Category Archives: personal

How do you write?

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Earlier today I was on Goodreads.com (wasting precious time that I should have spent on research) and someone posted this link. It is a collage of 12 bedrooms belonging to famous writers. Most of them are painfully lavish, reminding me how little I have actually earned with my own writing. This one apparently belonged to Victor Hugo (one of my favourites, but really, red?).

Some were surprisingly simple. Can you imagine William Faulkner sleeping here (below)? Stark hardly begins to describe it. There isn’t even a lampshade on that bare bulb.

What was notable about this variety of literary, decorative and slumbering styles was that almost all of them included a writing desk. This sparked a comical exchange in which we all discussed our bedrooms/writing spaces. I won’t rehash the conversation for you, but I do recommend checking the website out.

The conversation did cause me to pause and look around however. It made me laugh. How do you work? Are you the type that keeps things neat and tidy, with everything within ordered reach, or are you the type that has to let the paperwork flow in a natural manner in order to let your creativity free? I never gave me style much thought…until now.

Both my husband and I are in the last few months of masters degrees. He is down to less than a month and I am down to just under 4. Lately, we spend most of our time together  sitting silently at our desks hacking anxiously away at the keyboards. He produces amazingly complex graphics demonstrating the flux and stain of engineering principles I can’t begin to understand, and I string word after word after word together in what I hope is a sonorous manner. Our projects couldn’t be farther apart, and neither could our methods.

This is my desk:

It is small and cluttered. I surround myself with notes and reminders. They are stuck to the wall, my binders, the back of the computer, everywhere. It is like a den. I am physically immersed in  the information I am trying to assimilate. If ever I stop and clear my desk it is a sign of EXTREME stress, and should be taken as a very bad sign, possible even a sign to run for your life.

This, however, is my husband’s desk:

It’s a bit bigger, but I’m not bitter or anything. What I wish to point out is how neat and tidy it is. I couldn’t work in that space. Nothing would speak to me. No note would remind me where to reference de Vreese’s reconsideration of the Spiral of Cynicism or when my quants project is due or on what page Fukuyama discusses Zaibatsu. That desk gives me no information.

He, however, occasionally looks over at me in my mountain of material with a look of cold derision. I know what he’s thinking. He wonders how I can find anything or concentrate with so much distraction around me. He wonders why I have to scribble so many notes. He wants to tell me to clean it, but knows better.

We each have a method. It works for us in ways it probably wouldn’t work for anyone else. It is ours and ours alone, and I became aware of it today. It made me laugh through my stress. It enabled me to make one more cup of tea and get back to work. Today I appreciate our differences for what they are, amazing and necessary. 

Crazy Crazy Northern Weather

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I’ve often heard the English joke about how unpredictable the weather here is, but this is a little extreme. Last week the weather was a balmy 80ish degrees. The girls were playing naked in the paddling pool with no complaints. I even wrote a blog post claiming that Spring had sprung. I had my strappy shirts out and was ready to pack the winter coats away. This week…this is the view out of my bedroom window this morning!

that poor Forsythia

That poor forsythia, I wonder if its blooms will survive this. It’s still coming down too; big fluffy flakes that pile up. I simply can’t believe it.

I don’t suppose I should call it a cultural experience, but it is certainly a new experience for me to live somewhere that the weather can change so drastically in such a short amount of time. Shocking!

Spring is officially here!

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How do I know? ‘Cause I’m looking out the window, watching the clothes on the line sway in the breeze. Hanging clothes on the line is one of those quaint traditions (I can’t bring myself to call it a chore) that I just love. I’m conscious that calling it quaint is probably insulting in some manner. Possibly it marks me out as privileged in more ways than I’ve considered. Surely there are many many people in the world for whom it is a necessity instead of a luxury. Certainly there are far more people in the former category than the latter. But in the modern West it seems to be a dying activity.

I remember when I was growing up in rural Tennessee everyone had a clothesline, and everyone used it. Maybe half the people in town had a dryer, but they were considered expensive to run. So unless it was raining the clothes went out. Let’s face it the sun is free anyway you look at it, and people knew to take advantage of it.

As I became an adult and moved into urban America I saw fewer and fewer families hanging their clothing in the air to dry. Granted some of this is due to constraints on space. I get that. An apartment building is not particularly conducive to hanging clothing outdoors. But there also seems to have been a shift in mentality. It has been my experience that hanging ones garments in the open air is thought to only be done if you don’t own a dryer, or take the last step at the laundry mat. It is in effect advertising the fact that you can’t afford these things. Let’s face it the sun is free anyway you look at it, and who wants to advertise being poor or make themselves look poor even if they aren’t?

This is a surprisingly strong disincentive to using the resources of nature.  I once had a neighbor complain that it made the neighborhood look trashy when I strung a line on my back balcony (overlooking my own backyard) to dry the babies cloth nappies. I was furious and politely explained to her that I hung them in the sun not only to save electricity, but also because solar rays are antibacterial and this is good for both diapers and the babies that wear them. I also curtly told her that I would do anything I liked on my own balcony, but I felt conspicuous from that day forward. It took a little of the joy out of the experience.

What I didn’t know at the time is that she may have had every right to complain my about my nappy line. The use of clothes lines is officially banned in many areas! Millions of Americans are not even allowed to string a washing line even if they want to. I am shocked by this! Shocked I say.

As aware as I was that my  propensity to air-dry clothing  was culturally at odds with my neighbors, it wasn’t until I moved to the UK that I really gave it much thought. Here, despite postage-stamp-sized gardens (yards, no one grows vegetables in an English garden) the vast majority of people find a corner to string up a line and hang out the smalls.

I take great joy in this. It means that, like today, I can hang it up, sit back and watch the breeze blow the moisture away. It doesn’t cost me a dime. My neighbors don’t look at me like a freak. I’m doing something good for the environment, or rather not doing something bad, and my life seems somehow more complete.

Does this seem like I am contributing too much importance to a mere clothes line? Maybe; but it’s all true. I would like to think that as people become more environmentally aware the humble clothes line may come back in style; that instead of seeing a line of T-shirts, towels, and jeans as an indication that the owner couldn’t afford the electricity to dry them, they might be seen as proof that the owner was green conscious. More states need to follow the example of Florida, Colorado, Utah, Hawaii, Maine and Vermont, who have passed laws (it’s ridiculous but yes laws were necessary) forbidding bans on clotheslines. I look forward to the day when I can sit at home in the States and watch the clothes sway in the breeze, just like I can when at home in the UK.