AUTUMN INTERLUDE

I'm taking somewhat of an interlude from my publishing schedule for an undetermined time while my most recent book WRITING FOR THE SUPREME EDITOR is out of my hands and in production. 

I'll run a mini-marathon again when what they used to call the galley proofs (now electronic printouts) arrive from the publisher before the signal is given for the on-the-press run. 

Meanwhile, I'm literally taking some time off to savor full-bodied autumn with God's annual splendor symbolized by this welcoming bench afloat in the midst of a sea of color-splashed leaves.

How am I celebrating this interval? I'm inviting local friends, whom I fear I've neglected while I've been immersed in the protracted, self-imposed aloneness that is required to do creative writing. My invitation to them is to find a date to visit me for an hour or two of one-on-one leisure in my cozy kitchen some afternoon. I'll brew some tantalizing tea in my authentic Chinese blue teapot with two painted golden pheasants on its surface and offer some home baked goodies, if I can carve out time to bake them. 

We'll just catch up on our mutual lives which seem to be running a race faster than we can catch up with them. The sole purpose is to invest an interval of warm and fuzzy fellowship time while "the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock, and you hear the kyouck and gobble of the struttin' turkey-cock...." (I can't believe I still remember memorizing that James Whitcomb Riley poem in fourth grade!)

This includes an open invitation to each of you, my special blog post friends, to come too, no matter where you live, whether in the next town or in a distant state. Fly in from Florida if you wish to experience the extravagant change of seasons again, which I'm sure you must be missing. I'll just add another tea bag to the blue teapot and ask fictitious Polly to put the kettle on.

I need this slice of uncluttered, unscheduled space for awhile and perhaps my friends do too. Because I'm a writer, of course I use computer keyboard analogy for my poem below from one of my recent books. My thumbs work better on the space bar than they do when I try texting on my smart phone!

SPACE BAR

I need to press the space bar:

my life is overcrowded.

I need better proportion

my words run together

I'm too complicated

not communicating

what I am

or want to be

nor displaying accurately

God's life through me.

I want some distance

some intervals

between myself and others

not a gap or abyss

but unaccommodating elbowroom

perhaps headroom

away from distractions.

I need space to sort out

where I am going

and where I've been

a comfortable interim

to look within.

Then I can go on.

A space is not a period

a finality or a full stop

only a *pausing place

an interlude, a transition

to open up the words of my life

so I can decide more wisely

what I want to say

and where I want to go

and what I want to be.

* Orders filled promptly for my book published last year, SELAH REFLECTIONS: Press the PAUSE Button. Order by email leonachoy@gmail.com