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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!

The Vacation Typo

The Vacation Typo

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If relaxation means typing “vest” instead of “versa” or “swet” instead of “swerve” then I’m officially in vacation mode.

Those errors, since corrected, remind me this morning that my editing eye must be officially closed for the duration.

What I hope is not, what I hope is wide open, is the “inward eye,” the one that helps me notice all the hues in pool water, the liquidity of the cerulean, the merging of the teal and the turquoise, the azure and the ultramarine.

That’s the part of me switched off too often, the part bypassed for efficiency’s sake. And oh, how I want to reawaken it!

A Diller A Dollar

A Diller A Dollar

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I miss reading Mother Goose rhymes to little people, but this morning it was almost like I was reading one to myself.

Into my mind, unprompted, came these words:

A diller, a dollar, a 10 o’clock scholar
What makes you come so soon?
You used to come at 10 o’clock,
But now you come at noon.

I know why this nursery rhyme suddenly came to mind.  It’s the first day of my vacation, and I slept from 11 p.m. till 9 a.m.

The feeling, like the nursery rhyme, is familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. And, like both, it is much fun.

Writing a Life

Writing a Life

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An article in yesterday’s Washington Post says that writing a narrative of one’s life helps prepare one for death. It makes sense to me. But I would amend it slightly to say that writing a narrative of one’s life prepares us for … life!

I’ve been keeping a journal since high school, and wouldn’t trade those books for anything. They are a motley bunch of spiral-bound and hardbound volumes, with writing cramped and tiny or loose and free depending on my mood. They preserve more than I could ever remember — and quite a bit I’d rather forget. But they are a record of my life, for good or ill, and as such are valuable to me.

An expert quoted in the Post article mentions that merely listing one’s life events doesn’t work. It’s creating the narrative that brings perspective, linking one incident, one person, to another, a chain of belonging, a chain of being.

In other words, it’s figuring out the question that Charles Dickens so aptly asks at the beginning of David Copperfield. “Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.”

(If life is a journey, it is also a narrative.) 

Reclining

Reclining

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I’ve heard that Winston Churchill did much of his work in bed or in the bathtub — reclining, in both instances. Not that I intend to emulate that great man in all his habits (as if I could), but I have grown fond of working in a reclining position.

There is much to be said for it. Comfort, first of all. And with laptops as small and slender as they are now, it’s easy to do.

I even think thoughts may flow differently when one is lying down rather than sitting up. They’re more fanciful, less rule-bound.

Of course, the modern workplace is not set up for this, but if I was in charge, offices and cubicles would be outfitted with chaise longues as well as desks.

The only occupational hazard would be falling asleep. But it’s a small price to pay.

(Photo: Wikipedia)

Gains and Losses

Gains and Losses

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Over the weekend I started reading about the 50th anniversary of the moon landing, which we will celebrate next month. One of the tributes was in Parade, which bills itself “the most widely read magazine in America.”

I couldn’t help but notice how thin this most widely read magazine is. And this got me thinking about what we have lost in the 50 years since humans first stepped foot on the moon — in particular the rich print culture that has been slowly dying during the last two (three?) of those decades.

I’m a print girl from way back, and though I quite happily ply my trade in a mostly-web way these days, I miss the heft and gravitas of ink on paper. I miss the smell of it and the feel of it, the weight of it in my hands.

I suppose you could draw a line from rocket technology to the waning of print. After all, the information age was in part launched by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). But that’s not where I’m going with this.

I’m merely musing that our technological gains come with quality-of-life losses. And I don’t want us to forget about them.

(A small printing press, from an exhibit at the Museum of the Written Word in May 2013.) 

Words That Live On

Words That Live On

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Yesterday would have been the 90th birthday of Anne Frank. Seventy-seven years ago, she received a diary for her 13th birthday, a diary she would fill with words that would live on for decades, and, most likely centuries, beyond her.

The contents were in many ways typical — conflicts with her mother, questions about her future. But it was written in 500 square feet of hidden space that Anne shared with her parents, sister and four other people. And it was written amidst the horrors of Nazi Europe.

“When I write, I can shake all of my cares,” Anne wrote in her journal. “My sorrow disappears, my spirits are revived. But, and that’s a big question, will I ever be able to write something truly great, will I ever become a journalist or a writer?”

Anne would die not long after her 15th birthday. The diary she called “Kitty” was left behind in the “Secret Annex.” She could not take it to Auschwitz or on to Bergen Belsen, where she and her sister died of disease and malnutrition shortly before Allies freed the concentration camps. But a family friend saved the journal, and gave it to Anne’s father, Otto, who eventually had it published. It would be translated into 70 languages and sell tens of millions of copies around the world.

“It’s really a wonder that I haven’t dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out,” Anne wrote. “Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death.”

(Above: a page from Anne Frank’s Tales book. She also penned what she called The Book of Beautiful Sentences — copying passages of writing that she liked — started a novel and planned a book called The Secret Annex. Photo and information courtesy of the Anne Frank Museum website and The Writer’s Almanac.) 

Fallen Petals

Fallen Petals

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In a slight twist on “March winds and April showers,” we’re in the midst of an April wind that follows on the heels of an April shower.

That has meant that the April flowers, in this case the lovely pink rose-like blooms of the Kwanzan cherry, are no longer attached to the tree but strewn about the grass.

This is the way of the world, is it not? And has anyone expressed this more simply and more beautifully than Robert Frost?

“So leaf subsides to leaf,
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.”