Dear Friend,

I spend a lot of time at this little desk:

In this small cottage of ours, I had to get creative with space. This is actually the other side of Boo's bedroom. I have my laptop, my books, and a view. The only distractions are the buzz of the baseboard heater and the occasional acorn hitting the tin roof.

You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait. Do not even wait, be quite still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet. -Franz Kafka

Today I looked out at the view, and through the tree, now missing its leaves, I could see a tiny winding path on the forearm of the mountain across from me. I call it a forearm because it looks like a sleeping giant to me. This is my first time every noticing the path. Unmasked. A deep, tan cut. How much more have I missed up until this point?

I know I've said that we walked away from our old life, but what I'm discovering is that we've walked toward a new one. That's a completely different story. And sometimes I just let the story happen. There is no planning, no control, no prediction. Sark says that "being in attendance for all the variations in the ONLY path." She was talking about writing, but I think it applies to living. Just being in attendance. And sometimes that will be at a small desk, in a small room, in a small cottage, in a small town.

Love,

Ashley

P.S. If you've received this letter secondhand, you can leave your email address here to receive my weekly letters.

"I devoured this tiny recipe book not for the recipes, but for the little traces left behind. The drips, spatters and pools of ingredients on the pages made it clear which recipes were referenced the most. I imagined the owner’s name was something like Mabel, or Hazel, or Pearl or maybe Anna. Yes, Anna.
Anna made the Shrimp Patties at least once, and only on a special occasion. She would have read “be sure to remove small black intestinal veins which run down center back of shrimps” and probably had a stronger stomach than me."

...read more...

I picked up this book in our new Smoky Mountains bookstore because it was written about the area. I'm loving it so far. And this past week I got an email from the author saying she was just dropping me a note because she noticed I was reading it, and that she hoped I liked it. What a humble gesture. Anyways, it's a heartwarming memoir about small town life and small town doctor life....