Hey, I'm home again!

T and I did stall a bit, spending the morning at the Harriman Point Preserve, a gorgeous, very quiet spit of woods and beach reaching out into Blue Hill Bay. On our walk we watched at least a dozen (and maybe many more) harbor seals cavort in the cove, by far the largest number I've ever seen in one place. So that was a gift and a delight.

Eventually we did make our way back to Portland, where I set myself up for a late-afternoon zoom meeting to talk with arts commission and MWPA contacts about how to design sponsored laureate projects, how to prepare for grant applications, etc. All such advice is hugely helpful to me as I know nothing about how to design and administer these kinds of big endeavors. I can teach or facilitate all day long, but the minutiae of funding is always a mystery. Now, at least, I've got some step-1 instructions, and when things calm down for me in November, I can get started on that.

I think I'll go out to my strength class at the Y this morning. I need to grocery-shop and do housework and otherwise remind myself how to run a household. I hope to take a walk through the cemetery with Teresa,  and catch up with paperwork, and water my houseplants, and maybe even sit down and read a book.

I'm so glad to be sitting by this wood fire right now. 

Here are a few shots I took yesterday of our environs. That's our cabin there at the top, a charming little architect-designed plaything--cute, clean, warm, comfortable; a sweet perk amid all of this busyness.

I write to you from my chair beside the gas fire. Outside a barred owl hoots; inside my roommates slumber  on, though I imagine they'll be awake shortly as we all need to hustle back to daily life this morning.

Yesterday's performance was fun, nerve-wracking, exhausting, exhilarating, just as you might imagine. We had a good-sized crowd, and apparently the upcoming show in Portland is sold out, so it seems that people want to see this thing, which is bewildering and gratifying in equal measure. I can't quite get used to the idea that I'm constructing in this sort of context. Though I've performed publicly for most of my life, I've never made such a piece before, or worked in this way with a group of other people. So I haven't really known what to expect. What we received yesterday was concentration and curiosity, and who could ask for more?

Hello from the little cabin. We haven't been here in daylight, so I don't have any photos for you, other than one I took yesterday afternoon from the dock in Blue Hill. Four of us are tucked up in this little house, and Tom and I get to sleep in bunkbeds like the kids. The other two of us are up the driveway in a one-room cottage. It's all very cute and sweet, and we feel lucky to have been offered such nice housing.

For the moment I'm the only one away (as usual), and I'm perched here with a cup of coffee on a hassock beside the gas fire, almost replicating my usual morning routine. The sun is just rising and I can see a strip of coral sky through the trees and a glimmer of salt water below.

Later this morning the performers will head out for rehearsal, T will wander off to take pictures, and the afternoon show will happen, whether we're ready or not. I expect we'll have an audience: a lot of people came to yesterday's poetry readings. These midcoast festivals are very popular: Belfast was busy too, last week. It's nice to know so many people are curious about words.

I'm feeling well rested this morning, after a quiet night. I got home after five, started the laundry, made a simple dinner--fingerlings roasted with andouille sausage, peppers, and onions; buttery spinach; a beet and lettuce salad. We played cards, listened to a bit of the baseball game, fell asleep early. It was exactly the evening I needed before today's push.

Later this morning our caravan will drive up (over? out? down? coastal directions are strange) to Blue Hill. I'm reading at Blue Hill Books at 2:30, and then we're off the clock till tomorrow's rehearsal. We'll figure out where our cabins are, figure out where to eat dinner, maybe go for a walk . . . who knows?

First, though, I need to figure out what I'll be reading, what to wear, what food to pack, what Chuckie will need while we're gone . . . Yesterday he managed to sneak into the coat closet and got himself shut in there for the entire day. Tom found him eight hours later looking sleepy but unfazed. No mess, no suffering, but still we'd rather not have that happen again. It's a problem with black cats: they're so easily invisible.

Yesterday was a long day . . . visiting with my houseguest, then rehearsing all day, then going out to write in the evening . . . I was glad to be doing it all, but golly.

Today will be another long day in rehearsal, but I'm hoping to at least have a quiet evening, and maybe lay on eyes on Tom for a few hours. I'm glad he'll be coming to Blue Hill with us tomorrow. Another weekend without him would have been hard.

I think we're going to get a crowd at both performances. The Blue Hill show is free so there's no head count, but the Portland show is ticketed, and last I heard we were getting close to being sold out. That's both a comfortable and nerve-wracking feeling.

Today is the day we have to get ourselves into final shape. This afternoon we'll perform for Bowdoin dance faculty and students, so the morning will be a stressful few hours of finalizing visual and sound cues and polishing dances. It's such an odd sort of show: not a play, not a poetry reading, not storytelling, not a professional dance performance but an amalgam of research, imagination, movement, along with music and projected artwork.

Come see us if you're so inclined. We'll be at the Word Literary Festival on Sunday, October 25, 4 p.m., at Emlen Hall at the Bay School. And we'll be at Mechanics' Hall on Congress Street in downtown Portland on Thursday, October 29, 7 p.m.

Yesterday, when I pulled into the driveway, I saw that Tom had finished putting up the sheathing around the front door while I was gone. Next steps: storm-door installation and reattaching the siding, and then the house will be respectable again, except for the still-missing front stoop. I rushed around a bit, tidying up a few things, and then our old friend from Harmony appeared and we had a fun evening going into town for a meal and hanging around by the fire as Chuck beamed and pirouetted. And then I crashed into bed.

Now this morning T will leave for work, Sue will drive to her conference, and I will join my collaboration team and head to Bowdoin for day 1 at the dance studio. Let's hope my introvert button doesn't start flashing red again because if so I'll have to rip the wires out.

Today we'll be resurrecting our piece, which we haven't performed since July. Tomorrow afternoon we'll be opening our rehearsal to Bowdoin's dance faculty and students, so there's no time to waste. Meanwhile, I've been leaping from poetry festival to teaching high schoolers to hosting a houseguest to performing, so I feel like some cross between a jack-in-a-box and a tennis racket.

I fell asleep too early so I woke up too early, but sleep is sleep, I guess, even if the hours are weird. At about 3 a.m. the log trucks started roaring through, as they always do, and my bedroom fronts the main road, so rest was fitful after that. Still, the bed was comfortable, and I managed to linger dozily for a couple of hours until I finally had to admit that I was awake.

I suppose I should have tried to stay up longer last night, and I had every opportunity to do so as there was a big artists' dinner and hangout that was full of friendly, chatty people. But by 7:30 my introvert overload button started flashing red--time to leave, time to leave, time to leave. I haven't had much private time over the past several days, and I've got at least 10 days of public flurry ahead of me. My brain-body alert system clearly decided to take charge.

So here I am, restoratively alone, feet up on an apartment couch, wrapped in my familiar bathrobe, waiting for coffee to wind its way through the filter. Today the kids will be working with members of the Illustration Institute on an all-day project, so my teaching duties will be pretty light. Still, I'll need to be sociable, and that, apparently, is what my brain-body alert system was trying to reset yesterday evening. Let's hope it did.

The Illustration Institute residency is a good chance for our young visual artists and writers to come together to create work, so everyone on staff is pleased. I'm sure it will be an excellent day, as long as I can don this newly mended anti-hermit cloak. It'll need to stay intact for quite a while, what with visitors and rehearsals and travel and performances and and and.

Funny how a body just makes a decision sometimes. Quit. Enough. Go.