Going Inkless

Ah, Summertime! When life becomes a full-speed tumble through weddings, graduations, picnics, and all sorts of social events that rush from invitation to "holy cow! That's tomorrow?  Wait, what day is today?" so fast you can feel the breeze as they pass.  Your evenings are spent with chores you couldn't get to on the weekend, and you barely have time to breathe much less compose a thoughtful blog post. What happened to the time when summers were long days filled with tree-climbing, bike rides, fishing and swimming?  When soft dark nights were right for stargazing, firefly hunts or crack-the-whip?  Then again, I guess that was just another kind of tumble. So, point one: I apologize for the posting delay, and the meager offering this time around. And point two: If I don't get around to another post as soon as you'd like, please imagine me with a jar of fireflies. And, yes, it's close enough to summer; my thermometer tells me so.

     Some months ago, I was stopped by an employee as I walked through the store.  The young man only stated that I had a very confident stride, and then he moved on.  There was no follow up offer to direct me toward my goal.  The kid was half my age, so this was no flirtation.  It was simply a random compliment from a stranger.  Who knows?  Maybe he was a theatre student just trying to be observant about the way people move.  I was focused at  the time, knew what I wanted to buy and where to find it.  So, chances are, I was moving in a direct fashion.  It wouldn't be unusual.  The comment threw me momentarily, but I found it amusing and continued my course with a smile.      Now, months later, I still think about it.  For one thing, I am more conscious of the way I walk.  As a writer, naturally, I paid attention to all the ways people tend to move, and I wasn't unaware of my own tendencies....

     We make promises to ourselves, and we break them.  We feel guilty, and the guilt can even eclipse the real consequences of the broken promise.  Guilt, or the threat of it, is a tool we use to keep ourselves on task, but that tactic can turn on us.  Too many broken promises, and you learn not to make them.  It's hard to make the leap from "want" to "goal" when you're afraid you're not good enough to get it done.  So you stay where it's safe, and you sacrifice the possibility of accomplishment to "someday."      Here's the truth that you need to swallow before you can make good things happen in your life: You are destined to fail. You will promise yourself things that you won't be able to deliver.  You will set goals you never reach.  It may be circumstances beyond your control that knock you off that ladder; it may be that the timing wasn't right for success, but you will fail. Sometimes. and then, sometimes,...

     I've always had an uneasy relationship with the act of throwing things away.  Like most things this deeply felt, it's been with me from childhood and probably has no clear incident at its root.  For one thing, as a child, throwing things out probably means that you were pressed into some pointless cleaning exercise like straightening your room.  Maybe you spent too many Wednesday nights dragging heavy metal trash cans to the curb.  So, it's bound to carry some negative associations.  For another thing, growing up poor means your small catalog of thing you have is diminishing by one every time something goes in the trash.  You think twice about it when you live under the cloud of never having enough.  If something could still be useful, you tend to hang on to it because it saves you doing without in the future.  In my house, all our hand-me-down clothes were handed down through five sisters and into the rag-bag after they became...

     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...

Apologies, first of all, because this post is not as constructed as I generally offer.  It's more or less off the top of my head, but the topic is one I've been thinking about lately, and I wanted to record those thoughts despite my lack of free quiet time over the past few weeks.      The general rule with social interaction is that you avoid speaking of religion or politics.  It's usually a wise rule because these are two areas people feel passionately about, and those who give the subjects that weight are frequently unwilling to listen to opposite opinions.  Yet, because they concern the things we believe, and because they are that important to us,  I think we may be missing out on opportunities to enrich ourselves when we choose to avoid those conflicts.  I tend to stick with the rule except when I'm with people I know are open to honest exploration.  But here, I guess you can always opt to stop reading if you don't agree, so I'm going ...

     Day to day, I watch the tides of interlibrary loan.  Books and media of all sorts move in and out of my department.  Other libraries' items flow in for our patrons, and our items flow out for others.  The variety is amazing.  Just this past week, we have received or sent items on a wide range of topics, including art, history, religion, science, economics, and psychology.  Materials in multiple languages have crossed my desk - English, Spanish, Polish, Mandarin Chinese, Hindi, French, and Gujarati.  In addition to the novels, movies, music and children's books of all flavors, we have facilitated access to books on subjects as diverse as woodworking, philosophy, teaching methods, and real estate.  Practical matters like nutrition, car repair and sewing were represented as were academic studies like chemistry and medicine.  Our patrons are interested in everything from computer programming to learning Korean to politics and world...