Writing My Parasites

Ovidia--every other Tuesday I’ve finally submitted the draft, so now I’m in the waiting-for-edits limbo and all my writing parasites are surfacing.

You'd think I’d jump into all the things I’d been putting off—all the books I wanted to read, the exhibitions I wanted to go over, the shows I wanted to watch--but Plot Twist: I decided to come down with a cold instead. A real nuisance that's been around, on and off, for about ten days.

At least it held off until I hit “submit.”

And at least the view from out the window here is nice!

These lovely wild orchids growing vertically from the branches of the giant tree just outside my office window are parasites, aren't they?

Other parasites are a lot more aggressive. This is a tree I saw on one of my walks (the benefit of living close to several parks is no matter how lousy you feel, there's always somewhere to walk--and if you're lucky, dogs to encounter).

This was a palm tree--you can see some dry, brown fronds hanging--but its quite dead now, thanks to the vine that's smothered it.

You can see similar vines making their way up the trunks of other trees--

This one's just starting out. But, like the one in this next photo, it's just a matter of time--

As long as the vines are only on the trunk, things are not too bad. The tree provides support and access to sunlight at the top of the forest canopy... until the vine reaches the top and starts to smother the leaves, by which time it's too late for the tree.

All the vine needs for support is the trunk, dead or alive.

In my virus-congested state, I've been thinking we writers are kind of parasitically feeding off the society we live in.
But ideally we would be the trees and tree orchids as well as the vines, absorbing all the effluvia of society and producing oxygen, shade and beauty.

And dealing with our own parasites too.

It's not that I have nothing to do right now. I'm on the final stretch of the final sleeve on the knitting project for this book (tryiing to finish a cardigan and a book at the same time 'forces' me to take breaks) and I want to sketch out some story ideas I got that I didn't allow myself to work on till the draft was in, and I have so many books I want to read, but instead...

... I've been experimenting with sprouting mung beans and soy beans in teapots.
It works really well, because you have to flush them with water and this way they can drip into the tea pots.

Mung beans sprout a lot faster than soy beans, by the way!

But there's something a little creepy about the rootlets coming out of the filter.

And by the day after--

Sprouts for lunch today--these sprouts are delicious!


The other distraction is a phone game called 'Fishdom', which a neighbor’s kid got me to download so she could play during her 'compulsory' outdoor time.

I know that defeats the purpose of being outdoors but I remember being that kid who didn't want to 'play' so... Anyway, I tried it when I got home and the next thing I knew I'd been playing for three hours!

It's a Tetris style game, where there's just enough challenge to keep you interested, and you're rewarded with dopamine hits and getting fish and decorations for your fishtank.

Seemingly a harmless game, it’s a strangler vine that wrapped itself around my day, sucking out time and energy!

But oh, it was really fun!
Still, I have a real life fishtank and plants to take care of!

And speaking of real life, I’ve been so relieved and happy to know my agent and her family in Florida are safe after the last storm. We've been hearing such terrible things on the news!

And for now, I'm going to enjoy this forced time off and get rid of this cold.