I was leaving a restaurant with my mother on Saturday when I caught the afternoon light reflected on the yellow glass in this window. I had to stop to snap a picture.
Writing Prompt: Write about light in your life? Where have you found it? When has it surprised you?
This is a view I don't expect to tire of any time soon. First, because the glow of having my own office has not yet worn off -- and I don't anticipate it in doing so for a long while -- but also because each time I come out to the parking lot to go home the light is different. On this late afternoon last week, it gleamed golden as the sun descended in the sky. The icy ground caught the gold, holding it in yellow pools of light. It made me gleam, too.
Snow, snow, snow! It began falling in the wee hours and continued throughout the day. It blanketed everything, creating a cozy comforter of a day. It was the kind of day where people stay home from work and nest with a cup of cocoa and a good book.
I stayed home, but my day held busy work: emails to send and answer, a guest blog post to write, to-do lists to check off. I’m taking a class on self-publishing, and another online class on Blogging from the Heart. I am teaching a poetry class and working on deadlines for four articles. Sometimes I am so busy working I don’t have time to get anything done. So, I love this kind of day, when the world comes to a standstill long enough for me to catch up. I made corrections to my short story for my self-publishing class, did my blogging assignment, sent emails out to real estate agents for my real estate closings’ article, printed out directions to tomorrow’s interview, scheduled another interview for next week and yes, crossed off a number of to-dos.
As daylight started to wane, I took my SLR and tripod outside to snap a picture of the girls and I in the snow, hoping to use it for my guest blog, but decided instead to post it here. We’re kinda cute aren’t we?
Then the girls and I came inside for their favorite part of the day. Sofa time when pug snores grows as deep as the snow and blanket my world with peace.
I stopped by the office the other day to drop off more supplies and this greeted me at the entryway. They had added my name and office number to the Welcome Sign. It made me stop short. It is so official -- a place of my own.
I am enchanted by the view both inside and outside my office. The light changes throughout the day, casting golden sunlight through the trees. My grandmother sent me a lovely glass vase and I purchased some tulips to sit on the windowsill. My friend has promised me a plant.
I hung my diplomas above my desk and a small painting my friend Nancy made of her pug Sweet Pea a.k.a. Narnia. Nancy and I have been corresponding and she has been sharing stories with me of Sweet Pea's younger days. Sweat Pea now lives with my friend Joan and has lost the use of her legs, but her younger days were filled with love and stories and even the occasional glass of red wine. She used to steal sips from Nancy's goblet as Nancy read in her chair. Having the picture hanging in my office casts a sweet spirit throughout the place.
On the other wall I hung one of my photos of Vader and my former pug Mira, who I lost at only a year-and-a-half. I won an award for this photo a few years ago.
On the opposite wall I hung one of my digital collages -- the one with my ballerina pugs, Buffy, Mira and Alfie, I call it "Come Dance with Me." Beneath the collage is the small cafe table I purchased when Borders was going out of business. I keep it to honor the makeshift office I had at Borders and subsequently Books-a-Million for so many years.
On the wall opposite my window is my bookshelf above it I hung my Biography & Memoir sign, also from Borders, and a pic of me showing Alfie. On the bookshelf is a clock I found in the shape of a bicycle to remind me of my achievement in taking up biking this past summer and a family photo of my brother, his wife Gretchin and my niece Ellie.
The place is starting to feel like home. Ellie and Mark stopped by the other night to help me hang the photos. She declared my office "nice." It is.
Shh…I’ve been keeping a big secret for at least a week now. Okay, I know the blog has been fairly quiet in general for a while, but that’s because I haven’t quite worked out the art of daily blogging with the art of daily living especially when so much is happening in the living department. So, I’m opening the door a crack, so you can see what’s been going on in the living department lately.
I have a space of my own. No, not a house, but an office. An office outside the home. And, not just a table at the local café or bookstore. I have a real office with my name on the door, a desk and phone, privacy and access to a conference room where I can teach. Yes, its true I’ve had a home office for years – one with frequent interruptions by family members, needy pets, and household chores. I’ve claimed a table at Books-a-Million and made friends with the baristas there, but none of these places have been private or mine.
For years friends and fellow writers have encouraged me to find a proverbial room of my own and I have smiled and nodding, knowing I should do so, but not knowing how to make it happen. Last month, my uncle told my father about some office space available in a small business incubator location. My father told me and the rest is history. I am still a bit shell-shocked. It seems to good to be true and it is such a powerful thing; something perhaps not easily appreciated by those to whom space has come easily. I have had little to call mine. Aside from a bedroom and a small home office, the closest I have ever gotten to space of my own was a single dorm room my sophomore year of college. One with such paper-thin walls that I could hear my best friend watching Oprah in the next room and we could gossip simply by sitting close to the wall and chatting.
I love my family, I love my friends. I even have enjoyed the company of the other lost souls setting up makeshift workspace in first Borders and then Books-a-Million’s café, but having a workspace to call mine is so novel, so different, I am having a hard time believing it. I moved in last week: hung my photographs and diplomas on the wall, watched the sun set a brilliant shade of red over the parking lot, purchased tulips the lightest shade of lavender and placed them in a vase in my window. I set up my printer on my own and even hung the Biography and Memoirs sign that I purchased when Borders was going out of business right above my bookshelf above a picture of me showing Alfie. The Borders table I bought at the same closeout has found a home in my new space as well.
Now, that I’ve told you about it, perhaps it will seem a bit more real, though I think it will take some time for it to truly sit in. I find myself rushing through interviews and appointments just to get a chance to work in my new space, room 226B.
One of the greatest gifts in life is a good teacher. I have been fortunate to know several—my childhood art teacher, Maryann Davis, my fifth grade teacher, Paul Rocheleau, my photography teacher, Jim Block, and presently my friend, Sonja Hakala.
A fellow writer, Hakala is a self-publishing maven, who can take students through the history of publishing from its origins to present day. I feel like I am getting a Masters' level course, just sitting in her current class at the AVA Gallery in Hanover, NH.
Sonja has written books on publishing and quilting and recently turned her attention to fiction, writing a novel set in the fictional town of Carding, Vt.
Sonja gave me a copy of her novel for an unbiased review. I tried to be as unbiased as possible, and as a teacher myself used to reading students' works, I feel I did a good job, but t is always difficult to read the work of a friend—can she write, will I like it, what if I don't? Fortunately, Sonja can write and with every page I found myself being further drawn into the world of Carding, Vt., a town very familiar to my own.
And, for you dog lovers out there, Hakala includes a dog, Nearly that offers its own perspective on the community.
So, here is my review of Sonja's book. Next week I will run a Q & A with her. Enjoy!
Review: The Road Unsalted by Sonja Hakala
If you live in a small town, the dynamics of Sonja Hakala’s novel The Road Unsalted will be familiar to you. If you live in the Upper Valley of Vermont and New Hampshire, as I do, this story may feel like walking into a page of your own life. Hakala sets her tale in the fictional town of Carding, Vermont, but locates Carding in the Upper Valley region. Real life artists and locations pepper the story that has all the right elements including: small town politics, romance and scandal, and the warmth of family and friends found in such a tight-knit communities. At times I found myself laughing at the familiarity of it all, and at other times I was downright touched. Take for instance the scene where the friends of one of the main characters, Ted Owens, gather on the ski slopes to help him confront a painful memory. The characters ring true if a few, such as Lisa and Alli-O, are deliciously over the top. There are even a few scenes from the point of view of a dog, Nearly, a tribute to Hakala’s own dog Goldie. Nearly offers an unique perspective that dog lovers will enjoy. Hakala manages to use all these devices without seeming silly or diminishing the pace of the narrative. The novel is also peppered with lyrical description: “To the north of the green, the land swooped down to Half-Moon Lake, a big fat puddle that filled a hole craved out by the Corvus River. At the head of the lake, a thirty-foot bluff jutted out over the water, a great knobbly knee of granite that has resisted the river’s erosion for time out of mind.
The story has real heart as illustrated by the relationship between Suzanne and her Uncle Ted, but characters such as Edie Wolfe and her dog Nearly will long linger in my mind. The storyline – whether the Carding Academy of Traditional Arts will be forced to leave town as a result of a political debate over ancient roads – is entertaining, but it is the small town intrigue and wonderfully written characters that keep me reading and eager to return to Carding once again in the future.
It’s cold all over and while that isn’t necessarily foreign to Vermont, it is unusual to hear die-hard natives complaining about being outside this winter. Although the below zero temps and even colder wind chills haven’t stopped me from hitting the road and attending readings and movies with my best friend, we have learned to bundle up. Tonight was a long black jacket kind of day. These coats are as warm as blankets and as bulky, too.
On our first day of college, Sheila showed up at my house in an almost identical outfit to mine and I guess things haven’t changed. We’re still dressing alike today, but perhaps that isn’t saying much -- in this weather our long, black coats are definitely uniforms of necessity.
My students are working on haiku this week. When I drove to class today it was snowing hard. By the time I came out it was cold, but sunny. Getting in the car, I spied this purple balloon blowing in the wind and had to take a picture of it. Every few seconds it would rise from its post and cross in front of the sun, then fall to earth again. I jumped out of the car to take this picture, composing a haiku on my way. It was that kind of day:
Purple balloon soars
Yellow sun warms frozen sky
I join in their dance.
My girls have been spending most of this winter right by the stove. The bed was for them to cuddle in, but Waffles prefers to keep all her toys in there instead. So the pugs sit off to the side while the toys, balls and bones chill by the fire.