Malaise, wallowing in the swamplands, acedia (my new word for the week), writer’s block. Call it what you will–I’ve been bogged down. Started the cure this morning at my favorite coffee shop with some of my drugs of choice–20 ounce iced latte, new pens, a blank page. I would have added a Beethoven symphony at high volume, but forgot my earphones, and my presence in public forced me into quiet. The fog may be lifting. It looks like the Altitude Sickness story is coming home to me, or will be soon. It is Big Magic, as Elizabeth Gilbert says. I just have to keep believing in the Big Magic that has sent this story to me and compelled me to tell it.

During my childhood summers in Wisconsin, we bought our tomatoes from the farmer kids who ran their family farm stand outside of Williams Bay. Mom sliced them thin. Dad piled them on his plate and spooned white sugar all over them. I was never sold on the sugar-on-tomatoes thing, but I gave it a try a few times. I preferred my tomatoes on top of the burgers Dad and the uncles cooked over charcoal in the back yard. After a long afternoon down at the lake waiting for a turn to ride on the boat or chasing with other kids at the beach, those burgers were about the best thing I ever tasted. Tomato time every year takes me back to Williams Bay and the farm stand and the smell of burgers on the grill.

I am reading Pam Houston’s memoir Deep Creek and enjoying a return visit to the high altitude country of her Colorado ranch. No altitude sickness for me in her wonderful writing. The rest from my own manuscript of Altitude Sickness is  refreshing. Ideas bubbling beneath the surface and in my notebook pages as I get ready for the next round of revision.