books – For the Archives

Posted on December 12, 2013 by Jessica Dofflemyer · 4 Comments

An Ode to Pulp and Paper

All of his addresses are there in the palm of his hand, but it’s not a smart phone he holds. No touch screen showing contacts. The Bohemian is flipping actual pages. As in, real, pulp-made paper, bound together in a rare relic known as the Address Book. Yes, he’s still got one.

I’m reclined on the bed watching him reference this little piece of the past, as he addresses a box to be mailed.

“You’ve still got an address book,” I say from the pillows.

“I’ve had this for sixteen years.”

“You know, everyone just has their addresses on their computers or their cell phones these days.”

Pen in hand, he’s writing letters neatly on the box, eyes carefully moving from page to label. “But if something happens to your phone, you lose all of your addresses.”

Right.

I love that the Bohemian still has an address book.

“I had an address book – the same one – for over twenty years.”

“Really?” He rarely rushes. Slow as molasses. Not a multi-tasker. He’s listening to me, but quite intent, filling out his postal custom’s form.

“My grandmother gave it to me in high school and I had it into my thirties.”

I sound as though I’m lobbying to be included in the cool club. Trying to prove that even if I have acquiesced to technology by inputting data rather than handwriting names, that this segue hasn’t happened unnoticed. I still honor the value of a book, even if mine has transitioned to virtual.

It was in the name of simplicity and streamlined effectiveness that I finally recycled the 5×8 inch book that had twenty-plus years of characters inscribed. Many people were long-lost to me, addresses and phone numbers outdated. Heck, there wasn’t even a place on the template to enter an email. The internet didn’t exist when the book was printed.

A digital database of contacts can seem more neat and tidy. Easily updated, accessible anywhere, hyperlinks, et al. It goes without saying that if you don’t keep a back up, then all is gone to the ether. But such was the case for anyone, back in the day, that lost their address book, as well (though those king-sized, desktop Rolodexes weren’t going anywhere).

That’s the thing. I never thought of a “back up,” and I never lost that address book. The blue and pink flower design on the cover faded through years of schlepping, but that bridge to all my people wasn’t going to be misplaced. It was precious.

There were doodles in the margins. Ink-laden entries in greens and blues and reds. Sometimes I would have my friends fill in their phone numbers, the pages holding the handwriting of the very characters it charted. Flipping through, eras were revealed. Addresses in Vermont and New Hampshire chronicled my year in New England. The Oregon names came from that scorching summer near Grants Pass. Entries with monikers like “Pony” and “Sunshine” recall the months I spent camping with the nomads at Rainbow Gatherings when I was 21.

That address book was rich with texture. So full of third-dimension it had a smell: the scent of fading paper layered with dried flowers and forest floor, as real and tangible as the people documented within.

The Bohemian, he’s a bit of a keeper, like me. Holding on to his address book for sixteen years. But he strikes an even finer balance. No clunky 5×8 sentimental scrapbook, logging a lifetime journey, as much as listing zip codes. No, his address book is a mere 4×3 inch example of streamlined efficiency. Smaller than a cell phone, with paper light as a feather, detailing only the necessities.

He’s now done with his packaging project. He puts away the address book in the single box that sits neatly on the shelf of the closet that houses his ten shirts, three pairs of pants, and zero clutter.

I am not that zen. And I don’t know if I’m included in the hip club of retro techno-rebels, either. I use iCal and Google Contacts. But I used to have a real-life address book. And it was really cool.

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Posted on October 12, 2013 by Jessica Dofflemyer · 4 Comments

Levitation and Pearls, Love and Motherhood

Something happened in that room, in the white house, tucked inside the orange grove. There was a low table, shaped to look like a giant pumpkin, where my seven-year old body sat. My toes were deep in olive-green shag carpet, as exotic zoo animals looked on from my bedroom wallpaper. There, I punched away at the manual typewriter before me – caps lock, engaged – writing the story of the miniature mermaid caught in a jar. The title: “A SINGLE PEARL.”

There was no delete key. I knew not of white-out. No, it was a full-on, forward-motion, metal-and-ink, telling of the evil man who trapped a mermaid, and her inevitable and clever escape. Words found their way from my imagination to silver keys that clanked black ink on textured paper. Enraptured by the rapid impressions of letters to page, I was unswerving in my mission with the Muse.

The experience, so visceral, that I can still recall the unusual sensation of hovering above my chair, as if I were levitating. A tingling lightness coursed through my being as I typed. Each tapped key punctuating the perfection of that moment. All was aligned and right. And though the sense of floating out of my pumpkin table chair was a little ‘other-worldly’, it felt refreshingly familiar and quite real. This. This was it. This was good stuff.

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Even though my mom was busy with three children under the age of eight, she took notice of my writing and gifted me a legal-sized accounting book as a journal. My entries began in 1982, with sporadic spells of prolific chronicling and expansive gaps of silence. By 1995 I was 21 and writing with much more frequency, eventually signing off on the last page of my beloved journal, gifted to me thirteen years prior.

Today, I have storage bins full of the hardbound journals that followed over the next fifteen years. Long before the internet, it was just me with pen and paper. My journals were my touchstones. They were often collaged with random photos on the cover, filled with sketches, sometimes holding pages pressed with wildflowers or feathers. These books were markers of an era. My archives.

By my late thirties, I’d warmed to computers and made friends with technology. I especially saw the value of the internet as it connected me to a world that was so distant from the remote Hawaiian island where I lived. Based on the premise that if you do something for 40 days in a row it creates a habit, I decided to commit myself to writing in the public sphere on a blog I titled “For the Archives.”

I was a single mother, raising a six-year old boy on my own, facing the challenges of rent, groceries, work, loneliness, and downright overwhelm. In the midst of it all, I was trying to remember, that one day, I may look back and wish I’d had more appreciation for all the messiness of life with love and motherhood.

Still, I wondered if it was worth my while to write, publicly, about the experience of sorting through my junk drawer. What I concluded was that if a junk drawer was what I had to work with, I might as well try to glean some beauty, seek some metaphors, and share it. So I wrote about ordinary details, then tried to see them in new light. After 40 days of posting, I didn’t want to stop.

That was over three years ago. Since then, nearly 750 posts have been written to the Archives. My son is close to turning ten. Now, I even have a husband.

The truth is, despite the challenges of that first year of blogging on the Archives, it was a precious time. I’m grateful it’s recorded. From broken hot water heaters, to heartbreak, to Lego action figures, I followed some kind of thread. As I felt my way through the unknown, looking closely at the most mundane helped me to find sparks of the profound.

I’ve combed the Archives from that first year and created a collection of prose, poetry and photography that chronicle my experiences during that time, as a woman, a mother, and an artist. Volume 1: Love and Motherhood, is the first in a series that is now available in the Kindle store on Amazon. If you’ve enjoyed reading the Archives, this compilation distills some of the best of that initial year.

I look back in time at my seven-year old self in my bedroom at the pumpkin table, hovering above green shag. I wonder at that feeling, sparked by the experience of imagination moving into letters, forming into words, and then tapping on to a page. What did I know then?

And what do I know now?

That I love a good story. That I want to remember the magic that weaves through all the daily details. That I wish for all our greatest dreams to come true.

We all have our pearls. This book is one of mine.

I hope you enjoy!

For those without a Kindle, you can still read the book by downloading a free Amazon app that lets you read on your Mac or PC, your phone, your tablet, or even your web-browser.

Here’s the link: http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000493771