Well, in t-minus 59 minutes I'll be packing up my tooth paste, books, pens, and shorts and trekking across town to house and dog sit for my writer friend Charlotte. For two weeks. Normally I'm weird about staying at someone else's place for more than a night or two because bliss is being surrounded in my own mess. But this time it's going to be different. Firstly, I can pop back home to check the mail and NBC's Tuesday night line up (Charlotte has no TV--one of those). Secondly, I'll be finishing up my teaching gig this week, so I'll spend my mornings at school anyway, which relieves the stress of Being In Someone Else's Mess for more than the duration of a nice visit. But next week I'm off the teaching hook, and I plan to treat Charlotte's house like a writer's colony. I'm so excited.
Her house is in Old North Knoxville, the historic district near the good bars and the Agee walk. It's an old Craftsman bungalow style, with a lovely front porch for afternoon people watching, and a lovely pale green sun porch in back, completely screened and outfitted with a ceiling fan for afternoon reading and writing. In such posh digs, I plan to treat myself to beer beyond the cheapest available and venture out to a deli off Broadway I hear is amazing. Oh, and the farmer's market. I'll walk her dog in the cool each morning, then sip coffee on the porch and write a few pages before I sit down to the dirty work of revising the stack of stuff I need to overhaul for the thesis project and sending out for publication. I'm even taking a new notebook with me, which I fully intend to fill up with all types of scribbles--poems, stories, lists, ideas, drawings. No notebook would be mine if it didn't house a few grocery lists between leaves of poem drafts. I'll share the juicier bits as they are created.
After my retreat is over, I think I'm going to pack off to the old homestead for a few days (depending on gas prices and Daddy's generosity) for a late June lunch date with my best friend from high school and our old AP English teacher.
Don't worry, though. I'll still be updating.
Bon Voyage!
2 comments:
How's the Mister Sisk Writing Retreat going? It sounds like a good, cheap getaway.
Well, it's not really going so much right now. I'm in my final week of teaching, so I've been planning, grading, and scolding. Tomorrow I'm finished though, and then The Great Work begins.
BTW, I've used SO MUCH stuff I picked up from you and the WP this summer in my first all-by-myself teaching gig. It's been a wonderful experience, and I appreciate you more than the thirsty do water.
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