Enchanting Juno

Base Notes

When I was a wee lass I went to boarding school.  I think it was the first time I became aware of stuff as desirable in a way that related to other people.  Not that I never wanted anything prior to sleep away school: I liked shiny things as much as anyone - makeup and I were old friends,  I liked pretty clothes and blown-glass horses standing on a sunlit shelf.  What book bag one carried was socially significant.  Hell, I got up and curled my hair before school every day, something I have a great deal of trouble believing now, and yet, I remember it.  I know I did it.  There were trendy girls and not, and I knew I was Not.  But I don't think I had yet had a moment where I looked at someone else's stuff and coveted it, pined for it.   Mostly, if I had enough to read I was happy, though envious of the more petite and socially graceful.

But in boarding school there were girls with money, girls who brought their own rugs to the dorm, girls who had more shoes than I had novels, girls who liked New Wave, girls with Good Jewelry, girls wearing those Guatemalan woven hooded shirts with the pouch in the front, girls who collected vintage dresses.  It was a word of stuff such as I had never imagined.  Some of it was healthy - choosing things to represent who you are and want to be is normal I think - and some of it was money substituted for love or peace (and it was still a lot more innocent than the mass marketed consumerism we live with today).  It was a world before aspartame.  A world before the internet and all the acquisitive impulses that has fertilized.

The first day I was there I fell in love with "American Pie"* as well as with the idea that you could hear of a song and track it down and listen to it - oh, this world before iTunes, where you had to look for old vinyl if you wanted it.  And it wasn't long before I had a poster of Adam Ant, another by Robert Doisneau, a crush on Simon Le Bon, the beginnings of a fine collection of dangling earrings (come to think of it, I had those when I got there), a new opinion of the clothes my mother bought for me and a collage of words and images cut out of magazines hanging on my wall. 

One of the things that lots of girls had that I had never considered for myself was perfume - my mother had perfume she rarely wore and yet cherished, my grandmother traveled in a terrible cloud of Opium.  This was grown up stuff.  Not for me.  But the little bottles fascinated, the tiny samples of fantasy you could send away for.  I ordered Tatiana - something about the shape of the bottle, the description spoke to me and I waited for it and adored it except that I hated the way it smelled.  Hated it.  There was another, something with roses, that provoked the same loathing.

It was a lesson that took some time to assimilate, that affectation is useless, that you can't wear it or be it if it isn't you.  Scent is visceral.

Somewhere along the way I fell hard for Obsession and wore it it a toxic 80s cloud through college, alternately with Fendi and Chanel 22 and one or two others I think I owned for the bottle rather than the smell.  The imagery of perfume advertising captured me far more than fashion did, this idea of bottled identity, projected personality, applied confidence, the way perfume allowed boys and girls to bridge the gap between each other, an excuse to move closer, a catalyst for the profound intimacy of breathing someone in, the way scent changes with time and sweat to define evenings, moments, memories.  There was a boy in college I loved.  We kissed once and the whole evening is scent-colored in my head, tied together with vanilla and amber and terror and hope and desert air.  I think that might have been the beginning of the end of Obsession, that and I swear they changed the formula along the way.  Much sweeter now, almost intolerably so.

Later I wore Fracas - which was worn in a book and I fell in love with it and found it and adored it for real, then Agent Provocateur.....then nothing for most of my 30s, except on special occasions.   I tried clean scents, green teas and grapefruits, daytime scents, but they didn't stick.  Mostly they smell like the detergent aisle at the supermarket to me, scent afraid to be a smell.  They have no dirt in them, no life.  I like dirt.  Eventually I got rid of the old bottles - keeping just Fracas, Agent Provocateur which I still loved, and an old bottle of Obsession I never touch but still smile when I see.

Perfume was a branding idea in someways, a projection of what I wanted to be but was not quite yet and around the time I started therapy I think I stopped trying to project something - sexy! mature! confident! clean! professional! - and started trying to be it instead.  Whatever it was going to turn out to be.  I stopped wearing makeup regularly at the same time, and took up exercise instead, and casual clothing.  I went inside my head, not to hide, but to do a little work.  How could I assume an identity when I was actively trying to map my own?

I've come to miss it though, the enhancement of image, the mood interaction, the fantasy, the engagement of the senses.  I have a much better idea of who I am now and it occurred to me recently that I want that again.  Lipstick.  Dresses.  To enjoy the scent rising off my own skin.   It's a flirtatious impulse obviously, but not just in a sexual sense.  I have this desire to engage with the world more, to meet people's eyes, to talk to them, to hear them, to have my shutters open.   To have gravity on my personal planet.

Which led to my falling down the rabbit hole into Black Phoenix Alchemy Labs.   Some of you are probably familiar with them - the gothic perfumer.  They have perfume oils with literary antecedents and florid atmosphere, fantastic descriptions and complicated associations.  And they sell samples of most of their scents.  Perfect for the mild obsessive on a personal quest.

It's a site that demands a certain amount of surrender to the inside of the creator's mind, and it overwhelmed me for a long while.  Couldn't give in.  I would try to pick out six to try and get confused by what was sample-able and what wasn't.  How everything interacted.  How to find something when I wanted it.  So I would click away.   But a few months ago, I wasn't overwhelmed, I was enthralled.    I ordered a bit of this and a bit of that and was charmed to my toes by the story each perfume was crafted to represent.  It is brilliant, almost performance art.  Is this my story?  Do I only think so until the reality of a scent hits my system?  What do I like?  Why? What am I surprised to like or hate?

 

I've been trying one or two every day - depending on how I like it or how long it lasts.  I have dozens and dozens.  I'm going to have elimination rounds.  I'm on a mission.  I'm having so much fun. 

 

* While I was looking this up to add the link and reading about how Killing Me Softly was an inspired by American Pie, Killing me Softly came on the radio.  Literally as I read the words. How spooky is that?

Ritalin, perhaps?

So this morning I dreamed of the Jailhouse Rock production number from the eponymous movie (which I have long maintained, though with no firm factual basis, was the first music video).  Often these odd dreams are what a very clever commenter referred to as NPR dreams (this was upon the occasion that I dreamt my Thanksgiving turkey went to war) but today I had the buzzy alarm not the radio, so the imagery and soundtrack came from less obvious locations.

And while I yield to no one in my admiration for charm and beauty of the young Elvis, I fail to see what Jailhouse Rock has to do with knitting.  And yet it did.  A black and white scarf.  That I am assuming was colorwork, because it needed to be steeked at the end of the number.  Not unlike the climax of "Under the Sea", but with scissors.

It is possible I may be coming down with something. 

Sore throat.  Chill.  Sore neck for the past few days.  But I refuse to acknowledge it until I've written a check, mailed it and done the payroll. 

And now it is later and I have mailed the check and gone over the wall at the post office and been late for a forgotten meeting because I went to order eyeglasses on the way back (well sorta on the way back) and done half the payroll and had that meeting after all, very usefully and efficiently and also, ahem, created a database to keep track of my most recent obsession which I will show you if I am ever home during daylight again, and now I am eating lunch, courtesy of the fine people at Amy's.

I have been obsessed with this recipe this week:  Adzuki Bean Croquettes.  From Nourish Me.  Which I would encourage you to read for the beautiful food, beautiful pictures and beautiful words.  She's tremendous.  Braised fennel, people.  With wine glazed lentils.  My obsession with her cooking bears out one friend's belief that I am 18 months away from vegetarianism and closing fast.  On the other hand, I had a creole style pork tenderloin (in a converted church, in fact) last week that was delicious.  And murdered a pastrami Reuben on Sunday.  So perhaps not.

I hardly need glasses, but when I do need them, I need them most definitely.  A strange by product of either advancing decriptitude or LASIK (both?) is that my vision - which, five years post operatively, is about 20/30 on one side and about 20/50 on the other - can go exceptionally fuzzy on days when I am exceptionally tired.  Particularly around my period - hormones can effect ocular pressure, did you know?  - and particularly when I am dehydrated.  In Arizona, I can hardly read a street sign between the sun and the parched condition I am reduced to.  To which I am reduced.  You know.

So I need glasses whilst driving in unfamiliar places, in New York, when I have PMS and when I am so tired I probably should not be operating a motor vehicle anyway.  And also, sometimes for the computer, which is a different pair of glasses.   On average, maybe once a week.  Its stupid.    But not having them?  Also not working out so good.  And now that I have peripheral vision and stuff, I don't find them at all burdensome.  In fact, they are sorta cute when I'm not helpless without them.  Perspective is a marvelous thing.

Anyway, I think these are the ones.  This brand seems to make a frame width that fits my giant head, and they are light, and cute and flattering and I think I can live with them for 5 years of occasional use. 

Also?  I knit this week.  It was thrilling until I tried to groom the cat and she sunk her talon into the tip on my index finder, effectively limiting my enthusiasm for repeatedly shoving a wooden stick into the resulting hole.  But still.  I have - brace yourself - completed the long languishing right front of this sweater and begun the  left front.  I have learned a new button hole method.  And most shockingly of all, I have matched the gauge of the back, begun three years previously. 

Also, you have to go here and watch this guy.  I found him via Feministing twice: on the subject of the music business and the moral high ground and on MLK.  He was brilliant and I wanted to tell you and then I forgot.  Twice.  And then Flea at One Good Thing (a long time favorite read) mentioned him.  (Except it was on her other blog.  Oops.)  And I went over again and found this.  So dudes, settle in. 

And I smell like pirate.  Sort of.  Not really.  But kinda.  In a good way.

Thus concludes this edition of non-sequitorious blogging here at EnchantingJuno.

The right note.

So I went on a date last night, which is not the point of this story, but nice.  It was a good date.  Which is also nice.

Restored steam locomotives left unattended in the wee small hours of a fine spring night are a good place to kiss someone.  Make a note.

Anyway, in order to go on a date you have to get dressed for a date, which is a challenging thing.  Attractive but not overt,  appealing but not too sexy, like you made an effort, but not TOO much of an effort.  And for me - no heels, as I have a tendency to trip if I turn out to be attracted to someone.  Injury is not a good outcome. (Alternatively I will drop my keys, spill the wine or similar.)

I know some people just wear whatever, but I dunno.  I think its nice to show up like this is something you're really there for.   I realize that optimism in the face of dating is counter to the prevailing ethos, but I say dudes, if you haven't got the balls to hope for it, you ain't never going to find it.  Whatever your it is.  And for me showing up un-groomed is going in with LOW expectations.

So I worked out some variation on my normal theme of basic black with some stuff.
Wrap dress.  Mohair shawl made by a freind.  Nice earrings (one of which I lost, dammit.  Maybe the etsy lady can make me another?).  Chunky ring.  Ridiculously expensive suede bag I bought literally under the influence (never shop with a label conscious friend after three cocktails.  Tip from me) about 6 years ago and still love. 

And these great flat-heeled knee high, unlined black suede boots I bought over the winter.  Now, I've worn them before, to walk around the city, to go to dinner - very comfortable.  But always with black tights.  Last night - as it is April - I did not wear tights.  I wore legs.

I was out for oh, 6 or 7 hours. And I came home and took off my boots and checked my email and took off my jewelry and sat down.

And happened to notice something. 

My legs were black from the knee to the ankle. Like, ink-black.  Squid ink black.  Crocked, by gum.  My boots are crocked.

I forgot to take a picture (It was two am, when I thought of you it was already too late.  Forgive me.) but when I get home tonight I will show you the formerly white towel I scrubbed down with.

If it were yarn I could try rinsing, and a setting agent.  But suede? 

I'm at a loss.

 

7 minutes.

So this morning I hit the snooze and returned to the delightful cocoon of down blankets to contemplate the inside of my eyelids and the deliciousness of being entirely surrounded by weightless coziness. 

I began to make a list in my head.

First, go to the gym. 

Then - you know, the sheets need changing and the suitcase is still in the living room with dirty clothes in it.  Time for laundry. 

And mind you, laundry that you put away moron, not laundry you wash and fold and leave in a basket to be rummaged through on an ad hoc basis.

Where did I put my belt when I left my jeans by the washer yesterday - in the basement?  I hate going down there in the morning - the extra flight of stairs is so demoralizing first thing.  Eh, no matter.  Gym clothes are on the banister.
You know, Home Depot is by the gym - I bought the wrong size joint for the gutter pipe I need to fix.    Do that before the laundry, more efficient.   And Target - the gym socks are vanishing at an extinction level pace.  

Ok.

Gym
Home Depot
Target
Laundry.
Work on drain pipe while laundry does its thing
Oh, and those boxes by the door for goodwill?  Put those in the car - been sitting there too long (you have too much stuff.  How about not buying anything for a few days?)

And you know, it wouldn't kill you to vacuum something.  The cat hair is out of hand.

Gym
Home Depot
Target
GOOD WILL
Lau....

Hold on.  I'm forgetting something. 

No really?

Its only 7:45, not late for working out yet.

....

....

7:45?  I'm working out at 9.  Why is the alarm set this early?

It's Thursday. 

Thursday?

Yes, Thursday. 

Not Saturday? 

Thursday.  When you leave for the office at 7:45?  At least theoretically?

Shit.

(Sound of bare feet on floor)

Howdy.

I'm a crabby ass bitch today and I thought - hey, the blog might enjoy this. 

All foolishness to blame, really.  Plaguey doubts and irrational fears.  Too much celibacy, not enough hope.  I need a nap, some exercise and a bowl of edamame with sea salt and also, to not be ovulating.  Which is to say, give me a day or two.

I never think of myself as a PMS kind of person - in childhood, the mother's cycle was the undercurrent of our lives and I never saw myself that way.  But there is no denying I go optimism-shy on a couple of pretty specific dates and when I was out with mom for a few weeks the only days I had real trouble coping were the PMS days.   People talk about it like you should just pull up your socks and cope, but it is far more insidious than that. 
There may be a chance that I am a little bit like my mother after all, but if you tell her I said so, I'm afraid you'll have to be killed.  Nothing for it.

The big event of the weekend was that I accidentally deleted my iTunes library.  I'm new to the Mac thing and am constantly being hamstrung by the non-expectation of automation. The conversion has begun though - I used someone's Windows machine recently and found it EVER so clunky.  My brother just got a Vista laptop and his wife a Macbook and during the get to know you process he had this to say:

I find my experience with Dell a disappointing shadow of the customer service machine they were the last time I purchased a computer from them – I guess all the jobs have been shipped overseas.  Regardless, the computer is quite awesome and working great – despite a few glitches of the new operating system which I am told will work themselves out with a few hundred upgrades over the next few months......In an annoying parallel to my frustration with the Dell people, S. went out and bought a Mac after getting jealous of my new computer, and following a week of playing around with her parents Mac during her recent visit home. While I fight with marginally lingual tech support, the Mac people are all about “can I come to your house and help you set it up, …oh e-mail, sure we’ll help you set it up….oh, yeah we can transfer all your files for you and convert them to out much less complicated computer language.....can we have a group hug, Mac Users Unite….blah, blah, blah…….” Bunch of hippies!.

Which completely cracks me up.  And on balance I am happy to align myself with the hippies.  Though the Macbook does not feel near as sturdy as the old Vaio* and I don't generally care for the sleek Mac aesthetic (I got a Kandinsky for the top so I don't have to look at it.)  And he reminds me that I should maybe call Mac about the remaining file transfers I have to do, rather than wander in the wilderness as Microsoft has conditioned me.   

I imported my music files in January and have been deleting extraneous .wma files as I found them. I prefer MP3 (spare me all input on the subject of file quality and compression, etc.  I do not care and I can't hear the difference.) for its universality but turned out to have a number of cds that had been imported in the Windows specific format.  This is the thing that kept me from Mac & iTunes for so long - it is beautifully integrated as long as you stay in what David Pogue at the NYTimes calls the "walled garden" that is the Apple experience.  I didn't want to.  Keep your damn Kool-aid.  Also, I hate that backspace and delete are the same thing.  Drives me crazy.
But I've given up.  My Windows based tech knowledge was all seat of the pants and has been made obsolete in the last few versions of Windows and really, I am middle aged now.  I hate to admit it, but I just want it to work and be simple and the Mac integration is so satisfying I don't care any more.

I'm going to be able to wirelessly and automatically do back ups AND play iTunes on my stereo.  Because I will be able to play iTunes on my stereo I am not sure at this point I even need to replace my MP3 player, which is full to the point of crashing.  I have the bitty iPod for the gym and the playlists are so easy to swap out it takes five seconds.  (These people are marketing geniuses and I feel a little bit like I've sold my soul, but you know, do I really need one?)  Also, I'm in love with Adium for chat (iChat didn't quite make the cut, not cross platform enough).  Photobooth is enormous fun.  I even love Apple mail, though my heart's desire is for a GMail style email software.

That's if I had playlists left at this point, of course, because I believe I did mention that I DELETED my library.
It took me a long time to clue in to the fact that iTunes was organizing the iTunes Music data files using the info tags.  Because really, the computer doing the work for me is outside my experience.  So I kept sorting files the way I liked them and then finding them switched back, which lead to some bad links and double listings.   And then there were these data files left from the .wma deletions which lead to some more double listings in iTunes, one dead song, one live.  Untidy.  Inelegant.

I spent the weekend going through my cds, adding in anything that was missing or a bad file type and about 2/3 of the way through all the clutter started to annoy me.  No sweat.  I will delete and re-add the library. 

So I did delete and then I went to add to library from iTunes Music and dudes, there was nothing there.  6500 song files.  Gone.

Huh.

I looked in the garbage can and they were all there, but no longer in their album and artist files.  Just 6500 songs in a pile.  If I had a brain I would have said "Undo Delete" but my sinking heart and rising gorge prevented this simple option from occurring to me.

Instead I highlighted them all to drag them back into a file, despite the horror at the idea that I would have to manually sort them.  It would be simpler, if depressing, to re-rip every disk. 
But then what of the downloads? 

Lost in my despair I did not drag, I clicked.

And Finder informed me that it could not open file XX song title 12.mp3 because it was in the garbage and I should remove it and try again and please click OK.

Which I did.  Only to be told that it could not open file XX song title 11.mp3 because it was in the garbage and I should remove it and try again and please click OK.

Which I did.  Only to be told that it could not open file XX song title 10.mp3 because it was in the garbage and I should remove it and try again and please click OK.

And so on. 

And so on.

And I realized that it would try each file individually.   There was no Yes-to-all option.  The was no Esc.  And I was too scared to do a hard reboot for fear of data loss.

Click OK. Wait for process. Minutely adjust cursor to sit on new button.  Lather Rinse Repeat.

Do you know how long it takes to do that 6500 times?  More than five hours, that's how long.  And I did it because it is still a damn sight less time than loading every cd in again and cheaper than re-buying the downloads.

Then I dragged them all into iTunes Music and added them to the Library again, and bless its little people-pleasing heart, it sorted them back into albums and artists.   And it is fine.  Works perfectly, all there, pretty as a picture.  It even re-found all the album artwork for me.  You know what I am now?  A Mac person.  If I had deleted the files in Windows it would almost certainly have bypassed the Trash because the data chunk was so big and you know what I would be doing?  Re-ripping my CD collection and swearing.   When the desktop goes I'm getting an iMac, and Parallels or some equivalent to run the knitting software I have that's Windows only.  And maybe Apple TV when it comes time to go High Def.  And, and, and.....

I'm getting one of these this week.   I think it is much safer that way.

* The tragic demise of which I still mourn.  That was a computer I loved, genuinely loved, the tiniest computer in all the land.  It was a sweet pretty thing, though limited in speed and memory by its size.  If I could put Leopard in the Vaio?  That would be PERFECT.  Can you do that?  And get the camera all integrated and stuff?  I bet not.

 

oh my goodness.

Where to start, where to start.  I missed the blog.  But I've not been able to spare any kind of energy for things that require thinking.  Or energy.

I'm at my mom's house.  Most of the end of February and the beginning of March I was working to get my work and life in order to come out here, because Mom had back surgery in mid Feb and the plan was for me to come out about three weeks after to spring her from the rehab hospital and help her get her routines organized as she got more mobile. 

Problem the first is that her insurer would not approve her for a rehab hospital only a nursing home - which while it was staffed by very kind people was not really set up for the kind of wound care she needed, nor the kind of rehab she needs to rebuild muscle atrophied during the years of impaired mobility the surgery is intended to correct.  She was uncomfortable, and frustrated.  But ok, we work with the options available and set up out patient rehab for later and etc, etc. 

When I arrived to bust her out, she had developed a staph infection.  So from there, back to the hospital to have it drained - two further surgeries and what looks like 6 weeks more of IV antibiotics and so for two weeks I've been driving around visiting her and doing what I can to make things better and just giving her a hand to hold when she needed one.   I don't think she was ever in capital T trouble - no one at the hospital has ever given me the sad eyes - but she certainly hasn't been in good shape.  Its been an interesting time in our relationship.

I struggle with my mom - all our tastes and many of our values are different and I am still learning how to consciously discard the assumptions I've picked up from her over the years and we chafe at each other.  This time she was just so broken that I responded to her from a different place.   It has been not so bad to not be full of rage all the time around her, rage or the conscious decision to let things go.

Anyway.  She's getting better and has color in her face and started demanding tweezers yesterday and I actually wanted to kill her once, so things are looking a bit more cheerful and now we have to sort out after care and get her home.  And then I can collapse maybe because I am tired like I have never experienced tired before.

And then I can go home.  And knit.  Well really, I have been knitting a bit.  I even spun.  But I need to figure out how to disinfect silk from prolonged contact with hospital air and then take a picture.

I miss my cat.

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?

 

I know these streets and these backyards

On my way into therapy last night I stop to use the rest room.  It is an office building and the restrooms on each floor have a push button combination lock, recently installed to keep people from coming in off the street to use the facilities.   As I enter a woman comes out of a stall and applies what I can only describe as 1000 yard stare; intent and just faintly, politely hostile.  Her eyes stay on me too long.  And she says nothing when I say hello.

I wonder briefly if I have something on my face. 

I mention this to my therapist, who remarks "this town".  I know what he means.  After all, I was in her private bathroom.  To her, I am the hoi polloi.  I expect most people are.

When I go out to the car it doesn't start.  It takes me a minute to realize it, turn the key one, two extra times to be sure. 
This why Triple A exists, so I call and at 6:23 she says I can expect someone by 7:10

I put up the hood to mark me for the service guy, and stand on the curb and watch the traffic - no knitting, can you imagine?  I never have down time, outside of home, so I frequently don't carry any.  It wasn't cold, but it was chilly.  I watch my breath in the air and the way no one looks to see anything around them.

Cars pass, people park near me and say nothing.  A woman gets into the car in front of mine and drives away and says nothing.  I see a few people notice the raised hood and turn their heads back, away, as they drive.   Two men walk by with a dog.  They say nothing.  Someone parks across the street and stares a minute.  Walks away.

Someone tries to park in the empty space in front of my car.  I ask him not to so the truck can get in.  He is startled but agreeable.  He wishes me luck but does not ask if I need help.

I grew up here.  I once would have expected nothing other than this from any place, any people.  Now I am amused and angry in equal measure.

7:10 came and I called AAA again - their guy is doing a battery replacement a mile away and will be there soon,  10 more minutes, 15. 

I walk up and down the empty space - 10 steps end to end, and if I place my foot carefully I can just step on the line at each end.  My right side pivots more smoothly than my left.  I'm warmer now that I am moving, my back doesn't hurt.  I am starting to worry that I will exceed the capacity of my Diva cup, as today is hemorrhage day.

7:22 a police cruiser slows down - the fifth that has gone past in the last 49 minutes.  He asks if I am OK, I say I am waiting for Triple A and he nods, hesitates, drives away.  He does not ask me if I need assistance, or what the problem is or if he can help.

A woman walks by - power walking.  She nods, smiles.  Does not say anything, maybe doesn't even notice the hood raised.

7:31 a truck pulls in, a man hops out - hey, what's your trouble.  He lives near me - in the hood, he jokes.  You too, he says, when I give him my address for the form.  I tell him how the eyes have been sliding past me for over an hour and he nods.  I hate calls to this town, everyone is like that. 
I grin - uptight.  He laughs.  Makes a dirty joke and then gets self-conscious, apologizes to me and I brush it off.
We talk about how in our neighborhoods - which are much less nice than this place - you could never go 10 minutes with the hood up without someone stopping, offering help. 

(It's true - last winter a friend called me to borrow my jumper cables and while we stood there in the freezing cold of a February midnight, three white women in the dark, an older African-American man on a bicycle stopped, helped us clean the corrosion off the contacts, waited to make sure we got sorted out.  He used to be a navy diver, I think he said, and didn't have a good coat.  I think about him sometimes when I am feeling like a fish out of water, and then make a point to make eye contact, to see faces, to not be from that town any more.)

My battery is seriously dead and he tells the price of a new one.  Then he stops - tells me there's a discount, recalculates, gives me a price 20 bucks lower.  I think it might be a solidarity discount.

I hold the flashlight for him, he does his thing, I turn the key and everything works.  Write him a check - ask his name.  Orlando, you're a star.
Just a man, he says.  Good and bad.

7:56 I pull out and head home.