The dance. I got a royalty check, and it was the smallest royalty check I have ever received, and at first, I felt a flash of anger, even panic. It should not have been a surprise, royalty checks have been shrinking for a few years now, and I am a lucky writer in more ways than I can count. I am publishing four books this year and have 16 in print.
Still, that was my way of thinking, the way my mind worked for so many years. Oh My God, what happen to me now? But I have been working hard at this, and changing, and so after the first flush of alarm, I thanked my royalty check, and was grateful for it, and for all of the other gifts that pour into my life almost every day. And the fear, and the sense of alarm and diminishment receded. That is the power of a spiritual life, as raggedy as that can be. It is a choice, after all. And I don’t choose to think that way anymore.
I’m going off with Maria for a couple of days, part Valentine’s Day, part renewal. Like everyone else, I have wired myself into a lot of messaging machinery – Ipad2, Iphone, laptop. I am leaving it all on the farm, checking no e-mails, no messages. I am bringing my camera, as this nourishes my soul and does not ever drain it.
It’s important for me to be leaving this stuff behind for a bit. In some ways, these remarkable things are fear machines. I am afraid to turn them off. Staying in touch all of the time suggests I am important, and I have bought into the idea that urgent messages are waiting for me every second, and that I must read and return them and keep up with them quickly. The Ipad has almost become an extension of my psyche, and the thought of leaving it behind was traumatic. Thus, a good reason to do it. Angry Birds can wait a couple of days.
I told my daughter and my editor and agent where I am, and if something urgent comes up – see how I flatter myself? – then they can call me. I will not be hearing from them. So I am leaving fear and urgency and the stress of messaging behind. I will be interested to see how that feels. It feels good just to think about it.
I want to heal this trip, renew myself talk and walk with Maria for hours and hours. My knee is stronger, my cold is beginning to lessen its grip. I am bringing three books, a novel, a mystery, a biography. Re-reading my favorite novel “Love In The Time Of Cholera” and that is nourishing in itself. Marquez says more about the world in a paragraph than many writers in whole books. I want to take myself on a trip with my wife and meet myself, walk with myself. And remember the scent of unrequited love.
How could you not love a book that starts this way:
“It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love. Dr. Juvenal Urbino noticed it as soon as he entered the still darkened house where he had hurried on an urgent call to attend a case that for him had lost all urgency many years before. The Antillean refugee Jeremiah de Saint-Amour, disabled war veteran, photographer of children, and his most sympathetic opponent in chess, had escaped the torments of memory with the aromatic fumes of gold cyanide.”
— Gabriel Garcia Marquez, “Love In The Time Of Cholera.”
