The knitting projects for the year have begun, in grand fashion. This is not to say that there is anything grand or glorious about collecting needles and yarn and pattern and focus, rather that both of the projects I will begin soon are huge and will take many months to complete. The patterns are entirely new to me, and I've decided to be smart about them (as the finished projects are gifts for other people) and make actual swatches, to scale replicas, if you will, not only for practice and note-taking purposes, but also to have some remnant of the things in my home.
Not every project must be large and impossible. There is a need for fingerless gloves and perhaps even socks. A pattern has been chosen for the cabling that I would like to use on both of them. I find the idea matching gloves with socks deeply silly and wonder where the hell it came from. I feel that thick wool boot socks and matching gloves in various shades of orange and purple and green will be a lovely addition to my winter wardrobe. One of these years.
The small projects; the ones that take an hour or two; the ones that take an hour or two every day for a week - these are the ones that keep me focused on the larger ones. I learn more about consistency. I have something to do. Results are not necessarily immediate, but they are noticeable. and I've got stuff to show off to people. Which is always the goal, na?
I've broken the big projects down as much as I can. The house, the afghan, the couch runner thing, the novel. The novel is the one that has the most little steps. I've got an idea board for it. I've got ideas. The time is a little more haphazard right now as there is much going on. That will get worked out. Because it is a nice little project to sit with the calendar and my work schedule and move around each other for a little while.
Last night I began the replica of the couch runner thing. I've altered the pattern slightly to accommodate the yarn and needles that I've to use. This will be the first project involving more than one color that I've done in a very long time, and I'm more than a bit nervous, so the color change practice is good. It is good to just jump into a thing, knowing that there are more jumps ahead, never fear about the lack of challenge.
Also - oh, yeah, there's an also - the reading. I love the reading. but there's a hell of a lot of it to do this lifetime. The library that I leave to the world will be my gift to the next me. This is my reading list. What is yours?
The world here is cold, so cold that we all wish to be fitted inside with blankets and warm drinks. Our wishes go unfulfilled and the outdoors calls with sunshine and snow and we walk around in a daze, not quite believing where we are. These are days of coffee shops and long lunches and plans for winter adventures in snow-covered cemeteries in boots and gloves and many long layers under something lovely in flowing skirt. There is quiet in the walking, even the crunch does not always travel as far as it could. We will speak of fairies and families and perfect picnics as we take pulls from flasks of liquid warm and spicy. Our feet will freeze and our noses will turn us all into shunned reindeer and when we go home and finally sleep the dreams will dance in delight because their world has been given beauty and cold and spice.
Friday, 8 January 2010
Wednesday, 6 January 2010
Well, what of it?
It is the time of year for me to make no resolutions, plan nothing and generally not re-evaluate my life and activities in general.
It is also the time of year when I and all of the people I know spend enormous amounts of time stuck inside for many many hours and days on end because Mother Nature thinks it's funny to send us all around the bend with mild stale breath poisoning. So I go through my stuff. And I start thinking about why I have all of the stuff that I still have. And I listen to lectures on CD, or music or movie commentaries and I knit or sort papers or wind yarn or bother to open three different tubs and take out the necessary materials to make a sort of pin-stuff-to-it board that I really need to have around the place (I need more than one, actually) in order to put up the cards and things that I've got ideas and sentences written on so that novel that I started waaay back in November (you know, for nanowrimo?) won't languish in the pits of my guilt-filled hatbox of shit that never saw the light of day.
Because these things are in my home, and they are a part of me, and I am more than a little in love with them both right now. The commitment is a long-term one, you know? It isn't about the long ass blog post that will not be followed with anything for months until I have a fit of the 'must communicates' like I'm having right now. Nor is it about making one huge installation piece of yarn and recycled grocery bags and bits of chewed gum for my living room. These are small steps and terrifying because they build up and life changes and it almost never happens in any predictable shiny happy dreamtime kind of ways. I've made a rug. and a thing to stick cards to. and I've started fingerless gloves. The pile of books to read is lovely and not daunting, but damn if it isn't going to challenge me.
It could be just the timing of it. Could be coincidence. Could be that I'm just ready for things to happen. Could be the New Year.
Don't really care. It's happening and the movements have become forces in some direction that I know I've determined, but I certainly don't know the terrain yet.
It is also the time of year when I and all of the people I know spend enormous amounts of time stuck inside for many many hours and days on end because Mother Nature thinks it's funny to send us all around the bend with mild stale breath poisoning. So I go through my stuff. And I start thinking about why I have all of the stuff that I still have. And I listen to lectures on CD, or music or movie commentaries and I knit or sort papers or wind yarn or bother to open three different tubs and take out the necessary materials to make a sort of pin-stuff-to-it board that I really need to have around the place (I need more than one, actually) in order to put up the cards and things that I've got ideas and sentences written on so that novel that I started waaay back in November (you know, for nanowrimo?) won't languish in the pits of my guilt-filled hatbox of shit that never saw the light of day.
Because these things are in my home, and they are a part of me, and I am more than a little in love with them both right now. The commitment is a long-term one, you know? It isn't about the long ass blog post that will not be followed with anything for months until I have a fit of the 'must communicates' like I'm having right now. Nor is it about making one huge installation piece of yarn and recycled grocery bags and bits of chewed gum for my living room. These are small steps and terrifying because they build up and life changes and it almost never happens in any predictable shiny happy dreamtime kind of ways. I've made a rug. and a thing to stick cards to. and I've started fingerless gloves. The pile of books to read is lovely and not daunting, but damn if it isn't going to challenge me.
It could be just the timing of it. Could be coincidence. Could be that I'm just ready for things to happen. Could be the New Year.
Don't really care. It's happening and the movements have become forces in some direction that I know I've determined, but I certainly don't know the terrain yet.
Saturday, 5 December 2009
Calm down, you haven't known each other that long,
There is no reason to get excited. Nothing to see. No need to panic. It's just something new, that's all. Find a place for it in the world around the desk and the dishes and the cuddly demanding felines.
New friendships are always of interest to me, partly because I enjoy people and learning new people is an absolute plus. Partly because I like the people I hang around. They bring an enormous amount to my life and I hope that I share some of that back with them.
The known friendships are the theme of the moment, though. Who else hangs around for 8 hour breakfasts that do not even involve eggs? or bacon? Only coffee. Lots and lots of coffee for me, thank you! Ah. The joys of over-caffeinated self-dom. Oh, and there was a cinnamon roll and also a blueberry muffin, and also a cup of tea. But I didn't drink the tea, someone else did. The ninja. There was grocery shopping (we did not buy the fingerless gloves), and drugstore shopping (we did not buy the toe-d socks), new age store shopping (I totally bought the date book) in two places and even a trip to the Goodwill (no mojo, no wardrobe addition). It was brilliant. And there is more cheese in the house. And the cats were content to be fed and have new food.
When they left, I sat me down and pulled out some index type cards and made lists for menus and activities for the next few days. Now I do laundry and hang out with the parents and say nothing of the felines who captivate my attention when that attention could really be doing other things. Dreams float up through my memories and entertain me with their vivid disturbing obvious images. It is good these days. This writing and thinking and now laughing and learning and many much words in conversation is good. This is the bliss. Well, mostly. Better paycheck, or more assured paycheck with benefits, or more bills paid and immediate needs met. These, though, are manageable.
Superheroes were in town today for the parade. gak. We heard that there was some awesome Matrix action getting the balloons under the Skywalk. And that Kermit had some issues with a traffic light. It's not easy being green.
There are always boundaries. These are not impediments, they are not problematic, they are part of what defines one relationship from another. There are certain conversations that will not be had concerning this or that. It is a matter of privacy, and also trust, not necessarily of the listener, but of the subject, the person of whom we speak. The last month was very inwardly focused. My father finished his dissertation, friends got married, friends studied and created in classes, I wrote for NaNo. We have not seen much of each other, have not chatted aimlessly around the place enjoying the sounds of each others' vocabularies, hearing sense and understanding and accusations of thwartment or squishing or ninja-creep, etc. The rhythms are reminders that the new friends are good, and that there is always room for more when more are compassionate, understanding and patient.
Now, if only the boy would make some sense of things, I wouldn't have to feel like I'm rushing anything because I could blame him, and then everything would be just fine, thank you very much!
Only, no. It's time to calm down. We haven't known each other that long. And, really, I do have things I need and want to do.
New friendships are always of interest to me, partly because I enjoy people and learning new people is an absolute plus. Partly because I like the people I hang around. They bring an enormous amount to my life and I hope that I share some of that back with them.
The known friendships are the theme of the moment, though. Who else hangs around for 8 hour breakfasts that do not even involve eggs? or bacon? Only coffee. Lots and lots of coffee for me, thank you! Ah. The joys of over-caffeinated self-dom. Oh, and there was a cinnamon roll and also a blueberry muffin, and also a cup of tea. But I didn't drink the tea, someone else did. The ninja. There was grocery shopping (we did not buy the fingerless gloves), and drugstore shopping (we did not buy the toe-d socks), new age store shopping (I totally bought the date book) in two places and even a trip to the Goodwill (no mojo, no wardrobe addition). It was brilliant. And there is more cheese in the house. And the cats were content to be fed and have new food.
When they left, I sat me down and pulled out some index type cards and made lists for menus and activities for the next few days. Now I do laundry and hang out with the parents and say nothing of the felines who captivate my attention when that attention could really be doing other things. Dreams float up through my memories and entertain me with their vivid disturbing obvious images. It is good these days. This writing and thinking and now laughing and learning and many much words in conversation is good. This is the bliss. Well, mostly. Better paycheck, or more assured paycheck with benefits, or more bills paid and immediate needs met. These, though, are manageable.
Superheroes were in town today for the parade. gak. We heard that there was some awesome Matrix action getting the balloons under the Skywalk. And that Kermit had some issues with a traffic light. It's not easy being green.
There are always boundaries. These are not impediments, they are not problematic, they are part of what defines one relationship from another. There are certain conversations that will not be had concerning this or that. It is a matter of privacy, and also trust, not necessarily of the listener, but of the subject, the person of whom we speak. The last month was very inwardly focused. My father finished his dissertation, friends got married, friends studied and created in classes, I wrote for NaNo. We have not seen much of each other, have not chatted aimlessly around the place enjoying the sounds of each others' vocabularies, hearing sense and understanding and accusations of thwartment or squishing or ninja-creep, etc. The rhythms are reminders that the new friends are good, and that there is always room for more when more are compassionate, understanding and patient.
Now, if only the boy would make some sense of things, I wouldn't have to feel like I'm rushing anything because I could blame him, and then everything would be just fine, thank you very much!
Only, no. It's time to calm down. We haven't known each other that long. And, really, I do have things I need and want to do.
Friday, 4 December 2009
Well now, what's this?
Unethical? Illegal, even?
meh.
The day is one that may or may not be one that has a place in the building of a future. The week of the full moon brought a doctorate for my father, NaNo finished and won, marriages and plays and many accomplishments large and small all around the world I move around. With a complication. Who is nice. It is interesting and frustrating and altogether new.
There is not too very much to say today, it is all made of frustration and annoyance anyway.
This is what happens when friends come to visit. It is brilliant and beautiful and the best!
I'll drop by again. Later. For more, and more words and more focus.
No.
Really.
meh.
The day is one that may or may not be one that has a place in the building of a future. The week of the full moon brought a doctorate for my father, NaNo finished and won, marriages and plays and many accomplishments large and small all around the world I move around. With a complication. Who is nice. It is interesting and frustrating and altogether new.
There is not too very much to say today, it is all made of frustration and annoyance anyway.
This is what happens when friends come to visit. It is brilliant and beautiful and the best!
I'll drop by again. Later. For more, and more words and more focus.
No.
Really.
Friday, 10 July 2009
Movie mini-reviews: next!
Journey to the Center of the Earth (the new one): Adventure a la video game with Brandon Fraser sweating and being generally adorable? yes, please...
Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995): The movie that propelled Shahrukh Khan to mega stardom and celebrated its 700th week in theaters in March of 2009. It is a romance threatened by arranged marriage and all sorts of difficulties. The music is beautiful, Kajol shines (as she always does) and it is a joy to watch Shahrukh Khan dance.
Drona (2008): Fantasy epic with Abishek Bachchan, Priyanka Chopra and Kay Kay Menon. I will adore a movie with Kay Kay Menon in an instant. He is such a talented actor and as the bad guy/demon dude is as enjoyable as Alan Rickman in Robin Hood. If not more - cuz he's a demon! The actors do most of their own stunts, which is a little disconcerting at first, I am used to green screens and stunt doubles: semi-real looks kind of fake at first. My only real issue with the movie is one song. That hurts me. You'll know it when it starts, just hit mute and wait for the story to pick up. Really.
Honeymoon Travels Private Ltd. (2007): Ensemble piece about 6 newly married couples on a honeymoon tour of Goa. Did I mention the part about how I adore Kay Kay Menon? Yeah, he's in this. As are Boman Irani and Shabana Azmi - two actors who just make me happy, they are so good. I would recommend seeing Om Shanti Om or Don first, just for the joke. It's worth it.
Don (2006 & 1978): Mistaken identity gangster/cop movie with dancing? The new one features Shahrukh Khan as Don, some incredible fight scenes and much travel in Malaysia. Amitabh Bachchan originated the role in the 70's film, and it is totally worthwhile to see both of them. The first half of the movies are almost identical except for the clothes. There are some unreal fights and moments in both of the movies, thought the 70's movie suffers a bit more for them - at least according to one of my friends, but I thought it was brilliant. Good music, good acting, and I would still like someone to explain to me why the new Don is as good a movie as it is, because I can't explain it.
The Spirit (2009): I love movies based on comics that I've never read, and likely never will. Also, I love Samuel L. Jackson. 'nuff said.
The Punisher (2008): See above. Subsitute Ray Stevenson. Yummy bone crunching guns go 'splodey...
The Blue Umbrella (2007): My new favorite director is Vishal Bhardwaj, who also directed Omkara, about which I will rave whenever given the chance. Or just whenever. The film is based on a children's novel about a young girl who trades a necklace for a blue umbrella which becomes the object of desire for some others in her village. It is absolutely serene and pointed and a joy.
The Complete Works of Shakespeare (abridged) (2000): What utter joy and parody and romp and ridiculous in wigs with skirts! They are going to perform at the Lied Center in March of 2010 and I'm already all sweaty about it if that tells you anything. Funny men are just fucking awesome.
Pulse: A Stomp Odyssey (2002): This is one of those films that really highlights the power of film when used for a specific purpose: to showcase the rhythms that people around the world experience and create and have for centuries or decades or years or days. It is bright and brilliant and moves from one clip to the next without losing a flow or leaving the viewer/listener wondering what would happen next, how the song would end - although it is a survey, intended to fire curiosity and awareness, which it does. It was good for my soul. Captivating.
Everybody Says I'm Fine (2001): Tale of a hair-dresser/salon owner in Bombay who hears the thoughts of his clients through their hair as he cuts it and what happens when he meets a woman whose thoughts are closed to him. Best line (that gets quoted frequently): "your saintly soul behind benign eyes..." Very odd movie. Much beloved. In English. And hey, surprise Boman Irani!
Slumdog Millionaire (2008): Seriously? You didn't see it? Okay, it's at the library, check it out. We'll talk after.
Bandidas (2006): Could Penelope Cruz and Salma Hayek be any more fabulous? No? I didn't think so. This is not a chick flick. This is a movie for the girlz. Just saying. I want them to make more.
The Librarian: Quest for the Spear (2004)
The Librarian: Return to King Solomon's Mines (2006)
The Librarian: Curse of the Judas Chalice (2008): Noah Wylie gets to be cute and funny and action-hero-y and get and lose the girl! How do you not love this? Formulaic and slightly more than a little moralistic and fun. Bob Newhart and Jane Curtin and Olympia Dukakis are a more than excellent supporting (literally) cast. The Library itself is the stuff of story-telling and imagination. I hope they make more.
Swades (2004): Shahrukh Khan as a NASA scientist who travels back to India to find his former nanny and bring her to the States so that he can care for her in her dotage. It doesn't work out that way. I loved this movie. I would like to see the longer version that was released in India, but as I do not (as yet) speak Hindi, and the only copy we have around is not subtitled (although the subtitles for this movie lend credence to the opinions of people who think subtitles are stupid (check out my entry on the King James Version of the song lyrics)), I will be patient and persist. The music and landscape are sweeping, the story very simple and straightforward and deeply moving, especially as I am one of those who finds belonging to a land incredibly powerful and moving (the child of Vikings and colonizers and wanderers finds home more transient than most).
Death at a Funeral (2007): British farce done very well. The grinning scene is worth everything. Avoid the commentary with Frank Oz, though. I found it difficult and sort of, um, repetitive? Alan Tudyk is just brilliant. As is Matthew Macfadyen. Fun Fun Fun.
Thus concludes this installment! I will turn the page before next time and we'll see how long it takes to catch up! (should be about two more entries before I'm current)
Enjoy!
Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995): The movie that propelled Shahrukh Khan to mega stardom and celebrated its 700th week in theaters in March of 2009. It is a romance threatened by arranged marriage and all sorts of difficulties. The music is beautiful, Kajol shines (as she always does) and it is a joy to watch Shahrukh Khan dance.
Drona (2008): Fantasy epic with Abishek Bachchan, Priyanka Chopra and Kay Kay Menon. I will adore a movie with Kay Kay Menon in an instant. He is such a talented actor and as the bad guy/demon dude is as enjoyable as Alan Rickman in Robin Hood. If not more - cuz he's a demon! The actors do most of their own stunts, which is a little disconcerting at first, I am used to green screens and stunt doubles: semi-real looks kind of fake at first. My only real issue with the movie is one song. That hurts me. You'll know it when it starts, just hit mute and wait for the story to pick up. Really.
Honeymoon Travels Private Ltd. (2007): Ensemble piece about 6 newly married couples on a honeymoon tour of Goa. Did I mention the part about how I adore Kay Kay Menon? Yeah, he's in this. As are Boman Irani and Shabana Azmi - two actors who just make me happy, they are so good. I would recommend seeing Om Shanti Om or Don first, just for the joke. It's worth it.
Don (2006 & 1978): Mistaken identity gangster/cop movie with dancing? The new one features Shahrukh Khan as Don, some incredible fight scenes and much travel in Malaysia. Amitabh Bachchan originated the role in the 70's film, and it is totally worthwhile to see both of them. The first half of the movies are almost identical except for the clothes. There are some unreal fights and moments in both of the movies, thought the 70's movie suffers a bit more for them - at least according to one of my friends, but I thought it was brilliant. Good music, good acting, and I would still like someone to explain to me why the new Don is as good a movie as it is, because I can't explain it.
The Spirit (2009): I love movies based on comics that I've never read, and likely never will. Also, I love Samuel L. Jackson. 'nuff said.
The Punisher (2008): See above. Subsitute Ray Stevenson. Yummy bone crunching guns go 'splodey...
The Blue Umbrella (2007): My new favorite director is Vishal Bhardwaj, who also directed Omkara, about which I will rave whenever given the chance. Or just whenever. The film is based on a children's novel about a young girl who trades a necklace for a blue umbrella which becomes the object of desire for some others in her village. It is absolutely serene and pointed and a joy.
The Complete Works of Shakespeare (abridged) (2000): What utter joy and parody and romp and ridiculous in wigs with skirts! They are going to perform at the Lied Center in March of 2010 and I'm already all sweaty about it if that tells you anything. Funny men are just fucking awesome.
Pulse: A Stomp Odyssey (2002): This is one of those films that really highlights the power of film when used for a specific purpose: to showcase the rhythms that people around the world experience and create and have for centuries or decades or years or days. It is bright and brilliant and moves from one clip to the next without losing a flow or leaving the viewer/listener wondering what would happen next, how the song would end - although it is a survey, intended to fire curiosity and awareness, which it does. It was good for my soul. Captivating.
Everybody Says I'm Fine (2001): Tale of a hair-dresser/salon owner in Bombay who hears the thoughts of his clients through their hair as he cuts it and what happens when he meets a woman whose thoughts are closed to him. Best line (that gets quoted frequently): "your saintly soul behind benign eyes..." Very odd movie. Much beloved. In English. And hey, surprise Boman Irani!
Slumdog Millionaire (2008): Seriously? You didn't see it? Okay, it's at the library, check it out. We'll talk after.
Bandidas (2006): Could Penelope Cruz and Salma Hayek be any more fabulous? No? I didn't think so. This is not a chick flick. This is a movie for the girlz. Just saying. I want them to make more.
The Librarian: Quest for the Spear (2004)
The Librarian: Return to King Solomon's Mines (2006)
The Librarian: Curse of the Judas Chalice (2008): Noah Wylie gets to be cute and funny and action-hero-y and get and lose the girl! How do you not love this? Formulaic and slightly more than a little moralistic and fun. Bob Newhart and Jane Curtin and Olympia Dukakis are a more than excellent supporting (literally) cast. The Library itself is the stuff of story-telling and imagination. I hope they make more.
Swades (2004): Shahrukh Khan as a NASA scientist who travels back to India to find his former nanny and bring her to the States so that he can care for her in her dotage. It doesn't work out that way. I loved this movie. I would like to see the longer version that was released in India, but as I do not (as yet) speak Hindi, and the only copy we have around is not subtitled (although the subtitles for this movie lend credence to the opinions of people who think subtitles are stupid (check out my entry on the King James Version of the song lyrics)), I will be patient and persist. The music and landscape are sweeping, the story very simple and straightforward and deeply moving, especially as I am one of those who finds belonging to a land incredibly powerful and moving (the child of Vikings and colonizers and wanderers finds home more transient than most).
Death at a Funeral (2007): British farce done very well. The grinning scene is worth everything. Avoid the commentary with Frank Oz, though. I found it difficult and sort of, um, repetitive? Alan Tudyk is just brilliant. As is Matthew Macfadyen. Fun Fun Fun.
Thus concludes this installment! I will turn the page before next time and we'll see how long it takes to catch up! (should be about two more entries before I'm current)
Enjoy!
Monday, 29 June 2009
Movie List: part, um, beginning?
I started keeping track of the movies that I watch. I began the list on the second of March of 2009 and tried to remember all of the movies that I had seen since December of 2008.
The list is getting a bit ridiculous.
However, somewhere around May, I met a woman who is just getting into many of the Indian movies that I watch like they are necessary for me to continue to exist. Because they are. I told her that I would send her the list of movies that I've seen and maybe make some recommendations.
It is now almost July. I have decided to do things this way. There will be more lists, as I watch about 2 movies a week. I am slowing down for need of other ways to spend my time, but still find film captivating.
I was going to link these, but imdb has crap for information and I just dislike linking wikipedia, even though there is far more info there. Or netflix. Probably Blockbuster as well. And some of them have myspace pages.
Jodhaa Akbar - historically flexible account of the Mughal Emperor Akbar who was Mulsim and Jodhaa, his Hindu princess wife. It is a stunning film, with that enveloping music that only AR Rahman can make.
Om Shanti Om - Shahrukh Khan in a reincarnation movie! With abs! The director, Farah Khan has this wonderful way with making homage to the movies of the '60s and '70s and poking an amount of fun at movies of the 90's and aughts. Colorful and fun and the music is wonderful.
Parineeta - I have seen both the 2005 and 1953 film adaptations of this 1914 novel. The story is lovely: childhood friends who become sweethearts just as the world begins to collapse around them. Ashok Kumar is a less smoldering Shekar than Saif Ali Khan, but he gets more romantic lines. Meena Kumari and Vidya Balan share something like luminescence, and you wonder how any man could fail to notice. I enjoyed both of these movies, and try to take time to watch the 2005 version at least once every few months. Speaking of...
Captain Blood - Errol Flynn & Olivia de Havilland in a movie that has a story and adventure and twists and strange Irish accents and palm trees and is generally wonderful. What I love, almost more than the sword fights and Basil Rathbone, is that this was the first film for both of the leads.
Red vs Blue seasons 1,2 and 3 - wrong. just wrong. animated web-isode show based on Halo. who knew? It is brilliant. and wrong.
Kal Ho Na Ho / Kuch Kuch Hota Hai - I mention these movies to introduce something that we like to call The Bad. Adored and respected actors in movies that are made of *headsmack* or "wtf?" moments. That is all.
Omkara - This movie is an adaptation of Othello. Omkara (the Othello character) could totally take Othello. (not Laurence Fishburne, mind (no one can take him)) Visually it is very deliberate and evocative. The acting is wonderful. The adaptation of the story is completely spot-on. I am fully convinced that this in one of the most perfect movies I have ever seen.
Paheli - Much color. Much big Rahman music. Much Shahrukh Khan and Rani Mukerji. It tells a kind of odd story about a ghost who falls in love with a woman and takes the place of her husband. It's totally worth it.
Dil Chahta Hai - Aamir Khan, Saif Ali Khan and Akshaye Khanna look fabulous and have wonderful moments in what is essentially a coming-of-age movie about three friends navigating through the world. Lovely shots of Goa. Fun music. There is some strange dancing,(we call this one Wiggly Arms) and a soul patch, but otherwise, a very good time.
Amar Akbar Anthony - If you only ever see one Amitabh Bachchan movie you are an idiot and need to re-evaluate your life's priorities. This is movie about three brothers who get separated when they are very very young, and taken in by three different foster fathers, one Catholic, one Hindu and one Muslim. It is delightful and enjoyable and if you can watch it with someone who can get through translating the opening song (which didn't have subtitles) you will thank me forever.
The Holiday - This movie is cute. It could have been better. It should have been better. Kate Winslet and Jack Black? That really could have worked more and better and funnier. I totally watched the making of featurette.
Serenity - um. I think I heard somewhere that there's a Commentary: The Musical because of people like Joss Whedon who are all brilliant and gen x and who read stuff. If you haven't seen it: Firefly and Serenity are brilliant. I love this movie so much it is not a topic for public discussion.
Rang de Basanti - watch this movie. invite me over. i will watch it with you. just have faith.
Jab We Met - This falls under the label OMG This is the Cutest Movie Ever! There are about 13 titles on the list right now. Boy is angsty and silent. Girl is chatty and bubbly. They meet on a train. Things go from there. It is not completely predictable. It is completely lovely and sweet.
You know who you are - hope this gives you a good start!
The list is getting a bit ridiculous.
However, somewhere around May, I met a woman who is just getting into many of the Indian movies that I watch like they are necessary for me to continue to exist. Because they are. I told her that I would send her the list of movies that I've seen and maybe make some recommendations.
It is now almost July. I have decided to do things this way. There will be more lists, as I watch about 2 movies a week. I am slowing down for need of other ways to spend my time, but still find film captivating.
I was going to link these, but imdb has crap for information and I just dislike linking wikipedia, even though there is far more info there. Or netflix. Probably Blockbuster as well. And some of them have myspace pages.
Jodhaa Akbar - historically flexible account of the Mughal Emperor Akbar who was Mulsim and Jodhaa, his Hindu princess wife. It is a stunning film, with that enveloping music that only AR Rahman can make.
Om Shanti Om - Shahrukh Khan in a reincarnation movie! With abs! The director, Farah Khan has this wonderful way with making homage to the movies of the '60s and '70s and poking an amount of fun at movies of the 90's and aughts. Colorful and fun and the music is wonderful.
Parineeta - I have seen both the 2005 and 1953 film adaptations of this 1914 novel. The story is lovely: childhood friends who become sweethearts just as the world begins to collapse around them. Ashok Kumar is a less smoldering Shekar than Saif Ali Khan, but he gets more romantic lines. Meena Kumari and Vidya Balan share something like luminescence, and you wonder how any man could fail to notice. I enjoyed both of these movies, and try to take time to watch the 2005 version at least once every few months. Speaking of...
Captain Blood - Errol Flynn & Olivia de Havilland in a movie that has a story and adventure and twists and strange Irish accents and palm trees and is generally wonderful. What I love, almost more than the sword fights and Basil Rathbone, is that this was the first film for both of the leads.
Red vs Blue seasons 1,2 and 3 - wrong. just wrong. animated web-isode show based on Halo. who knew? It is brilliant. and wrong.
Kal Ho Na Ho / Kuch Kuch Hota Hai - I mention these movies to introduce something that we like to call The Bad. Adored and respected actors in movies that are made of *headsmack* or "wtf?" moments. That is all.
Omkara - This movie is an adaptation of Othello. Omkara (the Othello character) could totally take Othello. (not Laurence Fishburne, mind (no one can take him)) Visually it is very deliberate and evocative. The acting is wonderful. The adaptation of the story is completely spot-on. I am fully convinced that this in one of the most perfect movies I have ever seen.
Paheli - Much color. Much big Rahman music. Much Shahrukh Khan and Rani Mukerji. It tells a kind of odd story about a ghost who falls in love with a woman and takes the place of her husband. It's totally worth it.
Dil Chahta Hai - Aamir Khan, Saif Ali Khan and Akshaye Khanna look fabulous and have wonderful moments in what is essentially a coming-of-age movie about three friends navigating through the world. Lovely shots of Goa. Fun music. There is some strange dancing,(we call this one Wiggly Arms) and a soul patch, but otherwise, a very good time.
Amar Akbar Anthony - If you only ever see one Amitabh Bachchan movie you are an idiot and need to re-evaluate your life's priorities. This is movie about three brothers who get separated when they are very very young, and taken in by three different foster fathers, one Catholic, one Hindu and one Muslim. It is delightful and enjoyable and if you can watch it with someone who can get through translating the opening song (which didn't have subtitles) you will thank me forever.
The Holiday - This movie is cute. It could have been better. It should have been better. Kate Winslet and Jack Black? That really could have worked more and better and funnier. I totally watched the making of featurette.
Serenity - um. I think I heard somewhere that there's a Commentary: The Musical because of people like Joss Whedon who are all brilliant and gen x and who read stuff. If you haven't seen it: Firefly and Serenity are brilliant. I love this movie so much it is not a topic for public discussion.
Rang de Basanti - watch this movie. invite me over. i will watch it with you. just have faith.
Jab We Met - This falls under the label OMG This is the Cutest Movie Ever! There are about 13 titles on the list right now. Boy is angsty and silent. Girl is chatty and bubbly. They meet on a train. Things go from there. It is not completely predictable. It is completely lovely and sweet.
You know who you are - hope this gives you a good start!
Wednesday, 20 May 2009
It's more of a beginning than declarative...
The day is fine and warm and filled with wind. My walk downtown was intended to serve another purpose, but this is good, too. Universities are a joy when there is no one around to fill in the space between the steps and the air they breathe. It is a weakness, a daydream, a way of walking through the world, that all of these buildings like schools and capitols and libraries and fairgrounds, they have a very real life of their own, and that life is what I breathe in their halls when there is no one else about to do it for me.
Lately the world has seemed filled with talk. Talk of this, talk of that, lots of words and very little of it silent or considered. I know that the First Amendment guarantees US citizens the right to freedom of speech, but what about the freedom to listen, the freedom to consider audience, the freedom to speak well, the freedom to demand speech that is worth the listening.
I believe that freedom is a right is a privilege is a responsibility, and must not be left stagnant, without exploration or understanding. It is not enough to exercise the right to speak. It is not correct to speak simply because it is a freedom. It is up the speaker to accept responsibility for the choice of words others may hear. I am firmly opposed to inflammatory speech and speeches. I believe their purpose is destructive and divisive. Any audience whose ability to debate and argue is distracted by propaganda is an audience that has become a puppet.
It was difficult to acknowledge that in this world it is the right of citizenship that confers the rights of humanity. Whatever rights are bestowed, given or simply acknowledged by the country or nation or entity are the only rights any of us have. Whether I agree with this sentiment or not (and I don't) does not change what seems to be a fundamental state of being in this world. It is unnatural to be without country or place. It is not human, not valid. Though, how human anyone is or is not depends entirely on the accident of birth, unless a person chooses to change allegiance and become someone different. Born into one family or another on one continent or another, if rich, it is by blessing, if poor, it is because the choice was not made to accept the blessing.
We are an odd grouping of fundaments, we children of the Puritans.
And we have been given this right of voice, or at least of speech. Our Constitution makes room for arguments and debates, and we spend much time hearing about how there is no time for either, decisions must be made. I have wondered, more than a few times, if there were provisions made for rules of argument and debate, if perhaps we would be less inclined to such immediate action. I expect much more of the past than I have the right to. Argument has been reduced to volume - in loudness and number of words, no matter how relevant or coherent, the voice that speaks the most often with the most confidence is minded, given audience and time. There seems little point in the face of such opposition to speak up at all, knowing the voice will be little more than a squeak.
And yet. When those quieter, less familiar, more deliberate, voices are ignored, neglected or assumed to be an agreement, social injustice thrives. How to reach them, how to assure them they will be heard, how to deflect the necessary anger into something productive instead of something that perpetuates the status quo of nothing ever changes. How do we learn to listen?
I hear people everyday. I hear their stories, their jokes, their puns and barely concealed bitternesses. We all do, every time we greet someone or pass them in the hall or on the floor. Alone the comments are tweets & status updates, together over time, they become a narrative, a series of events and changes and personalities and as those statements collect, something begins to take shape, room appears for questioning, observing, patterns, history.
Without that history, my own voice feels anchorless, blown about with less purpose than an autumn leaf. With it, there is joy in the speaking, because I know what it means that I can.
These bits are beginnings. This conversation will go on. I will continue to ponder, to read, to listen, to speak.
Be well.
Be safe.
Be joyful.
Lately the world has seemed filled with talk. Talk of this, talk of that, lots of words and very little of it silent or considered. I know that the First Amendment guarantees US citizens the right to freedom of speech, but what about the freedom to listen, the freedom to consider audience, the freedom to speak well, the freedom to demand speech that is worth the listening.
I believe that freedom is a right is a privilege is a responsibility, and must not be left stagnant, without exploration or understanding. It is not enough to exercise the right to speak. It is not correct to speak simply because it is a freedom. It is up the speaker to accept responsibility for the choice of words others may hear. I am firmly opposed to inflammatory speech and speeches. I believe their purpose is destructive and divisive. Any audience whose ability to debate and argue is distracted by propaganda is an audience that has become a puppet.
It was difficult to acknowledge that in this world it is the right of citizenship that confers the rights of humanity. Whatever rights are bestowed, given or simply acknowledged by the country or nation or entity are the only rights any of us have. Whether I agree with this sentiment or not (and I don't) does not change what seems to be a fundamental state of being in this world. It is unnatural to be without country or place. It is not human, not valid. Though, how human anyone is or is not depends entirely on the accident of birth, unless a person chooses to change allegiance and become someone different. Born into one family or another on one continent or another, if rich, it is by blessing, if poor, it is because the choice was not made to accept the blessing.
We are an odd grouping of fundaments, we children of the Puritans.
And we have been given this right of voice, or at least of speech. Our Constitution makes room for arguments and debates, and we spend much time hearing about how there is no time for either, decisions must be made. I have wondered, more than a few times, if there were provisions made for rules of argument and debate, if perhaps we would be less inclined to such immediate action. I expect much more of the past than I have the right to. Argument has been reduced to volume - in loudness and number of words, no matter how relevant or coherent, the voice that speaks the most often with the most confidence is minded, given audience and time. There seems little point in the face of such opposition to speak up at all, knowing the voice will be little more than a squeak.
And yet. When those quieter, less familiar, more deliberate, voices are ignored, neglected or assumed to be an agreement, social injustice thrives. How to reach them, how to assure them they will be heard, how to deflect the necessary anger into something productive instead of something that perpetuates the status quo of nothing ever changes. How do we learn to listen?
I hear people everyday. I hear their stories, their jokes, their puns and barely concealed bitternesses. We all do, every time we greet someone or pass them in the hall or on the floor. Alone the comments are tweets & status updates, together over time, they become a narrative, a series of events and changes and personalities and as those statements collect, something begins to take shape, room appears for questioning, observing, patterns, history.
Without that history, my own voice feels anchorless, blown about with less purpose than an autumn leaf. With it, there is joy in the speaking, because I know what it means that I can.
These bits are beginnings. This conversation will go on. I will continue to ponder, to read, to listen, to speak.
Be well.
Be safe.
Be joyful.
Sunday, 5 April 2009
5 April 2009 noon
(still watching Simon Schama's Power of Art)(I seriously love it)
JWM Turner had a way with light. Apparently he also had a way with line, though because his lines are fluid and liquid in places and invisible in others, it is not often mentioned. I mention it now. I am still too struck by the works to talk much about them, also my ignorance shows itself to no great harm if I choose to acknowledge it and put a name to it that tells it where to go to change its face.
I am thinking of the people in Turner’s paintings. Of the vast range of the sky and the sea and the atmosphere and ho little of the space is filled with the image of humanity and its suffering or turmoil or death. Of the sense that there is much suffered in the bottom third of the painting that cannot be erased by the ephemeral beauty of the rest of it. I do not pretend to have any knowledge or understanding of the reasons for these compositional choices, but I can tell you very exactly what I feel and think of them. I feel very small and pointless and entirely connected to something that will do as it pleases whether I care or approve or no. It is not a fatalistic naturalism, but a pragmatic view of nature – it does not matter whether I exist or not, nature will.
The wind is blowing with a vengeance borne of neglect outside. It brings snow to this warming earth and sends so many of us indoors, where we will be safe and warm and can complain at our leisure about how unfair is the spring and why won’t it just be warm, forgetting just how warm is the summer, how still and wet the August days in the city when the wind has not abandoned us, but brings only strength and destruction and dust, nothing like relief. Nothing like respite. We do spend time looking for the beauty that will be in front of us eventually, say in Eden. I hope the people who seek Eden will find it, and tell their families and their friends and then get on a bunch of boats and planes and cars and trains and move past the gates and enter the garden and leave the rest of this life to me and my own, so that we can struggle as we will, learn and understand and adapt as we will, eat as we will and never again worry that we are surrounded by so much “life sucks” that we forget our manners and start acting inappropriately.
Yesterday the wind was not so full of cold and I walked with a book in my arms and my hair in a whirlwind past the old place and saw the magnolia buds. The flowers this year have been a grand shock. I am not ready for them, I have become accustomed to the gentle browns and grays and how bright the blue of the sky, the colors on the ground are startling and make me catch my breath, but I know that if I do not see, I will miss what is loveliest in this town – watching it change and remain the same no matter the season or day. This storm that sits over the Midlands and the Plains seems to have some grand purpose, some scheme in mind that requires our absence from its air for a time. We have grown soft in the days past of sunshine and breeze and left-at-home coats. The winter does not toughen us up anymore, rather it makes us fluid, longing creatures filled with hope, easily wounded.
There are leaf buds on a tree that I walk by, though I could not tell you where it grows. The buds have not changed size in a week. I tend to take my cue from them, waiting until the sun finally has its way as it does every year, and only then crawling out to show colors held away so long they are surprised at their own names. This is the wind, the time that kicks up the debris of little urban messes and makes the dust into something solid, with faces and arms and biting tendrils, the edges of leaves never sharper against such tender skin as legs and cheeks and eyeballs.
We command each other to make apologies for this weather as we do for all things unexpected. It is not our right to hold humanity accountable for nature, and yet we do. We forget that the greatest stories happen in a land, on a land, under a sky, on a sea, within a context that we seem to believe we can ignore because it has been explained as so many atoms, particles, light bits and patterns made up of names with definitions not reliant on mystery any longer! We have been freed of superstition! Only to fall victim to narrow minded self-assurance? So we are told. So we tell ourselves. Repeatedly.
I wonder. I wonder how many clichés I can come up with to explain my point of view, to explain how limited is everyone else’s, to justify my constant struggle with absolute hermitude, knowing I cannot be away from an espresso machine for long enough to unpack into my little cave. I wonder what is happening in the world that exists beyond and beneath what we are told about the world. I wonder how much of it does not need the reminder, would not care to share even the bottom third of the canvas, knows that Eden is where the rest of the world lives, and that’s more room for the rest of us.
JWM Turner had a way with light. Apparently he also had a way with line, though because his lines are fluid and liquid in places and invisible in others, it is not often mentioned. I mention it now. I am still too struck by the works to talk much about them, also my ignorance shows itself to no great harm if I choose to acknowledge it and put a name to it that tells it where to go to change its face.
I am thinking of the people in Turner’s paintings. Of the vast range of the sky and the sea and the atmosphere and ho little of the space is filled with the image of humanity and its suffering or turmoil or death. Of the sense that there is much suffered in the bottom third of the painting that cannot be erased by the ephemeral beauty of the rest of it. I do not pretend to have any knowledge or understanding of the reasons for these compositional choices, but I can tell you very exactly what I feel and think of them. I feel very small and pointless and entirely connected to something that will do as it pleases whether I care or approve or no. It is not a fatalistic naturalism, but a pragmatic view of nature – it does not matter whether I exist or not, nature will.
The wind is blowing with a vengeance borne of neglect outside. It brings snow to this warming earth and sends so many of us indoors, where we will be safe and warm and can complain at our leisure about how unfair is the spring and why won’t it just be warm, forgetting just how warm is the summer, how still and wet the August days in the city when the wind has not abandoned us, but brings only strength and destruction and dust, nothing like relief. Nothing like respite. We do spend time looking for the beauty that will be in front of us eventually, say in Eden. I hope the people who seek Eden will find it, and tell their families and their friends and then get on a bunch of boats and planes and cars and trains and move past the gates and enter the garden and leave the rest of this life to me and my own, so that we can struggle as we will, learn and understand and adapt as we will, eat as we will and never again worry that we are surrounded by so much “life sucks” that we forget our manners and start acting inappropriately.
Yesterday the wind was not so full of cold and I walked with a book in my arms and my hair in a whirlwind past the old place and saw the magnolia buds. The flowers this year have been a grand shock. I am not ready for them, I have become accustomed to the gentle browns and grays and how bright the blue of the sky, the colors on the ground are startling and make me catch my breath, but I know that if I do not see, I will miss what is loveliest in this town – watching it change and remain the same no matter the season or day. This storm that sits over the Midlands and the Plains seems to have some grand purpose, some scheme in mind that requires our absence from its air for a time. We have grown soft in the days past of sunshine and breeze and left-at-home coats. The winter does not toughen us up anymore, rather it makes us fluid, longing creatures filled with hope, easily wounded.
There are leaf buds on a tree that I walk by, though I could not tell you where it grows. The buds have not changed size in a week. I tend to take my cue from them, waiting until the sun finally has its way as it does every year, and only then crawling out to show colors held away so long they are surprised at their own names. This is the wind, the time that kicks up the debris of little urban messes and makes the dust into something solid, with faces and arms and biting tendrils, the edges of leaves never sharper against such tender skin as legs and cheeks and eyeballs.
We command each other to make apologies for this weather as we do for all things unexpected. It is not our right to hold humanity accountable for nature, and yet we do. We forget that the greatest stories happen in a land, on a land, under a sky, on a sea, within a context that we seem to believe we can ignore because it has been explained as so many atoms, particles, light bits and patterns made up of names with definitions not reliant on mystery any longer! We have been freed of superstition! Only to fall victim to narrow minded self-assurance? So we are told. So we tell ourselves. Repeatedly.
I wonder. I wonder how many clichés I can come up with to explain my point of view, to explain how limited is everyone else’s, to justify my constant struggle with absolute hermitude, knowing I cannot be away from an espresso machine for long enough to unpack into my little cave. I wonder what is happening in the world that exists beyond and beneath what we are told about the world. I wonder how much of it does not need the reminder, would not care to share even the bottom third of the canvas, knows that Eden is where the rest of the world lives, and that’s more room for the rest of us.
Friday, 3 April 2009
Perhaps less than solid
It is the third day of the month of national poetry writing, the 30 days of the year when the prolific nature of every poet is put to the test and heaven only knows what strung out bloodiness results. I would put myself to this test, spreading my lungs out over my ribs, no sound escaping with air, but with letters and rhythms struggling in the places between walking and thinking and typing and writing and keyboards. I would. I cannot. My imaginings are occupied on roads without names finding songs that tell stories about people who mean little to my responsibilities. They build cities and stories about cities and wonder at lives lived encrusted in the local magics. I guess that ought to be 'magicks.'
I have plundered my daydreams and found a jewel, something private and impossible to make fiction and real for these creatures rolling around in the muck of my still-forming stories. I do them disservice. They live and breathe and have names, and I have yet to find them places. There is little poetry solidifying itself in my life. All of the language is blood.
I have begun watching Simon Schama's The Power of Art. I had seen the Caravaggio episode, a friend of mine recorded it. I remember being thunderstruck at how meaningful the thing was when I saw it - how appropriate the timing of such overwhelming talent and ability and faith and that particular inability to see the morass of humanity as anything but sublime and fertile.
Now I am again struck at the peculiarly urban nature of certain art - the squalor and pageantry that walk the streets together, claiming the same spaces, the same roads and histories, though seen and told from perspectives so skewed as to be legitimately called alien. There is some magic, some mystery in the creation and maintenance of a city, a proper city, I mean, not just a large collection of people in tall residences. I mean a city, a living, breathing organism with a personality, creation story, art, food, smell, bureaucracy, music, trade, death, cancers and buds and patterns of traffic and chaos moving through every world created within its geography. There can be no city without a sense of expression. Reliance on trade as the defining characteristic of any urban area as a city reduces the human element to mechanization, something which is far too commonplace in this world, and has been throughout much of the history the world has seen fit to throw up in front of my eyes.
Why else would marble become flesh? Why bring Jesus to earth and give pilgrims dirty feet? Why find satisfaction showing mortal beings that no wealth, pomp or decree can prevent the beauty of Death its due? The city is a place that can live on the illusion of immortality, after all, the buildings will outlive us, perhaps we can outlive ourselves, skip the tradition of social construct, we'll just not acknowledge the right of Death. Rural life does not allow such illusions, a claim I do not make in the spirit of romance or idealism. Nature is a pragmatic lady, and Death is her triumph.
But we will insist that we see what we wish, will we not? We will see Nature as Fury, as Benevolent, as a Bitch. We will see the city as proof against Death, as the City of God(s), as the ultimate expression of our human capabilities.
I like to think of cities as the ultimate version of Voltron, made of the collected abilities and presences of every inhabitant, ready to establish that I Am Here. Problem with that is the rest of that statement: Best Not Fuck With Me. Bit defensive, bit challenging, bit headed towards disaster, that.
These thoughts are still shadowy, but I could not pretend that they were not there, could not go forward without finding them some sort of solid ground whereon to find their feet. It is a complicated thing, this world that builds itself from the patterns and details of the planet that is my home. I am in no hurry to define it for itself, the job is already done.
I have plundered my daydreams and found a jewel, something private and impossible to make fiction and real for these creatures rolling around in the muck of my still-forming stories. I do them disservice. They live and breathe and have names, and I have yet to find them places. There is little poetry solidifying itself in my life. All of the language is blood.
I have begun watching Simon Schama's The Power of Art. I had seen the Caravaggio episode, a friend of mine recorded it. I remember being thunderstruck at how meaningful the thing was when I saw it - how appropriate the timing of such overwhelming talent and ability and faith and that particular inability to see the morass of humanity as anything but sublime and fertile.
Now I am again struck at the peculiarly urban nature of certain art - the squalor and pageantry that walk the streets together, claiming the same spaces, the same roads and histories, though seen and told from perspectives so skewed as to be legitimately called alien. There is some magic, some mystery in the creation and maintenance of a city, a proper city, I mean, not just a large collection of people in tall residences. I mean a city, a living, breathing organism with a personality, creation story, art, food, smell, bureaucracy, music, trade, death, cancers and buds and patterns of traffic and chaos moving through every world created within its geography. There can be no city without a sense of expression. Reliance on trade as the defining characteristic of any urban area as a city reduces the human element to mechanization, something which is far too commonplace in this world, and has been throughout much of the history the world has seen fit to throw up in front of my eyes.
Why else would marble become flesh? Why bring Jesus to earth and give pilgrims dirty feet? Why find satisfaction showing mortal beings that no wealth, pomp or decree can prevent the beauty of Death its due? The city is a place that can live on the illusion of immortality, after all, the buildings will outlive us, perhaps we can outlive ourselves, skip the tradition of social construct, we'll just not acknowledge the right of Death. Rural life does not allow such illusions, a claim I do not make in the spirit of romance or idealism. Nature is a pragmatic lady, and Death is her triumph.
But we will insist that we see what we wish, will we not? We will see Nature as Fury, as Benevolent, as a Bitch. We will see the city as proof against Death, as the City of God(s), as the ultimate expression of our human capabilities.
I like to think of cities as the ultimate version of Voltron, made of the collected abilities and presences of every inhabitant, ready to establish that I Am Here. Problem with that is the rest of that statement: Best Not Fuck With Me. Bit defensive, bit challenging, bit headed towards disaster, that.
These thoughts are still shadowy, but I could not pretend that they were not there, could not go forward without finding them some sort of solid ground whereon to find their feet. It is a complicated thing, this world that builds itself from the patterns and details of the planet that is my home. I am in no hurry to define it for itself, the job is already done.
Sunday, 1 March 2009
Lyrics in Translation
Swades song lyrics in translation – The King James version – not all the bits, but most of them from two of the songs.
Because they cracked me up.
I have to say here that I loved Swades and think it a wonderful movie that must be seen again and again and the music is a delight. It's the subtitles and the lyrics in translation that pose a bit of a problem cuz I find them distractingly funny. Distractingly.
Saanwariya
I am infatuated with thee
Thou hast endeared my heart
My heart’s bewildered
My body with fire kindled
It’s monsoon of my dreams
The courtyard of my eyes streams
The pitcher of my heart is overflowing
O dear who hast drawn so near!
O dear who hast endeared my heart!
How canst I recount
What hath been thy bequest pray how?
Somewhere art buds of a throbbing heart
Somewhere the dream-lanes
Mirth that dwells in the heart,
How shallst I articulate?
Thou swayest me so
That oft times I am embarrassed
It seems I have lost my path
Ever since I have seen the haven of love
Now that thou hast met me
This world’s transformed
Methinks the flowers have begun to beset my path
And I fancy too that the earth’s renewed
The sky too freshly spun in our love
Wanton breeze singeth some melody
River too narrates some tale
All’s changed, my love, since my eyes courted thine
I have lost presence of mind
Gone is my treasured selfhood.
Dekho Na
See! Just see!
It’s you and me, and long solitude!
See! Just see!
How delicate are these shadows!
Listen in; heed the heartbeats
Listen in; heed the song of silence
Listen in; heed what the night hath to say
Night’s come; with desires nameless and many
She narrateth a hundred woes;
I listen to her epiphany
Night unwindeth, unabashed stripeth her cloak
Pearls, scattered as it were; I pick
You have chanted some spell in words
Lamps are alit in my eyes
You have chanted some spell in words
The darkness of my nights hath poured out
Lonely went the day and nights sans you,
Overcast with desolation
And now it seemeth the nights,
Kissed by the day and perfumed
For you art my companion
I was incomplete sans you,
More compete now none couldst be
In yours, my world I discovered,
Yet I am all lost
Both of us have now learned, art of living well earned
Like Midas touch, our living how well hath altered
Both of us have now learned,
Beauty of life well earned
O joys, we owneth a score, enough and more…
Because they cracked me up.
I have to say here that I loved Swades and think it a wonderful movie that must be seen again and again and the music is a delight. It's the subtitles and the lyrics in translation that pose a bit of a problem cuz I find them distractingly funny. Distractingly.
Saanwariya
I am infatuated with thee
Thou hast endeared my heart
My heart’s bewildered
My body with fire kindled
It’s monsoon of my dreams
The courtyard of my eyes streams
The pitcher of my heart is overflowing
O dear who hast drawn so near!
O dear who hast endeared my heart!
How canst I recount
What hath been thy bequest pray how?
Somewhere art buds of a throbbing heart
Somewhere the dream-lanes
Mirth that dwells in the heart,
How shallst I articulate?
Thou swayest me so
That oft times I am embarrassed
It seems I have lost my path
Ever since I have seen the haven of love
Now that thou hast met me
This world’s transformed
Methinks the flowers have begun to beset my path
And I fancy too that the earth’s renewed
The sky too freshly spun in our love
Wanton breeze singeth some melody
River too narrates some tale
All’s changed, my love, since my eyes courted thine
I have lost presence of mind
Gone is my treasured selfhood.
Dekho Na
See! Just see!
It’s you and me, and long solitude!
See! Just see!
How delicate are these shadows!
Listen in; heed the heartbeats
Listen in; heed the song of silence
Listen in; heed what the night hath to say
Night’s come; with desires nameless and many
She narrateth a hundred woes;
I listen to her epiphany
Night unwindeth, unabashed stripeth her cloak
Pearls, scattered as it were; I pick
You have chanted some spell in words
Lamps are alit in my eyes
You have chanted some spell in words
The darkness of my nights hath poured out
Lonely went the day and nights sans you,
Overcast with desolation
And now it seemeth the nights,
Kissed by the day and perfumed
For you art my companion
I was incomplete sans you,
More compete now none couldst be
In yours, my world I discovered,
Yet I am all lost
Both of us have now learned, art of living well earned
Like Midas touch, our living how well hath altered
Both of us have now learned,
Beauty of life well earned
O joys, we owneth a score, enough and more…
Monday, 23 February 2009
Bits from Sunday pm
It is not so easy to recapture the silence and movement of yesterday in the chatter and chairs of this afternoon, but I will do my best.
The television is not where it will be, though it is also not where it was one step closer to ready for the summer's heat escaping from the sunny funk in the kitchen that was the whole reason to move the television in the first place.
Every goal must be achieved through a series of steps as I reconnect with my home after it or I have been ill, usually both together and similarly. The funk must be identified and eliminated, it does violence to my healing senses from its invisible perch lately placed somewhere near the kitchen sink. It could be from the dishes.
The dishes get done last.
In order to move the cookbooks and the cat food and the table, the television, DVD and VCR must take space from the radio, writing desk, telephone and lavender which have been dislocated to the chairs for the duration as Pledge wipes make their way and the broom sweeps up litter and I mop the rugs of cat hair, glad to be free of the vacuum that sits in the almost way and has and will until I get around to letting go. Sets of altar decorations (for every horizontal surface is an altar) move together and are cleaned together and rearranged as I make plans to do this again in two months, only hoping that my apartment tetris skills allow me the mental space to work again, tho I have the had space for days and have not used it but for sleeping. The refrigerator top, the table top, the boards and blocks and stove-top and burners and door handles the hyphens between movement.
And all of this accompanied by dancing and a grace the felines do not acknowledge to my face. It is the grace of knowing where everything is or will be, how to get there and how to make things happen. The invisible part of housework and homemaking and living in rooms defined so specifically. This is my little cave and I the bear, groggy and dreaming and unwilling to tolerate tripping over shit in my way and tired of litter under my feet and in the cats' fur and sensing the absence of friends and comfortable surroundings.
The sunlight in rays inaccessible to small cats leaves the kitchen warm, spreads the smell of something. The discomfort is no longer bearable.
I have not been well enough to dance through the mess, cleaning. Today is different, legs and back and arms and focus working, though slowly, and the sink is clean, the stove white, the trash out and in the late evening I find quiet in the chair too large for the living room, and my home settles.
The funk is still present.
The dance continues.
The television is not where it will be, though it is also not where it was one step closer to ready for the summer's heat escaping from the sunny funk in the kitchen that was the whole reason to move the television in the first place.
Every goal must be achieved through a series of steps as I reconnect with my home after it or I have been ill, usually both together and similarly. The funk must be identified and eliminated, it does violence to my healing senses from its invisible perch lately placed somewhere near the kitchen sink. It could be from the dishes.
The dishes get done last.
In order to move the cookbooks and the cat food and the table, the television, DVD and VCR must take space from the radio, writing desk, telephone and lavender which have been dislocated to the chairs for the duration as Pledge wipes make their way and the broom sweeps up litter and I mop the rugs of cat hair, glad to be free of the vacuum that sits in the almost way and has and will until I get around to letting go. Sets of altar decorations (for every horizontal surface is an altar) move together and are cleaned together and rearranged as I make plans to do this again in two months, only hoping that my apartment tetris skills allow me the mental space to work again, tho I have the had space for days and have not used it but for sleeping. The refrigerator top, the table top, the boards and blocks and stove-top and burners and door handles the hyphens between movement.
And all of this accompanied by dancing and a grace the felines do not acknowledge to my face. It is the grace of knowing where everything is or will be, how to get there and how to make things happen. The invisible part of housework and homemaking and living in rooms defined so specifically. This is my little cave and I the bear, groggy and dreaming and unwilling to tolerate tripping over shit in my way and tired of litter under my feet and in the cats' fur and sensing the absence of friends and comfortable surroundings.
The sunlight in rays inaccessible to small cats leaves the kitchen warm, spreads the smell of something. The discomfort is no longer bearable.
I have not been well enough to dance through the mess, cleaning. Today is different, legs and back and arms and focus working, though slowly, and the sink is clean, the stove white, the trash out and in the late evening I find quiet in the chair too large for the living room, and my home settles.
The funk is still present.
The dance continues.
Sunday, 4 January 2009
I'm not so sure about all of this, but...
I made resolutions last year and didn't do any one of them. Not serious things like working out or anything, important things like going to visit my best friend in California, things that didn't happen.
I've decided to grow my hair out again. World changing? Not hardly. Just a personal choice.
Also, I've been thinking of what to do for a blog this year, as I'd like to keep one, perhaps weekly instead of daily, but we'll see. There is a reading project that is on-going, a collection and analysis project that is on-going and a fiction piece that is multimedia and in something like limbo. Adding another project might seem a bit ludicrous, particularly given my other commitments, but I think I've got a good idea for article analysis from periodicals that I see every day and would read, and sometimes do, if only I took the time to do it. Why take the time if there is no reason? Perhaps i can give myself a reason.
We shall see.
Bean soup and Blessed mornings to all!
Happy New Year.
I've decided to grow my hair out again. World changing? Not hardly. Just a personal choice.
Also, I've been thinking of what to do for a blog this year, as I'd like to keep one, perhaps weekly instead of daily, but we'll see. There is a reading project that is on-going, a collection and analysis project that is on-going and a fiction piece that is multimedia and in something like limbo. Adding another project might seem a bit ludicrous, particularly given my other commitments, but I think I've got a good idea for article analysis from periodicals that I see every day and would read, and sometimes do, if only I took the time to do it. Why take the time if there is no reason? Perhaps i can give myself a reason.
We shall see.
Bean soup and Blessed mornings to all!
Happy New Year.
Wednesday, 5 November 2008
Letter to my nation
Last night I cared. I cried a bit when CNN announced that Sen. Obama had won the election. I cried more when I saw Rev. Jesse Jackson crying. I have unending respect for the Rev. Jackson, and I grew up in a city where his voice rose above so many others and what he said made listening worthwhile.
It felt incredibly good to be a part of this country last night.
This morning brought with it a few sour notes that I cannot pretend away. Proposition 8 passed in California. Initiative 424 passed in Nebraska. A proposition to prevent unmarried couples from adopting passed. Maine split their electoral votes. Nebraska did not. Although it was heartening to see that Saline county went blue along with Lancaster and Douglas counties. It was good to see and hear how many people went to the polls, regardless of their affiliations.
My one cultural issue with the Obama/Biden campaign (oh how fun it will be to teach our spellcheckers to get rid of the nasty red lines there) had nothing to do with the candidates, and in fact, is an attitude that was not preached by that campaign. It is the sense that the President will be responsible for fixing everything. It is the willingness to alleviate our own responsibilities by burdening our newly elected President. It is the disillusionment of the last decades come to fruition in the unkindest of ways: okay, we voted you in, now change everything and change it in the way we want it changed. Yes, we can change things, we can create an environment in which change is more readily acceptable, though it comes with pains, as it must. In order to live up to that promise we cannot sit back and become complacent and allow ourselves to remain ignorant and aloof and apathetic. No longer do we have the excuse that dissenting voices are not heard. We have the example of those who attempted "revolution" only to find heartache, violence, imprisonment and the pointlessness of wasted passion.
Much of the last administration has left a stain on the collected soul and character of our nation. Last night's election showed that we are beginning to understand what we need to do in order to heal these newest wounds. We still have some very old wounds to heal as well. Rifts that have never been addressed. Horrors unacknowledged.
I do not envy President-Elect Obama his job. It is one that I have never wanted for myself. I believe that the best leadership is provided by those who see a leader as the person with the best organizational and management skills. Leaders who see leadership as giving service through strong communication skills and good hiring practices are people who understand that the ultimate aim of this country is to perpetuate itself in a sustainable and effective way, not to provide leaders with power, deification and a rowdy, uneducated public easily swayed and easily mollified.
We have, for far too long, allowed ourselves not to be lead but to be corralled. We maintain our silence at our peril. We believe what we are told about ourselves to our shame.
There are conversations that need to be held, hosted, encouraged and participated in: What is a conservative thinker, what is a liberal thinker, are they different from republican thinkers and democratic thinkers and what are those as well? What is ethical government, is it desirable, how do we discuss ethics in government, real or imagined? What is the purpose of education and how do/don't schools live up to that? Are we engaged in denying human rights to people? How do we approach that?
I believe that even engaging in these conversations allows for greater thought and purpose to action. Actively making decisions in life, as far as we can, is part of what makes a life well-lived.
It felt incredibly good to be a part of this country last night.
This morning brought with it a few sour notes that I cannot pretend away. Proposition 8 passed in California. Initiative 424 passed in Nebraska. A proposition to prevent unmarried couples from adopting passed. Maine split their electoral votes. Nebraska did not. Although it was heartening to see that Saline county went blue along with Lancaster and Douglas counties. It was good to see and hear how many people went to the polls, regardless of their affiliations.
My one cultural issue with the Obama/Biden campaign (oh how fun it will be to teach our spellcheckers to get rid of the nasty red lines there) had nothing to do with the candidates, and in fact, is an attitude that was not preached by that campaign. It is the sense that the President will be responsible for fixing everything. It is the willingness to alleviate our own responsibilities by burdening our newly elected President. It is the disillusionment of the last decades come to fruition in the unkindest of ways: okay, we voted you in, now change everything and change it in the way we want it changed. Yes, we can change things, we can create an environment in which change is more readily acceptable, though it comes with pains, as it must. In order to live up to that promise we cannot sit back and become complacent and allow ourselves to remain ignorant and aloof and apathetic. No longer do we have the excuse that dissenting voices are not heard. We have the example of those who attempted "revolution" only to find heartache, violence, imprisonment and the pointlessness of wasted passion.
Much of the last administration has left a stain on the collected soul and character of our nation. Last night's election showed that we are beginning to understand what we need to do in order to heal these newest wounds. We still have some very old wounds to heal as well. Rifts that have never been addressed. Horrors unacknowledged.
I do not envy President-Elect Obama his job. It is one that I have never wanted for myself. I believe that the best leadership is provided by those who see a leader as the person with the best organizational and management skills. Leaders who see leadership as giving service through strong communication skills and good hiring practices are people who understand that the ultimate aim of this country is to perpetuate itself in a sustainable and effective way, not to provide leaders with power, deification and a rowdy, uneducated public easily swayed and easily mollified.
We have, for far too long, allowed ourselves not to be lead but to be corralled. We maintain our silence at our peril. We believe what we are told about ourselves to our shame.
There are conversations that need to be held, hosted, encouraged and participated in: What is a conservative thinker, what is a liberal thinker, are they different from republican thinkers and democratic thinkers and what are those as well? What is ethical government, is it desirable, how do we discuss ethics in government, real or imagined? What is the purpose of education and how do/don't schools live up to that? Are we engaged in denying human rights to people? How do we approach that?
I believe that even engaging in these conversations allows for greater thought and purpose to action. Actively making decisions in life, as far as we can, is part of what makes a life well-lived.
Thursday, 31 July 2008
On the verge of angry
I spent the majority of my morning working with my past blogs and the organization of them via this very cute little spreadsheet that I had a good time developing - if 'developing' is a small enough word for what I did.
There were words of winter and the crunch of frozen rain and apples and walking alone and I could smell the contentment coming off of everything and I smiled for joy. Ethel slept between my feet under the desk for an hour or more as my mind drifted into and out of conversations I haven't had out loud, but which answered questions I hadn't even known I was asking myself. My solitude was complete and creative and good.
And then I came to a place where the internet was opened and I read my emails and took one look at my Reader and am now completely irritated and disgusted with humanity and how easily we forget that on the other end of all these tubes and wires and codes are human beings. Human beings who have as much right to be offensive and awful as they do to be thoughtful and considerate. Human beings who are supposed to be able to make decisions for themselves that do not rely on validation from others for their overgrown egos and the sense that there is Power with admiration because leadership is not about Power unless you want it to end in some disgusting loss of humanity - physical or spiritual. Leadership is about service, it is about being the best person to organize or motivate a group of people in service of a larger goal, that goal being the maintenance and perpetuation of said group.
I am disgusted at the need to be a dick for the sake of being a dick, or being wounded for the sake of making a Big Pronouncement that serves nothing but the purpose of someone's ego.
Egos are good, they allow us to understand our strengths and our possibilities and to sense when we have not done well. Life is not best lived when it is lived in service of our egos for they are flighty moody things subject to the will of none and the whim of all when they are not bounded.
Today I would like nothing more than to say that I am done. That I have enough friends and they are wonderful and my life is fulfilling enough and I am done with the rest of the world because they are acting like petulant children with no perspective, no respect and no sense of the consequences of their actions.
However. There is more inspiration, motivation, creativity and joy to be found within the world than without it.
It is not a finite answer. This will happen again. And again I will be angry, though perhaps not so likely to think of turning my back.
My father has given me ears to hear my voice. The anger abates and I am left with only focus and a desire for laughter and song and my project. The cats will purr when I come home and I will find joy in their warmth. My friends will laugh at my silliness and I will find comfort in that.
Everyone else can choke on their own choices, I have better things to do.
There were words of winter and the crunch of frozen rain and apples and walking alone and I could smell the contentment coming off of everything and I smiled for joy. Ethel slept between my feet under the desk for an hour or more as my mind drifted into and out of conversations I haven't had out loud, but which answered questions I hadn't even known I was asking myself. My solitude was complete and creative and good.
And then I came to a place where the internet was opened and I read my emails and took one look at my Reader and am now completely irritated and disgusted with humanity and how easily we forget that on the other end of all these tubes and wires and codes are human beings. Human beings who have as much right to be offensive and awful as they do to be thoughtful and considerate. Human beings who are supposed to be able to make decisions for themselves that do not rely on validation from others for their overgrown egos and the sense that there is Power with admiration because leadership is not about Power unless you want it to end in some disgusting loss of humanity - physical or spiritual. Leadership is about service, it is about being the best person to organize or motivate a group of people in service of a larger goal, that goal being the maintenance and perpetuation of said group.
I am disgusted at the need to be a dick for the sake of being a dick, or being wounded for the sake of making a Big Pronouncement that serves nothing but the purpose of someone's ego.
Egos are good, they allow us to understand our strengths and our possibilities and to sense when we have not done well. Life is not best lived when it is lived in service of our egos for they are flighty moody things subject to the will of none and the whim of all when they are not bounded.
Today I would like nothing more than to say that I am done. That I have enough friends and they are wonderful and my life is fulfilling enough and I am done with the rest of the world because they are acting like petulant children with no perspective, no respect and no sense of the consequences of their actions.
However. There is more inspiration, motivation, creativity and joy to be found within the world than without it.
It is not a finite answer. This will happen again. And again I will be angry, though perhaps not so likely to think of turning my back.
My father has given me ears to hear my voice. The anger abates and I am left with only focus and a desire for laughter and song and my project. The cats will purr when I come home and I will find joy in their warmth. My friends will laugh at my silliness and I will find comfort in that.
Everyone else can choke on their own choices, I have better things to do.
Friday, 27 June 2008
Friday List of Awesome
This is a list of that which I find awesome during the week, more like what occurs to me to post, but it sounds better the other way. I started doing these about 3 months ago and managed not to have one for the entire month of June (not including today). I blame Warren Ellis and Whitechapel entirely. You should too.
Freakangels. (There is a shirt. I will have one. It will go nicely with the pleated skirt of purple.) Also - Paul Duffield is fucking brilliant.
Bunny is making me happy lately.
as is Pibgorn - ooooo.
and Scary Go Round, ah, i had forgot the joys of thee.
Julie Taymor. Just her. Because she is brilliant.
My dear acquaintance Krista who moved away and isn't coming back! has a lovely blog with her photos.
The FURminator. 'nuff said.
Will Wheaton. He cracks me the fuck up.
Stephen Fry. Because how can I have gone this long without including him on any list of anything awesome ever? There oughta be a law. Really.
The trailer for Dr. Horrible is up. So much laughing.
Index on Censorship.
I'm including it here because I'm making a huge assumption that this is where it belongs - has anyone actually seen In Bruges yet? Anyone wanna take me when/if it comes to town? I promise to wear shoes in public, but that's about the only societal norm that can be anticipated these days. Probably it's not coming to town, is it? Sometimes this place is very stupid.
Hammocks are awesome. I am looking forward to spending some time in one this weekend. As an antidote for the whining. Of which there has been much this week.
Thank you and much love to all of you who have been so graciously amused by me and my misery and griping - it's good to laugh and get some perspective.
Anyone got anything to add to this? It's been a month since the last one - surely other people have awesome to share....
Freakangels. (There is a shirt. I will have one. It will go nicely with the pleated skirt of purple.) Also - Paul Duffield is fucking brilliant.
Bunny is making me happy lately.
as is Pibgorn - ooooo.
and Scary Go Round, ah, i had forgot the joys of thee.
Julie Taymor. Just her. Because she is brilliant.
My dear acquaintance Krista who moved away and isn't coming back! has a lovely blog with her photos.
The FURminator. 'nuff said.
Will Wheaton. He cracks me the fuck up.
Stephen Fry. Because how can I have gone this long without including him on any list of anything awesome ever? There oughta be a law. Really.
The trailer for Dr. Horrible is up. So much laughing.
Index on Censorship.
I'm including it here because I'm making a huge assumption that this is where it belongs - has anyone actually seen In Bruges yet? Anyone wanna take me when/if it comes to town? I promise to wear shoes in public, but that's about the only societal norm that can be anticipated these days. Probably it's not coming to town, is it? Sometimes this place is very stupid.
Hammocks are awesome. I am looking forward to spending some time in one this weekend. As an antidote for the whining. Of which there has been much this week.
Thank you and much love to all of you who have been so graciously amused by me and my misery and griping - it's good to laugh and get some perspective.
Anyone got anything to add to this? It's been a month since the last one - surely other people have awesome to share....
Tuesday, 24 June 2008
i swear, chandreyee, we didn’t break anything...
well, almost anyway, and it wasn't actually my fault, i swear, it just - well, the thing just flew off and there wasn't anything i could do about it and then when we discovered it in the sauce for the meat for the dinner, there just was no getting around it - the metal spout for the kosher salt was just too damn hot to pick up with our hands. i used a spoon to fish out and let it cool by the sink. and washed it off with soap and warm water and tried to put it back on the kosher salt box. i may have failed at that part of it. maybe.
the evening was an adventure all the way around, tho one not on the scale of runaway pups or scary drunk men. more like finding oneself the unwittingly well-timed rescuer of friends locked out of other friend's homes - don't ask and i won't tell - and frying balls and chicken so tender that it fell apart and realizing that even though i still can't smell anything well, i do know what the air feels like when it is carrying scent to my nose, kind of warm and heavy and slightly orange colored, though not tasting, that may have been psychosomatic owing to the lovely red color of the spices and the oil on top of the yoghurt coating the chicken. there was terrible white wine (seriously. terrible. suddenly i am she who finds the bad wine. better than other possibilities.) and we had to remember to leave it on the porch when we crossed the street to peer into the home with porch work being attempted. the two homes next to each other, twins of some relatively non-descript early 20th century style - the kind of homes whose interiors are filled with curving staircases and real wood panelling, the kind whose exteriors are so confused as to be ridiculous - seriously, what were those columns about? - and the brink front walks in a semi-circle joining the two porches, the bricks that are famous and of which there are not enough to finish the project so it ends, deceptive in its unfinished state, it looks as though the rest of them just fell off somehow - it is strangely disturbing to stand there and look at it and realize that the bricks didn't just erode away, they didn't fall away, they are all on the ground and the ground is still there - still prepped for more of them - it is not finished being built, not in some advanced stage of becoming un-done.
we did succeed in making a mess of Chandreyee's kitchen. we also succeeded in cleaning it up. because we are adults and even though the home of our friend is a place of food and laughter and multiple simultaneous conversations and ideas and joy and music and movies, it is also her home, and we know how to clean up after ourselves. we are laying groundwork for the future of this place. our laughter is our blessing: our hope that our friend find happiness and joy and focus and comfort in this place that becomes her home.
and the chicken was fucking awesome and falafel makes everything better and the bad wine was just bad enough to be laughable and the movie makes me happy and watching commentary with company is the same as having leave to talk over the commentary and over the movie all at the same time - the layers were thick, they were. seriously.
tonight is for Jazz and family. later there will be more housecleaning and prayers of thanks that i was not under the dripping ceiling fan last night.
thunder and lightning float through my consciousness making me question my sense of my own mortality and reactions and sensations and fears. i would sit and watch storms and ponder rain drops and surfaces and shining leaves and battered grass and the water rushing to the drains washing the wheels of the cars parked on my streets.
i have begun collecting the writing that i did between May 9, 2007 and Taming of the Shrew on my birthday this year. it is an interesting exercise. more real than i expected.
the evening was an adventure all the way around, tho one not on the scale of runaway pups or scary drunk men. more like finding oneself the unwittingly well-timed rescuer of friends locked out of other friend's homes - don't ask and i won't tell - and frying balls and chicken so tender that it fell apart and realizing that even though i still can't smell anything well, i do know what the air feels like when it is carrying scent to my nose, kind of warm and heavy and slightly orange colored, though not tasting, that may have been psychosomatic owing to the lovely red color of the spices and the oil on top of the yoghurt coating the chicken. there was terrible white wine (seriously. terrible. suddenly i am she who finds the bad wine. better than other possibilities.) and we had to remember to leave it on the porch when we crossed the street to peer into the home with porch work being attempted. the two homes next to each other, twins of some relatively non-descript early 20th century style - the kind of homes whose interiors are filled with curving staircases and real wood panelling, the kind whose exteriors are so confused as to be ridiculous - seriously, what were those columns about? - and the brink front walks in a semi-circle joining the two porches, the bricks that are famous and of which there are not enough to finish the project so it ends, deceptive in its unfinished state, it looks as though the rest of them just fell off somehow - it is strangely disturbing to stand there and look at it and realize that the bricks didn't just erode away, they didn't fall away, they are all on the ground and the ground is still there - still prepped for more of them - it is not finished being built, not in some advanced stage of becoming un-done.
we did succeed in making a mess of Chandreyee's kitchen. we also succeeded in cleaning it up. because we are adults and even though the home of our friend is a place of food and laughter and multiple simultaneous conversations and ideas and joy and music and movies, it is also her home, and we know how to clean up after ourselves. we are laying groundwork for the future of this place. our laughter is our blessing: our hope that our friend find happiness and joy and focus and comfort in this place that becomes her home.
and the chicken was fucking awesome and falafel makes everything better and the bad wine was just bad enough to be laughable and the movie makes me happy and watching commentary with company is the same as having leave to talk over the commentary and over the movie all at the same time - the layers were thick, they were. seriously.
tonight is for Jazz and family. later there will be more housecleaning and prayers of thanks that i was not under the dripping ceiling fan last night.
thunder and lightning float through my consciousness making me question my sense of my own mortality and reactions and sensations and fears. i would sit and watch storms and ponder rain drops and surfaces and shining leaves and battered grass and the water rushing to the drains washing the wheels of the cars parked on my streets.
i have begun collecting the writing that i did between May 9, 2007 and Taming of the Shrew on my birthday this year. it is an interesting exercise. more real than i expected.
Wednesday, 26 December 2007
Evening adventures & a puzzle, to boot
For the day after the day after Christmas Eve, my family celebrated by doing the thing that all families are so good at doing: splitting up. My sister and mother have been appointed Pair Productive and my father and I have are Pair Out and About (technically 'pair' is a misnomer as we went along with my wonderful 9 year old niece, but she's in training, yet, so does not get to count as a whole member (no voting rights) of the pair and there is no single descriptive word for 2 and a half).
But, I am not going to tell you about the day. Not yet.
We regrouped this evening and my father and sister took the Christmas decorations out to the shed (productive, see) and I helped Mama in the kitchen by blathering on and making a pot of tea and doing some dishes while she made dinner and tried to keep the 2 year old from getting too much in the way (boiling water type stuff). Dinner ended and the puzzle was brought out. it's a mary engelbreit-brecht-brucetta-whatever. It is a round puzzle. Not a sphere, but round.
the 2 year old was dressed in his pajamas, laid down in his bed and left there. we knew there would be no sleep. we knew this. we sent my niece upstairs to lock all of the doors and the gate. she came back down, we chatted about Jorge's toilet playing habits, ha ha ha.
i began reading, as i had promised my wonderful 9 year old niece (i am learning on this trip more about the value of trust in relationships. mostly i am learning it because of Ethel and her presence on this vacation. she lets me drape her around my shoulders and will stay there for many moments only minimally supported and without complaint, until she is ready to hop down . she hasn't hurt me yet on her descent. yet.) and my family collected around the dining room table to put together the round puzzle of letters and bowls and cherries and a cute cat.
and then there was the sound of water falling on the kitchen floor. coming from the light in the ceiling.
what followed:
Papa ran upstairs to find my nephew stark naked in the bathroom surrounded by water flowing happily into and out of the bowl of the toilet.
my nephew found himself standing in the hallway crying in surprise and because he got swatted once on the butt to get him out of the bathroom where he had created this playland for himself.
my nephew then found himself in dry pajamas and a new diaper, in bed, with the door closed, much to his very loud chagrin.
my mother came upstairs to get big towels to help collect the water from the floor of the kitchen.
i worked kid magic and got doors open so that the dream of dry floors could be realized.
my sister put a bowl under the light through which the water was running which we then stood and watched until the flow had subsided to a drip and then to nothing (i believe that we truly could sit and watch paint dry if we felt it was the thing to do).
the plunger was applied with great vigor to the toilet upstairs, to no avail.
it was decided that though my nephew usually just clogs the toilet with toilet paper, this time he must have dropped something stubborn (but not feline, all the cats are accounted for) into his favorite play area.
very quietly we all agreed that it was really very funny.
the grumpy emergency maintenance man came and said that he'll have to be back tomorrow to really fix things, but that my sister shouldn't expect him before 3.
we all hate the emergency maintenance man.
the cats are fine.
oh, and my sister did turn off the light that became a fount of water not unlike a breast spewing a steady stream of slightly off-white milk.
and now?
everyone is in bed. the book i was reading out loud (remember that part?) is still unfinished and my nephew is still trying to get out of going to sleep.
the couch awaits me. i get to spend some time alone in DC tomorrow, and will have to sleep in my clothes again tonight.
oh, and we gave up on the puzzle about 5 minutes before i knelt down to write this. they will finish it tomorrow. i have faith.
But, I am not going to tell you about the day. Not yet.
We regrouped this evening and my father and sister took the Christmas decorations out to the shed (productive, see) and I helped Mama in the kitchen by blathering on and making a pot of tea and doing some dishes while she made dinner and tried to keep the 2 year old from getting too much in the way (boiling water type stuff). Dinner ended and the puzzle was brought out. it's a mary engelbreit-brecht-brucetta-whatever. It is a round puzzle. Not a sphere, but round.
the 2 year old was dressed in his pajamas, laid down in his bed and left there. we knew there would be no sleep. we knew this. we sent my niece upstairs to lock all of the doors and the gate. she came back down, we chatted about Jorge's toilet playing habits, ha ha ha.
i began reading, as i had promised my wonderful 9 year old niece (i am learning on this trip more about the value of trust in relationships. mostly i am learning it because of Ethel and her presence on this vacation. she lets me drape her around my shoulders and will stay there for many moments only minimally supported and without complaint, until she is ready to hop down . she hasn't hurt me yet on her descent. yet.) and my family collected around the dining room table to put together the round puzzle of letters and bowls and cherries and a cute cat.
and then there was the sound of water falling on the kitchen floor. coming from the light in the ceiling.
what followed:
Papa ran upstairs to find my nephew stark naked in the bathroom surrounded by water flowing happily into and out of the bowl of the toilet.
my nephew found himself standing in the hallway crying in surprise and because he got swatted once on the butt to get him out of the bathroom where he had created this playland for himself.
my nephew then found himself in dry pajamas and a new diaper, in bed, with the door closed, much to his very loud chagrin.
my mother came upstairs to get big towels to help collect the water from the floor of the kitchen.
i worked kid magic and got doors open so that the dream of dry floors could be realized.
my sister put a bowl under the light through which the water was running which we then stood and watched until the flow had subsided to a drip and then to nothing (i believe that we truly could sit and watch paint dry if we felt it was the thing to do).
the plunger was applied with great vigor to the toilet upstairs, to no avail.
it was decided that though my nephew usually just clogs the toilet with toilet paper, this time he must have dropped something stubborn (but not feline, all the cats are accounted for) into his favorite play area.
very quietly we all agreed that it was really very funny.
the grumpy emergency maintenance man came and said that he'll have to be back tomorrow to really fix things, but that my sister shouldn't expect him before 3.
we all hate the emergency maintenance man.
the cats are fine.
oh, and my sister did turn off the light that became a fount of water not unlike a breast spewing a steady stream of slightly off-white milk.
and now?
everyone is in bed. the book i was reading out loud (remember that part?) is still unfinished and my nephew is still trying to get out of going to sleep.
the couch awaits me. i get to spend some time alone in DC tomorrow, and will have to sleep in my clothes again tonight.
oh, and we gave up on the puzzle about 5 minutes before i knelt down to write this. they will finish it tomorrow. i have faith.
Saturday, 22 December 2007
The Great French Toast Negotiation
notes for later, because i cannot find my notebook right now...
Family road trip: 3 adults (plus or minus adulthood), 1 child, 1 kitten (usually asleep inconveniently) (the kitten plays no role in the action to follow. i just like talking about her because she came with and has been a wonderful traveler and is suffering from the snobbery and intolerance of my sister's cats)
Mindy's Corner Restaurant: Ohio somewhere. on the corner of one street and another, across from a gas station, on the other side of the bridge from the highway.
Round about 12:30pm ET
Mindy's is your run of the mill family run restaurant with a huge dining room, wood tables, paper placemats (with a word search) and meatloaf special for lunch.
9 year Sierra asked if it would be alright to have breakfast for lunch. it is a peculiar thing, having breakfast for some other meal than breakfast. makes the whole day feel decadent somehow, just because you had an omelette for supper. johnsons are all for daily decadence where food is involved, and her request was granted.
she wanted pancakes. i resisted, knowing that pancakes are merely a vehicle for syrup - liquid sugar - more potent than regular coffee, and said no. she wanted french toast. i reminded her that it was just for the syrup.
- I don't always have syrup on my french toast.
- no, sometimes you use sugar, and that's just the same thing.
- okay.
the waitress came by and it was clear that none of us, minus the 9 year old, knew what we wanted, but since the aunt (that's me for those of you not following along) was being stubborn and marginally health concious (mostly of my own). she left us to continue or negotiations.
i countered finally with one scrambled egg, 2 strips of bacon and one piece of white toast with grape jelly (she, like me, doesn't do strawberry jam). negotiating with me is really not a possibility. i decided what she was going to eat, and forewarning was pretty much all that she was getting.
the waitress returned.
- we have finished our negotiations, i said
- alright, so what're you having?
- if i get a slice of french toast, then -
- oh, no, that wasn't it -
we ordered the mostly protein and starch meal for her (tire her out, clog her arteries, make her sleep)
and the little shit just sat there and smirked at me.
when the waitress brought our meals, she handed over the egg and meat and bread saying "here's your french toast" and my neice had the decency and good humor to laugh.
later i will tell you of the Fog of Doom and the Mortification of the Felines, but for now, i have a book that is fucking with my head, and i am happy that almost everyone else is asleep.
Family road trip: 3 adults (plus or minus adulthood), 1 child, 1 kitten (usually asleep inconveniently) (the kitten plays no role in the action to follow. i just like talking about her because she came with and has been a wonderful traveler and is suffering from the snobbery and intolerance of my sister's cats)
Mindy's Corner Restaurant: Ohio somewhere. on the corner of one street and another, across from a gas station, on the other side of the bridge from the highway.
Round about 12:30pm ET
Mindy's is your run of the mill family run restaurant with a huge dining room, wood tables, paper placemats (with a word search) and meatloaf special for lunch.
9 year Sierra asked if it would be alright to have breakfast for lunch. it is a peculiar thing, having breakfast for some other meal than breakfast. makes the whole day feel decadent somehow, just because you had an omelette for supper. johnsons are all for daily decadence where food is involved, and her request was granted.
she wanted pancakes. i resisted, knowing that pancakes are merely a vehicle for syrup - liquid sugar - more potent than regular coffee, and said no. she wanted french toast. i reminded her that it was just for the syrup.
- I don't always have syrup on my french toast.
- no, sometimes you use sugar, and that's just the same thing.
- okay.
the waitress came by and it was clear that none of us, minus the 9 year old, knew what we wanted, but since the aunt (that's me for those of you not following along) was being stubborn and marginally health concious (mostly of my own). she left us to continue or negotiations.
i countered finally with one scrambled egg, 2 strips of bacon and one piece of white toast with grape jelly (she, like me, doesn't do strawberry jam). negotiating with me is really not a possibility. i decided what she was going to eat, and forewarning was pretty much all that she was getting.
the waitress returned.
- we have finished our negotiations, i said
- alright, so what're you having?
- if i get a slice of french toast, then -
- oh, no, that wasn't it -
we ordered the mostly protein and starch meal for her (tire her out, clog her arteries, make her sleep)
and the little shit just sat there and smirked at me.
when the waitress brought our meals, she handed over the egg and meat and bread saying "here's your french toast" and my neice had the decency and good humor to laugh.
later i will tell you of the Fog of Doom and the Mortification of the Felines, but for now, i have a book that is fucking with my head, and i am happy that almost everyone else is asleep.
Wednesday, 19 December 2007
A.A. Milne essay
I don't generally post work by other people on this blog. In point of fact, I have never posted anything like this before. It's my blog. My words. That kind of thing.
I read this and immediately thought of at least a dozen people who are my MyFriends who would enjoy this and decided against making it into a bulletin and running the risk of strange changes made during reposting and such. Because it's that kind of a thing. For bibliophiles, anyway. I specifically thought of Erick and Ula and Chandreyee and Jenny and the folks at A Novel Idea, etc., etc. I found this at Quotidiana which I have just found and am enjoying hugely.
"My library
by A.A. Milne
When I moved into a new house a few weeks ago, my books, as was natural, moved with me. Strong, perspiring men shovelled them into packing-cases, and staggered with them to the van, cursing Caxton as they went. On arrival at this end, they staggered with them into the room selected for my library, heaved off the lids of the cases, and awaited orders. The immediate need was for an emptier room. Together we hurried the books into the new white shelves which awaited them, the order in which they stood being of no matter so long as they were off the floor. Armful after armful was hastily stacked, the only pause being when (in the curious way in which these things happen) my own name suddenly caught the eye of the foreman. "Did you write this one, sir?" he asked. I admitted it. "H'm," he said noncommittally. He glanced along the names of every armful after that, and appeared a little surprised at the number of books which I hadn't written. An easy-going profession, evidently.
So we got the books up at last, and there they are still. I told myself that when a wet afternoon came along I would arrange them properly. When the wet afternoon came, I told myself that I would arrange them one of these fine mornings. As they are now, I have to look along every shelf in the search for the book which I want. To come to Keats is no guarantee that we are on the road to Shelley. Shelley, if he did not drop out on the way, is probably next to How to Be a Golfer Though Middle-aged.
Having written as far as this, I had to get up and see where Shelley really was. It is worse than I thought. He is between Geometrical Optics and Studies in New Zealand Scenery. Ella Wheeler Wilcox, whom I find myself to be entertaining unawares, sits beside Anarchy or Order, which was apparently "sent in the hope that you will become a member of the Duty and Discipline Movement"—a vain hope, it would seem, for I have not yet paid my subscription. What I Found Out, by an English Governess, shares a corner with The Recreations of a Country Parson; they are followed by Villette and Baedeker's Switzerland. Something will have to be done about it. But I am wondering what is to be done. If I gave you the impression that my books were precisely arranged in their old shelves, I misled you. They were arranged in the order known as "all anyhow." Possibly they were a little less "anyhow" than they are now, in that the volumes of any particular work were at least together, but that is all that can be claimed for them. For years I put off the business of tidying them up, just as I am putting it off now. It is not laziness; it is simply that I don't know how to begin.
Let us suppose that we decide to have all the poetry together. It sounds reasonable. But then Byron is eleven inches high (my tallest poet), and Beattie (my shortest) is just over four inches. How foolish they will look standing side by side. Perhaps you don't know Beattie, but I assure you that he was a poet. He wrote those majestic lines:—
The shepherd-swain of whom I mention made
On Scotia's mountains fed his little flock;
The sickle, scythe or plough he never swayed—
An honest heart was almost all his stock.
Of course, one would hardly expect a shepherd to sway a plough in the ordinary way, but Beattie was quite right to remind us that Edwin didn't either. Edwin was the name of the shepherd- swain. "And yet poor Edwin was no vulgar boy," we are told a little further on in a line that should live. Well, having satisfied you that Beattie was really a poet, I can now return to my argument that an eleven-inch Byron cannot stand next to a four-inch Beattie, and be followed by an eight-inch Cowper, without making the shelf look silly. Yet how can I discard Beattie—Beattie who wrote:—
"And now the downy cheek and deepened voice Gave dignity to Edwin's blooming prime."
You see the difficulty. If you arrange your books according to their contents you are sure to get an untidy shelf. If you arrange your books according to their size and colour you get an effective wall, but the poetically inclined visitor may lose sight of Beattie altogether. Before, then, we decide what to do about it, we must ask ourselves that very awkward question, "Why do we have books on our shelves at all?" It is a most embarrassing question to answer.
Of course, you think that the proper answer (in your own case) is an indignant protest that you bought them in order to read them, and that yon put them on your shelves in order that you could refer to them when necessary. A little reflection will show you what a stupid answer that is. If you only want to read them, why are some of them bound in morocco and half-calf and other expensive coverings? Why did you buy a first edition when a hundredth edition was so much cheaper? Why have you got half a dozen copies of The Rubaiyat? What is the particular value of this other book that you treasure it so carefully? Why, the fact that its pages are uncut. If you cut the pages and read it, the value would go.
So, then, your library is not just for reference. You know as well as I do that it furnishes your room; that it furnishes it more effectively than does paint or mahogany or china. Of course, it is nice to have the books there, so that one can refer to them when one wishes. One may be writing an article on sea-bathing, for instance, and have come to the sentence which begins: "In the well-remembered words of Coleridge, perhaps almost too familiar to be quoted"—and then one may have to look them up. On these occasions a library is not only ornamental but useful. But do not let us be ashamed that we find it ornamental. Indeed, the more I survey it, the more I feel that my library is sufficiently ornamental as it stands. Any reassembling of the books might spoil the colour-scheme. Baedeker's Switzerland and Villette are both in red, a colour which is neatly caught up again, after an interlude in blue, by a volume of Browning and Jevons' Elementary Logic. We had a woman here only yesterday who said, "How pretty your books look," and I am inclined to think that that is good enough. There is a careless rapture about them which I should lose if I started to arrange them methodically.
But perhaps I might risk this to the extent of getting all their heads the same way up. Yes, on one of these fine days (or wet nights) I shall take my library seriously in hand. There are still one or two books which are the wrong way round. I shall put them the right way round.
(1920)"
If you are interested in more, I suggest you head to your local library and pick up a copy. If you like it enough to buy it, or just think it will look pretty on your shelf, head to your local locally owned used or new bookstore and pick one up. Please buy books responsibly.
SJ
I read this and immediately thought of at least a dozen people who are my MyFriends who would enjoy this and decided against making it into a bulletin and running the risk of strange changes made during reposting and such. Because it's that kind of a thing. For bibliophiles, anyway. I specifically thought of Erick and Ula and Chandreyee and Jenny and the folks at A Novel Idea, etc., etc. I found this at Quotidiana which I have just found and am enjoying hugely.
"My library
by A.A. Milne
When I moved into a new house a few weeks ago, my books, as was natural, moved with me. Strong, perspiring men shovelled them into packing-cases, and staggered with them to the van, cursing Caxton as they went. On arrival at this end, they staggered with them into the room selected for my library, heaved off the lids of the cases, and awaited orders. The immediate need was for an emptier room. Together we hurried the books into the new white shelves which awaited them, the order in which they stood being of no matter so long as they were off the floor. Armful after armful was hastily stacked, the only pause being when (in the curious way in which these things happen) my own name suddenly caught the eye of the foreman. "Did you write this one, sir?" he asked. I admitted it. "H'm," he said noncommittally. He glanced along the names of every armful after that, and appeared a little surprised at the number of books which I hadn't written. An easy-going profession, evidently.
So we got the books up at last, and there they are still. I told myself that when a wet afternoon came along I would arrange them properly. When the wet afternoon came, I told myself that I would arrange them one of these fine mornings. As they are now, I have to look along every shelf in the search for the book which I want. To come to Keats is no guarantee that we are on the road to Shelley. Shelley, if he did not drop out on the way, is probably next to How to Be a Golfer Though Middle-aged.
Having written as far as this, I had to get up and see where Shelley really was. It is worse than I thought. He is between Geometrical Optics and Studies in New Zealand Scenery. Ella Wheeler Wilcox, whom I find myself to be entertaining unawares, sits beside Anarchy or Order, which was apparently "sent in the hope that you will become a member of the Duty and Discipline Movement"—a vain hope, it would seem, for I have not yet paid my subscription. What I Found Out, by an English Governess, shares a corner with The Recreations of a Country Parson; they are followed by Villette and Baedeker's Switzerland. Something will have to be done about it. But I am wondering what is to be done. If I gave you the impression that my books were precisely arranged in their old shelves, I misled you. They were arranged in the order known as "all anyhow." Possibly they were a little less "anyhow" than they are now, in that the volumes of any particular work were at least together, but that is all that can be claimed for them. For years I put off the business of tidying them up, just as I am putting it off now. It is not laziness; it is simply that I don't know how to begin.
Let us suppose that we decide to have all the poetry together. It sounds reasonable. But then Byron is eleven inches high (my tallest poet), and Beattie (my shortest) is just over four inches. How foolish they will look standing side by side. Perhaps you don't know Beattie, but I assure you that he was a poet. He wrote those majestic lines:—
The shepherd-swain of whom I mention made
On Scotia's mountains fed his little flock;
The sickle, scythe or plough he never swayed—
An honest heart was almost all his stock.
Of course, one would hardly expect a shepherd to sway a plough in the ordinary way, but Beattie was quite right to remind us that Edwin didn't either. Edwin was the name of the shepherd- swain. "And yet poor Edwin was no vulgar boy," we are told a little further on in a line that should live. Well, having satisfied you that Beattie was really a poet, I can now return to my argument that an eleven-inch Byron cannot stand next to a four-inch Beattie, and be followed by an eight-inch Cowper, without making the shelf look silly. Yet how can I discard Beattie—Beattie who wrote:—
"And now the downy cheek and deepened voice Gave dignity to Edwin's blooming prime."
You see the difficulty. If you arrange your books according to their contents you are sure to get an untidy shelf. If you arrange your books according to their size and colour you get an effective wall, but the poetically inclined visitor may lose sight of Beattie altogether. Before, then, we decide what to do about it, we must ask ourselves that very awkward question, "Why do we have books on our shelves at all?" It is a most embarrassing question to answer.
Of course, you think that the proper answer (in your own case) is an indignant protest that you bought them in order to read them, and that yon put them on your shelves in order that you could refer to them when necessary. A little reflection will show you what a stupid answer that is. If you only want to read them, why are some of them bound in morocco and half-calf and other expensive coverings? Why did you buy a first edition when a hundredth edition was so much cheaper? Why have you got half a dozen copies of The Rubaiyat? What is the particular value of this other book that you treasure it so carefully? Why, the fact that its pages are uncut. If you cut the pages and read it, the value would go.
So, then, your library is not just for reference. You know as well as I do that it furnishes your room; that it furnishes it more effectively than does paint or mahogany or china. Of course, it is nice to have the books there, so that one can refer to them when one wishes. One may be writing an article on sea-bathing, for instance, and have come to the sentence which begins: "In the well-remembered words of Coleridge, perhaps almost too familiar to be quoted"—and then one may have to look them up. On these occasions a library is not only ornamental but useful. But do not let us be ashamed that we find it ornamental. Indeed, the more I survey it, the more I feel that my library is sufficiently ornamental as it stands. Any reassembling of the books might spoil the colour-scheme. Baedeker's Switzerland and Villette are both in red, a colour which is neatly caught up again, after an interlude in blue, by a volume of Browning and Jevons' Elementary Logic. We had a woman here only yesterday who said, "How pretty your books look," and I am inclined to think that that is good enough. There is a careless rapture about them which I should lose if I started to arrange them methodically.
But perhaps I might risk this to the extent of getting all their heads the same way up. Yes, on one of these fine days (or wet nights) I shall take my library seriously in hand. There are still one or two books which are the wrong way round. I shall put them the right way round.
(1920)"
If you are interested in more, I suggest you head to your local library and pick up a copy. If you like it enough to buy it, or just think it will look pretty on your shelf, head to your local locally owned used or new bookstore and pick one up. Please buy books responsibly.
SJ
Tuesday, 18 December 2007
does it count if it’s on CD?
one of the more difficult parts of being in a space with no other human there is filling it. if you live with no other humans, it is occasionally oppressively silent, even with the royal twins tearing through the house at break neck speed and getting yelled at for thinking that the ball of yarn that i'm working with, thankyouverymuch, is something to be hunted and carried off to the den under the bed. if you live with other humans and find yourself alone in the house for awhile, the silence can be a relief, but that doesn't mean it doesn't need to be filled with the personally chosen sounds of the individual.
i have always enjoyed a silent home, partly because there was always enough going on outside or in the house that adding noise to it just made no sense. there are the wonderful sounds of a house settling into the ground and all of the creaks and grinds and breaks associated with that motion. it takes time to sink a brick house, even in a swamp that has been filled with concrete pylons and dozens of layers of city that have sunk into the muck and built on over and over again for an hundred and fifty years, and the sounds spread out and go slowly or jerk for a few seconds, adjusting to some milimetric difference.
as a child, most winter evenings were spent in the living room, many involved a fire in the fireplace and listening to my father read to me/us from Laura Ingalls Wilder or Mark Twain or Charles Dickens. (thought - it sounds so much more impressive to speak of reading from an author than saying we read Little House on the Prairie and Tom Sawyer and A Christmas Carol. i wonder what trick of the language allows for that?)(yes, alright, idyllic childhood, without it, i would likely be a much more depressing combination of cliches without any hope of escape) it helps that my father has a pleasant reading voice and that he chose to read to us about young people who lived in places we knew of and had visited.
remember that Dream On guy? the one who was of the first generation of people raised in front of the television? yeah. I don't get that guy. i wasn't that guy. every now and then i go into cable addiction and Cannot Turn It Off! but then i move or get divorced or something like that (cable = husband or roommate(s), i never have it when i'm single.) as a child i hung out in the library upstairs, reading the spines of my parent's books. this is something i have written about almost ad nauseum.
part of the difficulty i have with sitting down to read a book is that it's one thing. i'm doing one thing, and only one thing. it is nice to read for information or for a class because then there is a notepad next to me and a pencil in my hand, and i can write things down, tease out bits of fun information, beginnings of theoretical underpinnings etc. it is my way of being actively involved with a text, there is a dialogue, not just parasitism for quotes or someone else's opinion or philosophy, but the recognition that there is something here that i find fascinating, that will be around for a while, that i will want to continue to engage with and in. i am allowed the illusion of multi-tasking, even though i'm sitting still only engaging two of my senses (unless i'm reading aloud, but we'll get there).
i finished reading Possession by AS Byatt. again. I read it about every year. and every year when i finish the book, i immediately turn to the front and begin it again. this year, i didn't do that. i wanted more than just a rehash. i wanted to find bits of it in my world and my home. i started writing - one of those dreaded book responses from college. and then i started looking for, and finding easily (because i've read the book so many damn times) discussions about certain themes - most notably the theme of what we call education, knowing, information having, can do to people - and i marked them with color coded post-it tabs. that is the reading that i truly enjoy doing, but rarely get the chance to - rarely does a book warrant that kind of attention. rarely do i have that attention to give.
i took a class in World Music at the end of last century and learned about this amazing thing: balinese shadow puppet shows accompanied by gamelan music (move my soul to heaven) that tell old and very well known stories, like the Ramadan. people crowd into these places. they smoke, they speak to each other, they watch the show, they eat. this goes on for near to 24 hours. gnungh! so want to do this. so want to.
i look at Trilogy Tuesday from years ago (lord of the rings - all three movies to herald the release of Return of the King. 12 hours in a movie theatre. Bad bad food. Smelled like a locker room by the time we were done. So. Much. Fucking. Fun. i was in tears for a week - just emotionally exhausted. it was wonderful) as a sort of test run. the culture of Bali and of Omaha are vastly different, though, so we'll see how much of a test run it really was.
part of my multi-tasking at home involves yarn work. more than a few years back, i discovered that commentaries are the most wonderful things ever, because they allowed me to watch a beloved movie, without having to watch it, while still being somewhat involved with it - thinking about the process of the end product. i tend to find commentaries sort of inspiring. sometimes they are awful, but that's for another blog. the point here, is that i enjoy listening to people speak about what they did, and why they did it, and what the thoughts were about it. but, i'm listening to it. (over and over and over again.)
yesterday, after i found that i could lift my head without unendurable pain (aftereffect of surgery - i recover okay, but when i get sick, i get sick right now and a lot and it sucks), i worked on a new project while listening to the new adventures of sherlock holmes - it's at the library, except for the ones that i have, they are the recordings (organized in someone's drunken notion of order) of the radio show from WWII and just after. it's taken some time and practice to pay attention the way that you would were this the only time you would hear it, and in fact, i'm sure that i don't, because i know that i can listen to them again.
in the last few weeks, i have listened to something like 4 or 5 books read aloud and recorded for my listening pleasure. i have wondered if listening to them counts as having read them. particularly in the case of non-fiction, although why that should be different simply leads us to a discussion of how i'm an elitist bitch, and we all know that already. i've answered the question for myself by deciding that it is just as easy to not pay attention to a book that is sitting in your lap, open, with your eyes fixed on it and moving over the words on the page, as it is to disregard the voice reading to you those words. the only real difficulty comes when you want to cite something or remember a specific line. when it is a machine controlling the reading (to some extent) and not a person sitting in the room with you, it is difficult to say "would you read that bit again" or "what chapter is that in" though not entirely impossible.
i enjoy sitting down to an entire day of a television show. one of these days i will own stargate sg-1 all 10 seasons box set, and i will have a television to hand with the necessary cords and i will do nothing but watch stargate. beginning with the movie. it will be wonderful and food-filled and i will have a headache and bad back for a week afterwards, because it will take me a while to get through it all, but i will - have no doubt or fear - it will happen.
the idea of 24 hours of entertainment, or storytelling or more specifically, story performance, seems so utterly appropriate to me, and i have no clue why. perhaps it's to do with the long nights of reading that i will indulge in on occasion. perhaps it's just the notion of being completely consumed by a thing - i tire of and find annoying the flighty entertainment that is available on a regular basis. i have now one show - two by proximity (one to the show i watch, one to my parents), and that is enough.
i get to go home and listen to someone read to me of war and love and honor and mystery and occasionally engage me in ridiculous conversation in Portuguese.
my home is filled with voices and story and i am not bound to one room or one chair or one attitude. i can do the dishes and move about, chasing the cats and blocking work. it is difficult to take notes, because i cannot look away from the book and now that everything will be in the same spot, but the discs end after very little time, so it is of no real consequence.
the only time it's really trying is when i know that i could have read the damn thing faster myself.
i have always enjoyed a silent home, partly because there was always enough going on outside or in the house that adding noise to it just made no sense. there are the wonderful sounds of a house settling into the ground and all of the creaks and grinds and breaks associated with that motion. it takes time to sink a brick house, even in a swamp that has been filled with concrete pylons and dozens of layers of city that have sunk into the muck and built on over and over again for an hundred and fifty years, and the sounds spread out and go slowly or jerk for a few seconds, adjusting to some milimetric difference.
as a child, most winter evenings were spent in the living room, many involved a fire in the fireplace and listening to my father read to me/us from Laura Ingalls Wilder or Mark Twain or Charles Dickens. (thought - it sounds so much more impressive to speak of reading from an author than saying we read Little House on the Prairie and Tom Sawyer and A Christmas Carol. i wonder what trick of the language allows for that?)(yes, alright, idyllic childhood, without it, i would likely be a much more depressing combination of cliches without any hope of escape) it helps that my father has a pleasant reading voice and that he chose to read to us about young people who lived in places we knew of and had visited.
remember that Dream On guy? the one who was of the first generation of people raised in front of the television? yeah. I don't get that guy. i wasn't that guy. every now and then i go into cable addiction and Cannot Turn It Off! but then i move or get divorced or something like that (cable = husband or roommate(s), i never have it when i'm single.) as a child i hung out in the library upstairs, reading the spines of my parent's books. this is something i have written about almost ad nauseum.
part of the difficulty i have with sitting down to read a book is that it's one thing. i'm doing one thing, and only one thing. it is nice to read for information or for a class because then there is a notepad next to me and a pencil in my hand, and i can write things down, tease out bits of fun information, beginnings of theoretical underpinnings etc. it is my way of being actively involved with a text, there is a dialogue, not just parasitism for quotes or someone else's opinion or philosophy, but the recognition that there is something here that i find fascinating, that will be around for a while, that i will want to continue to engage with and in. i am allowed the illusion of multi-tasking, even though i'm sitting still only engaging two of my senses (unless i'm reading aloud, but we'll get there).
i finished reading Possession by AS Byatt. again. I read it about every year. and every year when i finish the book, i immediately turn to the front and begin it again. this year, i didn't do that. i wanted more than just a rehash. i wanted to find bits of it in my world and my home. i started writing - one of those dreaded book responses from college. and then i started looking for, and finding easily (because i've read the book so many damn times) discussions about certain themes - most notably the theme of what we call education, knowing, information having, can do to people - and i marked them with color coded post-it tabs. that is the reading that i truly enjoy doing, but rarely get the chance to - rarely does a book warrant that kind of attention. rarely do i have that attention to give.
i took a class in World Music at the end of last century and learned about this amazing thing: balinese shadow puppet shows accompanied by gamelan music (move my soul to heaven) that tell old and very well known stories, like the Ramadan. people crowd into these places. they smoke, they speak to each other, they watch the show, they eat. this goes on for near to 24 hours. gnungh! so want to do this. so want to.
i look at Trilogy Tuesday from years ago (lord of the rings - all three movies to herald the release of Return of the King. 12 hours in a movie theatre. Bad bad food. Smelled like a locker room by the time we were done. So. Much. Fucking. Fun. i was in tears for a week - just emotionally exhausted. it was wonderful) as a sort of test run. the culture of Bali and of Omaha are vastly different, though, so we'll see how much of a test run it really was.
part of my multi-tasking at home involves yarn work. more than a few years back, i discovered that commentaries are the most wonderful things ever, because they allowed me to watch a beloved movie, without having to watch it, while still being somewhat involved with it - thinking about the process of the end product. i tend to find commentaries sort of inspiring. sometimes they are awful, but that's for another blog. the point here, is that i enjoy listening to people speak about what they did, and why they did it, and what the thoughts were about it. but, i'm listening to it. (over and over and over again.)
yesterday, after i found that i could lift my head without unendurable pain (aftereffect of surgery - i recover okay, but when i get sick, i get sick right now and a lot and it sucks), i worked on a new project while listening to the new adventures of sherlock holmes - it's at the library, except for the ones that i have, they are the recordings (organized in someone's drunken notion of order) of the radio show from WWII and just after. it's taken some time and practice to pay attention the way that you would were this the only time you would hear it, and in fact, i'm sure that i don't, because i know that i can listen to them again.
in the last few weeks, i have listened to something like 4 or 5 books read aloud and recorded for my listening pleasure. i have wondered if listening to them counts as having read them. particularly in the case of non-fiction, although why that should be different simply leads us to a discussion of how i'm an elitist bitch, and we all know that already. i've answered the question for myself by deciding that it is just as easy to not pay attention to a book that is sitting in your lap, open, with your eyes fixed on it and moving over the words on the page, as it is to disregard the voice reading to you those words. the only real difficulty comes when you want to cite something or remember a specific line. when it is a machine controlling the reading (to some extent) and not a person sitting in the room with you, it is difficult to say "would you read that bit again" or "what chapter is that in" though not entirely impossible.
i enjoy sitting down to an entire day of a television show. one of these days i will own stargate sg-1 all 10 seasons box set, and i will have a television to hand with the necessary cords and i will do nothing but watch stargate. beginning with the movie. it will be wonderful and food-filled and i will have a headache and bad back for a week afterwards, because it will take me a while to get through it all, but i will - have no doubt or fear - it will happen.
the idea of 24 hours of entertainment, or storytelling or more specifically, story performance, seems so utterly appropriate to me, and i have no clue why. perhaps it's to do with the long nights of reading that i will indulge in on occasion. perhaps it's just the notion of being completely consumed by a thing - i tire of and find annoying the flighty entertainment that is available on a regular basis. i have now one show - two by proximity (one to the show i watch, one to my parents), and that is enough.
i get to go home and listen to someone read to me of war and love and honor and mystery and occasionally engage me in ridiculous conversation in Portuguese.
my home is filled with voices and story and i am not bound to one room or one chair or one attitude. i can do the dishes and move about, chasing the cats and blocking work. it is difficult to take notes, because i cannot look away from the book and now that everything will be in the same spot, but the discs end after very little time, so it is of no real consequence.
the only time it's really trying is when i know that i could have read the damn thing faster myself.
Friday, 14 December 2007
sometimes you only get part of the story
In the classroom next to my office, the Chinese language class is having their last meeting. There have been presentations followed by applause, punctuated by laughter every afternoon this week. All semester long I have heard them every afternoon, the teacher's voice unintelligible even without the bricks of concrete between us, as I do not speak Chinese. It was rather like listening to an increasingly more expressive army or choir repeating her words loudly and more and more clearly. Now they are singing. The music is nothing I know, nothing I have heard. I want to cry for the beauty and the understanding that it is goodbye. The semester is over. Even though it is likely that these people will see each other again, perhaps even in their Chinese study, this time is done. It is time to move on and all that, and they are recognizing it in music. I want to cry.
Walking to work after lunch today, I was behind a group of men all loud and boisterous, less from an exuberant personality trait than the need to speak loudly enough to be heard through the ear muffs that are the ubiquitous and required at this time of year. (in case anyone is coming to the state for the first time, yes, they do hand them out as you cross the border north from Kansas and there are ear muff kiosks at the airports. consider it a public mental health service. cold ears = super cranky.) I do not have any idea what they were talking about, though, not because of my own ear covering, but because I was thoroughly distracted by the precarious position of the pants on the man just in front of me. I have no idea what was holding them up, and I didn't see braces or suspenders, so it might have been sheer luck or will, but my stomach clenched in anticipation of the moment when they would fall, he would fall, and I would have to look away in horror lest I catch of glimpse of underwear I am sure he would rather not acknowledge having. I always assume that everyone is secretly ashamed of their underwear - which is why we keep putting it display - and would not want to make that shame greater by involving myself in it in any way.
Also, I learned that Iowegians change lightbulbs that are blown. Apparently Nebraskans don't, at least not the ones that work at the university. The man who said that was wearing stupid gloves, therefore I do not trust him, even if he is from my mother's home state.
Ula had today off. She was "sick," a condition brought on at her office manager's insistence. Sometimes I am amazed that she can tolerate me, as I would be happy to be unsupervised and have days off randomly with nothing to do but roam around town, and she was so flustered at the change of routine that her phone wasn't ringing properly. Yes, I am convinced that was the problem. Her phone would ring, in her pocket, and neither one of us would hear it. This is the woman who can hear her phone ringing in the bottom of her purse in a crowded bar on a Friday night. And she didn't hear it.
Partly that could be because we were both very unsettled at having just seen/not seen my ex husband, who I didn't see because I was looking at the sandwich shop sign - a thing which I have never done as it is a place into which I will not go on principle (chain) - and she saw him and his girlfriend and I totally missed it, thereby, I am sure, being thoroughly rude. This actually bothers me. Not that I am not rude by nature, but it's disturbing to me to be rude on accident. It indicates a lack of awareness of my surroundings followed by the several moments of concern over how to make it okay - how to prevent any more negativity about me going out into the world. It's selfish, I'm hip.
Ula really should not have days off. Everything is thrown off balance.
Every now and then things are just floomey. They just go all odd and there's really nothing to do but wait them out and read a good book. That's the problem - there's really nothing that you can "do" - not just to make it better, but at all, because everything is all topsy-turvy and any action that is committed will very likely end up having to be committed again. I recommend a nice long read in a very warm place with a glass of water - seriously, I mean water. It's good for you and will help avoid the hangover you are likely to give yourself otherwise. Because, remember, it's not just you for whom the world is all upside down - it's everyone around you and it's the kind of thing that is catching.
It's a good thing that I have a healthy sense of the goddess's humor.
The students are gone now. The hall is quiet, and there is much to think about that has nothing to do with any of this.
I hope you all have wonderful weekends and are safe and warm.
Walking to work after lunch today, I was behind a group of men all loud and boisterous, less from an exuberant personality trait than the need to speak loudly enough to be heard through the ear muffs that are the ubiquitous and required at this time of year. (in case anyone is coming to the state for the first time, yes, they do hand them out as you cross the border north from Kansas and there are ear muff kiosks at the airports. consider it a public mental health service. cold ears = super cranky.) I do not have any idea what they were talking about, though, not because of my own ear covering, but because I was thoroughly distracted by the precarious position of the pants on the man just in front of me. I have no idea what was holding them up, and I didn't see braces or suspenders, so it might have been sheer luck or will, but my stomach clenched in anticipation of the moment when they would fall, he would fall, and I would have to look away in horror lest I catch of glimpse of underwear I am sure he would rather not acknowledge having. I always assume that everyone is secretly ashamed of their underwear - which is why we keep putting it display - and would not want to make that shame greater by involving myself in it in any way.
Also, I learned that Iowegians change lightbulbs that are blown. Apparently Nebraskans don't, at least not the ones that work at the university. The man who said that was wearing stupid gloves, therefore I do not trust him, even if he is from my mother's home state.
Ula had today off. She was "sick," a condition brought on at her office manager's insistence. Sometimes I am amazed that she can tolerate me, as I would be happy to be unsupervised and have days off randomly with nothing to do but roam around town, and she was so flustered at the change of routine that her phone wasn't ringing properly. Yes, I am convinced that was the problem. Her phone would ring, in her pocket, and neither one of us would hear it. This is the woman who can hear her phone ringing in the bottom of her purse in a crowded bar on a Friday night. And she didn't hear it.
Partly that could be because we were both very unsettled at having just seen/not seen my ex husband, who I didn't see because I was looking at the sandwich shop sign - a thing which I have never done as it is a place into which I will not go on principle (chain) - and she saw him and his girlfriend and I totally missed it, thereby, I am sure, being thoroughly rude. This actually bothers me. Not that I am not rude by nature, but it's disturbing to me to be rude on accident. It indicates a lack of awareness of my surroundings followed by the several moments of concern over how to make it okay - how to prevent any more negativity about me going out into the world. It's selfish, I'm hip.
Ula really should not have days off. Everything is thrown off balance.
Every now and then things are just floomey. They just go all odd and there's really nothing to do but wait them out and read a good book. That's the problem - there's really nothing that you can "do" - not just to make it better, but at all, because everything is all topsy-turvy and any action that is committed will very likely end up having to be committed again. I recommend a nice long read in a very warm place with a glass of water - seriously, I mean water. It's good for you and will help avoid the hangover you are likely to give yourself otherwise. Because, remember, it's not just you for whom the world is all upside down - it's everyone around you and it's the kind of thing that is catching.
It's a good thing that I have a healthy sense of the goddess's humor.
The students are gone now. The hall is quiet, and there is much to think about that has nothing to do with any of this.
I hope you all have wonderful weekends and are safe and warm.
Tuesday, 11 December 2007
it’s not that I don’t want to complain...
I just can't bring myself to it today.
I bought myself slippers at random while at target with Ula last week. I promptly developed a cold and stayed in bed for an entire Saturday (my first Saturday at home by myself with nowhere to be, mind), but I don't believe those things to be connected, necessarily.
The reason I mention this has to do with a late evening's adventure last night when it was required of me to go out of my apartment, down the stairs, out the front door, around to the back of the house, down the newly re-done (thank you, Howard) stairs and flip my fucking breaker. Again.
We moved the fridge. I am convinced that all of the things that are happening in my house are as a result of moving the fridge. I could have been content to live with a kitchen whose accessibility was severely hampered by the bottle-neck effect of the world's most ridiculously large for one person fridge placed right next to the stove giving an already narrow and dark kitchen the feel of a very strange vaginal canal leading to and from my womb-like bedroom (which I've decided to decorate like a cloud, just in case anyone was wondering). It's not that I'm a prude or anything, it's just that I really do have better things to do with my brain that actually have to go through the thought process every morning that 'I'm just now being born into the world. Again.' And believe me, I would. I'm very routine oriented when I feel like it.
The fridge was, therefore, moved to a much more acceptable spot and now holds a place of prestige and honor and occasionally acts as a very tall and not remotely cushion-y cushion for the terror twins who like to hang out there while I bathe. Don't ask, I don't know. And everything in it promptly froze. Which has been mentioned before, so I may continue.
With the fridge moved, the next project was the attempt to prevent wind from coming through the house by putting plastic up on all of the windows. There are ten in my cloud-room alone. This was not going to be, and in fact was not, a single evening's adventure. Now, I have been putting plastic up on windows since my parents discovered this wonderful new thing many many years ago. Which means that I have been used to using a hair dryer to shrink the plastic so that you can't hear the plastic billowing in the wind or see wrinkles - in effect, the only real purpose I can see for using the hair dryer is to make it look as though there is no plastic holding back the winter coming in through the windows that it will cost many thousands of dollars that not one of us has, to fix. I'm sure that there is some other, rational, not cynical explanation, but I don't know it.
If you ever come over to my house, you will notice that the plastic on the windows billows and is very visible. Because the hair dryer was not used to tighten it. Because I blew the breaker. Three times. I got tired of blowing the breaker every time the hair dryer got turned on. We turned off all of the lights in the house, lit candles and unplugged the clock. We forgot to unplug the fridge. And blew the breaker. At that point it was 7 at night and dark and I was tired. So I went to the bar with Ula. We had earned it.
A few days later, I was moving the second of two bookshelves from one side of the living room to the other and deciding how much more I was up for doing that evening when everything went dark. I had blown the breaker. I had Nothing plugged in! Nothing. There were only 3 lights on. And I blew the breaker.
So, I turn off lights when I leave rooms. I am comforted knowing that my heat is gas and the electricity in my cloud is on its own circuit, therefore guaranteeing that I will be warm even if I am in the dark. I have developed a very uncanny sense of time passing. I never bathe right before leaving the house, as I cannot dry my hair and have not pursued getting the toaster oven I would love to have, because it is something which gets plugged into walls and they are walls which I distrust.
Living alone means that I have lots of projects: going through boxes and sorting stuff, baking things, finishing craft things, starting craft things, cataloging my books, reading, listening to radio, cataloging my books, writing letters, exploring themes, cataloging my books.
In order to catalog my books, it is necessary to decide on the specific items of information which will be listed in combination with the title, author, publisher, edition, year of publication, pagination and illustration, if applicable. I have decided to include at least one quote from each book and perhaps some indication of whether I have read it before, if I remember why I have the book, etc. As I have no computer, but do have much paper and binders and a typewriter, it seems appropriate to use the typewriter to record the information I would like on some of the filler paper that I have collected over the years and to the put that paper into one of the many binders that I have, and perhaps to decorate that binder using the other kinds of resources that are at hand.
The sticking point is the typewriter. It's electric and makes a certain amount of noise, particularly when it's on my desk, which is wood, which is sitting on a wood floor which is the top of the ceiling of my downstairs neighbors. I do not want to rattle at them, so I decided to make a sort of pad to put between the typewriter and desk. I decided to use yarn for which there seems to be no other purpose and found a nice stitch (star stitch, in case you are interested) which I worked into a sort of frame, 24 x 18 inches, give or take. It was intentionally large, the cotton I used shrinks considerably when washed, which I did next. and since it's going to be stitched with ribbon to a piece of fabric and then to batting and a backing to make a sort of not quilted knotted-quilt pillow, I wanted to do what I could to make the piece square, which it didn't naturally want to be. So, I plugged in the iron.
It blew the breaker.
By the time I got outside, slippered and coated and ready to head to the back door, down the stairs to the basement and almost immediately back up again, there was no wind, the sky was as black as the clouds and light pollution would let it be, which was something like slate gray and the freezing rain had begun.
I stood under a tree in the backyard and smoked a cigarette, not wanting to walk up the snow covered back stairs, and also not wanting to be seen on the well-lit front porch by passers-by. It was unbelievably quiet. There weren't many cars to be heard and none to be seen moving down my street or through the intersection several feet away. Frozen rain crunches underfoot and as long as you don't make any sudden moves, is really not slippery. I paced back and forth ducking under the lowest of the evergreen branches under which I had taken shelter for my cigarette.
My fingers were a little cold, but with a hat and a coat and no wind to speak of, the winter wasn't so bad. It helped that my feet were warm and felt sturdy against the weather on the sidewalk, a thing which for a pedestrian is an odd study in ice and snow and salt and human habits. I really like my slippers. I'm glad I bought them.
I bought myself slippers at random while at target with Ula last week. I promptly developed a cold and stayed in bed for an entire Saturday (my first Saturday at home by myself with nowhere to be, mind), but I don't believe those things to be connected, necessarily.
The reason I mention this has to do with a late evening's adventure last night when it was required of me to go out of my apartment, down the stairs, out the front door, around to the back of the house, down the newly re-done (thank you, Howard) stairs and flip my fucking breaker. Again.
We moved the fridge. I am convinced that all of the things that are happening in my house are as a result of moving the fridge. I could have been content to live with a kitchen whose accessibility was severely hampered by the bottle-neck effect of the world's most ridiculously large for one person fridge placed right next to the stove giving an already narrow and dark kitchen the feel of a very strange vaginal canal leading to and from my womb-like bedroom (which I've decided to decorate like a cloud, just in case anyone was wondering). It's not that I'm a prude or anything, it's just that I really do have better things to do with my brain that actually have to go through the thought process every morning that 'I'm just now being born into the world. Again.' And believe me, I would. I'm very routine oriented when I feel like it.
The fridge was, therefore, moved to a much more acceptable spot and now holds a place of prestige and honor and occasionally acts as a very tall and not remotely cushion-y cushion for the terror twins who like to hang out there while I bathe. Don't ask, I don't know. And everything in it promptly froze. Which has been mentioned before, so I may continue.
With the fridge moved, the next project was the attempt to prevent wind from coming through the house by putting plastic up on all of the windows. There are ten in my cloud-room alone. This was not going to be, and in fact was not, a single evening's adventure. Now, I have been putting plastic up on windows since my parents discovered this wonderful new thing many many years ago. Which means that I have been used to using a hair dryer to shrink the plastic so that you can't hear the plastic billowing in the wind or see wrinkles - in effect, the only real purpose I can see for using the hair dryer is to make it look as though there is no plastic holding back the winter coming in through the windows that it will cost many thousands of dollars that not one of us has, to fix. I'm sure that there is some other, rational, not cynical explanation, but I don't know it.
If you ever come over to my house, you will notice that the plastic on the windows billows and is very visible. Because the hair dryer was not used to tighten it. Because I blew the breaker. Three times. I got tired of blowing the breaker every time the hair dryer got turned on. We turned off all of the lights in the house, lit candles and unplugged the clock. We forgot to unplug the fridge. And blew the breaker. At that point it was 7 at night and dark and I was tired. So I went to the bar with Ula. We had earned it.
A few days later, I was moving the second of two bookshelves from one side of the living room to the other and deciding how much more I was up for doing that evening when everything went dark. I had blown the breaker. I had Nothing plugged in! Nothing. There were only 3 lights on. And I blew the breaker.
So, I turn off lights when I leave rooms. I am comforted knowing that my heat is gas and the electricity in my cloud is on its own circuit, therefore guaranteeing that I will be warm even if I am in the dark. I have developed a very uncanny sense of time passing. I never bathe right before leaving the house, as I cannot dry my hair and have not pursued getting the toaster oven I would love to have, because it is something which gets plugged into walls and they are walls which I distrust.
Living alone means that I have lots of projects: going through boxes and sorting stuff, baking things, finishing craft things, starting craft things, cataloging my books, reading, listening to radio, cataloging my books, writing letters, exploring themes, cataloging my books.
In order to catalog my books, it is necessary to decide on the specific items of information which will be listed in combination with the title, author, publisher, edition, year of publication, pagination and illustration, if applicable. I have decided to include at least one quote from each book and perhaps some indication of whether I have read it before, if I remember why I have the book, etc. As I have no computer, but do have much paper and binders and a typewriter, it seems appropriate to use the typewriter to record the information I would like on some of the filler paper that I have collected over the years and to the put that paper into one of the many binders that I have, and perhaps to decorate that binder using the other kinds of resources that are at hand.
The sticking point is the typewriter. It's electric and makes a certain amount of noise, particularly when it's on my desk, which is wood, which is sitting on a wood floor which is the top of the ceiling of my downstairs neighbors. I do not want to rattle at them, so I decided to make a sort of pad to put between the typewriter and desk. I decided to use yarn for which there seems to be no other purpose and found a nice stitch (star stitch, in case you are interested) which I worked into a sort of frame, 24 x 18 inches, give or take. It was intentionally large, the cotton I used shrinks considerably when washed, which I did next. and since it's going to be stitched with ribbon to a piece of fabric and then to batting and a backing to make a sort of not quilted knotted-quilt pillow, I wanted to do what I could to make the piece square, which it didn't naturally want to be. So, I plugged in the iron.
It blew the breaker.
By the time I got outside, slippered and coated and ready to head to the back door, down the stairs to the basement and almost immediately back up again, there was no wind, the sky was as black as the clouds and light pollution would let it be, which was something like slate gray and the freezing rain had begun.
I stood under a tree in the backyard and smoked a cigarette, not wanting to walk up the snow covered back stairs, and also not wanting to be seen on the well-lit front porch by passers-by. It was unbelievably quiet. There weren't many cars to be heard and none to be seen moving down my street or through the intersection several feet away. Frozen rain crunches underfoot and as long as you don't make any sudden moves, is really not slippery. I paced back and forth ducking under the lowest of the evergreen branches under which I had taken shelter for my cigarette.
My fingers were a little cold, but with a hat and a coat and no wind to speak of, the winter wasn't so bad. It helped that my feet were warm and felt sturdy against the weather on the sidewalk, a thing which for a pedestrian is an odd study in ice and snow and salt and human habits. I really like my slippers. I'm glad I bought them.
Tuesday, 4 December 2007
no really, it's all true...
Today is a day of gray clouds hiding the sun which has been on verge of sunset since about 11 this morning. Earlier, I wrote this in an email to a friend: "it's so lovely out. I'd really rather be on a park bench with a cup of hot chai and maybe a bag of some ridiculous Pepperidge Farm cookie or other. And my book. Which I'm loving utterly - the Wordsworth and Coleridge one."
And it's true. All of it. The part about the chai, the cookies (preferably one of the kinds with ridiculously huge nut bits or chocolate chunks - you know which ones, the kind that are named after cities because that's how big they are - not the nice little fancy you-can-drink-tea-with-them cookies that I really like, especially the variety packs of the tidy cookies, yeah - not those), and the book. Even the park bench thing is true, which is cool, because there are a few benches on campus, but no one ever sits on them to read, because why would anyone read?
I have finished the baby blanket and am now seriously contemplating beginning another one, because I know someone else who had a baby and they are small creatures and can get cold very easily, this being winter and all, and we all know that the only reason I'm thinking about it is that I'm still on a high from the completion of the one I've been working on for more than a year and that it's really a much better idea for me to continue going through every single box in my home and re-sorting and throwing away and all of that. Yes. I know. It's a much better idea.
But but but but there's a book at the library that's entirely ripple stitches - entirely!!! and and and I like the baby silk that I used for this last blanket (OMG! softest blanket ever! E-VER, do you hear me?). Yeah. Well. there are about 30 pounds of yarn at home that will not be used for anything that will ever touch a baby that I know - icky grody acrylic (does anyone know how to spell grodey without getting the red squiggly line?)
So, everything else I have to say is all kinds of thoughtful and serious and I'm really just not in the fucking mood.
It's beautiful out. And I'm in. And that's pissifying. But it's beautiful out.
And it's true. All of it. The part about the chai, the cookies (preferably one of the kinds with ridiculously huge nut bits or chocolate chunks - you know which ones, the kind that are named after cities because that's how big they are - not the nice little fancy you-can-drink-tea-with-them cookies that I really like, especially the variety packs of the tidy cookies, yeah - not those), and the book. Even the park bench thing is true, which is cool, because there are a few benches on campus, but no one ever sits on them to read, because why would anyone read?
I have finished the baby blanket and am now seriously contemplating beginning another one, because I know someone else who had a baby and they are small creatures and can get cold very easily, this being winter and all, and we all know that the only reason I'm thinking about it is that I'm still on a high from the completion of the one I've been working on for more than a year and that it's really a much better idea for me to continue going through every single box in my home and re-sorting and throwing away and all of that. Yes. I know. It's a much better idea.
But but but but there's a book at the library that's entirely ripple stitches - entirely!!! and and and I like the baby silk that I used for this last blanket (OMG! softest blanket ever! E-VER, do you hear me?). Yeah. Well. there are about 30 pounds of yarn at home that will not be used for anything that will ever touch a baby that I know - icky grody acrylic (does anyone know how to spell grodey without getting the red squiggly line?)
So, everything else I have to say is all kinds of thoughtful and serious and I'm really just not in the fucking mood.
It's beautiful out. And I'm in. And that's pissifying. But it's beautiful out.
Saturday, 1 December 2007
Applesauce and other disturbances
Two days ago, while listening to a book about William Smith and the first geologic map of anything (Bath, in case you're curious), I decided to try my hand at applesauce.
Normally, I would not do this. Fruit is kind of a mystery to me, and I prefer to let it be. However, during the grand moving of everything around my place, the refrigerator got moved and everything inside of it promptly froze. Including the apples. Which then became not good for munching or salads. Very good for cooking down to bits with spices.
So, I hauled out the handy dandy bland but available Betty Crocker and found the recipe for applesauce which said I needed 4 apples - the same number of apples currently languishing in a frozen state in one of the crisper drawers of my increasingly moody refrigerator! What are the odds.
Peeling frozen apples.
Yeah.
Cold hands and some not entirely certain passes at cutting the ice-apples in my hands had me pulling out the cutting board and creating not fourths but eighths out of the whole apples. The smaller bits are easier to carve the icky bits away from and the pan I was using is small-ish and I don't like to wait for things to fall apart on their own. I use force. (The metaphor is not available for extension at this time.)
The recipe calls for 1/2 cup of water. It isn't lying. It is very tempting to say that it's lying. Resist the temptation. Fight the Borg within. Trust the knowledge of your elders. One half of a cup of water is plenty for 4 medium sized cooking apples cut into fourths. Or eighths. Or rhomboids.
I currently live in an apartment with a gas stove. which is stupendously wonderful for things like fried chicken and boiling water, but soup and slow cooking - it's user error, I know this, but I'd really like to blame it on the very very old gas stove trying desperately to prove its worth at the very end. It needs love. And an overhaul. I have Brillo pads. I will win the battle of the ick on the burners, but I am no oven mechanic, I do not understand the tricky aspects of gas lines and burners that won't burn when something is over them.
The water boiled very quickly. And then didn't stop boiling. Not when I turned down the flame to the barest suggestion of gas spewage, not even when I pointed to the cookbook and informed the stove that I have explicit instructions saying that boiling is not any longer required. It boiled on. I found my potato masher. And I mashed the apples.
I love my potato masher. Truly. I don't know if my parents know that I have it. It is a combination potato masher - cudgel. In times of dire need, I can wallop someone over the head with the rounded end of my wooden masher and probably leave a very oddly shaped mark. None of these permanent plastic mashers for me, no, I will have something heavy and breakable, yes.
Mashing apples is very much not the same as stirring fudge. They both require standing at the stove, one hand on hip or the handle of the pot, one hand using a utensil to manipulate the contents of that pot in a specific and defined way. This is where the similarities end. Mashing apples releases energy in a focused and productive way and is destructive all at the same time. Stirring fudge is endless and frustrating. Even after the fudge is poured and chilled and cut and ready to eat. You still wasted a huge portion of your life stirring the fudge. I only stirred fudge once a year one time. Probably only 6 or 7 times in my life have I stood at a stove wooden spoon in hand, stirring fudge. And yet it is an overriding image in my mind, one of my favorite analogies and holiday memories and a great family joke. Because it is easier to explain than the 30 miles thing, I suspect.
The apples got mashed. I cooked them a bit longer, hoping that the boiling wouldn't hurt them, pulling out the stringy bits that I hate in applesauce - does no one else value consistency in their mush? If it's mush - I don't want to know what it was before it was mush. I want no lingering attempts at pre-mush identification. It's distracting.
In preparing the brown sugar and spices combination, I was still thinking that a half a cup of water would be too little, and planned the spices accordingly. Also, I didn't read the fractions before the word teaspoon until it occurred to me that maybe I didn't need that much nutmeg. and I added cloves. It is winter. If you are going put cinnamon (cassia for those of us who buy what's available) and nutmeg into something edible, you add cloves. It's my new rule about winter cooking. Fortunately, I enjoy dark brown sugar and I enjoy cloves and nutmeg; cinnamon (cassia) makes me twitch when there's too much - everyone's got their spice thing, this is mine.
It came out fine. It cooled down and is in my refrigerator right now. I haven't had any of it.
I will later, but right now my mother and I are waiting for the ice to melt from the trees and roads and maybe even sidewalks before venturing out into the world where it is gray and raining and probably wonderful.
Oh, and: Ethel eats soap.
Normally, I would not do this. Fruit is kind of a mystery to me, and I prefer to let it be. However, during the grand moving of everything around my place, the refrigerator got moved and everything inside of it promptly froze. Including the apples. Which then became not good for munching or salads. Very good for cooking down to bits with spices.
So, I hauled out the handy dandy bland but available Betty Crocker and found the recipe for applesauce which said I needed 4 apples - the same number of apples currently languishing in a frozen state in one of the crisper drawers of my increasingly moody refrigerator! What are the odds.
Peeling frozen apples.
Yeah.
Cold hands and some not entirely certain passes at cutting the ice-apples in my hands had me pulling out the cutting board and creating not fourths but eighths out of the whole apples. The smaller bits are easier to carve the icky bits away from and the pan I was using is small-ish and I don't like to wait for things to fall apart on their own. I use force. (The metaphor is not available for extension at this time.)
The recipe calls for 1/2 cup of water. It isn't lying. It is very tempting to say that it's lying. Resist the temptation. Fight the Borg within. Trust the knowledge of your elders. One half of a cup of water is plenty for 4 medium sized cooking apples cut into fourths. Or eighths. Or rhomboids.
I currently live in an apartment with a gas stove. which is stupendously wonderful for things like fried chicken and boiling water, but soup and slow cooking - it's user error, I know this, but I'd really like to blame it on the very very old gas stove trying desperately to prove its worth at the very end. It needs love. And an overhaul. I have Brillo pads. I will win the battle of the ick on the burners, but I am no oven mechanic, I do not understand the tricky aspects of gas lines and burners that won't burn when something is over them.
The water boiled very quickly. And then didn't stop boiling. Not when I turned down the flame to the barest suggestion of gas spewage, not even when I pointed to the cookbook and informed the stove that I have explicit instructions saying that boiling is not any longer required. It boiled on. I found my potato masher. And I mashed the apples.
I love my potato masher. Truly. I don't know if my parents know that I have it. It is a combination potato masher - cudgel. In times of dire need, I can wallop someone over the head with the rounded end of my wooden masher and probably leave a very oddly shaped mark. None of these permanent plastic mashers for me, no, I will have something heavy and breakable, yes.
Mashing apples is very much not the same as stirring fudge. They both require standing at the stove, one hand on hip or the handle of the pot, one hand using a utensil to manipulate the contents of that pot in a specific and defined way. This is where the similarities end. Mashing apples releases energy in a focused and productive way and is destructive all at the same time. Stirring fudge is endless and frustrating. Even after the fudge is poured and chilled and cut and ready to eat. You still wasted a huge portion of your life stirring the fudge. I only stirred fudge once a year one time. Probably only 6 or 7 times in my life have I stood at a stove wooden spoon in hand, stirring fudge. And yet it is an overriding image in my mind, one of my favorite analogies and holiday memories and a great family joke. Because it is easier to explain than the 30 miles thing, I suspect.
The apples got mashed. I cooked them a bit longer, hoping that the boiling wouldn't hurt them, pulling out the stringy bits that I hate in applesauce - does no one else value consistency in their mush? If it's mush - I don't want to know what it was before it was mush. I want no lingering attempts at pre-mush identification. It's distracting.
In preparing the brown sugar and spices combination, I was still thinking that a half a cup of water would be too little, and planned the spices accordingly. Also, I didn't read the fractions before the word teaspoon until it occurred to me that maybe I didn't need that much nutmeg. and I added cloves. It is winter. If you are going put cinnamon (cassia for those of us who buy what's available) and nutmeg into something edible, you add cloves. It's my new rule about winter cooking. Fortunately, I enjoy dark brown sugar and I enjoy cloves and nutmeg; cinnamon (cassia) makes me twitch when there's too much - everyone's got their spice thing, this is mine.
It came out fine. It cooled down and is in my refrigerator right now. I haven't had any of it.
I will later, but right now my mother and I are waiting for the ice to melt from the trees and roads and maybe even sidewalks before venturing out into the world where it is gray and raining and probably wonderful.
Oh, and: Ethel eats soap.
Wednesday, 28 November 2007
recent thematic occurences
Every now and again in my life there are repetitions of ideas or words or conversations - it happens to everyone that I know, sometimes more, sometimes less, but it is difficult to go an entire year without a day of someThing. There were two things recently - one of which I cannot remember, the other was Mystic. As in Pizza and Connecticut. I wondered where it would lead. There are some themes which are not really for contemplation, rather they are like the flashing light for don't walk or slow down or almost to go.
It helps to counteract the beginnings of the cool down after the move. I am gaining weight, the kittens are well and healthy, the job is being what it is, but it isn't changing, and suddenly the past is swooping in on soft huge wings to cover and smother me when I am making turkey soup or sorting through cards or reading a beloved book, or doing crosswords.
The distraction back to the world of productive thought is a good and useful and enjoyed and somewhat desperately grabbed.
I think of the quiet and dark of the womb - well, quiet, not so much, but definitely dark. The quiet is for the cave of the bears who pace in my psyche, comfortable in their sleep, sharing dreams and birth and rest all winter until the spring comes and I am again given to the wandering, snuffling loss of my self into the world. Summer is a time of great confusion for me, it always has been. Winter is the time when I know myself best, when I am most at peace. And this year, I can be at peace without a draft on my face.
The books I find seem to be filled with rhythms and words that I understand in a way I could not have imagined even months ago. I find the goddess a carefully approached entity, I am careful not to get too close, for I know how easily she folds you in to herself. But I cannot stay away for long. I enjoy too much the danger of treading close to the fire, to the energy of the words, that place where all could be lost is where I find what that is.
Now I am hungry and must go downstairs to make some bad food for my tummy. All are well and healthy and maneuvering through this season joyfully if not smiling.
It helps to counteract the beginnings of the cool down after the move. I am gaining weight, the kittens are well and healthy, the job is being what it is, but it isn't changing, and suddenly the past is swooping in on soft huge wings to cover and smother me when I am making turkey soup or sorting through cards or reading a beloved book, or doing crosswords.
The distraction back to the world of productive thought is a good and useful and enjoyed and somewhat desperately grabbed.
I think of the quiet and dark of the womb - well, quiet, not so much, but definitely dark. The quiet is for the cave of the bears who pace in my psyche, comfortable in their sleep, sharing dreams and birth and rest all winter until the spring comes and I am again given to the wandering, snuffling loss of my self into the world. Summer is a time of great confusion for me, it always has been. Winter is the time when I know myself best, when I am most at peace. And this year, I can be at peace without a draft on my face.
The books I find seem to be filled with rhythms and words that I understand in a way I could not have imagined even months ago. I find the goddess a carefully approached entity, I am careful not to get too close, for I know how easily she folds you in to herself. But I cannot stay away for long. I enjoy too much the danger of treading close to the fire, to the energy of the words, that place where all could be lost is where I find what that is.
Now I am hungry and must go downstairs to make some bad food for my tummy. All are well and healthy and maneuvering through this season joyfully if not smiling.
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