#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream
All to bed so early last night, all awake at dawn. Loveliness of the fresh morning, first morning. Arrival, and the sun up, and already hot. To be here you have to be able to tolerate hot. I left early for my walk down to the beaches. I walked six miles before I realized how far I had gone! Wonderful to be back in familiar territory, have a reunion with Playa Pelada and Playa Guiones. It grew quite hot––I dipped once or twice. I thought a lot about Navalny, the grief, the outrage, the injustice, the profound and sudden loss. And worse, because the day before he was killed he was joking with the judge on video. To have slowly killed him with enforced suffering and intentional neglect was a distinct possibility. But to take his life when he was such a survivor––the horror. The shock. I thought of him as a father, of the unimaginable loss to the children. I thought of my own father too; how Alzheimer’s struck him down even when he was quite healthy otherwise and would have been vital and present in so many ways to us and to his grandchildren for so many years. Navalny––47 years old. This was on my mind very much as I walked. Then I met with Frank and Po and Geoff for breakfast after they played tennis, and then we went to the market for a big food shop. Home to unpack, and then we all collapsed into a relaxing afternoon of reading and swims in the pool and naps and naps and naps. It was quite hot outside but we had shade and had the air on in the casa. At five, our favorite beach time, we went down for a swim for sunset. The water was a blissful temp. The surfers were in the waves. The water was frothy and filled with the colors of the setting sun. A casual dinner. I worked on a new poem, very very rough. For workshop tomorrow. Today I was so pleased to get an acceptance of a short poem in a journal I’ve been submitting to for a long time. A poem about Wave. I am reading a biography of Raymond Carver: A Writer’s Life, by Carol Sklenicka––a bit fat actual hardcover book I can get lost in. I am eagerly anticipating the new Leslie Jamison memoir, Splinters, coming out on Audible in two days. And I have finished the wonderful novel, “The Post Card,” by Ann Berest, a novel in the form of a memoir, on audible which was deeply moving and wonderfully told. And, because we are traveling to Turkey in a few months with our friends, I am going to listen to Lords of the Horizons: A History of the Ottoman Empire. I have plenty of great reading to enjoy on this trip!
Goddess in the sand