Murder on the Dishes

Agatha Christie and her novels

“During domestic chores I could always relax my mind completely.  Robert Graves once said to me that washing up was one of the best aids to creative thought. I think he is quite right. There is a monotony about domestic duties — sufficient activity for the physical side, so that it releases your mental side, allowing it to take off into space and make its own thoughts and inventions. That doesn’t apply to cooking, of course. Cooking demands all your creative abilities and complete attention.”

— Agatha Christie: An Autobiography

Another British novelist, Elleston Trevor, told me essentially the same thing, and I’ve found it to be true myself. 

Your unconscious mind does more than half the heavy lifting in good writing, and bland, simple physical activities can be useful in getting the conscious mind out of its way.

The Joy of Saying No

"We are afraid that we will be forgotten, that if we stop going all the time, the loneliness and emptiness we fear will surface. So we build a false sense of security, warding off uncertainty by making a fetish of constant activity.”

“There is a common phenomenon among those newly diagnosed with cancer. My friend Ange Stephens, a longtime therapist to people with life-threatening illness, calls it a ‘secret gratitude.’ After the initial shock subsides, many of her clients quietly express relief. ‘Now I can say ‘no’ whereas I always had felt obliged to say ‘yes.’’ They tell her ‘Now I can finally rest.’”

— Frank Ostaseski, The Five Invitations

They Chase Our Joy

“Because of the dog’s joyfulness, our own is increased. It is no small gift. It is not the least reason why we should honor as well as love the dog of our own life, and the dog down the street, and all the dogs not yet born.”

— Mary Oliver

The Answer from the Sea

I go down to the shore in the morning

and depending on the hour the waves

are rolling in or moving out,

and I say, oh, I am miserable,

what shall—

what should I do? And the sea says

in its lovely voice:

“Excuse me, I have work to do.”

― Mary Oliver, A Thousand Mornings: Poems

Listen for the Chime

“Many elderly friends have what I call the chime,” wrote novelist Anne Lamott. “It is a vibrating energy that certain artistic and spiritual people exude, as do people with a basic spirit of generosity. Almost silent, the chime rings like a tiny triangle off in the expanse. The chime is life and is in all of us, but it tends to be muffled until much of the clamor and hustle of existence quiets down. I hear it most often in the elderly, whose days are quieter, who gladly ruminate and gaze out windows a lot. They may appear frail, but there is strength in this fragility.

“Do not mess with the very old and their gangs. I see them live with grace and (sometimes cranky) humor, along with infirmity, pain, wobbly brains and the scar tissue of decades enduring the blows and losses splattered through human life. They laugh gently at me when they hear me once again in do-or-die mode: They’ve seen over and over that most things will be okay as long as we’re tender with each other. They are whom I want to be in 10 years, if I am alive and can remember this one thing.”