Letting go and Moving on
Photograph by Bettman-Corbis
This week’s project -
My youngest daughter graduated from high school! Our days were filled with ceremonies, celebrations, dinner parties, cocktails. We were celebrating her, for sure. But you know what? I’m also proud of me. I birthed two babies, kept them alive and got them through high school. Congratulations to me!
Apart from journaling, there was very little time this week to work on my creative projects. But I did start brainstorming my next book… The working title is The Lake House Project. The idea is still forming in my mind and I can’t yet put it into words. But I think it will have a strong visual component as well as written words. Sophia’s agreed to be my photographer and art director! Should be fun.
Artist: Luc Lavenseau
Travel: Where I’m at, where I’m going -
We’re moving! The owner of our London home wants to sell and we don’t want to buy - so we have until September 30 to move out. I’ve looked out dozens of houses and apartments here in London, but I just can’t get excited about any of them. Both kids will be in the US for university, so we could literally live almost anywhere.
What I really want to do is travel around the world and be a nomad for a while… But what about work? Is that realistic? We are brainstorming options…
In the meantime, I’m going through the house room-by-room and deciding what to keep, what to donate and what to throw away. And Oh My God I Love This Process So Much! B asked me if I needed help going through the things in the attic and I was like YES MAN, TALK DIRTY TO ME! LET’S GO! We spent all day up there and then donated two carloads of stuff to our local charity shop. And then I took a carload of junk to the Refuse and Recycling Center. Is there anything more therapeutic? I FREAKING LOVE IT. Nothing is safe from my purging! I’m a woman on a mission.
HENRY’S book cover is fuzzy like a peach and I can’t stop petting it.
Books: What I’m reading -
I’m still making my way through Tiananmen Square by Lai Wen. I haven’t made up my mind about this book. I’m told the ending is phenomenal, so I’m sticking with it.
I’ve got two other reading obsessions at the moment. The first is I’m searching for great stories by exquisite food writers. A few months ago, I read The Paris Novel by Ruth Reichl (which I loved) and I just finished Butter by Asako Yuzuki (which I liked). Next up is How to Eat a Peach by Diana Henry and then Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain.
I’ve also fallen down a rabbit hole researching visual memoirs. I might have made up that genre, but here’s what it means to me: Books where the images carry as much narrative weight as the words. Books like the perennial favourite Film for Her by Orion Carloto or It by Alexa Chung. Or even Sara Berman’s Closet by Maira Kalman or Elena: A Hand Made Life by Miriam Gold.
I know these two categories of books seem wildly different, but they are both feeding my next project!
Where I walk my dog. :) The River Thames, Chiswick to Hammersmith. Artist: Arabella Harcourt-Cooze