We mapped our house
in a township
with a lake
and a preserve
for native species...
Then structures came on wheels
manufactured halves
parked in a cul-de-sac
while the foundation cured
waiting the arrival
of the cranes...
When the schedules converge
on that day... in this plat:
the dwelling,
planned by convention and
executed in compliance,
is lifted in place...
May the process of completion
the prospect of residence...
engage and enrapture us...
Until when,
if ever,
in early light
we are startled by waders
lifting from among the water lilies.
~ Circa 1993
Tag: Writing
Writing about writing, autobiography, cross posting selected work from other places.
Categories
Writer’s Weekend
I got out to the garden on Good Friday. In years past, I would plant potatoes that day as part of remembrance of my grandmother’s gardening folklore. Potatoes are an inexpensive food, readily available at the grocer, year-around: a simple carbohydrate in a life when I need to reduce my number of carbs. I enjoyed having home grown potatoes, yet skipped it in favor of other uses for the home made potato-growing containers.
Most garden work lies ahead. The weather forecast this week seems dicey for outdoors work. Such uncertainty is caused by our unpredictable, changing climate. Garden plants are resilient, however. If I protect against the last frost, chances are good there will be a crop.
I managed to move some brush around on Good Friday.
Celebrating Easter weekend is no longer a thing for me. While I was coming along as a grader, my grandmother was a driving force in celebrating Easter weekend and noting the resurrection. In studying the history of her community of Polish immigrants in Minnesota, I found her desire to don special clothing, attend Mass, and take posed photographs of everyone to note the day has its roots there. They lived an impoverished but good life in the late 19th Century. They also shared a vibrant cultural life surrounding the church. Parts of that cultural heritage found its way through grandmother to me, even if it didn’t stick.
I’ve been working on the part of my autobiography that describes the time our child started school while we lived in Indiana from 1988 until 1993. I kept written journals and re-reading them has been life changing. During the 30+ years since then, I have forgotten a lot of my own history. The current writing includes broader historical perspective I couldn’t get while living a life in real time. The end result is an appreciation for things I did do to help our child be the best they could be.
A main concern was how to spend more time with family. In February 1991, I put a pencil to it and found I was spending no more than 60-90 minutes per weekday plus time on weekends with our child. That seemed not enough. There are dozens of snippets of journal entries about our lives together. The challenge is how to weave those into a meaningful narrative, yet maintain the idea they are only a part of our lives together. This is perhaps the most interesting writing challenge thus far in the autobiography.
I didn’t make much progress on the book this weekend, although there was no shortage of things about which to think and remember. Some days, that’s what a writer needs.
Categories
Round and Round
The sound of their tricycle on cement,
"Look Daddy how fast I'm going!"
Clockwise, now counter-clockwise
in early afternoon.
Round and round
pedaling, pedaling
looking at me
then gliding to a stop.
They are almost too big for it.
Soon they will need one less wheel...
Better to move around the expanding circles
until they are on their own.
~ April 21, 1991 in the Calumet
Empty milk bottles, an empty wine bottle
and a salad dressing bottle...
filled with water and white tulips --
whose time will soon be past.
There is a dead spider in a milk bottle.
I remember those milk bottles
being left on the back porch, filled with milk.
How it was...
Contemporary life has changed.
We drive to the Stop N Shop to get our milk
in plastic jugs (#2 recyclable).
And glass milk bottles are the stuff of collectors
and flea marketers.
They hold tulips well.
~ April 21, 1991 in the Calumet
I cut the white tulips.
They were almost gone.
Petals dangling down,
ready to fall to the ground.
They still smell fresh,
as flowers do... in the clear
glass vase
where I put them on my desk.
Others bloom now,
still others are yet to bloom
now and next year.
It's time I left them for a while
to multiply, and grow, and flourish.
Instead of transplanting them each October.
~ April 21, 1991 in the Calumet
Categories
Dark and Blustery Morning
On the 100th anniversary of publication, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald was a quick read. In this case, less than 24 hours in four sittings. I highly recommend reading it. There is not much new to say since I wrote about it when the copyright expired in 2021. My new takeaway: a novel needn’t be long to be effective, engaging, and relevant. Gatsby is a product of that unique time, yet relevant to American society today.
It is a blustery day in Big Grove Township with winds forecast in the 25-30 m.p.h. range all day. With ambient temperatures in the low 50s, it is again on the chilly side for garden work. I realize there are few perfect days for gardening. I will get outdoors again to enjoy the sunshine.
He returns. There were big cumulus clouds of the kind Georgia O’Keeffe painted in 1965 when she was 77 years old. Cast against blue sky, these real clouds were a wondrous summer scene.
I went to breakfast with a neighbor and that set back the whole day. We had a good conversation and learned we have a lot in common, including time spent in the Calumet region of Indiana. I’ll be playing catch up the rest of today and tomorrow. Wish me luck.
Categories
Weekend Creations
Editor’s Note: This is fifth in a series of posts about my creativity while living in Indiana. Check out the first post here.
When we lived on West Post Road in Cedar Rapids, our child was transitioning to talking in human language and walking. Singing and running soon followed. I determined the best time for my creative endeavor was in the early morning hours before the rest of the household woke and I had to leave for work. On good days, I got in two solid hours of reading and writing.
After moving to Indiana before our child started preschool, working in the garage became a main creative activity. The ranch-style home on a crawl space had inadequate room for much of my creative inventory except for some book shelves in the living room and a place to put the word processor. In the garage I had a workshop, a writing desk, and boxes of stuff brought from Iowa. My longer spells of creative activity occurred on weekends and vacations and included all aspects of my life muddled into one process. I continued through winter by acquiring a propane construction heater.
Elizabeth is in the driveway washing the car windows. I am in the garage, writing at my desk, listening to the radio WJOB.
The garage is a place where we can let our imagination go. Much time is spent organizing and moving supplies, but the creative endeavor is what we live for.
What assumptions are behind this garage and the endeavors in which we engage? (Personal Journal, Merrillville, Indiana, Sept. 12, 1992).
Our child was often outside with me playing in and around the garage. It was a main activity we did together. Some days they would ride the Big Wheel tricycle up and down the driveway, sometimes play on the small deck where there was a sandbox shaped like a turtle (called Shelly), sometimes playing in the backyard and garden, and much time hanging out with me inside the garage. All of those memories combine into one of just being together. I felt it was what fathers did.
I built a workbench out of two by fours custom designed to match my 73-inch height. At times I would use it to build or repair something. At times I would spread out papers on a project in progress. It was well built and survived the move to Iowa in 1993 where it occupies a prominent place in the current garage.
Characteristic of warm days in my creative space was to open the garage door and hang an American flag on the door frame. The flag was one I used in Mainz while on Autobahn road marches with armored vehicles. Garage door up! Flag hung! I was open for business!
In my journal I described some conversations about what we should call this space. We tried out names and settled on The Deaton Family Workshop. I wrote that on a student-sized chalkboard and placed it where all who entered could see. We possessed a secret life with each other in the garage and were co-conspirators regarding our lives in the Calumet.
Today I continue to put the garage door up and hang a flag. It is not the same one. This American flag once flew over the U.S. Capitol and was acquired through my congressman. It is fading from exposure to sunlight and needs to be replaced.
When I’m open for business in the garage today, it is not the same feeling as before our child left home. I do the best I can. I don’t mind remembering what once was when we simply went outside and played together. Days like that are no longer commonplace. Once in a while we get together and simply be with each other. I look forward to those days.
Categories
Saturday Restlessness
I can't shake it...
Here with me is...
a feeling of tension.
I am okay...
I am going forward in time.
Yet I am restless
going forward in time...
Passing through cultures and societies,
accomplishing things:
doing laundry,
vacuuming,
or cleaning the closet...
all satisfying.
I washed dishes
and prepared burritos for lunches next week.
I have accomplished this.
But I need more.
~ August 3, 1991 in the Calumet
Categories
Places to Create
A writer needs a place to work. Somewhere safe, secure, and with adequate room to spread out. I’ve written in my share in public places: restaurants, coffee bars, grocery stores, and parks. These locations serve for a moment, but eventually we need to return to a home base. Since 1974, I found many of them, including my drill sergeant’s office at Fort Jackson, S.C., an apartment not far from the Mississippi River, in the lower level of the first place we lived after our wedding, and others. Five of them stand out.
Five main places I wrote, where I felt I had a writing space, are as follows: In my Bachelor Officer Quarters in Mainz, Germany; my apartment at Five Points in Davenport; my apartment on Market Street in Iowa City; in the garage behind our house when we lived in the Calumet; and finally a very long spell, maybe 30 years, in the room I built on the lower level of our home in Big Grove Township. All of them afforded reasonable quiet, and freedom to write what I wanted. I took advantage of the spaces as best I could.
After seeing the Pablo Picasso retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in 1980, I became enraptured by his artistic process. Before his 1973 death he was exceedingly successful. David Douglas Duncan’s 1980 book Viva Picasso: A Centennial Celebration 1881-1981 depicts Picasso as he created his work. From these photographs I took inspiration for my own studio stolen from small spaces where a busy family lived.
When I lived near the main railway station in Mainz, Germany, my apartment had two large desks which I pushed together to use as a writing place. My apartment was at the end of the hall in a building called the Bachelor Officers’ Quarters. As a corner room, it was fairly quiet. My schedule had me away from garrison for two to three weeks at a time so part of what I did there was spread out mail and make sure what needed addressing was. I received and wrote a lot of letters. I had a big map of the region pinned to the wall. Next to it was a large bulletin board, and then an American flag I used when we road marched with armored equipment on the German Autobahn. While I wasn’t there much, I felt like a writer when I was.
I left the Smith Corona portable typewriter Mother gave me to use at university in storage and bought a new Olympia portable typewriter in Mainz. I used a blue three-ring, loose leaf binder to keep my journal. The chair had a straight-back, dining room-style. Behind the desk was a bookshelf I made from planks set on wine bottles I had emptied out by drinking the contents. My source of news and information was a multi-function AM-FM radio that could also receive short wave signals. I was still trying to be a musician so I bought an inexpensive guitar at a local music store. In the early years I had no telephone or television. About year into my tour of duty I went to the German phone company and had a land line hooked up, not that anyone called me while I was there. This writing space was my escape from serving in the military.
The image above is my writing space at Five Points in Davenport. I wrote previously about this apartment where I pulled my life together after serving four years in the military. I was determined to be a writer. Note the oak desk. I purchased it when I arrived in Davenport after living in Germany. It followed me until the present day, although it is used mostly for storage and layout space today.
I recently described my apartment on Market Street in Iowa City here. It was a transitional space from youth into marriage, although I had no idea that’s what it was when I lived there. I did know I was a writer.
When we lived in Indiana, the house we bought did not have space for my writing. I moved to the garage. This was problematic when it was cold because there was no insulation. I bought a construction heater and had a local propane service deliver a bottle which I leaned up against an exterior fence. It was very noisy as it burned the fuel.
I’m reading my journals from Indiana and more than any other prior period, I produced writing that stands up to the years since then. I developed the idea that a creative person had to integrate all aspects of their life into one continuous band of creativity. My garage was an escape, yet it brought together my work life, my home life, and everything else I did in the Calumet. This was a significant change.
In a discussion with our child we came up with a name for the place, The Deaton Family Workshop. I did some of my creative work on the word processor we brought from Iowa, which was located inside the house between the dining area and the living room. Still, the garage was my main creative studio.
Finally, There is my current writing space. I use a chair I bought for a dollar at an auction, and a library table inherited from the father-in-law’s estate. I described building this place in a post called, A Place to Write. It has well-served the writing process.
Each place I wrote is important. The hard part was to envision that I am a writer. Working a career in transportation and logistics distracted me from that. Now, though, I can focus on the actual writing. In the main, given a space, that’s what my life has always been about.
Categories
Tools to Create
When I began writing after university I used a bound journal to enter my experiences. In the 50 years since those first beginnings, the technology changed, and with it, the type of writing I did.
I migrated from bound journals to a loose leaf binder in the military. This was a faint image of the famous journals in literary history, Samuel Pepys for example. I spent a lot of time recording my thoughts and evolved continuously in how I presented myself.
When we got our first home word processor in 1987, I worked at my writing with the intent of making a completed text I would use in another application. I produced letters mostly, but a few journal entries. I also maintained the format of my earlier journal-writing. The word processor replaced the three typewriters I accumulated.
We bought our first home computer on April 21, 1996 and installed it in the kitchen where the extra phone jack was located. We connected to the internet via dial up. I had used computers at work, including for email, but having a home computer was a revolution. Thus began a period of experimentation with online writing.
In 2006, a group of consultants from Hyderabad, India convinced me to move to a new email platform called Gmail. At the time I needed a referral to get into Gmail, which the guys gladly gave. I spend as many hours drafting emails as I do other forms of writing. Email changed how I did correspondence forever and for the better.
As our child finished college in 2007, I joined the social media platforms Facebook and Twitter to keep in touch. I stayed on both for a long time, yet terminated both in the revival period of American oligarchs, Twitter in 2024 and Facebook in 2025. Social media became a creative outlet as well as a news source. I continue to post on BlueSky which rose in the wake of the transition of Twitter to X. For now, I expect to continue.
Also in 2007 I posted my first blog on the platform Blogger. Eventually I transferred to WordPress which seemed more user friendly. Even though I wrote thousands of blog posts, I printed them out in book form using a service. The concern about hours and hours of creative effort vanishing into the ether because of an electrical failure or an errant keystroke has me seeking the comfort of paper.
Today I write book-length projects in Microsoft Word, which I began learning while I was working at the oil company. At the time, it was MS-DOS based and not nearly as functional as it is today. Microsoft Word facilitates saving single documents so I don’t lose them. It also provides a form of security that seems less available on the internet.
Creative people need tools to create. In my case it was basic pen and paper for the first 20 years. After personal computers came along, the whole world of writing changed, not only for me but for everyone. I would not want to go back.
Journey Home 
You must be logged in to post a comment.