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Bookmark Revolt

Bookmark Revolt

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I noticed the telltale threads last night. There was one on the nightstand and another among the bedcovers. No doubt about it, my bookmark was shedding, losing its jaunty tassel. The store-bought item made of laminated pressed violets and violas — such a lovely way to mark my place in the latest journal I’m keeping — is going rogue. 

I’m not surprised at these shenanigans. The bookmark is plainly not pleased with an essay I just wrote, the essay in which I disparage store-bought bookmarks and mention how seldom I use them. In fact, I’m only using this one because my current journal does not have its own built-in bookmark. 

I could repair this marker. I could collect the slender threads and attempt to reattach them. But since I spent much of yesterday tied in knots (see below), I’m unlikely to do that today.

Does a bookmark know when it’s been thrown under the bus? Apparently, it does.

Paean to Portability

Paean to Portability

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Let us pause for a moment to praise portability. Here I sit in my kitchen rocking chair, laptop on lap (actually, laptop on lap desk on lap), able to sway back and forth to Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, now blaring from the radio, monitor soup simmering on the stove … and also write this post.

This is nothing new. I’ve drug this trusty machine all over the world. But given that I came of age first on typewriters and later on desktop computers, the fact that I’m able to hop around the globe or the house, creating a workspace wherever I sit, is nothing short of amazing. 

What does portability provide? Ease and freedom. Today I’m appreciating them both.

(Sometimes the laptop is almost lost amidst the clutter that surrounds it.)

Desk Envy

Desk Envy

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I really can’t complain. I may not have the desk of my dreams, but it’s not bad. An apple-green table of a desk, only slightly dented and worn (a lopsided heart carved into the middle, a few splotches of salmon-pink paint in one corner, souvenirs of the girls who once used it).

True, it does not overlook the Atlantic Ocean, or the Front Range of the Rockies, or the harbor in Oban, Scotland. But it does have a lovely view of the backyard, the main street of the neighborhood and a corner of the woods beyond. 

My perfectly-fine desk doesn’t keep me from having desk envy, though. And last night I experienced a full dose of it while watching the movie “Something’s Gotta Give.” It wasn’t my first viewing of this film, but it was the first time I had desk envy watching it. 

Instead of focusing on the budding romance of Erica the playwright, I zeroed in on her writing space. The broad expanse of the (mahogany?) desk, the perfectly placed lamp. The windows! Oh, my gosh, the windows! And the door, open to sea breezes.

I keep telling myself it’s just a movie set. But still…

Auld Lang Syne

Auld Lang Syne

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It’s Robert Burns’ Day in Scotland and elsewhere as fans of the poet raise their glasses to toast the man and his verse, preferably at a Burns Supper, where haggis is eaten, strong drink is quaffed, and songs are sung (some of them not suitable for mixed company). 

I saw little of Burns at the Writers’ Museum in Edinburgh. His room was being renovated. Instead, I looked at the exhibits of his compatriots, Robert Louis Stevenson and Sir Walter Scott. 

But today’s festivities are a perfect excuse to write about Scotland, look through photos of the place, and honor one of the most famous of Burns’s poems, Auld Lang Syne.

And there’s a hand, my trusty fiere!
And gie’s a hand o’ thine!
And we’ll tak’ a right guid-willie waught,
For auld lang syne.

Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence

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I’m thinking about artificial intelligence this morning, about what it knows and how it knows it, about its regulation, about the world we’re creating with it. 

Because I’ve built a career on words, and bots can now string words together so well that most of us would be hard-pressed to tell the difference, I want to think there’s a level of creativity, a depth of soul that human-generated content has locked in. But because bots use creative, soulful work to build their models, that’s not necessarily the case.

Some writers work with AI to perfect their prose style. Others rail against it with sentences not as felicitously crafted as those they critique. Who will win this battle? That’s a question we can’t answer now — and won’t be able to answer for a long time. 

(These books are filled with human-produced content. Will future books be able to say the same?)

For Charlie

For Charlie

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Today I note the passing of Charlie Clark, journalist extraordinaire. I met Charlie our first month in Northern Virginia. His wife is a former colleague and dear friend of one of my best buddies. Charlie and I had writing in common, too, so when we bumped into each other, we traded tales. 

Charlie was an energetic reporter, a storyteller, a lover of words and community. He brought the two together in his “Our Man in Arlington” column for the Falls Church News Press, which he wrote for years. In his last few weeks he interviewed philanthropist David Rubenstein and covered a court hearing on the “missing middle” debate in Arlington. 

In addition to his day job and his column, Charlie wrote a novel, several books on local history, and a biography of George Washington’s step-grandson. When I planned to leave the world of paid employment, I asked Charlie for advice. He encouraged me to take the plunge — and was a model of productivity right up to the end.  

Today I’m mourning Charlie and thinking of the verses he always included in his holiday card, funny couplets like “have more fun in 2021.” He left us wanting more in 2024. 

Rest in peace, Charlie. 

Badge of Courage

Badge of Courage

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Long before Shout, my go-to stain removal substance, and the little Tide pen I now carry with me on trips, there were stain removal charts. Mine is tacked up in the laundry room and is still my best source for wild and wacky — but often effective — stain removal tips.

From it I learned that the remedy for ballpoint ink stains is glycerine. I once had an old bottle of the stuff that worked wonders, saved a yellow linen shirt that I paid way too much for and was almost ruined by an inky gash across the front.

I used that old bottle until I couldn’t anymore, but I regret to say that the new stock I ordered — proudly described as vegetable glycerine — isn’t nearly as effective. I scrubbed and scrubbed and managed to mute the stains slightly, but the ink stain isn’t gone … and probably will never be.

I tell myself it doesn’t matter. Ink stains are a badge of courage, not a blot of shame.

(A lovely painting — by Edmund Blair Leighton — but an ink stain ready to happen?)

Ripeness

Ripeness

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Before the flurry of preparation begins, I search for a poem to serve as grace before the meal. Or if not, to sum up gratitude for my eyes only. This one does: 

Ripeness

Jane Hirshfield

Ripeness is
what falls away with ease.

Not only the heavy apple,
the pear,
but also the dried brown strands
of autumn iris from their core.

To let your body
love this world
that gave itself to your care
in all of its ripeness,
with ease,
and will take itself from you
in equal ripeness and ease,
is also harvest.

And however sharply
you are tested —
this sorrow, that great love —
it too will leave on that clean knife.

Beacon

Beacon

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Fall is farther along here at home than it was out west. Only the Japanese maple is still brilliant with color. I’ve written about it before. 

Today, it seems a souvenir, a memento from the trip. For so many years my writing has been what I do around the edges of things, something I slipped into the day wherever it might fit. 

The last three weeks have given me an idea of what it’s like when writing comes first. It becomes a glowing thing, a beacon, the last tree gleaming. 

Fresh

Fresh

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On a last walk before leaving, I find a new path to the brow.

Places are like that. Just when you think you know them, they open up and offer more. 

Yesterday I strolled out to Battery Stoddard, one of several battlements at Fort Worden. Only this time, I was on top of it rather than below. Seeing it — and the coastline — from a fresh angle. Kind of sums up the residency, too.

I write this post from a little room in Seattle, continuing the work I began two weeks ago. I left Fort Worden with two overriding thoughts: keep it going and keep it fresh. And that’s what I intend to do.