Friday, September 18, 2026
summer 2026
End of summer.
End of my friend Annie Dillard’s many, many wonderful days. “If this is my last note,” she messaged last spring, “don’t worry. You have work to do.” I didn’t know what she meant.
The photo at the top of the New York Times obituary isn’t her. That’s
a public face. She was always the woman of the second photo there: finding herself in observation—“meta-Ann,” she joked. (Her given name was Meta Ann.)
We met in late summer of 1972, when she did a reading at my univers-
ity. I hadn’t read anything by her, but I knew her name from conver-
sations with a friend a couple of years earlier, who attended Hollins College with Ann. I was surprised by the philosophical spirit in her poetry. We spent some time together after the reading. Later fan notes became friendship over the years.
I can’t share more now.
And I do have work to do, which is going well, though I don’t have anything new to share yet.
Aug. 14
“Oh well. I got sidetracked again by new ideas, …,” etc. Summer daze.
Keep hope alive—and lightness toward loving open time in wilder-
ness.
Aug. 7
Oh well. I got sidetracked again by new ideas, writing to that, rather than working with what I had. But I’m through with it. So, I’m hoping for new discussion here before next weekend. It’s feasible! I can keep on task.
Aug. 1
I’ve completed my prospective archetexture for the upcoming year-or-more of conceptual work to be shared online, i.e., for work transposed into practical terms, while expecting my prospected foci to evolve thanks to the influence of others' cited work.
I'm expecting new transitional discussion to be available during the coming week, then on to new kinds of narrative things soon after.
July 17
I regret I’m not ready to do an update in line with “upcoming work to be done and shared” (June 19), but that clarity of wayfaring is faring well. I’m not posting to merely have something novel to share.
My specific project of many years is sprouting new foci daily, which
I follow (like side trips on an itinerary which enriches the journey) until enough satisfaction returns me to an enriched route, a linearity of agenda which is getting extended by new segments.
I want the little inspirations to stop sprouting, yet I don’t. I reach
a horizon, determined to not yield to the next one, but I relent.
The middle of last month, I believed I had enough closure to continue my anticipated agenda. I was wrong, but that’s a happy advent.
Though I’m averse to promoting myself, I truly believe that what I'm
to do will be useful, though the road from studied abstraction to current events can’t be briefly mapped.
Anyway, I’m not on vacation from my work; quite the contrary:
I’m intently letting creative sprouting have its way until I’m fulfilled enough to come home in line.
I’m close. I’m determined, openly.
June 26
I don’t have an update today (other than this, nothing linked) because I’m so engaged in good flows of ideas that I’ve not given time for new writing for online sharing.
But, if I was supposed to write for solicited deadline, I’d get the product out on time—which I did for decades.
Now, though, I’m free to use my time as I prefer (as I wish, but really it’s about valuing, then choice, more than desire, then choice), which is for sharing, yet of writing I really prefer to do for online (very different from my private style of constellating themes with vast cross-refer-
encing), which requires closure of the flow (and constellating), then writing the preferred thing for sharing.
That’s about creative process. I’m having fun, in my odd way.
Write you later (well, to you, but I have no idea who you are—like any authorship: writing to the wind—so, by implicature, you’re imaginary)..
