Rock Salt Journal

Editor's Note

It’s 6:00 AM, and my dachshund puppy is chewing a bone on the couch beside me. Every minute or so, he drops the bone off the couch and looks up at me in the most pathetic way. Of course, I stop writing every time to return the bone, which he happily receives, chews, and then proceeds to drop again. This is not the subject of my editor’s note, but it is annoying.

I like building things. It’s a hobby I discovered just out of college when I realized my English degree wasn’t going to take me anywhere. I got a job as an apprentice carpenter at a company my brother worked for. A lot of the work was dirty and uncomfortable, crawling under houses through spiderwebs and mummified mice, wrapping myself in Tyvek and duct tape in the heat of July for a week of “lead-safe demolition”, but sometimes I got to cut wood into pieces and screw it to stuff, an undeniably good time.

I have since pivoted careers again, but the desire to make stuff has not gone away. Unfortunately, apartment living makes carpentry an inconvenient hobby. Tenants are discouraged from renovating, and unless I set up shop in the dining room, most of the places I’ve lived had no room for big dusty messes. Until now.

I bought a house at the beginning of October. It’s the type of house with an endless list of not-quite-essential repairs. The list completely overwhelms my wife. I want to quit my job and submerge myself in that sweet spiral of hammering nails, spreading joint compound, and digging fence holes. I built a desk out of scrap wood; I was nine years old again, sitting in a hayfield, playing with my Playmobil guys. I didn’t leave the shed until the desk was finished.

I’m not the first to say that creative writing is like building (no references needed; just Google that exact expression). You start with nothing. You turn that nothing into something. The process is just as enjoyable as the product (often more). Except for these notes, this journal is not a creative endeavor on my part, but it is for the dozens of artists who make it possible. These stories and poems and photos and paintings and collages would never exist if all these people didn’t love to build. I can’t name another part of my life that persists purely through the passion of others. Even more, they’re funny and thoughtful and sometimes a little bit sad and always a little bit beautiful.

Thanks for reading, and see you in the spring. There goes the bone again.

— J.B. Marlow, Editor