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<\/a>Chesterton.\u00a0 I was of course familiar with the name Virginia Woolf, and knew enough to spell her last name with two O\u2019s, but knew nothing of her writing.<\/p>\nThese two random essays seemed very similar \u2013 Chesterton buys a piece of chalk to draw a picture on a piece of brown paper, and Woolf goes out on a evening walk to buy a pencil.\u00a0 Reading just these pieces the aspiring essayist could believe that the secret to success is a closely drawn description of a trivial errand interwoven with some philosophical observations.\u00a0 In fact, this seems like very good advice, and as I sit here at my desk, I cast my eyes about for some triviality.\u00a0 I am lucky to have a panoramic view of a prairie, and multiple nature-themed essays come to mind, but they seem just too grand.\u00a0 I need something smaller.\u00a0 Perhaps if a bird suddenly thudded into the window, I could describe my tender stewardship in finding the bird\u2019s final resting place as I watch its agonal flutters.\u00a0 I could segue into a commentary contrasting the end-of-life care of animals vs. people, and the relative merits of sudden violent death versus a slow trickling ebb.\u00a0 But that is just too heavy, man.\u00a0 I will leave that subject aside for now, though I will retain \u201cAgonal Flutters\u201d as a suitably provocative title for when I am older and the issue is more pressing.<\/p>\n
I get up and walk to the window and peer out into the two deep window wells to see if there are any trapped animals that could provide me with the small moment.\u00a0 No \u00a0luck.\u00a0 One year we had a bizarre influx of frogs, presumably due to some once-in-a-decade coincidence of moisture, temperature and several other intertwined X factors.\u00a0 We routinely found frogs in our finished basement and were puzzled as to how they got there. \u00a0 \u00a0My sister-in-law was startled from her pleasant respite on the porcelain throne by a nonchalant frog hopping by.\u00a0 My cousin Edie put her suitcase down in the basement guest room and several days later was saddened to discover she had inadvertently crushed a frog.\u00a0 I reached into a basket of yarn and found a mummified frog, who was probably initially thrilled to find such a soft landing spot, and then desperate as he became fatally entangled in the fine wool. The window wells were filled with live frogs.\u00a0 My nephew would jump in and pitch the frogs out onto the moist grass.\u00a0 I could hold a frog and look right into his bright eyes and imagine what strange fate brought us together, perhaps describing how the frog suddenly tumbled into the abyss, the struggles to eke out a living among the dank stones, and his lucky escape.\u00a0 This is exactly the strategy that Woolf uses in her essay.\u00a0 She imagines the lives of the strangers she passes on the street based on small snippets of overhead conservation \u2013 the dwarf buying a new pair of shoes, the quarreling shopkeepers or two blind men.\u00a0 Woolf is indeed impressive \u2013 she turns a simple act of buying a pencil into a tour de force spanning 9 pages and some 5,600 words.\u00a0 In contrast, I typically run out of things to say after about 1500 words.<\/p>\n
I find no inspiration in the window wells today, and sit back down at my desk.\u00a0 I lean down to find my other shoe and for a moment rest my eyes on my foot. \u00a0I need look no further, there it is \u2013 the perfect topic for this writing exercise of turning nothing into something.<\/p>\n
Specifically, I want to focus on my left foot, since to dissect my right foot would require a description of the unhappy marriage of fungus and a toenail, more formally known as onchymycosis, a subject that flirts with the uncomfortable fringes of too much information.\u00a0 My left foot is a bit scuffed up from a morning of gardening but otherwise unsullied and suitable for discussion.\u00a0 I find the format of my toes most satisfying with a steady and even progression from the stalwart big toe to the diminutive pinky, which perfectly snuggles its neighbor.\u00a0 Other foot styles, with a second toe longer than the first, or a knobby and gangly big toe, don\u2019t have the same panache.\u00a0 While I have no illusions that I could multi-task as a foot model, I will say that I have absolutely no complaints about my feet.\u00a0 They have served me well, and I try to do right by them.\u00a0 I have never crammed then into pointy shoes or teetered on stiletto heels.<\/p>\n Summers we spend hiking in the untrampled woods of the upper peninsula Michigan.\u00a0 The trails are well-worn, but sometimes I wonder if I just stray off the trail a little bit, maybe as little as 100 yards, I could be the first ever human to make a bipedal imprint in the leaf litter, the first in the 50,000 years that humans have been in North America.\u00a0 Neil I bend down to hold my thumb next to my big toe, anatomically known as the hallux, and they look suitably similar.\u00a0 My parents had a neighbor who was in a terrible farming accident involving a hand and a thresher, the way farmers do.\u00a0 The solution was to surgically move the hallux to the raggedy hand and repurpose it as a thumb.\u00a0 My big toe would be a bit oversized for my hand, but otherwise I would welcome the gerry-rigging.<\/p>\n While we might think an opposable thumb is the hallmark of being human, I know that I should really value my two feet planted firmly on the ground.\u00a0 Evolutionary anthropologists point out that a bipedal gait is the defining characteristic of humans.\u00a0 \u00a0Other primates have opposable thumbs after all, but we are the only mammal that walks, and walking was the prerequisite for our other treasured attributes, such as free hands to make tools, and breathing that could be uncoupled from our gait, permitting the development of speech.\u00a0\u00a0 And once we started walking, we could hunt for protein rich meat, and then, properly nourished, our brain really took off.<\/p>\n What a marvel my foot is \u2013 with some 26 bones, 33 joints and over 100 muscles, tendons and ligaments.\u00a0 Lest we get too caught up in the wonders of evolution, I would like to point out that evolution does not have an agenda in mind and does not seek excellence, but only something just good enough to provide an edge in that jungle out there.<\/p>\n A good example of this phenomenon is the good but not great bipedal sense of balance.\u00a0 I know my balance is poor, and growing more tenuous with age.\u00a0 Just this morning I tripped over a hose at the garden supply store and fell into a murky puddle.\u00a0 I suffered nothing more than embarrassment and a skinned knee whose scab might be fun to pick at in a week\u2019s time.\u00a0 But perhaps tripping was just a careless accident related to sloppy footwork, and I should be grateful to my sense of balance for saving me from a more disastrous header.\u00a0 Now I\u2019m all cleaned up and sit watching the acrobatic swallows outside my window and jealously think of the flamingo who finds hours of relaxation standing on one foot. \u00a0When I stand on one foot, I bob and waver.\u00a0 If I close my eyes it gets worse and the other foot touches the floor in less than a minute.\u00a0 But I don\u2019t blame my feet.\u00a0 As I look down I see the muscles sequentially quiver in a heroic attempt to stay upright. My toes arch and clench and the big toe is working so hard.\u00a0 It would definitely be a sacrifice in balance, if, god forbid, the toe ever needs to become a thumb.<\/p>\n That\u2019s all I need to say, and yes, kind readers, as predicted this essay clocks in at about 1500 words.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s say you ******* to be writer, but then you lost your way.<\/p>\n You developed writer\u2019s block – couldn\u2019t think of what to say.<\/p>\n Others found success in disclosing dark thoughts from the depths of *******<\/p>\n But you\u2019re happy and peppy and there\u2019re some things you just don\u2019t want to share.<\/p>\n So think small – Chesterton became famous writing about a simple piece of chalk<\/p>\n And Virginia Woolf was ******* for her (well-written) essay about an evening walk.<\/p>\n *<\/p>\n *<\/p>\n *<\/p>\n *<\/p>\n *<\/p>\n *<\/p>\n *<\/p>\n *<\/p>\n *<\/p>\n *Aspired, despair, praised<\/p>\nFollow Liza Blue on: One of the books on the reading list for my upcoming writer\u2019s workshop is \u201cThe Art of the Personal Essay,\u201d a 700+ page anthology of essays ranging from Seneca (AD3-65) to present day.\u00a0 I decided to pick my selection by … Continue reading <\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>Armstrong is justifiably proud of his one small lunar step, and I would imagine a picture of the first dusty footprint hangs prominently in his office.\u00a0 But even though I am relentlessly earthbound, I would like to think that there might be one or two unique footprints in a lifetime of millions.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\nThe missing words in the following poem are anagrams (i.e. share the same letters like spot, post, stop) and the number of asterisks indicates the number of letters.\u00a0 Your job is to solve the missing words based on the above rules and the context of the poem.\u00a0 Scroll down for answers.<\/em><\/h6>\n
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