One day follows another, and during this "slow season" the days are running together until they are almost indistinguishable from each other. My sleep patterns have gotten messed up because when I don't have to get up at a certain time, I will sometimes stay up most of the night and then wake a couple hours later, so the next night, I will sleep 10 or 11 hours.

I'm back into reading again. Just can't stop myself from doing that very long. Last summer, when I was working in the British Columbia cherry harvest, I got lucky and found a lot of great used books at Kingfisher Books in Creston, B.C. (Lovely little town, if you ever get the chance to visit, and a terrific cafe/bookstore.) I shipped the books home to myself, and opened those boxes a couple days ago. Canadian writers definitely have a different flavour, and I'm enjoying this! First, I read some Farley Mowat - a book titled "Sibir" about his discovery of Siberia. Then, picked up a book by Margaret Lawrence. After reading her, I noticed I was starting to say "eh" again, and people were looking strangely at me. It doesn't take much for me to pick up that habit, even after 20 years of living in the South. It must sound strange to hear my Southern accent, interspersed with "eh's!"

Next, I thought I would change the mood and started to read some William Faulkner. Beautiful stuff .... elegant words like "slantshimmered" and "lightpoised." a captivating description of a man's face: "hard tough shortchinned face, blueshaven, with a long threadlike and recently staunched razorcut on it and in which the hot brown eyes seemed to snap and glare like a boy's approaching for the first time the aerial wheels and stars and serpents of a nighttime carnival ...."

But, reading Faulkner requires an attentiveness that I'm not willing to invest right now. By the time I pick up a book to read myself to sleep, my mental focus has been fried to a crisp. I will save Faulkner for my upcoming trip. Travelling is a wonderful chance to lose myself in literature like that.

So, I put Faulkner aside and picked up an old favourite - Pearl Buck. I have loved her writing for years, and was delighted to find a collection of old paperbacks written by her that I haven't yet read. I just finished "Dragon Seed." Turns out that it was very timely. The story is about a Chinese farm family who organized and participated in an underground resistance movement against their Japanese invaders. They hid people in a hole dug under their home, smuggled guns, launched nighttime raids on the enemy's bases, and sniped at their soldiers every chance they got. They hid resistance fighters in their hiding place often, and hosted planning meetings.

This is a perfect parallel to my family's story of their involvement in the Dutch Resistance during WWII, which I am writing about. So many of the stories of this ficitional Chinese family are similar to stories I have heard my uncles tell. Hopefully, I will glean a few more such stories on this trip, to include in the book.

The trip is only a month away, now. My heart is already there, and my body is just marking time until I leave. I long for that place again, and those people. I'm doing my work as usual, always taking care to do an excellent job, but my mind keeps travelling ahead of where I am.