It’s been cooler. Still sunny, mostly, but sometimes a breeze, and overnight the temperature falls a little so that when I go down for my swim, the water is warmer than the air. Yesterday a merganser surprised me by jumping onto a log near one end of the beach. Another was fishing just beside her. Was it one of this year’s babies, almost grown?
Last week was busy and this week will be busier. Our Edmonton family arrives tomorrow. And I am working to finish the copyedits for my forthcoming book, The Art of Looking Back: a painter, an obsession, and reclaiming the gaze. It’s interesting to me to spend time looking at the writing at the level of commas, citations, paragraphs. Every now and then, the copyeditor comments on elements of the narrative, not to suggest changes or anything, but to say, Wow, that must have been a shock, as she responded to an extract from a letter in which the painter was essentially telling me he would make naked images of me available to everyone. And yes, I think (all of over again), it was a shock. And I’d put it away.
A photographer came last week to spend a few hours taking photographs of some of the images referenced in the book and also some potential author photographs. She was just wonderful: Chelsea Roisum. We talked, laughed, talked some more, ate the lunch John prepared for us under our vines, and on Friday she sent me a file of her images. She hoped there would be a portrait I was happy with and oh yes, there were many. But maybe this one most of all, because it echoes two sections of the book, one about the Karyatids in Athens, supporting the entablature of the Erechtheion, and another in which I hold up the beam (the one above me in the photo) while John nails it into place.
Summer goes on. The world is a terrifying place right now. But here, on this piece of land I’ve known since February, 1980, a breeze makes its own music of capiz shells hanging over a table, and I am lost in recollection.
Note: Chelsea generously said I could use some of the photos.
...Theresa Kishkan 
Gorgeous! I love the play of light and shadow in the image too (but obviously your reasons are more meaningful, given the relationship to the work itself). I don’t think I’ve had an opportunity to say, but I was so pleased to hear that that manuscript found a home; I remember when you were debating whether to continue looking for a home for it and I’m so happy it worked out that you did!
Thanks so much. I am (obviously) thrilled that the ms. found a home and the work so far with editor and copyeditor has been really great.