Coulda woulda shoulda

I should have been in Budapest today.

But instead I am writing. Writing, writing, writing. It's late, but it's coming, finally.

'Tis good, though. I think that what I'm writing isn't crap. Lately that feeling is pretty unusual, I have to say. Actually, I think it might even be good. But it's early to tell.

It's taken me AGES to get through my field data from Hungary, Slovakia, and Romania to the point that I can make heads or tails of it. I didn't leave my house all weekend, and today only went as far as the cable company a few miles down the road to restore my troubled internet service. I filed away about two inches of papers into a three-inch binder, added tabs to six field notebooks, and have been creating indexes for myself. I feel like this is the kind of stuff they don't teach you. An archival methods course would be so handy. I know there are probably more intuitive digital ways of creating cross-referencing tools. But I'm just working with the skills and tools I've got. This is even before transcribing, which will add PILES and PILES to the data I've already got in the form of field notes, photographs, and documents from field contacts.

I've started making a more comprehensive database than I've had up until now, except the one in my head, and realized today that I probably have met at least a few hundred people "in the field" at this point who have something to do with my project. No wonder I feel a little loopy sometimes, and like I haven't had a real chance of synthesizing my life while I've been doing coursework. Thank God I took a semester to do independent study so I could start to process this, a little.

wordpainting

These things I see, I could not create if I tried . . .

A gruff man in a cowboy hat with a lit cigarette hanging in his mouth, sitting with the engine running in his tan metallic long-bed Ford pickup truck with a full load of firewood dusted with snow, waiting outside the cable company . . .

The golden stubs of a corn field poking their stalky fingers out of the thick blanket of white, against the fading pale pink horizon. . .

A weathered red barn, the wood in danger of collapse at any moment, against the stark winter landscape. . .

A tiny round bird resting beside a tuft of snow in the bare stalks of the hedge in my front yard . . .

The morning sight of a lone figure making his way on cross-country skis across the lake . . .

In the afternoon, another with a device like a massive corkscrew, shuffling on foot back from a center point where he has drilled, presumably to test the ice thickness for its readiness to hold the ice fishermen . . .

And then the narrow glimmering fingernail of moon rising in the pale blue arc of the sky at sunset over the cottage when I arrive home.

They are things I drink in every day, images I think I will carry in my heart for life. It is so very beautiful out here.

(Despite the 40 minutes of shoveling the driveway this morning . . .)