If you want to write you have to read;
It’s as essential as breathing.
Breathing in – reading. Breathing out – writing.
A hut in Idaho, a welcomed rural retreat
How may I improve my writing? I asked. She said, Read!
What can you recommend? I asked. She said, You will find what is good to read? It will fall off a shelf, make itself known. And she was right!
On San Juan Island I picked a book off the shelf hoping to induce sleep. Dakota.
At the rummage sale in Portland last Saturday the same book gazed up at me from the sidewalk. Dakota. Dakota: A Spiritual Geography, by Kathleen Norris.
Thanks to Eido-san and to Margaret for your help, encouragement and know-how.
Illuminated log in the early morning after rain
On a related theme watch out for “Prairy Earth” by William Least Heat-Moon on those American second-hand shelves.
I aspire to try and write a similar book about Chiba one day.
in gassho