"You want skates?"  I repeated Dog's request back to him, not sure I had heard him right.  I would have cleaned out my ears for effect, but I had gloves on.
Dog, his dark brown miniature Dachshund frame shivering a bit in the cold, blew out cigar smoke as cool as a, well, cat, as we balanced ourselves on the deck.  It was covered in a sheet of ice due to last night's rain which froze as everyone slept.  "Sure do.  I want a pair of skates.  You can see why after finally coming out here and seeing what I have to put up with to just go to the bathroom.  See?  This deck is like a skating rink.  I need skates to traverse from the house to the ramp and stairs."
Shaking my head, "But how would you actually get down the ramp to the yard, then?"
Dog smiled, his teeth reflecting a garish orange glow from the ember at the end of his cigar.  "That would be the fun part.  With skates, I'd just slide down that ramp, land in the snow at the bottom.  You could take videos and post them on the internet."
I laughed. 
"What's so funny?"  Dog seemed a bit put off by my laughter.
"Sorry, I'm not mocking you, but the sight of you sliding down a ramp, cigar clenched in your teeth, on ice skates, with your long ears flying behind you...well, that WOULD be quite the sight! Even better if we found some goggles for you to wear."
Dog blew more cigar smoke out. "So you agree?  You'll get skates for me?"
Placing my cigar in my mouth, I put my hand out.  Dog grinned, the winter light sparkling in his dark eyes, and he spat in hisshook my hand.  "Remember, I need four skates."  We had a deal.

Read more adventures of Dog, the philosopher of life and daring swashbuckler, in Cigars with Dog - Conversations and Tall Tails.

A couple of articles lately make me question what the future of the book entails and how it's disappearance as a physical thing will impact a community?  The last remaining chain bookstore seems to be on its way out, "The Wrong Goodbye of Barnes and Noble", and libraries across the nation are facing cuts in hours, staff, and budgets.

My first job was in a library, in a kind of neat stone building, gray and stately, the way downtown buildings used to be built.  It overlooked the shore of Lake Michigan, and provided a great lunch hour, in the downtown of a small city.  Nothing could fill the head of a young aspiring writer like being around books for the day, punctuated by being outside for an hour in the sun with the sound of waves to incubate ideas.

As I write this I checked out that library's online site.  I noticed that they are only open on Saturday from 11 am to 4 pm., and only open until 8 pm Monday through Thursday.  Greatly reduced hours, and as people work longer, it makes it more difficult to get there in time.  I am not a hopeless romantic, and I know fewer people go there, so this is not unexpected.  Still, as I reflect, I remember the library, when I worked there as a page, as a place of community.  Many people were regulars and had favorite tables or booths.  It was very busy.  It was a great place to browse for books, and to do research.  In a sign of the times, however, it's opening web-page now offers advice on how to use Facebook.

Browsing for books is a favorite past-time of mine, and I browsed more than libraries.  I have loved bookstores my whole life.  The physical feel of a book, the browsing of a few pages, the feel and smell of the place selling...more than books, it was a place.  A destination, and a means to build your own collection.  A hope that one day your children would browse the same classics that made your imagination soar.  Sometimes getting a gift card to a bookstore was more fun than getting a book itself, for it allowed for a discovery, time to go and search and find something unexpected.  To be around people with similar interests.

I know some will have quibbles with the reductions of chain bookstores, since Barnes and Noble, like other large chains, has been responsible for undercutting the independent bookstore.  I do agree that it was not a good thing that many independent stores didn't make it due to the chains.  Still, with many Barnes and Nobles closing, so many communities now will be without a book store.  Combine that with no library.  Yes, we get some creative solutions, such as "birdhouse libraries".  It doesn't, however, see to be a replacement.

Ultimately, I wonder what is the impact on publishing, and on books?  If there is an impact there, is it an impact on authors, too?  It will impact how we perceive "the business" and "the craft".   On the larger community, the one we live in, the impact is probably greater.  So I wonder:  What is the impact on us when the only community around books that we will have is online?  The article on Barnes and Noble makes a link between physical books  driving ebook sales.  So I am unsure that the answer of the online community is the only answer we need.

Some people wake up early to do it. 

Others have a cigarette, or a cup of coffee, or keep a journal about it.

What's your habit? 

I'm talking about writing habits...due to coming across an article on daily routines of famous writers.    Ray Bradbury, Jack Kerouac, Joan Didion, William Gibson and others are covered in this article.  The habits they have range from having a drink, or lighting a candle, to writing in a notebook every day.   There are some great insights into the minds, habits, and personalities of some of the great writers.   One even says he doesn't schedule the writing, the writing schedules him.  Another talks about what I sometimes consider an obstacle:  "internet ablutions."

I know a young writer who goes to a cafe to write.  Others write before work, or after the rest of the world goes to sleep.  I don't have any one habit, myself, but my favorite is mocha coffee in the morning, or music late at night.

Anyone else have habits?  Do they help?  What's the oddest habit you know of?

     What is writing?  What is in it?  What is the spirit of the thing?  Sometimes it is fun.  An escape that we need.  Sometimes it is serious, an exploration of an issue that we must face.  The genius of the best writing is when it is both.
     Denise Levertov talks of the poets in the Northwest, who write with a dimension that takes in not just "the appearance of phenomena, but the presence of spirit WITHIN the phenomena."  ("Some Affinities of Content", 1991)  To give an example of this, she quotes a poem by Sam Hamill, Black Marth Eclogue.  Part of this poem, about a heron, I will quote here:
       "He stands in the black marsh
        more monument than bird, a wizened prophet
        returned from a vanished mythology.
        He watches the hearts of things."
     This is such an outstanding poem, and displays perfectly the spirit of the bird, as well as the bird itself - an ephemeral meaning behind eye and feather - without interposing the viewer.  The scene has a spiritualism all of its own, a proto-spiritualism.  The heron, a large bird, is presented as a prophet of old, and all sorts of imagery and meaning is brought to bear.  With that meaning, confronting a prophet of the past, we move in our minds.  We get an escape from the city life we face, an escape from the stresses of honking cars, work deadlines, and bills due, into a scene of peace, of myth, of something older and wiser than us.  Through that, we can inject our issues.  That issue may strike each of us differently.  The art has drawn us in.  For some it could be, "Where should we be?  What should we be seeking?"
     An example not from nature, but still of this phenomenon and the spirit within, is in a poem by Barbara Alfaro, The Rocking Chair, from First Kiss (2012).   Here, the literal spirit of a boy is present, but it's the deeper spirit of loss, of hanging on, that moves this.  The opening is quoted here:
       "In the nursery the ghost of a boy stands
        on a rocking chair, holding its back.
        A miniature prisoner of wood,
        he is looking through its slats."
     We look through the slats of such good poems and writing, and find our own spirits, our own issues, and our escapes.  We may or may not have suffered the loss of a child,  but all of us have lost, and hung on.   Who has not been a miniature prisoner at some point in their lives?  Or looked through our own slats?  Hopefully, we read and write ourselves to go on, to be better, to find the spirit of an event, a place, a bird, or a rocking chair not yet thrown away.  Then, we find the spirit of a thing, and perhaps, maybe, of ourselves.