Vigilance
pursuing the practice of writing
I’ve begun doing writing exercises, and thought I might collect them here. I’ll tag them all “prompt” so I can organize them together. Each prompt is very specific and places a word count limit; this one required me to write a first-person story of 600 words, limiting my use of the first-person pronoun to three instances. Try it — it’s very difficult!! The stories I write may or may not be true of me; my efforts will be directed toward fiction. When I read this prompt, I had the immediate idea of writing about a woman glancing at a mirror before meeting a semi-stranger, someone she knew to some degree of intimacy, and the whole idea fell into place very quickly. So here goes, prompt number one:
* * *
Glancing in the mirror I see my messy hair but there is no time to worry about it – we are meeting at 1pm and there are just a few minutes to spare. He was often snappy over email and seems like an irritable guy, so being on time feels important today. Luckily there is a parking spot by the door, and he’s waiting at the bar with a slight smile; I’m 5 minutes early, and hope we’ll get off to a good start after all.
“You’re late – I’ve been waiting 10 minutes,” he says as we stand face-to-face. We both lean in and give each other a slight hug of uncertain familiarity; we’ve been chatting on email for the last three weeks, since we first connected on the dating website, but this is our first meeting so it’s odd. Familiarity with a stranger, with the instant recognition of differences between our conjured images and the real person — the flesh and bone contrast to the smoke and mirrors of virtual connection. As we take our table and the waitress hands us menus, he leans forward and says, “Can I make fun of you for living here?” He stares for a minute and then turns his attention to the menu. Long minutes pass in silence, and the waitress finally takes our orders – we share the appetizers and each order a light salad and a glass of Pinot Gris.
“My daughter lives in Riverdale with her mother,” he says, “and that at least makes sense – it’s a suburb of the city. But here, why would anyone live here?” His expression is intense and focused, and he doesn’t seem to realize how rude his comments are, because his eyes hold mine with curiosity and interest, but he doesn’t smile. “Well, when the job in Taylor fell apart, this opportunity to make a change to the field of marketing seemed too good to pass up, and the company is based here in Mahwah. It didn’t make sense to live in New York City and commute up here every day. Anyway, it’s not a bad place to live, and the city is nearby.” After a pause, he responds, “Still, it seems like a stupid place to live.”
The appetizers arrive, and our conversation slows as we pick at the food, trying to find our way into a comfortable conversation. He is a writer and asks good questions, and the conversation soon shifts into darker places, older stories, wounds and scars. He listens to my stories with tears in his eyes, and his voice cracks with emotion when he responds. He lingers and is hesitant to shift too quickly into his own stories, but eventually he does. Our salads arrive and we don’t even pick up our forks; the waitress interrupts to ask if we need anything, and we don’t answer her, or even pause the conversation. The restaurant empties; waiters are placing small candles on the tables. We talk, clutching hands across the table, and our untouched salad plates are removed. He tells a wrenching story of addiction, of the absolute loss of himself, of throwing his syringe kit into a sewer because he’d never go back for it, and then going back for it. His eyes are haunted, his voice shifts to a whisper – not from shame and privacy, but from the remembered horror. We know each other in a very particular way, now, and fall in love.
He pays the bill and we walk to our cars, reluctant to leave each other. He touches my skin and we kiss, for a long time.
she’s mean and nasty, a real hateful person. yuck.
I have a stalker, since last July. She’s a very nasty person, and I’ve found a way to block her from being able to access my blog. She’s so crazy and obsessed, she had a friend of hers stalk me too. Luckily there’s a plug-in that allows me to ban her IP address, and whenever I track down another of her minions I ban them, too. This may sound paranoid of me, but I’m telling you: she is nasty.
There is someone in the Bronx who googles “Lori [last name] blog” to arrive at my blog every day or so. I’m about to ban that IP address, so if you see this, you there in the Bronx, get in touch with me (thrums.ny {at} gmail.com) and let me know that you’re a nice person and unaffiliated with my nasty stalker, and we’re good. Otherwise, I just have to ban you and I really don’t want to do that unless I have to. I’m going to leave this post at the top for a couple of days to be sure the Bronx visitor has a chance to see it. Sorry for the unpleasant interruption of All Things Thrums (or do you prefer the House of Thrums — equally and overly pretentious, it makes me laugh a little more). 
thinking about my upcoming digital sabbatical
As I promised myself, this coming Saturday I’m taking a combination internet/knitting break, and I’m anxious about it. I’m allowing myself to use my computer to write, but not to go online. We’ll see how well I do with this; in the last few days, there have been several great articles (two in the NYTimes, including this lovely piece by Pico Iyer) about people taking digital sabbaticals. There’s something to it. I feel increasingly overloaded by all the information flying in, by my distracted and fractured nonstop word and image consumption — more blogs to read, more long articles to read, more insights to consume, more inspiration to absorb, more fiction to admire, more poetry to read, more thoughts to consider (oh! Must read Fareed Zakaria’s piece on the world.…). I feel wobbly, like I need to stop and make some priorities, and do some quality curating. I need to make time to process, to incorporate. I think this post about going on an information diet might be helpful, but I haven’t yet had time to read it thoughtfully — oh, the irony. Time!! I want more time, need more time. I have too many interests, and simply can’t understand people who say they’re bored.
Last year I grew in a very specific way: I became more self-possessed. That’s a very neat word, especially for someone who has always been other-possessed, past-possessed, history-possessed. Self-possessed means I take my own counsel, I have integrity and take my time, consider myself, pick and choose with the confidence of my true self. But I’m allowing myself to be overwhelmed, and it’s definitely time to stop, to take stock, to turn away from the easy seduction of immediate gratification and instead move thoughtfully and mindfully ahead. Easy to say, hard to do. I hope Saturday’s experiment gives me a start.
On Sunday my husband and I are driving to Atlantic City for a couple of days, to get out of town and keep ourselves busy and distracted while we wait for some news. We’re going ironically, and we’re Atlantic City’s worst nightmare: we don’t drink, we don’t gamble, we intend to lie around the pool or walk on the boardwalk or chill in our room, and we plan to eat.
It’d be much more interesting to go when Nucky was there, and Chalky, but alas. That’s a tv show. We’ll have a good time together making fun of the whole thing, the gamblers, the Snookies, the plastic glam and fake glitz. I’ll be taking my laptop, and since it’ll be after Saturday, I’ll be reporting live. From Atlantic City.
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?
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.
Well, who are you? (Who are you? Who, who, who, who?)
I really wanna know (Who are you? Who, who, who, who?)
Tell me, who are you? (Who are you? Who, who, who, who?)
‘Cause I really wanna know (Who are you? Who, who, who, who?)
hiding!
You know how it goes: when something particular is happening for you, you start to see it everywhere. The pregnant woman syndrome, the broken arm syndrome. This often extends to things I’m thinking about, too. Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be myself, to really be myself, and I seem to see it pop up in things I read here and there, and I hear it in conversations — focused and overheard. I read a great line by Anne Lamott: “So the real issue is how do we gently stop being who we aren’t? How do we relieve ourselves of the false fronts of people-pleasing and affectation, the obsessive need for power and security, the backpack of old pain, and the psychic Spanx that keeps us smaller and contained?” (I posted her full essay here, last month.)
It’s funny how just being who you are can be so bloody difficult. Of course we’re social animals and we have to bend and tweak ourselves to grease the social world that surrounds and helps create and support us. Of course. So I may love to sing showtunes at the top of my lungs at 4am (I don’t), but I live in a very crowded city, in an apartment building, and my neighbors wouldn’t appreciate that aspect of me (as I wouldn’t appreciate it in them), so I hum them softly at 4am and reserve my song-blasting for some other time and place. But that’s not what I mean, really. I’m really talking about how hard it can be to go ahead and relax into who you are and just be that. Hell, I’ll quit futzing around with the ‘you’ and ‘we’ and just say: It’s so hard just to relax into who I am, and then be that.
It’s not helped by the fact that part of who I am is [until now] an insecure person filled with self-doubts. I guess, to be accurate then, I’ve been being myself all my life! But underneath that, and coming increasingly to the surface, is the fullness of who I am, which I’ve kept tucked away under the pressure of being nice. It’s a particular problem for women, but for southern women in particular, it’s deadly. It struck me the other day that I’m so damn nice, always wanting to be nice, and it’s dull and boring. “Isn’t she so nice,” well who cares. Not to throw the baby out with the bathwater, of course, but when I think of the people I’m most crazy about, I feel that way because of the particulars of who they are. I like them because they say at least some version of what they think, they’re not shutting it up in order to be nice. So I might not always like what they say, or agree with it, but I very deeply like that they say it.
So here is my declaration of who I am, which I’m trying to face and relax into and be:
- I’m often outrageously exuberant. I can get really worked up over how great butter is, if I’m in the mood. Exuberance is often mocked by cynical people. Note to self: go ahead and let them!
- I’m an introvert and socially awkward (a) with strangers when we’re supposed to chat, and (b) when there are more than 2-3 people around. Parties are sheer agony for me. Extraverts don’t get this, and can be quite impossible to deal with on this topic, pushy and head-shaking, like what’s wrong with you. Note to self: smile at them and say what I think.
- Gratefully, I have more interests than time. I love architecture, art, music, theater, dance, travel, creativity of any kind (and people who are creative), books, poetry, writing, public readings and lectures on almost anything, and photography. But I can feel guilty about seeking out those things when I’m around someone who doesn’t have many interests, or who doesn’t share mine to a degree, and just let them go and not pursue them. Of course, this breeds resentment, not a good idea. Note to self: go ahead and pursue everything, life is short! If they’re left alone and not babysat, maybe they’ll need to find interests of their own, which will make them more interesting!
- I have a wide emotional bandwidth, as someone once said of me. I do of course usually live in the gray boring middle; working hours pass with not much more emotion than interest, boredom, restlessness, curiosity, things like that. I’m not in agony! ecstasy! most of the time. But I can sure go there. I feel things deeply and out to my fingertips. Joy is a very easy one for me; bliss is not rare; love and happiness, commonplace; sorrow is not rare; grief is not uncommon; despair, yeah, I’m quite familiar with it. People with a narrower bandwidth can find my range thoroughly exhausting. Note to self: It’s fine if they need a break from my experiences, that’s good for them and no skin off my nose.
- I’m not physically unattractive; my smile and open spirit make me more attractive than my actual features might be, otherwise. I’m fine, but not so attractive as to be threatening to anyone, so this one doesn’t get me into too much trouble with people.
- I’m thoughtful and smart and articulate. That one is even harder to say out loud than the previous one, which is mighty damn hard. (I talked about this a couple days ago.) I struggle with this one and am afraid to speak about things for fear of (a) being dumb, or (b) being rejected because no one likes the smart girl. Talk about a childhood mistake! So I’m trying to relax into this one and just be. Note to self: don’t be so afraid!
- I’m jealous and insecure, and suffer terribly because of it. I have a very critical and small side of my personality, which causes me to suffer a lot. Anne Lamott says we’re not punished for our sins, we’re punished by them, and see how smart that is?! These parts of me punish me terribly, and I’m always working on transforming them into something that feels better.
So there.
“O strengthen me, enlighten me! / I faint in this obscurity, / Thou dewy dawn of memory.” (Ode to Memory, Alfred Lord Tennyson)
Maybe it’s because I’ve been under a lot of stress, or because I don’t get uninterrupted sleep (not to mention not enough sleep), or maybe it’s just because I’m getting older, but my memory is not what it once was. I used to love experiencing my mind working; it was fast, zipping zipping crackling with blue light. I could remember details, texture, nuance, and not only that, it was reliably pretty accurate.
But that was then, and now I just don’t remember — and luckily(?) I also don’t even remember that I don’t remember. It’s not awful, it’s not like I have Alzheimer’s or anything, I’m just forgetful now. Because I hope to age with grace and acceptance, I’ve decided to see this as charming. Isn’t that charming, I have to write everything down. That does just beg the next problem of remembering that (and where) I wrote it down, but you can’t have everything.
my memory bank
I have moleskines stashed everywhere, and going through them can be hilarious. I just thumbed through one, looking for the next clear space, and read this:
“remember the ironing, everything damp & rolled up, stacked in a basket. Huge coke bottle with a metal ‘shower head’ for sprinkling.”
I have no idea. But isn’t that charming? Today I’m grateful for moleskines, and a sense of humor.
plumbing and sounding the depths.
A friend of mine introduced me to Denis Johnson a couple years ago (Jesus’ Son, an amazing and wrenching collection of short stories), and he became one of my favorite writers. This morning I read a bit of an article by Lorin Stein on Paris Review about Johnson’s work, and the writing was gorgeous. Stein wrote:
Sometimes, if you wander long enough out-of-doors, you look up and find yourself in a suddenly devastating place: on a glittering slab of granite, say, hanging a thousand feet above a mountain lake. Your blood quickens, the clouds stretch, the light turns everything to gold and something enters you, shakes you, seizes some root of your soul and pulps it. Maybe you make your way down to the lake for a swim, or just sit beneath the sky for an hour, dazzled, but what lasts is the feeling that you have found something important, something precious, something that would be world-renowned if only it weren’t so hard to find.
It’s a proprietary feeling, too, when you find a place—or a song, or a painting, or a sandwich—that you love, that moves you. You want to share it with only a few other souls, believers, maniacs, folks who won’t trample on it. Because who wants to see her sacred meadow flattened by the sandals of tourists?
I first read Denis Johnson’s novella “Train Dreams” in a bright orange 2002 issue of The Paris Review and felt that old thrill of discovery … It’s a love story, a hermit’s story and a refashioning of age-old wolf-based folklore like “Little Red Cap.” It’s also a small masterpiece. You look up from the thing dazed, slightly changed.
YES. He captured so perfectly the experience I constantly seek in movies and books, the experience of being moved and changed and never quite the same. On Sundays, I always seem to crave a movie that will do this to me, and I’m usually thoroughly disappointed (though this weekend I very much enjoyed Thomas Merton: A Film Biography (netflix streaming) and Edge of Dreaming (netflix streaming)). But you know what I mean, don’t you — that jarring experience of reading or watching something that just takes you to the depth of what’s important? That moves you away from the silly, the unimportant, the trivial?
When I was a young girl, I had a hard time. A very hard time. I was that too-smart, unkempt girl on the front row, the one who always had her homework, who always made the top grade, who read a bit too much, who was awkward and strange, who was without exception the last choice in PE, the one who made the chooser groan. Surprise! — I was unpopular. This caused me a lot of anguish and I decided that one way I might be liked was if I were dumb. So I tried very hard to fail, to at least make Bs, to “forget” my homework now and then (isn’t that sad?!). But I never could succeed at failing, so I just hid my mind and played it down, acted dumb whenever possible. Suffered fools gladly, by acting like I was one, too.
I never really got over that tendency, though I am trying very hard. Marnie takes herself and her work seriously, a trait I admire very much especially since she does it without taking herself too seriously, if you know what I mean. So when I read things that scoot me over inside myself, or watch movies like the two I watched this weekend, I remember a little more clearly that I am the deeper one hidden inside, much more than I am the foolish one I often pretend to be.
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” ~Mary Oliver. I don’t know, Mary, but I’ve got to find out.
reorient – orient once again, after a disorientation
I’m going to start by imagining that y’all are like me in this regard: You have aspirations to take excellent care of yourself in the widest variety of ways possible. Yeah, you’ll take good care of the physical, you’ll floss regularly and eat carefully and get bone-building exercise and moisturize and take enough care with your appearance whatever that means to you. You’ll tend to the emotional, you’ll value experiencing all the emotions there are and not stuff any away and you’ll express anger appropriately and you’ll take care when you feel low and you’ll spend your time with people who share themselves and make it easy for you to share yourself. You’ll take good care of the intellectual — you’ll read interesting or challenging material, you’ll value learning new things, you’ll engage in great conversation rather than empty small talk. You’ll tend to the spiritual, you’ll look at art and make it if you can, you’ll listen to music, you’ll go out and enjoy whatever natural setting you can, you’ll meditate or do whatever spiritual practice makes sense to you, you’ll practice mindfulness. Yeah, those are my regular aspirations.
I’ll start boldly, and to my surprise I even stick with some of it. Other bits, though, fall by the wayside, and then I notice I’m feeling gunky. The very coolest thing about life is that every single day is a new chance to do it. Every day. Every week. So after a royally crappy day, and after noticing that I’ve felt a very long line of royally crappy days, I reorient myself today:
- No more small, cruel, sadistic people who live to destroy others. As of today, I’m done with them. Life’s too short to have these people in my life, even if they live in another city. Hello, all my dear and loving friends who are such good people, and farewell to the rest.
- And on a lower scale but still dragging, no more people who just refuse to be happy, who refuse even the possibility of being happy. I’m sorry, I tried, and I wish you as well as you can tolerate, but this is a day of my life and I need it.
- Continue with the exercise (yay me!) and keep trying to eat more; this change is kind of rooted now so I just reconfirm it.
- I’ve been seriously neglecting the spiritual side of my life, and I think it’s a big part of my long run of gunk. Mindfulness, some meditation, and more walks in the beautiful park should help. And more effort at creativity, by which I mean creating something from myself. I so enjoy knitting, but I’m following someone else’s creativity. I need to birth some of my own.
- And finally, though I guess this is really just part of mindfulness, I reorient myself to remembering that this is a very precious day of my precious and brief life. How do I want to spend it? I don’t have an infinite number, this one is precious. Absolutely precious, and I am so lucky to have it. I get into a rut of forgetting that, of allowing the days to slip away with mindless junk, of allowing other people to take over to the point that I lose my connection to this fact. This is a day of my very very very precious life. It’s mine.
Thanks for the true knitting confessions, and for the advice. Kelly, I’m ordering a little stash of those red row counters, since that seems to give me the best opportunity to connect the count with the project. I could be prone to set the note card aside, or never find it when I pick up a project.
If you do not let my people go, I will send swarms of flies on you and your officials, on your people and into your houses. The houses of the Egyptians will be full of flies, and even the ground where they are (and fly pesticide won’t work). — Exodus 8:21 (with an amendment)
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. Weevils? For the last year, every other bag of bread flour I’ve opened has had weevils in it. It makes me mad, a brand new bag of flour, but they don’t creep me out. I’m not crazy about cockroaches, or their gigantic Texas cousins, the water bugs, and like them to be gone immediately please. They’re so ubiquitous in Austin, living in the leaf litter, that you just have them whether you like them or not. I was in the shower once and saw one crawling on the far wall of the shower, CREEPY, and though I didn’t want to, I kind of had to turn my back for a second and when I turned back, it was gone. WHERE WAS IT????!! That was one of the fastest showers I ever took.
But flies, I really really really detest flies. In the south, there are screens over the windows so you can open them without becoming fly infested. They might dash in when you open the door (“shut the door, you’re letting flies in!” I always heard as a kid), but that was it, really. Up here, in NYC, there are no screens. Can you believe that? No screens. And since we keep the windows open whenever possible, year-round, we live with flies. Most of the time, it’s the annoying one or two, but once a year every single year, there is a fly infestation of near-biblical proportions. A plague.
Where do they come from? No idea. Yesterday I was wondering if there was something dead in the walls, a rat or something (happens in a 112-year old building in a rat-infested city), but I’d have smelled that. Nothing smells bad. There is no food left lying about, there is no obvious origin for them, but my apartment is absolutely filled with flies. Two days ago I used half a can of spray thinking that’d get them. And indeed, they started walking pretty slowly, easy enough to swat a bunch of them. The next morning I was shocked not to see dead flies everywhere, I thought surely the morning would be spent cleaning them up. But no, absolutely no dead flies. Just a lot of flies walking around, a lot flying, and a giant swarm in one room. So at the end of the day, I used an entire can of fly-specific pesticide, fumigated the living room which is closed off from the rest of the apartment, and left. Spent the night closed up in the bedroom. Expected to see dead flies this morning……..nope.
What the hell??! These flies are not only completely resistant to pesticide designed especially for flies, they’re either the fastest-breeding flies in the world, or they let their buddies in at night while I sleep. I’m feeling possessed and hopeless about it. Last year when this happened, the pesticide fumigation route worked, the first time.
Isn’t that gross?
A half truth is a whole lie. ~Yiddish Proverb
Adrienne Rich said, “Lying is done with words and also with silence.” I almost think the lies that are in silence are worse, because you’re left being unable to trust what’s said and what’s not said. At least when someone lies with words, you’re left only unable to trust their words.
This is one of those funny human things — everyone lies, all the time. Ordinarily they’re little unimportant lies, like saying you have another appointment to get out of something with someone else. Social grease, those lies. So we all lie, and not uncommonly, but when we are lied to, oh the outrage! How could he!
There’s an AA saying that’s something like ‘the louder the no, the louder the yes.’ I’ve probably botched that; I hear these things second-hand and don’t always get the full explanation. But anyway, the point is obviously that when someone is being Quite! Certain! about something, the opposite is likely true. And not just in a “methinks he doth protest too much” kind of way, but in subtler ways, too. When I was first dating, I was pretty loud and certain: Oh no! I’m never getting married again, that’s for sure! Why would I. I’m not having more kids, mine are grown, that’s it for me, never getting married. Ever. Never. For sure. For real. Don’t ask. I’m done. And slightly less than a year later, I was married.
But the less-subtle over-protests are red flags: no! I did not do that, and I’m outraged that you would suggest I did! mmm, yeah. I’ll bet you did.
So I was lied to within the last 24 hours and it sucks and it feels pretty awful and I’m trying to regain my own equilibrium. I’m trying to keep in mind the thing about everyone lies (me too), and all the rest. But it’s just a wrenching thing, isn’t it, learning you’ve been lied to. Especially in silence. hmm.
DO NOT let H.R. 3 pass you by — pay attention, speak up.
I do not discuss politics here — or rather, I haven’t until now. And I’m sorry if this offends you, or causes you to decide never to read my blog again, whether it’s because you aren’t interested in political commentary from random people regardless of the content, or whether it’s because of the specific content of this post. I’ll miss you, because I’ve enjoyed your online presence in my online life.
The GOP has introduced a bill to the House, H.R. 3, the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act,” a bill with 173 mostly Republican co-sponsors that House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has dubbed a top priority in the new Congress. The bill is intended to restrict the definition of what rape is. Of course the fundamental issue relates to the government paying for abortion, and I could get off on that issue, but I’m trying hard to stay focused here. Here’s a summary of what the bill is trying to achieve, and here’s a thumbnail: “Other types of rapes that would no longer be covered by the exemption include rapes in which the woman was drugged or given excessive amounts of alcohol, rapes of women with limited mental capacity, and many date rapes.” The proposal is intended to limit the definition of rape to FORCIBLE rape. So if a child of 11 is raped by her father, who didn’t have to use force because of all the obvious reasons, then she wasn’t raped. If she becomes pregnant, too bad for her.
Obviously, I am extremely upset by this and maybe you want to disregard my intense emotion — but every person, and every woman in particular, and every mother in particular, should look into this and let your representative know how you feel about it.
It may be easy for you to sit on high, from an intellectual or theoretical place, and say that you are against allowing federal money to be spent on abortion. Perhaps you have religious beliefs that inform your position, or your own moral compass, or whatever. And if it were your child, your 11-year old daughter who was raped by whatever kind of male you find most terrifying, and you were poor and she was pregnant, and there she was, 11 and pregnant because she was raped, would you be as certain of your position? What if she was mentally or developmentally challenged and 11 and raped?
If you don’t already know about OpenCongress.org, it’s a great site that lets you follow your representatives, particular bills that interest you, etc. You can track them, get RSS feeds of interest, etc. You can, with a click of your mouse, let your representatives know how you feel about bills, and issues. You can, with a click, write them. Here’s the H.R. 3 page, so you can see it was introduced by Christopher Smith (R-NJ) and it’s been referred to the Ways & Means Committee. Only 18% of people who visit that page have indicated that they support the bill — so 72% oppose it. Add your voice….not that (I fear) it’ll make any difference, though I do always hope.
Luckily for me, my representatives share my political beliefs, for the most part. If I lived in a state that had representatives who were voting for this bill, I don’t know what I would do, but I know I’d do everything I possibly could to get the bill defeated.
We all have to pick the issues that matter to us; no one has the time to become passionately involved in every single issue. We even have the pick among the issues we care about, because we’re so busy we can’t even give enough time just to those that matter to us. We have to pick and narrow. This one matters to me, a lot. A LOT. You may speculate about why it matters to me so much. If it matters to you, please please please please let your representative know about it. Please. It’s so easy to do that now. Go to OpenCongress.org, sign up, it’s free and quick.
i know i’ve said this before, but this time I REALLY MEAN IT.
Even though, as they say,
The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men,
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!
Screw it. I’m making plans anyway. For once in my life, I’m going to just take my time and do it right. (Mister Rogers has a song about that — I like to take my time, I mean that when I want to do a thing, I like to take my time and do it right. I mean I just might make mistakes if I should have to hurry up, and so I like to take my time. That came entirely out of my memory, by the way.) I’m making plans, I’m taking my time, I’m going to do math (gasp! No! Not math!), I’m going to measure myself (get the smelling salts, gussie, ma’s fainted), and this time, I’m making a perfect sweater.
Geez, what a long-winded way to get here. In the wake of my gorgeous-but-large Dark & Stormy (which I will get into shape this weekend), I want to be thoughtful and slow and careful with the next one. I’ve now made three sweaters — my mondo cable cardi, my Peasy, and my Dark & Stormy. I adore them, they’re all gorgeous, but I did them my usual way, getting a wild hair, willy-nilly ordering some yarn and yes, making a little swatch, but then plowing ahead blindly. It’s a wonder they’re as good as they are.
Next up: Gudrun Johnson’s gorgeous Laar sweater, in dragon’s blood red. Here’s hers:
so beautiful!
One lesson I learned on Dark & Stormy: use needles you enjoy working with, even if it means you have to go buy new ones. I absolutely hated every minute of using the Denise needles, and believe it took me much longer to make that sweater, in part because of the needles. The constant difficult scootching, ugh.
So I’m making a substantial swatch, I’m measuring all the critical areas of my body for fitting this sweater, I’m making adjustments to the pattern so it fits ME (especially since I look absolutely nothing like the gorgeous model), and if I goof, I’m ripping. If it’s ok but meh it’s not quite right, I’m ripping.
I’m making a public vow. Promising myself. Yeah.
Paging Alfred Hitchcock, paging Alfred Hitchcock.
Across the street from my apartment, on the 2nd floor of the building, something’s going on. From my couch, I can see the bedroom window. It’s a fancy one. It is more like a glass door, it swings open like that. There are no cross-panes, it’s just a full door-sized window. The owners open it when the weather is nice; they have one of those tiny little balconies sticking off the front of the building, just deep enough for a few potted plants.
For the last several days, the overhead light has been on 24 hours/day, and for the last 3 days, that window/door has been standing wide open. Last night I was up from 1-3am and there it was. Lights blazing, door/window wide open, despite the snow.
Now, the door/window has been closed but the curtain is still pulled aside and the overhead light is still on. I haven’t seen a person once; it’s not like I see them very often — it requires a coincidence of timing, I just happen to glance over as they just happen to be there. But it does happen often enough that I would’ve seen them by now.
So! Just enough ambiguity to leave me uncertain what to do.
Tomorrow: lots of knitting. Hope to finish knitting D&S, in fact. Fingers crossed.
que sera sera — but who knows what that is.
Cases in point:
- one of my dearest friends in the world, age 41, in perfect health and with no known family history, had a major stroke just over a year ago and of course everything everything changed in that moment. now she can’t work, she wanted a child and now that’s not possible, she lost her verbal fluency (although it feels much worse to her than it seems to those of us who still love to listen to her, even if it is more halting), etc. she was (is) brilliant, and while she still is brilliant, her fluency problems make it so much harder for her to express herself. so all at once, in one unexpected moment, everything changed.
- another of my dearest friends in the world, newly married, crazy in love with his wife, happy life filled with plans — his mother-in-law, dear to him and his wife, learned she has ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease). it was like an atom bomb in their lives, worst for the mother-in-law of course, but big-time life-changing for my friends. they’re selling their home and moving in with her to care for her. all at once, in one unexpected moment, everything changed.
- i just learned that right before thanksgiving, an acquaintance’s wife was ok, then something was wrong, then it was diagnosed as kidney cancer, then she had surgery. in a 3-week period of time.
and of course we all know these things can happen (though they usually happen in other people’s lives), but we don’t even think about them unless we have to. we go about our daily business making all our happy plans, imagining the long string of tomorrows and next months and this summers and next falls. but of course what else can we do? it’s all there is to do – make plans, expect them to be possible at least, and shoot for tomorrow.
but they do serve to remind us — at least a day or two after they happen to other people — that life is fragile, and that we really should appreciate it and that today’s the day, man.
last night i had dinner with my friend who had the stroke. we were talking about the ways we can feel so sorry for ourselves, and how irritating it is when people say “but look at all the ways it could be worse.” (seriously, don’t ever say that to someone who’s dealing with something horrible.) (if you aren’t sure what to say, just say that, that you don’t know what to say but you are so sorry they’re having to deal with it. and also, don’t say you know how they feel unless you’ve had that same experience. and also, don’t say that you couldn’t deal with it if it happened to you — oh yes you could, just like they are trying to.) ANYWAY. we both realized that with enough time, we are able to think about all the ways it could be worse and find some measure of comfort in it — but not in the way you’d think. “it could be worse” stops the spiral of sorrow for yourself, but it does not make it better. it just stops it from getting worse. for a while, anyway.
so my long-winded point: today’s the day. don’t forget that.
too much to do! too much to do! stress monster, aaargh!
That would be me, today and for the rest of this week — Wendy Whiner. Whiney McWhinerson. I have too much work to do, (a), and something’s gone jiggy with me, (b). My muscles are all vibratey and jittery, my head’s kind of wonky (-er than usual), and as my kids used to say when they were little, I have daddy-rhea. I’ll let you figure out that one.
So in keeping with the old adage, since I don’t have anything nice to say, I won’t say anything at all. But in the celluloid words of the recent governor of California, I’ll be back. Just as soon as I get this work done……..
what? I was gonna wha…oh yeah! That’s right. I was going over there to do that wait why am I here? Why is the refrigerator open, and why are my keys in there?
Well, my attitude is to roll with it. Don’t fight it too hard, don’t waste time griping that this is how it is now, taking it to mean that death is just around the corner. Yes, I’m getting older, and yes, things change in all kinds of ways. Yes, some things are harder (but some things are easier, too!). And sometimes things are just different, now.
My short-term memory has a very weak grip, these days; if I don’t act on something when I’m thinking about it, odds are pretty good that I’ll forget and that’s that. If the thing comes around again, I frequently don’t even know that I’d thought of it before! New world, and all that.
So here’s how it goes in my new associational way of being in the world:
I’m working and realize that my face is feeling tight because the air is so dry. Oh yeah! I was going to put some moisturizer on my face! Walk to the bathroom, as I’m putting it on I remember oh yeah! I was going to refill the humidifier in the living room because the air is so dry….walk to the living room and get the tank, walk to the kitchen to fill it oh yeah! I was going to empty the dishwasher, empty the dishwasher as I put away the mugs I remember oh yeah! I was going to make some mint tea, go to the cabinet to get tea and see oatmeal oh yeah! I was going to have oatmeal for breakfast…..
My life is a series of ‘oh yeah!s’ now. I experience this in a delightful way, a never-ending series of eyebrow-raising, gasp-inducing insights. Ah! Oooh! Oh! Luckily, I always remember that I’d much rather be knitting. If only these manuscripts would edit themselves…..
want to know how i know fall has really arrived? dust on the radiators being burned off…..if you live in NYC you know what i mean.
One reason fall is so exciting is that it engages all the senses in a new way. (Especially true if you live in the north.) The colors on the trees are so vivid; the crunchiness of the leaves underfoot is so delicious; the crispness of the air tingles on the skin and in the nose. If you live in a rural area, I imagine you smell smoke in the air…….and if you live in NYC, you smell that very particular smell that means the heat has been turned on.
It’s the smell of the summer’s accumulation of dust burning on the radiators, I guess? When I came into the kitchen to make my coffee this morning, I felt like a dog because I paused, cocked my head and made a quick sniff, looked side to side, and sniffed again. Yep, that’s it. The heat is on. Which means the heat is on from now until next April or May, whether we like it, need it, or not.
My building was built at the turn of the last century – 1901 I think? Maybe 1905, I can’t remember now. I believe we have a boiler in the basement that heats oil — I see and hear the big oil truck parked at the curb now and then. I don’t know how the decision is made about when to turn on/off the heat, but it’s a binary thing, and we have zero control over it. The only way I can regulate the temperature in my apartment is to open the windows. So during the winter, the heat is blasting in my apartment and the windows are open, but that does not mix to produce comfort. Instead, I’m simultaneously very hot and very cold.
As I get older and mark transitions between things, the transitions feel a little different than they used to — more notable. Ah, it’s fall again. Another fall, one more fall, a finite number of them still to come. Of course there has always been a finite number of them to come, but when you’re a kid that’s not what you think about at the transition! (Correction: that’s not what most kids think about at the transitions, unless they’re dark little kids who read too much Camus, like me.)
Still, even though I know I’ll be cursing the radiators and the boiler and the incessant hounds-of-hell heat before too long, at this first moment I note the smell with a bit of delight. Fall is here. The light hasn’t done that cool shift thing that it does, but the radiators are on. Seasons turn.
will i have enough? that’s all too often my question. why oh why don’t i just go ahead and spring for the extra ball. (that’s what SHE said.)
Well, I am just a little bit worried. I have 5 skeins of yarn, and I just finished the first one. I have another pattern repeat before I cast on for the sleeve width. This shrug is knit all in one piece, then the sides and arms are seamed. The diagram looks like a big fat cross.
one skein down, and only this far....
It’s real purdy, as my east Texas relatives would’ve said. Real real purdy.
I’ve got a shout-out on the madelinetosh rav ISO forum, and two people have volunteered a skein each. The pattern calls for 1096 yds and I have 1125 yds, so I’m cutting it close, even assuming everything matches up.
This section of the pattern uses the Eve’s Ribs pattern. Once I get into the main body, it shifts to Adam’s Rib, which does not include the pretty yarn overs.
Finally, to poke fun at myself on this absolutely gorgeous Wednesday morning, I saw this early today (by which I mean 4am, because that’s when I spontaneously and completely woke up) and laughed with recognition.
this could've been written about me.
Busy day today – the entire day yesterday was spent up to my scalp follicles in statistics, so today I turn to editing the historical novel I’m working on. A couple of errands today, dinner with a friend tonight at the wonderful Ethiopian restaurant in my neighborhood, and all on the only rain-free day of the week. Lucky me! Hope it’s as gorgeous where you are.
do you need an editor? HIRE ME!
Yeah, I’m shamelessly stealing from my daughter Marnie. When she was facing a life change, she put a note out on her facebook page, asking people to keep her in mind when opportunities came up that might fit with her skills. As an academically-minded person, she included a citation:
“In my empirical study of recent job changers, I found, in fact, that if weak ties are defined by infrequent contact around the time when information about a new job was obtained, then professional, technical, and managerial workers were more likely to hear about new jobs through weak ties (27.8 percent) than through strong ones (16.7 percent), with a majority in between (55.6 percent).”
-Granovetter, “The Strength of Weak Ties,” 1974
So in the same spirit, and with a bit of happy experience under my belt, I do the same thing here. One of my friends who comments here, and who I met through Ravelry (hi again Kelly!), has already helped me. I just finished an editorial assignment that I got from an agent Kelly connected me with. And in the true spirit of weak connections, it wasn’t actually an assignment from the agent, but rather from a friend of hers who happened to mention that she was writing a book proposal. (thank you Kelly!)
Oh, the strength of weak ties. What good is this social networking thing, if we don’t put things out there? If we don’t occasionally shake the ropes and see how far out they ripple?
So here’s what I do, and if you know someone who knows someone who knows someone who needs me, please think of me! Having been an acquiring editor for a major publisher, I know what publishers need and want, and can provide invaluable assistance to authors who are preparing proposals, or who have written manuscripts. I wear my acq ed hat, and I also wear my in-depth editor’s cap, which allows me to see the book that may be buried in a not-quite-there manuscript.
I also have a strong background in market research; you know the Harris Poll? Yeah, I worked for them and used my background in survey design as a social psychologist, along with my research and analytical skills. Most recently I used those skills to help publishers do research around new online products. But whatever! I know how to craft questions to get real answers, and I know how to program surveys and prepare the results.
Up there at the top of my site, just under the masthead, is a new tab labeled Hire me! See it? It goes to my professional site. And while I am shy about this, there’s a page in my professional site that includes comments from my authors. They were awfully nice.
Even though I have a particular grace and skill at just being myself and being charming, no one has paid me to do that just yet. So I’m in the market for work, doncha know, and if you know someone (who knows someone who knows someone…..), please think of me! I’d do the same for you, I promise.
.
using my street for an SVU murder AGAIN.
Looks like the murder will be happening right outside my apartment window. The production guys just parked a police car and a detective car right outside my window. The streets have been cleared – no parking, no traffic – the trash pickup came earlier than usual, the big panavision truck is here, and the bedbug exterminator had to come in very quickly. LIFE IN MANHATTAN. I’ll keep my eyes peeled for Mariska and will snap a pic if I can.
our bldg has bedbugs, they have roscoe - doesn't seem fair
PANAVISION!
setup for the fake cops
I think the fake murder will be happening in that little alley between the two buildings. They always do. More as the (duh duh) drama unfolds.
i’ve never HAD time to kill! i don’t know what to do with it.
greek yogurt with greek honey - luscious
It’s so strange, going from having too little (time) to having an abundance. From having too much (stress) to having almost none. I don’t quite know what to do with myself.
I know what I want to do with myself! I want to arrange a life of balance, that’s the big picture. I want to do yoga regularly, to strengthen my very bad back; I want to walk regularly, to be outdoors and to benefit my heart; I want to lose a bit of weight and eat well; I want to write; I want to line up enough work so I don’t feel frantic about it; I want to make things; I want to stay connected to people; I want to keep my house clean and neat. Balance.
If I’m not careful, though, I piddle away time without doing anything at all. I sit with my laptop, just checking this site one more time and oh yeah let me look at that one and oh wait I need to respond to this and after I look at that I’m shutting it down and getting busy and then it’s time for dinner. That’s what happened yesterday.
I tend toward Prussian organization, which then collapses and I’m back to wasting. In other words, I get way too anal about it, like this: On Mondays from 8:30 to 8:45 do this. From 8:45 to 9:45 do that. Tuesdays and Thursday from 7:15 to 8:45 do that. Every Wednesday afternoon from 3:00 to 4:15 do that. Rigid, strict, entirely structured. And all it takes, when you’re set up like that, is one fail and then the whole thing can wash down the drain. (Of course it needn’t, but if you’re a person with these tendencies, that’s what happens.)
So I think instead, well, how about if I just say “3 mornings a week I’ll spend an hour doing yoga” etc. But what I do in reality is this: well, right now I’ll just finish my coffee and poking around the internet, then I’ll get up and straighten up the living room – I’ll do yoga tomorrow.
Maybe, instead, I need to deconstruct the beginning – do what alcoholics have to do when they’re trying to learn how to stay clean. Break up the routine that supports the addiction. Right now, I get up and make a little pot of coffee — 2 mugs’ worth — and then I slowly drink my coffee and feel justified in poking around the internet. Just while I drink my coffee, you know? That’s all. Then I’ll get busy. But I take a long time with it! I may take 2 hours drinking those 2 mugs of coffee. A little sip, poke poke poke. Sip poke poke poke. Sip poke poke poke. It’s really really hard to break up that very slow start to my day. Every night I think, as I drift off to sleep, “in the morning, don’t open the computer, just take your coffee to the table and write by hand for 20 minutes. Just do that.” But then I don’t, because I’m tired. Or whatever.
My life has been entirely structured, forever. Babies’ nursing schedules, naptimes, picking up kids from school/snack/homework/dinner/baths/tucking in. My own college and grad school schedules. Work work work work work work, always at jobs that are intense and draining and never the kind that nourishes me in any way.
So now, here I am, for the first time in my 51 years of life, with time. I can’t squander it. Do you have any advice for me? How do you manage your time?
don’t hide!
my spirit animal must be an ostrich. i know that’s not a fancy spirit animal, or an elegant one, but it does seem to be mine. if everything is A-OK, buddy i can face it and do what needs to be done. but if anything gets a little bit wobbly, i just hide my head and do a bit of psychic fingers-in-the-ears ‘la la la i can’t hear anything’. and then the hiding takes on a life of its own, and i begin to feel so awful about having hidden, and having avoided people, that it just gets harder and harder to do what needs to be done. and doing what needs to be done becomes increasingly heavy, since – you know – it’s not being done.
i love the spirit of amy herzog’s ‘fit to flatter’ series, for a great many reasons. the reason that’s relevant to this post is that she says ‘here’s what IS, and here’s how to work with it.’ that’s right: this is how i actually do look. actually. not how i wish i looked; not ‘how i’ll look when i lose 10 pounds;’ not how i used to look; not how the victoria’s secret models that i walk past every morning look (well, how they look with a lot of airbrushing and photoshopping). no. this is how i look, right now, and it is.
i’ve enjoyed the fit to flatter posts, every single one. i’ve enjoyed seeing actual photographs of real women, and how real women actually look – and they look great, they look like regular people. like me. on top of the ridiculous blight of advertising and overly skinny models, i also live in manhattan, which seems to have a greater-than-average percentage of fancy people. i am not a fancy person. i am an average-looking person, an average 51 year old who has given birth to 3 children, who has had major abdominal surgery, who has less-than-perfect posture, who can be lazy and just throw on whatever is convenient, who could certainly benefit from more exercise.
facing what actually is requires either a bit of courage, or an attitude stripped of judgment. i think it’s the stripped attitude that helps the most. step on the scale and just look. open your eyes, really just look at that number. ok, that’s what is. and open that email and just look at it – that’s it. and go ahead and open the envelope, open the mail, look at what it actually is. what’s amazing – and i do already know this – is just how powerful it feels to go ahead and do that. i always feel so righteous, like i can just keep doing it, it’s so much easier – working is always easier than not working – and from now on i’m just going to do it. i’ll adopt a new spirit animal, something that Gets. It. Done. i wonder what that would be.
the fevered workings of my itchy mind
I know what you’re thinking – this post is going to talk about how itchy wool is. Well you’re wrong! Sorry, didn’t really mean to set you up like that. Instead, it’s about how my fingers and mind are itchy to knit with that pink Felici yarn. Or that new soft Noro. Itching, itching, itching. My mind, too, itching. Can’t stop thinking about it. Just want to cast on, see the stripes unfold, feel the softness.
Don’t do it, Lori. Don’t start something new. Satisfy yourself with touching the yarn, looking at it. Keep it on the table next to you so you can …. NO! Put it away! Go put it in the stash bins so you’re not so sorely tempted all the time! Do it now! Just get up, step away from the laptop, and store the yarns out of sight!
But it’s so pretty, that pink, and I don’t even like pink. The caramel colors of that one skein of Noro, so seductive. And the madelinetosh pashmina, bali hai come to me.
NO – finish at least one thing first. You know you have a lot of work to do, finishing the wedding dress, and don’t forget the shawl – not even halfway done with that and time’s a-ticking. The baktus, the blanket, the cardigan. You’ve got your train knitting project, you don’t need another one. Focus Lori, focus.
But just a little bit, just a swatchNO! NO!
help me……
all aboard – ha ha ha ha – the crazy train
Maybe New York City mothers tell their kids about days like this, people like this. It’s not like I’m unaccustomed to some of the more colorful people one runs into in this city; we have our neighborhood schizophrenic who used to do push-ups in the middle of Broadway, and who once ran up and tagged me. There’s the schizophrenic who ‘lives’ in front of my office, the poor man you can smell before you even round the corner. There are drunks in the subway, not all that uncommon to see. Oh, and the occasional weirdo who picks up 2 reciprocating saws the workmen left untended, and starts sawing people on the platform. (That last one is really rare, I mean really rare, but it did happen at my subway stop so that makes it notable to me.)
But today was a real doozy. The trains were strangely empty; as we went along, there were always empty seats throughout the car. Weird, for “rush hour” on a normal week day. I get on at Penn Station, and the next stop is Times Square. Well, a totally drunk dude got on at Times Square. I wasn’t sure he was going to be able to stand up, or to stay upright in his seat. And I was afraid he was going to lose the contents of his stomach like the last majorly drunk guy I encountered. He wobbled, he wavered, he drooped, and he kept getting up and lurching around, back and forth. And he was right in front of me.
He rode along for 3 stops and then he got off, and I felt a wave of relief. For about 10 seconds. Another guy boarded, and he was happy! Like, really really really really happy – cackling and slapping his leg. Throwing his head back with his mouth wide open so we could see all 3 of his teeth, cackling. Then he’d jump up and down, then do this weird thing where he’d kind of squat and move up and down in a squatting position. Then he’d jump up! Turn around! Windmill his arms! Cackle cackle cackle! Maybe he was doing the hoky poky for all I know. Whatever reality he was in, there was a happy party going on.
Still, there’s something frightening about insane happiness, and he was so physical and all over the place. And – like the drunk – he was right next to me. What gives, drunk and crazy dudes?!
He finally got off at the stop just before mine. Today, apparently, I was aboard the crazy train. It’s not really all that much fun.
not-doing is so much harder than doing, but doing is pretty hard, too.
Stopping all at once – from following 435 blogs to not reading any blogs at all – that is tough. Since Google Reader doesn’t provide a suspend option, I just eliminated the gadget from my iGoogle home page. The choices are either to quit following, or see all the posts. I wish they’d provide a vacation option or something, but they don’t. So I know they’re all there, accumulating, showing up in the Reader that’s there but just not on my home page. They taunt me, the posts. I know there is beautiful knitting, gorgeous quilting, interesting thoughts, amazing design, fun and happy and curious and melancholy, all there just behind my screen.
But I am not reading. It’s hard. I wonder what you’re up to. Not reading hasn’t yet transformed my mornings, although I have done more knitting. I’ve also done a bit more writing. I think I have to overcome the thing underneath, the thing that made sitting and reading all the blogs so appealing, such a good alternative to doing. Inertia, laziness, general procrastination, fear. And that last one is such a funny thing – fear. I’m afraid to try toe-up socks. WHAT? Afraid to try toe-up socks? What is there to be afraid of? Afraid I’ll sit at my table and start writing and … what? It won’t be good? Does it all have to be good, and perfect, and finished, with my first effort?
Of course the answer is no, and of course the answer is yes.
this is my brain on distraction crack
Not the corpus callosum, the crack-like division between the two brain hemispheres. Not crack cocaine and what it does to your brain. No, the ‘brain crack’ of the post’s title is a phrase my daughter the artist uses to describe the way a creative person might get so involved in figuring out everything involved with a new project and never start, preferring instead to continue planning, tweaking, thinking. That process is kind of like brain crack, it’s fun, nothing is at risk, it’s a way of doing “work” without having to face the blank canvas, or the blank page, or the raw materials, and enduring that difficult process and the potential for risk and failure. “Don’t get stuck on brain crack, mom.” Because that’s what I do. (And here I’m not talking about the actual prep work, the swatching (though that could be done in a brain crack-like way), the material testing, the sample creation, etc.)
I’ll just answer these emails that are coming in, and after that I’ll get going. I’ll just organize my knitting bag and then I’ll get going. Oh wait, I should really read this book about design before I get going, it’ll probably save me a lot of trial and error. Oh wait, let me just clean the kitchen first. I’ll just run through my Google Reader real quick and then I’ll get started. I’m sure this is very common; I’ve read all sorts of pieces by writers who describe this kind of process they wade through when they’re having trouble writing. It doesn’t feel good to do this, there’s a kind of building desperation, you know you’re stalling and the thing is waiting, waiting, getting further away rather than closer.
During the week, I get up at 5am and spend about an hour (more or less, depending on the daily situation with my hair and how tragic it looks) sitting on the couch, drinking two cups of coffee, reading my Google Reader, and knitting. Some days I don’t knit, but usually I do. I leave the house absolutely no later than 6:30, and shoot for 6:15 as an average. I relish this quiet hour all to myself, and if I don’t get it I feel cattywampus all day. The street is usually very quiet, and I don’t listen to anything, no music, no podcast. It’s precious and necessary and I love it. I have aspirations of other things to do with that hour, and I continually plan to do them but the morning comes and I think well, this morning I’ll just do my usual. What I’d like to do instead:
yoga and meditation
writing
actual work on creative projects
walk in Riverside Park
explore my neighborhood and take photographs
I really want to do these things! I really do. Obviously, I couldn’t do them all each morning, and my silly tendency would be to regulate them in some kind of rigid fashion: yoga M and W; walk on Th and Sat; write on T; etc. What stops me, as silly as this sounds, is Google Reader. I subscribe to 435 blogs. I have them categorized in ways that let me skip to specific ones (knitters, NYC, food, art, photography, entertainment, fabric, design, creative multi, etc). If I’m in a real time bind, I always just read the knitters and the fabric (which means people who work in some way with fabric, sewing or quilting or dying or weaving), and try to fit in the creative multi – the people who knit AND sew AND do photography. I tell myself that one important purpose of looking at all the blogs is inspiration, and that does happen! There are some amazingly creative people out there who not only do good work, they write about it in inspirational ways and take amazing photographs. Of course, inspiration is a two-edged sword, because it can also make me feel like I’ll never be that good at anything.
I daydream of a balanced life, where I do yoga and walk, and have time to write, and have plenty of time to make things, whatever they are. Where I am careful about my food, and eat with the seasons, healthy and yummy all together. In this fantasy, I’m also calm and content because of the balance, and those two – the calm and the balance – feed each other. And me. Those weekends where I take a little adventure somewhere, Queens or Chinatown or somewhere, and where I take a little walk in the park, and I actually do some housework and also knit, I am much happier in a strange way than I am at the end of those weekends where I have just knitted on the couch for the whole weekend and watched good movies. It’s that balance thing, obviously. Of course, I don’t live in fantasy land, I live in a life that is mostly taken up by my job, family I enjoy talking with on the telephone, unpleasant tasks to do like laundry and cleaning up after dinner, etc., and then the obvious need for sleep. Not much time is left. Still, I do have that hour five days a week, from 5 to 6.
For a while, I’m taking a blog reading break. I hope you will still read mine even if I am on a temporary hiatus and [very painfully] not reading yours, though I understand if you unsubscribe. Blogging is a community thing – we get to know each other, we comment on each other’s posts, we follow the parts of our lives that we share. I find myself wondering how Jocelyn‘s class is going, what’s going on with Kty, over in Paris, etc. We are real to each other in a funny and kind of unreal way, so I feel bad turning away from reading all the posts I enjoy. But I’ve realized that I’m reading about others’ lives at the expense of living my own. You wouldn’t want to do that for yourself, either. I will continue to write on this blog for my own pleasure and documentation, and hope you stick with me. I’ve just got to get off this brain crack and get busy.
following light is a good thing in the bleak end of winter
Do you know the blog perches in the soul? I can’t remember how I found her blog, now, but hers is one of my favorite blogs in my blogroll. When I see her blog in the old Google Reader, something settles inside me, and I can reliably expect to read something that makes me happy, and to see pictures that make me smile – not least because her beautiful son is usually right there in the middle of it, with his big smile.
Here, on this last day of February, she writes:
In the month of March, we will be following light, reflecting in pictures and words on the details that light reveals in different hours of the day.
I’m in! My spirit fades and gets pretty thin this time of year. My genes are so profoundly Texan, I’m completely hardwired for a very brief winter; the long period of cold and gray up north just wears me down, man. And yet I do know that you can find what you look for, if only you look.
Another blog I follow is needled – the blogger (Kate) lives in Edinburgh, Scotland. She’s a professor specializing in textiles, she knits, and her blog is always fascinating. And one month ago she had a pretty serious stroke. Since my dearest friend here in NY had a stroke a year ago, I’ve been closely following Kate and her progress. It’s impossible to make fair comparisons between two people, no matter what – and just as true when people are grappling with what looks like similar problems. Kate has the benefit of much better health care than we have here (so obvious it hardly needed to be said), and I obviously don’t know the extent of what she is facing, AND she’s in the early stages. But I have been so struck by her attitude of ‘ok then! time to work hard.’ Today’s post is about her gratitude for the various tools that help her regain independence. Those things are there – and what they give her – but she is looking at them, and that makes a lot of difference. She could just as easily look at her need for them, and come away with a different sense of things.
So join me, join perches in the soul, let’s follow light. The middle week of March I will be on the island of Roatan, off the coast of Honduras, where the light will be oh-so-easy to follow, but I still have the remaining weeks of March in Manhattan, where following light will require a bit more looking. I think wherever you are, though, there are days when following light requires an effort.
Happy last day of February, happy Sunday.
a housekeeping question you may not be able to answer
Olly olly oxen free
Just as I got ready to open this new post, I realized the flaw in my thought process. I have gathered that a couple of my friends are not being able to leave comments here, and that’s a problem for me because I love to hear from you!
So my thought was to create this post and ask you to let me know if you are unable to leave a comment. DUR. How can you leave a comment and let me know you can’t leave a comment. Silly me. But you can send me a note on rav (I’m LoriNY), or you can send me an email to thrums.ny at the gmail business. You know what I mean. I want to get your notes, if you are inclined to leave them! You always make me happy. Well, most of you. I’m not happy with the ones who want me to try their viagra.
If you’re having trouble, and take the extra step to let me know, please let me know what happens, why you can’t, so I can try to figure it out. I just checked all the backroom settings and everything looks ok. The weird ways of the online world, I’m telling you.