Should auld acquaintance be forgot / And never brought to mind? / Should auld acquaintance be forgot / And auld lang syne!
….thing I read this year was Nick Flynn’s stunning memoir of his father (and therefore himself) Another Bullshit Night in Suck City. I can’t stop thinking about it, or the upcoming movie.
….family thing that happened this year was the reunion between my son and our entire family, back in February. Thank you Katie, for your hardheadedness.
….website I found is Brain Pickings, which I happily recommend to you!
….place I traveled this year — oh, what a terribly hard decision, given my travels to Turkey, Vietnam, Borneo, Malaysia, Chicago, and Austin — but if I want to choose the most forever-memorable, it’d have to be the Mekong River Delta.
….hard thing that happened this year was saying a final difficult goodbye to my dad.
***
There was a lot of knitting this year — mostly sweaters, which surprises the hell out of me! The best of my 2011 FOs, given how much I wear it, is my Wintry Mix, but Ozma’s Delight is close behind. Most people liked my Ozma’s Delight.
my ravelry page for this year's FO's, organized by favorites.
I also returned to sewing this year (well, I did make Marnie’s wedding dress last year…), making two dresses/tops for myself:
summery aqua -- the other one is purple. I need to wear them a bit more!
On my birthday November 6, I did a nice recap of my just-passed year, so I’ll link to it here to remind myself of all the stuff that happened — mostly good, but when it was bad it was bad, man. In fact, the hard parts were so hard that despite the fact that quantitatively there was so much more good, I kick 2011 in the pants on its way out the door. Sayonara, 2011! Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
But I want to close on a note of gratitude instead of the sourness of the bad, because the truth is I have more than my fair share of things to be grateful about. All my children, all 6 of them, are healthy and happy and living good lives. They struggle as we all do, but they achieve and succeed and they’re such good human beings. I’m in very good health and spent another year freelancing, which is much better for me. My husband and I traveled a lot, which is one of the things we do best together. I get to see the world more than I ever dreamed I would, which never fails to amaze me. I have wonderful friends here in New York, and sprinkled around the country and the world, and all of you enrich my life in very real ways. I have intellectual outlets that feed me — my book club and poetry group, for instance — and I live in Manhattan, where there are so many exciting and wonderful things to do, every single day. I have more than enough to eat. WAY more than enough to eat. I am happy.
So happy new year’s eve, y’all. Be safe, and here’s to 2012.
“I always felt that the great high privilege, relief and comfort of friendship was that one had to explain nothing.” ~Katherine Mansfield
Do you know what that acronym stands for, PWT? It’s poor white trash — a really derogatory name to call anyone, but in the way these things work, you can say it about yourself. When you hear the word, especially if you’re from the south, a specific image comes to mind involving trailer parks, and ratty-looking kids with fat slovenly parents wearing sloppy sweat pants and drinking beer. Driving a beat-up old car to Kmart is part of that scene, too, as are grocery carts at the cheap store filled with processed food and lots of fat. You can take the girl out of the PWT, but you can never really get the PWT out of the girl, so I’ll say it now: I am PWT. At least, I grew up that way, and while I don’t live a PWT life, it’s one of the ghosts inside me.
I have a friend here in NYC who is also PWT, but I guarantee you that you’d never know it if you just met him. He’s very smart, extremely chic, he dresses so well (designer duds in black and white almost exclusively), has an extensive knowledge of wine, is an excellent cook and foodie, and lived in Rome for a long time (with nonspecific plans to move back, since he feels like Rome is his true home). He’s also screamingly funny. And he’s PWT. We used to work together, and when we were in Oxford, England, for a brain science summit meeting, there was some conversation over drinks about Huskies, from Montgomery Wards (Monkey Wards, we called it), and we were off to the races, bonded forever. It was our little secret space, where we could go to revel in some of the old stuff that was so shameful then, but that’s so specific and unique, now — especially here in Manhattan.
He made that job bearable for me, every single day, and is the only person I know in this city who knows what it’s like to be me, in this city. I had dinner with him last night at a semi-fancy restaurant, and we laughed hysterically, talked about work, talked about what’s going on in our lives, and talked about some possibilities for him that would be so very very good for him. I know I love him, because they’re a dream come true for him and terrible for me, but I want them to come true because of what they’d mean to him. I suppose there are plenty of people who have siblings they just adore in an uncomplicated way, but I don’t, so he’s my little brother who I simply love and adore, without the complicated history that true shared childhoods can bring. But we have the best of a shared childhood — a shared understanding of very specific details, of very specific memories, and of the ways things are done.
He organized one (or maybe more, I can’t remember now) of the going away parties for me, at a pub in midtown. The photos are grainy and dark, but I can’t look at them without feeling so much for him. He cracked me up by collecting some of the more humiliating pictures from my past, blowing them up and having them mounted on poster board, and arranging them around the party space. That guy. He’s the one in the black shirt, the one whose face you’ll never see in a photo.
grrrrr. One of those days.
When I was a young mother, I did everything. I made all our clothes, I made everything we ate from scratch, I was the Brownie Troop Leader, I had my giant floor loom and a giant-er Navajo loom and my big spinning wheel in the living room, I played guitar and sang in the elementary school, I was a Maker Deluxe. In this vein, I planted a vegetable garden, a couple times, because it just fit with what I was doing in my life, for my family. Oh, I loved gardening. Except I really, really didn’t. I didn’t like the feeling of dirt under my fingernails. I didn’t like having to deal with bugs and weeds. I didn’t like one thing about it. So my first vegetable garden produced what it produced in its first blush but without the necessary care, it didn’t really last. The following year, oh, I love gardening! I planted another one. And I really hated gardening.
It took me a long time to figure out that what I love is the idea of gardening. I really love that idea. The idea of preparing the ground, planting and watching and watering, seeing the plants, the flowerings, the vegetables begin and then grow. Pulling that food out of the ground and putting it on my table. Love every bit of that idea. I just really don’t like to garden. I wish I did, but I don’t. I felt so much better when I realized this distinction, because it helped me understand this conflict and it relieved me from ever having to attempt to garden again.
Last night I had another insight, though perhaps it is more temporary. Another thing I like better as an idea is Manhattan — definitely the incredible crowds of people in Manhattan. From a distance, the crowds of people pouring through the subway stations, the hordes of people on the sidewalks, they make this city vivid and so alive. From a distance, it’s easy to see that all these people are Manhattan, really. That we all live together, in each others’ faces, in public, and we mostly do it very well. We create whatever private space we need around ourselves as we are crammed together in small spaces. From a distance — the George Washington Bridge, say — all these people on this island are exciting. All these people dashing about, creating the busyness that characterizes this city. I really like all these people from a distance.
But under any kind of stress, as I was last night, my feelings change pretty dramatically. I hate all these people! Good god, I just want to get from here to there. Nothing’s easy. The subways are often screwed up for any slight reason, and if it’s raining hard, or long, everything is just that much more difficult, including subway commutes. Since the subway is underground, obviously, and we’re on a small island, a whole lot of rain at once can bring the subways to a crawl. Once, the trains just had to stop, and we all had to leave. What this means is that (a) it’s raining very hard, (b) hundreds of people are streaming out of the subway at once, into pouring rain, so (c) getting a cab is impossible. No subway, no cab, no luck.
everything's less fun in the rain, here
Last night I went downtown, to the NYU area, for a knitting meet-up. I love and adore all my friends and various groups, but I’m the only person I know here who makes things, and now and then someone says something that makes me feel like I’m seen as weird, because of it. People will ask if I’m making something because it’s cheaper (um, no), and they’ll look at me quizzically. At a minimum, they don’t seem to get the impulse to make things. They do other things, but they don’t make things. When I was a young mother, most of my friends made things, because they were my friends from the weaver’s and spinner’s guild. So I’ve been longing for real-live in person friends here in New York who make things. This one meet-up takes place pretty far from my apartment, requiring two different trains and then a long walk, but it meets on a night that works for my schedule and I’d wanted to go several times before but then had to cancel. Last week I RSVPed for the meet-up and was determined to actually go.
And then, yesterday afternoon, it started pouring rain. Not just raining, but pouring rain. And it was windy. I thought about not going, but I decided to just suck it up and head out. The bulk of the trip is underground, and the long walk in the rain would be fine. I wore my raincoat, took my umbrella, and headed out.
Times Square -- one of the major subway stations on the west side of town
It was nothing less than miserable. By the time I got to my subway stop, which is one block from my apartment, my jeans were soaked to the knee, and my feet were soggy. The wind kept whipping my umbrella inside out. Going down the steps into the subway required tip-toeing through the lakes of rain, and the trains were very crowded. Transferring trains at Times Square nearly done the old girl in; I think everyone gets cranky when they’re trying to get around in this kind of rain, and the rain causes train delays so the crowds are worse than usual. And this time of year the city is filled with tourists, who are taking it all in and don’t know the rules of the road, so they poke along, they stop in the middle of where people are walking, they stand at the top of the stairs, blocking them, they struggle to figure out the Metro Card system, it’s not their fault but they muck up the works even more. We’re just trying to get home, it’s cold, we’re wet, it’s crowded. I finally made it to the second train, only to find out that due to debris on the track, the train I needed wasn’t running. I don’t know that subway line (or part of town) very well, so coming up with an alternative way to get there was mysterious to me, and I nearly turned around and went back home. At this point I was realizing that I don’t like people, I don’t like Manhattan, I don’t like any of it. That maybe this is one of those “gee, I like the idea of it” deals.
But I got there, and after the long walk, I entered the bar dripping wet. My hair was hanging, wet, because the wind kept inverting my umbrella. My pants were dripping, my toes were pruning, my raincoat was dripping. I found the group in the back, introduced myself, and sat down. And not one person spoke to me. They looked at me while I was introducing myself, then they turned their attention back to their knitting, and to each other, and went back to their conversations. I ordered a drink and sat there, smiling, trying to figure out what to do. I thought I’d just go back home. I felt terrible.
Finally two other women arrived and sat by me, and the proximity led them to speak to me. I ended up having a nice time with them, and may go back (but not in January, unfortunately, because the two meetings fall the same nights as my poetry group and my book club meetings). A couple hours later, the group started to disband and I headed home. The rain had slacked off, the crowds were a little less intense, and I was freezing cold because my feet and jeans had been soggy for all that time (and still were!). I got home and crashed, went straight to sleep; I’m so shy and introverted, and it’s exhausting putting myself into a new social setting with strangers.
I’m going to hold off on making a final announcement to myself about how I feel about Manhattan, and Manhattanites. Maybe I like more than just the idea of them, but I need dry feet and pants to feel it.
sharing some of the tabs I can’t seem to close in the hopes you like them too!
This week between Christmas and the new year is odd, isn’t it — a kind of vacuum, free space, free parking, festive, but also kind of ‘what?’ I’d love to be taking this time off but I have too much work and need to stay hunkered down. In my early morning knitting time, instead of reading the book I should be reading for book club, I’ve been reading these pieces, which I want to share with you:
- a brief essay by a man who believes that Walt Whitman saved his life. Whitman saves mine now and then, and this essay resonated with me.
- this uber-collection of the best long reads on the internet this year, curated by a whole bunch of smart and interesting people
- I’m fascinated by and intensely drawn to David Foster Wallace and read nearly everything by and about him I can find. This piece is loosely about the marginalia found in his collection of self-help books.
- This beautiful piece is another about David Foster Wallace, his new book, and his legacy.
- I read this over and over: 30 things to stop doing to yourself. Some are brilliant, especially (for me) #s 12 and 24.
- This gorgeous illustrated view of what happens in a second is pure delight.
- I’m kind of a sucker for lists of people’s favorite books; if someone lists one of my favorites (especially an oddball favorite of mine, or especially if they say something specific and wonderful about it), then I trust the other books on their list. This piece pulls together the faves of a dozen or so writers and editors, and includes often-funny commentary about why the books are their favorites. One writer said Another Bullshit Night in Suck City will “knock you on your ass” — and yes, dear reader, it will; another said this about Nabokov’s Pale Fire: ”You know what? Fuck Lolita. I take that back, don’t fuck Lolita, she’s too young, plus I loved that book. I loved this one more, though. The poem makes me disintegrate with feelings.”
Whatever you’re doing this week, I hope you’re winding down the year in style. Yesterday I had lunch with a friend from poetry group; tonight I’m going to a knitting group; tomorrow is lunch with the daughter who just returned from Israel; Thursday evening is dinner with friends; in between is lots of work, some knitting (ready to do the sleeves on my Audrey sweater, which is gorgeous!), some eating, and some movie-watching. Happy strange week, y’all!
ghosts of Christmas past
I hope you had a wonderful Christmas weekend, if you celebrate. Mine was very nice — as nice as it could possibly be, without having my kids with me. [But did you hear the awful, awful news from Connecticut, about a house that burned down early Christmas morning, and the owner survived but her three young daughters, all under 10, and her parents were all killed? God...could anything be worse, that poor, poor woman.]
This seems like a non sequitur, but I promise it isn’t. Have you ever read A Fine Balance, by Rohinton Mistry? (I feel compelled to tell you I read it before Oprah picked it for her book club….) It’s a beautiful, horrible, sad, tragic story of people trying to survive during The Emergency, in India. It’s so tragic, there were times I had to put it down because I simply couldn’t keep bearing it. Passages I had to read out of the sides of my eyes because I couldn’t tolerate them head-on. One of the characters, Ishvar, just endures more misery than should be possible, but he always says “life is long.” Although the longer his life goes on, the more misery he endures, that’s not what he seems to mean. It’s that life is long, whatever is happening now isn’t necessarily what will always be happening. There is room in the future for other things — better things, perhaps. Whatever is happening now isn’t the only thing that ever will happen.
Plenty of people suffer during the holidays, and feel excruciating pain and loneliness. Christmas Eve is more painful a time to be alone than Christmas, for me, but maybe that’s because of my Christmas Eve in 1970. Late that afternoon, when I was 12, my mother gathered me and my sister and brother and told us she was divorcing our dad. She walked us into their bedroom, where he sat, on his knees on the floor, and told us to tell him goodbye. He pulled us into his arms, sobbing, and told us how much he loved us. We told him goodbye, and walked out the door. Mother drove us to a motel — The Downtowner — where she had already secured adjoining rooms, and where my soon-to-be step-father was waiting for her. She and he were in one room, and my sister and brother and I sat on the ends of the beds in the next room, staring at the tv. We watched A Charlie Brown Christmas…..our eyes took it in, but I doubt any of us were really watching it. Could there be sadder Christmas music than that soundtrack? I don’t know of it, if there is.
So that’s my sad little holiday tale o’ woe…..we all have them, of one kind or another. I’ve come such a long way, and life has indeed been long. I’ve had joyful Christmas Eves, sad ones, lonely ones, endless ones, happy ones, hilarious ones, new baby ones, warm ones and cold ones, and next year’s celebration will be of another form, I’m sure. Life is long. If your holidays were lonely, I’m so sorry; it’s a particular pain, feeling lonely when the whole world seems to be connected and warm and joyful and spending time with loved ones. You aren’t the only one, and those of us who had a lovely time this year aren’t guaranteed those types of celebrations in the years to come. It’s life, and life is long, and you get to experience nearly everything if you live long enough.
oh what a beautiful morning, oh what a beautiful day — i have a wonderful feeling, everything’s going my way [today, anyway!]
Merry Christmas, if you celebrate! I had an absolutely lovely day, beginning with gifts and a sumptuous breakfast, then a videochat with all but one of my kids, who is on her way home from Israel today. So me plus 5 on the videochat, so very wonderful. I’ve spent the rest of the day knitting and watching movies, and I baked a batch of snickerdoodles and two loaves of cranberry-orange nutbread. It’s been a happy, good-smelling, good-eating, good-moments day. Here is a variety of images from the day:
TEXANS: SIT DOWN. Pecans for $18/pound. I KNOW. That's insane. They're supposed to be free, on the ground in your backyard. I never dreamed I'd pay $18/lb, but I did today, for the cranberry-orange nutbread. And it was good.
beautiful yarn from Katie, my knitter daughter. 50% alpaca, 50% wool. Aran weight, three skeins. What to make?
The tree outside my window; how are those two branches still green, on an otherwise barren tree?
along with other gifts, my husband surprised me with a bowl filled with my favorite fruits -- strawberries, cherries, red grapes, and clementines. LOVE (him and the fruit).
the shetland lace bib on my audrey sweater -- hauling butt now!
So that was my lovely day. I have a new external hard drive to fix up, several new prints courtesy of Marnie to get framed, a bunch of great food to eat, and all while wearing my new waiting-for-Santa flannel pajama pants from Katie. I have another post I’ll write tomorrow about traveling a long way from one Christmas Eve to another, but that’ll wait. Tonight’s dinner is shrimp crusted with buttery garlicky breadcrumbs and a giant gorgeous salad. Me happy, and me hope you happy too.
xo
Lori
i’m dreaming of a white Christmas….
a mid-chat screen grab
We couldn’t all be in the same place this year, though we’re twosies: my daughters and their husbands are together in Austin, and my son and I are here in Manhattan. We have big plans to all be together in Austin in 2013, but this is the 21st century and different ways of doing things are possible. So we had a Christmas Eve chat, all together, and we’ll do it again in the morning, after all the presents are opened.
That expression is SO ME, I’ve learned. I frown more than I ever realized, but I usually do it while I’m grinning. Try that! The frown is about listening so hard, but I’m usually pretty happy, and when I’m looking at and talking to all my kids at once? PURE-DEE JOY, y’all.
Watching White Christmas, smelling the delicious pork ropa vieja my husband’s making for our dinner (along with mashed potatoes and green beans), and planning to dash over to St John the Divine at 10pm to listen to a little music and smell the incense. Happy happy Christmas Eve, y’all.
this video was posted by the embarrassed big sister of the singer. the baby jesus slept through everything.
I think that’s the lyric — anyway, this little singer gave me a big smile and I hope she does you, too. Give this a chance; once all the little singers assemble and the song gets underway, you’ll see what I mean.
Merry Christmas Eve, y’all!
the poets speak and I just set them up:
[reprinted with my permission, from last year's solstice!] This post is published exactly at the solstice – 12:30am NY time, December 22. The shortest day, the longest night, ripe for metaphor. With our modern minds, we cast back and try to imagine what it was like for our ancestors who hadn’t yet come to understand celestial machinations, we imagine that they thought the world was ending (as we imagine they thought darkness ate the sun during an eclipse) — but those are our modern imaginings, only.
We’ve all seen our own planet from a vantage point beyond it…. startling, if you remember to think about that and how new and weird it is. We understand celestial mechanics, things going around things, planet tilts and seasons, orbit patterns. We are so sophisticated, we’re beyond fear that the night will never end. Right?
Anselm Kiefer, Gescheiterte Hoffnung (C.D. Friedrich), 2010, Charcoal on photographic paper. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery, New York. Text on the work is translated as follows: "Wreck of Hope."
[a cranky note from the winter of my feeble little mind: why does it seem like winter doesn't really begin, and the world really gets bleak, after the solstice! i'm ready for it to start lightening up, man.]
BUT: in honor of the world turning, light returning, and all that amazing jazz, I have a handful of beautiful winter / solstice poems here, after the jump.
CLICK to continue reading the longest night *always* ends (so far!)... Continue reading »
think I can pull it off?
I think the fact that this idea is so frightening suggests that I really really ought to do it — and not just do it, but commit to it for a specific period of time. I’m so scared I want to give myself a tiny little time frame, like once, but I’m going to try to aim for a little more than that.
For the month of January, 2012, on Saturdays I will not open my laptop at all, and I won’t knit.
I KNOW!! Isn’t that a terrifying idea? And honestly, I don’t know which part is scarier, the computer or the knitting. Can I really do it? Why should I? Would you attempt such a crazy stunt? I may need to think this through a little more; I may want to write (and in fact I do want to write), so should I instead say that I will not be online for that month of Saturdays? But if my computer is open and on my lap, how could I not just do one little email check, just take one little glance at facebook? Am I a woman, or a mouse?! [in fact, i am a mouse. a woman mouse.]
What would I do, instead? Well, actually, there’s quite a long list:
- take a walk
- do yoga
- write by hand
- read (read, read, read!)
- watch a movie
- go to a museum
- paint
- sew
- housework
- go to Central Park
- go out for coffee or brunch
- cook / bake
- meditate
And that’s just what comes to mind right off the top of my head, things I always want to do but end up not doing because instead I knit and poke around online the whole day. I think I’ll be a little bit of a weenie and just challenge myself to one Saturday, for starters. But let me take a kinder stance to myself: rather than seeing it as my being a weenie, I’ll decide to give myself the best possible chance to succeed! Yeah! Saturday, January 7, I will not open my laptop, and I won’t knit. I make this promise to myself, to encourage myself to explore more of what interests me.
Do you think I’m nuts?
happy birthday to my dad.
Today my father would’ve turned 75 years old; he died when he was 45, so old[er] age and him don’t go easily together in my mind. I was 23 when he died, so he was almost twice my age, which seemed old to me, then.
I didn’t know him, really; plenty of people don’t know their parents as human beings, as people other than ‘parent.’ I didn’t grow up with him; I didn’t live with him after I was 10, we didn’t see each other at all after I was 14, and I had just met him again when I was 23. I had a few months to get to know him then, but knowing him was not possible, no matter how much I may have wanted it, because he was drunk every waking moment.
When he was a tiny little tow-headed boy, he loved to play behind the couch, quietly, with his little cars. His mother told me that story once; he kept to himself and was quiet as a mouse because his father was a rampaging, furious, out-of-his-mind alcoholic who beat the shit out of him and everyone else in the house. Just as my father would grow up to do, and to be. He was sickly as a child, with what they then called Bright’s Disease – inflammation of his kidneys. The bad thing about this was that it meant he couldn’t eat beans, which were the staple of their diet because they were so terribly poor. When he was a teenager, he and his friends would run through the corn fields, imagining themselves robbing the Sinton, Texas banks on horseback. He longed to escape.
the man on the far right is my step-grandfather, who was a sweet man. my dad on the far left, his mother holding me
And he did escape, but it was from the frying pan and into the fire; he married my mother, who was still a high school student (though not for long…she dropped out and ran off with him). And presto, 9 months later, I was part of the scene. They were too young and too troubled, and too ill-prepared for the real life they found, and the rest of his life was terrible – magnified, I imagine, by how terrible he made the lives of his kids.
the newlyweds, plus me. they'd been married a year -- they both look kind of stunned and dazed. She's 18.
He fancied himself a Tragic Figure – initial caps, important –and he was. He was not much more than the next tragic embodiment of rage in a long line of such men, and he couldn’t escape the generations behind him. But he loved books, and reading, and he was smart. He worked as a draftsman at an architectural firm, where he was valued, even when he was too reliably drunk to keep his job. He had a child’s style of romantic notions; he loved his dogs so much, and bought an old Chevy pickup truck just to drive them around, because he thought they loved riding in the back of an old beat-up truck.
that's me, draped in his hands. he was just barely 22
Although I suffered greatly at his hands, I loved him so much, and thought he was beautiful and elegant, and I was his. He called me Scout after we watched To Kill a Mockingbird (and he probably considered himself as Atticus, which is a mighty funny stretch); he also called me Pete and Dawn Ann. Ours was a nicknaming family, obviously. I don’t remember what I called him when I was a child – daddy, probably – but usually I referred to him as Frank….though not to his face. So now I stumble when I think of him, not knowing what to call him in my thoughts.
he was 25, she was 21 -- that's me on his lap. don't they look older than they were?
I’m not writing to talk about his death, but since he is dead, his life is complete now, start to finish, so it’s part of the story. He didn’t live long, only 45 years, and he didn’t fulfill what he might’ve, and he didn’t leave any kind of positive legacy behind (well, my life does continue, and it has great value). He kind of fulfilled the circumstances of his birth, to a young mean woman who hated him and hated that he’d been born, to a young mean man who hated him as much as he hated himself, to a life of poverty and cotton gins and liquor and misery. His birthday is usually a haunted day for me, but this year it’s not; this year, I just think of who he was, what his life was like, and I wonder who he’d be if he were alive. When I try to think about that part, I get stuck because I have to imagine a very different person than he was. My poor dad.
near the end of his life -- probably 2 months before he killed himself. he's in the dark blue shirt.
No one was ever glad he was born, and it’s kind of complicated to be grateful that he was born, but I am. I’m sorry his life was so sad and hard, and I’m sorry he made mine so sad and hard, but I’m so glad to be here, and I couldn’t be, without him. So on my dad’s birthday, I wish a happy birthday. I wish a happier birthday than he ever had. And I reaffirm my joy and gratitude at being in this world, filled with everything.
” Perhaps my best years are gone. When there was a chance of happiness. But I wouldn’t want them back. Not with the fire in me now. No, I wouldn’t want them back.” Beckett, “Krapp’s Last Tape
There’s a brilliant resource in Rochester, NY, called Writers & Books — in a gorgeous old building, they offer writing classes, reading seminars, and readings. I took a class there on Beckett, led by a philosophy professor; we read and discussed many plays and stories, but the one that struck me hardest was “Krapp’s Last Tape.” I tend to get frustrated and bored with Beckett — he’s best taken in small bites, not in concentrated chunks because it starts feeling like this one’s hopelessness in a black landscape; ah, this one’s hopelessness in a white landscape; oh wait, this one’s hopelessness in a gray landscape; wow! this one’s hopelessness with a lobster. Hopeless, I get it. Next.
But Krapp, Krapp was different. Krapp was about a man, a real life, about looking back on a real life, and trying to understand it all. If you’re unfamiliar with this short play, Krapp is a 69-year old man who has made a tape recording each year on his birthday, kind of summarizing his year (an early blogger?); on this 69th birthday, before making the new recording he listens to one he made 30 years earlier. Part of the older tape is him pontificating on things he’s learned — kind of separating himself from his life with a big-vocabulary verbal distancing. But part of it is spent recalling a moment with a woman, in a boat. Now listening to it 30 years later, Krapp embraces the tape player as if it’s a person — that woman, perhaps. [here's the play, if you want to read it -- it's short.]
One striking thing is Krapp’s ongoing contempt for himself; on the 30-year-old tape, he’d listened to an earlier tape and expressed great contempt for himself, then. And at 69, he expresses contempt for the 39-year-old who was expressing contempt for his earlier life. Contempt is such a cowardly emotion, and contempt for contempt is staggering. Contempt for life, for one’s life, is the biggest waste of all.
This passage, the piece Krapp listens to again and again, and the piece that ends the play, is beautiful and heartbreaking. They were in a small boat:
I said again I thought it was hopeless and no good going on, and she agreed, without opening her eyes. (Pause.) I asked her to look at me and after a few moments–(pause)–after a few moments she did, but the eyes just slits, because of the glare. I bent over her to get them in the shadow and they opened. (Pause. Low.) Let me in. (Pause.) We drifted in among the flags and stuck. The way they went down, sighing, before the stem! (Pause.) I lay down across her with my face in her breasts and my hand on her. We lay there without moving. But under us all moved, and moved us, gently, up and down, and from side to side.
The “Let me in” line is deeply moving; let me in. Please, let me in. Do we let people in, do we have the courage to ask to be let in? I often don’t have that courage.
i had seats in the nosebleed section
I attended the final performance of this play at BAM — Brooklyn Academy of Music — with John Hurt. It’s a one act play, one actor, only 55 minutes, more or less. Minimalist setting: just a desk and chair, an overhead lamp, and the tape player and tapes. Plus a couple bananas. He was brilliant, and looked like Beckett himself with his thin body and white thatch of hair.
that's the whole set -- a desk, chair, and overhead light.
There wasn’t an empty seat in the house; as the lights went down, I understood that we were all there to do this together. All of us in the audience were there to create this performance with John Hurt. The lights came up and he was there, at the desk. He held the stage for several minutes in absolute silence, and I could feel us all there, together, in the room, bringing Krapp into being again. It was wonderful.
really brilliant -- John Hurt
Before the performance started, these two women in my row caught my attention. They were older than me, two old Jewish ladies in furs with loud voices. It was hard not to hear them, but their conversation was kind of funny so I dragged out my little notebook to record it. One said — oh so loudly — “It’s a secret, don’t tell anyone. I can’t stand her, she’s a skinny little pinch-faced bitch. She only brought bruschetta and a white bean dip to the party.” Surely she hated the woman for reasons beyond what she did and didn’t bring to the party. 
And thus ends my long week o’culture. It was just wonderful, a memorable week of moving experiences. Next week is quiet, at home, and I look forward to that, too. Time to knit and read, time to write, time to pull inward and generate rather than consume. I wish you all a lovely Sunday night….
I should’ve titled this post The Unbearable Whiteness of Ballet
Last night I met my friend Temma for dinner (Indian food, so delicious) before we saw The Nutcracker at Lincoln Center. [and thank you again, Temma, for inviting me!] Let me start by describing what the performance meant to me, before I get to my primary point. When I was a little girl in the sticks of Texas, I used to watch the nutcracker on television each Christmas — Baryshnikov, as I recall. Remember how they used to put “culture” on tv, back in the old days? Anyway, I’d watch the ballet on tv and it couldn’t have been more remote from me and my life. I imagined it taking place in some other universe, not the one in which I lived, or the one to which I could even aspire. It was Fancy. Cultured, sophisticated, rich with meaning and tradition and beauty. Not my life. Not even remotely like my life. So getting to go — and to Lincoln Center, no less — was the realization of that little girl’s dream she couldn’t even dream to dream.
We were surprised there weren’t more children in attendance; Temma was looking forward to seeing little girls with ribbons in their hair, and I don’t think we saw a single girl like that. Our seats were on the 4th ring, right in the center, so we had an outstanding view of the stage and the orchestra. As a long-time flutist and piccolo player, I’ve played that music and could hear every piccolo solo, every note from the flute section. This production is the George Balanchine version of The Nutcracker, and it’s extremely traditional. The children who danced were quite good, and Temma and I kept wondering what it must be like to be the main little girl, what a thing for her. (But then, where do you go from there, when you’ve done that at age ~9, on the stage at Lincoln Center)?
The main thing that surprised me, though, was the supreme whiteness of everything. The dancers were all white — whiter than me, even — as was the audience. There may have been people of color somewhere in the audience, it’s not like I could see every single person, but if there were, there weren’t many. But what struck me and eventually made me kind of sick was that there were only really, really white people on stage. I find it hard to imagine that in all of New York there isn’t a single brown person worthy to dance in this performance.
all white, all the time
Coming immediately on the heels of the brilliant and hot performance by The Forces of Nature Dance Theater, I realize the contrast made this experience stronger than it might have been, otherwise, but it left a bad taste in my mouth.
So it was a mixed bag, for me: deep pleasure at spending that time with my dear friend, deep pleasure over the dinner, deep pleasure for getting to do this thing I’d been too poor a child to dream about — all those, great things — and deep disgust over the pure whiteness of it. Temma and I are going to see more dance performances in the future, but I’ll be more interested in modern dance and a greater mix of people, as will she.
This afternoon: Krapp’s Last Tape, with John Hurt! Another fantastic day for me. Happy Sunday, y’all.
last night I went to the 32nd annual Winter Solstice Concert at St John the Divine and it was amazing….
I’m dizzy from everything — this morning I’m having breakfast with Will and tonight I’m going out to dinner and then to Lincoln Center to see The Nutcracker with a dear friend, so more on that tomorrow morning. Last night was the Winter Solstice Concert at St John the Divine, and it was just magnificent. I had one of the little notebooks that Kty gave me for my birthday and I scribbled notes in the darkness, hoping they’d make sense in the light.
The concert featured Paul Winter on his saxophone, of course, and there was a singer and a guy who played the thumb drum (brilliantly!), and The Force of Nature Dance Theater. This video will give you the full flavor, but don’t miss the rest of the post:
When we first arrived, I wasn’t feeling the magic I felt last year — the magic of the solstice, of that one moment when the night is so long and we wait for the light. But the space went dark and I heard that first note, and I slipped into the magic, happily. The show opened with a call and response sequence that was amazing, in a space like the Cathedral of St John the Divine (which is the largest cathedral in the world, and the 4th largest Christian church in the world). The opening moment was Paul Winter playing from a niche high up on the back wall, and someone playing the response on the far opposite wall (whom we couldn’t even see). Back and forth they played, and then the pipe organ began a call and response with an organ on the far end. The one at the back is one of the most powerful organs in the world, and when it plays it plays, boy. That series felt something like noise calling creation into being, since the space was so dark. I love a good call and response, so it was a lovely way to open the show.
The program didn’t list the names of songs so I can’t name anything, but the second song Paul Winter played left me crying. Without knowing the song’s title, and since it didn’t have words, I may have totally missed the point of the song from the creator’s perspective, but it sang to me of goodbye. At first, as I listened, I thought it was about goodbye to the year — makes sense, given the context — but I realized it’s about all goodbyes, about the sweetness of goodbye, and especially the sad sweetness of a goodbye when there isn’t more to be had. Goodbye to the year, it is over now whatever it was. Goodbye to people we won’t see again. Music and art can make you understand something more fully than words, and I understood something I’ll never be able to articulate here, and however I do articulate it, it’ll miss the fuller boat. I was thinking of people who are not part of my life, who died or left, and I realized that they didn’t leave, that they really are in me. Everything that happened with them, between us, is part of me and I’m not at all the same person I was before, and I can’t be that person again. Forever, all the moments with them are part of me, even if I don’t specifically remember them. I mourn not getting to have more of them, perhaps, but they’re not gone.
As the show progressed, I realized it was essentially the same show as last year; one performer replaced another (the incredible Armenian singer named Arto Tunçboyacıyan was replaced by the thumb drum player, for instance), but Winter played the same songs, the same solstice tree was played in the same way, the same earth was wheeled in and raised over the stage, the same series with the sun gong was performed, it was all the same. For a moment I felt disappointed until I realized that this is kind of the point: every year we hit this same mark, the world turns and returns back to where it started, but I am not the same person. I’ve been around one more time, I’ve had hundreds or thousands of experiences that have left me changed, even as I return to the same point. When I was in graduate school, a friend in the clinical psych program said she thinks of therapy like a slinky stretched out on its side: patients move along and may return to the same spot on the rings but they’re farther along each time. So throughout the performance, the sameness gave me reason to reflect on the un-sameness of me.
The performance made a lot of light and dark; occasionally there would be wild flashes of light in the darkness, and the giant scary pipe organ in the back would suddenly blast sounds that made me jump out of my seat. Those kinds of sounds are unnaturally natural — the deep sounds that the earth makes, which are always scary. Once, when the organ was blasting, I put my hand on my chest and felt my body vibrating with the sound, which was kind of cool. And sometimes in the dark there would be clangy bells all around — cowbells, kind of. People walked up and down the center aisle and the side aisles carrying those bells so they were randomly clanging, but so many that it was a constant chaotic sound in the dark. It was disorienting and unsettling, at the least, and frightening (to me!) now and then. But I loved it.
And GOD ALMIGHTY THE FORCE OF NATURE DANCE THEATER. They are incredible, no words I could possibly write, even if I were a brilliant writer, could properly convey their performance. They’re the primary reason I came this year, and the primary reason I’ll go again next year. In addition to the performance they gave in the first half of the show, which was high energy and gorgeous and vivid and alive, they performed a new piece called Water in the second half that had me gape-mouthed, sitting on the edge of my seat, leaning forward with my eyes open as wide as possible. Occasionally it made me laugh out of pure joy of what they were doing. I felt this whenever they were on stage. The notes I wrote in the dark were:
- GOD ALMIGHTY
- bliss
- insane
- big arms (Izzard!)
- ecstasy
- AWE^2
[their movements included very big arm movements, which made me think of the Eddie Izzard piece about Jesus and the disciples posing for Leonardo as he painted the Last Supper....oh Izzard, you've taken over my mind!]
-
- she brought a sandwich and a banana
-
- unbelievable
-
- color and energy
-
- brilliant movements
-
- exuberance and joy
-
- the earth ascends
-
- the giant sun gong ascends; I’d see him strike the gong, but not hear the sound for a second or two
If you’re ever in New York when this concert is taking place, I encourage you to go. It’s an incredible experience, in person. The solstice happens next Thursday, so I’ll have a proper winter solstice post then.
good thing she’s smaller than me, or I might not be able to give away this sweater….
Last night I did some swatching for Marnie’s sweater. The yarn is Valley Yarns Northfield, which is 70% merino, 20% alpaca, and 10% silk, and the fabric is just so beautiful. I’m going to have to buy exactly the same yarn and color to make myself a sweater, assuming I continue to love it as much. Here’s the stockinette pre-blocked swatch, followed by the rope-cable swatch:
so beautiful -- this is what the back of the sweater will look like, since it's the only area that's not cabled in some way
and here's one of the cable swatches; it's very neat, the way the rope emerges.
I’m actually a little bit afraid of knitting this sweater, just as I was afraid to read Moby Dick (which is the craziest idea in the whole world…really? afraid to read a book?). Just as with the book, I’m afraid it’s beyond me, too complicated for my feeble mind to manage. With the sweater, there are multiple patterns and cables going on simultaneously plus shaping. It’s knit in the round, bottom-up, and splits at the arms. So all the busy business happens simultaneously, and since I knit at night, while watching tv with my husband, when I’m kind of tired, well…..I worry. But I want to do it perfectly, so I’m just going to take my time, take each row for itself and make it right, and it’ll all work out. And perhaps I’ll love the FO as much as I love the book. Probably not, but maybe.
Here’s a funny thing about Christmas songs I found on the NPR music page. I especially love #6, though they’re all funny.
so funny!
Tonight’s the Winter Solstice Concert at St John the Divine, and if I love it half as much as I did last year, it’ll be overwhelming. Happy Friday, y’all! I hope you’re able to enjoy the holiday season and not feel too stressed.
p.s. OH — one more. There are a couple of Ryan Gosling tumblrs, and this is my favorite picture so far:
hey girl.
an odd year-in-review post
It’s almost 2012. Boggling. Even more boggling is that I’m 53, I have a daughter who’ll be 30 next year, another who’ll be 27, a son who’ll be 25, and a daughter who’ll graduate college and be 22. WHAT?! Also, 32 years ago today, as a matter of fact, I got married to my former husband, who saved me in a very real way. How am I old enough to have done anything important 32 years ago?!
I’ve seen this on a few blogs and really liked it, so here’s my version. 2011 in review — the first line of the first post each month, with my favorite photo from that month. The photo doesn’t necessarily (usually doesn’t) come from the same post. Here we go:
an urban snowman, with baby beets for buttons, and that's probably an organic carrot. this IS the upper west side, after all.
Ah, New Year’s Eves I have known. One little night, fraught with such imperative – must have fun! Must be memorable! AAAAGH!!
will and katie, 4 years ago
I’m looking at gray skies, gray buildings, brown-gray-black-filthy snow everywhere, and ice-coated trees that look like glass.
giant moon over NYC
Moody. The dreadful and misleading-sounding labile. All over the place (which sounds like it could be at least partially good, doesn’t it?).
sib play
I finished Katie’s socks — the pattern is Angee, by Cookie A, and the yarn is the ultrasoft and super washable KnitPicks Felici (colorway: green vegetables, in the most obviously-named color ever).
I was here just a few days ago! This was shot behind the Greco-Roman amphitheater at Myra, in Kale, Turkey
Turkey was wonderful — in almost every way, it was a perfect vacation.
all done by hand. Every tiny leaf. The hatching on every tiny leaf. Thousands of tiny bunnies. Really. Marnie is a genius.
Remember that old Steve Martin bit about how to be a millionaire and never pay taxes? Basically, it was: first, get a million dollars.
lovely gorgeous NYC
I hope it’s been a good summer for everyone — it’s been a good summer for me! Thank you to everyone who said something here, or on facebook, or via email, about my seeming disappearance from good old Thrums.
i love this color so very much
Aside from fire ants, I don’t mind ants — regular old in-the-house ants. I know some people are freaked out by them, but I don’t mind them. I try to get rid of them, but I don’t mind them.
picture swiped from Marnie's facebook wall, so it's a copy of a copy of a copy. But that's me in Chicago, holding a Bitter Woman Ale and smiling at Marnie and Tom before digging into a giant sandwich. And being 52 the whole time.
This is the whole point with this daily gratitude thing, I guess. Sometimes you have to make a hard effort to find something to be grateful for, and that’s the very time it means the most.
my last evening in the Mekong Delta
We got home around midnight from our wonderful trip to Vietnam and Malaysia. It was just amazing; if you are interested, here’s a link to the flickr set.
central park, so artistic
So there we were last night, handing out candy to trick-or-treaters, waiting for our wonderful dinner, listening to scary music, talking with a friend who came over to spend the evening with us. We munched on Katie’s roasted pumpkin seeds, Trey tended to the smoking pork, it was lovely.
such great texture in that front panel
Are you in a book club? I really want to know — if you are, tell me about it, and if you aren’t, tell me why! I’m in a book club and I love it so much. Although the true number of members is much larger, there are 6-10 people who reliably show up. There’s no reason we don’t have men in our group, we just don’t.
* * *
So what I’ve learned is that my first post each month is usually quite banal; I need to take more photographs, since I included few of my own across the year and many more scrounged off the Internet; it was a rollercoaster year, with some real highs and some extraordinary lows. But it ain’t over yet, the fat lady sings in 14 days and 14 hours!
she’s a w-o-m-a-n, say it again.
Have you seen this huge print H&M ad?
Jerry Hall and her daughter, Georgia May Jagger
What catches your eye in this ad? I’ll tell you what catches mine, and it’s not the hottie daughter. I think she’s meant to catch your eye (and she does catch mine, secondarily, making me note her daddy Mick’s thick lips, and the pout that’s surely meant to exude sexiness), but it’s Jerry Hall — 55-year-old Jerry Hall — who catches mine. When I look at her face, she’s saying to me, “That’s right, I made this gorgeous girl, she’s mine, I did that. Me.” For my money, she completely trumps her daughter, who appears unformed and like a pupae. Maybe that’s just 53-year old me gravitating to my own, but I don’t think so. I think Jerry Hall is one of those Big Women, the kind that exudes herself, the kind whose confidence is a thing unto itself, the kind of woman who feels like a Professional Woman, while I feel like I’m still in amateur standing, wondering when I’m going to feel like a grown-up, and wondering when I’ll feel comfortable with the word woman for myself.
And she’s a Texan, too, that Jerry Hall. Born in Gonzales, a dusty little town in the south of Texas, she grew up in Mesquite, a suburb of Dallas-Ft. Worth, which explains her particular twangy accent, and her big blond hair. I really love this ad, and love what I see in her face.
Me, I’m sporting quite a huge blister from my Sunday night boiling soup on my hand episode.
and it's worse than it looks
Here’s my public service announcement message just for you: Never pour boiling tomato soup on your hand. It will hurt you, a lot.
From their website: “Spellbinding short stories by established and emerging writers take on a new life when they are performed by stars of the stage and screen. Whether we present stories around a lively theme, the favorite works of a guest author or a special collaboration with a museum or publication, each Selected Shorts event is a unique night of literature in performance. Hosted by Isaiah Sheffer.” LISTEN!!
If you love stories, you may already listen to Selected Shorts — either at Symphony Space, if you live in (or visit) New York, or on the radio (or streaming online), as I did for many, many years. There’s something so special about listening to someone read or tell a story, and I never outgrew the pleasure of it. One of my favorite memories is from the summer I had a new spinning wheel and I’d spin while Marnie read aloud to me — Grendel, John Gardner’s wrenching version of the Beowulf story, from the point of view of the monster. So a couple years ago, still relatively new to Manhattan and constantly dazzled by it, I bought an annual subscription to the Selected Shorts season, and loved going to all the performances. Now I pick and choose, and last night I went to the show called NOLA: Jazzy Tales from the Big Easy. I adore New Orleans, and have been there more times than I can shake a stick at. Here’s the program:
what a lovely menu!
Michael Cerveris
Of course the best part is sitting in the dark listening to the stories, and that’s worth the price of admission. But it’s also just fascinating watching the performers, some of whom perform. Some act the hell of out the piece. Some read it. Some are overly precise in their diction, some are loose and jangly. Michael Cerveris threw himself into reading the chapter from A Confederacy of Dunces, giving Ignatius a deep, slow booming voice, and the other characters quite different voices. He has a lot of familiarity with New Orleans (real being-there familiarity) and got the accents just right. There’s more than one accent there, and he nailed them, which gave me a lot of pleasure.
Patricia Clarkson, so luscious
Patricia Clarkson’s mother “runs New Orleans,” she said, and she grew up there. She’s got that deep, lush, drawly accent, you know, so I figured her readings would be great. She’s one who acted the hell out of it. Before she started, she suddenly took a wide, firm stance as if facing the microphone for a fight. When she started to read the Bukowski, she shifted her stance entirely. She was quite dramatic (big surprise there), raising and lowering the volume of her voice quite a bit, and her facial expressions were fluid and exaggerated. Sometimes I liked it, sometimes it felt a bit much, but I was definitely engaged. I just love hearing her accent, no matter what.
Clarke Peters -- loved him in The Wire, and also in Treme
Clarke Peters was gorgeous, elegant, and with such a deep beautiful voice it was a joy listening to him. I thought he was the best of the night. He really just stood there and told the story of the man trying to teach New Orleans kids how to play jazz, acting out what was necessary, singing the singing bits. He wasn’t flamboyant but he was in it. He also really nailed the accents, and I could close my eyes and listen to him and feel like I was back there. I could hear things that he wasn’t putting into the story, because what he did put into the story was so full. I wish he’d been the last reader of the night, it would’ve been such a lovely place to end. Unfortunately, he wasn’t.
Amy Ryan, loved her in everything she's ever done
Still and all, it was a wonderful evening of intense story. Listening required great effort; it’s not at all a passive experience, even though it seems so. With each performer, the listener has to make a shift and learn how to hear. And listening to stories being read takes more effort, there’s a period of adjustment at the beginning where it doesn’t make sense — true of just reading short stories, too, sometimes.
And thus ends the first of my fantastic NY nights. Next up: Friday night’s Winter Solstice Concert at St John the Divine. It’s so delicious having such great things to look forward to.
Nothing against being taught about things, but finding your own way can be awfully wonderful.
I don’t mean it’s pleasurable to be ignorant, or to stay ignorant, but there’s a real pleasure in being ignorant about something and just finding your own way in. In some ways, I’m so glad to have the exact background I have; I come from uneducated and ignorant people, most of whom took great pride in both those things. I didn’t grow up with books and educated discussions about anything, though I was an obsessed and voracious secret reader, myself. I had to keep it a secret because it infuriated my mother. So I read the things that gave me pleasure, without any knowledge about the things people should read.
After high school I didn’t go to college, I got married and had my children, but continued reading the things that made me happy. I read Homer and Dante, and all of Hemingway’s and Fitzgerald’s and Faulkner’s books, when I was 23 years old and home with my first baby, Katie. I read those mostly because I loved them and they made my brain vibrate, but I read them partly because I had a sense of my own ignorance and felt ashamed of it. I felt ashamed of the way I spoke….not my accent, but my grammar, my syntax. I grew up hearing “I don’t want none of that,” or “We ain’t got none.” Because we moved so much (occasionally as many as 6 times in a school year), I always seemed to miss the unit on grammar. Either they’d just completed it before we moved to a place, or we were just about to begin it and we’d move away. So I read partly to learn how to speak.
And I came to poetry with the same ignorance. Complete and absolute ignorance of it. I’ve never taken a poetry class, never learned one thing about the mechanics of poetry, the jargon of poetry analysis. I don’t know the members of the academy, I just know poets I’ve found and liked. Are they famous? I don’t know. Are they well-regarded? Beats me. Are they holders of chairs, winners of prizes and awards? No idea. I’m completely ignorant about poetry, except for my understanding of what I see in a poem, and my deep understanding of what it makes me feel.
But great poetry is great poetry, and it turns out that poets I’ve found and loved are usually famous, well-regarded, holders of chairs and winners of prizes and awards. Last night I took a poem by Richard Wilbur to our monthly poetry group meeting, and turns out he’s a big deal. Who knew? Not me. (Here’s a lovely interview with him, highly recommended reading.) And here’s the poem I took last night; it moves me to tears, chokes me up. I was going to save it for my winter solstice post, or my end-of-year post, but it’s so much bigger than those things and it’s so urgent in my mind right now, I want to go ahead and share it. I hope you enjoy it too.
Year’s End
Richard Wilbur
Now winter downs the dying of the year,
And night is all a settlement of snow;
From the soft street the rooms of houses show
A gathered light, a shapen atmosphere,
Like frozen-over lakes whose ice is thin
And still allows some stirring down within.
I’ve known the wind by water banks to shake
The late leaves down, which frozen where they fell
And held in ice as dancers in a spell
Fluttered all winter long into a lake;
Graved on the dark in gestures of descent,
They seemed their own most perfect monument.
There was perfection in the death of ferns
Which laid their fragile cheeks against the stone
A million years. Great mammoths overthrown
Composedly have made their long sojourns,
Like palaces of patience, in the gray
And changeless lands of ice. And at Pompeii
The little dog lay curled and did not rise
But slept the deeper as the ashes rose
And found the people incomplete, and froze
The random hands, the loose unready eyes
Of men expecting yet another sun
To do the shapely thing they had not done.
These sudden ends of time must give us pause.
We fray into the future, rarely wrought
Save in the tapestries of afterthought.
More time, more time. Barrages of applause
Come muffled from a buried radio.
The New-year bells are wrangling with the snow.
Breathtaking.
meanwhile, here I sit doing a whole lot of nothing.
In the truest meaning of that overused word, this gave me a feeling of awe. Chills. I felt transported, moved, shifted, elevated, awed. (The guy gets a little heavy-handed, literally, at the beginning but straightens up very quickly…)
Yeah? You too? Don’t you imagine that’s how Tchaikovsky heard it in his head when he was writing it?
Ava Gardner was the most beautiful woman in the world, and it’s wonderful that she didn’t cut up her face. She addressed aging by picking up her chin and receiving the light in a better way. And she looked like a woman. She never tried to look like a girl. ~Sharon Stone
Somewhat unusually, I’m editing an academic paper for a peer-reviewed journal, in a discipline that’s outside my own. This means the jargon sounds very dumb to me. And I quickly race to acknowledge that the jargon in my own discipline likely sounds dumb to people in other areas. This one is about cathected objects for Latin American identitarian thinking. I have to keep reading it over and over just to get it. I know you can add -ism to the end of anything, but Latin Americanism just doesn’t make sense to me, no matter how many times I read it.
And so I am here, avoiding work. It’ll bite me in the butt later this week, my procrastination, but whatever. How’s about a couple beautiful women?
beautiful 62-year old Mary Louise Streep
Where even to begin with this gorgeous photograph. The thing about Meryl Streep is her gaze, always, and it’s arresting in this photograph. But what grabs me and keeps me coming back to stare at her face is the softness, the creases, the tissue-ey luxury of her skin. And I love the way her lipstick has bled into the feathery lines around her mouth. I love this photograph, and I love these two things she said recently:
[2009] My daughters had helped me to stop worrying about my appearance over the years. I wasted so many years thinking I wasn’t pretty enough and why didn’t I have Jessica Lange’s body or someone else’s legs? What a waste of time.
[commenting recently on what she'd like people to take away from her newest movie Iron Lady about M. Thatcher] I would like to think that everybody that got on a subway and saw some old lady sitting across from them, that they would imagine that a whole huge life lay behind all those wrinkles, and that seemingly nondescript, forgettable [face]. I mean, there is almost nothing less interesting in our consumerist society than an old lady. Um … dismissed. We don’t make movies for her. We don’t give a damn. You can’t sell her anything, she doesn’t buy anything. But just the idea that everything — the whole panoply of human experience, births, deaths, struggles, joy — everything’s in there. And just to imagine that. That’s what I would hope.
It’s so funny the way our daughters help us grow; my daughter also helped me stop worrying about my appearance. Thank you again for that, Marnie.
And then here’s another true beauty. I confess to a secret about this one; you may be surprised by this (I always am) but I’ve been told my whole life that I look like Diane Keaton. Actually, I think it’s just that we both have big smiles and similar cheekbones, and I think we share a similar Golly, gee! sensibility. And I can’t tell you how similar my husband and I are to Annie Hall and Alvy Singer, but that’s a whole different thing.
gorgeous almost-66-year-old Diane Hall
Look at those gorgeous faces! I know they’re celebrities, with lives very different from mine, but there’s something that feels authentic about them and I love that they both put their beautiful 60+-year-old faces out for close-ups. I love that their faces show their ages, and I love that they both seem to recognize their own beauty.
I’m usually very surprised by the kinds of searches that bring people to my blog (someone in the Bronx always searches me by name, and I’d love to know who you are!). “Crazy Train” is a very common search — I used that in a post about a nutty subway trip — as is “woman with big feet” which takes people to a post I wrote about funny proverbs. And then there are the ones that freak me out a little bit, of a creepy sexual nature. I don’t want to type them here and increase the possibility that someone making that search could land here. Curiously, 95% of those searches originate from Saudi Arabia or Pakistan. I counted. Over the last five days, you’ve arrived from these places:
such far-flung visitors! Hi, y'all!
No one from Australia in the last 5 days, and never anyone from Africa.
And finally, coming on the heels of my little corneal abrasion day o’misery: I have a second-degree burn on my left thumb. Sunday night I was in a happy frenzy of assembling all the goodies for a box to send to Austin, filled with Christmas gifts. I was making tomato soup in the kitchen and wasn’t paying close enough attention; I heard it furiously boiling over, so I ran into the kitchen and grabbed it off the stove. I’d placed my giant soup mug in the sink and I grabbed the handle and poured the boiling soup into the mug but somehow missed, and poured it all over my thumb. The whole thumb immediately turned a bright red, and the burn went down onto my hand. All night long I was in a lot of pain, and kept a baggie filled with ice on it. It blistered, and there are blisters underneath the blisters. It’s awful-looking, and it’s probably going to peel and who knows what will happen. At this point, as long as I don’t accidentally scratch it, it actually has no feeling at all. I can lightly stroke the thumb and I just can’t feel anything at all. The worst of it is on the knuckle, which will be nasty when it starts healing after the skin opens up. OY. It made me feel so old, having two painful accidents in three days.
The yarn came for Marnie’s Moby sweater today, and I finished Anna’s socks, so one of these evenings I’ll do the swatches. Not tonight — poetry group. Not tomorrow night — Selected Shorts at Symphony Space. Maybe Thursday.
Have a nice evening, y’all.
76 trombones led the big parade, with 110 cornets close at hand. and there was one guy in the subway.
A couple days ago, I entered the subway and heard a musician — perfectly normal. There’s almost always someone in my subway station, usually a guitarist of some kind but occasionally a saxophone player, a one-man-band kind of dude, or even a saw player. The other day, though, the guy had a trombone. I retreated into myself, dreading having to listen to Trombone! Playing! As I walked to the far end of the platform, he started playing, and it was stunningly beautiful. He played Christmas music, and it was warm and rich, and resonated in the fully-tiled space.
Will peeking out from behind his 'bone
As I stood there waiting for the train, listening to the beautiful music, I wondered why I’d been so dreading it. Was there some kind of trombone stereotype I held? My son Will played the trombone in junior high, but I didn’t hold that against the trombone. (No instrument sounds good when the player is just learning. I played flute and piccolo, one of my daughters played cello and one played viola, I have a lot of experience with new musicians and it ain’t pretty.)
Why the bad attitude about trombones? Sure, there’s “76 Trombones” from the Music Man, but I loved that song! It’s not like they make a hard sound, like trumpets. They’re kind of loopy, slide-y, nice. When I got home I googled “trombone stereotype” and found this hysterical page with more funny information about trombone players than you’d have imagined existed.
Anyway, lovely beautiful trombone Christmas songs in the subway. Just one of the great surprises of life in Manhattan, and one more reason I love living here.
[bonus link: If I got you in the mood for The Music Man, click here for the fantastic scene Pick A Little, Talk A Little. I'm grinning. Baaaalllllzac.]
what have YOU outgrown?
- a desperate longing to wear capes
- my crush on David Cassidy
- a willingness to eat a bunch of donuts at once
- my childhood dream of growing up to become a paleontologist
This list was prompted by walking behind a woman who was wearing a swingy hip-length wool cape — black and white herringbone — over black riding pants and boots. I nearly laughed out loud because I thought she was wearing a very silly costume, and then I realized it’s what she chose to wear today. When I was a young slump-shouldered girl, I wanted a floor-length gray wool cape (with a hood) in the most intensely-felt way. OH how I wanted that cape. My mother refused to get one for me, saying that I’d look like an old lady. And honestly, though I say this rarely, she was right. It was Texas, first. It was the late 1960s/early 1970s (I wanted this for many years). It just wasn’t done. Over these years I’d periodically think about a cape but never got past that, just thinking about it. I even bought that Folkwear pattern once, the Kinsale Cloak, but somehow never got around to making it. Again, TEXAS.
Seeing the woman on the street just now, I realized I’ve outgrown that wish. I have no desire to own or wear a cape, period. This is jarring to me, but it’s true. Remember how fantastic Meryl Streep looked in that cape in French Lieutenant’s Woman (Lef-tenant, for any of you Brits)? She kept my cape dreams going for quite a long time, but you really need to have long quays in foggy weather to make that look work as well as she did.
So farewell, cape wishes. And David Cassidy, and boxes of donuts, and Gobi fantasies. I’ve grown up. And it’s just fine.
there’s very little that’s more enjoyable than finding the right words to say something very clearly.
I just read this and feel such delight at the prospect of thinking about it:
Henri Michaux wrote, in The Major Ordeals of the Mind and the Countless Minor Ones: ”Just as the stomach does not digest itself, just as it is essential that the stomach do no such thing, the mind is constructed in such a way that it cannot grasp itself, cannot directly, continuously grasp its own mechanism and action, having other matter to grasp.”
I’m not at all sure that the reason the mind cannot grasp itself is that it’s too busy grasping other matters, nor am I entirely sure that the mind cannot grasp itself (or am I…), but I love this idea and look forward to thinking about it.
I’m trying to figure out how to write an experiential scene of dissociation, where the character makes the shift into dissociation. We all dissociate, even just to a mild degree; we zone out, we do a little zombie thing, we step out of the immediate environment, even if just for a second. Of course there’s a more profound kind of dissociation, in which a person psychologically flees the scene and leaves the body behind to take the heat. People sometimes talk about watching themselves as if they’re floating overhead; that form seems pretty easy to write. Other people talk about kind of being in an all-white (or some colored) space, as if nothing else exists. And other people dissociate and only know it when they’re “back,” and realize that some time has passed. The jargon for that is “lost time,” as in I’ve been losing time.
So this question of the mind grasping itself seems somehow relevant and interesting in terms of dissociation. I think there’s something in it for my current dilemma, I just need time to think about it. But that probably won’t come today, unfortunately, so I record it all here, for my safekeeping. If something strikes you, I’d love to hear it!
oh what a week / mid-December, in 2011 / what a very special time for me / I’ll remember, what a week. (apologies to Leo Sayer)
Before I moved here, I had all these ideas about what I’d do as a New Yorker, and they entailed going to the theater, seeing live performances at Lincoln Center, walking in Central Park every day, and attending readings and lectures. And I do all those things (though not as much as I’d imagined…..), and feel lucky to live in a place with so many opportunities. Some are quite expensive, but there are so many inexpensive and free things to do, you can still have a culturally rich life even if you aren’t in the 1%. As I certainly am not.
But this is definitely going to be one of those weeks, and I cannot wait! Here’s what’s up on deck for lucky old me:
- Tuesday — poetry group. Oh how I love this, as any regular blog reader knows. Very smart people talking about poetry; it’s Temma’s Poetry Salon, as I like to think of it so I can feel even fancier.
- Wednesday — at Symphony Space, a Selected Shorts performance called NOLA stories, featuring Clarke Peters (from The Wire and Treme), Patricia Clarkson, Michael Cerveris, Amy Ryan, Roy Blount, Jr., and a performance by New Orleans piano legend Henry Butler. People reading stories out loud, while we listen in the dark, sheer heaven.
- Friday — the annual Winter Solstice Concert at St John the Divine. Remember I went last year, and was prone to fits of joy and awe? The same dance group is performing this year (The Force of Nature Dance Theater), along with old and new musicians. I know it’ll be magical again.
- Saturday — I’m going to see the NYC Ballet dance The Nutcracker at Lincoln Center! In all these years of life, I’ve never seen a live performance. My dear friend Temma invited me, and we’re going to dinner before the show. She wants to see little girls in the audience wearing satin ribbons and bows, and I’m sure they’ll be there in abundance.
- Sunday — I’m going to the final performance of Krapp’s Last Tape, my favorite Beckett play, at BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music), performed by John Hurt. If you haven’t read Krapp, this is essentially the point: A tragedy in one act for a lone actor, this dramatization of the messy truths of memory and time illuminates the predicament we face when we become strangers to our former selves. Doesn’t that sound like something I’d love?! I have so many former selves, so many lives I’ve lived, this play really speaks to me more than any of Beckett’s plays and stories.
So yeah, it’s going to be an amazing, amazing week. Today I’m making panettone, finishing up my Ho-Ho-Ho-ing and getting everything wrapped and ready to ship to Austin tomorrow, and doing some house-straightening.
last year's panettone, with apricots and cranberries and lots of dried fruit yummies
Department of Random:
- Why do computer manufacturers use different keyboards??? It’s always tiny little small differences, like the placement of the Control and Alt keys. On my last keyboard, the arrangement on the lower left was Fn, Ctrl, then Alt. On my new one it’s Ctrl, Fn, Alt. It’s driving me crazy! I use keystroke combinations constantly, and my little finger expects the Ctrl key to be in a certain place. It’s really goofing me up, man.
- Here are the year’s 26 best films, according to The New Yorker. I haven’t seen most of them, yikes!
- And here are the most criminally overlooked books of the year, according to Flavorwire. I feel so guilty, because I’ve also overlooked them. All.
- When I was a very little [precocious] girl, around 5 years old as I recall, I wanted to be a paleontologist and discover dinosaur eggs in the Gobi Desert. That’s all I wanted to be when I grew up, and I remember feeling it quite desperately. It pissed off my mother, for some reason. Marnie sent me a link to this article about a recent discovery of a nest of gorgeous dinosaur eggs in the Gobi Desert. See?? That could’ve been mine!
- Watch and enjoy this interview with a one-year-old. “On Fridays she hits the turtles.”
- And one more: remember how much I loved Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, a poet’s gorgeous memoir of his difficult father? It’s going to be a movie called Being Flynn, and the casting looks perfect. The trailer suggests the movie will capture the mood and feeling. I am SO excited, and can’t wait to see it. Here’s the trailer:
Happy Sunday y’all!
take good care of your eyes! SERIOUSLY.
Last night I went to my book club’s holiday party, at a neat little bar down on St. Mark’s Pl. It was so much fun; many of the women brought their husbands/boyfriends/partners, and it was great meeting them. When I got home, all was well and I crashed. No big deal, everything was fine when I went to sleep.
But when I woke up this morning, boy was I in a lot of pain. I have somehow abraded my right cornea. Have you ever done that? IT HURTS, let me tell you. Blinking irritates the cut, and I just want to rub my eye but of course I can’t do that. There are tears constantly flowing out of that eye, and oh, did I mention how much IT HURTS yet?? The eye is rich with nerve endings, but luckily the eye also heals extremely quickly; it’s among the fastest-healing parts of the body, so yay for that. I’m not supposed to read, which I’d assume also means I am not supposed to knit. I guess I’m supposed to just rest my eyes, listen to something.
Signing off, through the tears.
ooh baby i love your way (every day)….want to be with you night and day ~peter frampton
Last year, before we left for Laos and Cambodia, I had my little laptop perched [precariously, as it turned out] on the footstool. I got up off the couch and stepped over/around the stool but caught my foot in the cord, and we both went flying. All my attention was on protecting my own bones and teeth so the computer just flew through the air, uninterrupted, and landed hard on its top left corner. I was mostly ok, bruised and shaken, but my tough little thinkpad took a hard blow; the casing on that corner broke, and the screen never closed well after that. It was torqued at a weird little angle, and I had to hold my mouth just right to get the latch to click when I closed it.
But it worked! It was tough, it traveled many a mile — around southeast Asia twice, around Turkey, around Chicago and Texas and upstate New York. Everywhere I go, it goes. We bought it because it was very small and light, easy to slip in my traveling backpack. Of course, that meant it wasn’t so great for spending very long days typing on it, which is how I use it more often than not. I’d get some carpal tunnel pain now and then, and vow to get (and use) a full-size keyboard, but I never did. I knew I wouldn’t. I mostly sit on the couch, with it on my lap, from 7am until I go to bed. That extra keyboard just wasn’t going to work. I wasn’t fooling anyone.
A couple months ago, though, I noticed that the cracked casing was getting much worse. That hinge was nearly broken off. It was a matter of time until one day it simply broke. Since all my work takes place on my laptop, that could’ve been bad. (Well…..only partly. There are just the two of us in the house, and we have 5 computers. I know.) So we decided we should bite the bullet and replace the laptop before the end of the year, and it arrived yesterday. It’s the polar opposite of my little thinkpad, with a 17.6″ screen and a giant keyboard. And it’s fast, man. And gorgeous. Really, really gorgeous. Want to see? Sure you do.
look at that! it's so bright and crisp. on my old computer, this same view of my rav project page only fit 3 projects per row.
it's beautifully textured...look ma, no fingerprints
and here's my humble thinkpad. it was a good soldier. but i must say that i won't miss that stupid red button mouse thingy. i always hated it.
Even though the new one is so big, it still balances lightly on my lap on the couch. The screen is so large I can easily have open a Word document with the manuscript I’m reading, and a second Word document to its right, for writing my notes and comments.
We’ll obviously keep the thinkpad and continue to take it on trips as long as it lasts. I feel so fond of it, it logged so many miles and so many wonderful photos of our journeys. It’s kind of funny how important my computers are, since I spend so much time with them. My husband did the hard drive partitioning and setting up the program installations, and I’ve already done all the file-moving and customizations so the new one is ready to go. And so am I………..zoom!
” Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.” — Herman Melville
To say Marnie likes the book Moby Dick is a tremendous understatement. The name of her business is Monkey-Rope Press (here’s her professional site, and here’s her Etsy shop). The banners on both sites feature a quote from the fabulous monkey-rope chapter in Moby Dick: “it is a humorously perilous business for both of us.” If you poke around in her shop, you’ll see prints about oceanic life, including shipwrecks. She’s creating a book that is partly set on a huge ocean-going ship that …. well, I don’t want to give it away. To do research for the book, she built a model ship, and she took sailing lessons. The girl is thorough.
So when I saw this sweater of course I thought immediately of Marnie:
Ambergris, designed by Ann Weaver
Those whale flukes up the center, the beautiful knots and ropes up the sides, it’s Moby Dick in wool. I have been wanting to knit sweaters for someone other than myself, but Katie lives in Texas and I wasn’t sure Marnie would want one; inspired by this sweater, I sent her the picture this morning, hoping she’d like it. A few emails very quickly exchanged later, and the yarn is on its way and I own the pattern. I’ll be using Valley Yarns Northfield, in charcoal:
Valley Yarns Northfield, in charcoal -- the color of the depths!
I’ll be loathe to set Audrey aside, but so very eager to make this sweater, and for Marnie, I won’t mind a bit. It should be loads of fun to make; I’m changing the neck, to give her a slouchy turtleneck instead of the kind of odd neck it currently has. I can’t wait!! If it’s as great as it seems, I may have to make one for myself, too. I loved Moby Dick so much, it nearly ruined me for reading anything else because nothing compares.
Just sharing my intense enthusiasm……knitters, I know you know what this is like.
the skies aren’t sunny, but at least this project is!
I’m not knitting Christmas gifts, just as I didn’t last year. If my kids need or want something, as Marnie wanted a warm winter hat that could accommodate her braids, I’m thrilled to make it to order. But just making stuff in the hopes they’ll like it? A fool’s errand, I’ve decided. The lone exception is my youngest daughter Anna, who shockingly (to me) loves handknit socks. She’s a high-powered behavioral economics/stats major at a fancy college far away, where it’s hot (but dorm floors are always cold), and the only socks she owns are the ones I knit for her. This is a kid who snagged a prestigious summer internship at Standard & Poor’s, who gets all excited talking about economics, and she loves handknit socks. Ah, the lovely complexity of people.
So the only Christmas knitting I’m doing (for her, it would actually be Hanukkah knitting!) is a pair of socks for Anna. She’s still a college student, so I have to use superwash yarn that’s tough enough to withstand college machines; this is KnitPicks Stroll Tonal (golden yellow), and it’s the Kai-Mei pattern by Cookie A, which I knit once before. I’m telling you, it’s an absolute blast to knit, and how often do you end up with socks that have a right sock and a left sock?
i really ADORE this pattern
I finished the first sock in a day and a half, and I’ll cast on the second sock tonight. When I finish it, I’ll get back to my beautiful Audrey in Silt.
Happy Wednesday y’all, and if you’re in NYC, stay dry! I have to be out and about all afternoon, and am starting to hate the weather gods, who give us reliably rainy weather on Wednesdays. Come on. Shift it over a day to Tuesdays or Thursdays, at least once in a while.
squeezing and smashing and flattening, oh my.
Hey, remember that scene in The Wizard of Oz, when the scarecrow is telling Dorothy how frightened he was when the flying monkeys tore him apart and scattered him around? It was something like, “they took my legs off and they threw them over there! Then they took my chest out and they threw it over there!” Yeah, remember that?
like this, except with older women, colder hands, and fewer clothes
That’s a mammogram. The kind and caring mammogram technician grabs your breast and takes it over there, then pulls the tissue next to your chest and takes it over there, where it all gets squashed as thin as possible.
So yesterday was my annual mammogram, obviously. I arrived early for my noon appointment, and after 45 minutes I was taken back for the exam by my long-time doctor, Julie Mitnick, for a little touching, a little feeling, a little sitting-up-arm-raising, and then it’s back to the equipment room. The technician was this truly kind and warm woman (with cold hands) with a heavy Slavic accent, who kept apologizing for torturing me. She’d lower the flattening thing until I cried, then she’d jump, apologizing, and go activate the scan and release me. The whole time she was apologizing.
The problem for me yesterday was that they had to redo the scans. You know, for each breast there’s the one where they flatten it horizontally and then the one where they flatten it vertically. For the redo, they only had to do one extra view for each side, so at least it wasn’t four more scans, but it was kind of awful. I was bruised-feeling and very sore already, from the first round. I’d been told there’s always a possibility the scans will have to be redone, so don’t worry if I’m called back….so I really wasn’t scared by what it meant, as much as dreading having to be squashed again.
It occurred to me that mammogram technicians must have the best self-images of their bodies, since they see (and handle) real live women every day. They see what real women look like, who are at the ages where they need mammograms. We don’t look like models, that’s for sure, even the healthy among us. We sag, we droop, we have had quite a bit of life happen to our wonderful bodies. Most of us, probably, have given birth, a great many have nursed babies, age and gravity have happened. I imagine that seeing very real women all day must help you accept your own body for what it is. I’d love to more regularly see real women my age (not naked, necessarily!).
The place I go is actually pretty great; after the scans are completed, I wait a very short while and then the doctor speaks to me personally and tells me the results. Two doctors look at the images, and when you’re done, you’re done. You know the news, you don’t have to wait for a phone call. I always walk away with (a) next year’s appointment made, (b) a feeling of unnecessary self-righteousness, (c) a need for ibuprofen, and (d) intense relief. Safe, clean, and clear for another year.
I came home to a package in the mail from Jocelyn, who sent me the yarn she had left over from her welted hat, since I admired it so much. We’re going to be hat twins, and the thought makes me smile. I love blue and orange together (or purple and orange) so it’ll be fun to knit, aside from my connection to sweet Jocelyn.
Bruisedly yours,
Lori
all i want for christmas is you (and his courage)
I want to be his friend — I want to be him. If this doesn’t make you grin like an idiot, get up right now and go slap yourself in the face. Seriously. Lighten up.
sisters, sisters / there were never such devoted sisters ~ irving berlin, ‘white christmas’ (1954)
I grew up with a sister, though I haven’t really seen her all that much (or known her, for that matter) since I was in high school, and I graduated in 1977. Once every several years she’ll reappear with a bang, we’ll speak for a couple weeks, and it’ll be all over again. When we were very very little, we were quite close, as is often the case in a troubled household. She was my refuge when I had nightmares, which was often; even though she’s 2 years younger than me, I’d run to her room and climb in bed with her for comfort. I was born in 1958, and she was born in 1960, so this movie was part of our childhood and we sang this song over and over, with our arms around each other, singing to each other.
From the movie White Christmas, of course. For two tiny little girls from scrubby old Texas, the idea of snow and Christmas and holiday cheer was as far away as the moon; farther, maybe, because we could see the moon out our bedroom windows.
here we are, sitting on VERY hot rocks in our front yard -- junior girl scout (me) and brownie (her). sisters, sisters, devoted sisters at that time, anyway
Memory lane. A nice place to visit now and then. And now….I’m sure the bathroom floor is dry, so I can resume my housecleaning. Yay?
despite this, I’d rather be who I am now, than to go back in time….
I don’t often feel old. I hear people say that — I feel so old, boy I’m getting old – but it’s not something I feel. I feel young, actually, and think I will probably always feel younger than my years, unless I get very sick or disabled. But two things happened in the last 24 hours that gave me that stomach-dropping jolt of feeling old.
On Amazon, I was going through one of those little exercises where you improve your recommendations by indicating things you like and dislike. Books, that one was easy. Like this one, hate that one, own this one, don’t show me more like the other one. Movies, piece of cake. More of this type, never that type. But then I hit the music selection and didn’t know a single artist who came up, no matter how many times I clicked the “refresh! get me out of here!” button. I’d never heard of them, and couldn’t even guess what kind of music they made.
I felt old.
How long has it been since I was excited about a new musician? I am riding the Adele wave, but bands? No idea. How do I find new music these days, anyway? I work alone, my social network comprises very smart women more or less (less, actually) my age, and we don’t talk about music. We talk about books or our lives. My kids and I always have too much else to talk about, to get around to music, although occasionally one will recommend something new.
I guess I’m out of that loop, now.
And then this piece in today’s NYTimes, about how face to face conversation is so….yesterday. Granted, I have an awful lot of electronic communication, but I cherish the face to face conversations I have with people I care about. (Just don’t call me on the telephone, I really hate that device.) But really? Younger people don’t like face to face conversation? I guess I’m old.
This wonderful article about Rita Hayworth didn’t make me feel old; in fact, it filled me with the exuberance of feeling that young feeling, so I prefer to close with my recommendation that you read it, and watch the video embedded near the bottom. Remember this feeling, y’all (even if you weren’t leaping over Fred Astaire)?
the joy of living, right?
and with this, I bid you adieu for the day! enjoy your saturday, y’all -
I decided to knit for a little while and do some reading for fun, so I gathered my stuff together, made a little snack, and sat down to knit. Then it struck me, what a funny thing it is to knit in 2011:
it amused me, anyway.
another one bites the dust! Two Amy Herzog sweaters in about 6 weeks’ time. Pret-ty, pret-ty, pret-ty good.
And….here it is! My new sweater, dubbed Laurayana, because Laura gave me the Ayana pattern for my birthday. It took me less than 3 weeks to make the sweater, from swatch to block. I really love it, though I may undo the hem facings and redo them in simple bind-off or something. I’m not sure I like the bulk there. But it’s flattering, and very comfortable, and it was a fun knit:
such great texture in that front panel
red in the sweater's hem, and in the sleeve hems, too! surprise!
really such a comfortable sweater to wear.
This is my first sweater knit in pieces, and the first time I’ve used Cascade 220 for a sweater. I’ll do both again, for sure.
Here’s my project page on ravelry, where I note a lot of details. And this leads me to a mini-rant, now that I think about it. I wish people would indicate the size they knit, and how much yarn they used! It’s also nice if they list mods, or problems they encountered, and I love to read notes about how the yarn wears with time. But at a minimum, I wish everyone would list the size they knit and how much yarn they used. This isn’t about comparing (ooh, she’s a 42!!), it’s about knowing how it’ll look in your size, and how much yarn you really need for that size. Good grief.
And with this, I suspect my long run of knitting posts will slow down. Though I’m nearly done with the deep ribbing on Audrey……
Have a wonderful Saturday, everyone!
this may signal a shift from knitting to non-knitting posts……there’s a lot of interesting stuff coming up!
I seem to post in long jags — weeks without any mention of knitting, except in passing, focusing instead on stuff I’m thinking about, seeing, and doing, and then weeks of knitting posts without much else. So if you like the knitting posts, you’ll like this one! If you don’t, hang on….there’s a lot going on in the next few weeks, so (a) little time to knit and (b) lots of other stuff to think about.
[for instance: next week I have my annual mammogram Monday and my book club holiday party Thursday, but the week after is chock-full of good stuff, including a winter concert Sunday, poetry group Tuesday, Selected Shorts performance Wednesday, the annual Winter Solstice Concert Friday, and the Nutcracker at Lincoln Center on Saturday. WHEE squared!]
For now, though, a bit o’knitting. My Laurayana is all seamed on one side, waiting for the 2nd sleeve to dry so I can sew it in. It’s a gorgeous fit — of course I tried it on, closing the open side with pins. I’m exhibiting great restraint by waiting for it to be all the way finished before showing you. I really do recommend the pattern; FO post and photos tomorrow!
Audrey is now on the needles:
a lovely bit of knitting time this morning, with my tea
That’s madelinetosh pashmina, in siltwash, which is a really beautiful brown with bits of caramel and olive. I’m enjoying the yarn, after the rougher Cascade 220. I decided not to do twisted rib for the hem, so I’m plowing ahead.
My mug has sheep on it, one of which is glazed black. I bought this mug in Fredericksburg, VA, in 1988 — it was perfect for me. Sheep. Yeah. Black sheep, me. Yeah. I moved it around, place to place, year after year. In 2004, a bunch of my stuff was in storage for a while and I hadn’t seen my mug but assumed it was just boxed up. When I moved in with my (now) husband, I opened the cabinet for a mug and there it was! I was a little bit confused, but said “Ah! There’s my mug!” He said what do you mean, that’s my mug. And it was his mug; mine had a crack at the top of the handle. What are the odds that he had the same mug (and to this day I have no idea why he’d have such a mug, he’s no sheep person!).
It’s going to be a cold weekend, high of 46 tomorrow, but no rain or snow so I plan to get out and do something. Sunday night I have an art date night with myself — either painting, writing, or making something, not quite sure what. I hope your weekend plans are as exciting to you as mine are to me! Happy Friday, y’all.
An Arab proverb says, “If you have much, give of your wealth; If you have little, give of your heart.” I add, “If you have a bit, give of your yarn!”
Thank heavens for the random number generator, that’s all I have to say. If it’d been up to me, I’d have been thoroughly paralyzed, because I had a reason I wanted each one of you to win that skein of purple cashmere. I’d have picked one of you, then I’d have seen the next name and thought no, I want her to win, then the next name would’ve prompted oh wait, I want her to win, then but wait, it has to be her. And you see I never could’ve gotten anywhere.
Instead, I just plug 1 and 15 into the little website and I get this:
Kristie! Kristieinbc posted the first comment.
I already contacted Kristie, but in case my email went into her spam folder and Kristie, you see this, just let me know your shipping address and it’ll go out on Monday. I secretly wanted everyone to win, which makes little sense but there you go.
I finished Laurayana’s second sleeve last night (whee!) and cast on Audrey in Silt, so things are popping in my sweater wardrobe. This morning I’ll sew in the first sleeve and stitch up that side seam while the second sleeve is blocking.
In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit. ~Albert Schweitzer
Are you in a book club? I really want to know — if you are, tell me about it, and if you aren’t, tell me why!
I’m in a book club and I love it so much. Although the true number of members is much larger, there are 6-10 people who reliably show up. There’s no reason we don’t have men in our group, we just don’t. The women are mostly young; if I’m not the oldest, I’m second oldest, and there’s one woman a bit younger than me. Otherwise, they’re mostly in their late 20s, early 30s. They’re smart and accomplished — lawyers, writers, media producers, they work in publishing, big pharma, all with fancy careers. (And then there’s me, sitting on my couch freelancing in my jammies.)
We meet once a month, on a weeknight, at a member’s apartment; hosting duties rotate among us, though some of us can’t host for one reason or another. The host usually provides food, which ranges from chips and veggies to all-out sumptuous spreads. Then we each bring a bottle of wine. The host gets to select the book we read, and we all try to finish the book but usually only a few of us actually finish. In months past, it didn’t matter if anyone finished, because we talked about the book for a total of 2-3 minutes, and that was my real disappointment because I wanted to talk about the book. But the women are so great, and I really enjoy their company, so it was ok.
Last night we talked about the book the entire meeting, after we talked about our book swap/holiday party we’re having next week. I LOVED IT. We read The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides. I didn’t like it; I haven’t been captured by any of Eugenides’ books yet, and this was no exception. I won’t go into it, since I’m not intending this post to be a book review. Some members liked it a lot, some asked questions none of us had thought about, some had insights, some just expressed their opinions, or asked questions, but all together it was a fun conversation.
Being with everyone definitely lifted me out of my blah, and made me realize anew just how important our connections are. I think in addition to feeling bad about not seeing my kids for Christmas, I was also feeling disconnected from friends, cast aside (not really) in some way (not really, but that kind of feeling), unimportant to anyone, etc. Sitting among those women last night, I got to feel the connections between us all, even though I don’t know them all to the same degree, a few I’m marginally comfortable with and others I adore.
I have so little time to read for fun, and I’m not always happy with the selected book, but I try to read it anyway. It’s usually the only book I read for fun, so the power of our monthly meeting is the real draw. I read an interesting story in the NYTimes this morning about a literary salon set up by a bunch of young literary kids — writers and editors and recent graduates – and thought I’d love to be part of that too, but not at the expense of my monthly get-together with those great women. I almost always feel kind of high on my way home, and that’s something special.
IT’S DECEMBER, Y’ALL. It looks like this in my neighborhood now:
buying trees in Manhattan
trees decorated on the Columbia campus
How did this happen! Where did the year go……… Happy December! (And tell me about your book club, don’t forget. Also, p.s., don’t forget the giveaway in progress — see this post for details, and leave a comment there.)
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