Weather Diary - Day 16 ( Tuesday April 4 2006 Sunny and Windy 64F)

'On Reading'

I'm so totally into my book.

I have spent over two weeks now honing and perfecting the best way to make use of the hours in my day.
My daily rhythm, that is, while on this art pilgrimage on Ocracoke Island.
But it is, after all, designed to suit my own interests, and be to my own satisfaction, so if I stray sometimes from its structure, that is okay by me.
That is, except for my one-a-day evening drawing. On this I keep firm control.
It must be done.  On. The. Day.

So here I sit at ten in the morning,
enveloped in the comfort of reading.

I keep up my regime of early morning spiritual reading. It is, I think, just about the perfect way to start the day. (Once the tea is made.) And the term 'spiritual' is proving to be fairly flexible. (Flexible to the extent of including, on this pilgrimage, just about everything I have brought with me.)
So, that includes writings poetic, inspirational, reflective, sensitive, artistic.
And, well, maybe stretch just a wee bit further.

And so, I read:

'The Cloister Walk' by Kathleen Norris.
'Beyond the Walls' by Paul Wilkes.
'Pilgrim at Tinker Creek' by Annie Dillard.
'The Pocket Aquinas'
The Psalms

And regularly dip into:

'The Penguin Book of Canadian Verse' (edited by Ralph Gustafson)
'Donne' (poems selected and edited by John Hayward)
'Search for the Real' by Hans Hofmann
'Hawthorne on Painting' (collected by Mrs. C.W. Hawthorne)
'Sara Midda's South of France'

And here's the stretch:

'The Shell Seekers' by Rosamunde Pilcher
'Sense and Sensibility' by Jane Austen
'Q's Legacy' by Helene Hanff
'Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince' by J.K. Rowling
(purchased at the lovely little Ocracoke bookshop)
'Swallows and Amazons' by Arthur Ransome

But it is the last of these that has me in its grip right at this moment.
I am betraying my art. I am being unfaithful to my purpose for being here.
But I do it out of love.
I am in love with a place and time, with an island, (Wild Cat Island), with its inhabitants, (the crew of the Swallow), and their invaders, (the 'Amazon' pirates).
I can't put this book down until I know if they, (the Swallows), are very nearly duffers. Or not.
(Read book to understand.)
So I read, and console myself with the fact that my 'spiritual' reading does at least involve water and an island, and decisions, and conscience and love.
And it is, oh so nice, to lie in a sunny sheltered spot, (without fear of tornadoes or tidal waves or earthquakes), and read.