Category Archives: writing

Yellow Sun, foggy sky

Indira Ganesan, Neither Fog nor Sun, 2012

Just before six this morning, the sun was a yellow sphere, hovering above the horizon. A pale yellow, like the yolk of an egg from a chicken that doesn’t have much room to wander. Maybe this is a political piece. The sky is foggy, although skies are never foggy, atmosphere is. Skies are dark, cloudy, blue, scattered with stars. It is going to be a hot, hazy day but there is a breeze. A female cardinal tried to hide in the side-view mirror of my car, maybe because my rusting vehicle looks like her. She couldn’t find a grasp. I live in the country part of a seaside resort that is teeming a mile away. The town is three miles long, surrounded by water and dunes, salt marshes. Simply to write salt marches is transportive.

In six months,seven days I will have a book out. An old friend in town has her new novel set to release in two days. Another friend who used to live in town just had her book released. In this town, writers and painters are working, preparing, gazing into the fog, waiting for the sun to burn an idea clear. Sometimes a deep reed flute breaks the lull.

Here, I hear a squirrel land on a summer branch. The birds talk, distinct dialects. Multilayers. I had a thought but it’s gone now. The sun shines brighter. There.

Summer of Dog-Ears or Distracted Mind

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Indira Ganesan, Soon, 2012

It has been a summer of dog-earing, folding down corners of books and projects that will be finished later. In my home, the rooms are scattered with magazine articles and stories I am coming back to, novels I’ve opened and marked, little dog-ears that promise later, soon, maybe in the winter. I have a book of stories open at the table where I eat meals, and I’ve been on the story for days. The story is very good, but I am compelled after I eat to clear the dishes, and go on to something else, even while thinking, why not just sit and finish? It wasn’t always like this. Books were read. A friend once asked, looking at my books, have you really read all of these? Of course, I replied, surprised, thinking, that was why they were shelved. Who would own books they hadn’t read, I thought. That was decades ago. Now my shelves are full of the partially read, the near forgotten, the new ones.

Once I stayed in this town refusing to leave until I finished my first novel. I did, and began another, moved, then spent ten years moving and finishing the second book. A few more moves, fourteen years pass, and a third gets completed. Now I am back where I first finished, fishing for a fourth. Is it among all the dog-eared and bookmarked projects? The books, the magazines, the garden, the Olympics on tv? The laundry, the groceries, the car tune-up?

And what is that noise outside anyway and when will the tomatoes fruit?