in between

This is the time between Xmas and New Year’s Eve when social media is flooded with memes about not knowing what day it is and eating too much cheese. I don’t have that problem, being lactose intolerant, but my lovely hosts sent me home after Xmas dinner with a Tupperware container full of chocolate and I definitely overdid it on Boxing Day. Now I feel like life is back to normal, except that I’m binging a new series every day—some in English, some in French. I missed a few journal entries but wrote a lot of poems after visiting the botanic garden again on Saturday. The next morning I sat down and put all my garden-themed poems into a 32-page picture book manuscript: The Winter Garden. It doesn’t look that good right now but we’re only a week into the new season so I have lots of time to write more (or better) poems.

Yesterday I booked my ticket to London; it’ll be my first time taking the Chunnel and I don’t know what to expect but realized it was probably best *not* to tack on a trip to the Channel Islands. I still have seven weeks left in France so I don’t need to panic but I do feel like I shouldn’t waste the time I have left. There are places here in Tours that I still want to visit and I need to sign up for another language class. I reached out to a researcher earlier today and hope to get some help with the Huguenot massacre that took place here in 1562. I don’t need any of my projects to be finished by the time I leave, and right now I fully intend to return once my 90 days outside the Schengen zone are up. But this is my gathering phase…I tote around a mental basket and it’s pretty full already but I want it to be crammed by the time I leave. Then it really won’t matter where I go—I’ll just need someplace quiet and stable where I can get up every day and unpack my basket, putting each item I collected into its proper story/book. These two sculptures could become a chapter book; I keep seeing clumps of moss on the cobbled streets, like tiny green tumbleweeds except moss doesn’t grow that way. My friend thinks drunken university students tear hunks off while hanging out by the river and then drop them as they stagger home. Plausible, but what if there’s something IN the river that emerges in the middle of the night and follows a trail left by someone or something else? I reached out to the Catholic school across the street to see if they’d like an author visit; if they respond, I’ll definitely want to know more about the Roman ruin in the middle of their courtyard! There’s inspiration everywhere…

Last week I got the initial sketches from my illustrator in Brittany—actually, she did each one in 3 different styles, so it turned out to be 12 sketches in all. She’s very talented and I hope I haven’t disappointed her by being less ambitious with this book. I’m all about taking small steps at this point. Observe, attempt, grow, then advance…