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I feel like a fox that has gone to ground. I’m in my dark, safe hole, but it’s not safe, not safe at all. I can hear the terriers digging at the earth above me. Their furious yelping, coming closer. It sounds supsciously like the thrum and whirring growl of heavy machinery. The hounds’ bays, are coming closer like the cement truck, and the giant crane that is looming over my house. Men’s voices shout back and forth all day, or so it seems. The calls of the hunters, encouraging their great mechanical dogs. “Dig her out,” they seem to say, “dig her out.”
I am being dug out. I can’t concentrate in this level of noise and activity. I hate people that cry about being an artist. That they can’t work unless the moon is in the right phase, or they have lavender ink, or pink paper. It’s all a bunch of whoie. I like my sticky notes, and I prefer pink or blue, but I can write anywhere, and have. But I feel invaded. If the book were going well, maybe, I could work through the noise and activity? But the book is not going well. Four pages, three pages; progress, but not enough. Not fast enough. Never fast enough.
I know part of the anxiety is the tour which is about seven days away. God, just writing that makes my throat and chest tight. Damn plane phobia. Damn travel phobia. Damn weird letters and people, so that you have to wonder just how crazy some of them are, and you end up with armed security, just in case. Most of my fans are some of the best people around. Kind and generous, and spunky, and stubborn, my kind of people, but there are a few, just a few, that take some of the fun out of meeting everybody in public.
The house and yard are full of people everyday. I try to ignore them, but I catch them out of the corners of my eyes as they move around outside. I can’t ignore that much movement from my windows, and I can’t work with the drapes down. I need more open space than that. Damn claustophobia.
It seems that every day there are people with clip boards in my yard, needing decisions made, questions answered that only the homeowner can answer or decide. Jon is taking most of it, but the landscaping is my baby more than his. I do have the degree in biology, and I did work in a green house in college. (though frankly I sometimes marvel that I was ever left in charge of an entire greenhouse. I did my best, and any care was better than the years of neglect it had suffered, but I was woefully under qualified.) So I walked around with our wonderful landscaper and the tree service gentlemen, also very nice. We made plans. Wonderful plans. This fall they will plant my cottage garden which I’ve wanted for years. Though, admittedly, climate being so different it won’t be an authentic English cottage garden, because I just can’t bear the thought of how much water it would take for some of those traditional plants to survive in St. Louis. So a more water and climate friendly version. Cool.
It’s all cool. The new edition will be wonderful. I marvel that a drawing is being made three dimensional. Right now it’s mostly a hole in the ground, but it’s coming along. Sometime while we’re gone on tour they will have to tear up our beautiful brick patio. I mean demolish it. Because the sewer line, clay tile original to the original part of the house broke. And it’s old enough that we need to replace it now, before we get everything built over it. We do not want to build the edition then have to tear it apart to replace the sewer line. No, no we don’t. But it will put a nearly nine foot pit where our patio should be, until it’s repaired. Sweet Jesus.
I have a choice. I can try and stay in my den, while the terriers dig, and the hounds bay, and the hunters haloo, or I can bolt. I can flee and hope I’m swifter than the dogs. Hope I can out run the noise and confusion, and find some safe refuge somewhere that is quiet enough and calm enough to allow me to work.
It feels doubly unfair, because on tour I will be without my den, as well. I will be out among strangers, at the mercy of their kindness, or lack there of. It’s like I’ve lost my sanctuary, weeks ahead of schedule. Tour makes me feel like an animal that has been dug out, and cast to run before the hounds. Thirteen events, thirteen cities, in fourteen days. Because I begged not to be out a month. I keep reminding myself that there are writers out there that would give their eye teeth to have their publisher put them out on tour. I am grateful that I’m doing well enough to have them want me on tour. But I’m good at tour. I love meeting everybody. Jon and I enjoy the crowds, and the questions (alright not the rude ones). But when I finish talking to the happy, smiling crowds, we don’t go home. We go to the next hotel, or plane, or train. Have I mentioned that I’m phobic of every type of transport known to man?
I’m out of here. I’m going to throw a few things in a case, and run with what I can carry. The hounds are in pursuit. Why does the line, “A horse, my kingdom for a horse,” suddenly spring to mind. I either need to out run the hounds, or make friends with them. Where are those dog treats when you need them?