Enchanting Juno

Hope, Faith and Reality: A letter to my dad.

I detest George W Bush, this is not a secret.  The day I can take down the end-of-his-presidency calendar in my sidebar will be a happy one indeed, unless I have to replace it with a McCain one.

But it's been an interesting election cycle for me, one that has really clarified my politics in my own mind.  I posted months ago about the realization that I am not a Democrat.  When my brother called me the shame of the family after Bush/Dukakis in 1988 he was joking, but there's a kernel of truth in it.  I come from a long line of conservatives and I was educated to be one of them.  There's about 10% of me that walks around with a streak of elitism and reserve - it's often my first response when I feel out of my depth, a recoil and swift strike of impatient rebuff - another 10 percent that lacks confidence to put down the barrier and stake a claim on what I think is right, and the other 80% is rational, emotional, humanist, flexible, a little bit timid but always learning. 

I wonder weekly what my dad would have made of Bush.  He detested Clinton for his - well, my dad called it immorality, but I also think it was because Clinton is a highly accomplished and intelligent self-made man.  For men of my dad's generation and, well, class, sexual morality and morality are the same.  You just don't flaunt it, you're not common about it.   A discreet mistress is one thing, an intern in the oval office QUITE another.  
But he was also incredibly threatened by people who had it together to pursue concrete ambitions, who were motivated, organized, driven ...walking in tall cotton he used to say.  As if their accomplishments were a matter of luck only.
I make him sound terrible and he really wasn't - his whole life he was in conflict with the side of himself that thought this way and the side of himself that thought it was idiotic.  Which is why I think so much about what W would have done to his head.   Pop went to Yale (as his father and grandfather before him had), and he had nothing but contempt for the spoiled sons of legacy, skating on shallow charm and privilege, nothing but respect for the men there who were creating something from their own gifts and hard work. 

All my instincts from an early age were in opposition to this world I grew up on the edge of, but defending my ideas was incredibly hard.  My instincts bewildered him - though they were at least partly a product of his own dissatisfaction - and my inarticulateness about how or why I could think the way I did frustrated him.  I knew I disappointed him.  It took me a long time to learn the lesson of reading to develop instinct into opinion and being brave enough to argue about it.  A very long time.

So here it is Pop:

If you were alive I think you'd be voting Obama too, because what has happened over the last 8 years would make you weep.  I could be wrong, but everything you taught me about hard work, about responsibility, about decency, about MANNERS, tells me that.  But I am not embarrassed to think differently than you did anymore, so if you WOULD be voting for McCain, I would totally make fun of you. 
You can't even make the small government argument, because have you listened to the guy?  He hasn't got a principle left that he hasn't abandoned for convenience, far in excess of politics as usual, and his entire campaign is based on fear-mongering.  Let us not even speak of Mrs. Palin and her utter lack of knowledge, or principle or professionalism, and rejection of science or intellect as needful tools.
And if every fear-mongering idiot emphasizing the candidate's middle name doesn't make you queasy with the thinly veiled racism and narrow-minded panic over Otherness, then this time, I'm disappointed in you.

I believe economic self-interest is the worst possible ground to make policy from, second only to vanity. 
I believe the greater good IS the common good, that creating policy that protects and benefits those who have the least makes a world that benefits us all. 
I know we have a responsibility as human beings to follow our own ethics in our own lives, and an obligation to protect the right of every other person to do the same.
I believe government, at some level, should be a service provider.  Not a business entity.

Obama can think, the most important thing you taught me to look for.  I think he has a global view, a sense of the movement of history, basic decency and a grasp of economic priority that makes sense.  He can speak, and he does give me hope that there is a better way to run this place.  His ambitions are not the sum of him.  He's a man, not a miracle, but I think there is a lot of evidence that the tone a president sets can change everything.  And his is the tone I want representing America, representing me.

I know you were happy that my year abroad brought me home more fiscally conservative.  It was because I didn't understand the deeper issues of social policy and it didn't stick.  I hope you don't think you wasted all that money educating me, because the more I learn, the lefter I get.  Thought you should know. 

What I'm On About These Days

Sometime while I was off living instead of writing, typepad appears to have changed everything. And my picture is ENORMOUS.    I wonder how I fix that?

This is what I've been knitting. Cari says cowls are the new hoodie and I agree.  Except for I don't wear hoodies much, they don't suit me, but a little not-floppy warmth around the neck is ace.  In this case some sweet, fuzzy single ply merino-cashmere is even more ace.   2 skeins of Karabella Boise Color 62, knit-and-purl rib loosely on Addis, 130 stitches I think.  It's fluffy.  It'll look nice with my suede trench coat.

I do love me some goat.  I've starting making oaths on cashmere goats instead of any more formal gods.  It's good - try it:  By the undercoats of all the cashmere goats in China.  Better than the power of Graystoke, by far.

Since I took Robin Russo's goat fiber workshop at SOAR, I may have to extend that to all goat fiber.  Do you KNOW about Pygora?  I was was on a mission to find some Pygora B at Rhinebeck and I didn't, but I got some super fantastic Pygora A and Pygora/Merino and I was greedy, greedy and didn't share it at all, just grabbed and bought.  Not even sorry neither.

AND I learned to make a fat fluffy yarn from Maggie Casey, who is such a safe person to make mistakes around I find myself learning with a degree of effortlessness that I thought was gone with my 20s.   I also played with silk fibers with Judith McKenzie which just seemed like fun, except I realize now I learned a lot about how to match fiber and spinning technique and Estonian lace with Nancy Bush, who said the most profound thing - It's a SAMPLER, if you don't like your gauge, just change needles and keep going.  I had been going to rip back and start again in a highly controlled and perfectionistic way.  Moving on is a totally new concept.

And then Rhinbeck was a giant cocktail party of all the wonderful people I get to see so infrequently.  Too huge for intimacy except in fleeting moments, gorgeous color in the trees, knitwear out in force, frantic, overwhelming, hectic, with sudden pockets of stillness and serendipity.  Wonderful.  I barely shopped until the very end when there was a Shetland accident, because it isn't about the acquisition, none of it is.  It's about learning and people.

There was a Peruvian textile accident at SOAR too though.  I cannot tell a lie.

I'm suffering from the post-SOAR, post-Rhinebeck eyes-bigger-than-stomach desire to cast on everything I ever dreamed of knitting, of course.  Gonna have to work on the focus thing, as I've been scattered for months and there isn't much point in starting three sweaters if I am only knitting two rounds a night.  I'm scattered still - the next thing I am thinking is that I saw some gorgeous Finnish fingering weight yarn yesterday and more and more I just think I should only knit lighter weight yarns, if I want to actually have clothes I can wear.  But I think I need to work on my zen because if I am going to knit fingering weight sweaters for my 48 inch chest I am really going to need to be in the moment more than I have been able to swing since about January.

Do you guys have trouble with that - not just with knitting, but with life?  How do you stay all the way present for the good things?

Mulligan.

I wrote this email yesterday to a friend, all about my improved mood and non-specific happiness and old friends and circles closing and how self-image defined by the opinions of others was stupid and I was done with it and it left me feeling full of light and goodness and I was a new person, yay.

Then I went to therapy and got run over by a truck.  Before I even sent the email, which now needs revision.

Therapy is like that.  My belief that I am on top of something is chum to that man.   I asked him about it - he thought I was assigning malice to the incident but no.  It is just that I've noticed that when I have a week where something really feels like its fallen into place and I want to talk about that, he always, always, always directs my attention to something that is still in progress.  Maybe something that couldn't be looked at until that piece fell into place.  He's fucking uncanny, he is. 
I'm a little bitter about not getting to dwell on the happy for a bit longer, is all.  But taking the long view that the fact that he is not always as gentle as he used to be is maybe an indicator that I don't need kid gloves they way I used to.  I am stronger.

All I have to say is that anyone who thinks therapy is self-indulgent ego massage has clearly never been.  This stuff is incredibly, ass-kickingly, hard work. 

However, I was wearing a new mascara and I would like to recommend it on two fronts.  It is  a completely non-flaking formula that stayed out of the lines under my eyes all day and when I cried snottily all over myself in therapy it came off neatly onto the tissue without leaving those flattering raccoon smudges all over my face.  Thumbs up.

Actually I have two new mascaras :
Inju Fiberwig - a lengthening mascara.   
And Kevyn Aucoin The Volume Mascara

but they have in common their style - not waterproof, but gel (or possibly magic) based, non-smudging and remove with warm water.  No plastic waterproof mascara thing.  As always, wipe the brush down first and go to town, use a Q-tip for application clean up (or is that just me?).  Then you're good for the day.

(For the record, I was wearing the Kevyn Aucoin.  But the Fiberwig works in much the same fashion and is a fantastic lengthening mascara if that's what you need.)

In the same spirit of getting things right EVENTUALLY:

Original curling mitts.  I followed the pattern without, apparently, using my cognitive processes at all.  Despite the fact that this left a chunk of the gorgeous SuperYak unused.  I adore this yarn, it makes this plush velvety matte surface.

It is, clearly, a bit scant.  My knuckles were cold, a draft wafted up the back of my hand whenever I wore them and the curl of the bind off was both a practical and an aesthetic annoyance.

   

As you can see, when the subject employs fuller use of her native intelligence (two years later), the result is a more pleasing and useful object.  Only 2 feet of yarn were left, an efficiency that adds to the over all satisfaction of the project.

1 skein Karabella SuperYak on 4 mm Susan Bates dpns, Fetching mitts.  Originally knit in Feb 2007, revised in Sept. 2008.  No visible difference between old and new yarn, which is rather nice, and not a pill on them.

I'm wearing them right now.