November 2, 2009
Monday

What then shall I do this morning? How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days.
                                — Annie Dillard, b. 1945
                                    American writer, from The Writing Life

 I used Annie Dillard’s thoughts about the importance of a schedule in July of 2006, just before I left for Vermont. I identified Chaos and Whim as two of my best friends. Although I’ve gotten pretty good at working with Melanie, the Black Bitch of my depression, I still let Chaos and Whim have far too much to say in how I spend my days.

Now that I’ve shaken Melanie and gained some clarity, I’ve devised a schedule that I think will serve me at least for the next two months. Though I nominally share The Aerie with another writer, her needs and her obligations and the way she approaches her work have changed, and I have carte blanche, for the nonce, to use the space without consultation. I have decided that I will work here at least three days a week, Angelus to Angelus. 

The Angelus is a Catholic tradition dating from probably the eleventh century. Recalling the scriptural account of the annunciation by the angel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary that she was to become the mother of God, it is recited three times each day, at 6 in the morning, noon, and 6 in the evening, accompanied by the ringing of the church bell. The practice of stopping one’s work for this brief devotion is depicted in a painting by the 19th-century French artist Jean-François Millet, seen at right. This painting is among those art treasures I first fell in love with, surreptitiously sneaking the textbook onto my lap during my fourth grade teacher’s endless math drills. Looking at it now reminds me of those days, and of my grandmother, who, like Millet’s subjects, stopped what she was doing to say the Angelus.

Mammam knew when it was time for this brief devotion even without looking at a clock. We could hear the bells of our parish church, Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament, sounding the call to prayer from its tall steeple just two blocks down the hill from where we lived.

Our Lady’s is, of course, directly across the water from my studio. It is very nearly the first thing I see when I get to the top of the steps and turn to my right to put down my bag. Nevertheless, I was a bit startled the first time I heard the Angelus ring at noon. I had never considered that the deep clang would be carried on the air west into my open studio window the same way it always carried east into our attic, my very first studio, where I set up a table and chair and pretended to be Jo March.

I have devised an answer for people who ask me how long it took me to write a particular piece. “Two years (or ten months or fifteen minutes) and all my life,” I say. As I noted yesterday, the neighborhood that the church stands in became something of a character in the manuscript I worked on throughout much of October. To have the Angelus rung by the church of my childhood anchor my work day, calling me to focus at noon and reminding me to rest at six, seems exquisitely fitting.

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The NaBlos of the past:

2008: What The Hell Is That? – [Redding out a kitchen drawer] I found two Christmas-themed pot holders, a red casserole grabber that actually belongs to Lynn (it came in a set of learn-to-cook items I got her when she was ten), and some chip bag clips. At the very back of the drawer I found the device pictured at left. In the words of Steve Martin from Saturday Night Live, “What the hell is that?”

2007: Fridge Friday I —  I had a call from my doctor with my lab results. My cholesterol levels suggest that there is nothing flowing through my veins but Velveeta cheese. The level of my replacement thyroid hormone (I have acquired hypothyroidism) is so inadequate that she doesn’t know how I am even able to stand up. My bone density has deteriorated, and the mammography place wants me to come back for a different kind of test “just to be sure.” The good news? I’m not pregnant (they had to test for that?), and I don’t have chlamydia (I didn’t think so), although there is a proliferation of e. coli E. coli* that could use some attention.

2006: Phenomenon — Yesterday I did manage to post [here] and write more than 2700 words for the novel I’ve evidently begun. I’m also working on a presentation to be given Sunday to a church group on cemeteries, a subject close to my heart. Not only do I have to write the presentation, I have to put together a slide show from the hundreds of photos I’ve taken over the last few years of weeping angels and elaborate headstones. This is more productivity than I have achieved in the last several months put together. I don’t know where the energy and the concentration are coming from.

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