There are two very specific vast empty spaces currently in my life, both of which will be ever-so-slowly filled. They’re both incredibly exciting yet one I understand better and lives in my imagination, while the other is in my line of sight yet I can’t quite visualze it yet.

A week-ish ago, D & I found out for real/for sure that a piece of land we’d made an offer on in upstate New York (Schoharie county, Stamford is the nearest village with all mod cons: grocery, cute diner, coffee place, used bookstore) is ours. It’s 25 amazing acres and D has plans mapped out for the house and all attendant things that will be built on top of it. He’s been sketching and planning for over a year now as we’ve been looking for just the right place. Having found it, while also enduring as one does the slow-mollasses drip of NY real estate, once the deed was done (&signed), the excitement was both real and slightly blurry to me. For D, he can look at this land—one vast space, half-mowed, half with big gorgeous trees—and see things: What needs to be done, what will stand where and in what order. He also has some solid ideas about when those things will happen.

I stand on the land and see the half-mowed-ness, the amazing trees, vast expanse of the view and am slightly stunned. By the beauty, yes, but also by the fact that he has the vision to bring it all to life and I have a vague sense around, Wow, look at all this land; check out this view. That’s about where my imagination stops. Last weekend, we went out and measured where some wee-trees will be planted along the property line that separates us (by a couple of miles) from the neighbors. Yet still, because there aren’t a lot of houses in the area, and there are a lot of sloping mowed hills, the view into other houses would be real. Hence the trees. They arrived last week. Little saplings of Maples that were shipped in boxes and tied to sticks. And while it will be years before they grow into actual block-the-view trees, for the first time I could understand how this land would (slowly) populate with us (and our trees). How D will build and fashion and make this rolling space ours. This impresses the hell out of me and I still stand and look out over the landscape with my vision a little blurred while he trails his hand around saying things like “and over there…” and “right here…” and “that’ll be….” and I nod because I believe him, it’s just that it’s more amorphous to me. We do have an apple tree from which I grabbed a few ripe ones and made an apple concoction (basically flour, sugar, and all sorts of baking stuff with the apples on top. Very yummy.)

Where I’m more able to see things that aren’t there yet are in stories. In my head I have a whole bunch of characters who are up to no good and definitely in dire straits. Some of them mean well, some definitely don’t. They (mostly) all have names and some traits, all of which could change as the writing gets going. The thing that will hold them is this large book: 230 lined pages inside a hard cover, 220 of those pages are currently empty. I’m actually trying something new in writing the story out longhand. My longhand is really horrible, mind you, so it’s hit or miss that when I get to the end of a draft, I’ll be able to go back and be able to read and then transfer the story into my computer. But, I’m trying it. The idea of just writing without erasing or going back and changing things or moving things around. I mean, already there are for sure lines and words crossed out but somehow the pen on the paper is keeping me moving and I’m not freaked out that I’ll lose the file or that one of the cats will step on the keyboard and disappear the whole thing.

This empty space does not freak me out. Where D can see what’ll be on the land, I can see what’ll be on the page. Of course, we both get to do the thing to bring it all to life. And that will take time (years). So now comes the patience. I’ve never been altogether good at that but in this case, there’s no real choice.

Away we go.