Woke a bit before 6 am this morning. Drank coffee outside on the porch and read an essay in Harper’s by Lydia Davis. She’s an author I’ve encountered many times in journals and magazines, and I’m pretty sure I have a story collection or two of hers somewhere? At any rate she’s writing about observation and the compulsion to write about her observations. She’s got a singular style and voice in her fiction and non-fiction, and does a lot of translation from the French–in fact I’m sure I read an essay by her about French translation at some point. I’m distracted while reading and observing our two cats who are climbing on me one minute, then chasing lizards the next. Lydia Davis is observing cows in her essay, and while I’m reading I hear a horrible guttural stegasaurus groan which I can assume is one of our goats even though it’s a new sound. The male has climbed along a narrow ledge atop a wall which has a metal chain-link fence built into it, at the top of which is a kiwi vine. While standing stretched out full length on his hind hooves to nibble kiwi leaves his hooves slipped off the wall. I rush over to find him being strangled by the kiwi vines with his horns stuck in the fence. I free his horns as he re-positions his hooves on the wall and immediately he is contentedly munching kiwi leaves again as if nothing happened.
At about 8 am guests who’ve rented one of our gite appartements–The Studio–check out. They are two cyclists off to their next destination after a one-night stay in Treignac. I pause my reading to strip down the bed and turnover the apartment for the next guests. Just as I finish hanging the clean sheets and towels from the washer our next guests arrive. They’ve rented The Loft gite for a daytime sleep-over as they are driveing some horrid 24-hour route. They check in at 8:05 and are planning to leave at 5pm. I wonder if they are actually going to sleep or if they are going to fuck. It’s our first overday stay as opposed to overnight stay. And, to complictate things we have a check-in in the same apartment 45 minutes after they are planning to leave. Things will be tight. We are used to it, however, as business has been brisk this year since January.
After checking in the new guests I hear the guttural scream again, and the male goat is once more dangling in the air with his throat tangled in kiwi vines. I free him once more.
I sit again and finish the Lydia Davis piece and then polish off the rest of the magazine. I realize I rarely write about day-to-day stuff anymore the way I used to on a previous and much more successful blog. Has my Muse deserted me? Have I lost interest? On the desk in my office is a pile of language books I put out back in February–I was adamant that I was going to do a daily study/writing routine and that immediately fell apart. Perhaps I’ll get it back together in the fall after tourist season quiets down.
Mysterium Coniunctionis 