I dried clothes on the outside lines yesterday, my first chance in weeks, but no such luck today. It rained a bit overnight and another round of big downpours will start later this afternoon, just when I'm supposed to head north for the Monson kids' gallery opening. Right now I'm wondering if I should even go, which breaks my heart, but driving 300 miles in one evening in the pouring rain is starting to seem like a stupid idea. Well, I'll wait a few hours and see what's what before I decide. Blah.

On the other hand, yesterday I did plant tomatoes and peppers and eggplant, and transplanted lilies and iris into the front yard's patch-under-construction, and bought some some astilbe for the backyard, and weeded a flowerbed. And I was relieved to write with friends last night. And I was glad to come home to Tom. And today is Friday and I don't have to work either day this weekend, and on Sunday T and I will go canoeing in a bog.

I've got a small editing project on my desk, which is probably what I'll be focusing on this morning, but I would like to mess with some notebook scribbles. I suppose I ought to submit something somewhere, though I doubt I'll talk myself into that chore today. There are days when I say to myself, Never again. No more publishing. There are days when I say, Dawn, you're an idiot. They often overlap.

Fortunately Rilke keeps me on the path.

Paris, February 17, 1903

My Dear Sir,

. . . You ask whether your verses are any good. You ask me. You have asked others before. You send them to magazines. You compare them with other poems, and you are disturbed when certain editors reject your efforts. Now (since you have allowed me to advise you) I beg you to give all that up. You are looking outward, and that above all you should not do now. Nobody can counsel and help you, nobody. There is only one single way. Go into yourself. Search for the reason that bids you [to] write; find out whether it is spreading out its roots in the deepest places of your heart, acknowledge to yourself whether you would have to die if it were denied you to write. This above all—ask yourself in the stillest hour of your night: must I write? Delve into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer should be affirmative, if you may meet this earnest question with a strong and simple “I must,” then build your life according to this necessity; your life even into its most indifferent and slightest hour must be a sign of this urge and a testimony to it.

May I always believe this--always, with my entire lurching heart.