I think I need to use this time in the mornings when Juniper is off doing her own things–even if that means all the LEGOs get dump-trucked across the house or Wendell is fed yogurt from the palm of her hands. I’m exaggerating, I’m not glued to my chair, but for example right now she is trying to sweep with the adult-sized broom in the gap between the dog’s corral and the wall. It’s either a genuine desire to clean house or an elaborate and professionally performed slapstick routine. 

All day everyday I have thoughts and phrases blowing into my mind and this morning I am regretting letting them go. I have said this was part of the process, like thinning apples–you have to let some go–but I had some in my head that I wanted to let grow. The deer would have probably got to them… 

I have a handful of pocket-sized notebooks, I should begin, again, to carry them in my pocket and write these thoughts down. OR I have a cellphone in my hand too much of the time anyway. Might as well use it usefully.

For years I carried one of those pocket notebooks for my writing, but more than writing, they were just used for notes–shopping lists and addresses and phone numbers, and to-do lists. Rarely did I write any thought down, much less return to it.

–Juniper is now reaching through the bars of Wendell’s corral to grab handfuls of his food and pile them outside the cage. Keep up the good work!–

I’ve heard countless writers recommend this–journaling or scribbling down notes throughout your day. But maybe it’s okay if that’s just not how I work. Somedays, I chew a thought like cud, and by the end of the day it’s beginning to look like a poem. Somedays a thought is on repeat, and dies on the vine overnight. And of course, sometimes the thoughts that I’ve been fermenting for years are the hardest ones to sit down and do the actual work on–so much like drawing: usually I know right away that I won’t be able to draw how I see it in my mind, so I guess I’ll just keep it my mind.

I do think it’s more difficult to generate creative work when everyday is nearly the same. The circulation of fresh oxygen from bumping into old friends and going somewhere new is so helpful. But I think greater mindfulness through the mundane, like focusing anew on the experience of eating a Saltine cracker, would serve the same purpose, to stir the tanks.

In the last few days Juniper has begun to ask for my hand, so she can pull me across the house to see or do something with her.

At the same time, she has requested to go into Wendell’s crate twice…both times, seemingly to take a crap in her pants.

Welcome to the radical mundane.