Paper Copies

            Kim has encouraged me to start a new project: making paper copies of all my blog entries and poems. I bought a set of folders with thousands of plastic sleeves where I can insert the pages. I’ve mainly concentrated on the weekly blog pages, and I have now done up through 2023.

 

            Why am I doing this? For one thing, I have become increasingly aware of how things sometimes just disappear off of my computer. The Host of my blog recently changed hands, and for a while I could not find it, and now I can no longer get photos into my posts. I’m sure it can be done, but I don’t know how to do it. And if, for some reason I fail to make my monthly autopay to my blog host, I think the whole blog – years of weekly posts – will be gone. What a loss to civilization! But wait – I have these hard copies, so all is saved (unless we have a fire).

 

            The process has been enjoyable. I have not reread any of my precious blog entries through, but seeing them and reading a few patches reminds me of the pleasure of writing them. I’m glad I enjoy them, but I am not vain enough to imagine anyone else wanting to read them, except perhaps family members with a lot of time on their hands. 

 

            The poems are another matter. I just re-read and typed a few love poems I wrote to Kim in 1994, and I was impressed – not by the quality of the poems, which could use some editing, but by the open emotionalism that today I find difficult. Here’s a sample, written in 1994:

 

            Cloud  Moon  Sun  Star

 

            You shift like a cloud

            making all the greens

            here on my earth

            modulate. Golds

            deepen, then dazzle.

 

            You are my moon,

            whose unseen gravity

            pulls me to high tide.

            I measure time by

            your face—silver, gold,

            haloed in mist. You

            call out night creatures.

 

            Serene life source.

            But your sunstorms

            burst into solar winds

            to collide with belts

            of radiant air. Your

            art is our home’s

            aurora borealis.

 

            Sometimes I star gaze

            from a safe distance.

            Surrounded by your

            daily rose beauties,

            I need the comfort

            of invisibility to help

            me reach across space

            and draw you near.

 

These will be fun to explore.

 

            I suppose that a big appeal of saving these writings is an attempt to leave my mark on the world – the kind of thing you think about when you get old. Kim has kept things – articles of clothing, pieces of jewelry, some old photographs and letters – that connect her to her father, grandparents, and other parts of her family history. These things are a way these people live on. And Kim has made her own mark on the world – through her artwork, but perhaps even more, through the homes we have designed and built, and then left behind to enrich the world – the Bark House, the Riverwood house in Ypsilanti, the Paynes Prairie house in Florida, and a significant remodel of our Craftsman Bungalow in Saline, Michigan. These homes are mainly Kim’s work, and the world is a better place because of them.

 

            I leave the world my writings. I don’t think providing amusement is a path to immortality, but that’s what I have. And the paper can always be recycled.