Enchanting Juno

Postcard.

I tweeted the other day that I thought I had forgotten how to blog.  A kind soul emailed me and asked if I was depressed, but I don’t think that’s it. 

This has been a year full of stress and it’s easy to point the finger at The Economy but it is slowly seeping into my awareness that perhaps this is just a time of evolution MASKED by the shitty business climate.  Or brought into focus.

I wanna run away from home.  Except being me I want to run with a wagon full of books and yarn and fabric and a computer and 78 pairs of impractical shoes.  The TV can stay behind though.  I’m not good at letting go, at leaping.
What I mean is that I want a different life and I’ve kept digging away at it for years and years and changing and learning and taking up new activities until my life is utterly unrecognizable
and all that is so very great and yet, it is not enough.  I keep looking around and going, 'there's nothing for me here'.  There’s going to have to be a leap, I think.

I keep having dreams where I am massively stressed out by my forthcoming college graduation (which took place 18 years ago) - packing my dorm room and not having enough boxes, not knowing where to send them.  Waiting hungover in line to pick up my cap and gown and then not being able to make it to the ceremony in time......my sleeping mind is using the bluntest of instruments to get my attention.  Apparently I am working towards making decisions about who I am that are more typically made by those in their early 20s.  I’ve always been a late bloomer, what can I say?

I went to Rhinebeck and bought no fiber or yarn, I had a cigarette and found it utterly disgusting and unsmokable, I finished a sweater that fits perfectly and is exactly what I wanted, I keep eating things I think I like and finding them inedibly salty, I take vitamins now, I dyed my hair red, which I have been letting people talk me out of for 22 years.  What I am saying is...I hardly recognize myself in some ways.   I THINK it’s good, but we’ll see.

I’d love to say I’ll write more, but all this building force toward something feels private and banal in this weirdly complicated way, so it might be a lie.  It's not depression though - there's a vibrant kind of tension to it is way too energetic for that. 

What's up with y'all?

Hi! I'm a progressive.

I like that better than Democrat -which, as we have discussed, I am not really - or liberal which I am, but which is primarily, I think, social & intellectual in its application rather than political.  

I think government is useful to regulate and support human endeavor and human society and while I am not at all anti-business, I am opposed to unchecked free markets because people are greedy and short-sighted in fairly predictable ways over the long term and free markets are a pretty accurate reflection of this.

I'm not good at arguing though - I haven't enough historical fact at my finger tips and I tend to get mad and froth at the mouth and frown stubbornly over the underlying ethics of policy, without necessarily having an ability to turn my thoughts and feelings into words (I know the difference between single payer and socialized health-care, but I can't always express it under pressure, for example).

I had dinner with friends Saturday, spent the evening arguing - in a friendly way - with M.  While he says he is a Republican, I would say he is in fact a free market conservative of the old school, rather than a modern Republican (I keep waiting for him to notice his party has abandoned him).  We agree about nothing, but I think in a respectful way.  It was fun.

I thought I would share some of the things I have been reading that left me saying - Dammit, THAT'S what I MEANT - since then. 

Jon Carroll on Rachel Maddow:  My love is not quite so true, but I do appreciate her for saying things with humor and impeccable calm and well informed decency. 

Obsidian Wings (a fantastic site) on the role of progressive politics in creating a society we can enjoy living in.  

Shakesville on misogyny and the Pennsylvania gym murders:  If I read one more thing that paints the shooter as having been victimized by sexual rejection I will spit upon who said it.  I expect he had trouble getting dates because he was exactly the kind of psychiatrically ill person who would say, commit murder to make a point, and was creepy as fuck.  Blaming the 30 million women (right) who turned him down is just another way of avoiding taking responsibility for his own life and actions; women are not to blame any more than the Easter Bunny was.  Feministing on the same.

Shakesville on the media complicity in breeding poorly informed hysteria about health care change:  WORD

Lance Mannion on civility and disagreement:  follow the links if you have time.

FiveThirtyEight.com on the conservative/liberal political distribution in the US, kind of fascinating.

I am noticing that Paul Krugman is a recurring theme in all of this.  Excuse me while I go follow his blog.

Shakesville on the potential for fascism in the US.  For the record, I find this extreme, but it's very interesting, and an idea worth incorporating into your mental filter.

Ta-Nahesi Coates - who may just be my favorite blogger of all time - on the intersection of fear/racism/misogyny that drives explosions of violent resistance to change.

We do live in interesting times.

A step at a time.

I have noticed this before, but it is so worth noticing again - you all are terrific.   I find it awfully heartening to find out that there are (obviously brilliant and perceptive!) people out there, ones who know me in real life, and ones who only know me from the blog, who think well for me, as well as of me. In such a beautifully thoughtful way.

Nobody better ever pick on the Internet around me, because I tell you, it has brought me more than I can ever possibly measure.

Spent the week paring the corners off my budget and exploring different ways to expand my business.  I have some ideas and got some notions from others; unfortunately everything takes time, so let us hope for slightly looser pocket strings in my existing customer base while I try this out.  
Oddly, I feel better.  Faced this set of my own failings, working on a plan....if it succeeds that's great, and if it doesn't, well......then I'll have a new life.  And that will be OK too.  Transition sucks, but you know me well enough now to know how I love me some evolution.  Plus I had a revelation while thinking about it, a good one, though that's a post for another day.

And I stand corrected.  I am a creative person.   I will make sure not to doubt that again.

In the meantime, I went for a walk this weekend.   I have such a mixed relationship with walking.   The very first time I ever walked in the woods I was in first grade and I went with Rob-from-my-class and his family and by the end of the day I had a gorgeous worm-eaten walking stick that I kept for years and a crush on Rob, which was more likely a crush on Rob's mom, who was the yoga-teaching hippy mom at my school.  They lived by the lake and fed the geese and thought about the environment and were the first people I ever knew who had those 5 gallon bottles of water for drinking and cooking.  It was like going to another, very, very cool planet. 

But other than that first experience, and walking by the ocean at my aunt's house - I hated it.  Walking out of doors?  With the bugs and stuff?  And sweat?  (I was a very girly little girl).  Even when I was young and limber and well able to walk the lead for a day, I got through hiking by shutting my head down and going on auto pilot.   Which kind of misses the point, yes?   Walking in NY is ok, cause there is ALWAYS stuff to be amused by and usually friends - walking and talking is great.  

These days the bugs don't bother me so, and I have rediscovered the beauty of discovering what might be under a leaf, but I am older and creakier and less fit - it takes a half an hour for my hip to loosen up and stop hurting and about an hour UNTIL my foot starts to ache.  So I have tended to avoid.   But more and more I hate being limited to 'indoor girl' and the aches and pains which once seemed like a reason NOT to do things now seem more like a reason to DO something. 

Ferociously determined is just another way of saying obstinate as a pig and 40 can bite me in the ass if it thinks its going to make me LESS.  Not that I have a plan.  More an inclination.  I like inclinations better than plans anyway.

So I went for a walk in the park near the canal with a friend and had a fine time and my foot never even really hurt much after an hour and a quarter which is huge thing and it was only a little bit sore this morning and we saw naked trees and people with happy wet dogs and geese and ducks and no squirrels which is odd, and reproduction Durham boats and a spinning wheel through a window and watched the river current and I wore her son's hat cause I forgot my own (bad knitter!) and it kept sliding up until I looked a complete dork, and that was funny too.   And at the end we were walking by the canal and there were three ducks, one white and two green headed, and the white one was diving for something tasty and I do not think there is much in the world I like better than a duck's ass pointed at the sky with his little orange feet paddling hard to balance him.

Which led to me calling out to the duck - loud - "do it again, baby".  And then to his friends, "Give me some mallard ass, lemme see your duck ass".   Which they did.

My friend, needless to say, laughed.  But seriously.  What is better than diving-duck butt? 

I'll tell you what's better, is a few minutes later when a small group of four landed in formation, wings back breaking and slicing the water like art.