Going Inkless

     You may not know this, but a library workroom can get a little noisy sometimes.  With meeting room noise leaking in through the walls and the friendly chatter of employees, it can get difficult to concentrate.  Since much of my job requires focus, attention to details, and clear thought, I've developed strategies to deal with the occasional hubub.  Counting in another language can help me keep from being derailed by random numbers in nearby conversations, provided the language is different from those likely to crop up in the area.  Systematic double-checks and lists can help to make sure nothing gets missed.  Music is a great tool in that effort, too.  When things are getting hectic and the noise level is rising, I can find an oasis in my headphones.  I still have to keep one ear partially free in order to catch a ringing phone or answer questions for coworkers, but a little music can effectively cancel most of the distractions and ...

     There is a particular sound that a guitar string makes when the guitarist slides his finger into the next position.  It's nothing more than a tiny squeak in the background of the music, but it's a sound I will dearly miss if I should ever go deaf.  I mentioned it in an earlier post about music , and recently, a CD with an acoustic guitar focus has me contemplating the reasons for my warm response to it.  Why, beyond a general love of music (and, really, have you ever encountered someone who doesn't  like music?) does this particular sound always make me smile?      Physiologically, there may be some response completely separate from the thinking world.  We have negative reactions to certain low frequency sounds that make us feel uneasy, so I'm sure there are other frequencies that can produce a positive response.  It's a possibility that the appeal is nothing more than good vibrations, scientifically speaking.  Then...

"The Earth keeps some vibration going      There in your heart, and that is you."            ~  Fiddler Jones,   Spoon River Anthology , Edgar Lee Masters       Spoon River Anthology  was required reading in one of my high school English classes.  I don't know if that's a common choice or if the fact that Spoon River is an Illinois location might have played a role, but I'm glad this book wound up in my path just the same.  It's a collection of poems, each written in the voice of a different "resident" of a small town cemetery.  Over the course of the book, you get the singular glints of individual lives, but also the collective glow of shared stories, and a larger picture of the town emerges.  In that respect, the literature reflects the way the real world works; A community is bound together by shared experience, but we each have our own perspectives and our own stories to tell.  I...

The old tree never talked to the human things, never once in the endless cycles of dark and light or the greater turns of buds and ice. They were disinclined to listen, so he had never considered it. Oh, he had watched them scurrying through their lives, passing his place on their way to some other. He had watched them coming and going, building and unbuilding , rearranging the world and moving on. Little by little, they cleared the grove around him, taking the timbers of his fallen friends for ceaseless projects in the far away. His wood was too knotty and twisted for that purpose; so, in time, he stood alone with the smaller lives. On quiet evenings when the breezes tickled his leaves, he listened to the rustle of the long grass and answered in his way. He shared his world with the soft moss and a tangle of weeds that sprouted up each spring. He knew their generations, untouched as he because they were equally insignificant to the men who remade the forest. In the fresh day...

I woke up this morning with a song running through my head... barefoot and smiling... They have a tendency to do that. It was an old Dylan tune, but it could as easily have been something new this year or something centuries old. It might have been nearly any style and as likely to have lyrics as not. There's a wide range of songs that bubble up in my head unexpectedly, but each one is clear and singular when it makes its appearance, the star performer on its stage. I feel it in my ears just as if it were playing in the physical world rather than only in my mind, and my whole being resonates with its notes. What a wonderful way to wake up, swept along on a current of song. Music has a way of seeping in and possessing me. I may not remember the title or artist. I may not remember the words, but for the moment I'm listening, I'm entirely there, submerged in it, listening with more than ears. The connection to the song remains long after, ready to well up like a natura...