Janine Donoho

Spring offers a natural time of renewal. Cleaning out the cave involves more than chasing dust bunnies into the great outdoors or dealing with windows smeared with sighthound nose-hits. This time of year has become the nexus for an abundance of creative relationships. Besides another planting cycle, an ELEMENTAL novel presses insistent cotyledons from my subconscious as story reaches for light.

Earthy renewal has become as perennial as the hardy plants in my desert gardens.Digging into soil allows space between intuitive writing and more pragmatic edits. As a meditation, building soil presses me to be fully in the present. Sometimes the outcome is to let old fields lie fallow. Either way, this process opens the way for story.

Like kilims and area rugs from Turkey, Morocco and Egypt, it’s good to air winter’s buildup and knock free any debris. Just as stress fractures in a relationship heal faster under bright light, rugs and edited stories can take on a fresh luster. Worn areas can be shored up and perhaps new joys added into the mix. Let’s face it, disappointment and sorrow can dull even the shiniest, most enduring bonds, whether delivered via rejection letters or life’s bumps. But handmade carpets and individual stories hold value because of the hands that craft them. The journey weaves into both weft and tale.

As with this latest ELEMENTAL novel, for years I resisted the call of narcissus and tulips, although crocuses, snowbells and hyacinths received no such impertinence. Yet even as I adore the return of ubiquitous robins, now daffodils, unsown stories and tulips usher in this warming equinox. Thus, both saga and common flower have been invited to grow. Will there be a market for this novel? Who knows. Local whitetails and mule deer treat tulips like candy. The blossoms are more ephemeral than in less wild climes. Still, they’re in my garden today. Thus, this year my Earth ELEMENTAL, along with table grapes and kiwis, take precedence in cultivation. From the multitude of choices available, only the hardiest varieties of ideas and plants survive.

Unlike many stories, there’s a known endpoint for writing the Earth ELEMENTAL. Submissions for Barbara Kingsolver’s BELLWETHER PRIZE FOR FICTION end this September. As for the grapes, Valiant, Edelweiss and Swensen actually have a good chance of enduring arctic continental winds–with some help. The kiwis, whose male plays Pasha to a harem of September Suns, eschew the fuzzy jackets of their commercially known cousins. For each of these endeavors, structure is necessary. Grape arbors, story framework, and kiwi trellises fill my dreams. Oh, and gabion windbreaks constructed from wire and stone…

Yes, the center of my life brims with spring. My beautiful 32-yard turquoise-&-black dancing skirt, which offers no boundaries to untamed Turkish dances, blisses me out. Rich brocades and velvets for vests and hip belts await, too. In a lovely synchronicity during my last signings and library program, a budding friendship with Sou gifted me with Omid’s VICTORY CD along with body mist and butter appropriately named BLISS. Even now, French onion soup simmers in the crockpot. With final additions of Gruyere cheese and coarse chunks of thyme-infused bread, a rainy April in Paris will be revisited. Meanwhile, ferocious winds usher in the season even as chaotic thunderstorms bring pelting rains to quench thirsty gardens.