Coffee in the Sun

(image from Kohler Art Center Artery, where you can make art of your own)

All I can hear over the distant hum of traffic on 151 is the sound of eggs whirring around in a pot, boiling hard so there's protein in a one-person package for my students on Saturday. In preparing for a retreat, I like to give myself a broad list of things to do - make the soups, cut images out of old National Geographics, make a list of prompts - and then putter my way through the list in no particular order. If I am headed to the basement to get the cooler I may also pick up the lingerie in the washer and hang it on the drying rack upstairs.

It's not exactly multi-tasking. There is far less a sense of force and far more a desire to allow space between these tiny tasks. I prefer to do just about anything this way. Whatever I am working on - usually one major thing (preparing a manuscript, preparing for a retreat, etc) It takes me all day, and during that day there are all kinds of other occurrences - a call from my godmother in England, a text or two with a friend in distress. And the coffee and sun continue all throughout, a reminder that there is no reason to hurry in ending out the last day of this year and preparing for a solid start to the next one.