It’s Sunday, the blog is pretty much established, the dogs are walked and I have a fresh, hard-cover copy of Frances Mayes’s A Year in the World: Journeys of a Passionate Traveller. I also have a bad case of jealousy. Oh, to be able to wander Europe for a year, and be paid to write about it! To be, as she says, “out in the world with a small stuffed suitcase and a notebook . . .” Sigh, I want to be out in the world, too. But then I think about Emily Dickinson and Flannery O’Connor, both of whom stayed home and wrote fabulous, enduring poems and stories. So, is travel good for the writer’s soul or not?
I always think I’ll write wonderful things when I travel, and already I’m day dreaming about this coming summer and driving cross country, just me and Duncan the dog, seeing my picnic lunch in a green park somewhere between Denver and the coast of Maine and a good book and, of course, the notebook. I promise myself to notice everything and everybody. But I also know that the business of getting from Point A to B will intrude and at times I’ll lose myself in reading maps and booking rooms. Maybe, though, just maybe, if I practice I can learn to write on the road. It worked for Kerouac, and he was under the influence of more than road rash, rage and regret.
Karen Douglass, Author 
5 responses to “The Joy of Reading”
Glad to see that you continue on your journey, may it never end…
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Well, I lost the beginning of my comment because I couldn’t remember the name of the book I just read and went to Google to find it – I should have known. Once in awhile I get away with hopping to Google and returning in midstream, but not this time.
Congratulations on the new blog! May it be frustration free.
Have fun in writing group today!
We had a little earthquake this morning here in the Bay Area. A 4 on the richter, enough to wake me up at around 5:30 and remind me of one reason I still live in Colorado, where we just have tornadoes, floods, fires, droughts, blizzards, avalanches, plague, an exploding bunny population, and some really scary tea party people. I’ll be back next week, unless “the big one” shows up, and then, who knows? I’m on the second floor of an Oakland apartment building flimsily constructed on the side of a hill in the 1960’s. Hmm. Better call Southwest.
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Thanks for visiting, Diane. We missed you yesterday in writing group. Please, come home stirred, not shaken.
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How about whisked?
My flight is scheduled for next Tuesday. I’m getting antsy to work in the yard. In theory, anyway.
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Wow, knockout new blog! Have to visit here more often, for educational updates. Enjoyed the new poem you sent today, too: “Invasion of the Space Cadet.” Yikes, so little space, too many cadets. Keep ’em rollin’ from your pen.
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