Lucky 500

Today I stopped by the printers to pick up what will probably be the last batch of issue #1 I'll need. This makes 500 copies created, paid for, and largely bespoken. I was afraid, a few months ago, that I wouldn't be able to find a good home for the 200 I had the nerve to order.

Pathetic, if you compare it to, say, The New Yorker, or even a decent university review. But pretty good for the first issue of a magazine the necessity of which a lot of people still need to have explained to them.

I know that someday I will have a mailing service handling things for me, and there will no longer be this lugging upstairs of bulky boxes; and my back and the other residents of my dinky apartment will be appropriately grateful for the change. But I also know that I should enjoy this stage of the magazine's life, in the same way that I should have savored my son's early babyhood. There's a lot of just plain physical work involved, along with all the thinking and planning and sleepless nights. But once that demanding stage is past, one thing is clear: life will never be so simple and innocent again.

Today was the first time I went alone to pick up a printing. I got to listen to the radio station I like all the way there and all the way back, and I wrangled the cardboard carton out of the trunk and through the security gate and up the stairs and through our front door all by myself into an empty apartment. I set the order down on the first empty chair I could find, and I looked at what I'd managed to do -- bring a much-loved, wanted, and hoped-for magazine into existence -- and just stood there and smiled at it. It has been very much a family endeavor, but it was quite fine to have a spell of unbroken quiet in which to admire it.

And then the moment passed, and I thought about all that I had to do on the next issue while still finding time to get these copies of the current issue out, and I slipped naturally into my accustomed state of frenzied semi-panic. It may not be everyone's idea of a good time, but it's getting the job done for me.