to think so. Einstein might have said Time is the source of stress. Maybe he did. Or maybe he will. In a parallel dimension.
People often say of their impending vacations, “I’m taking some time off.” Do they mean they’re taking a break from measuring the passage of time in arbitrary increments? Or do they mean they’re going somewhere? Will they be free of the constrictions of time for a time? I hope so.
When I left for college fifty-six years ago (or right now according to Einstein) my mother gave me two things: her old Smith-Corona electric typewriter and a Timex wristwatch. The typewriter was a boon, the wristwatch a curse. Given my compulsive nature, I looked at my watch constantly and drove myself crazy. So I stopped wearing it, attached it to my knapsack, and to this day I have a wristwatch attached to my basket. I use a basket as my knapsack/purse nowadays. Everyone should tote a basket if you ask me.
Today is Thursday, which means I’m going grocery shopping at Corners around eleven. Before the pandemic I used to go to town almost every day to shop and get the mail. Then during the pandemic I started doing just one big shopping trip per week. Now I go two times a week, Mondays and Thursdays, and I time my going to coincide with deliveries of fresh foodstuffs. I still wear a mask in Corners and in the post office, though few other people do. I’m in the habit.
I like to take my time when I shop at Corners. Now there’s a lovely concept. Taking my time. Giving myself all the time I need to select the very best mushrooms, the loveliest green beans, and to be available for conversations with people I might meet as we forage together for tasty comestibles to sustain us for another day or four.
Seems like just a few moments ago we got the firewood into the woodshed for the winter, and now we must order more firewood to sit outside and season until October when we will schlep the logs into the woodshed, which is to say we’ve lived to see another March. Hallelujah.
Springtime. Our prune plum tree is sporting her first blossoms of the year. Prune plums hereabouts are an unpredictable fruit, and by that I mean there is no obvious correlation between how many blossoms our tree presents and how many prune plums will emerge and grow to fruition.
Will the gods grant our valiant tree sufficient warmth and the necessary pollinating insects to produce enough plums for jam? And will we manage to harvest the plums before the ravens do? We shall see.
Daffodils are blooming everywhere right now. How lovely and solemn they seem before they open to reveal their bright promise.
Always reassuring to see our lemon trees making new fruit despite and because of everything. “Don’t forget to feed us,” they whisper.
And here come our rose bushes emerging after their winter’s slumber, pinkish red in their infancy and soon to metamorphose into summer green on which roses will bloom.
The first rhododendron flowers on our two acres emerged a few days ago – harbingers of many more to come. The folks who owned this land before us planted several rhododendrons to give us gaudy shows every year, while on the fringes of the forest bloom the wild pink rhododendrons.
I recently engaged a drummer named Gabriel Yanez to play on two tunes on my upcoming album Hip Salon. He exceeded my fondest dreams of how my piano tunes might sound embellished with tasty percussion. What a fabulous percussive vocabulary he has, and how deftly he speaks with his drums. Hallelujah.
Speaking of salons, Marcia recently gave me a haircut and I feel days younger.
