The Experiment: Day 249 ~ Long Lush Novels and Roses…

It is absolutely pouring! The kind of rain that looks as though it will never end. I’m so glad that I was able to cut some roses yesterday when I was in the garden. They would be battered and an array of petals all over the ground now. I’m not sure how soon I will be able to broadcast the seeds for the wildflower garden. Heavy rains are predicted for days and they would all be washed away.

Yesterday I did get out and hoe and rake all of the thickly sprouted birdseed from the deck. I spread salt all over it which now will be washed away, but it looks world’s better than it did. I also cleaned up all of the branches of the climbing rose that covered the fenceline of the green gated garden. It is ready to be planted as soon as the rain subsides.

Rachel was here yesterday and we had a lovely time and watched a hilarious movie that we laughed all the way through, “Game Night.” I am always so happy when she is here and kind of sad and wistful when she leaves. I have to recover myself and find my way back into my solitude again once someone leaves. The stillness here is not often unbroken by the joyful sounds of company and the warmth and love reverberates through the hours after their departure.

The thing that is helping so much right now is the audiobook I am listening to, a novel I read in the 80’s when it first came out and loved so much it has always stayed with me, not the story so much which I had mostly forgotten, but the feeling of having loved a book so much you knew you would one day read it again. The novel is The Shell Seekers by Rosamunde Pilcher. It is a big fat novel and the audio version is 20 hours long. I had put my Audible membership on hold a few months ago. You still have access to your library and mine is absolutely huge because I’ve been an Audible member since 2008. Before Audible I would have told you I didn’t care for audiobooks, just wanted to read “real” books, but the whole notion of real books has changed so much over the years what with Kindles (Which I said I would never have but now do, even though I mostly read these “Kindle Books” on the app on my desktop computer or on my phone.), audibooks, eBooks, etc. But when I signed into my account I was given a very cheap option to activate my membership for 3 months and did so because I had put The Shell Seekers on my wish list some time ago and wanted to hear it. I downloaded it Saturday night and started listening to it while I did dishes and cleaned up the kitchen. I have simply been swept away.

One of Pilcher’s novels (Coming Home) is over 40 hours long in audiobook form. I would have previously found that impossibly daunting, I may just read/listen to it one day.

I listened to it Saturday night while I did dishes, as I said. I usually only listen to audiobooks while doing chores, or driving, (never before bed or I will fall asleep and miss the whole story!) but I have been so completely swept away I am listening for long periods of time doing things that I can do while listening simply because I don’t want to turn it off. (Painting and drawing, even playing solitaire…) For so many years I have been reading only non-fiction, the likes of Natalie Goldberg, Anne Lamott, books on spirituality, writing, art, letters and memoirs, etc, that I had forgotten what it was like to get lost in a novel, especially a huge, expansive novel like this. Do they even write novels like this anymore? It seems the novels that I see now are slender and spare, or filled with hard, brutal, sad stories. (I know that this is neither fair nor accurate, but I am 64 and loved the huge sweeping novels with lushly painted stories of women’s lives, gardens, kitchens and families, not romance novels but romantic stories. For me this is the kind of thing that lifts you up out of your own life and gives you a different place to inhabit for a time. And 20 hours of listening is a remarkable adventure.) So here I am on a dark, rainy day that looks like it might not ever end with a book that is taking me through the hours. I have been writing stories with my friend Katya and I seem to want to be lost in stories again. The Shell Seekers is working it’s magic on me. I am deeply grateful.

Who will I read or listen to after this? More Pilcher, and an author I have always wanted to read but never gotten around to, the Irish writer Maeve Binchy. (Though I did see a movie made from one of her books long ago, Circle of Friends. Katya said she has read all of Binchy’s books.) I would love to hear from those of you who like this genre and have read these authors, kind of a “If you loved her you would also love…” kind of recommendation. I think the long, hot summer ahead will find me both writing stories and reading/listening to them. I am turning back toward fiction, and it feels good.

And so here is my book, and a bouquet of roses on a rainy day, and Vincent the Beta fish swimming around in his habitat, and sweet, small pugs snoring at my feet. What are you doing today dear one? Share a bit of your day with me would you? And what are you reading? Who sweeps you away and transports you to another place and time? I’d really love to know. For now I am back to The Shell Seekers. I don’t want it to end.


Julia Child roses cut yesterday before the hard rains came…

The Experiment ~A 365 Day Search For Truth, Beauty &
Happiness: Day 1 ~ Introduction To The Project
“Do or do not. There is no try.”
Yoda