Writing alone for throusands of miles
I spent an hour on Sunday cleaning out my oft unused fancy fountain pen, given to my by my sis many years ago. Writing has always been a conflicting exercise for me. I have nearly illegible chicken scratch on paper, and I write very quickly. I also prefer to write with non-ball point pens, preferring the fountain pen to anything else, but the last inch to the far right of my paper is always smudged as is my right pinkie. Writing on a computer does no suit me. The letters are all exactly uniform, no matter how frustrated or happy I happen to be.
K gave me a wonderful gift for my birthday. It was a leather bound moleskin notebook, with a clasp and a pen holder and everything. I have a thousand poems lost in notebooks like that, from all over the world. It is by far the best medium for writing given the portability, flexibility, and durability.
My favorite writing moment, the one that I channel whenever I need to find that special spot, was in Switzerland. I was in Zermatt, the town at the foot of the Matterhorn, for a weekend of hiking and tennis tournaments. I climbed to the base camp one afternoon and fell asleep with my back to a boulder in an open field with an amazing panorama of Alps and blue skies. White clouds were streaming off of the evaporating snow that capped the Matterhorn’s summit. I must have been asleep for about thirty minutes, with my hemp tilly hat covering my face and my notebook open to a half written poem about nothing at all, when I was woken up by strange sounds and smells. Surrounding me, and nipping at my hat, were two dozen sheep accompanies by an eighty year old man with a big hooked stick. I carefully stood up and, giving the sheep a wide berth, found the trail back down the mountain.
Good times.
D.
K gave me a wonderful gift for my birthday. It was a leather bound moleskin notebook, with a clasp and a pen holder and everything. I have a thousand poems lost in notebooks like that, from all over the world. It is by far the best medium for writing given the portability, flexibility, and durability.
My favorite writing moment, the one that I channel whenever I need to find that special spot, was in Switzerland. I was in Zermatt, the town at the foot of the Matterhorn, for a weekend of hiking and tennis tournaments. I climbed to the base camp one afternoon and fell asleep with my back to a boulder in an open field with an amazing panorama of Alps and blue skies. White clouds were streaming off of the evaporating snow that capped the Matterhorn’s summit. I must have been asleep for about thirty minutes, with my hemp tilly hat covering my face and my notebook open to a half written poem about nothing at all, when I was woken up by strange sounds and smells. Surrounding me, and nipping at my hat, were two dozen sheep accompanies by an eighty year old man with a big hooked stick. I carefully stood up and, giving the sheep a wide berth, found the trail back down the mountain.Good times.
D.
