About this blogger
JACK FREEBORNE is hostile to the whole concept of the blogger bio. He resents having to write one. He would gladly do just about anything else. That said…
Jack was born and raised in a town with one traffic light (there are two now). He is forty something, an American by birth and passport, who lives abroad by personal preference.
Jack is married. He does not have kids. What else?
He does not punch a clock. He has no LinkedIn profile. Nor has he updated his resume in several years.
Jack’s a poet and would-be author, considers writing his day job, though it does not pay the bills, yet.
He is working on a book, has been for some time, though he does not pretend know what the outcome of his efforts will be. He’s got other ideas as well, other books he’d like to write one day, if only…
It’s like he’s in a committed relationship, and he can’t break it off, can’t move on, can’t even conceive of seeing other people. He’s just not ready to let go.
As for hobbies, Jack enjoys travel and photography, often at the same time.
Though the wall between our worlds is thin, though we are both writers writing ourselves into existence, though our stories flow from the same source, are interwoven like a braided river… I am not Jack; Jack is not me. But as time passes, the line blurs, and I do find it harder and harder to tell what is real, who is the work of fiction.
All words and images, unless otherwise noted, are duly credited to Jack Freeborne, all rights reserved.
Inquire about permissions: jafreeborne@gmail.com
About this blog
WORDS FOR THE MEANWHILE is meant to be a meaningful diversion, a needful distraction for the would-be author otherwise gainfully unemployed in the years-long struggle, the heretofore unpaid, unsung labor of his life’s ambition, i.e. the stubborn bastard child of a book he’s trying to write.
It was the gentle (and persistent) suggestion of the blogger’s loving wife (and benefactor), that he “put himself out there,” which did compel him (eventually) to begin this little project.
The name of the blog? It comes from a poem by another poet named Jack, surname Gilbert. For the curious, the relevant verse:
I called the tree a butternut (which I don’t think
it is) so I could talk about how different
the trees are around me here in the rain.
It reminds me how mutable language is. Keats
would leave blank places in his drafts to hold on
to his passion, spaces for the rights words to come.
We use them sideways. The way we automatically
add bits of shape to hold on to the dissolving dreams.
So many of the words are for the meanwhile.
As to what is meant by commonplace…
While “commonplace” in the common parlance is synonymous with ordinary, Jack had this other, much less common meaning in mind:
commonplace blog, n.
1) Sort of a diary. Something of an external memory device.
2) Akin to a scrapbook, a cork board, a junk drawer—a place where one keeps potentially useful things, just in case.
3) A post-modern take on a bygone practice. See commonplace book.