twelve

“Lucio: I believe thee; for I think thou never wast where grace was said.
2nd Gentleman: No? A dozen times at least.”

~ William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, act I.

This summer is surely conducive to writing outdoors, and on a fine day aperch it occurred to me that La Vie Graphite is now twelve years a work in progress. Noticing this reminds me of how I fill a journal book and set it on my bookshelves as I begin another. A filled notebook always feels somehow heavier than a blank one. In 2006, I hadn’t yet purchased a digital camera, and began with writing short paragraphs in a blog application easily available on MySpace. With the development of Blogspot shortly after, I moved some of the original blog to this venue, and began the exploration of reflective essays and poetry. Adding digital photography to the still-film media with which I had made a career since high school, along with scanning typed and handwritten pages, the blog’s ambience formed. The title I gave to the blog is my longtime nickname for idea-jotting in pocket notebooks. Holding a thought and recording it begins with a few words scribed in pencil on a palm-sized page. Subsequently, as time permits, those graphite sparks of life become essay elements.

The little books of pencilled ideas are in a parallel continuum with two other strands of journals I maintain- one in fountain pen ink (the “full-dress” Journal), and the other by typewriter. Indeed, creative processes are essay themes in themselves! Separately from these, a small box of index cards is reserved for “BTs,” known as Big Themes. There’s still plenty to write about; surely more ideas than time permits these days. The essays continue, and albeit at a slower pace than I’d prefer, the commitment remains. Recent years have required some additional and major commitments involving basic economic sustenance, housing, and caregiving. As a writer and artist, it’s been all the more vital for creative pursuits to continue- even in smaller measures.

Many of you that reflect and write know how even the most peripheral memories stick to our thoughts. My elementary school is called P.S.13 (New York City public schools are numbered), and our school newspaper was called The Baker’s Dozen Review. Well then, my baker’s dozen year of essay blogging is now underway. On this embarkation, the number 12 does need its due. Twelves and dozens are identifiable across literature, history, and measurement. If it makes little difference to you, you’ll take six of one or a half-dozen of the other. The philosopher Cassiodorus liked how the number 12 referenced twelve tribes of Israel, twelve Disciples, wind directions, signs of the zodiac, hours of the day, to name a few. He also famously said, “He is invited to do great things who receives small things greatly.” And with this, I return to the expressive potential of the written word and the photographic image. These are the still, small elements that are needed to compose and communicate thematic works. The small things to be greatly received are the nascent ideas, the inspiring glimpses, the graphite jots that can be built into the greater things. With time, the journey becomes increasingly unique as well as voluminous, and thus the value of our narrative is able to intensify.

As the days proceed, so must the writing. A faithfulness to journal writing opens paths in a number of ways. Though I cannot claim major successes as a writer (at least not yet), I can speak for profound satisfaction. Expanding my journal writing into web-published essays began as a way to “bring out” the work to the public, as many of my fellow visual artists seek to do. Some of the consequent fruits of this work have manifested as published pieces in print, lecturing, reading to audiences at events, travels such as an extraordinary invitation to sojourn at the home of my lifelong favorite poet, a writing and study fellowship at Oxford, along with a continuing string of retreats and residencies, and the grace that I continue to love to write. Without the practice of the written word, these doors would not have opened for me. I’m certainly grateful for the milestone efforts, but more importantly there remain ideas to formulate and the will to carry on.

Artists, generally speaking, dedicate their energies to their art media for the purpose of expression. We create because we want to explore. I’m among those that has always needed artistic exploration, even since childhood. With these forays into words and images, there is the parallel line of exhibiting the work to be received by others. During an online interview, I was asked about what is essential to personal writing. My answer was that writing must be honest writing, no matter the emotion, recollection, or subject. I recalled this comment while teaching a journaling class- something I’ve been doing for two years. The latter is another grateful outworking of writing and exploring, and it has coincided with having begun teaching philosophy three years ago. The two intertwine, and occasionally the lesson plans affect each other. Regarding philosophy, I want everyone to consider and articulate, discovering their sources of inspiring thought. With writing, I want the burgeoning writers to observe and write with the fluidity of the spoken word. These are all things I want to do myself. And get the writing out. It’s very important. As for me, I’ll add here’s to more. I’m still looking for the audience that is looking for what I’m writing. There are many ideas and angles to flex with my aspirations.

Above: Sad Clock Face;
Below: Happy Clock Face.

equipped for the new

"My pipe is out, my glass is dry;
My fire is almost ashes too;
But once again, before you go,
And I prepare to meet the New:
Old Year! a parting word that’s true,
For we’ve been comrades, you and I --
I thank God for each day of you;
There! bless you now! Old Year, good-bye!"

~ Robert W. Service, "The Passing of the Year."

An arduous year has concluded, making way for a new one. Although I speak in relation to the Western calendar, with weeks and months appearing as the dotted lines of municipal peripheries, there remains a sense of new frontiers. We may each mark the anniversaries of our personal milestones, ascribing meanings of our own. But with the prospect of a new year, I noticed time thresholds while routinely re-inking my pen. In this context, some of my everyday routines absorbed the marking of time passing.

In recent years, I have been profoundly engaged in a large project resulting from my rescuing of seventy years of newspaper photographic negatives, which I’ve been organizing and conserving into an exhaustive documentary archive. The trove of many hundreds of thousands of pieces of film had been destined for disposal- but that has surely been prevented. In the almost-daily pursuit of identification and indexing, I’ve been examining- and in a metaphorical sense, inhabiting- each of these images, one at a time, marking their eras, and travelling through the decades from the 1930s to the mid-2000s. As New Year’s Eve approached the present threshold of 2016, I catalogued June of 1954. Amidst descriptive work to index Memorial Day of 1954, the back of my thoughts began to perceive the close of 2015. Yesterday, while identifying the photo (below), of a Mr. Sampson opening his new grocery store in 1954, I mused at my light-table, and noticed the radiating pride of a family businessman. He was surely looking confidently toward the future.

With my 4x magnifier, I looked closer, and remarked at a gesture of eager preparedness: Mr. Sampson had no less than eight sharpened pencils in his tweed suit pocket, pointed up and at the ready. Hope sprung eternal in Mr. Sampson’s spring of 1954, and I am burrowing through the winter of 2015-2016 determined to be undaunted. It’s a new year. Sharpen the pencils, ink the pen, oil the typewriter carriage, take some deep fresh-air breaths, and persevere. Out with old; be equipped for the new.

Along with the grocery store photo, and numerous sundry group pictures from the society pages, I identified a Mr. Jacobsen (below) at his desk. It seemed insufficient to leave it at that; I enriched the finding aid (the archival term for a collections inventory) with an additional line about the table radio behind him, as well as the pencil. This is more than a portrait for a news item: he is assiduously at work. There are tasks to be completed, and he is ready!

Today, more than 61 years after the above photos were taken (and they haven’t seen the light of day since), I am gathering my forces to venture into 2016. Indeed, as I write this, I hope to encourage you in your future constructive pursuits. Remaining encouraged is essential.

Here’s to a New Year of growth and life-giving ventures.
Thank you to each of you, for reading and your encouragement!



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

See also : Graphite Archive;

and Typosphere Cheer.

pencil pensive

“An observing spirit
can thus derive pleasure from the most
trivial circumstance.”

~ Thomas Cogan, Treatise on the Passions and Affections of the Mind.

familiar, yet anew

In this fledgling, burgeoning season yet untracked, I take up the pencil anew. Just as the approach of Labor Day weekend annually brings school beginnings past to mind, so late-April rain rekindles the sense of semester-end promise. Gradually, it is becoming easier to write outdoors. Lengthened days remind me to get out and away from walls and ceilings- when possible. Apparently there is life to be lived, aside from the constant dawn-to-dusk workday grind. As daunting as inertia can be, rote repetition of denial has its detriments. Self-limitation can become a debilitating habit. By recollection and writing, at least in spirit I can vault the fence. It does mean expending energy, for a measure of transcendent vigilance. But it’s worth it, and the alternatives would be still more regrettable.

Back when I had some schedule flexibility at my job, I’d take my coffee breaks outside- even in winter- as daily as I could. Occasionally this is still possible. My pocketable idea journals- after which I named this blog- have been constant companions for years. The musings and fragments are the ingredients for essays to be developed. Aperch on a public bench or at an outdoor café, I’d scratch down the date and time, then pencil some ruminating words beneath the quick heading, graphite today. Not exactly enough time for substantial stream-of-consciousness writing; perhaps more like rivulets. Such trivial habits create links that maintain the vital momentum of inquiry and ideas. Re-reading the lines and pages of these small books help me retrace my discoveries and thought processes- and at present I’m able to retrieve morsels of confidence to continue.

new season

At the season’s threshold, attending a baseball game, it was impressive to see the bright and well-tended grass on the field. The rest of Portland is still shaking off the ashen grit of a protracted winter. But the pleasant distraction of time measured out by innings has similarities with my writing intermissions: these microcosm journeys have lives of their own. Within the common threads are my pencilled notations. The intricacies of play-by-play baseball scoring are best expressed in sharp pencil. In the province of graphite, notations can be corrected and emphasized with the game’s progress. Causes to adapt a play’s documentation include a fielder’s choice, a passed ball mistaken as a wild pitch, a force-out, or a stolen base. Space needs to be made for pinch-hitters and relief pitchers. As umpires will occasionally amend a call, the erasable medium capably responds. To erase is human, indeed.

The materials and instruments of a craft are means toward ends. In their respective contexts of writing and photography, scribal and image-recording tools serve to record perceptions. In turn, recorded thoughts are elements with which creative works are constructed. Well-crafted tools can have their own intrinsic value as objects. Such extensions of our creative selves present inherent inspiration.

For the moment, on the topic of the humble pencil, I’ve long found this particular writing medium to be as patient as it is tactile. Following pensive spells of recollection- which are misinterpreted as stoppages- a pencil will not dry out and have to be re-inked, as is necessary for pens, nor will the display of text shut off, as it happens with computer screens. I prefer writing instruments that wait for me, as opposed to my having to compensate for syntactical dissonances in the tools. (Ponder that, during your next download, update, reboot, server failure, and virus scan.) With the pace- whether fast or slow- is the proprietary way a pencil changes while it is in use. A sharpened point broadens to a smooth chisel edge that mirrors the angle of the writer’s grasp. Similar to dip-pen writing, emphasized downstrokes reflect as bolder lines. With enough writing and sharpening, a pencil transforms into something weathered. Wood dissolves into shreds and sawdust, the eraser (if there was one to begin with) flattens, and its temporal life shortens as its stamped lettering disappears. Like nutrients, pencils are provisional- vehicles that are transformed en route to their intended purposes.

ideas and speculating

Through a meandering journey measured in jots, my pencilled notions represent various reaches. Sentences scratched in curved graphite parallel my often fractured prayers: constant and unvarnished. But these held thoughts are purposeful means toward ends. I develop ideas and observations by tracking and articulating them. Pilgrimage is surely a voyage of comprehension. In the 18th century, Thomas Cogan wrote voluminously about emotion and philosophical speculation, in his Treatise on the Passions and Affections of the Mind. He described our abilities to cultivate ideas as a testament to our existence, fascinated by the ways we know that we possess our ideas. Cogan describes an idea as follows, from vol.2, p.153:

“It is that wonderful something which pertains to the thinking principle, it is its exclusive property, is indicative of an awakened state of mind, and which the mind knows to exist with such an infallible certainty, that we consider the conscious possession of ideas, as the strongest evidence of our existence.”

Speaking for myself, not all my ideas are wonderful somethings, but wonder is surely a motivating ingredient. Writing, reviewing, and writing more ideas provides a continuum of recorded motion. Thoughts may be expressed into tactile and tangible lines in a notebook, for example. Instruments and surfaces for our ideas have their primary qualities- in this instance, the intrinsic properties of the physical writing tools. From there, an individual’s creative discernment can derive secondary qualities- impressions- based upon practice and experience. Strong sunlight upon writing-paper that reflects the warm end of the light spectrum; the sound of pencil-point upon the surface; the aroma of sharpened wood; the sense and warp of paper humidified by ocean winds.

During one of my always-enlightening lunches with an elderly Chinese colleague, we talked about classical “thinking gestures.” Comparing generalities and tendencies of East and West, we noted the tradition exemplified in Auguste Rodin’s Thinker, with head-holding gesture. My friend described the Asian gesture of a “thinking philosopher” as having folded hands across one’s torso. This brought up how western spiritual practice has tended to emphasize the mind, compared to eastern practice emphasizing the heart. Even the classic Eastern Christian teaching about contemplation has been to “descend into the heart” so as to make ascent.

Above: Rodin's Thinker;
Below: Korean Scholar, 16th century.

One day last week, having successfully stolen away to read and write, I suddenly noticed my own gesture while trying to fathom a very complex text. My hand tends to prop my forehead, while holding a pencil. Comprehension may require writing down something! Hence the digestion by the soul, via the craftsman’s motion. Pursuing the essence of the sacred draws the writing outward and onward, often drawing the map while the exploration is in progress. Realizing this, I gratefully look ahead to more graphite todays.

scripto ergo sum

“When you are first starting to write,
you don’t need to buy a whole lot of things.
What you need most is a fierce desire to put things down on paper;
and you need a certain sensibility, a way of seeing and feeling.”

~ Elizabeth Berg, Escaping Into the Open

For many people, in many parts of the world, this time of the year anticipates the liminal season that sees the late summer dovetail into early autumn. Northern New Englanders still have many shirtsleeve days of picnic temperatures, yet we can sense the transition. Light patterns and air currents call to mind what many call “back to school” season. Whether we are current students, recent graduates, instructors, or those whose school days reach into the previous century, this week’s cooler breezes are familiar old songs. As with music closely held, each of us have our own references for changing skies and passages of time.

Late August remains a slide toward Labor Day weekend. In childhood, summer camp ended at about this time, and the weeks leading into the start of the school year provided a breather. Later on, work schedule changes paved a gradual way into the collegiate routines. And still later on, the season became one of lesson plan resurrection. Time calls us inside from outdoor wanderings, sandlots, bug bites, popsicles, and shorts; life aligns with the seasons. Not surprisingly, this writer remembers the annual re-equipping for the academic year. The images of new shoes- and their aromas- come to mind. Fresh new notebooks, pencils, and other related materials, heralded the new embarkation. As with the new shoes and backpacks, the unused supplies had their own memorable aromas that came to associate with new ventures.

In this seasonal spirit, I’ve called upon my friend and fellow New Englander Mr. Roger Russell, who thankfully keeps numerous Scripto pencil writers renewed and refreshed with his inventory. Vaguely remembering the translucent, telescoped-graphite Scripto from distant childhood, these sturdy mechanical instruments were more recently brought to mind by an elderly colleague. I’ve rounded up enough of the tools to be able to apply Scriptos in larger archival processing group projects. Archival notation must be done in graphite, and alongside wooden pencils, the Scripto thickness is as bold as it is consistent. The graphite refill is as long as the holder itself, extending and retracting by twisting the eraser holder. To me, Scripto is “the fountain pen of pencils.”

Mr. Russell and my senior colleagues remind me of how long Scriptos have been around. The company name dates back more than 80 years, and although the pencils have not been manufactured in nearly 20 years, these resilient American-made tools can be found in many a desk drawer. Mr. Russell’s shop selection includes new Scriptos, along with refills of varying grades and colors. He has authored a Scripto history page which is colorful and informative. He also writes his observations related to backcountry hiking, but he tells me he is neither collector nor creative writer:

“I am more of a scientist than anything else and have other pages I have written about radium, gold and copper. Perhaps someday I will write about carbon that has an atomic weight of only six and exists in so many different forms. It does relate to the carbon used in pencils and the various blends that make the different grades of leads.”

His home page can be found here, and among its extensions there may be more you will want to bookmark. With gratitude, whether une vie en graphite is pursued by an engineer or an artist, the continuation of craftsmanship is equally essential. Here’s wishing all of you good seasons of creativity.

graphite archive

1980

"I've got to feel the pencil
and see the words
at the end of the pencil."

~ William Faulkner

When work impresses itself as encouragement upon daily life, extraordinary momentum and renewed energy manifest to merge both spheres. Through the occasions during which vocation and avocation intertwine, various aspects of life provide for cross-referenced appreciation. My years in commercial photography and printing helped me to become proficient at cooking and baking. The study of history and philosophy, combined with the active pursuit of the spiritual life, inspired the practice of journaling. By writing the adventures of personal journeys and the business of the quotidian, I’m better able to perceive as an archivist.

A current project permits me to play many of my cultivated notes. Just over two years ago, I was called upon to organize, index, and preserve seventy years worth of negatives produced by a local newspaper. The publisher’s building was being emptied and the sub-basement’s contents included dozens of rusted file cabinets stuffed with photographic negatives- which were being destined for a refuse smelter. Providentially, I took on the project and the experience has been as wonderful as it has been mountainous. The collection comprises hundreds of thousands of celluloid and acetate images- an incomparable treasure trove of regional images- and I’ve already identified many thousands of places, events, institutions, and individuals.

The best way to deal with this massive amount of unorganized and unindexed material has been for me to review each single piece of film, while taking a macro approach regarding descriptive depth and preservation. By doing this, I’ve been living the collection in numerous ways and at many levels. My personal memories are being bolstered by illustrative artifacts that are much older than I am, and the continuum has been blending into my own. Throughout this continuing and painstaking process, I’ve been trying to communicate the immense joy of this large project to those around me that cringe at the prospect of the daunting tedium of commandeering many hundreds of linear feet of negative images without accompanying prints. I consider it an honor and a privilege to be conserving this photographic history of my home. From the beginning, it’s been clear to me that I’ve been discovering more than mere imagery. Being a process in progress, only small portions have been made available, and a growing number of individuals have already been blessed by these thin slices of time, and new anecdotes come to me by the week. There are many stories, even now at these early stages, and I try to write as many as possible in my journal.

1957

In the process of reviewing each negative, assessing physical condition and date, I’ve seen (and indexed) a great many unusual images. When newspapers were more local in their production and coverage, there was a strikingly personal touch to the content. Between the 1930s and early-1950s, I started to take note of a few sensitively composed images of people writing, even indicating the pencil-writers in my spreadsheet index. This cast of characters is at school, at work, at home, and outside. Here are a few of the gems (from the '30s - '80s, so far) with hopes that you’ll find some encouragement to write your days and journeys. Enjoy the photographs which are little worlds that now visit ours, and enjoy the continuum in which each of us participate.

gearing up

1949

Above: Getting ready to do serious work requires just the right pencil.
Below: Enthusiastic customers at Grant's Department Store.

1953

1960

This young writer would surely have blogged about such a grand collection!



at school

1972

Above: Thinking about what to write meant looking up, not down into an electronic device.
Below: Comparing notes.

1989

1973

1970

at work

1953

Above: A uniquely pencil-writer's gesture is to keep the instrument at the ready- over an ear.

1960

1961

Above: A graphic designer wields the graphite.
Below: Pencilling orders at the malt shop.

1960

1965

1969

1979

Sharp points for accounting (above)
and for the Maine State Legislature (below).

1989

wandering and musing

1987

Above: Ideas are afoot on the grocery store stoop.
Below: Writer aperch in a cushioned jump-seat!

1938

What's in your pencil box?

1974