Shortcutting the Details
Weeks have passed - maybe even months - since I have felt "inspired enough" to write something. Well, something greater than 422 characters.
I did think once last week that I should write up a little piece on my admiration of root beer.
But lately, in my ever-accelerating life, every passing essay idea of merit ends up as a facebook status. It's lazy man's writing.
I got a Kindle for Christmas. I didn't want a Kindle for Christmas. But now I can't put my Kindle down. At first, I was delighted to find that I could use it to play games. The compulsive, addictive kind of find-a-word games with levels enticing you to go ever faster and ever higher and think of oneself as ever superior, engrossed in your book-sized screen while the kids in the other room maim each other with their Christmas toys.
This was not an activity that I could feel good about. But then, glorious day! I discovered that I had access to everything that my parents - the bestowers of the Kindle - have downloaded. It was like being handed 95 free books, without having to explain to my husband where I was planning to store them. Even if I'm only interested in half of their choices, I have material for months.
And THEN...halleluyer!...I found the real treasure chest. Public domain. All the good stuff is free. Capital F-r-e-e. Library free, but without the due date, the questionable library smell or the petri dish-book jackets. You name the old dead writer, and he (or she) is there. Jane Austen. Conan Doyle. Shakespeare. Elinore Pruitt Stewart.
Elinore Pruitt Stewart?
Aha! I'm glad you asked. Elinore Pruitt Stewart wrote a little book that I found ON MY KINDLE called Letters of a Woman Homesteader. Technically, I suppose she wrote a collection of letters that was published as a book. Either way, had I not, while downloading Little Women, "also been interested in Little House on the Prairie," (my friends at Amazon know me so well...) I would have missed out on this little gem.
Elinore Pruitt was living in Denver with her small child at the turn of the century when she decided she was going to be a woman homesteader. That is, she was going to pack up her life as a paycheck-to-paycheck laundress, move west and stake her claim to a piece of land in Wyoming.
And she wrote letters about it. Really, really good, hilarious, detailed letters. The kind of letters that make you think, "no one writes letters like this anymore." And it's true, most of us don't. Because it wouldn't fit into 422 characters.
My shortcuts are depriving me of the details of my memories.
My facebook status this week is "Amy is declaring 2011 to be the Year of the New Sofa." It's a little amusing. A little informative. But a little vague. In 80 years, if my grandkids are reading some holographic scrapbook of the collected thoughts of their grandmother, they won't get it. They would miss out on the stories of this old sofa, of the friends it has given a good night's sleep. Of the kids it has comforted through sickness. Of the laughs it has given Matt and me as we have tried to dress it up and allow it to stay a part of the family. They wouldn't know about how we had to take the window out of our condo bedroom in order to heft it up and through, since it wouldn't make the turn in the hallway, or how it had once been a prized piece in my childhood home.
They're not important things to know, or even inspiring things, but they are MY things, and as I get a little older and my brain gets a little more crowded, I'm starting to feel like if I don't record it, maybe it didn't actually happen.
And it certainly would be a shame to get to the end of life and wonder if it ever really happened.
I did think once last week that I should write up a little piece on my admiration of root beer.
But lately, in my ever-accelerating life, every passing essay idea of merit ends up as a facebook status. It's lazy man's writing.
I got a Kindle for Christmas. I didn't want a Kindle for Christmas. But now I can't put my Kindle down. At first, I was delighted to find that I could use it to play games. The compulsive, addictive kind of find-a-word games with levels enticing you to go ever faster and ever higher and think of oneself as ever superior, engrossed in your book-sized screen while the kids in the other room maim each other with their Christmas toys.
This was not an activity that I could feel good about. But then, glorious day! I discovered that I had access to everything that my parents - the bestowers of the Kindle - have downloaded. It was like being handed 95 free books, without having to explain to my husband where I was planning to store them. Even if I'm only interested in half of their choices, I have material for months.
And THEN...halleluyer!...I found the real treasure chest. Public domain. All the good stuff is free. Capital F-r-e-e. Library free, but without the due date, the questionable library smell or the petri dish-book jackets. You name the old dead writer, and he (or she) is there. Jane Austen. Conan Doyle. Shakespeare. Elinore Pruitt Stewart.
Elinore Pruitt Stewart?
Aha! I'm glad you asked. Elinore Pruitt Stewart wrote a little book that I found ON MY KINDLE called Letters of a Woman Homesteader. Technically, I suppose she wrote a collection of letters that was published as a book. Either way, had I not, while downloading Little Women, "also been interested in Little House on the Prairie," (my friends at Amazon know me so well...) I would have missed out on this little gem.
Elinore Pruitt was living in Denver with her small child at the turn of the century when she decided she was going to be a woman homesteader. That is, she was going to pack up her life as a paycheck-to-paycheck laundress, move west and stake her claim to a piece of land in Wyoming.
And she wrote letters about it. Really, really good, hilarious, detailed letters. The kind of letters that make you think, "no one writes letters like this anymore." And it's true, most of us don't. Because it wouldn't fit into 422 characters.
My shortcuts are depriving me of the details of my memories.
My facebook status this week is "Amy is declaring 2011 to be the Year of the New Sofa." It's a little amusing. A little informative. But a little vague. In 80 years, if my grandkids are reading some holographic scrapbook of the collected thoughts of their grandmother, they won't get it. They would miss out on the stories of this old sofa, of the friends it has given a good night's sleep. Of the kids it has comforted through sickness. Of the laughs it has given Matt and me as we have tried to dress it up and allow it to stay a part of the family. They wouldn't know about how we had to take the window out of our condo bedroom in order to heft it up and through, since it wouldn't make the turn in the hallway, or how it had once been a prized piece in my childhood home.
They're not important things to know, or even inspiring things, but they are MY things, and as I get a little older and my brain gets a little more crowded, I'm starting to feel like if I don't record it, maybe it didn't actually happen.
And it certainly would be a shame to get to the end of life and wonder if it ever really happened.
Comments
Food for thought...