I can’t believe I missed all of July, blogging. I was in New York for a big chunk of the month and although I wrote (sixty pages!!!) I didn’t write every day, and I got out of my habit of noticing the high points, my own, and the high points of those around me. I went to dozens of plays and galleries. I saw good, good friends and ate amazing food. I worked out at the gym. I saw clients. I got very, very sick. The whole month–July–was a kind of high point of my adult life.

Now I am home, in my very different life, working hard on two book projects and cycling and seeing my beloved friends, reading and sitting in my bay window, and thinking a lot about so many good things. I Scyped my Dad! He looks amazingly good. He’s 80! What a gift, to get to see him, show him old photos, sing to him. I got a letter from a student who is a camp counselor. An actual letter.  A written thing. What a gift: pencil and paper and truth.

Someone has too many gladiolias, so I am going to harvest a raft of them for my pretty little house–swords of joy.

I’m happy to be back. I’m happy to be here. I’m looking forward to fall semester, and the students, and the life of books and bikes and love and faith, fun, and forgiveness.

My Summer Screens Rant…

Dave Eggers, interviewed in the new issue of Creative Nonfiction, talks about e-readers. And how most of the people in the world can’t afford e-readers. “Secondly,” he says, “I just plain won’t read books on a screen. It just seems nuts to put every last aspect of our lives continually onto a screen. We moved entertainment onto screens (TV), and then we moved most of our work onto screens with computers. And I know so many people who just can’t wait till they can read everything on a screen…”  (He goes on, and it’s a great rant—for my students I assign this interview as required summer reading.)

I could see myself reading a book on a screen, I suppose. I haven’t yet. I’m not against it. I have get emails from readers asking me why my books aren’t e-available. I’m sure they will be. Very soon. And I feel lucky about all that. I’m not anti-screen. But, I have to say, the happiest week of my year this year was the one I spent at the retreat center—no computers, no television, no e. No screens except the ones in the window, overlooking the mirror lake.

I work by hand. I sleep by hand. Eat by hand.  And I use my computer—I use it a lot.

But I need lots of breaks from screens. My eyes need the breaks and my heart needs the food. I love book books. I love non-electronic things: jewelry, flowers, friendship where you take a walk together. I love food and bicycles and love—these things are completely non-e-able.

I’m getting a web cam this week, so I can talk to a soldier I love, a kid on a tropical island, far far far away. I love vast stretches of the e world.

As I write this, I see a kid in the park across the street from my house. He’s in the branches of the ancient mulberry tree. He is reading a book.

I love unconventional farmers in the age of agribusiness. I don’t want to lose touch with paper, pencil, chalkboard, hopscotch. I like DIY and wrinkles. I need the kid, across the street from my house, in the park this afternoon, lodged in the limbs of the mulberry tree tree with a book. A book book.

He is his own battery charger, which is never lost, which he knows, intuitively how to repair (read another book).