Tomorrow, at 5 AM I am driving to the airport and flying to Philadelphia where my friend Liza will pick me up (she’s driving down from Boston) and then we’ll be on the road for a day and a half on the way to Rabun Gap, Georgia to spend two weeks at the Hambidge Center for the Arts and Sciences. We both were granted fellowships and will be helping each other work on our writing projects, each in our own cabin with no TV, no internet (except for one line that we all share), no husbands, no jobs, no errands, and all the rest that comes with maintaining one’s “regular” life. I’ve never done anything like this before and up until a couple of days ago was trying all sorts of ways to understand how I was going to do it–felt like I had to really accomplish something big…go with a plan and come away with a product. Well, that’s pretty much disappeared and I’m simply looking forward to dreaming, reading, taking my journal and writing while I sit on the porch swatting flies and sipping tea. I desperately need the “nothing” where anything can, and often does, happen in the creative realm. I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to blog, or even if I’ll want to, while I’m there but you can be assured I’ll be taking pictures and jotting down my thoughts to share.

Yesterday, here in L.A., there was a substantial cloud burst in our neighborhood. It was a very local event but the sky and the light and the rainbows were spectacular. I thought I’d share a couple of photos I took, one looking north, the other south. The contrast was amazing. If you look closely you can see the rainbow in one of them. I’m taking it as a good omen (it did happen on Friday, the 13th) for my trip and that the muses will be with me.