Given lemons? Make lemonade. We know the saying and are, depending on our circumstances, either inspired or infuriated by it. My citrus-y dilemma is a hybrid of unanticipated free time and limited capacity on my laptop. Forget those mornings decades ago when I rose early to take a non-credit typing course. Yup, on an Olivetti Lettera complete with a carriage return and an encouraging bell that chimed to celebrate the completion of another line. (Too young to remember? Leroy Anderson captures it
here.) I completed pages of exercises in a pale gold workbook that google images could not unearth even after adding "vintage" to the search bar. Now I have regressed to a style similar to the ol' hunt and peck method. Sigh.
My solution? Haiku, a style of poems that originated in Japan. Three lines, seventeen syllables with punctuation optional. Perfect!
five, seven, and five
even I can write that much
in ninety minutes
My goal is to distill each "In the Shade" essay into a haiku poem. I may jump around a bit with the order of the chapters, much like Pam and I jumped around with the order of our hikes, and I may not finish. But I will try.
one-handed writing
(slow, cautious, tentative) suits
and imitates me
And when I'm done, perhaps an icy glass of lemonade, and bells to mark the completion of the final line.