A Digression

I'm retreating at the Johnson Cultural Centre in Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park. The Johnsons (whose custom-designed, fieldstoned, Danish modern, skylit house--bequeathed to the Friend of Cypress Hills Inc. as an artist retreat--contains hundreds of books) believed in reading about everything. From a Casey Stengel bio through bestsellers, encyclopedia, books on birds and wine and Napoleon, classics of English and American lit, how to win at backgammon, railroads of western Canada . . . to John Steinbeck, Travels With Charley, a book I love. 
It's graceful and potent, funny and sharp, supple as the swat end of a flyswatter. That last bit I just threw in. Here in the Johnsons' kitchen (through the two windows to the right of the front steps in the photo) a couple of flies are going at it--and they're gonna get it--between the blind and the window.
I took a break from Oak Floors! to walk and do this entry. And read--how good to read the Steinbeck again.
I might even borrow this nugget: that the only cure for loneliness is being alone (or words to that effect). Not about myself, mind you, but the janitor, in Oak Floors! (through which I've been progressing a scene at a time by moving around upstairs, in the mornings before it gets too hot up there). 
Completion of first draft, here I come.