2/8/2019 0 Comments February 2019The Royal and the Valentine I drafted this post on my 1930’s Royal Quiet De Luxe typewriter. I am challenging myself this month to do all my drafts on a typewriter. Writing on a computer is hard for me because of the distractions; spell and grammar checks, alerts, email, messages, and the general seduction of the Internet. It is easy to lose an hour (or many hours) following legitimate needs that lead to links, visuals, videos, and ends in I can’t remember what I was going after. I have been loyal to my Royal but truth is, I have others. Over the last several years I've had an addiction. A serial falling in and out of love. But Royal is my first love with the best keyboard for my hands; the glass keys which can’t be beat. I should have stopped while I was ahead but one leads to more: Hermes 3000 (Mid-Century, Swiss), Royal Safari (70s big doll), Hermes 3000 (cursive type) and Erika (20’s delicate little beauty, laptop-like but with a European keyboard). All of them are wonderful typewriters but, with the exception of Erika, they are not for my hands. Last week, being a member of the typewriter community, I got an email from Typewriter Review , which is a great review site for writers. The current review compares two Olivetti typewriters. I have long wanted an Olivetti Lettera 32, not to mention the design icon, Valentine. The review pushed me right over the eBay edge. I found one and it was in pretty great condition. It had a perfect case (won’t buy one without a case) and all the original documents (rare to get them). But, I told myself not until I sell the others and went back to revising a poem. Well, some days I have a struggle writing a poem, story, or essay; Saturday I had a struggle with all three. The cure was the Olivetti Lettera 32 because, well, Sylvia Plath wrote her poems on one. I put in a low bid and left it up to fate. I should be getting the Olivetti in two weeks! So now, I am looking at creating an eBay shop to sell the Hermes and Safari which are in their perfect cases in a line along the back wall of my writing shed. I will sell them, if only to find my Valentine . Best, Jacqueline P.S. If you are ever in Venice, Italy, visit the Olivetti Museum. More on the Typosphere: http://typosphere.blogspot.com Famous writers & their typewriters: http://mentalfloss.com/article/80104/19-authors-and-their-typewriters ***If you are here for the first time, scroll down to sign up for my email list and you'll get a notice of new Posts.
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1/7/2019 1 Comment January 2019My mind has been on the fragility of our current circumstances on Planet Earth. This was intensified for me by the November (Woolsey) fire that devastated 88% of the park lands in our Santa Monica Mountains. As it ran out of control we were evacuated; this time for a week. We were lucky, the winds shifted, and thankful for our friends in Ventura who opened their home to us and the dogs (much to the horror of their cat, Luna). Fire never reached our canyon but it brought home the reality of living in these mountains. As I packed up my backpack I added a library book; Ursula K Le Guin’s last book of poems, So Far So Good. This book gave me relief and perspective on living, aging, dying; all with the long view that only someone who lives a full life into their nineties has.
Today, I heard the first Pacific Tree Frog of the new year. We are having a classic rainy day and it is a joy, sadly a rare joy, but my excitement sunk as dread crept in; lately on a daily basis. Over 16 years here I have experienced the change in our climate, my guess is that you have that experience where you live or travel. For some time, after the fire, I couldn’t shake it. Now I realize it is pointless and immobilizing. Now, I work toward not going down that spiral. I am not naive, but to stay right in the moment; merged with this land, speechless, overwhelmed, is what I have at hand. I didn't read Le Guin until last year. I finally woke up to the fact that I was I admiring her but never actually read her, so I started with The Left Hand of Darkness. And so began my unsystematic journey into her work. Right now I have four of her books on hold in the library system, and today received, The Found and the Lost, The Collected Novellas and Words Are My Matter. I am definitely on a journey, she is the writer I want to read this year. Recently, before going to the Honda dealership, I picked up my latest library book, Ursula K. Le Guin: Conversations on Writing, with David Naimon, since I was wrong to presume it would be a short appointment, I was able read it over the five hours it took for my Element to reappear. These conversations took place toward the end of her life and are one of the last interviews of her; they are organized around the genres she wrote in fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. David Naimon received her final penciled comments when he got news that she died. Le Guin is an amazing world creator, and her focus on writing, publishing, gender, nature, and our current world has never been sharper. Reading this book was like sitting with her, was having her voice in my ear. She has much to say about the world we live in, about writers, writing and to readers--all with a healthy sense of herself. It has taken some time to come back to what I know is true for me; reading Le Guin has helped me to understand that this is where I need to live . I’ll accept the risk. And there, in the midst of a once-normal-now-rare rainy day, I went out on the upper deck and heard those first sounds of the Pacific Tree Frog. She/he was blending into the bark of the massive Coastal Live Qak tree encroaching upon the deck, its leaves showing evidence of a flash burn from a 114 degree summer day. And so, if our luck holds out, it will come down into our fountain to voice amplify and become our resident Chorus Frog. Happy New Year, Jacqueline *********************************************** Here is where you can listen to Le Guin's gutsy speech at the National Book Awards when given the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. It went viral and gave rise to what she calls her 15 minutes of fame. More links:
So Far So Good Ursula K. Le Guin: Conservations on Writing with David Naimon The Found and the Lost, The Collected Novellas Words Are My Matter And everything you want to know about the Pacific Tree Frog/Chorus Frog ***If you are here for the first time, scroll down to sign up for my email list and you'll get a notice of new Posts. Where, you may wonder, is the Poem of the Month? Well, it has been suspended since I am working on a new project. Instead, I will write monthly blog posts.
Since you have been reading my Poem of the Month feature, here are a couple of links that will let more poems into your life.
Oh and here is one of my favorite baseball poems www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45498/the-crowd-at-the-ball-game Have fun adding poetry to your life! ***If you are here for the first time, sign up for my email list and you'll get a notice of new Posts. Jacqueline |
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©2024 Jacqueline De Angelis, writing, audio, video, paintings and site images are the property of Jacqueline De Angelis. Photography: Ricardo Medina, Edean Amador. Watercolors: Jacqueline De Angelis. Design: Simple West.
©2024 Jacqueline De Angelis, writing, audio, video, paintings and site images are the property of Jacqueline De Angelis. Photography: Ricardo Medina, Edean Amador. Watercolors: Jacqueline De Angelis. Design: Simple West.