“One does not find solitude, one creates it,” wrote Marguerite Duras when she moved from Trouville to her new house in Neauphle, France. She’s one of my favorite writers and now in my almost-finished new house in Pasadena I’m rereading her:  “Finding yourself in a hole, at the bottom of a hole, in almost total solitude, and discovering only writing can save you.”

I’ve been on hiatus, a holiday/escape from writing. Letting go of my last writing project to gain distance – and also to use any of my decision making powers on things like, well, faucets, door knobs, light fixtures, 18 inch or 22 inch towel bars, not to mention a three month obsession on Mexican tile. I like the activity and the company of the guys who install this stuff. I’m thrilled that my fridge is finally arriving between 2:00 and 5:00 this afternoon, and that curtain rods will be going up around noon today. I loved talking to Emilio this morning who knows how to plant the red bougainvillea to climb white stucco walls.

But I don’t feel like myself when I’m not writing. I feel antsy. Disconnected. Who is this person who can bore you senseless with sconces and tile choices, the difficulties of assembling Ikea furniture and the joys of Douglas fir floors? C’est moi.

Duras wrote that writers are a contradiction, we make no sense and that writing also means not speaking, keeping silent, listening a lot. She wrote:  “So long as the book is there, shouting that it demands to be finished, one keeps writing.”

And making our own solitude.