Bloggus Interruptus

Some time ago Glenn Reynolds wrote about his “third place” – somewhere away from both home and office where he could work productively. For him it was the coffee shop at a nearby Borders [or was it Barnes & Noble?] where he could link to the internet, have a cup of coffee, relax, and engage in happy bloggery. His post stuck with me because I knew the feeling. When I was writing Rome and the New Republic my favorite work site was the food court of a nearby mall. In such places you are semi-connected -- surrounded by people, but don’t have to interact with anybody. You also have close to hand coffee, soda, and other stimulants, comfort food, background music and human voices. In other words, a perfect setting in which to be both comfortable and productive.

UPDATE:

Wouldn't ya know it? No sooner do I post on the subject than Glenn Reynolds [Instapundit] has a column on it at Tech Central Station. He calls the phenomenon the "Comfy-Chair Revolution." Here's a link to his article. Read it and get a sense of the fluid physical dimensions of the new intellectual world that is emerging. Classrooms, offices, and salons may soon be a thing of the past.

Back to the thread:

Today I spent some time at a Panera restaurant. The WiFi was free, the food was good, the dessert was sinful – blogger heaven! I was happily searching through an American literature database looking for a quote [more on this below] when “She” spoke.

Yes, “She who shall not be named” was present and growing impatient. She had finished lunch and now seemed to think that since we were in a shopping center we should be…, um…, shopping! In some weird way that made sense..., sorta. So I packed up my laptop and soon found myself pushing a shopping cart through long aisles while she looked for bargains and sorted through coupons. Fortunately, I had the foresight to bring something to read with me and she was kind enough to interrupt me only when she needed something off a top shelf.

* * * * *

Have you ever started a book and realized that, no matter how long it was, you would be sorry to see it end? I felt that way when, at age sixteen, I immersed myself in Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings." Today I got the same feeling. I had heard wonderful things about Neal Stephenson's "Baroque Trilogy," but had never gotten around to reading it. It had long occupied a prominent position on my "Shelf of Reproach" [a term coined by the marvelous Cullen Murphy to reference all those books he meant to read but never found time for]. Now I'm reading the first volume: Quicksilver, and it is wonderful [in the classic sense of "wonder filled"]. This is definitely one to check out. Stephenson's book is particularly cool for an historian who has some appreciation of the background work that went into it. Occasionally something will bring a pro up short thinking, "but, but...". Those times are few, though, and easily overlooked. Read it.

* * * * *

Eventually even "She" was shopped out and we trundled our purchases out to the car.

Then something marvelous happened.

For some years now I have been lurking around the edges of the "birding" community [Yes, there really is a community of "birders." They are large; they are well-organized; and, so far as I can tell, not really dangerous, unless you count that DDT ban thing.] I have spent many happy hours staring into the sky searching for migrating birds and trying to ignore the "floaters" in my eyes. It has become something of a habit -- scanning the sky as I walk. Occasionally it pays off. Once as I rode along a Maryland highway I saw a Golden Eagle dive on a rabbit. Another time, in Pennsylvania, I saw a kestrel trying to hover [they're not really built for it] while stalking something small on the ground. Eventually it gave up, the prey must have found a hole, and took off with breathtaking speed. You get the idea -- little magic moments that stay with you for a long time.Today there was another one.

As we walked toward the car I looked up and saw three jets high overhead lined up for landing at a nearby airport. Their sharply etched contrails shone brilliant gold against the light blue sky reflecting the setting sun, and below them came wave after wave after wave of Canada geese. There were three large flocks, totalling more than a thousand birds. Two of them began to circle, looking for a place to land, the third forged on to the northeast. For a second I held my breath and thought, "this must be what it felt like when the passenger pigeons came." Then I realized that my camera was in the car. Hurriedly I pushed the cart across the lot toward the car, but it was to no avail. By the time I got there the spectacle was gone forever. The flocks were separating, some spiraling down to land while others disappeared to the north, and the contrails were losing their definition, starting to dissipate. It was just a fleeting moment of grace, but it is a memory to which I will return time and again for the rest of my life. I don't need no steenkin' photo to remember it.

One more thing: when we got home and started to unload the car I could hear in the distance the honking of geese in flight. "She" heard it too, so it wasn't just my imagination.

* * * * *

At times like these I wish I had the skills of a "real" writer and was able to convey in words the emotional essence of the moment. It can be done. I know it can because I've seen it done. Here I append a couple of long paragraphs embodying some of the finest writing in the English language. With regard to evocative prose, this is as good as it gets. The two selections are from Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi. You can access searchable online texts of this and many other literary classics here. By all means do yourself a big favor and check it out.

From Chapter 51:

"We had a heavy thunder-storm at Natchez, another at Vicksburg, and still another about fifty miles below Memphis. They had an old-fashioned energy which had long been unfamiliar to me. This third storm was accompanied by a raging wind. We tied up to the bank when we saw the tempest coming, and everybody left the pilot-house but me. The wind bent the young trees down, exposing the pale undersideof the leaves; and gust after gust followed, in quick succession, thrashing the branches violently up and down, and to this side and that, and creating swift waves of alternating green and white according to the side of the leaf that was exposed, and these waves raced after each other as do their kind over a wind-tossed field of oats. No color that was visible anywhere was quite natural--all tints were charged with a leaden tinge from the solid cloud-bank overhead. The river was leaden; all distances the same; and even the far-reaching ranks of combing white-caps were dully shaded by the dark, rich atmosphere through which their swarming legions marched. The thunder-peals were constant and deafening; explosion followed explosion with but inconsequential intervals between, and the reports grew steadily sharper and higher-keyed, and more trying to the ear; the lightning was as diligent as the thunder, and produced effects which enchanted the eye and sent electric ecstasies of mixed delight and apprehension shivering along every nerve in the body in unintermittent procession. The rain poured down in amazing volume; the ear-splitting thunder-peals broke nearer and nearer; the wind increased in fury and began to wrench off boughs and tree-tops and send them sailing away through space; the pilot-house fell to rocking and straining and cracking and surging, and I went down in the hold to see what time it was."

It just doesn't get any better than that, or does it? Here Clemens crafts prose just as evocative, recalling another brilliant moment, but presents it as a powerful commentary on the cost of the loss of innocence.

From Chapter 9:

"Now when I had mastered the language of this water and had come to know every trifling feature that bordered the great river as familiarly as I knew the letters of the alphabet, I had made a valuable acquisition. But I had lost something, too. I had lost something which could never be restored to me while I lived. All the grace, the beauty, the poetry had gone out of the majestic river! I still keep in mind a certain wonderful sunset which I witnessed when steamboating was new to me. A broad expanse of the river was turned to blood; in the middle distance the red hue brightened into gold, through which a solitary log came floating, black and conspicuous; in one place a long, slanting mark lay sparkling upon the water; in another the surface was broken by boiling, tumbling rings, that were as many-tinted as an opal; where the ruddy flush was faintest, was a smooth spot that was covered with graceful circles and radiating lines, ever so delicately traced; the shore on our left was densely wooded, and the somber shadow that fell from this forest was broken in one place by a long, ruffled trail that shone like silver; and high above the forest wall a clean-stemmed dead tree waved a single leafy bough that glowed like a flame in the unobstructed splendor that was flowing from the sun. There were graceful curves, reflected images, woody heights, soft distances; and over the whole scene, far and near, the dissolving lights drifted steadily, enriching it, every passing moment, with new marvels of coloring.

I stood like one bewitched. I drank it in, in a speechless rapture. The world was new to me, and I had never seen anything like this at home. But as I have said, a day came when I began to cease from noting the glories and the charms which the moon and the sun and the twilight wrought upon the river's face; another day came when I ceased altogether to note them. Then, if that sunset scene had been repeated, I should have looked upon it without rapture, and should have commented upon it, inwardly, after this fashion: This sun means that we are going to have wind to-morrow; that floating log means that the river is rising, small thanks to it; that slanting mark on the water refers to a bluff reef which is going to kill somebody's steamboat one of these nights, if it keeps on stretching out like that; those tumbling 'boils' show a dissolving bar and a changing channel there; the lines and circles in the slick water over yonder are a warning that that troublesome place is shoaling up dangerously; that silver streak in the shadow of the forest is the 'break' from a new snag, and he has located himself in the very best place he could have found to fish for steamboats; that tall dead tree, with a single living branch, is not going to last long, and then how is a body ever going to get through this blind place at night without the friendly old landmark.

No, the romance and the beauty were all gone from the river. All the value any feature of it had for me now was the amount of usefulness it could furnish toward compassing the safe piloting
of a steamboat."

I close with a simple judgment: Samuel Clemens is by far the greatest wordsmith America has ever produced, period..., end of discussion.