Office supplies

The only things I like more than Pilot G-2 07 pens (Ah, the comfort of the rubber grip, the easy release of the black ink) are blank, 3-inch-by-5-inch index cards (Just the right size for cupping in the hand while jotting down a writing idea) and file folders (Buff color only, please, letter size).

Other people may prefer hanging out in coffee houses, dress shops or taverns, but I spend my off hours in office-supply stores, those big- and small-box outlets crammed floor-to-ceiling with all things clerical and writerly.

Heading down an aisle inside Office World or Paper Emporium, I breathe in the scent of 10-inch-by-13-inch mailing envelopes with their reinforced eyelets and long-life clasps. Then it’s on to the next row, where I fondle packages of red-edged address labels, Super Sticky florescent-green Post-it® notes and laminated maps of the world.

Extra-strong storage boxes that support up to 350 pounds beckon me on, followed by the perforated notepads, disappearing-glue sticks and bags of size 16 rubber bands. Who could bypass the pencil pillows, desk pads and leather-bound journals, the high-back chairs with lumbar support or ignore the briefcases (leather and plastic, with and without wheels), computers and printers, calculators and shredders, scissors and letter openers?

Eventually, I stumble out the door, feeling uplifted, as if life mattered somehow.

Plein Air

At about this same time last year, I took part in a Plein Air event during which writers and painters wrote and painted outdoors in the Columbia River Gorge. It took place on a beautiful day with the sun shining brightly overhead, but I was carrying with me a certain feeling of sadness, a result of something that happened the night before.

I’d gone out for dinner with a friend, a member of a writing group I’d belonged to for many years. After we ate and talked, Beverly was walking me to my car when she told me she thought our writing group might be ending, that the whole thing had run its course. I didn’t say so at the time, but I felt sad, to think what Beverly said might be true. In typical fashion, I dealt with it by making a joke, about how I would send an e-mail to the members with a subject line that read, “Writing Group Dies Slow, Agonizing Death.”

It was true. Signs of the group breaking up had been showing up for months, if not years. Still, for some reason, I didn’t want to give up on the group. In addition to the fact that I just liked hanging out with writers, many of the group members had become my best friends. So that’s what I was thinking about during Plein Air – about loss and endings and giving up; but although I was feeling sad, at the same time, I was aware of the bright sun overhead. And I wrote this poem:

Fallen Fruit

Narrow shouldered and
Bottom heavy
The ripened pears
Fell like copper buddhas
Onto the welcoming earth

Where they
Kept each other company
After having given up on summer
Allowing gravity to do its work

Offering comfort
For lonely souls
Passing by
Revealing secrets
Hidden in the shadows of branches
Reflecting the strength
Of the sun overhead