Words gathered chopped stirred and mixed

Their flavor seeps out

Continue with instant maple nut oatmeal, a pat of butter, some almonds, a banana and a glass of milk. Two percent. Jerry’s Farm, Mulino, OR. Coffee once. New Seasons Concordia Blend. French press.

Toothpaste. Peppermint with baking soda.

Coffee again, thicker and coarser, dripped from a DeLonghi machine in the kitchen of a temporary workplace.

Tap water.

Sub-par street cart seafood ramen served in a plastic container. Wet noodles, orange broth and a gritty mussel. Tortilla chaser. More water.

A third cup of coffee.

A third cup of water.

Finish work, play some pinball, drink a happy hour beer. A Ninkasi. IPA.

Taste the beer fading from your breath as you bus home. Start savoring the thought of the leftover chicken you roasted the night before.

Decompress.

A wing, a thigh and a few other scraps. Roasted root vegetables. Turnips and parsnips and carrots and beets reheated in the microwave. Dave’s Killer Blues Bread and melted butter. More water.

Start writing.

However, if I were staying town, there are a number of things I might do:

• Check out what the Cascades Volcano Observatory has to say about the 30th anniversary of the eruption of Mt. St. Helens.
• Explore the Sunday Parkways in Northeast.
• Make up for totally spacing last Saturday on National Train Day and ride the train somewhere.
• Find a hammock to string up in my yard and whip together some micheladas.
• Finally finish reading The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring after eight years of constantly losing every copy of Tolkein‘s classic I get.
• Write letters on my typewriter.
• Head to the coast and see if there are any last minute yurt cancellations (doubtful).

Have anything else a would-be me should do? Let me know in the comments … and share some ideas for later when I’m actually not somewhere that’s not where I am right now.

The day takes shape slowly. Getting out the door just happens. Once you do the bus is ten minutes late. Then so is the MAX, but you don’t mind. You’ve been quietly extricating yourself from time. You wait in the chill beneath an interstate, listening to teenagers gossip. Staring at the spikes lining the steel beams beneath the roadway you think perhaps a bit too long about pigeon deterrence.

Boarding the wide slick new cars of the Green Line, you laugh occasionally at a Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me podcast and take another stab at the crossword you started two days prior. Disembarking in Lents, you pass a crop of green, swirling, solar panel-topped sculptures, walk beyond cold, new planters toward Foster Road and gaze on Lincoln’s giant face on the side of the New Copper Penny.

This landscape is neither foreign nor familiar, a domestic banlieue swept to the edge of the green movement’s model city.

The mission is murky at best. You walk west under another freeway, looking for a well-reviewed video game merchant you found online. It’s not clear why you went this far. You don’t play games often enough to make them a destination, though you suspect the entire point was to ask just such questions. Wedged next to a 7-11, the store is smaller than you imagined, as cluttered and cramped inside as the clamoring chaos of the intersection between which it’s squeezed. A man lingers at the counter, trying to squeeze pennies from the business as he sells old games. There are two many people in the store. Despite nostalgia stirred by the pile of old NES games all you want to do is leave. Asking a quick question of the clerk, he assumes you’re there to make a trade and for some reason won’t look in your eyes when he talks with you. Nothing in the store interests you enough to make a purchase.

Not quite ready for lunch, you head the other way beneath the freeway to see if you can find some sort of treasure to justify the journey. Past a barber shop and tiny antique shop and a handful of businesses closed for the weekend, all you can see in the distance is a long road.

You turn back toward the MAX line, but can’t ignore a taqueria down a side street. Inside, fake pepper and onion and garlic plants line the ceiling. Elephant statues raise their trunks from every surface behind the counter. They’re outnumbered only by ducks. Rubber ducks. Ceramic mallards. Wooden drakes and plastic hens. Ducks. Everywhere.

Everything else is as traditional as taquerias seem anywhere. Staticy TV stations play spanish-language music videos. Hand-written specials fill a dry-erase board. A dozen bottles of hot sauces and salsas sit on the edge of every table. The red, white and green of the Mexican flag on the wall mirrors the facade’s paint job.

You make your order quickly, and simply. Tacos. One pollo, one pastor, and one cabeza.

You sit down at a middle booth, ponder discoveries and road trips and that burning itch to travel. When you pull from your bag the latest issue of Harper’s, it opens to an excerpt from a writer who spent five weeks in residency at London’s Heathrow Airport. He describes arrivals. Expectancy. The cultural filters thousands of us pass through each and every day. Crunching tortilla chips and hot salsa you sink into the words, wishing you wrote that way, or that you could be there, documenting the everyday, spinning it into lush, rich language.

A family comes through the door, led by a girl of no more than seven hobbling on a cane. She’s dwarfed by the boisterous entry of her oversized relatives. They settle into the larger table in the middle of the room. You find yourself inching away as one sits near you, the slightly unpleasant odor of her exhaustion hitting your nostrils just as your meal arrives.

Embarrassed by your quick judgment, you let the discomfort pass and eavesdrop on their cheerful Saturday afternoon conversation. They plan errands. The mother recalls a long-passed uncle’s favorite foods. The boys and girls chirp. A man, a boyfriend or brother or son, sits at the head of the table and doesn’t utter a word. Not one. The women talk about an 18-year-old niece’s thwarted hopes to hire a male stripper. The $150 cost of the house-call is too high and she’s too young to go to the 21-and-over club in town with male exotic dancers. Mother and daughter and aunt discuss the situation as the younger kids laugh and joke, oblivious. It doesn’t seem anything is resolved, except the family’s decision to include tacos with breaded fried beef in their order.

You sprinkle a little too much habenero sauce on top of your second taco, the chicken. A middle-class couple walks in. The woman is cute, blonde, maybe mid-30′s and wearing a long, knit sweater-jacket. Her partner is about the same age, with a meticulously cropped red beard around his chin and a tight, pastel green t-shirt from another Northwestern metropolis. They ponder the menu and make their orders. They’re loud, somehow more so than the sum cacophony of the family, which somehow seems to have gained even more members in the fifteen minutes or so they’ve been in the restaurant.

You turn your attention away and sip your lime Jarritos. A waiter offers more tortilla chips. Though you decline, on each of your remaining five or six you carefully dab a few drops of a different sauce to find just the right one for your last taco. The name of the favorite escapes you now, but you sprinkle it carefully on the taco, only a touch so as not to overpower the pork.

Taking a bite, you sit back in the booth and notice another herd of elephant figurines in the corner.

In the middle of the night I had it all figured out. In a journal rescued from stack of half-finished tomes, I penned thoughts about what I am doing here, free of school, free of work and ready to cast out on my own yet again. Writing with a sudden fervor, I listed the major projects I wanted to work on, projects I’ve discussed tangentially here on this site from time to time, and repeatedly in conversation with my friends and family. I knew what it was I wanted to do. After an uneasy weekend of random, mounting bits of disappointment and frustration, I went to bed content.

Hours after waking, it all seems to have dissipated. I can’t start one project for fear it will distract from another. I send out queries. I update my résumé. I catch up on my reading. I research. I follow-up and I wait in silence.

Meanwhile, the life I want surrounds me. The radio crackles behind me as I type. Through a light fog of static Warren Olney spends 45 minutes catching listeners up on the rapidly changing situation in Iran then deftly switches the topic to American policy in Afghanistan.

Across the room one of my typewriters rests on a table. The paper is rolled up to reveal the few lines of faint text I’ve randomly typed on it. A reused sheet, I can see enough of the paper’s opposite side to know it’s an old 460 — a California campaign finance reporting document — printout I must have consulted for some story about political donations, or one I hoped to tell. It makes me hunger to pore over documents, to analyze connections, to question and prod and explore.

A pile of books sits stacked against my bed. Stories and stories and stories full. I want to tell so many similar tales. I want to bring people and places to life; to recount histories of far-off lands as well as all-too-familiar backyards. I want to look beneath the veneer of political and social idealism to the true machinations occurring in even the most progressive atmospheres. I want to translate complex knowledge to lush, page-turning narratives about the fascinating processes governing this world in which we live.

On one corner of my computer screen a little box occasionally lights up. It tells me I’ve received new updates about stories I’ve been following. Subjects that matter to me. Right now it’s announcing the release of the full text of a new federal transportation reauthorization bill in Congress. It seems boring, but what it contains will directly shape how we get around our neighborhoods, our cities, and our country. I want to dive into the text, to carve it up, to continue one thread of my master’s project. Then I realize that project still sits on a shelf. I wonder whether it will see the light of day, whether the editor pondering it will write me back, will find it suitable for publication, will believe that I have something to say, a story to tell that no one else can tell.

I’ve talked about this project for months and I’m starting to feel like a lier, like a cheat, like I’ve told all these people how I was compiling this grand tale of movement and transportation in Los Angeles. So far, most of them haven’t seen word one. It’s there, it’s on the page, and I think it’s fantastic. I think about it every time I ride the subway or the bus, or tell someone I am doing so and they look at me quizzically, as if they’re shocked to learn there are ways to move about this vast, deep city without a car.

I understand – trust me I understand and kinda don’t want to discuss – that the publishing world is rapidly changing. Even if it weren’t, it takes time and patience to get something published. But I wonder about the rules of the game. With information spreading so rapidly how am I supposed to do this, to wait patiently on a story that is constantly evolving? Even if things go well with this story, how do we publish, how do we write or report anything? How do we set boundaries? Do we just say “that’s the story” even as it continues to change? Do we just cut convenient slices of ever-lengthening timelines out?

I’ve just finished reading Roxana St. Thomas’s most recent “Notes from the Breadline.” The poetry in her words. The honesty. Most importantly, the resounding familiarity of her situation, despite our differing professions, has brought me close to the point of tears. When she wonders why she left “The Big Law Firm” I ponder why I left my Big Job, then finished school feeling less certain than before about where I wanted to be, more certain than ever about my ability to do it, and completely lost about how I could ever fit into this transitioning world of journalism.

She ultimately recognizes the fight she has left in her and I think of the times I’ve come to the same realization, of the numerous times I’ve gotten off the mat, of the blessings I’ve counted, of the gratitude I have for the ceaseless support from my family and of the friends who have lately been crawling out of the woodwork. But I also feel the ebb and flow more than ever, the impermanence, the sensation that everything about where I am is foreign. I feel as I always have: neither here nor there. Too experienced to start completely fresh, not quite accomplished enough to stand out.

I’ve become good at what I call step one. Last week at the Los Angeles Press Club’s Southern California Journalism Awards I countered my disappointment at not making my mark beyond a finalist in the commentary category by introducing myself to a few people I wanted to meet, getting my name and my card out there, and getting excited about journalism again. The question, now, is what is step two? I’m there, making the connections. What do I do with them? More importantly, why am I asking? Shouldn’t I know by now? Shouldn’t that be what I learned, if not in my years as a professional journalist then certainly during my master’s studies?

The day after the Press Club awards I set up shop at a Melrose coffee shop and spent hours reading old Lascher at Large columns. The originals. The ones my dad wrote. The ones I always heard about at the childhood dinner table but never really grasped. For much of my adult life I’ve avoided them because I just didn’t want my entire writing career to be some sort of cliched following-in-my-father’s-footsteps endeavor. Finally, a few months ago, I realized they really had something relevant to say, something worth expanding upon.

Last week I sat at this coffee shop watching the traffic pass and savoring the sun despite irritation from a nearby smoker. I was riveted. In my father’s words I found a tremendous richness, a biting wit, a sense of humor and an intelligence I wasn’t old enough to appreciate before he passed away. I don’t want to idolize a man I really barely knew, and there were elements of his legal columns that really are too specific to his field and his time to be of much interest, either to a general audience or a current one. Still, I did find threads I will eagerly pick up and weave, not just into my own writing, but into today’s contemporary political and social discussions.

As I was saying before, though, do I pick that up or one of these other projects? Those with whom I’ve spoken are probably wondering about other plans of mine I’ve discussed. Where have they gone? Why am I not focused on them? I won’t detail them here. I’ve articulated them again and again. Repeating what I want to write about like a mantra is meaningless if I don’t do any of the actual writing (just as journalists’ pondering repeatedly of how to monetize and disseminate their work means nothing if they have nothing to monetize and share).

My problem isn’t forgetting what’s simmering on the backburner. It’s figuring out what I’m trying to cook in the first place.

]]> http://lascheratlarge.com/2009/06/22/cooking-up-frustration/feed/ 1 http://lascheratlarge.com/2009/06/09/whats-next-and-marathon-love/ http://lascheratlarge.com/2009/06/09/whats-next-and-marathon-love/#comments Tue, 09 Jun 2009 19:24:07 +0000 Bill http://lascheratlarge.com/?p=444 New posts coming this week:

– Posts on production and consumption versus conservation; – Environmental critiques of train travel; – The ultimate (if not particularly green) multi-modal vacation; – Dodger Stadium gets even less accessible; – Privacy, chatting and (in)visibility.

To

Read the rest of What’s Next and Marathon Love

New posts coming this week:

– Posts on production and consumption versus conservation;
– Environmental critiques of train travel;
– The ultimate (if not particularly green) multi-modal vacation;
– Dodger Stadium gets even less accessible;
– Privacy, chatting and (in)visibility.

To keep you sated, I’ve been meaning to post some of my photographs from my time handing out beer with the Los Angeles County Hash House Harriers (A decent description of the hash is available on Wikipedia. A more complex, compelling history is available here.) at the 21st mile of this year’s Los Angeles Marathon.  Click here or on the photo to the left for a gallery. It was my first time ever seeing the marathon in person and it really is an inspiring sight. More than anything, as the hours passed it struck me just how many kinds of people of seemingly wide-ranging fitness levels (all far more impressive than my own) ran the marathon. Knowing a few people who have run this or other marathons I know how much training and preparation goes into the endeavor, and the payoff was evident on every runner, walker and wheel-chair operator (I can’t think of an adequate term to describe the efforts of the wheelchair racers) even as some struggled to make that last 5.2 miles. Some smiled, some grimaced, but all carried on.

Anyhow, this description from Yirko at LA Blogitudes, who ran the race himself, is far more moving than anything I could ever write, so pay it a visit.

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It’s late, but I know the way it would look in the sunlight, the circuit boards stretching between the foothills and the sea, the life filling every crevice. But I am somewhat comforted by these thoughts. They distract from the sensation of my ears recalibrating to the shifting pressure through our descent.

Where I previously pondered how nothing spurs the familiarity I feel arriving in Portland, I suddenly realize I could say, looking at this ocean of electroluminescence, that nothing could ever recreate or replace Los Angeles. In ways I never realize until these final moments marveling as the city spreads across the horizon as far as can be imagined, it seems unconstrained and inimitable.

I am convinced in this moment that the city is limitless, recreating itself as it crawls across the landscape. Too many discount it as a disjointed whole lacking some maturity shared by the world’s great destinations. But it is only here, it is only this sea of stories crashing upon each other, glittering from the ripples in the water. As the waves draw near I know I am here, only here, perhaps realizing only further that home means far less than a mindset. It is just another constructed identity.

Later, on the Fly Away, even in the dark, even among the all-male handful of riders, I reconnect with Los Angeles. The creaking, vibrating bus brings me back, even though I can see little out the windows as we drive up the Harbor freeway in the middle of the night. My thoughts earlier may have landed in Portland, but now I am taking off to this next step, to a broader sensation, to travel, to movement, to a world outside my doors and beyond my routine.

Maybe i spoke too soon about home, about how it is defined, about what I’ve internalized. Perhaps when I discussed the comfort of Portland I was more right than I thought about what it meant to be home, that it wasn’t a place or time, just a sensation, a way of life, a way of knowing that all other moments spread out from this one, here.

I wrote this piece more than a week ago, still longing wistfully for Portland but certain upon taking off through the streets of L.A. there was more to learn about the city that beckoned my entire life. How could I now desire Portland when I knew I had barely scratched L.A.’s surface?

I struggled publishing any of this, as the week evolved and I tumbled back into my consciousness and fumbled through my everyday, trying to make sense of it, not knowing how any of these cities I stumble through fit together. I struggled with this split feeling, the sensation that all too often I feel these days, that leaves me paralyzed, not sure how to take off. The deep split. Do I try to bridge these chasms, learn to live on one side, or remain forever at the edge, contemplating a leap?

This matters to me because I struggle with what this site might become and what it could be. I am studying journalism and practicing it, and yet I have no energy left for it here, where I declare myself to the world. Likewise, I use the name of my father’s column, but I’ve yet to really capture the essence of what he did with it, or even attempt to. I keep pondering who is out there, hungry for information and reading this, judging and deciding to either follow what I have to say or take off, never to return again, because I have yet again said little of substance and produced little of the environmental and science and cultural reporting I’ve promised, and, instead, have sunk into this same self-absorbed pondering of urban choices, these private splits that I should resolve before the public gets involved, yet this is my lens, this is my now.

That said, get a taste of some of my previous reporting by visiting my clips page.

Yesterday morning I drove along Lombard Street. Stopped at a light where Lombard intersects with Albina, I pondered a craft store in a small house on the north side of the road. A large shingle hanging in the yard read “Yesterday and Tomorrow.” From the road I could see through the windows to view what looked like vases and sculptures and other knick-knacks, but the store’s name and the fact the sign featured a dragon (See postscript) made it hard not to think it catered to lovers of fantasy novels and science fiction. I thought of Renaissance Fair fans and Trekkies and how the two groups share a category somewhere in my brain.

Something dawned on me. Fans of these genres spend so much of their entire lives concerned with either what has been (in a loose sense, since we’re talking about fantasy), or what might be (as fanciful as such visions may be constructed). I don’t say this out of judgment, for I admittedly enjoy a great deal of science fiction and the odd medieval-themed book or movie. Still, it’s an unsettling thought. What about the beauty of the present?

I’d rather not delve into a cultural/literary critique, especially because I don’t want to discount the power and beauty of imagination. Nonetheless, these thoughts arose as I’ve pondered the intersection of my own present with my past and future. Here in Portland this week I’ve seen how so many paths have intersected. I’m always awed as I drive East and West by the 10 bridges spanning the Willamette River, and only now am realizing that Portland itself has been the backdrop for so many transitions across my own life.

Over the past year I’ve flown into this city three times. There’s something about landing here that stirs a tremendous amount of nostalgia. When I land in Portland, it feels like home. I understand where I am. I see where I’ve been. It feels like a real arrival, unlike any other city I’ve been to. It makes a certain amount of sense.

Whether it’s mist dancing through City Center skyscrapers or bursts of green splashed across the outskirts of town, everything seems to fit together. Certainly, Portland isn’t quite the emerald masterpiece it’s cracked up to be. Like most American cities, Portland displays the scars of sprawl. As I landed, I saw huge swaths of recently-sprung developments. From the air, the foreclosure signs and anxious faces that surely populate many of the capillary-like cul-de-sacs were invisible. All I could discern were patches of conformity spreading around the city. Visible evidence of turn-of-this-century greed that left this and all of America reeling.

It’s so jarring, because on the ground Portland proper, if not its suburbs, swirls with the pot luck attitude of a true community, although strong, valid critiques exist of redevelopment within the city as well. Far more than any place I’ve been in the United States except perhaps, as a matter of fact, the original Portland, this is a self-determined city, including the blemishes of its modernity.

As I land and swirl through so many past worlds of mine, I remember I can move about the city without thought. However, I’m still constantly discovering more beneath Portland’s surface. The only time I ever had a similar sensation was at my five-year college reunion last year, and that feeling was aided by the presence of so many others who had experienced that period of my life with me. But where the grounding I find among my undergraduate peers is most firmly rooted in a mindset, there seem to be physical roots here in Portland.

It’s strange as well because if my sense of home has something to do with the experience of landing in a city, I’d imagine my ties to L.A. would be stronger. Where I can count the number of times I’ve flown into PDX on my fingertips, my journeys to and from LAX are innumerable and stretch back to my youngest days. But the meaning carried by a descent into Los Angeles is far different, likely because until last summer I had never resided there. I’m still forming my understanding of Los Angeles and the placement of that megalopolis into my mindset. I’m still defining what it means to me. As much as I’ve come to love the city and begun to understand its layered intricacies, I am far from knowing it, from internalizing it the way I’ve internalized Portland.

And the thing is, i don’t know if I ever will, and not just because Los Angeles is such a massive place by comparison. It’s something deeper. When I am in Portland I feel little more than the now. Like the city, I’m not perfect when it comes to finding serenity, but, I think importantly, I don’t feel rushed to find it. In L.A., as I did in Ventura, I feel I’m constantly trying to get my footing. To get settled.

That divergence might be stronger now, when I feel myself trying to pack an entire life into a one-year graduate program, then find myself this week coming to understand perhaps more deeply than I ever have just what it means to be on vacation. I am aware there are thousands struggling to live in Portland. Thousands without the luxury I’ve had this week of time and loved ones and treasured friends with whom I can reconnect. Thousands standing at the precipice of an uncertain future, as there are across the world. But I also am finally at a point in my life where I’m finding it’s pointless to fight the way I feel about anything so I will savor this sensation.

This weekend, a couple days after I landed in Portland and first started forming these thoughts, I thought about what Portland and the other parts of Oregon that have been a part of my life really mean to me. In my life it has been not just a place of respite, but something of a transitional zone. A buffer. I move through lives here. Most of the major phases of my adult life have been book-ended by travels, sometimes quite literally, through the state. These journeys have been moments of re-centering, of rediscovery.

At many instances I find myself upon bridges traversing two sensations. I have rebuilt myself, found esoteric escapes and torn down shells of myself here even as I have simmered amid apprehension and self-doubt and pushed myself beyond my limits. When I’m here, I find myself chasing the faintest of distant lights and simultaneously fighting to stand firm against the over-exuberant facets of my personality. I find myself wandering through semi-charmed moments of surreality as if amid dreams yet feeling incredibly alert.

Again, I’m still here. My words still get tied, get excessive, they get me in trouble and go too far. Somehow, though, Somehow even if I resist, I know there is comfort and rest here. I know myself here. I can free myself, I can be myself here, whether the “here” is this moment, this place or neither.

Postscript:

I took a few moments to peruse the Web site of the Yesterday and Tomorrow store after I Googled its name. I didn’t get too far, but I did notice this hilarious description of one category of their products.

“Our Gargoyles & Dragons are only visiting us, while they are waiting for just the right person and place to call home.  A few stay only a day and some are much more picky and stay a while. So we never know who will be here moment by moment, but it seems that as one moves out another moves in. There always seems to be a number underfoot. Big & Little, they come in all sizes, some like to be tucked in small places and some like to be the center of the show.”

I don’t have any specific qualm with the magazine, nor the city for which it is named. Every now and then, particularly last summer, when I was transitioning between incarnations of my life, I’d actually read an article or two in the magazine (don’t ask me which — my apologies to the authors, but they just didn’t leave very lasting impressions). Usually, the magazine would just get filed away, stacked toward the middle of my pile of magazines and books to read.

Thankfully, my subscription is finally nearing its end and I can give away my last copies on Freecycle. If there’s nothing else I’ve learned in life recently it’s that there are people in this life who want and can make use of just about anything in this world.

Today, I got yet another copy, oddly enough, since I received the previous issue on Tuesday (There seems to be no rhyme nor reason to New York’s circulation). As I climbed the stairs to my apartment I found my thumbs skipping across the pages, but I didn’t really glance at what they said.

Then, this evening, my not quite as old as it sometimes acts laptop overheated right as I was in the middle of watching an episode of Lost. While I waited for the computer to reboot I went about my apartment, shuffling papers and washing a few dishes and generally pretending to be busy. I got to the front door adjacent bookshelf upon which mail gets stacked for innumerable weeks and grabbed the New York i received this week. Flipping through, I landed on a page listing a few restaurant openings and closings.

Then I saw it. What would appear to my wondering eyes but none other than the home of “Crispy Chickenjoy” and “Juicy Yumburgers.” Jollibee.

Oh the joys of coincidence. Since the day I moved to L.A. and passed the giant, gleeful bee scultpure outside a drive through fast food joint, Jollibee has pervaded my consciousness. In the following months, friends and family have all discussed the joint, yet I haven’t had any crispy poultry or tasty beef patties. Just last night I mentioned to a friend how curious I am about Jollibee and was reminded, as I learned a few months ago, that the restaurant is actually a popular Filipino fast food chain.

Somehow I feel cheated that it made it to New York’s openings list before it even got a mention in L@L. It’s not so much that I’m protective of my L.A. gems, but that it seems a latent instance of the somewhat annoying  irony fad that so infected  late 90′s and early 00′s Western culture, often fueled by inaccurate understanding of the term’s definition.  Perhaps, perhaps not. Whatever the case, I still keep picturing New York‘s food editors thinking how recession-chic it might be to list a new fast food outlet among the openings.

Yes, my computer is fine. And yes Lost was great. I’m a sucker.

In other news. Did anyone hear about the Octopus at the Santa Monica Aquarium? Crazy.

Another typewriter sat on a table across the room. A portable Corona, its curved black shell was decorated with a gold-colored paint, although the decoration was muted somewhat by the years passed since the  machine was owned by the journalist Melville Jacoby, a cousin of my grandmother’s who died in an accident in the Pacific as he covered World War II. Better known as Mel Jacks, I hope to share his story another time — I only invoke him now because I can’t help thinking about those machines, about what it feels to squeeze words onto those pages and what it feels like at this moment to string words across this screen.

As I typed on my dad’s typewriter, it felt as if the keys shook off the years, stretching after a long slumber. They began moving with ever more ease, every more confidence. With them, my words arrived more readily and honestly.

So as I launch this publication I felt these thoughts come first in fits and starts. I distracted myself. I procrastinated until eventually I found my rhythm. Thinking less and feeling more, I found the words coming more quickly. Like the keys on the typewriter eventually had, my fingers moved more readily, more confidently. They found their pace as I found my groove.

I stopped worrying about design elements and readership and who my audience was, what they thought and why it mattered. I stopped worrying and pressed my fingers to the keys. I stopped worrying and felt. I stopped worrying and observed. I stopped worrying and wrote.

Launching this publication I think about these machines. So many people in my field — loosely, journalism — agonize over what to do next, what to do with this digital age. As we fret and flail we risk forgetting about the words we’re stringing together, the information we’re reflecting upon and sharing, and the stories we’re telling. Whether breath on our lips, ink spread across a page, keys hammering into a ribbon or electrons running through a circuit, I’m concerned with how thoughts are captured, contained, altered and disseminated.

I don’t believe it’s true that journalism is dying. It is simply changing. Yet, too many people are trying too hard, throwing whatever they can at the wall until they see what sticks. This site will have two goals, to provide in depth, unrushed reporting and storytelling, and to serve as a central repository for my past writing and clips.

I want to offer a contemplative web publication. Something pondered and researched and unrushed whenever possible. We can innovate and tweet and network, but none of that means anything if we’re not able to articulate anything, if we’re not able to say why what we’re doing matters.

I’d like to think I’ll be appealing to those who value complete writing combined with an extensive eye. My readers might be those who want perspective on the world wider than a slim glimpse, something more than just a taste. Instead, I hope to offer a deeply connected, reflective banquet of thoughts.

I believe in a world that still values words but doesn’t neglect the power of images and sound. I believe in fierce independence in harmony with strong community bonds. I believe in a sense of place, whether that place is a neighborhood, a city, a nation, a biosphere, a world or a universe, or even whether the place is virtual, physical, mental or emotional.

With that in mind, I hope this site will reflect these perspectives.

So I draw on the past as well as the present for information. I think of Mel Jacks, but more importantly, I think about my father, Edward L. Lascher. I imagine some of those who end up at this site will know his name and the name Lascher at Large well.

Lascher at Large, authored for decades by my father, was more than a popular monthly legal affairs column in the California Bar Journal and the Los Angeles Daily Journal.

While this new incarnation doesn’t have a legal focus (despite my experience as a legal affairs columnist for the Pacific Coast Business Times — or the overabundance of J.D.’s surrounding my upbringing), I realize part of the charm of the original Lascher at Large was my father’s weaving of discussions of the legal world with thoughts on current events, reflections on gustatory delights, explorations of new wines, descriptions of foreign travels and even tales of ill-fated encounters with our family dog.

I’ll go more in my own direction on this blog, but I do hope to return from time to time to the original Lascher at Large and ask what has become of some of the topics long ago shelved and filed. What of the new courthouses and charming new wine shops? Where did the skilled lawyers go? How did the aftermath of then surprising decisions play out?