Coming along. Maybe I will finish it tomorrow. Cryptomeria, the next tree in the field guide, is tugging at my sleeve, but I’m really relishing this time with a beloved tree. I’m very happy with the way the glow is showing.
I’m very, very close to writing the Dewey Decimal number on all the books in my office. Before anyone gets worried about incipient OCD (cue my wife saying: “Incipient?”), hear me out.
There are about 10% of my books that I never know how to categorize. My office shelves have sections: worship resources like meditation collections. Scriptures of various religions. Philosophy. Religious education, preaching, fundraising, and other practical arts of ministry; fine. But then pastoral care shades into spiritual memoirs, books on healing through writing and art, others on aging, etc. And do books about our spiritual relationships with money go with fundraising or spiritual something-or-other?
And which books are history, which philosophy, which theology . . . ? I often find myself holding a book, trying to decide what shelf to put it on, and wondering what Dewey would have to say about it. (That’s Melvil Dewey, creator of Dewey Decimal Classification [DDC]. Not John Dewey, who maybe goes with Philosophy or maybe Humanism or maybe Unitarian Universalist History . . . )
Usually, I go with my gut. I figure, wherever I classify it in my own mind, that’s where I’ll look for it. That worked for a while, but it’s gotten harder as my library has grown. Plus, some of my most interesting books seem to cross categories.
Someone has already done all this work: Dewey and those who have further refined his categories over the years. So I’m leaning toward hitching a ride on their labors by putting books where the DDC would. Generally, this number is listed on the same page as the publication information. But to actually categorize them all means not only looking at those (at least for that non-obvious 10% or so), but remembering them. Making little piles, maybe, of the 210s and 220s and so on. And how will I remember which pile is which as I sit on my office floor, surrounded by books?
You see where this is headed. If I’m going to make a lot of little piles, it’s just as easy–and a lot clearer–to simply put the DDC number onto a label and stick it where I’ll see it, such as, oh, say, the spine of the book. Then, putting them all in order, and keeping them in order, will be easy and not depend on my memory at all.
The only catch is, when it’s all done, I will have an office that looks like a library, and people might look at me strangely. I don’t suppose that’s much of a change.
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Many nights, I am tempted to skip that day’s drawing, but I’ve stuck to it every time. Usually, even if I don’t sit down to it until 10 p.m., the process gives me energy and I’m glad to be drawing. But last night, I really wanted a break from both drawing and piano practice, gave it some serious consideration, and decided a day off was a good idea.
Today, I played piano and I drew, but this drawing is going to take a couple more days. It feels special to have gotten to it in the field guide: Sequoia sempervirens, our beloved coast redwood. And the reference photo I found conveys that quality of light that comes through the branches, and maybe explains it too: each needle, it turns out, is outlined by a glow where it thins to nothing. That’s what I want to get across in my drawing, so it will be a slow, careful process. Today I mostly just outlined the leaves.
See you tomorrow, Sequoia sempervirens.
Trying out an ink pen again . . .
The fact that this tree is commonly called “California nutmeg” threw me into a tizzy for a few minutes. Nutmeg? It is very aromatic . . . Wait, but it’s a yew. Does nutmeg come from a yew? Mind reeling . . . but no. It’s just called that because its cones look a lot like nutmegs.
The tree of so many Hebrew Bible verses. Native, yes, to the Middle East and Turkey, and planted in the Southeast and along the Pacific coast here.
I went to lie down for a while between dinner and family game night last night and slept right through until morning. That’s the first time I’ve missed a drawing day since beginning the leaves on January 1. I’m particularly sorry to have missed out on Sushi-Go with the family.
So I’m back to it today, and wanted to draw the cone again, this time with charcoal pencils.
I haven’t been giving the dimensions on these because it’s just too tedious to measure every day, but they are almost all in the same 6 x 8.5 sketchbook. Some really fill the page, while some, like this drawing, are quite a bit smaller.
They are tight, ovoid cones in the trees, but when they fall to the ground they often look like tiny, wizened roses.
Sermons in Stones 
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