A year is precious. As is a minute. Imprecations to avoid wasting a moment, even a second, are probably themselves a waste of the time. Instead, my intention to create a 12-month gap in my life seems to be working out. I continue to work with my clinical genetics friends on a few projects, and I have kept to schedule for applying for an MFA in fiction. Today is the first day of school here in San Antonio – the 3rd graders are running around the track at Cambridge Elementary, the surest sign that summer is over. Winter is coming.
I have been reading in the afternoons on the screened side porch. Of Human Bondage has continued to delight and entertain. I read with attention to pacing and how Maugham paces time as he drives the plot through the interior of Phillip’s (the protagonist’s) psyche. I’ve taken long walks around the empty campus of Trinity University, sat amid alert students on sunny mornings at Local Coffee, suffered unexpected and guilt-free naps, and binge-watched Game of Thrones. The Lannisters’ and the Starks’ fortunes resonate, but Arya is still my favorite.
I return to the upstairs office for serious writing. This summer I wrote a short story, 7 personal statements and 3 critiques for my MFA applications, called Jo Pitkin, the editor/poet who published my first poems in 1976, pestered my wife with drafts and revisions, participated in one old and one new writers’ group, attended a major writing conference, pitched and sent the full proposal for my book of prescriptive / practical nonfiction (First Steps to Improve Your Genetic Health) to 2 agents, absorbed the wisdom in 2 writing workshops, went to local readings, and submitted a dozen new pieces to journals and contests, and had one poem published online. And this blog. The intention has been to find the beauty and truth and power of the word, the search itself the reward, success merely asymptotic. It was a hot, slow summer.
Now a change is upon us. We are hitting the road.
“Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.
Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,
Strong and content I travel the open road.”
The first stanzas of “Song of the Open Road” by Walt Whitman
Scott D. McLean, MD 