Enchanting Juno

Waking.

It happened again yesterday, the most terrifying thing.

I have a long and deeply codependent relationship with my alarm clock.  I hate it, and yet need it; I sleep deeply in the mornings, the sleep of the chronically under-rested, the sleep of the habitually late.  And so I need it. 
But it rings and I start up like a heart attack, alert for predators, pulse rapid, startled, disoriented.
Or more accurately, it rings for 45 minutes and THEN I start up like a heart attack, when the cumulative noise manages to penetrate the thickness of my skull.
Anyone who's ever stayed in my house knows about this and I do, again, apologize.

Maybe a year ago I switched to the local classical station instead of the alarm.  It still takes 45 minutes for the noise to work its transformation on my consciousness, but it is MUCH nicer noise and generally the newscaster discussing the most recent suicide bombings on the hour finishes the job of getting me into the shower.  In the shower DEPRESSED at this point, of course, but vertical and conscious are the only things I require most days.  Cheerful would be expecting too much.

Recently they have been playing snippets from the soundtrack to Oklahoma as part of advertising for a local production.  A fine musical, but you have not experienced anxiety until you have been ripped into consciousness by a high volume rendition of "Oklahoma, where the wind comes sweepin' down the plain..."  Twice.  They holler it a bit, don't they?

This morning I dreamed that my Thanksgiving turkey was going to war (I WISH I could recall against whom, I do) and woke up to the news report on Turkey's invasion of northern Iraq.  Sometimes dreams are just logic filtered through a half-alert system.  But the sleeping brain is weird indeed.

Things that are chapping my ass mightily this week:

The Virginia House has approved in a panel HB 1126 which makes what they call feticide and I call miscarriage or abortion a CLASS 4 FELONY (to clarify, this bill has been approved for consideration, not passed, as I understand it).  I refer you to the Fairfax Times.

Along with this is the proposed legislation in Missouri which would make law the scientifically inaccurate view that emergency contraception* causes abortions.  Via Feministing and Bitch PhD.

Not to mention the headline I saw in the check out aisle last week vilifying Angelina Jolie for daring to endanger the lives of her unborn children by visiting Iraq in pursuit of cheap publicity.  Which inflamed me.   

A woman, any woman, is not a vehicle for reproduction alone.  Her rights as a human being are not replaced the moment she conceives by the rights of the embryos inside her.  Women are not brood mares nor children incapable of self determination; pregnancy does not grant others the right to control my life and body or yours or hers for the sake of some fascist idea of the greater good as determined by someone in an office somewhere with a bad case of misogyny and fear of loss of status in an equal world.

Plus - this woman has a long history of commitment to humanitarian work.  Whether you like or respect her or not, I think the accusation of publicity seeking is a reach, and another way to diminish her for daring to step outside of the box marked "sex object".

In Dallas last week security at the Obama rally was relaxed several hours before the event began - apparently on orders from the SECRET SERVICE.  To make the event move along faster.  Never had any intention of screening everyone.  Uh huh.  The Secret Service disagrees with the accusation of course, but have any other candidate's campaign events had security relaxed this way?  Am I paranoid to find this significant? 

I'm not really going anywhere with this, just needed to get it off my chest.  If you have a state or federal legislator connected to any of these things and you find them troubling I encourage you to say so. 

Which reminds me of this completely fantastic thing: a few months ago a guy stopped by my office.  Usually these wandering pitchmen get short shrift, but he was kind of interesting, or what he was selling was: he worked with an organization called National Write Your Congressman.  Which is kind of awesome - I get these weekly faxed summaries of what congress is up to, and mailing packets with postcards for writing my congressman.  Last week they sent me a book containing the text of important American documents - when was the last time I sat down and really read the Bill of Rights, or the 14th amendment?   And if I have a question about specific issue, they will be happy to send me research on the specifics.

I wonder about the long term effectiveness of all this stuff of course - can all our single voices change anything? - but you know, years ago my dad was having trouble getting an invoice honored by a state authority.  And he wrote to his congressman.  And it helped.  Small example and small business oriented, I admit.  But silence never got anything done at all.

Added later: * originally and erroneously read 'emergency conception'.  Which would be a rather different sort of thing.

Vitamin deficient. Or Something.

I have been reduced to stupid knitting for some time.  I have, like, a whole plan for what to do with some existing not-stupid knitting and even a desire to embark on some other even less stupid knitting - I have swatched, oh, how I have swatched.    But non-stupid knitting is dependent on one very important thing, a non-stupid knitter.  And that I cannot help you with.

(For clarification, stupid knitting is for when I am at a low ebb of focus and fuzzy of intellect.  The knitting itself is of at least average intelligence and often of great charm and beauty.  Which is to say, it is the knitter who is stupid, not the knitting.)
(excuse me, I took a drink and missed and have just poured iced tea down my bra.  It is quite cold.)
(and also, I rest my case)

Recently I have made a hat which I cannot show you because the pictures are at home and I am not, and am wearing a finished greenjeans sweater which I have never showed you - though you can find it on the Ravelry if you like (It is very good.  The sweater I mean.) and am taking my second run at a pattern I feel is a nearly perfect manifestation of the stupid knitting aesthetic - easily memorized, very beautiful, easily fixed when my attention wanders even further astray, pattern-free and multi gauge friendly.

(All in some chunky blue tussah silk I bought a year or so ago and which crawled out of the stash and bit me on the leg recently in a demandingly insistent sort of way.  I have been having some trouble buying yarn (though I expect this will pass).  It seems the demands of my existing relationships are enough; I cannot take any new lovers for a time.  And which I also cannot show you until I come up with a useful picture, so instead, look at this - the entire time I was visiting my mother for Christmas I tried to get up for the sunrise - forgetting that the east there is mountain-shadowed and by the time the sun reaches over it to us, rising is long past.  I finally got my chance at the airport waiting to go home: even with the tarmac, it was beautiful.)

 

I am distracted really.  Is it February?  Ordinarily a month that does not upset me, this year it seems extraordinarily gray.  Today I managed to blow my hair dry before I dressed rather than flying out the door soggily coiffed and in yesterday's jeans.  I was still 15 minutes late, mind you, but this is, nevertheless, an improvement.  In winters past I have used a lamp on a timer to combat middle winter mornings, and I realize now I've never gotten it set up this year (hardly seems worth looking for at this point), which may explain the past six weeks of pathological reluctance to leaving the insulated down cocoon I sleep in.  Does that mean that I am making progress in my fight against the gloom in some larger sense, even when the mornings feel like losing ground against something?

It was a good weekend - for years I have made the argument that we should switch to a 3 days off, 4 days on work schedule and have lower blood pressure and more sleep and generally happier lives.  No one listens, but every three day weekend convinces me further that a less bottom line approach to life is the key.

City Garden LES NY

I napped a great deal and met some excellent people and ate some excellent food and knit a bit and listened to music and read and made an important decision about what it OK and what is not and acted on it (no longer knee-deep in boys, regretfully) and also my mother had back surgery and is groggy and doped up and not looking forward to being moved later but essentially herself in all important ways, which is very good.  As much as I complain about her she IS my mom and anesthesia is scary.  Please remind me I said that the next time I wish to stab her through the eye with a US8 aluminum straight.

Oh, and I had Moroccan tea for the first time (also couscous with stewed lamb: if you are going to eat meat this is definitely the way to go, which is more than I can say for the hamburger I ate Friday), maybe a hair too sweet but delicious, and then walked six doors down to buy some too - fair trade the girl behind the counter informed me while she bagged my loot.  Which is nice.  Delicious AND you don't have to go to hell directly after drinking it.  Have you noticed that grocery shopping is becoming increasingly fraught?  One does one's best, but someone somewhere is being exploited on my behalf right this minute.  It is the nature of human life to damage both the environment and adjacent other life just in the act of living.  Unavoidable.  And yet.  I told someone recently I was starting to have a certain amount of sympathy for the Janists.
I just finished reading Women's Work, the First 20000 Years this weekend - reading it as opposed to owning it and having skimmed it enough to find it interesting.  Excellent book - any interest in women, textiles, archeology, good writing, history or language?  Read it (If you had, you would know that the Venus de Milo was almost certainly using a drop spindle before she lost her bits.  See?  Go. Read.).  And now I have to read the Mummies of Urumchi which I find I resent terribly, almost.  I have a life-long habit of avoiding paleontology and archeology as a backlash against the extraordinary numbers of bones I was asked to look at by my mother, who was an enthusiast and had the typical sensitivity to her audience that an enthusiast has.  I remember that when we saw Lucy my feet hurt and that's about it.
I should have more retroactive sympathy these days - can I show you some wool, perhaps?  But it is an excellent book - and makes me very sorry indeed I paid so little attention when I took linguistics from Dr. Barber a million years ago.  Honestly, my education was wasted on me in some ways and I rather think I owe her an apology.

Oh, there was a point to this, I swear - somewhere in the early part of the book she makes the point that we are the inheritors of the waste of 20000 years of human invention and industry.  I'm trying to decide if that alleviates anything, knowing that, or if its just context.  Fair trade tea hardly makes a dent, though I think its a worthwhile endeavor anyway. 

I heard from two long lost old friends last week and had a drink or two with someone who isn't lost so much as just not as intimate anymore.  It is interesting my gut responses to each contact - which ones I feel most positive about seem largely related to how close I was to being my essential self when I knew them.  It is very non-linear, which is a bit of a surprise - apparently my junior year in college was a time of greater solidity than the decade after:  identity is remarkably fluid sometimes, running into the corners of experience and environment and changing how you are no matter how fiercely you cling to your self-knowledge. 

You see people walking around drinking coffee with their white earbuds in, or sitting at a red light and they never show a bit of what is going on, not really.  Just people running errands, walking through the city with Joni Mitchell playing in their heads, or carpooling.  But inside we all have a lot going on, all these thoughts, passions, fears and excitement, stories piled up on stories, failures and successes and all the things that are neither but only life.  All these 20000 years of human development and we're still a mystery to each other and even to our selves.  It is scary to look at sometimes, that unregulated interior so very fearful, but what a glorious jumble it all is.    It is wonderful to be human.

 

These days that go the other way.

I think its time to face the fact that I may not be a knit blogger.  A blogger, yes, and one who knits.  But as a knitter I am too erratic for focus, too slow for glory and too self-taught for technical mastery.  Not that I mind these things about myself, but they maybe sort of make the knit blogging designation a bit of an overly optimistic statement.
Though I did go out with a guy a few times - a complete knob, it proved -who when he read the blog said "there's an awful lot of wool in it, isn't there?"  And I replied impatiently - yes, well, it's a knit blog [idiot].  (The 'idiot' was implied)

Anyway. 

I've been reading a lot these days - I'm starting to fall in love with the writer's strike.  At first no TV was really weird, kind of left a hole in the evening.  Which was a piece of self-discovery I found very disturbing.  And then I watched old episodes of things to fill in the gaps.  And now, I'm just not turning it on, the tube.   Or not much:  I watch BBC news at 11 sometimes - I find non-American news soothing for its lack of breathless drama and acknowledgment that there is a world outside of this chunk of North America.  Sometimes I catch the Colbert Report and Coupling re-runs on PBS.  The Jane Austen marathon, also on PBS, is fantastic.   
But I'm mostly reading again.

This is a small thing, you may say, but for me it is huge.  I was the original bookworm, ruined my eyes reading under the covers by flashlight, spent the years from 1st grade to 23 or 4 pretty much carrying two books plus a spare in case I finished something out in the world and suffered a terrible word drought that might kill me before I returned to the safety of my book-lined burrow.  But something happened - I worked in book retail for a couple of years and got so tired I stopped reading things that made me think, ever, and focused more on pure escapist literature.  And then I got a job that left me even more tired and involved a bit of editing as well, and I pretty much divided my days between my desk and catatonia, and reading took another hit (this is when I discovered couch TV - the pure numbing power of home improvement shows and similar).   And then my dad died 7 years ago and that finished me: I could not focus on other stories, I could not surrender to narrative.  I couldn't get lost.  I was much too raw to feel the pain, even the imaginary pain, maybe especially the imaginary pain, of others.

Somewhere after that it occurred to me to ask why I was trying to get lost in a book, rather than sucking it dry of inspiration, of education, of guidance.  And I began to read the occasional biography.  A book here and there.  But slowly, and without that joyful surrender I remembered, that time stoppage.  I missed it, but I no longer had the knack.

A few months ago I picked up some kind of escapist literature - a mystery?  A romance?  Which had continued to be the only kind of occasional fiction I could handle - and I couldn't finish it.  Not because I couldn't give in to the story, but because it irritated me with bad logic and poor writing, shallow waters.  After all this time, my critical faculties were stretching, blinking in the light.  I backed away from the crap book and then spent a weekend collecting and organizing the books in my house.  (I have a lot). 

Since then I have carried books with me a little bit like I used to, reading some of them, not all though.  Getting familiar again.  Reading good things.  Gaining momentum, but a weird kind of momentum that involves slowing down and having actual thoughts, actual feelings about what I'm reading.  Taking it inside me and making it part of me.  And I'm finding that I'm accumulating recommendations unconsciously again - a note here, a word there, the list grows.  A giant box from Amazon arrived yesterday and I already finished one of the things inside.  I'm really happy to feel a book in my hands again.   I'm maybe just really happy.

To be me again.  Something about the march of adult life and the shattering force of grief broke this thing I thought was central to my identity and I have missed it so much.  So much.  But it has come back different - tougher and more thoughtful.  Better.

At one point I thought a lot about adding audio books to my day - but it is not the same.  Not bad, but not the same.  You can't trip and hesitate over a phrase, a word, go back and read again and think about it and go on, or skip something with your eyes, catch yourself and step back and wonder what made that paragraph miss for you.  Read it again more slowly.  Audio books do not enhance the silence, audio books are not a break from the onslaught, they don't enter your brain quietly through your hands and eyes.  They can be great - the treadmill for one, is a wonderful place for being read to.  But they are not reading, not for me.

We don't give each other enough time in this word (Update: should be WORLD.  grr.  Although....) Time to be silent, time to formulate thoughts, time to recover, time to grieve.  We can be in such a hurry to get what We NeedNeedNeed that we steamroll over the nuance and delicacy that make our world complex and beautiful.  We can be morons.  Morons with ear buds and a personal soundtrack, morons with 24 hours of streaming video and 200 channels of loud.  What exactly are we trying to drown out?  Our own senses?  Pain?  Other people?