PICKING AND CHOOSING - 17 September 2011

17th September, 2011 

We leave for Provence tomorrow, to gather material for our book. Glaneurs that we are, we're off to pick up whatever nourishing tid-bits we can find. It will be harvest time in the Luberon where we will be living and it will be harvest time for us as artists: a time to reap whatever thoughts and visions and ideas we sowed back in the spring on, our first trip to Provence, and then, added to on our second, in the summer. Later will come the sifting, the wonderful winnowing process of editing, choosing what to keep, what to let go of and what to let sit on the darkened shelf so that it might come to fruition in its own time.

I love the editing process and wish I could do as good a job editing my suitcase which, no matter how spare I try to be, somehow always carries too much weight, some amount of redundancy and a certain amount of worry over whether or not we've chosen the "right" combination of layers to cover 2 seasons: in this case the end of summer and most of autumn with the possibility of some early winter nights.

Packing a suitcase is a bit like writing a book: you cram in as much as possible to begin with and then, as the journey progresses, you whittle it down, get surprised by something that turns out to be the thread(s) you keep returning to and, admit it, often chuck out a couple of articles to make room for a new pair of shoes, perhaps a cheese or two and whatever else might present itself as representing the essence of the place one has temporarily inhabited and if lucky, have been permanently inhabited by.

But for now we are still in New York. Joel at his last 9/11 talk and I, on the couch, once in a while turning my gaze to the melancholy grays of river and sky. 

Between times always make me feel somewhat disconnected. I know there really is no such thing as between times; wherever you are, you are. But there's something about being between seasons and between leaving one place and going to another that has a suspension to it that must be the weight of waiting. Even if I stay busy while waiting for something or someone there always seems to be an edge of fear and distraction. I think I've lived my whole life either waiting for it to improve and then when it does - and it really has! - waiting for something to take it away. Surely as a glaneur I should chuck that bit of rubbish out of the sack.

I'd better go check my suitcase again.