Joy
February, month of despair,
with a skewered heart in the centre.
I think dire thoughts, and lust for French fries
with a splash of vinegar.
Cat, enough of your greedy whining
and your small pink bumhole.
Off my face! You’re the life principle,
more or less, so get going
on a little optimism around here.
Get rid of death. Celebrate increase. Make it be spring.
~excerpt of “February,” by Margaret Atwood
My posting has been a little sporadic, though not so much that it’s probably noticeable. I don’t post on the weekends because dadgummit I am loving my weekend digital breaks! I got tired of being fancy-schmancy and calling them “digital sabbaticals,” though I did love it when I started calling them that because it made me feel like it was a real thing I was doing. Now I’m fine with just taking a break from going online. I’m amazed by how easy it was, because of the intensity of need-to-do-it that I felt before I started. Since we don’t have TV, and since the NYTimes has started charging to read their articles, I’m out of the loop about what’s going on in the world, at every level, and you know what? That’s a happier way to be, seriously. I do miss knowing the ins and outs of small news from my fellow bloggers, and I can glance at the NYTimes headlines when I need a jolt of worry (which I don’t need, honestly). I read my weekly issue of the New York Review of Books, I look at facebook and get the occasional longread from various longread-type feeds, I know how my kids are doing in a fine-textured way, and otherwise what’s coming into my head is more carefully selected. And it is good.
Also, last night I took something to help me sleep because this zombie thing is getting old, man. Like, really really old. This morning I slept until 9:40. NINE. FORTY. 9:40 a.m. Me. I slept that late. What finally woke me up was a dream that someone closed my bedroom door loudly, or I’d still be sleeping, I think. I feel like a dewy bud of happiness this morning. It’s so wonderful, I want singing birds to come perch on my windowsill and I’ll sing along. I want people to break into song on the sidewalk, and I’ll sing along. I want dancers to come down my street busting any kind of move, and I’ll dance along. Osteoporosis, be damned! I feel so great! Sleep is exclamation-point-worthy! MANY OF THEM!!!!!! If you sleep, never take it for granted. If you do not sleep, I know your pain and you know mine (and you celebrate the rare night of good sleep with me).
Much work to do today, and a busy (non-digital) weekend ahead, including Richard III on Sunday, followed by my long-delayed date with Will — a whole week late, but that’s just fine. Have a good one, y’all, whatever you’ll be doing this first week of February.
Double, double toil and trouble / Fire burn, and cauldron bubble. ~Macbeth Act 4, scene 1, 10–11
Last night I had dinner with my dear friend. We met in the neighborhood for Thai food, and we’d kind of warned each other in advance that we weren’t doing all that well: she was feeling tired and sick with allergies (this warm winter we’re having in NYC is killing the allergy-sufferers!), and I’m worn down and exhausted and post-migrainey with just a hint of the blues (probably from my continuing inability to sleep). So we met with all this advance knowledge and with our appropriately low expectations. We also both believed that seeing each other would help us feel better. We always talk about our thoughts and feelings, our worries, our plans, we ask for and give each other advice, and we laugh and cry. It’s the best part of life, getting to have that with another person.
So we ate our dinner, and we laughed and cried, and we decided to have a cup of tea at her place rather than at the restaurant, since she lives just a couple of blocks from the restaurant. By the time we left the restaurant, I’d been crying a good bit, and my mood and heart were kind of heavy. (Note: that’s not a bad thing, it’s a relief to share sorrows with someone!) We got to her place with an express mission of making a caffeine-free cup of tea, so she opened her cabinet to see what variety of teas she had to offer.
[sidebar comment of note: we are both women of a certain age, though i am more certain than she is.]
ladies' tea
She said:
“Let’s see. I have FatBuster, Women’s Cycle, and Black Cohosh.”
I fell down laughing. I laugh this morning, remembering it.
She looked at me and she started laughing. I laughed seeing her laugh. I couldn’t stop. And my heart lightened so much.
And so another kind of friendship magic happened, another of those moments that are just a bit of crystalline joy — surprise! You can’t make them happen, they come in the midst of time together. This reminds me of the old “quality/quantity time” argument people will make about time with their kids…..usually as a justification for not spending much time with them, “it’s the quality, you know.” Yes, but quantity is critical too, because connection and life happens in a surprise moment like this, and you need a luxury of time, a spread of it, to give space for moments like this.
Lucky me.
edit: this is post #666. of all things. 
Let the rain kiss you / Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops / Let the rain sing you a lullaby / The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk / The rain makes running pools in the gutter / The rain plays a little sleep song on our roof at night / And I love the rain. ~ Langston Hughes
It is an utterly beautiful day to be working at home, one of those that makes me grateful to be a freelancer, grateful to be sitting at my desk in the window, watching the drenching rains, seeing the wind blowing the drops across standing puddles, seeing the lights turn on in apartments across the street as the skies darken. I met a favorite client this morning at my corner Starbucks and proceeded to dump my giant cappuccino all over the table, on our papers, and in my lap. She was kind and gracious as she grabbed napkins and helped me clean up, assuring me with a gentle lie that this happens to her all the time. I came home during one of the brief breaks in the rain, peeled off my coffee-drenched jeans, and pulled on flannel pajamas. Made a big mug of green tea and lightly toasted a sesame bagel. Pulled out my chair, opened my laptop, and took a deep breath. Selected the perfect music: Berliner Messe, by Arvo Pärt, performed by the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir and the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra.
After weeks of not sleeping, I took a pill last night that made me sleep deeply, all night long. It’s not something I can do regularly — the drug is not addictive, but it has dreadful side-effects like weight gain and the potential for tardive dyskinesia — but getting one good night of sleep is enough, for now. Happy Friday, y’all. I hope it’s as peaceful and lovely where you are as it is at my desk.
Here’s a different piece by Arvo Pärt, also perfect for a rainy day:
“Cracked Open in Dunkin’ Donuts” — a Lori story
Brevity in the face of way too much work, y’all (not complaining….exactly….) — but I read this Tom Stoppard piece this afternoon (from Arcadia) and it stopped me cold with its beauty:
We shed as we pick up, like travellers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it. The missing plays of Sophocles will turn up piece by piece, or be written again in another language. Ancient cures for diseases will reveal themselves once more. Mathematical discoveries glimpsed and lost to view will have their time again. You do not suppose, my lady, that if all of Archimedes had been hiding in the great library of Alexandria, we would be at a loss for a corkscrew?
Isn’t that just lovely, and true?
i do love my city. it's heartbreakingly beautiful.
And today I had one of those experiences that are not at all uncommon for me. It’s bitterly cold, and I was about 20 minutes early for an appointment. There was no Starbucks in the neighborhood (what???! No Starbucks in the neighborhood???), but there was a Dunkin Donuts, so I stopped in and bought a small coffee so I could justify sitting at their little table in the window. I was very cold, and the coffee smelled so good, and I sat in the sunlight, smelling the coffee, and looking out the window at the very bright light bouncing off the skyscrapers of midtown Manhattan. I saw the people curled into commas, hunched inside their thick coats against the cold, walking so fast down the sidewalk. And then it hit me, how beautiful the world is, how beautiful the constructed world is, how beautiful the natural world is, how touching it is that we all walk past each other with our struggles and joys, how beautiful winter is, against the other seasons, and I started crying. I felt cracked open by the world, as I often do. I thought “Cracked open in Dunkin Donuts” and that sounded like some kind of nutty short story. And I laughed.
Behind me, 2011 — in front of me, 2012! And happiness on either side.
This post has one foot in last night and one in this morning, straddling the 2011/2012 divide. Which is, of course, silly, because I’m writing it in 2012, but the conceit struck me so I’m sticking with it. Happy new year, y’all!
Last night we went to the Concert for Peace at St John the Divine. The primary reason I wanted to go was that Judy Collins was on the program, and I’ve loved her beautiful voice since I first encountered it back in 1978. She’s had quite a difficult life, losing her son to drug addiction and suicide, and anyone whose child commits suicide awes me with their strength and courage to go on. When we walked the block and a half to the cathedral, I was struck anew by how dazzling it is that I live so close to such a place; imagine if I lived a block away from Notre Dame de Paris, or the stunning cathedral at Chartres. If I lived so close, and could walk over there on a whim….but I do live so close to a similarly-magnificent place, even if it doesn’t have the same kind of history.
the always-gorgeous St John the Divine
It was beautifully decorated, and packed with people. The concert started at 7 and we left our apartment at 6:30 for the 5-minute walk; by the time we arrived, the only empty seats were in the very back rows. I took the shot above relatively close to the front, in the paid section — $60/ticket. We were there for the free seats, and from where we sat in the very back, we couldn’t see anything at all but there were giant speakers placed in our back section so we’d be able to hear. And THEN this woman standing in the aisle next to us asked if we’d like to take two extra ticketed seats she had, because her friends didn’t show up. Why yes please, we’d love to do that. So we sat in the 5th row from the performers. Unbelievable. Unfortunately, our seats were in the middle of the row, so if we wanted to leave we really couldn’t — and I’d have wanted to leave. Ah well.
Judy Collins and Jessye Norman, a couple of feet from me. Judy was performing, Jessye was just there like the rest of us lucky schlubs, to listen.
After opening remarks by the Dean of the Cathedral, Harry Smith spoke briefly, and then introduced Judy Collins. She talked for a bit, sang a bit of a song she’d written after attending Duke Ellington’s funeral there at the cathedral, and then launched into an a capella version of Both Sides Now. She sounded absolutely amazing, but she started wandering around with the lyrics; in the second stanza, she was just pulling lines randomly from different stanzas and I saw this fleeting expression on her face where she realized she was off, but she plowed forward anyway. That stanza didn’t make sense and it didn’t rhyme, but it didn’t matter. She sang the rest perfectly, and I cried, a lot. Her sweet quavery voice, lifting and breaking so high, reaching the notes….the lyrics themselves….it was just lovely.
there she stood, singing clear-voiced and beautifully
We came home and had a beautiful meal my husband made, tandoori chicken, and chicken with green curry. Broccoli in curry and ginger. Rice. It was mouthwatering, mouth-stinging, and oh-so-good. Just before midnight we walked down to Riverside Drive, which is always surprisingly empty at midnight on New Year’s Eve, and stood in the middle of the street and kissed each other. Here’s to a new and improved year, with hope for something especially good to happen to my husband.
If you’re from the south, I know you’re eating something with blackeyed peas today, for good luck. I made sure that the first thing I put in my mouth this morning was sweet, so sweet things would come out of my mouth this year. And I’ve paid attention to what I’ve been doing today, because whatever you do on New Year’s Day is what you’ll do a lot of in the coming year. So I cooked and knitted:
two blueberry cobblers ready to pop into the oven, for my husband -- Pioneer Woman's blackberry cobbler recipe, quite luscious and simple!
eaten with tortilla chips, Texas Caviar so good it'll make you slap your mama
getting going! got marnie's measurements, so i'm knitting away; 8 more rows to the waist shaping!
button bands and icord edging done -- one sleeve underway!
I imagine we’ll take a walk on this beautiful sunny day — it’s 51 degrees, very unwinter-like! I hope the first day of your new year is as happy and lovely as mine, filled with great food and enjoyable activities, and someone to love. What else do you need.
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.
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 »
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.
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?
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!
” 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.
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.
you’re part of the mud that gets to sit up, Lori! Don’t forget that.
First, don’t forget the giveaway in progress — see this post for details, and leave a comment there.
I’m not quite sure why, but I’m feeling off, kind of disconnected, more blah than blue but hanging out in that neighborhood. Maybe one reason is that I won’t get to be with my daughters and their families for Christmas in Austin, a crying-worthy fact that aches me. I suspect that’s the bulk of the reason for my mood, since even writing that sentence made me well up with tears. But I’m usually pretty good at scrambling around and setting things up in a way to be happy with not getting what I want……so I plan to have video chats with them on Christmas, and we’re planning to all be together for Christmas 2013, come what may. That helps.
I’ve been trying to plug into things I have to feel grateful for, to help me feel better. And you know, sometimes that’s just very hard to do. It isn’t that I can’t see them and count them — I do, and can. It’s more that they’re bled of color, or something. The warmth that comes from them doesn’t reach my skin. This feeling is one reason I wanted to do the giveaway, actually; I know the wonderful feeling that comes from giving, so I’m trying to do it in all parts of my life, which of course includes y’all.
As I made my french press coffee this morning, I did each step mindfully, trying to be present for the sound of grinding the beans, the scratchy sound of the kettle coming to a boil, the heavy feeling of stirring the wet grounds, the thick smell as I pressed the plunger, the rich taste in my mouth. I breathe, feel it fill my lungs, I pay attention. I listen to the sounds — the compressor in the refrigerator, the kids running down the sidewalk, the click of my fingers on the keyboard. I’m here.
This morning I woke up without the mean headache that tormented me all day yesterday — grateful! Yeah, that one made me wake up with a smile, but it didn’t reconnect me to anything beyond itself. Today is a busy day, going all over town up and down, east and west, ending with my book club meeting tonight, on the east side…..and it’s a gorgeous sunny day, not the rainy day that had been forecasted. Grateful! It rained yesterday [hence the headache] but today, my get-around day, it’s glorious. Oh so grateful.
But as I’ve been writing this, a thought started creeping in: wait a minute. This is a day of my life. This, right now, this is one of a numbered days of my life. I get to have this day (weird, the sun literally came through a cloud just then ). I am lucky beyond measure to have this day.
As Steve Martin says, no one can be sad when they hear a banjo play. And if one banjo is good, 5 banjos are EVEN BETTER!
Enjoy this day of your life, it’s a very precious thing! (edit: ha! a friend of mine just wrote a great post for Huffington on this general topic.)
happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me, happy birthday dear me-ee, happy birthday to me! and many more…..
If you really understood how much I love my birthday, you’d not be surprised to hear that I’ve been thinking about this post for a very long time. Last year my organizing structure for my birthday post was mid-century modern — I loved it. To me it was funny and apt, two of my favorite things. So for months I’ve let this rattle around in the back of my brain, hoping to come up with something funnier or apt-er, but alas, nothing new. But in honor of my birthday, in honor of the year I just spent, and in joyful anticipation of the year to come, I do make a few notes. This post will be photo-heavy, so I insert a jump if you’re not interested: CLICK to continue reading mid-century modern, #2... Continue reading »
this little guy was a real maverick.
Trey's jack-o-lantern
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.
The doorbell rang so Katie picked up her basket of candy and opened the door, and before she knew it a little boy walked through the door, into the living room, sat down on her couch, and started exploring his candy as if he were at home. His dad seemed kind of embarrassed and came in to retrieve his son, who didn’t really want to leave. He finally got the boy out of the house and down the sidewalk, but the boy broke free and was headed for the door again.
It was the funniest thing I’ve ever seen. We laughed and laughed, and wondered what was up with that kid.
pork butt pork butt pork butt pork butt. pork butt.
Katie is baking pumpkin cookies and roasting pumpkin seeds, and Trey has spent this entire day slow-smoking a couple huge pork butts. See?
this is the just-dawn light. katie and trey got up MUCH earlier than they'd have liked, but it's worth it (easy for me to say!)
two pork butts so big it takes the both of them to turn them.
that's just shy of 20 pounds of pork butt. How many more times can I say pork butt? PORK BUTT. I am so mature.
How did I get so lucky!! My husband cooks fantastic meals for me every night, we eat fantastic meals on fantastic vacations, and now my daughter and her husband make fantastic meals for me. Granted, I put in my time on their end of the spatula — many, many long hard years of getting dinner on the table every night after a long day of classes and work — but this feels like a big bonus.
Katie’s frying some okra to accompany the pulled pork sandwiches we’ll have, and there’ll certainly be leftover Halloween candy — if not, we’ll have her pumpkin cookies for dessert. And I think there’s a gallon of Blue Bell chocolate mint chip ice cream in the freezer. Have I said it’s kind of about the food already?
put the lime in the coconut and you feel better / put the lime in the coconut drink ‘em both up / put the lime in the coconut and call me in the morning (listening to this with Katie right now!)
So life goes up, and things seem mostly good or even great, and life goes down, and things seem to be falling apart — nothing new there. I happen to be in an upswing right now, and it’s occurring to me how subtle the details can be, but how important they are to the overall temperature. Right now, the big things that contribute to my feeling that things are right in the world are travel-related. My vacation to Vietnam definitely helped, and now my time in Texas is a big contributor (of which more in a minute). But I woke up to two small-ish communications this morning that were much more boosting than their word count might’ve suggested.
I’m in a book group and a poetry group, and I just love them both for different reasons. My book group is filled with such interesting, wonderful women — the book is often secondary, and while I regret that a lot, the women are just so wonderful I don’t usually mind not talking about the book. I do mind, but gee they’re so great and I only get to see them once a month and I inevitably come away from the night’s meeting feeling kind of high and happy. My poetry group is also filled with interesting, wonderful women (and one similar man), but we stay tightly focused on discussing poetry, which thrills me. Really, how often in your life do you get to sit and talk about something like that — whatever it is that you particularly love? We actually talk about the poems we bring or write, we deconstruct them, plumb their meaning, see them differently. The poetry group members are very very smart (as are the book group members) so it’s high-wire fun. I brought the woman who organized the poetry group into the book club and last night was her first meeting — unfortunately, I didn’t get to be there, since I am here in Austin, but she wrote me and her note was one of the boosting things for me this morning. Her appreciation of the women in the book group, and her thanks for bringing her in, made me feel so great. My life is so rich with all these wonderful people, women (and one man) whose lives and intellect I get to share so easily.
The other communication that gave me such a boost was a comment left on a previous post. The commenter’s blog-related point spoke to her pleasure in reading my writing, which she characterized as genuine. Well! For anyone who writes, is there a better thing to hear? I love to write and have writing-related dreams that I constantly pull off the shelf, gaze at, and then put back on the shelf. The idea that someone takes pleasure in my words is so thrilling, it’s like an energy boost that shoots my little rocket into the higher levels of space. Her comment reminds me too that we are all kinds of things, big and small, to others and we’re not even aware of it. I mean something to my friends that I’m not all that aware of — you do, too. And you mean more to me than you know, you who read and also you who read and comment.
Now, to Texas. Yee-ha! As always, when I got off the plane at the Austin airport, everything in me settled down and relaxed as I walked through the terminal. The people look SO familiar. I did’t know any of them, but I might have! There is a Texas look, familiar at least to Texans. In New York, the general look (big old over-generalization coming) is Italian or Jewish. I’m neither. But I do look like the people here, and it’s more than bone structure in the face. And then they sound like me, too, double great! Not many have accents as thick as mine, but Texas shows up in certain words pretty reliably. Also, if you’ve never flown into Austin, you should know this so you can quickly plan a trip: LIVE MUSIC in the airport. There’s a stage set up and the band that was playing when I arrived was pretty great! Also, the food in the airport is not the normal airport fare. No Chili’s or Cinnabon or that pretzel place. Instead, it’s local restaurants, really good Mexican food, barbecue, Schlotzsky’s (a local sandwich place with uniquely great bread), a local ice cream joint. You step off the plane directly into Austin sounds and Austin smells.
The flight from Chicago to Austin was kind of neat. You know there’s that very friendly, midwest, Chicago way of being — people just seem not to be guarded, and to smile easily? Well, combine that with Texas and you have friendly squared (y’all do know that Texans are very friendly, right? DO NOT go by our politicians, please, who are assholes). There was so much laughter in the airplane, loud friendly joking by the flight attendants, it helped my weary bones, I’ve got to tell you. And then when we started our descent into the Austin area, it was shocking to see how dry and brown everything was. Nothing green to be seen anywhere, so sad and tragic. So much heat and fire, so little rain, so much loss.
The best thing of all, of course, was my daughter and her husband waiting for me. I ran to them and just felt such overwhelming joy. It sucks not seeing your kid very often. You spend all those years knowing nearly everything about them (though boy can you be surprised to learn the things you *didn’t* know!), being able to look at their faces every day and have a sense of how they’re doing, being able to care for them when they’re sick or tired or blue, playing games with them, laughing or fighting with them…..and then suddenly you see them a time or two a year. I can’t stop staring at Katie, and I don’t want to do anything more than be near her, look at her, listen to her, live in the midst of the life she lives while I’m here. Katie and Trey took me directly to Chuy’s for some delicious TexMex (which you cannot get in New York. No TexMex, delicious or otherwise), and then we came home, to their beautiful and comfortable home filled with Katie’s cozy touches. I’m a happy mama right now. Life is good.
In the early 1800s, people would find the initials G.T.T. carved on the doors of family’s and friends’ houses — Gone To Texas. Texas was the place to go, a sanctuary for outlaws, a place to start all over again, a place to begin for the first time. For me, it’s just home.
The boogie-ing part, not the sleeping at the wheel part. (Though, side note: Once I was driving up IH-35, from Austin to Dallas, and stopped to get gas. There was a giant tour bus there, the kind that bands use. Austin being the official Live Music Capital of the World [oh, you bragging Texans you], it’s entirely common to see them so I didn’t give it a thought. As I passed the bus, I saw it was Asleep At The Wheel, and as I glanced in the open door, I saw the bus driver seemed to be asleep at the wheel. It made the inner kindergartner in me giggle.)
ANYWAY. Yeah. My flight leaves NYC at 6am, so do you realize what time I need to get up in the morning? I haven’t done the backwards math yet, but I’m grateful I am still in the jetlag state of reliably waking up at 2am. I can’t wait to spend time with my daughter Katie…..a whole week, so luscious. We’ll bake (and eat, including pinto beans and cornbread, a delicious treat I don’t get in NYC) and knit and talk and watch movies and shop and be homebodies together. We both love that.
Everyone rags on Texas — and I’ll be honest, Texas politicians make that so so easy — but Texas is so much more than its idiotic politicians. Really. (And remember, it was historically a hard-core Democratic state. YES IT WAS! It took a bad turn in the 80s, like much of the south did, but I have hope that someday it’ll return to its Democratic roots.) Anyway, there’s so much that’s great about Texas, and Austin. I loved this article 50 Reasons Texas is the Best State in America. It was compiled in response to a piece written by Manhattan-based Gawker listing states by their worst-ness (Texas came in at 13), and the Gawker writer says:
The Texan ego is as big as the state, and no matter how much you point out to them that, uh, hey what about all this extremely terrible stuff, they will not listen. If you guys would just shut up about it for a while, the rest of us might like you a little more.
The funny thing is — and I say this all the time to New Yorkers — you could say that very thing about New Yorkers, who think the sun rises and sets on Manhattan, and that just outside the Manhattan borders, ignorance, evil, and chaos reign. Hrmph.
Anyway. Boogie back to Texas! Whee! GTT! Whee!
“you been goofing with the bees?”
On his facebook wall, my son recently posted something he called “The Nostalgia Series.” That led me to think there would be at least one more post like it, but so far I’m still waiting. What he posted, though, filled me with nostalgia. Have you ever seen The Point, an animated movie from 1971? (Not available streaming, but on DVD on Netflix). It’s about a little boy named Oblio, born with a round head in a village where everyone’s heads are pointed, the houses are pointed, everything is pointed. Has a point. Oblio is different, and odd (but loved by his pointy-headed family), and eventually he’s cast out and has a bunch of adventures in the wider world. It’s brilliantly-colored, like a Peter Max print, but the best part is that Harry Nilsson wrote and performed the soundtrack. My kids loved it and so did I; we may have watched it hundreds of times over the years of their childhood, and when I hear even a whiff of a lyric or melody, I’m transported back, in that way beloved music can do.
Here’s a clip, with one very beautiful song (music starts at 30secs):
Nilsson said, “I was on acid and I looked at the trees and I realized that they all came to points, and the little branches came to points, and the houses came to point. I thought, ‘Oh! Everything has a point, and if it doesn’t, then there’s a point to it.’” That’s so him. Here’s another one of my favorites. Sigh.
Thanks Will, for starting the nostalgia series. I can take it from here. (Here’s the clip he originally posted — it’s so funny, such a relic of its times. I can dig it.)
“Gratitude is when memory is stored in the heart and not in the mind.” ~Lionel Hampton
This morning the sun broke through the clouds and there were blue skies….. as we were leaving. Boo. Still, we got to see and remember how much difference it makes when the sun hits the fall foliage. The oranges that were there, hidden by the cloudcast, emerged just for us.
moody berries -- don't know why, they just struck me as moody. sullen, perhaps.
i want a little house like this, on a river. in fact, i have a very well-developed and detailed fantasy about such a house. i know what it would look like, down to the pillows on the couch.
not the most brilliant orange i've ever seen, but it'll do!
knitters and other yarn-ey folk like me might look at this and see a brilliant semi-variegated yarn. at least, i did.
a short and winding road. leads to someone's door, i'm sure.
Two weeks from today will be my birthday, and I was telling my husband this morning that in the lead-up to my birthday, I always find myself feeling more and more grateful…..about every little thing. Light. Color. Sweet air. smoke from fireplaces. Good coffee and tea. Thinking. Smiling. Everything. I feel overwhelmed by it, and I’m even grateful for that.
“There is no season when such pleasant and sunny spots may be lighted on, and produce so pleasant an effect on the feelings, as now in October.” ~Nathaniel Hawthorne
When I was a little girl, I especially loved the lessons about explorers and adventurers. Henry Hudson, John Cabot, those early explorers of America captured my imagination and I couldn’t get enough. I imagined what it must have been like, coming upon the great landscapes and waterways of this part of the world. My first job after graduate school, in 2003, took me to Rochester NY and Marnie was in college at Smith, in Massachusetts, so to visit her I drove over the Hudson River, and through the Catskills, and I was always filled with emotion. The great Hudson River…..I’d look up and down the river as best I could as I drove over the bridge, imagining those early sailing ships. I’d thrill with the place names that were reminders of the early Dutch Knickerbockers, like Kaaterskill Falls, and the native Lenape people who lived here first, like Esopus River. It’s a beautiful place, and I’m so happy I get to know it.
We generally restrict our visits to the area around Phoenicia, Hunter Mountain, and Windham, though we did explore the northern parts once en route to Montreal and Quebec City. But it’s this area I know best, and dearly love. To a Texan, mountains and forests are really special, so they always thrill me no matter how many times I come here. And fall color — I used to think that robins and colored leaves were made-up things, just for storybooks. So even though the fall color is not that great this year, thanks to the devastation wrought by Hurricane Irene, it’s still thrilling to little old Texan me.
no reds and oranges, but lots of vivid yellows
gorgeous rushing creeks, water pounding against rocks
sometimes yellow + creek!
i just thought this was super creepy. those two muddy puddles looked like eyes to me.
i always love this and have dozens of photos like it
this one too. rocks and leaves in a puddle. why do i love it so?
and this, the color and texture make me so happy
Hunter Mountain -- autumn technicolor, waiting for the blast of snow that will transform the landscape
THRILLING
makes my heart soar
yours too?
Here's my wonderful Wintry Mix sweater, by the way!
this autumn, 2011
The promised partly-cloudy but sunny skies never materialized yesterday; it was quite chilly and the skies were always flat gray, covered in clouds, but it was still a beautiful day. We hike and tramped around, ate some great food at Brios, and generally enjoyed this autumn day. The devastation is kind of shocking to see; Hurricane Irene was a joke in NYC, ballyhooed and overly prepared-for, but just a bit of wind and little rain. Up here, though, bridges and roads were destroyed, homes were devastated, belongings lost.
My Wintry Mix sweater is absolutely wonderful to wear; it’s a bit more rumpled-looking in the photo than it really is. I’d been hiking in it all day, and pulling on/off a coat, so it’s a bit goofed-up looking by my shoulder in a way that it’s not, really. I love everything about it, and imagine I’ll wear it a LOT this fall and winter!
home again home again jiggety jig. but no fat pigs purchased at the market this go-round.
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. We saw such gorgeous scenery in the mountains near the China border, in the Mekong Delta area, and on the island of Borneo. Oh my, I can’t think about any of it without crying.
I got a lot of knitting done, because we were traveling around a lot. Also, 2.5 days floating down the Mekong River with nothing to do but watch the scenery means plenty of time for knitting. I finished the body of my yellow featherweight cardigan, and I’m ready to pick up the first sleeve. Maybe Sunday, though I’m awake all night long since I’m 12-hours off schedule so perhaps I’ll sleep on Sunday, who knows.
So what’d I miss? Anything great in your life? In the world? On Rav? I know I won’t get to read all the things I missed, so if I missed a great post on your blog please direct me to it! It’s good to be back home, but I desperately miss Vietnam. Hard to think about it without crying, seriously.
so long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, good bye, i leave and heave a sigh and say goodbye, goodbye!
It’s time, yo! We’re off on our fall vacation, to Vietnam and Malaysia (and the island of Borneo). I won’t be posting here until Sunday October 16.
We’ll arrive in Hanoi at 9:30am on Saturday, which is 9:30pm Friday (NYC time). However. From the looks and sound of the typhoon that’s approaching Vietnam, it’s extremely likely that we’ll be stuck in Hong Kong for a day or more. Not that Hong Kong is a bad place to be stuck — in fact, we wanted to see it — but I’m just so eager to get to Hanoi, and I don’t want our train trip to Sapa to get screwed up. Keep your fingers crossed, say a little prayer, send good thoughts, burn incense, please do whatever you do!
My travel knitting will be my little yellow featherweight cardigan and my KtyKozue scarf, in case it’s too muggy and sticky to deal with the malabrigo.
The title of this post is goodbye in both languages, so here you go in more familiar tongues: goodbye! au revoir! despedida! kveðja! hwyl fawr!
“The pain of the mind is worse than the pain of the body” — Publius Syrus
When I was young, I got migraine headaches associated with my cycle. Then, at age 28, I had a complete hysterectomy and — surprise!! — I got them whenever I was exposed to volatile organic compounds. Anything with a strong smell, like perfume, PineSol, most cleaners, bleach, and even natural smelly things like mildew. That has not been fun to live with all these years; now, when I smell a hint of perfume, it’s associated with fear and terror of the pain to come. I have plenty of sumatriptan on hand, and (usually) one hit will knock out the migraine before it develops, but often it takes two. Of course, that just changes one problem for another, because the after effects of that large a dose of sumatriptan are pretty miserable, themselves. That’s what happened to me yesterday.
So I had huge plans for the day, cleaning plans, organizing plans, getting-ready-for-the-trip plans, and they were all scuttled. I lay on the couch, against a heating pad for the brittle-tight muscles, and moaned all day. Barely moved all day. Except for my hands. Since my Wintry Mix sweater is so simple to knit, and worsted on Addi Turbos, I didn’t even have to look at what I was doing: perfect for my situation! One sleeve is completely finished, and yesterday I got the body done, divided at the sleeves, and I’m working up the back:
the fastest sweater I've *ever* knit
Since this is a busy and short week, and we’ll pull out of town late Thursday afternoon, I probably won’t finish the sweater before we go. DANG. It’d be fun to hunker down and finish it in such a short time. I definitely won’t take it with me; it’s quite hot and steamy where we’re going.
And here’s the best thing about having a situation that is excruciatingly painful: when it’s over, Joy! Rapture! Bliss! Clouds parting! Sun shining! All is right with the world, I can do anything! And on that note, I’m off to do chores! Whee! [edited: nope. No can do. Rebound. Stupid migraines.]
Way down south way down in Borneo, we’ll dance til the break of dawn-io, way down, on Borneo Bay. (Jim Kweskin and the Jug Band)
our little sampan, with our own crew of 3
I feel kind of breathless about this — it’s coming up so quickly, and I’m so excited — but a week from this Friday, at 1:30am, we’ll be flying off to Hong Kong for our next great adventure. From Hong Kong we fly to Hanoi (one of my favorite cities in the whole world), then we’ll take an overnight train to Sapa, in the mountains near the Chinese border. Back to Hanoi on the overnight train, then we’ll fly to Kuching, on the island of Borneo, then to Malacca, on the Malaysian peninsula, then up to Ho Chi Minh City where we’ll travel out into the Mekong Delta, on a private sampan. Our last night we’ll stay in a beautiful lodge in the delta, before heading back to Ho Chi Minh City for our flight back to Hong Kong and NYC. We’ll be gone for 16 days.
I always thought New York City and Paris were my favorite places in the world, and I do love those places, with all my heart and everything I am. But I very deeply love Vietnam — can’t say why, exactly, though I can list all kinds of things I love about it. I keep finding myself on the verge of tears, so happy that I get to go back there. I went to Vietnam in 2005 with my husband (6 months before we got married), and it was my first jarring travel experience. Before then, I’d been to Montreal and Quebec City, Cozumel and Isle Mujeres, Paris, London, and Glasgow. None of those places were jarring, they were Western and familiar, obviously. But Vietnam, it just blew me out of my socks. After a full day, I kind of hit a wall and didn’t think I could bear it. The alphabet was different, I had no idea what was going on, I couldn’t make sense of the money, almost no one spoke English, the food was sometimes mysterious, I couldn’t read anything, and some of the rules were unknown and scary, like the time we were taking a photo and an armed policeman ran toward us. That panicked feeling passed, and I relaxed a bit, though I continued to feel that sense of Otherness for the entire trip.
But the people were so gentle and busy and fast and laughing, the architecture (in Hanoi especially) was so distinctive, like Parisian architecture is. In both those places, you know where you are. The food was fresh and delicious (but don’t ask me about what my husband ate in Hue, he still can’t talk about it). The countryside is beautiful. But mainly, I think, it’s the people. I feel like I could live there and be very happy.
Will I feel the same sense of Otherness this time? Probably not, because I’ve been there before and I’ve now traveled to a lot of places that were uniquely foreign to me. I’m just so thrilled to be going back, I keep getting all choked up.
there’s very little as nice as knitting that’s working out as you hoped.
A bit of housework, a chat on the phone with a daughter, a disastrous pasta-making effort, and some knitting.
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- My “Oops I did it again” featherweight cardigan, cast on and underway.
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- Sleeve #1, one full ball of yarn. Close to the sleeve cap shaping, just another 13 rows.
So two things to say, here:
- MALABRIGO LACE, y’all. Oh boy do I get it now. It’s as soft as everyone says. It’s luscious, creamy, delicious, I want to run away with it. The color is so rich; the color in the photo is true, on my monitor. Deep yellow with a hint of orange. I don’t ever want to knit with anything else, as long as I live. I think I’m going to love this one even more than my red one. Hannah Fettig, you’re a genius with the little cardigan. So simple, nothing really, but wonderful.
- A sleeve in a day, along with the rest! Kind of amazing. I always had sleeves categorized in my head as “ugh, now it’ll be weeks.” Not with this yarn and these needles, man. Speedy Gonzales (speedy ka-dah-dis, if you’re my dear Katie). The angora and silk in the yarn gives it such a luxurious hand, I really like the fabric a lot. Amy Herzog, you fit-to-flatter wizard.
Homemade lasagna for dinner, even if no homemade pasta — smells so good, happy hands, soon-to-be-happy tummy, happy day. Ah! Time for a daily gratitude. I’m so grateful to be a maker, for which I take no credit. It’s just the software I came with, and I’m very very grateful for it. Grateful for the impulse, grateful for the experiences, grateful for the pleasures, grateful for the desire, grateful for the end results, grateful for the making life.
wow! I’m proud all right, proud as a whitewashed pig! (~the widow Sugrue, Darby O’Gill and the Little People, 1959)
Artists toil away in poverty and obscurity, making awesome things, giving it out to the universe, and recognition can be slow. Hard to come by. There in spirit, but spirit doesn’t cover a loaf of bread. You know how proud I am of Marnie’s work, and today Chicago is hearing about it. She was featured on the Chicagoist website! She made a wonderful set of graphic prints of the prerecorded announcements on the L train, and that was the primary point of the Chicagoist post. Here’s the one they featured:
They wrote:
Few things become unwanted earworms more quickly than the automated “L” station and train announcements. People have had harrowing nightmares where “Attention customers: an INBOUND train toward the Loop will be arriving shortly” plays endlessly, with the train never arriving at the station.
Monkey-Rope Press is the brainchild of illustrator, printmaker and bookbinder Marnie Galloway. Galloway’s Etsy store is a glorious time suck of amazing prints, none more so than these letterpress posters of “L” station announcements. We also love the bicycle subculture pugilism prints.
It’s never too early to begin your Christmas shopping.
!!!!!!!!! IT’S NEVER TOO EARLY TO BEGIN YOUR CHRISTMAS SHOPPING!!! Let the shopping begin!
we all need one another. Listen to Asa.
For Sunday morning, when the news of the world is nothing but horrible, when everything seems like it’s going to hell, when someone needs to do something, please. This Asa song came on while I was hemming an ao dai I bought in Vietnam a few years ago and it brought me peace and relaxation. We don’t have to do a 360, let’s do a 180. Drop your guns and your swords. Come on.
and…..we’re off!!! (in 14 hours )
Tonight I’m off to Turkey! My flight leaves JFK at 11pm, but I have so much to do today I won’t be posting again here until I get home. I’ll arrive in Istanbul around 4pm Saturday (which is 9am Saturday in NYC) but I probably won’t post anything the first day. Although who knows. I have a new camera battery so I shouldn’t have trouble with photos this time, like I did in Laos. I’m so excited!!! Bye y’all (which is the title of this post, by the way).
I don’t know who Asha Tyson is, but s/he is so right.
My first instinct was to write, “I don’t usually go for these kinds of things, but…” and then I realized that yes I do tend to go for these kinds of things. In fact, I think it’s just the I’m too cool for that this-century hipster attitude that has inserted itself in my brain, because I very much love these kinds of things.
Yeah, I believe that.
when the moon is in the seventh house, and jupiter aligns with mars…
Are you like me? Do you love time-lapse photography of the sky? Yeah? Here:
From the photographer: This was filmed between 4th and 11th April 2011. I had the pleasure of visiting El Teide. Spain´s highest mountain @(3718m) is one of the best places in the world to photograph the stars and is also the location of Teide Observatories, considered to be one of the world´s best observatories.
The goal was to capture the beautiful Milky Way galaxy along with one of the most amazing mountains I know El Teide. I have to say this was one of the most exhausting trips I have done. A large sandstorm hit the Sahara Desert on the 9th April and at approx 3am in the night the sandstorm hit me, making it nearly impossible to see the sky with my own eyes.
Interestingly enough my camera was set for a 5 hour sequence of the milky way during this time and I was sure my whole scene was ruined. To my surprise, my camera had managed to capture the sandstorm which was backlit by Grand Canary Island making it look like golden clouds. The Milky Way was shining through the clouds, making the stars sparkle in an interesting way. So if you ever wondered how the Milky Way would look through a Sahara sandstorm, look at 00:32.
Music by my friend: Ludovico Einaudi – “Nuvole bianche” with permission.
ch-ch-ch-ch-cha-nges…
In psychology, it’s said that people do mesearch. He studies self-esteem? He doesn’t have any. She studies deception? Big liar. He studies social dilemmas with a focus on people who don’t play nice? He doesn’t play nice. Etc. Social psychology is all about us as social animals, the way the world outside us has far more to do with who we are than we like to believe. The way roles, and scripts, and other people shape our behavior — and then of course we swear that no, that’s not right, we wanted to do that.
Digression #1: Here’s the coolest research I know. So some psychologists go to a mall with a fake questionnaire. As a reward for taking the survey, participants get to choose one of a set of items. In one study, for example, the items were pantyhose. The secret is that every single pair was identical, in every way (and that wasn’t disguised; in other words, the researchers didn’t try to make them appear different). People would mull them over, look them up and down, and then pick one (very reliably, the one on the far right). That’s interesting, but here’s the point: They would be asked why they picked that one (the real point of the research) and people just made shit up. “Well, I picked it because it’s the highest quality.” “I picked it because it’s sheerer than the others.” “I chose that one because it’s the best match to my skin tone.” Etc. And they were all identical. The title of the published paper was “Telling More Than We Know,” and it’s a classic. People do all kinds of things and then make up stories — on the fly — about why they did the thing. And they’ll insist, very strongly. Hilarious.
Digression #2: I’m a social psychologist, but a very unsocial animal. I’m awkward, shy, uncomfortable, and hate parties with the burning passion of a thousand suns. I’m good one-on-one (love that), ok with 2 others, start to wobble with 3, and am lost with 4+. I don’t know how to do small talk, and go immediately into inappropriately deep stuff that makes people suddenly remember they need to go to the bathroom. At home.
So all of that is to say this:
Such a busy social butterfly I am! Last week, lunch with a friend one day, breakfast with another friend one day, and my writing group one evening. This week: breakfast with a friend one day, breakfast with Will this morning and dinner with 2 girlfriends tonight, and then breakfast with another friend tomorrow morning. I hardly recognize myself!
I hardly recognize myself right now, anyway. I daydream about doing plank (plank!) and love to think about getting my form right, on squats. [me?! the most exercise i ever did was moving the mouse around.] I care about how I’m eating and want to be sure I get enough protein and the other stuff I need. And I’m kind of dressed up every day….even just to sit around the house. I enjoy shopping! ME! Yesterday, before my Wednesday appointment, I had some time to spare and stopped in at Filene’s Basement to see what’s new. ME!
I woke up from an unremembered dream a couple nights ago, and I didn’t know who I was, where I was, what I was doing, when I was (by which I mean what decade it is), and couldn’t figure out what I might be doing the next day. Complete and utter identity confusion. Who is this exercising socializing careful-eating dressed-up adult-like person?!
one of the top 5 weekends of my LIFE
My little idea for “weekend’s best” was to post one or two photos, but I indulge myself this week because it was one of the best weekends of my entire life. Why?
- Marnie came to visit.
- She and Will saw each other for the first time since July 2008. And it was good.
- I got to have dinner with two of my kids at the same time — now I just need to get us all together at the same time….hard, since we’re so far-flung. But I’m going to do it, somehow.
- Marnie and I went shopping and I got this very cute little style going, now.
- Marnie helped set my life on a different course with a strength training routine, and lots of conversation about it. I get it now. I’m ready to go.
So here are some photos that capture some of the above (all photos courtesy of Marnie; click to enlarge any of them). It was wonderful.
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- bad Easter candy debauchery. you can’t see the Peeps because I already ate them.
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- another cute outfit! me happy, facing 2 of my kids and missing the 3rd really badly.
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- always with their heads together. always.
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- will at highline park, wearing the hat Katie knitted for him
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- will, smiling at marnie
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- one cute outfit!
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- marnie at highline park
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- heads together. again. always. i love this one.
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- sib play
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- smiling at her brother — she has such a great smile!
Weekend’s best, of the best weekend.
oh happy, sunny day. oh how i’ve missed you.
I had breakfast with Will this morning, which made me so so happy. We see each other every week (he only lives a couple blocks away from me), and it’s usually over a meal or a beer. Starting my day with him was especially wonderful. And you mothers out there, you’ll get this: he still smells like my boy.
Will refuses to have a straight photo made; I have literally hundreds of photos he took at arm’s length with every possible facial expression you could imagine. Plus extreme close-ups, some of which freak me out if I accidentally run across them, like his nostril. So I asked him if I could take his picture, and at the very last second he copped this sneer. Too bad, because his smile is gorgeous.
bagels & lox, a cafe au lait, and my son. sneering. c'mon, will, show me your beautiful smile.
And then, not to make so damn much out of the simplest hat in the whole world, here’s the finished hat, on my head. It’s the dreaded “shot in the bathroom mirror” pose. And this will officially end my discussion of Marnie’s hat.
so slouchy! i love it. marnie wanted it because she has long hair and often wears braids, pinned up like katie davies (needled) does. this should cover her.
adorable, fast, fun, and well, adorable. not me, the hat. though i am fun.
I have loads of work to do so this is quick. I decided not to do the Knit Crochet Blog week, though i did it last year and had a blast with it. I don’t know, I’m just not feeling it this year. But I do look forward to reading everyone else’s posts!
Happy Monday y’all. I hope it’s as sunny where you are as it is in NYC today. Glory. Bliss. Sun.
happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear sweet marnie, happy birthday to you!
She’s 26 years old, today (exactly half my age!). She’s an artist / weight lifter / thoughtful smart loving funny creative sweet tough genuine amazing authentic person. Marnie has been special from the moment of her birth (and I’m not just kidding here, or using hyperbole or just being her mom) (though I am her mom) (and real proud of it) (and of her too) (because she is a fine, fine human being). If she loves you you’re a very lucky person. I’m a very lucky person. Happy birthday, Marnie my love.
she loves photobooths
she loves nature (though she prefers ants to turtles)
she used to LOVE being fancy and adorable
she loves irony -- (as in, wearing this pink fuzzy sweater ironically)
she loves Tom (me too)
she's one of the smartest people I know (Smith 2006), and i happen to know a bunch of very smart people so that's saying something
and she's freaking aDORable on top of it all
she loves cows
y'all remember this one.
and she loves me.
You ought not to practice childish ways, since you are no longer that age. Homer, “The Odyssey”
My understanding of the traditional anniversary gift ideas (i.e., the first anniversary is paper, the 50th is gold) is that it’s about replacing wedding gifts that have worn out. So whatever you got for a wedding gift that was made of paper would be worn out by the first anniversary. That seems like a dicey explanation, but whatever, I’m going with it.
the traditional 5th year anniversary gift is wood, but look at the gift ideas on the bottom line, there! GO RIGHT AHEAD, I won't stop you if you want to give me that gift. You're wonderful like that.
So I will celebrate our 5th wedding anniversary at the end of April, whee! That’s a biggie for old people like me who finally got it right, here at the end of the game. Since I’m struggling along economically as a freelancer (read that: not making nearly enough money), I’m thinking hard about our vacation strategy. I always use frequent flyer miles, so that’s a huge savings right there. In the late winter/early spring, I always take a 1-week beach vacation, and in the fall I take a 2-week far away vacation. For the last two springs, I went to an island off the coast of Honduras, and it was wonderful but I’ve kind of exhausted the possibilities in that fun place. I was considering Barcelona, but MAN is it expensive.
It’s looking like I’m talking Turkey. Istanbul for sure, but then very quickly to the Mediterranean coast, to Olympos. This is where Poseidon stood when he watched Odysseus sail away from Calypsos, where he got really pissed off and sent yet another big storm to throw the weary wanderer off track. Asshole Poseidon. He’s a real jerk that way.
Been to Turkey? Visited Olympos? Got any recommendations to share? It looks like some of the most fascinating scenery is over near the Syria border, but for people with my passport and last name, that doesn’t seem like a smart place to be. I’m kind of hooked on the Mediterranean coast of Turkey, so I’d love to hear any experience you may have!
I’m collecting things that are guaranteed to make me smile and laugh. God knows there are plenty of days I need them. If you get a laugh or smile too, all the better.
See the links just above–music and videos. It’s an idiosyncratic curated collection of joy. But what isn’t.
I’m collecting things that are guaranteed to make me smile and laugh. God knows there are plenty of days I need them. If you get a laugh or smile too, all the better.
See the links just above–music and videos. It’s an idiosyncratic curated collection of joy. But what isn’t.
will i wait a lonely lifetime, if you want me to, i will.
will and katie, 6 years ago
Strictly speaking, of course, that photo is not from this past weekend, but it summarizes my weekend in the best way possible. Katie is my oldest daughter (she lives in Austin), and Will is my only son (he lives here in Manhattan). The story is long and terrible and makes me prone to hours of tears, but Will has been hiding himself away from our family for the past 5 years. He hasn’t spoken to any of us since he appeared at Katie’s wedding, 2.5 years ago. Estrangements are always complicated and this one certainly is, but I promise that you can’t imagine the pain of it, unless your child does such a thing. The only thing worse is death.
Katie came to town Saturday in order to find Will and do a kind of intervention; she had letters to read that we’d all written, and she made a big photo album. She was not going to let him keep doing this without being forced to hear just how much it hurt us. I thought it was a mission doomed to fail…..find him? Here in NYC? Even that seemed impossible.
But find him, she did (she’s a force of nature, that one). And talk to him, she did. And listen, he did. And last night I got to see him, and sit next to him, and touch his face. We cried and laughed and cried, and it was awful and terrible and wonderful. Katie’s here until Wednesday, and they’re spending much of tomorrow together. Will and I will make a date to see each other again. It’s too much to hope without caution; we’ve all been so hurt, we’re all taking care of our hearts, but I’m the mother so I’m in all the way, no matter what happens. O happy happy day….
it’s about time! i’m pleased to introduce you to……
excuse everything about this photo please!
There’s nothing good to say about this picture — my hair is its morning mess, there’s nothing styled here, the sweater is just off the needles and so not yet blocked, and it’s pinned together with yellow-headed pins — but LOOK! My Dark & Stormy sweater [rav link] is a fait accompli! (and p.s., that’s not really a muffin top around my waist, it’s the unblocked sweater pooching out. i swear. )
And do I love it? With the heat of a thousand burning suns. With the calories of a thousand triple-decker chocolate cakes. With the winds of a thousand level 5 tornadoes. With the spit of a thousand tobacco-chewing cowboys. With the seeds of a thousand watermelons. I’d say I do.
Janna, I think you were on to something. I needed to finish something. I haven’t had an FO in months, and finishing this has re-lit the fire in mah belly. Now I just want to grab Eve’s Rib and finish her off. I’m in a tough spot since I came to be crazy about sweater knitting; knitting small things doesn’t thrill me like it used to, but it takes me a long time to finish a sweater so the FOs are fewer and farther between. I’ll have to figure this out.
Au revoir, ennui! Hasta luego, malaise! Hello, new sweater!
how many ways can we love Cee Lo? AND DONUTS.
Popping in for a very quick post while eating my impoverished little diet lunch. These two videos have my head spinning. An ASL version of Cee Lo Green’s F*^k You, made even better if that’s at all possible, and a piece on Cambodian donut makers in southern California. I have a soft spot in my heart for all things Cambodian….and, well, donuts. My kryptonite. My achilles’ heel. And now I’ve gone and revealed that to all of you. (mmm, donuts, part of the explanation for today’s lunch I guess.)
Awesome, right? R-i-i-i-g-h-t.
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