post-novel tristesse

But actually, I don't feel any. Is it like Emily Dickinson--"a formal feeling comes/The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs"? Probably not, but I love that poem. I looked it up just now to get the quote right and found it on Quotations About.com, a carelessly literate site where they called it "Poem lyrics," and misspelled Tombs. If you want to read the whole thing, it's here, spelled correctly, and with Dickinson's dashes intact.
Ahem, you may say, you are meandering, and it's true. I am happily unfocused, at least for a while. The novel is living in another room just now--we're separated. I'm planning a reconciliation in a couple of weeks, after school has started and settled down, after Charley O has read it and told me what he thinks; after my sister and I have talked it over. It's not you, I told the novel, it's me--I need some space. And the novel took it well, retreated to its disks and CDs. It's biding its time--it knows I still love it.
Since I wrote The End (metaphorically; although why didn't I? it would have been fun), I've been to the Catskills for my niece's wedding. (I took the novel disks and CD along in my plaid bag, because what if burglars broke in, etc.?) I've worked in the garden (lots of weeds, few tomatoes), and tomorrow D and I are going to start canning the motherlode of peaches from his father's 2 trees, planted on his tiny Parma lot (along with an apple and a pear tree). Plus I'm doing some fascinating reorganizing of the majors' files at school. Is there Life After the Novel? Yes, but it's a strange and cloudy life. I think I might write a short story or two, but the novel is tapping its foot. Remember me, it's saying. Or else.