[Slideshow: “An Ecstasy of Redwoods,” by John E. Simpson. (Swipe left/right to alternate between desaturated and full-color versions of the photograph.)]

Turns out that our anonymous whiskey river friend has actually had pneumonia, not flu and certainly not the suspected “ordinary, everyday, common” flu. But this week they’ve managed, even so, to offer us one tidbit “oddly relevant” to that context (it helps that the original source is tagged as a journal entry from the “End of November”):

Whenever I get ready again to write really sincere notes in this notebook, I shall have to undertake such a disentangling in my cluttered brain that, to stir up all that dust, I am waiting for a series of vast empty hours, a long cold, a convalescence, during which my constantly reawakened curiosities will lie at rest; during which my sole care will be to rediscover myself.

(André Gide [source])

This resonates nicely with a passage I first read yesterday — a meditation on, and repudiation of, the notion that productivity requires motivation, drive:

What might change if we understood meaningful action to be something we could let happen, simply by standing out of the way? On such an account, actions are always flowing through you anyway, unless you actively impede them. Your only job is to direct the flow a bit, so that you end up focusing more on the things that matter to you.

The Zen teacher Kosho Uchiyama once wrote: “Life completely unhindered by anything manifests as pure activity.” Orient yourself to the world in this way, and the question is no longer “How can I get myself to do things?”, with its implicit and unwelcome answer: “By putting in more effort, you lazy jerk!” Instead, the question is something a bit more like “What’s seeking to be done through me, right now?” And then, whatever the response, all you really have to do is to allow it to happen.

(Oliver Burkeman [source])

In these terms, I welcome whiskey river‘s unsolicited break in routine — and very much look forward to seeing whatever emerges from this fallow spot in their calendar!

At the moment, not really by choice — but nor by necessity — I’m kinda wallowing fallow myself.

It’s not unusual of course for me to go a week or two without a photo session somewhere or other; my rhythm, generally, calls for a photo shoot of a day or maybe two, followed by a week-plus of “clearing the deck.” (This involves transferring photos to a computer, which I then cull and organize — eliminating (near-)dups, categorizing one way or another, and touching up with software for what passes for “publication.”)

As for writing, well, outwardly the years-long stasis on that front remains in place. Emphasis on “outwardly,” though — and this represents progress. There’s no major writing project in the offing, but I’m toying with a few ideas — especially now that The Missus and I are “planted” for a few months and minding our own schedule. Last week I submitted a haiku (“come out of nowhere,” much???) to a contest, and am reworking a short story slightly to meet the requirements of another, due next week. Downstream, once we’re really settled, and once I again have a real honest-to-gods computer at my disposal, I have a short-story anthology project I’d like to tackle…

So real progress, I think, lurks behind the scrim of everyday life. Premature still to announce a Grand Opening. But the crew behind my eyes seems very busy, and I hope you’ll excuse me if I seem distracted — it’s just hard to pay attention with all the hammering and sawing in there!