A few weeks in our new house, built in 1973, most of the boxes have made it out the door. We can park one car in the garage. I should be doing a happy dance.
While I no longer wend my way through manmade canyons, it’s the little foxes that threaten my undoing (cf. Song of Solomon 2:15). My computer working, but I do not. No chunks of time set aside to write. I feel guilty.
In Frankfurt, my husband lived in an apartment across the street from a university named for Johann Wolfgang von Goethe—Germany’s counterpart to Italy’s Leonardo Da Vinci. Goethe wrote Faust, which begs the question, did the author consider selling his soul to the devil?
I told my husband that two things hinder me writing fiction. One, I have spent my life determined to tell the truth. He said, “You’re the only person I know who footnotes conversation.”
“That’s right,” I said, “because I want people to know that ideas and words wise and wonderful did not originate with me.”
“So what’s the second reason?”
“You know how I hate to be misunderstood.”
While unpacking boxes in the dining room, I came across a wine bottle that my husband’s friend from Germany had brought for my graduation. A thoughtful gift to encourage me to keep writing, this unique bottle has a 4x3 inch porcelain cameo of Goethe, a keepsake both for its beauty and sentiment.
The Writer’s Almanac spotlighted Goethe this week, and I liked this quote:
“Sometimes our fate resembles a fruit tree in winter. Looking at its sad appearance who would think that those stiff branches, those jagged twigs would turn green again and blossom and bear fruit next spring; but we hope they will, we know they will.”
The Daily Literary Quote on Google from a couple of days ago, I copied to a sticky-note.
“A creation of importance can only be produced when its author isolates himself; it is a child of solitude.” Goethe.
Solitude. That explains it.
