Marquez and the material world of writing

 

I sat for a full day at the computer on Friday and forgot the material world. The end of a week of neglecting the world and thinking far too much about writing. I didn't sew, I made a loaf of bread and was back at the keyboard. 

I slept badly the other night and read a whole collection of stories by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Strange Pilgrims, which has its own strange story attached. In telling the story of this collection, Marquez reveals he increasingly found himself unable and unwilling to write in pauses between books. He turned to journalism to keep himself engaged. I have felt that disassociation and in me it turns to disillusion. But I know my own medicine and I hadn't been taking it. The earth. I went to the allotment in the drizzle. 

A chilli plant in the polytunnel isn't doing well, but well enough for its harvest to be ripening and what a red. In the other greenhouse, tomatoes are still ripening. I pulled up all the plants in the polytunnel, worried about blight and gave away the green fruit. But the greenhouse is draughtier and blight hasn't taken hold. So I'm still picking tomatoes and wonder what this means for the future. I cut the buddleia, pruned gooseberries, weeded and turned two compost piles. I planted some lettuce and pea shoot seeds in the polytunnel and tried to fix a wheelbarrow. I came home with chillies, carrots, a turnip, rocket, tomatoes and chard. 

At 3 am, reading Marquez - and it's a mixed collection, not all the endings are entirely believable - I was reassured. Writing needs a material world - food, people, animals, wind and cars...Maria dos Prazeres, teaching her little dog to cry and find the plot she's bought in the cemetery for herself, a man obsessed with a woman he sleeps next to on a plane...