Rembrandt:
Self-portrait in a Soft Hat and Patterned Cloak (1631)

Tomorrow Morning's Problem
Someone I was chatting with at a holiday party asked me if I was retired. I'm never sure how to respond to that question because I don't consider myself retired, yet no one employs me. I responded by declaring myself a writer who puts in his daily hours. I don't know what I'd do if I retired. I still feel the deep need to create something every day and the responsibilities owning The Villa place on me. I continue to get up very early every morning to seriously consider what I should be doing that day. By the time The Muse rises hours later, I've already accomplished something, however modest. The balance of my day builds upon that early success. I rarely fail to achieve something of my own devising, early each morning. If I fear anything, I fear not accomplishing that something. I might suffer from some obsessive-compulsive disorder, except my world seems exquisitely ordered. I am free to procrastinate after I've finished my writing, and I procrastinate plenty, but I am never free to avoid my writing. Am I retired? Not hardly. I can't imagine myself ever hanging up my spurs.

As I finish another series, I ask myself if I have another one in me. The answer is an inevitable maybe. I cannot know until I've finished whether I have another in me. The honest answer would be that I didn't but that I didn't need to have another one in me before I started writing. What would become another one was never in me before I began but passed through me as I continued once I started. The starting primed the pump. The daily ritual maintained the flow. Knowing was never necessary or, I suspect, sufficient. There's no going back to recover what was never started. There's never a good enough excuse for not starting. I have not yet decided what my next series will focus on. That's tomorrow morning's problem.

——

Weekly Writing Summary
This Exiled Story, ChristmasesPast, recounts how we spend our Christmases after having been Exiled. We spent those days in deep remembrance rather than traveling back into some past no longer present. We made manifesting our pasts into our present to each other each year.

Samuel Palmer: Christmas (c. 1850)
"Our Exile was best when ChristmasesPast were the present."
—
This Exiled Story, LeaveMaking, starts recounting how The Muse and I finally managed to end our Exile. This story will likely continue over the next few installments, leading up to the big ending at the end of this week.

Randolph Caldecott: Taking leave. (1885)
"More complications sat between us and our exit."
—
This Exiled Story continues describing the Separations necessary to finally return us from Exile. Return never occurs in a single step. It requires many fortunate events to finally affect an exit.

Félix Edouard Vallotton: Cancellation sheet, fragments of ten woodblocks from Intimacies(1898)
" … actively engaging in her separation dance."
—
This Exiled Story recounts a painful final chapter of our Exile, a LastAdolescence for our granddaughter and us. We returned from exile with an innocence shed.

Carel Christiaan Antony Last: Meisje met Tulband [Girl with turban] (1835 - in or before 1839)
"Once we were empty nesters again … "
—
This Exiled Story, the next-to-last installment in this series, finds me explaining that I've been leaving PiecesOfMyself behind. My Exiled experiences pruned my existence. I returned less than before. Exiles seem exclusively extractive. They teach lessons with perhaps no practical applications.

Louis Rhead: I diverted myself with talking to my parrot (1900)
"Another Exile might be in all of our near futures."
—
This Exiled Story, Passing, the final installment in this series, finds me realizing that I'll always be an Exile. The hero never returns from his adventure. The adventure continues, as does the Exile.

Winslow Homer: The End of the Day, Adirondacks (1890)
" … anyone Exiled never returns."
—
I finish each of my series reluctantly, much as I start them. Exiled was my thirtieth series in seven and a half years. With that much practice, I must have learned something, though whatever I've learned was not the sort of lesson that has rendered me predictive or knowledgable. I have not known where any of my series was headed when I started them. I've relied upon some narrative drift to guide my hand. I've been readying one of the earlier series for publication, and I'm learning that I need more editing, even after the manuscript has been pre-read by several who declared it finished. The Muse insisted that it seemed out of order. I interpret this comment to mean that I need the services of a Developmental Editor specializing in putting disjointed stuff together into more seamless wholes. That said, as of this writing, the ending of the Exiled Series has come close to coherence. It didn't mislead. I led the reader through the closing acts even if the ending failed to provide the sort of closure I'd imagined it might when I started. Our ChristmasesPast traveled with us through our Exile and, indeed, stand displayed before me again this week before Christmas. The Exile required layers of Separations, which probably rendered it normal, if not perfectly so. Innocence might be the chief casualty of all experience. To watch my LastAdolescence fading proved to be a humbling experience and should remain so until I discover additional adolescences lurking within me later. It's a wonder I'm still together with all the PiecesOfMe I've left behind me like a cookie-crumb trail. The Exiled Series is now Passing, if not precisely past. Thank you for following along these last thirteen weeks. I wonder what comes next!

©2024 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Exiled, #PureSchmaltz