Tuesday, August 11, 2015

The lake house posts








I usually do my bit to make each blog post as much a stand alone affair as possible. Generally posts are not serialized or tightly grouped together, and there would not usually be any need for an introductory post. You may even have noticed my blog posts so much like to start out as introductions to themselves that we don't always get around to the subject matter at hand.

But this post is explicitly an introduction. It's not necessary to the 17 posts that will follow it, but I felt an urging toward the formality of it. The next 17 days of posts are almost as disparate as usual, do not (mostly) follow one upon the other (though they are more inclined to it than usual), and vary in tone, subject, and approach. But they are also like a little book to me, a discrete journal, a group of all the blog pieces I wrote at the lake house.

Clerkmanifesto, now two and a half years old, is not a strong one for following tradition or observing commemorations. It may follow the seasons, or mark occasions, but it does not have holidays, seasons, or occasions of its own.

Except perhaps the lake house.

Every year I race to get far ahead on my blog so I can safely leave it behind for the lake house. Invariably that preparation is part of the discussion itself. One post catalogs the books I am bringing to the lake house, and on return I give my accounting of them. And up at the lake I write. In a spiral notebook I write blog posts. By a roaring fire, on our sadly last night for the year here, I now write my 18th post. This is the only one, for obvious reasons, that will run out of order from the others. Written last it runs first.

Over the next 17 days? My usual array of long and short, farces, ruminations, revelations, reminiscences, satires, and left turns. Lots of left turns. But no matter their nature every one of them was written in this grand room I love, perched like the prow of a high boat over the wild shore of Lake Superior, and they belong, in their way, together. So I have written this introduction and hope you might, just a little, follow along in spirit these next 17 days.

Pull up a metaphorical chair. I must go put the last armload of wood on the fire. It will burn a little more tonight. From the lake, the great lake, I bid you greetings, and farewell.







2 comments:

  1. I hope you have a wonderful time. Perchance some wildlife will join you for tea and Scrabble or a sunrise. I will drop in periodically on the past 17 days that have already happened.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you. I had a (spoiler alert!!!) lovely time, one that will now happen before your very eyes, sort of.

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