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To feel the intimacy of brothers is a marvelous thing in life. To feel the love of people whom we love is a fire that feeds our life. But to feel the affection that comes from those whom we do not know, from those unknown to us, who are watching over our sleep and solitude, over our dangers and our weaknesses — that is something still greater and more beautiful because it widens out the boundaries of our being, and unites all living things. Pablo Neruda

Two experiences this week sent me to my fiction bookcase. One was a friend of many years and is recovering from a stroke who said, “Bring me something interesting to read.” The other was this quote from Neruda.

I have seven shelves of fiction, if you count the shelf of books in Spanish which I’ve owned and kept since I lived in Mexico. One of the books I read while learning Spanish was Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude. It’s a verrrrry long book and took me months of reading with a Spanish/English dictionary at my side, but I was determined. And finished it after about a year. I can still read Platero y Yo, but it’s short and written for children. Not sure I can read Marquez anymore in the original, but I have several of his which are translated into English.

But I digress. As I often do. Looking for short and lovely books for my friend, who is 89, I chose Molly Fox’s Birthday, set in Ireland, and a book of New York essays by Paul Auster. Both books are short and both I’ve read more than once which my friend said was a good recommendation.

I can’t remember when books were NOT in my life. That, primarily, due to my mother, who was a reader and a writer, but her mother and father were readers and writers, so I guess reading books, and writing, falls into that family inheritance thing. Or gene pool.

As I’ve probably written previously, I’ve lived in this house longer than I have lived anywhere in my life. That fact has both a plus and minus side: on the plus side, I know where most everything is – my books and papers and years of pieces of writing are all here in my writing room and not stored in boxes somewhere; the minus thing has to do with so much stuff in one house. We have, in fact, seven bookcases in this room, two downstairs, and one in the small office. My life in words. To which, it seems, I am right now, adding more. Oh, yeah, all the writing that’s stored in various places in one or the other computer.

Words. A life in words.

So thank you for the affection you send me after each of these rambling posts; in Neruda’s words… to feel the affection that comes from those whom we do not know, from those unknown to us, who are watching over our sleep and solitude, over our dangers and our weaknesses — that is something still greater and more beautiful

Thank you to each of you who responded to my frustration over the new and improved WordPress writing space – I think I’ve figured it out as this rambling post — NOT in blocks–attests. You all are the best audience I’ve ever had and your kindness and affection keep me warm in the times when I fret over not publishing this memoir. I guess, all in all, this blog is the best memoir I could have.

Love and gratitude to you all. J.

I am on a cleaning spree. My husband says I always do this when I’m about to start a new writing project. Goodness knows, after a three year stint of writing this last book and editing and revising it and revising, etc. etc. etc. about the only thing I want is clear space. Both in my head and in my writing room. Ergo, I’m cleaning and tossing.

However, I also had to clean out my laptop. That was not my plan, but it seemed, instead, to be a joke from the Universe in the guise of a new backup program which had bought out my old backup program which I’ve had for, oh, goodness only knows, but I’ll say fifteen years, give or take.

It was a process, as they say.

But new back up is installed and all files are restored (well, I’m not completely done because there’s also files in backup that need to be cleaned out to say nothing of Dropbox which also has files, but I digress. As is often the case these days.)

But what led me on this rant is finding and reloading Trello. Which I’ve had not as long as the previous backup program but long enough to have a lot in it. Trello is really built for groups to work together on projects and add thoughts and changes etc etc and has as many boards as one chooses to have. I have several. The file backup program does not save programs oddly enough so I had to once again download Trello and magically, all my files were still on it.

My reason for Trello is to save the random and overwhelming bits and pieces of paper and Post-Its on which I place random thoughts, seemingly, it seems, that I think important.

Here’s one for you: “Mothers laughing with their children on their backs. And he had come to believe that all men were meant to be wanderers, like them, like Saint Francis, and that by joining the Way of the Universe you could find the Great Spirit everywhere–in the smell of bracken after rain, the buzz of a bee in foxglove, or in the eyes of a mule, looking with love on the blundering movements of his master.” The Way of the Universe. On the Black Hill, Bruce Chatwin.

If you’ve never read Bruce Chatwin, I recommend him highly. He was a wanderer. And I, being a wanderer, appreciate his voice. He died young, at age 48, in 1989, but his voice remains. The first book I read by him was In Patagonia. I have several others in my bookcases.

Here’s another piece in the Memoir board – board is what the separate spaces are called in Trello but I don’t know why except they probably relate to work each group is doing. I’m not a group.

“The Sunderland men, uncles, brothers, grandfather, would circle, telling stories. Dad told stories. Women’s stories are often relegated to mystery. But my mother, against that grain, told stories. I expect the women around the quilting frame with Grandma Sunderland told each other stories, but to each other. Not to us kids. The men’s stories were loud enough for all of us.”

A memory to put into whatever memoir piece I write one day. Maybe, for example, right here, now.

And now I must return to my previous task of gathering the loose bits of post-its and scraps of paper on which interesting thoughts are written or printed. I also, like my mother, have a habit of cutting out bits of newspaper stories – and just found, in this cleaning spree, the story printed in a newspaper of my mother being in the Kansas City Union Station when the Mob shootout of about 1920 happened. I knew that story but now I have the newspaper article, too, although a bit chewed at the edges from long storage.

Mercy.

Maybe I’ll write it up so you have it, too. But not tonight.

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