Descriptive Noun Deleted

A few months ago, my editor sent me an email telling me that, though she liked the satirical column I had just submitted, she didn’t want to run it with a word I used three times: Moron.

Having learned long ago to trust editors in such cases, I simply made the changes: For George W. Bush I put “frat-boy.” For Donald Trump, “grifter.” For both of them, “disasters.”

No question that the substance of the column was improved by three more precise, descriptive nouns–although “moron” better suited the manic narrative voice ranting against “an insane asylum posing as a state.” In fact, had I not been writing for a newspaper, I’d have put an f-bomb with an “ing” in front of all three, and in a few other places in front of “Florida.”

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Yesterday morning, the town sent a couple trucks and a steamroller to the island to re-pave the last street attached to Sunset Blvd. before it enters the wildlife reserve and runs the length of the island. This is the intersection where I live, and because I’m up on a hill, I was able to look over the vehicles toward a distant horizon while having breakfast. Actually it was just one they left there while they went to work down the street, starting at the ocean side. The remaining truck was pulled in enough to let two cars pass in opposite directions on Sunset, though it was tight on that two-lane road.

Just as I dug in to my once-over eggs and rye toast, I watched a Subaru hatchback pull up directly across from the truck. When the driver got out, I assumed she was delivering something to the crew. Instead, she went to the back of her car, opened the hatch, pulled out a tripod, set it up roadside, put a camera the size of my leg on it, and started taking pictures of birds in the marsh.

For me to forget about food is as abnormal as a bank forgetting about a loan, but this birder could’ve snapped a hundred shots before my appetite snapped my lower jaw back into gear. She had nearly half a mile of Sunset Blvd. between here and the intersection to the causeway, and perhaps more than that going north toward the river. Past the parked truck, maybe another football field, Canadian no less, before the reserve. In the reserve, another 6.5 miles, though that would have required admission, or a pass. The birder had well over seven miles of road to pick, and she picked the one and only spot where she created a bottleneck.

I considered calling the police, but figured she’d be gone by the time they arrived. And it was a weekday, before Memorial Day, so traffic was minimal. She was there about 20 minutes, during which I noticed just two occasions when cars had to stop. I finished my eggs and toast wondering what descriptive noun my editor would allow for someone who sure takes “birdbrain” to a whole new level.

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After breakfast, I took my walk on that road, a mile-and-a-quarter into the reserve where there are two benches facing the marsh.

Spend so much time sitting on them that I once wondered aloud to my doctor if I was negating the good of the exercise. He assured me that two 1.25s were just as beneficial as one 2.5 and that I could sit as long as I pleased. And so I do, and now I wonder if I should pay the reserve rent.

While the walks began as a weight-loss program, I’ve come to think of them as part of my “writing process,” though that’s a term I haven’t used since I last taught writing twenty years ago. My parole officer, Helen Highwater, calls this “writing with your feet,” and I’m glad to think that my walks are productive in that sense because, no matter how many walks I take, most of the weight remains.

Works like this: I always set out with an idea that I mull over to the bench, on the bench, and from the bench, and if it has grown at all into something I want to put my name on and send out into the world, I’m on this laptop immediately upon return.

Yesterday it was a most unusual project, a newspaper column about a (descriptive noun deleted) headlined “Descriptive Noun Deleted.” I’ll let you know what my editor says, but you are welcome to fill in the blanks until I do.

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