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Forward from Here

Forward from Here

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I first began reading Reeve Lindbergh because of her famous mother, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, whose Gift from the Sea has always been a favorite of mine. Reeve’s memoirs Under a Wing: A Memoir and No More Words: A Journal of My Mother provide the inside stories of her upbringing and her mother’s final years.

Like her mom, Reeve writes with a friendly, accessible style. And because Reeve grew up with a writer (actually two of them; her famous father wrote books too), she learned early on how writing can help make sense of things.

Reeve is an unabashed journal-keeper, and though she laughs about using her journals as an escape from other writing chores, she also says that much of her material comes straight from them.

“To write as honestly as I can in my journals about my everyday life and the thoughts and feelings I have as I go along is an old, tenacious yearning,” she writes. Writing is “comforting and steadying,” she says. It was so even when she underwent brain surgery, which she did while writing Forward From Here, the book I just read and from which I quote.

In a later chapter, she talks about moments of well-being when she’s “suddenly, acutely conscious of being alive: on a spring morning when the first V of wild geese flies over the farm; any time I see one of my children again after a separation; whenever I look out over the hills and pastures, or up at the stars.

“I’m convinced that what we really need most to sustain us as we grow older, more than any drug on the market, is this kind of appreciative awareness, along with compassion, a sense of humor, and simple common sense.”

To which I can only add … amen!

Room with a View

Room with a View

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This morning I moved all my worldly office possessions a few steps down the hall into an office. It has four walls (one of them glass), no door and two huge windows. Best of all, I can turn off the overhead light and leave it off to my heart’s content.

Once they figure out how to mount my Mac monitor (this is most assuredly a PC environment) on a standing desk, I’ll be able to stand up in here too (something I was reluctant to do in Cubicle Land).

I write this post (quickly, during my break) looking southeast at the building across the courtyard and the train tracks that run all the way to Florida. Beyond the trees is the highway, then the airport, then the Potomac River and Maryland.

I’ve been lusting after an office since I arrived here, and I’ll only have this one a few months (we move to a new building next spring). But while I’m here, I plan to enjoy it. And sitting here looking out the window, laptop on lap, feet resting on trashcan … is an excellent way to begin.

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.

Sports Writing

Sports Writing

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After reading about the Washington National’s stirring comeback to win a wild card berth in the National League play-offs, I had a thought. It probably won’t last, but it’s how I’m feeling today. And that is that, in my next life, I’d like to be a sports writer. Of course, that would require me to play and understand sports. But this will be my next life, so I may be stronger and more coordinated.

I’d like to be a sportswriter because it’s the one place in the newspaper where you can let fly (pardon the pun) with a description or two. Lyricism is not frowned on, nor is sentimentality.  You can write long and you can even write purple and it will not necessarily be edited out.

Furthermore, there is the theory (which seems truer to me through the years), that sport mirrors life  to an uncanny degree, and that in writing about it one is actually chronicling human nature with all its warts and halos. An infinitely rich and varied topic, to be sure.

But since it is not yet my other life (I’m thankful to say), I will have to content myself with reading about sports — rather than writing about them.

(Photo: Wikipedia)

Frozen Sea

Frozen Sea

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“A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.” — Franz Kafka

I came across this quotation a week ago while reading The Second Mountain by David Brooks — and it took my breath away.  In that way that books can seem to be speaking directly to you, I first read these words as a writer, as in, writing a book will free up, if not a frozen sea, then at least a creative block I’ve felt off and on for many years.

I was pretty sure that was not the way Kafka intended his words to be construed, though. Today, I’ve had time to find the larger work of which this is a part. And yes, it is most definitely about the books we read, not the books we write. But it is still powerful, especially when you know it was written by a 20-year-old (!) Kafka, in a letter to a friend. Here it is in context:

I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for? … We need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us. That is my belief.

Writing Outside

Writing Outside

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The far end of the new lounge chair was already exposed, so I whipped away the rest of the waterproof green covering, brushed off the acorns that landed overnight and raised the recliner to the proper angle for writing.

The air is moist with the fullness of summer. Also summer-like is the background music. Crickets sing the sostenuto line, and wrens and sparrows chirp a tremolo. Bluejays screech, and in the distance a crow caws. 
Now the wind has picked up and leaves are stirring. A distant lawn mower whirrs, and a low plane thrums. It strikes me that today’s white noise is not unlike yesterday’s artless arrangement of fall flora: beautiful in its randomness. 
Window Seat!

Window Seat!

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I could tell from photographs that I would like the “Rose Room,” but until I walked in, I had no idea how much. It was the slanted roof, the pinks and greens, the hearts and flowers …  and, of course, the dormer window seat.

The seat was deeper than most, for one thing, and wide enough that I could stretch out completely. It was soft, too, and plumped with pillows of several shapes and sizes. There was even a cute stuffed dinosaur for good measure.

Was it the feeling of enclosure it gave me, of being alone with my thoughts? Or, when the window was open, the expansiveness?

I’ve always wanted a window seat, would make it my writer’s aerie if I had the chance.

But until then … I’ll just have to lust after this one.

Saving Papers

Saving Papers

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It turns out that the torrential rains that plagued us the last couple of weeks seeped into our basement (usually dry) and had their way with a few boxes. Since these boxes contained paper (as oh so many of them do), this was not a welcome development.

Of course, it’s never a welcome development when your basement is even partially flooded … and let’s just say that not everything in my house is tidily placed on shelves and ensconced in plastic tubs. Which means there were some waterlogged files. Nothing terribly vital, but material that I had saved, and at one point had some utility.

In the general vicinity were two large boxes of newspapers. Saving newspapers is something I come by honestly — Mom was a pro — and I’m no slouch myself. This was soon made abundantly clear. Some of the saved newspapers contained articles or op-eds I wrote. Fair enough. But do I need to save the entire newspaper? No! That was an easy one.

More difficult was deciding which of the historical newspapers to keep. I settled on 9/11, Clinton Elected, Clinton Impeached, Bush Elected and … somewhere there’s an Obama Elected one too but it must be in a different box.

And then there were newspapers for the day of each daughter’s birth. I’d forgotten I did this. These papers will, I hope, mean something to each of them someday. But what they mean to me now — especially since two of the girls were born on Sunday — is that I have just that much more heavy newsprint in of my house.

Moving Image

Moving Image

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When I woke up this morning I was dreaming I was snapping a picture. I was a passenger in a moving car, and the terrain we were driving through was like an ancient Chinese painting.

There were human-sized hills, a winding stream and perfectly coiffed trees. There was a sense of scale that made me think I could capture the landscape quickly from a vehicle.

The dream probably augurs nothing. But if it does, could it mean that I’ve become less of a words person and more of an image one? It’s happening to many of us these days.

Of course, there’s the fact that I’m writing about this experience, not illustrating it. And I’m doing it on an outmoded platform that is anything but image-friendly.

Whew! I’m probably safe — at least for the time being.

Soporific

Soporific

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Last November, I took the National Novel Writing Month challenge and produced 54,000 or so words of fiction in 30 days. The idea is to punch out a draft, and punch it out I did. But at the end of the month I tucked it away on my computer hard drive and barely looked at it again.

Until my recent getaway, that is. Curious to see just how bad this thing was, I opened it up, held my breath and started reading. And I learned that, well, it wasn’t as terrible as I thought it would be.  Which is not to say that it’s ready for the New York Times bestseller list — or for any eyes other than my own.  But it has a couple of likable characters.

This morning, I discovered that the novel, which I call For Sale, has another attribute.  I’d been trying to read myself back to sleep for almost two hours without success. But after 10 minutes of For Sale I was out like a light.

Perhaps this could be a marketing tool. Watch out, Ambien, here I come!