What is about moving my blog address and hosting that makes me want to write? I realize it is not just that, as I have been wanting to resuscitate this blog for over a month, but life somehow intervened and I just couldn’t get past the objections I raised within my own head.
Then, of course, Typepad said it was shutting down. And I was not in a place where I could deal with that, at least not emotionally or intellectually. I spend the beginning of September in San Antonio, where my aunt was dying. She was my father’s brother’s wife, but both my father and his brother have long since left this earth. I was happy to spend her last few days sitting with her, holding her hand, my hand on her shoulder, or knitting by the side of the bed. I was happy to be there for that time and for the funeral, but I was emotionally overwhelmed place. I couldn’t think about blogs, or in fact the embroidery I had taken with me due to an impending deadline.
When I returned home the deadline loomed and it felt like I spent all my time either in meetings where I serve on boards or otherwise volunteer, or in my studio working on embroidery. There was no time for processing, and no mental bandwidth for taking on anything new.
After the baptismal towels were done I crashed but it was not enough. September was already the busiest month and I think I am still not so much ruled by coherent thinking but by my stress response.
But not all has been stress. My cookbook club met and I was rejuvenated by an hour of wonderful conversation about food. The Collector’s Circle group for the Knoxville Museum of Art held their seasonal kick-off party and I was soothed by wonderful conversations with people I had not seen in some time.
Last night I attended the symphony’s seasonal opening which included a lovely new work by Jennifer Higdon, a work I do not remember clearly enough but I remember enjoying. I acknowledge that my brain is currently at dangerous overflow levels but I know that I will remember this performance much more clearly when I have an opportunity to hear that work again — this is simply how my brain works.
Last night the orchestra and the choral society also performed Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, which is always an uplifting and happy work. Part of me didn’t want to go downtown; I was too tired. But I knew it would soothe and uplift me, and so it did. I was bouncing in my seat with the music lost as much in memory as the music itself. For once my critical faculties did not kick in, although I do actually look forward to Beethoven now. (Our previous music director’s renditions of Beethoven were an offense to my sensibilities) I was simply carried away by the music, by memories of a life filled with the music of Beethoven. With the soloists I heard my father singing to the Beethoven as he listened to it in my childhood home, I heard George joining in. At some point I may have sung parts of the alto line to myself. It was joyous.
And here I am again this morning, reviewing, and archiving, old blog posts looking for lost photos. I’ve been able to find most of the missing pieces. So far there are two photos that appear to be gone forever, but I’ve gone through what, 400 out of 1700 posts. This task alone may take me the rest of the month. Yes, I wondered if someone could do all the work for me, but they couldn’t find that which was lost, and my budget at the moment is unfortunately very tight.
Actually the process is stressful because I am afraid I won’t finish and that things will be lost. I am afraid that, even if I get the typepad file, I won’t be able to automatically update the picture storage and will have to do it manually, which will take a long time. And why am I stressed? Long ago I decided that things were only things, that words were only words, and that I am but a spec. Posterity does not care. Why should I? And yet at this moment I do care.
But the process is also joyous. One thing I am rediscovering about those early posts, when I knew nothing about the internet or blogging and did not feel self-conscious about what I wrote, was how I just threw words out there, much like I am doing now. It may be silly, foolish, out of touch with the times. But that is the voice I wish to resurrect, a voice that is very much like my own interior voice.
Today I found a post from 2006, where I wrote about a silly internet “test” I took. That one seems to have been something like “what math text would you be if your were a math text”. (As if anyone would care) The test determined that I would be a text on Algebraic Topology, which is odd because I am not a mathematician but I love Topology. Topology, like organic chemistry, is a subject that has always just made sense to me.
This is what I wrote at that time (April 23, 2006)
“what intrigues me about this one is that I love Topology. I am not a mathematician, I was an English Major in college, although I later went on to work with computers and get an engineering degree. However one of my college roommates was a math major and she had a lot of trouble with Topology. One of the math tutors would come over to help her, we later became friends, and he always thought I should have become a mathematician, and once when she was having trouble with something that he couldn’t get across I just explained it to her. I would listen to these talks and it all seemed so obvious to me. In retrospect I see that this was probably maddening to my roommate, that the English major could figure out Topology and she couldn’t, but I didn’t mean it that way. Topology, like Organic Chemistry (which I did take) was just one of the subjects that clicked with me right away and changed the way I looked at the world.”
This resonates with me today because once again I am connected to the chain of memories — of my youth, yes, but also more recent memories. When I was in San Antonio I had a conversation with my brother the physicist who was telling me that he had been stymied by a conversation with a high school senior who wanted to know what real life uses there were for Calculus II. I couldn’t come up with an answer then because it was late, my aunt had just died, and I was exhausted. But I woke up with that question on my mind. I wondered if calculating the amount of fiberglass needed to cover a free-form roughly circular pool surface would be calc II. We did that once, George did it in his head although he claimed he was “bad at math”. He was right and the contractor was wrong. I’m not sure if that is calc II though. I also thought it was useful in calculating how much garden edging one would need to create a randomly undulating bed around a yard. I’m sure most people just guess and either buy too much or too little, but I do like to know exactly what I need before heading to the store. I have done those calculations.
Later, on the plane home, I also wondered if calc II was useful in calculating present and future value of investments. And perhaps population spread in disease. But I suppose one could argue that none of these are “real life” for the average person. Although I think I’m pretty normal and I have made some of those calculations. I could also just be crazy.
Anyway, these thoughts are all running around in my head this morning. I’m also not convinced I like the layout I chose for this blog, but that is something I can amend in the future. At least for now, I have a place to contain my random word dumps.
Have a nice Saturday.