Yesterday was midsummer gift of overcast and cool breezes. Soft and almost unreal. Gratitude was boundless. I had been reduced to sobs last week to see my outdoor canopy and umbrella thrashed and smashed by wind and my plants deer-nibbled. The oppressive heat and sere desiccating everything, my brain, my skin. I couldn't water hard enough to make it up.

I feel better now, indoors working and determined to keep detached from results of yard work. I water, I cultivate, but I no longer invest hope. We redouble our efforts to escape the grim desert plateau we've been confined to for far too long.

Set back to work on opus part 3, which will be done now in a minute and lobbed into those offices all unprepared to receive it. Resume was updated and cleaned up, but I find I can recall no reference names from back in the day, and the venerable Rolodex has gone missing. So - stalled. Again.

When you give birth there is a stage just before crowning called "transition" where many mothers weaken and give up, ask for drugs, anthing, in their fear. They are told, always, "Too late. It's almost over." And so it is, in a joyful rush.

And that seems an apt metaphor for this work: I grow discouraged, convinced of my words' unworthiness, and certain I labor under delusion. Then I pick up one of these biographies and learn that every hopeful artist gets to that point - repeatedly, with some - and gives up, goes underground, hits the rails, whatever, to escape his or her failure. That's when, inevitably, everything comes clear, and the work gels.

I must remember that.