WEEKLY WRITER'S PATH #26
We’ve been hearing owls this week as the rains have been frequent and the mist crawls through the valleys in the morning like cloud snakes.
Last night when Asher and I went out for a walk, we heard the distinctive hoo-hoo, HOO. HOO. HOO. We walked to the backyard and saw two owls, both perched on the top of the old wooden swing-set—a deteriorating grey structure built from 20-foot logs. One flew away to the south and one to the east as we approached. I followed the first and Asher the second.
When I lost track of mine, I joined with Asher, stalking a bumpy silhouette against the stormy sky. It sat at the very top of an old juniper, looking like Totoro in the moonlight. When it turned its right ear to our approach, we saw the feathery tufts that indicated it was a Great Horned Owl.
We followed it from tree to tree, playing a kind of “statue” game. We approached quietly and as soon as it turned its head, we froze. But there is no kidding an owl whose hearing is far beyond that of humans.
With all the rain last month, the desert grasses and flowers were blooming: globe mallow, chamisa, milkweed. There was a carpet of gramma grass as neat as a mowed lawn of Kentucky blue grass covering the five acres adjacent to our house.
I was so focused on stepping over cacti while keeping one eye on the wind-whipped owl, that when it finally flew away, I realized I was in a different part of the land than I’d ever been before. It took a few moments for me to set my inner compass as I looked out over the trees at the retreating owl. I listened for a car on the road and when I saw it, I was shocked. The road in front of our house has always been the spine of my physical perception; the front of our house lies parallel to it, our driveway, perpendicular.
But looking at it from an owl’s perspective, the road ran on the top edge of a sloping parcel of land, an almost insignificant ribbon fluttering away at an angle in the wind. Even now, as I sit at my desk looking out toward the road, I can’t think the same way about it. This change of perception is a new current in my life.
I dropped my DIZZY SUSHI manuscript off at an agent’s door in town this week and as I prepared the box, I noticed the difference between myself now and what I was like seven months ago.
I didn’t bother to make sure every page was in order like I would have then. I didn’t type a nice little memo, print it out and trim the page down to a neat size. Instead I slapped a post-it note on the box that said to email me if the ms needed to be returned and I would pick it up. (Read: I didn’t include postage.)
I didn’t do the little “I-want-to-be-published” dance either as I wrapped the box in a clear plastic bag. I didn’t include a synopsis, the table of contents, my next writing project plans or even my resume. The local agent said she liked the first 50 pages and wanted to see the rest so I was simply giving her the rest.
I don’t think this change indicates a lack of resolve on my part, or less interest, or even a hard kind of submission. It’s simply seeing the road differently: no longer the path that must be walked, but only one part on the edge of my life that is already teeming with creatures and flowers and chasing owls.
