Spring in Amagansett

I'm filled with pleasure about being home, back in the northeast, especially because coming home means coming back to our house in Amagansett, which we barely had time to begin to know before we left for California just after the new year began. Now it's a time of much rearrangement, unpacking, figuring out where things go, fetching stuff from Fire Island and from storage: a chance to consolidate and to make home in a more solid way than we've been able to the last few years.

It's funny that all this should coincide with the publication of Louise DeSalvo's new book, ON MOVING, a meditation on relocating, leaving old places and making home anew. Especially because Louise's book discusses, among the domestic disruptions and revisions of many writers, yours truly. I am moving, and my moving is being represented, all at once.

Last night I stood up in the garden, on the slope above the house looking down to the woods across the road. It was a little foggy, so that the lights of the house spilled out into the air in an unfamiliar way, and the trees (still leafless) were slightly blurred. In the vernal pools, the peepers seemed to be growing louder -- that sweet ringing annual chorus I just don't ever get weary of. I'd been spending all my time working, settling, and that moment made me just stop and pay attention to where we are.