Cosy in the Snow

I always walk to the Print Shop. My reasons are simple: I don't have a car, and my dorm is only seven minutes away, by my stride. Also, walking wakes me up. This morning, I stepped out an hour early, at 11:00 a.m., right into a constant flow of snowflakes. Today, I didn't walk to work, I skipped and twirled and stomped.

The snow calmed the landscape and softened the edges of even the ugliest buildings on campus. When I reached the Literary House, the snow was already bearing down on the black roof, muting the pitch of it to the same greys and whites that already belonged to the trees.

Inside the Print Shop, even the Vandercook 4's chipped blue-grey paint felt brighter, starker. Sunlight generally steps directly down through the tall windows in wide beams, but today it was diffused by the thick, low clouds. It was as though the roof and front of the shop had been lifted off, as if they were part of a doll house, exposing the shop to the visual beauty of the elements.

As a result of so much light, the shop felt larger to me, as though I had tasted a few drops of the potion in Alice's "Drink Me" bottle. When I printed 100 sheets for Beanball, each sheet felt less substantial than the sheets I had handled the day before. Also, I noticed that the light, thin as it was, was strong enough that I could hold a sheet of paper up toward the window and see through it as well as if I had pressed it to a light box.

Jim asked me to search among some endpaper samples to find a good color and texture that would work with the colors he has in mind for the cover and the crisp white of the book's pages. Endpapers are the blank sheets that start and end a book; they mark a visual progression from the cover to the title page, and from the final page to the cover. Perhaps because the light was so cold, my eye caught a burgundy sheet with dark flecks. It's dark enough to anchor the bright pages and it's as rich as blood, which could fit well with the story's noir tone.

"Sometimes it's best to go with your instinct," Jim said, and apparently our instincts agreed. He asked me to figure out the amount of paper to buy. I had to determine how many 7" by 10" sheets we could cut from a 20.5" by 33" sheet, which is 8, and divide that number into 200, the number of 7" by 10" sheets we would need. I am embarrassed to note that this was perhaps the most complicated math I have had to attempt in at least the past semester, and it went smoothly until I realized that 200 divided by 8 is just 25, not 24.64.

But I kept my cool, and Jim ordered the paper. He managed to secure the last fifteen 41" by 33" sheets of that particular kind of burgundy paper available on the East Coast, so we'll have plenty of extra in case we mis-cut any. The 20.5" by 33" sheets were completely out.

Mike called from his day job with an assignment regarding the final Advanced Workshop project, which is the development of a postcard that can be used as a punchy demonstration piece. I searched out a font to suit a Samuel Johnson quote. Maybe it was the brain-clearing influence of the crisp light, but I found the choice particularly easy.

I crouched before the case of 24 point Munder Venezian, composing stick in my left hand, and swiftly nipped each letter from its home. The point size was large enough that setting was easy; it is easier to identify letters when they are larger, and the letters are weighty enough that they do not slump to one side if I jostle the composing stick before the line is filled. However, my wrist began to feel just how weighty lead is after only one line was complete. The whole form felt as heavy as a third of a brick, but made up for that with character. The lowercase "g"s have a rounded cowlick, and the "e"s have a slanted crossbar like a nose upturned or a smile quirked.

I completed the quote within 20 minutes, washed my hands, swung myself into my borrowed leather coat, and chatted with Jim for another 20 minutes before I actually left the shop for a quick lunch and my 2:30 class.

I happen to hate being cold. I can tromp through snow happily as long as the stuff doesn't invade my socks, and I can twirl and skip in it as long as the wind doesn't tear through my jacket, but I much prefer a quiet evening in my room to a snowball fight. I like to look and look and look, reserving the touch for token moments. Today, joy of the snow and the window's planetarium-like view of it from the safety of the Print Shop both managed to warm me for the entire day.