nina turns 60

alive || not alive

I've been setting metal type in the physical world rather than typing in the digital one, and it feels really good. The meticulous care with which one must operate to make a beautiful page (or even just a clear, easy to read page) is impressive. The feel of the type in my fingers makes me grounded. The presses themselves, so beautiful and heavy, still doing their work after 100 years, give me joy. I marvel at their ingeniousness, their various parts working together just so. They don't seem alive, but they don't seem entirely not alive either. 

Next week I will go to Texas with 10,000 or so other people who care very much about words and language, about fitting it together just so, both by meaning and by its physical properties. I will get to eat and work with beloved colleagues whom I normally only interact with digitally. It will be warm, at least outside. 

My parents are flying out to California on the same day and same airline that I am flying to Texas. I hope I will see them at the airport. The last time my father fell down was at an airport. The helplessness of watching your parents grow old and start to falter—

my parents have grown old

Spent the weekend with my folks. It was their 62nd anniversary. They didn't know I was coming, and they were happy at the surprise. I sometimes find it hard to be patient with them in this new iteration of themselves, these old people who have taken over where my parents used to be. I want to be better. I work consciously toward being better. But the dynamic shift has thrown me. I had underestimated how much I still depended on them in my mental world. That sense that they would always be there for me. It's been true my whole life. And now it's not. They can't be anymore. It's my turn to be there for them. And I am happy to do it. But really, it's much harder than I am prepared for. 

It's not unlike when you become a parent and you have no friggin' idea what you are doing, but you have to figure it out because you've got that baby and that baby needs you. Except now you are much older and even more tired and you aren't as desperately in love with those in your care. Oh, you love them deeply. But the mama bear thing does not drive you. There is a tenderness. There is also mourning. You miss your parents the way they were even just a few years ago. You worry about them—so much worry. So many questions about what is the right thing to do. Instead of leading them toward independence, as with a child, you must start to take their independence away from them. Everybody is a little bit afraid. 

 

this & that

I saw some coffee described as having flavor notes of Fuji apple. Not just apple, but Fuji apple. I want to know who has a palate that sensitive that they can get down to that level of specificity when they are tasting a friggin cup of coffee. I'm the biggest dorkiest coffee snob anywhere, but even I must apply the eyeroll emoji to that one. (Hey, why doesn't typepad have emojis? This really is an old school operation.)

I made a notebook!! As in, I folded the sheets into a folios and nested the folios into a signature and I punched holes into the fold and sewed that baby up into a notebook. I'm taking a class with Myrna at Expedition Press and we ended up spontaneously making notebooks at the end of the evening last night. Such a delight to be in a print shop with a group of women who care deeply about words and art. 

I'm the oldest person in the class (including the instructor) by at least 20 years. 

Alejandro is turning 21 in a couple of weeks, and I can't even.

 

gift

Look at the beautiful broadside sent to me by one of my favorite CCP poets, Alison C. Rollins! A sweet surprise on a day I was feeling very low. I can not recommend her book, Library of Small Catastrophes, highly enough. I spotted the manuscript in our submittable queue a couple of years ago and immediately read it through twice, something I've never done before or since. It is not my job to read manuscripts, but I get the opportunity to poke around from time to time. Usually my other tasks pull me quickly away. Not with this one. 

The editor rather jokingly calls this book my first acquisition, though I know that whoever would have come across the ms first would have advocated for it just as hard as I did. I find it nothing short of brilliant.

Poets and librarians and poet-librarians. My kind of people. Thank you, Alison!