Highcombe & Endicott West 2
We got to Endicott West* quite late, but Will & Emma were up and waiting to welcome us. After years of being our Artists In Residence caretakers, they were packing to leave the next day. I woulda been a basket case, but they were warm and helpful to the last - even took us out to breakfast at the fabulous Paco & Mom's, where you must have the green chile.
But I get ahead of myself. The next morning, I woke to see the horses (our 4-legged tenants) in their corral, and the sun over the mountains. Like this. I unpacked, refamliarized myself with the Casita - which is an independent little house-lette attached to the larger main house, which we keep hypoallergenic so we and similarly allergic guests can stay there. It was once a garage, then a workshop, before Delia & Terri got their hands on it and turned it into a beautiful, tranquil living/work space where the eye is delighted everywhere it rests.
After lunch, Will took time out from packing up the car to give me a final tour of the place, since I am Caretaker this week. Then there were hugs and he & Emma drove off to their new life.
Leaving me alone with my brother in a place that, while not precisely strange, is not somewhere I've spent very much time - and not any unattended. A sort-of-cottage with a blue door, attached to a larger house. A brother I've not seen without being surrounded by family since we were in our 20s - not quite a stranger, certainly, but not someone I've ever lived with solo before . . . and a week ahead of us to find out who each other are, to see if we can work together - or side-by-side - to see if we get along, if we can forge a new adult working relationship deep in our lives. . . . A giant question as the car with my friends pulled out, and we turned and went back into the house together.
Those who've read my novel The Privilege of the Sword know where all this is coming from.
Life Imitates Art once again.
--I do have this belief that we carry fractals of our lives within us, that manifest in our work: this is not the first time that I have lived an event or experience that's emotionally like something I wrote about years ago. I'm probably hyperconscious of this one because I just finished recording the Highcombe scenes for the Project that Still Cannot Be Named. And, reading it, I was also fully aware that the Man with the Staff who is Master of his Art comes straight out of my teenage obsession with A Wizard of Earthsea: I even tried to write a story then about a girl who is apprenticed to Ogion - I had no idea until recently that that is what I was enacting (so to speak) in writing the Highcombe section - I just knew that it had a very strong specific gravity, and that I found it profoundly satisfying to work on.
Today was a settling-in day. I found the desk I want to write at, with a view of the Rincons (or is it the Catalinas?). I revised a finished story. I made us dinner. My brother played me some rehearsal tape from his new incipient Bluegrass band (keyboard). We talked about his novel. Then we built a fire in the Casita, set off the smoke alarm, figured out how to open the flu, drank some wine . . . and I read him a couple of chapters of The Privilege of the Sword.
But not the Highcombe section.
*Endicott West is a private artists' retreat at the edge of the Sonoran Desert just outside Tucson. Writers, thinkers, tinkerers are welcome. You pay what you can afford to keep the place going and make it possible for others to stay there. Our new caretakers will be Mike & Deb Manning from Boston. For more info, DM or email me.
But I get ahead of myself. The next morning, I woke to see the horses (our 4-legged tenants) in their corral, and the sun over the mountains. Like this. I unpacked, refamliarized myself with the Casita - which is an independent little house-lette attached to the larger main house, which we keep hypoallergenic so we and similarly allergic guests can stay there. It was once a garage, then a workshop, before Delia & Terri got their hands on it and turned it into a beautiful, tranquil living/work space where the eye is delighted everywhere it rests.
After lunch, Will took time out from packing up the car to give me a final tour of the place, since I am Caretaker this week. Then there were hugs and he & Emma drove off to their new life.
Leaving me alone with my brother in a place that, while not precisely strange, is not somewhere I've spent very much time - and not any unattended. A sort-of-cottage with a blue door, attached to a larger house. A brother I've not seen without being surrounded by family since we were in our 20s - not quite a stranger, certainly, but not someone I've ever lived with solo before . . . and a week ahead of us to find out who each other are, to see if we can work together - or side-by-side - to see if we get along, if we can forge a new adult working relationship deep in our lives. . . . A giant question as the car with my friends pulled out, and we turned and went back into the house together.
Those who've read my novel The Privilege of the Sword know where all this is coming from.
Life Imitates Art once again.
--I do have this belief that we carry fractals of our lives within us, that manifest in our work: this is not the first time that I have lived an event or experience that's emotionally like something I wrote about years ago. I'm probably hyperconscious of this one because I just finished recording the Highcombe scenes for the Project that Still Cannot Be Named. And, reading it, I was also fully aware that the Man with the Staff who is Master of his Art comes straight out of my teenage obsession with A Wizard of Earthsea: I even tried to write a story then about a girl who is apprenticed to Ogion - I had no idea until recently that that is what I was enacting (so to speak) in writing the Highcombe section - I just knew that it had a very strong specific gravity, and that I found it profoundly satisfying to work on.
Today was a settling-in day. I found the desk I want to write at, with a view of the Rincons (or is it the Catalinas?). I revised a finished story. I made us dinner. My brother played me some rehearsal tape from his new incipient Bluegrass band (keyboard). We talked about his novel. Then we built a fire in the Casita, set off the smoke alarm, figured out how to open the flu, drank some wine . . . and I read him a couple of chapters of The Privilege of the Sword.
But not the Highcombe section.
*Endicott West is a private artists' retreat at the edge of the Sonoran Desert just outside Tucson. Writers, thinkers, tinkerers are welcome. You pay what you can afford to keep the place going and make it possible for others to stay there. Our new caretakers will be Mike & Deb Manning from Boston. For more info, DM or email me.