Lying Fallow: "Something in us does not erode." — Mark Doty

May 4

The Laughing Gulls careening above the ferry from Dauphin Island, Alabama

“…that there is
something stubborn in us
— does it matter how small it is?—
that does not diminish.
What is it? An ear,
a wave? Not a bud
or a cinder, not a seed
or a spark: something else:
obdurate, specific, insoluble.
Something in us does not erode.

— Mark Doty | from “Manhattan: Luminism” in Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems

I have not disappeared; just took the month of April to lie fallow, or take flight. Fallow: left unsown for a period in order to restore its fertility. I set down my work— brushes, paint, ink, canvas, classes— and was, for a while, a student and wanderer.

Well, there is time left --
fields everywhere invite you into them.
And who will care, who will chide you if you wander away
from wherever you are, to look for your soul?
Quickly, then, get up, put on your coat, leave your desk!
— Mary Oliver | from “Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches?” in West Wind: Poems and Prose Poems

My husband, desperate for an adventure, got the idea of driving to the nearest shore, which from here in Kentucky is Alabama. The picture above is from the ferry we took from Dauphin Island to a small spit of beach on the other side, whose only name we could find is “Grass Island.” On the way there the children on the ferry were joyfully throwing bits of their lunch in the air, which the gulls caught in frenzied dives, mid-flight, just above our heads.

When we arrived at our small cottage on the beach, the gulls, terns and pelicans sailed overhead, and the sandpipers ran on their skinny legs along the shore.

Everywhere I looked I saw line— calligraphy etched by grasses, sand, water and wind. These lines below, made from incoming waves, reminded me of one of the exercises we did for my online class, following contours in nature:

Writing within the lines given by the waves….”temenos”

Calligraphy: Lines in the driftwood found by wind and sand, in the sand made by grasses and wind, and by the beak of the sanderling, incessantly searching for crabs.

I brought scraps and thread and paper to stitch together my new pocket journal, #31, for my “Not a day without a line” sketchbook:

Stitched together “Not a day without a line” pocket journal on the road…
Kingfisher (left) Laughing gull (right)

Playing with a new palette | “Odyssey: a long series of wanderings” L Doctor Sketchbook

I am inspired to renew my practice of “Sabbatical Sundays,” taking at least one day away from screens, social media and news. Having just returned from our road trip, how refreshing it is! Taking time away from work, I am convinced once again, is the best thing you can do for your work.

I rediscovered some books: Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination is full of her essays from talks that she gave. There are spellbinding stories from her life — growing up with Papago Indians in Napa Valley, reflections on Mark Twain and Tolstoy. And this excerpt from a piece she wrote called “My Island”:

Invited to write about a favorite island, at first I couldn’t think of a real one— only the unattained or the imaginary. Islands are by definition separated from the ordinary world, not part of it. Isolate…
— Ursula K. Le Guin

I also took with me to our “island” Mark Doty’s book of poems, Fire to Fire, which I can spend the rest of my life reading. And for those of you who like to write, Francine Prose’s book: “Reading Like A Writer”.

The something in you that does not erode is re-discovered by getting off the wheel of habit, and away from what everyone else is doing or thinking, out of the orbit of group think. Lying fallow. Finding the thread back to fertility.

Travel opens the door to synchronicity, and new discoveries … we spotted a garfish in the shallow waters. This strange creature, who has adapted to salt or fresh water, goes back to the Early Cretaceous period, over 100 million years ago. He blended too closely with the color of the water to get a good photo. But, just a couple miles down the beach were the remains of a ship that wrecked about a hundred years ago.

Our first morning we got to see the full moon set at sunrise over the ocean. The sun, the moon, the stars, the shifting sands. The billions-of-years-old sound and smell of the sea. All this reminds me: "Something in us does not erode."