Not every summer Saturday is good for being in the woods. (We observed Thoreau’s birthday this past week, and I thought: “I know why I went to the woods!”) Today was a rainy Saturday; and those are good, too, because the rain washes off the thick dust of Neville Island that accumulates on my car during the week.
So with a clean and gleaming old car, I drove to a branch of the Carnegie Library and did something I’ve been wanting to do ever since moving to Pittsburgh: I finally made a library card. Now I have full access to the wonderful world of the Carnegie Library system!
This branch to which I went is located in the Pittsburgh neighborhood of Squirrel Hill, a stately, well-kept, largely Jewish community. (I realized just how Jewish it was when I discovered, in the Giant Eagle supermarket there, a set of toys for teaching children about the plagues upon Egypt described in Exodus! I remember the inclusion of a red rubber ball to remind children how the Nile River turned to blood. I can’t remember the others, but they were equally interesting. Something opaque and black was the Angel of Death.) In the library, which was fairly bustling, I found a highly satisfactory writing niche: a carpeted window well, a ledge about 3.5 feet square, set into the wall. It was obviously intended for people to climb up into and read, since it was carpeted and had a little step-ladder stool directly beneath it. So up I went with my Neo, notes, and manuscript, and I spent several happy hours there, writing away and gazing down through the large window at the street below. I saw an elderly man in a wide-brimmed black hat and a long black coat, his beard full and gray, flanked by two young men (also in black) wearing kippot, and they appeared to be deep in a discussion. I wondered whether it were about some point in the Torah, or about how the Pirates were faring.
To my great delight, I found both my books on the shelves there! The Star Shard is in the children’s area, and a paperback Dragonfly is in the science-fiction and fantasy aisles! What a feeling that is: to be writing fiction in a library in which two of your own fiction works are in the stacks for children and adults to borrow and enjoy! We are strangers and pilgrims on the Earth: but if we have any kind of home on this side of Eternity, isn’t it in situations like this? I’m here; I’m writing; these are my stories around me, the children around my table like fruits of the olive. I couldn’t help introducing myself to the children’s librarian and telling her how happy I was to find my own book there. I didn’t find Dragonfly until I was on my way out, or I might have had to bend the ear of another patient staff member.
As it was, I wrote 1,389 words in that window well, sitting sometimes cross-legged, sometimes with my legs stretched out, with the wall to lean comfortably against. That’s a small Saturday figure, I know, but it’s tempered by two things: one, I had some important errands to run, so I got started late, and the library closed at 5:00; and two, above and beyond those words, I wrote a riddle-poem that’s crucial to a soon-upcoming scene. That took a lot of careful thought and staring out the window. (The poem doesn’t go into the word count yet, because I haven’t yet gotten to that scene.) I count it as a good and productive day, by grace.
I don’t think I have officially reported on the blog yet that my novel has now topped one hundred thousand words! It stands tonight at 101,397. Cheer me on this summer! I’m hoping to arrive at a complete rough draft by about the summer’s end.
These nights, I’m keeping my eye on the Summer Triangle in the sky, which figures into my book. It rises earlier and earlier each night. Its brightest star, Vega, is pouring upon us the light it produced in 1987, which is just now reaching our eyes after a journey that boggles my imagination. To the left is Deneb, bright blue supergiant, the “The Tail” of Cygnus, the Swan. And over to the right is Altair (“The Flier”) in Aquila, the Eagle. Altair is closer than Vega, but less bright. Vega is in Lyra, the Lyre or Harp. I like to take a look at the Triangle before bed. It puts things into perspective. I may be sorting trash for a meager living at the moment, but I’m writing about light that takes a quarter-century to bridge the gulf of space. I’m writing about comets and fairies, about courage and loyalty, about faith and determination and perseverance, and about many other things besides. It all works out. It’s all part of the whole miracle, I feel. Throwing a can down the aluminum chute . . . laughing about something with Ralph, across the belt from me . . . watching Vega rise . . . seeing the sun awaken glorious and pink over the Ohio River . . . sitting in my kiosk in Frick Park to set words on an electronic screen . . . life in every breath. Lately, nothing seems more or less profound than anything else.
While I’m being philosophical: a few days ago, I was writing in Frick Park, and needing to think deeply, I stretched out at full length on my back, on the bench of that little writing house. It was a perfect summer day. I gazed up into the canopy of the woods, where sunlight set the green leaves all aglow. A warm wind pushed everything into motion; I could see at least three different layers of treetop, all swaying independently of one another. I was perfectly comfortable, touched by the somnolent breeze, perfectly at peace. It occurred to me then that when our eyes close for the final time in this life, and then when they reopen in the world to come, this scene might very well be what they see. I have never experienced a more convincing vision of Heaven.
To continue the analogy, I was seeing this only around the borders of the roof over the table. I glimpsed it imperfectly, with the center obscured. That’s the here and now: we have a low, dark roof over our heads. Now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face. Now we know in part . . .
This midsummer, I’m essentially camping out. I sleep on a three-folding mattress I brought from Japan, and on these excellent hot nights, I’ve brought it right to my balcony door, which I leave open all night. (Yes, I encounter a few moths and flies in my apartment, but so what? I’ve been encountering them all my life, and my life would be poorer without them.) I lie with my head almost on the threshold, the summer night pouring in through the open door, the air wafting over me. By so doing, I don’t even need my electric fan. It reminds me of one summer in Japan when I was into “verandah camping,” and slept out on a twelfth-floor balcony from high summer until well into October, when dropping temperatures forced me indoors. It was on that Japanese balcony that I wrote, by the light of a kerosene lamp in a single evening, a youthful work called “A Tale of the Moon” which has never been published. I recently re-read it, and yes, it’s juvenilia, more an idea than a story, but it made me think, “This is why I adore Steven Millhauser. He came of writerly age and carried this out. He got it right.”
Lots of thoughts swirling around this midsummer . . . I’d like to believe I’m living deliberately, like Thoreau . . . sucking all the marrow out of life. May it be a blessed season for you, too. Feel free to comment with your own summer reflections!
I’ll close with these (hopefully) humorous lines from my book:
“[Character name] was the strangest boy I’d ever met (I hadn’t known our father when he was young).”
And now I’ll really close with these lines set in stone by Vicino Orsini before the sphinxes in his garden:
Chi con cilia inarcate
et labbra strette
non va per questo loco
manco ammira
le famose del mondo
moli sette
“Whoever without raised eyebrows
and pursed lips
goes through this place
will fail to admire
the famous
seven wonders of the world.”
(I saw the old John Wayne movie El Dorado. Fun!)
Hagiograph says: 
fsdthreshold 
Morwenna 
Daylily 
jhagman 
Buurenaar