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Genesis of a Historical Novel

Monday, June 27, 2005

the writer as account reconciler

Morning notes: Rubicon, From the Maccabees to the Mishnah.

A high white overcast has set in--reminds me of traveling in Europe in the late fall and winter. Sprinkles of rain have fallen throughout the day.

As I sat at the PC I heard Robin run downstairs and out the front door. I ran up to say goodbye to her as she stood at the bus stop just outside our door. I found out that she'd rescheduled her job interview for this evening at 7:15.

"How'd the exchange go?" I said, leaning over our porch rail.

"She was fine," said Robin. "I told her that 'you just said tomorrow',' and she said, 'Oh my god, you didn't go there?'"

"Now the worst case is that she'll want to get rid of any reminders of her incompetence," I said. "You'll have to go." I made a handgun out of my fingers and blew Robin away.

The bus pulled up and Robin climbed aboard.

I visited Mom in Deep Cove to work on the estate spreadsheet. We both racked our brains to figure out what might be wrong with it--and we're both very good at account reconciliation. There was nothing for it: I started going through all the bank statements back to the date of death of Harvey Burt (27 December 2003) to look at them line by line for electronic transfers and such. In the first few months there was a flurry of activity in his account as his many charitable contributions set up on automatic debit were bouncing, being charged to the account and then denied because the account had been frozen.

But Mom made me an excellent lunch of toasted ham-and-cheese sandwiches with mustard. Pushing the laptop aside on her heavy 1908 dining-table I munched contentedly, looking out across the little cove, where a group of kayakers was scattered like yellow pickup sticks on the metallic water.

I told Mom about Marian Toews' blog. In some ways Marian reminds me of Mom: they both have discovered that they like solitude, and feel comfortable living with their private thoughts. The solitary woman is an unconventional figure, more so than the solitary man, and evokes deep-seated feelings that have a numinous, spiritual tone.

There's more work to do on the estate workbook. Lots more work. An unknown amount of work.

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