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Category: perspective

Malawi Memories

Malawi Memories

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This time last year I was catching my first glimpse of Africa’s Great Rift Valley. In Malawi for work, I was bouncing around the countryside in a car full of colleagues, exploring small villages and learning what they were doing to help fight child labor.

Some villages built homes for teachers, tidy brick structures that provided a fresh start for an instructor and his family. Others started commercial enterprises — a grain mill or a dormitory for older students — and the money they made from these was used for school fees or uniforms.

It was a quick trip but a wonderful introduction to the vast plains and awesome peaks of this beautiful and warm-hearted country. And this week I’m reliving it, seeing it again in memory, marveling that somehow, improbably, but in actual fact … I was there.

On Looking

On Looking

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In her book On Looking: Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes, Alexandra Horowitz asks us to look at the world with the wonder of a child and the expertise of geologist, entomologist, illustrator or other professional observer.

Horowitz’s simple and elegant argument: that we cease to really see the world we inhabit because we become so accustomed to it. Through a series of strolls with those trained to see what we do not, Horowitz urges us to “look, look!”

In one of my favorites so far, she ambles with the typographer Paul Shaw. He points out the text on a manhole cover, ghost writing on the sides of buildings, and always and everywhere, the type itself: the thickness of a serif, the placement of a crossbar, and the humanistic qualities of the letters, a “long-legged” R and a”high-waisted” S. After a few hours of this, Horowitz realizes she “had been blithely walking by undiagnosed lettering disasters my whole life.”

But after her stroll with Shaw, she sees not just the words but the letters that compose them. “Walking back to the subway, I glanced down at my feet as I crossed the street. Look was painted on the sidewalk where I stood. I will — but I feel sure that now, my vision changed, the letters will find me.”

A Night at the Office

A Night at the Office

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It was a late day at the office. Which didn’t mean I was there until the wee hours, only an hour and a half later than usual, just long enough to label, transfer and prune some MP3 files that had been filling up my voice recorder.

My attention had been riveted by the screen for a couple hours, that and my inner ear, where voices from interviews I conducted months ago replayed through an earphone. It’s a strange thing, listening to voices heard only once and trying to figure out who they are. It was an interior exercise, a journey into memory, aided by last year’s day planner and typed notes.

But back to the matter at hand, which was the long day, the tedious task, and then, finally, completion. I clicked off my computer, packed up my things — and only when I stood up to grab my coat did I look out the window.

And there, spread out before me, was a magical sight. Offices that are drab brown and inscrutable in daylight were all lit up at night. What was normally invisible was suddenly seen. I marveled at the lights and the reflections. I marveled also at the comfort they brought. And that’s when it occurred to me, something I know but too often forget — that we’re never alone in our toil. Even when we think we are, there are countless others who are close by, working along beside us.

On Veteran’s Day

On Veteran’s Day

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It’s impossible not to think of my favorite veteran on Veteran’s Day, so Dad will be much on my mind today. And, because it is a federal holiday, I’ll be able to drive into the office and back, creating a more “flow” commute than usual. Beyond these realities, what’s on my mind this Veteran’s Day is that this dear country, which so many have fought and died for, needs us in ways it never has before.

When my son-in-law took the oath of citizenship last August, he pledged to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Those of us lucky enough to be born here never take such an oath, unless we serve in the military or other public service. But I think many of us would go to great lengths to make this nation a less divisive place.

So what can we do? Maybe something that’s not very complicated. Something that doesn’t require signing up or shipping out. Something like this: that we try every day to understand those on the other side of the political divide.

Our Only World

Our Only World

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In his essay collection Our Only World, Wendell Berry writes of the “deserted country” that results from farmers displaced by progress, whether it be Big Coal or industrial machinery and chemicals.

The result is an emptiness most modern people think normal because they’ve never known it any other way. But Berry, who is 85, remembers a richer, fuller, more peopled countryside. A countryside that included farmers who “walk don’t run,” Berry writes.

“The gait most congenial to agrarian thought and sensibility is walking. It is the gait best suited to paying attention, most conservative of land and equipment, and most permissive of stopping to look or think. Machines, companies, and politicians ‘run.’ Farmers studying their fields travel at a walk.”

It’s one of the reasons I walk, too, because it is the gait “best suited to paying attention.” And though the remnants of a once-rich countryside lie ruined all around me, suburban neighborhoods named for the farms they’ve displaced, there is a point to walking even here.

Because when we walk, we feel just a little more like we belong. And when we feel just a little more like we belong … we care a lot more about the place we live.

Charged by Change

Charged by Change

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Night before last, our temperature dropped 40 degrees in a few hours. This morning it was 25 degrees when I woke up. Winter blew in right on time for the first winter month and the big light change this weekend.

I went out for a walk with three layers on … and it wasn’t enough. Time to break out the down jacket and turn on the heat, which has been off since April.

Though in the depths of winter I might fantasize about living in a place where it’s always warm, I never get too far. As much as I grumble about the cold, I like seasonal change, am charged up by it.

So today, on the coldest morning of the season, I will try to concentrate on the difference … and not the deficit.

A Change of Day

A Change of Day

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Yesterday began with a deluge, a rainstorm that settled in over the region and sent me into a reflective, closet-cleaning mood. Not that I actually cleaned any closets — though I did do some straightening up and pruning of old clothes in the basement.

But I had no sooner hunkered down for a day of inside work when, about noon, the rain stopped and the sun peeked out. I soon abandoned the basement chores for a walk and some outside tasks — such as cleaning up a pumpkin that was apparently mauled by hungry deer (that’s a first!).

Days with dramatic weather changes can throw off one’s rhythm and to-do list. But they can also foil the routine thinking that sends me into auto-pilot. By mid-afternoon, I decided that the best thing I could do would be to sit on the deck in the rocking chair, bask in the 70-degree temps and describe the scene in my journal.

“The low sun bends behind the big tree in the back of the yard, the one that will probably have to come down soon since half of it is already dead and the other half sports two large lifeless limbs. … Ah, but it’s lovely sitting here on the deck in the warm wind, a few clouds scudding by above, as the oaks flash yellow against the blue.”

Terra Firma

Terra Firma

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Ever since I moved into my new office I’ve had an aerial display to observe out my window.  The first week it was directly across from me on the building across the way. Now, entering my third week, it has moved slightly to the west.

At first, I thought these intrepid souls were window-washers. But I quickly realized what they were doing was infinitely more complicated and nuanced, something that involves power-washing as well as chiseling, scraping and applying what appears to be a seal at the base of each stone panel.

Of course, what they mostly do, what absorbs my attention when I’m in between tasks and “resting my eyes,” is hang off the side of an 11-story building.  Right now, for instance, they are almost at the top, swaying in the breeze on a little platform with only a few ropes to hold them up.

I know they are belted and secured and wearing helmets. They appear to be safe. But I still get a funny feeling in the pit of my stomach watching them work.

I may have hard days filled with crazy deadlines and tight turnaround times. But every writing and editing assignment, no matter how difficult, is conducted with my feet firmly planted on terra firma. Watching these guys has made me very grateful for that.

Tripping the Light Domestic

Tripping the Light Domestic

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Sometimes the tasks of the day seem to weigh me down. They are just more to-dos in a sea of them. But other times, they are actions of such richness and delight that I wonder why I ever thought them otherwise.

Take today, for instance. Since I’m working at home I leisurely brewed a pot of tea, whipped up one of my strawberry milkshakes and had both at the ready as I read through email. It was a pleasure to give Copper his pill, to coax him to eat his breakfast by sprinkling a meaty treat on the dog food.

What makes the difference, I think, is time. When I rush through each chore, I am only in check-off mode. There is no presence. Whereas when I’m not in a rush, the day spreads out before me, a banquet of sights, smells and activities.

Tripping the light fantastic means dancing nimbly. Tripping the light domestic means walking lightly through the day.

Turning Right

Turning Right

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I left the house early, out for a walk and an artist’s date. The walk was one of the usuals — until I turned right instead of left at the end of Glade and ended up on an unpaved section of the Cross County Trail.

It slowed me down, this packed-dirt, root-strewn path. And slowing down was a good thing. I noticed the light filtering through the early autumn leaves, some just starting to change. I heard a bluejay squawk. Finally, I took my earbuds out so I could hear Little Difficult Run sing as it tripped over its large smooth stones.

Back to my car and inspired by the trail, I decided to drive past houses that line it. Some of them look small and down-sizable, worth a second glance.

Now I’m writing at a coffeeshop I recently discovered. The Doobie Brothers are playing, I’m tapping my feet and trying to concentrate.

Maybe not the perfect artist’s date, but it’s a start.