the hummingbird nest, the end of a revision

Two nights ago, as I recently noted here, I received the gift of a nest.

It had been hunted for—sought after. Mike knows of the books I write and the things I do and my obsession with birds. He knows how I sit outside waiting, in particular, for hummingbirds, and so he had climbed and searched and dug his long arms into tree branches and found, in the end, this nest, woven of human hair and plastic and time.

It sits now on the edge of my desk. It calms me. It has accompanied me as I have finished a drastic revision of the Florentine novel, a book that had all the right themes, but (especially in the first two-thirds) much of the wrong plotting, and too many wrong words. A book about tangles that became too tangled. A book that set me back and made me wonder if I would ever finish a book again.

It is that book that has obsessed me these past many weeks. That book that is the reason that many of my friends have not heard from me. That book that I refused to let go.

When it hurts, as with all things, the only way out is through.

I've just come through. I will leave this book to itself for awhile, go to Atlanta, talk memoir and teach memoir and then come home and read again. There will be more things to do. But the foundation is right, and the tangle is gone, and the nest is here, where I need it.

I've fought shame, this time around. And I've been reminded of the power of humility.