Here is Alfie, supervising the set-up of a treadmill in my studio in Maine. I have one in Cambridge but soon will move up to Maine for the summer and need to continue trudging away. My friend Kay has convinced (make that coerced) me to go with her in January to a place that I am thinking of as Torture Resort (see website: http://www.theashram.com) so I have to prepare myself. Kay doesn't need to; Kay is always prepared! As I speak she is leaving for Peru to hike the Inca Trail; and she spends time each day at the gym, or rowing on the Charles River, but only of course when she is not off trekking the tundra of northern Canada.
The childish part of me (my main component part, actually) would like to say, of Kay, "Well, nyah, nyah, she can't write a book!" but the fact is she is in the middle of writing a book right now, while she is on sabattical from her teaching chores at Harvard.
The treadmill allows me to prop up my Kindle and read while treading, and I have just finished Barbara Walters' much-publicized memoir. In it she mentions a question she sometimes asks during interviews: 'What do you think is the biggest misconception that people hold about you?' So I have been thinking about that, and mentioned it to Martin (who arrived here yesterday) over a glass of wine last night. I told him that my first response was "that I am well-organized."
Then, after a second, I said, "But I am pretty well-organized, actually," and he agreed.
So far I have not come up with another answer.
I heard Barbara Walters interviewed on NPR. Hearing about her "real" life sure made me realize that people's lives are not always what they seem on the surface.
I suspect it's the fact that people like her and, you Ms. Lowry, for that matter, have accomplished extraordinary milestones..feats that seem out of reach to mere mortals like me, that inspire us to look within us for inspirational goals.
Take this blog for instance. Reading about poetry and seeing a photograph of your flowers inspired me to work on my pesky yard---which seems to have a taken a life of its own. I'm currently fashioning it into a graden ( no small feat) so that I can seat out during lazy summer afternoons surrounded by flowers and watch the orange hues in the sky as the sun sinks in the horizon while cradling a favorite tome in my arms and sipping a chilled glass of Chardonay from a local winery here on Long Island.
Contributing to your marvelous blog has also rekindled my love of writing...which is mostly personal and therapeutic rather than for public consumption.
The biggest misconception about me: "that I don't know how to dream big"
....go figrue!
Posted by: Oswaldo Jimenez | May 12, 2008 at 01:43 PM