Weeknotes: January 13-17, 2025
Monday January 13
My limbs trundle reluctantly up the hill past the south edge of campus, the wind biting my bare face. The first half mile is accomplished by will alone, but it gets better. I gauge my footfalls gingerly over the ice patches and head down the ginnel that connects College Place with Pearl. By the time I cross onto Spring Street, my body feels relaxed and lithe. At Waterworks Park a woman stands over the hood of her blue minivan arranging loaves of supermarket bread to feed to the assemblage of ducks and geese closing in around her.
I think of my mom, a lifetime nurturer of urban waterfowl populations. I picture her tiny figure holding up a bag of hamburger buns to feed the squawking gulls. For a brief time she and I kept up a Christmas Eve tradition of emptying a large bag of cracked corn on the grass by the Brighton Mill Pond, a gift to the cold feathered peasantry. Even now when I go to visit my parents, she is constantly managing a half dozen feeding stations. Just yesterday I caught her scattering seed on the front porch for her favorite possum and then on a metal table out behind the kitchen for her resident doves. She loves her doves. My parents have always had big hearts for wild things.
Tuesday January 14
Winter semester begins today. Typography 1. I want to become a typographic sorcerer. On the way to class I stop at the quirky little gift shop in town to buy a birthday card. WEMU is playing a jazz cut with lots of frilly bass movement. I like jazz most in winter. The new local All Things Considered host is Irish which I find appealing. I think about finding an antenna for my old Harman Kardon receiver in the living room. Most of my radio listening is done in the car or on the old Sony boombox mounted in the kitchen, but I'd also like to have it on my hi-fi. I could be one of those protagonists in a Howard Norman novel who is always listening to interesting CBC radio programs in their flat and drinking coffee all day with a strong enigmatic woman.
There are some familiar faces in class, returnees, like myself, from last year's Intro to Graphic Design course. The instructor is passionate about typefaces. She guest lectured for us last semester and I knew right away I wanted to take her class. The sun is a pale blemish in the flat gray sky. Snow moves sideways across the cars in the lot outside. CC can't make our evening rehearsal so I work on an introductory assignment and listen to Fleetwood Mac. I'm still in the Fs on my A-Z vinyl census. I adore Tusk, but its packaging has too many sleeves. Five in all. Six if you count the plastic outer sleeve I keep it in.
Wednesday January 15
MIDWEEK FIVER:
Great blasts of morning sunlight flare behind the bare trees on my street.
A FedEx truck comes to a brief stop out front then reverses back to the address it just missed.
Schuler Books (formerly Nicola's) at Westgate has always had a vague food smell to its interior that I alternately find inviting/off-putting. Today, it finally dawned on me that it must be from the bagel shop next door.
The bagel shop's coffee tastes like 1992. General "coffeehouse" flavor.
WCC is a different animal at night. I am no longer the oldest student in my class.
Thursday January 16
The gentle snowfall creates a sweet canvas to move across. I walk lightly between rows of cars, looking up, looking around, caught up in the present. Inside the student center it's a hissing greenhouse of coats drying around bodies eating quick meals, chatting, working, walking. I buy a folder with the college's emblem on it and head out to my Typography class. My spirits are dimmed, but not dashed when I realize I've forgotten my glasses. I'm not helplessly blind yet, but taking notes and working on a screen will be tough. Fortunately, the bulk of today's class is a lecture, and I get by okay. We learn about anatomical basics like x-height, apex, ascenders, and descenders, as well as more charming terms like gadzooks, quaints, and tittles. All of this is right in my wheelhouse. I realize I've always been a little in love with type.
Later I learn that David Lynch has died. If there were a Mount Rushmore of film directors, he'd be off in a nearby cave doing the opposite of whatever got the others there. He was always in a league of his own. What an inspiration for living a full creative life. I play the Twin Peaks soundtrack as I get ready to go out into the night. The river looks black and Lynchian as I pass over the bridge on my way into the park.
Friday January 17
I'm setting up a new notebook this morning. I always use Field Notes for my everyday carry. I have a pocket sized Moleskine for information and lists that I refer to during longer periods of time. It's a little more permanent. The Field Notes are for daily observations, creative ideas, shopping lists, work notes, sketches, and other more ephemeral concerns. I go through maybe 1-2 each month then retire them into an archive. Last year I filled 24 of them, which was a lot. Starting this blog likely had an effect on my output.
Sometimes there are ideas and reminders I want to keep thinking about, but they aren't quite something I'm ready to commit to my daily planner (an entirely different system of note-taking and journaling), so I transfer them to the first page of my next Field Notes under the headline "Ongoings." This is basically an idea cloud of things that seem important to me over a two or three week period. They might refer to larger creative projects, items I'd like to acquire, or tasks I think I should complete. Here are a few Ongoings I transfer into the new notebook: Murphy Desk, Make Recording Simpler, New Backpack.
I'll glance at this list a few times throughout the week and maybe work on some of them. Some get completed, others lose steam and don't get transferred. That is my system. Sometimes when I need to refer to something in one of my older notebooks in the archive, I'll also look at the Ongoings and see what felt important to me at that moment in my life.