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Category: Introspection

  • The View from My Window, Skittering Thoughts

    (This post was written when I was in fact in New York City last week.  It is only now that I have had time to revisit it and post.)

     

    Here I am, in New York City and I find myself with this inexplicable sense of wanting to write you.  Why? It has been months.  And I have been content in my rather quiet life.  I do have to admit though that the only reason I brought my laptop with me on this trip was a sense that I might indeed want to write.

    This is the view from my window as I write.  It makes me happy.  The penthouse apartment across the street with the lovely patios, in a beautiful old building.  The contrast of old and new appeals to me.  The shiny glass building on the right; the scaffolding on the left.  I’ve always thought that the signs of human industry are beautiful in their own ways — and yes, I can extend that to even our more brutal invasions such as power plants and mining sights.  The beautiful ugly. Once I thought I would like living in the city.  Now I see peace in my morning suburban walk, in the greenery. in my hands in the dirt, even as I fail, daily, to keep up with the weeds.  

     

    But I also recognize that all of this could change in any instant.  I recognize that peace exists only in my own head and heart, in where I allow it to enter.  It could be found anywhere; it could be found nowhere.  The choice is mine.  In this moment, in this window, I choose peace.

     

    Openness to new ideas and curiosity; those are the important things.  They are not the same, although they are related.  And they are each thoroughly interior qualities.  They are not about gallivanting about, throwing oneself into new experiences, although they could be, for some people, in some circumstances.  But the opposite could be true.  Curiosity can also be found in solitude, in quiet moments.  

     

    One can travel the world and do all kinds of exciting things, without ever changing one’s mind; a person can gather up facts and experiences, while yet remain closed-minded  and set in their ways.  I’ve known people like that.  I also have known people who have lived in one place all their lives, rarely leaving, but who know more of humanity and the world, who are more open, more curious about ideas and experiences than most.   The difference is not always obvious.

     

    I had forgotten how early it gets light here in Manhattan.   I shouldn’t have; it took me years to adapt to how late the sun rises in Knoxville, which is very close to the Central Time Zone line, much further west.   I do miss this. I don’t actually know if my natural circadian rhythm is to wake early, or if I acclimated after living in New York State for over 35 years, but since I moved to New York in my late teens and early adulthood, I suspect that my rhythms matured into the rhythm of that particular environment.  The Knoxville summer light still throws me even though I do often sleep later than I used to.  It should not surprise me that an hour, here or there, should make a difference, but of course it does.  Look at all the research on the health impacts of our semi-annual shifts to and from daylight savings time, and how harmful it is.  Not that science changes anything when butting heads with tradition.  Anyway that is not the topic of this post.

    You probably noticed that this second photo is really the same view from the same window.  The reflections seen in the window of the glass tower is, at least partially, my own building.  I am sitting in one of those windows, reflected, small and insignificant, invisible even.  I like that idea.  I like the way the reflection is somewhat distorted, the layers of images, of life.  It reminds me of how small my life and my choices really are inn the greater scheme of thing — insignificant really in the grander scale, in the life of cities, in the life of the human race itself.  I might as well be true to myself, live the life that resonates we me.  All of our power is in the small bits,

     

    But even the life of the human race, even our impact, as great as it seems, is again a tiny speck, not really seen against the whole.  Our planet, earth, has its own life, a life of which we are a tiny speck, occupying but a few seconds? hours? perhaps days? in an otherwise long life.  An unseen face in a window filled with reflections, lost in the greater scheme of things.

     

    I am reminded of Samantha Harvey’s novel, Orbital.  In that novel, the astronauts are, at first, attracted and drawn to the sparkling lights they see during the nights of their rotation, the beauty of the human civilization of which they themselves are a vital part.  And yet as their time in space lengthens, they grown more attracted to the daytime views of earth, where humanity is less in evidence, just the earth itself, taking on almost its own life and its own light.  

     

    Such an idea of the moment, that.  The earth is its own life, and we are just a small bit of dust occupying its face.  Almost a cliché; and yet no less valid. a thought and creation defined by our own moment in space and time, our own zeitgeist.  This is not a criticism per se; that humans before us thought they were the center of the universe simply is a fact.  That we have learned we are insignificantly small simply another fact.  And I am not criticizing Orbital here;  I love this book.  And quite frankly my own musings are as ephemeral, of the moment, and inconsequential as anything existing in this world.  They remain simply another example of the clichés and worldview of my own generation and time, but far less eloquently stated. A post going nowhere, circling on itself.

     

    I am not putting my own thoughts down.  I am not claiming anything. There is much in the word that may be good, and much that may be evil as well.  In a sense we are each individual cells in a giant creation the is earth, if not the universe itself, and each of us has a role to play.  We are insignificant and yet also mighty. 

     

    I am here, in NYC, in upper midtown, very much in my own comfort zone, both physically and, in many ways, mentally.  Circling around the musings and mutterings of my own brain.  It feels like I have been working my way back here for a long time.  It is a comfortable a good place to find myself, even in a world that sometimes feels very much at odds with what I hold dear.  To my own brain each echo of light and image in glass, each fleeting thought, each eruption and seismic shift in either the earth or humanity, is a significant event.  How do I choose?  I can only live in each moment.

  • Musings, Mutterings, Knitting.

    Hello blog! It seems I have been absent although in many ways that is not surprising.  It seems that I have been swinging wildly between being present in my life and at the same time being absent — not as in depressed, although that has probably been the case on occasions. More that I have just been sorting out some things in the hopes of reconnecting with something essential to myself.  That has seemed like a slow process.

     

    At the moment I feel fully "back", meaning increasingly settled in myself but not a promise that the blog is back, although I hope it is.  I intended to attempt a start-up in January, and although it is not the beginning of the month, it is still January.  That is good.  There has been a lot of hemming and hawing here, fretting over wanting to write, letting my inner voices argue over whether or not I had anything to say only to find myself back in a place of apathy, where the whole blog thing didn't seem worth the effort.  

     

    I had an idea to write about movies, or a particular movie, but the negative arguments won, the voice that says "who cares what I think", which may or may not be true.  By the time I resolved the issue the movie in question was weeks behind me and it seemed hardly worth the point.  The idea may find its way back up, or not.    The only thing I know is that I want this blog to be about whatever is on my mind at the time I am writing it, and that it is an extension of a journal of sorts.  I tell myself that I should write polished essays, and I occasionally work on those, but that is NOT what I want this blog to be about.  My original idea was for an online journal, really purely for my own reference and entertainment, and then I let the idea get perverted into something else, something I didn't want.  I don't really know what I want now but I am willing to let the impulse play out.

     

    So, after this long, and mostly irrelevant introduction, the remainder of this sweater is going to be about sweaters and knitting.  Specifically it is about sweaters and knitting and colors, specifically puce and muted wines. 

     

    Puce seems to have been the color of the year.  I knit two sweaters in the color.  In fact the color of neither yarn was called "puce". The color name for the yarn used in the first sweater was "vintage wine".  You can see that sweater here.

    Amandier

     

    It is a lacy cropped cotton cardigan, knit in a 4-ply yarn.  Technically a summer sweater although I am not likely to wear it in the hottest months.  It is a color that has a presence throughout my wardrobe, a few pieces popping up whenever muted wines and roses become fashionable.  

     

     I never really thought about the color as puce until I was finishing up this cardigan.  Technically I would suppose puce is darker, with a bit more brown.  But it struck me that the range of muted brownish purply pinks suite me well, and I am consistently drawn to the range. 

     

    Then, in December I felt the urge to knit a warm snuggly sweater and I decided to knit another sweater in an alpaca boucle.  Although this wasn't planned, the yarn I ordered falls into the same color range.  This time the color is named topaz.

     

    Puce

     

     

    I finished it in early January and have been wearing it steadily throughout the current cold spell.  I am not quite sure how my dream of an oversized snuggly sweater morphed into this shorter, slightly more fitted sweater, but it did, and I love it. Even though I do not always like sweaters out of bulky yarns, this sweater has ended up being exactly the sweater I wanted.  It is a  sweater that sits a the top of the hip, that looks good with a pair of pants, and which has fairly close fitting sleeves that do not get in the way.  It is a color that makes me feel warm and happy.

     

    PuceWine

     

    In fact it goes well with my most-frequently worn coat, at least most winters in Knoxville. Seen here with an assortment of reds, all of which are really pinkish or brownish reds. 

     

    This photo was taken last winter, when my hair was still permed in an attempt to maintain those post-chemo curls.  It is not permed now, and I am wondering if I regret the decision to grow my hair out and stop perming it.  I am not thrilled with my hair the moment, but I can always go back.  It is just the transitional process that is difficult.  Transitional processes are always difficult.  That doesn't seem to get easier with age.

     

    Perhaps this blog, like my hair is in transition.  Like all transitions it will take time to see what develops.  And, in that spirit of transition I am going to toss this out, messy as it is, because once I start editing, doubts will set in,  and my words will fall into the bottomless pit, never to reemerge,

     

  • April! Already almost half gone….

    Hello.  Welcome to my monthly blog post and a brand new peony.

    Peony2

     

    This is the first bloom of a new self-starting peony which appeared in my yard a couple of years ago, slowly growing every spring, disappearing in the heat of late summer, and slowly growing.  I have a couple of peonies in places  where I never intended them, but they seem so happy in their chosen abodes that I have been loathe to move them.

     

    I think there is a lesson in that.

     

    Just as I think there is a lesson in the way this spring has worked out for me, my general sense of overwhelm, my ongoing tiredness, and ongoing struggles in terms of decisions about who it is I want to be in this moment of my life.  I know that sounds strange for a woman who is 65 going on 66, but it seems to me that life is not so much a smooth line but a series of  chasms and summits, opportunities for growth or for stasis.  I've always been a person who embraces change and yet who also struggles with that very change.  The struggle part is not unusual.  I, like most of the people I know, embrace comfort, embrace familiarity.  And yet I think that change is equally a part of what it means to be human.  I am changing.  And as I change I become more the person I have always been.

     

    I can't write about what that means yet.  I'm too much in the middle of the process.

    Iris

    I can only leave you with another flower.  The first of the irises.  More will follow.  

     

    I too will return.

     

     

     

  • Hello Spring

    I did say I would return in March although my intention had always been for early March.  Missed that internal deadline, didn't I?

    Hellebores

    It is no matter, somehow things always play out the best way they can.  Or at least that is the view I choose to take on the matter.  It is lent after all, and it always seems to me that lent ends up being a period of upheaval and resolution.  Sometimes metaphysical, sometimes physical, sometimes, surely, all in my head.  

     

    Lent is, in many ways much like spring.  Spare and bare still, but with pops of color, pops of hope.  Uncertainty abounds: cold nights, warm days, rain, sunshine, sudden frosts, and yet resurrection surrounds us.

     

    And yet it is all a part of the plan, the normal cycle of things.  It shouldn't surprise us, and yet it always does.

    TucsonScenes

    I was in Texas and Arizona.  Lovely visits, both with family.

     

    I returned to a series of unfortunate glitches:  some kind of mild allergic reaction thingy on my face, a rheumatoid fare, an encounter with gluten that lead to a celiac flare, more struggles with atrial flutter.  All basically minor.  All annoying nonetheless.  

    Camelia

    Like the garden, we muddle through, marshal our resources, cliché-filled, marching ever onward.  The camellia is sending out a few precious blooms.  It wasn't the January snow that did it in, but the single digit temps so close to its normal bloom time did set it back.  What blooms appear are late, a little war-torn, but valiant harbingers of hope.

     

    The vegetable garden continues.  A few hot days, have prompted the bok choy to bolt, but the flowers are also delicious.  Cabbage, broccoli, bitter Italian greens continue onward.  I will never keep up with them all.  Broccoli is heading.

     

    I planted fava beans and they were coming up nicely, little green leaves peaking above the soil.  The same for peas.  And like that, they were gone.  Someone ate them all last night.  The great legume massacre of 2024. Perhaps there is time to sow another crop.  Perhaps best to let it be. Another sign.  But there will just be room for other vegetables.

    Daffodil

    The first of my "late" daffodils are up.  Actually a little early.  But its the only one so far, although there are lots of buds.  There is always someone who leaps out from the crowd.

     

    Anyway, welcome spring.  It is a good spring, a good start.  Always too much too do.  As always it doesn't all get done.  And who says it should anyway?

  • The Tenth Year

    It seems the urge to write is slowly returning, not so much out of some misplaced sense of obligation but rather because I seem to miss this space.

     

    It struck me recently that this year marks ten years since my husband, George, died.  It is not something I think about much any more, although that is not because I have forgotten, or he was not an important part of my life.  His presence is always with me,  as is my ever-present but unspoken acknowledgement of how his presence shaped the person I am today.

     

    All of this to say that I don't know why that number, ten, resonates so deeply with me today.  It is not the anniversary of any specific date.  I didn't expect to be writing this post.  Actually I started out writing about sewing, but something shifted, and that post got turned aside.  Perhaps my brain is just seeking out patterns, of trying to make sense of life.  It struck me, that this year, the year after a few had years, hard years for everyone, I am not one to say that my struggles or any harder than other person's, has proven to be a year of closure and of new beginnings. And the tenth anniversary of a loss also marks a closure of its own sort.

     

    A year or two, perhaps two, after George died, a very wise woman, a retired psychiatrist told me that, in her experience, many people took a long time to recover from the loss of a long-term spouse.  She mentioned something about ten years or so, which struck me, because all the pop-psych google-type gobbledygook that grieving takes one year, as if any human experience can be reduced to a simple formula.  I know now of course that so little of grief is about the initial rending of loss.  There is the loss of the beloved, the loss of a part of one's very psyche, the painful process of redefinition, of reforming who one is as one instead of a part of two, and then after all those wounds have been healed and the scars have faded there is the process of learning who one has become, what new growth has come forth.  

     

    I suppose it is not so far from so much of life:  leaving the sanctity of the womb to be born, leaving home, making a new home, making a family, fledging that very family.  Careers, roles, life choices, all roll across our paths.  We all have many paths, many selves, and this is just another branch off that same tree.   I am not trying to lessen anything here, this is simply the space I find myself inhabiting today.

     

    I think that what has actually struck me today is that I've had lots of goals, lots of roles or careers, or whatever you want to call them.  I've made lots of plans.  Some have gone sideways.  Some have not.  This particular iteration of me doesn't really have any plans.  Oh a few short term thoughts here and there, but basically I am much more open to just letting things happen than my younger self might have been, even my ten-years-younger self.  It has been an eventful ten years. Ten years since George died.  Eleven year since leaving New York State and moving to Tennessee.  Nine years post back surgery. Six years post buying a house on my own and moving yet again. Four years post renovating said house. Two years post breast cancer. One year post a flirtation with heart-failure and a series of cardioversions and ablations and finally slowing down uncontrollable atrial flutter.  

     

    I know who I am and I also know that I know nothing.  I don't know what I am doing.  I don't know what tomorrow brings.  I actually don't need to know either of those things.  Whatever happens is going to happen whatever I think about it.   I am  65 years old and I don't need to have a plan.  I don't need to change the world.  I've done my time, made my plans, conquered, failed, started over.  I know the world can't break me unless I let it.  That is all the strength I need.  Now I just need to be open to whatever is going to happen.  Or perhaps it is just that I am willing to admit I don't have any choice in what the world does.  But I do have a choice in how I embrace the world. 

     

    Somehow, that last sentence feels like Christmas to me.

     

     

  • In which I have no idea what I am doing.

    And that is perfectly okay.

     

    I made no specific plans for 2023, no resolutions, only a vague idea along the lines of "nesting".  I didn't want to go anywhere do anything, just settle.  It seems that the time since I moved into this house, in late 2019 had been a time of turmoil.  There was Covid, a fall, struggles with atrial flutter that twice ended up sending me into heart failure, breast cancer, six surgical procedures, chemotherapy, and radiation.  I'm still here but the process itself has been life altering.

     

    I'd moved into my new house, but I hadn't settled.  There has been a lot of fluffing, rearranging, working myself back into systems; there is still a lot I am really not keeping up with, although it is questionable whether I care enough to worry about any of that.  With all this puttering about, I have also come to a profound realization that there are a lot of aspects of who I was and what I chose to do which were no longer relative to who I am today and who I want to be.  Some of those realizations started off innocently enough, with baby steps, that led into sudden and unexpected metaphorical falls, or new realizations. 

     

    As a result, what started out simply enough as a project involving a physical place called home, has ended up having profound repercussions on the spiritual place called self.  Doors have been opened.  Doors have been closed.  And I find myself in a new place that is simultaneously an old place, a place I have always been, although not always fully in touch with.

     

    I am, oddly, content.  That word, oddly, is relevant here, because I have come to the realization that contentment is not truly familiar territory.  I have sought peace, sought contentment, or joy, or happiness, But somehow I always thought of it as something to achieve, somehow missing the point.  Contentment just is.  You cannot get there by trying.  But I was reared in a society and a world where planning and goals, and who one wants to be in life were paramount, and I have always been a planner, an organizer, an achiever, a doer of things.  I was brought up to believe that self alone was never enough.

     

    Until, suddenly, it was.  I cracked a door, and something unexpected came flooding in.  I am content. I have no real plans.  I have no real expectations.  I don't know where I am going and I find that a perfectly satisfactory place to be.  

     

    In fact it seems that all the times in my life when I had plans and expectations, goals, drives, schedules, all of these ideas of who I was, what I should do, who I should be were based on some idea outside myself that I had to live up to, that they were simultaneously a necessary adaptation to reality and a fools errand, a story I told myself in order to live, based on a version of artificial reality, perhaps.  There is the reality of the world.  Of culture, of society, of human community, which we create, and which is necessary for our very existence, and yet the very nature of the realities we create for ourselves is simultaneously arbitrary and completely necessary.  

     

    I'm not saying I care not for the world.  I'm not saying anything really, except that I am here at a place in my life where I see that much of what I have pursued prior to this point does not have meaning to the person I am now, in this moment.  That does not mean my previous life, goals, experiences,  were a waste of time or meaningless, everything has led to where I find myself in this moment, on the threshold of something new, new to me.   I have no idea where I am going, or who I will be tomorrow, other than perhaps myself.  But I don't know who that self may be.  

     

    Early in the year, I became fascinated with the Beowulf story.  I picked up the three or four different direct translations I have, and a couple of retellings of those interpretations, perhaps a story loosely based on the original but reshaped for the culture in which it was written.  My intent was to pursue this idea of the hero's journey and how this journey shaped an understanding of civilazation that still shapes us today.  And it does, still.  In beowulf we can see the roots of Christianity, of the Hebrew Bible which lies at the basis of three of the world's great religions, and whose beliefs and conflicts still shape the world today.

     

    But I also saw something else.  Beowulf had to come home. The ultimate goal of the hero's journey is to take that journey back to where it started, to go home, and to learn how to live, not as the hero, but simply as himself as a human being.  Perhaps the goal of life is to go out on our grand journey, whatever that may be, and I believe all journeys and all goals are grand, but in the end we have to come back to ourselves, if we are lucky, to settle back into life, the life we were born to live, as our essential selves, to be who we are simply in the present, and that person is very close to the person we were born to be.  The ultimate goal then is a very small and personal life.  The hero's journey is the world.  The secret to eternal life exists in the tiny nugget of the soul, of being the self in the everyday passing of life.  

     

    Oh, I gave up before I finished my studies.  I may have made all this up.  I don't know.  Perhaps I will get back to it.  Perhaps not.  I am at a stage in my life when fretting about the future seems meaningless.

     

    What I do know, is that for all I have written and thought about expectation and control, and the letting go of same, the path from thinking to actually doing, or not doing as would be the case here, has proven to be fraught.  And now it is not. I suddenly find, that having softened my grip on my own expectations, many things that were holding to tightly have fallen away, and many new vistas have opened.  

     

    All I know is that today matters.  And what I do today patterns, not for the world, but for my own soul, and in the end, that is all I can control.  I have no idea what my choices mean.  I'm not even sure that meaning, or intention, or plans are the things I should be pursuing.  I have no idea what next week brings.  I only know where I stand right now and that all I can do is what is important to me, right now, in this moment.  The future? Well I've never had any control over that no matter how much my human psyche is filled with plans.

     

    It is time for another cup of coffee and to see what today brings.

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Books Read January Through June 2022

    I've got to start somewhere.

     

    There have been periods where I have read, and periods where I have not.  Periods where I have thought about writing about what I have read, and, yet again, long periods where I have not.  For long stretches of time I have not written anything at all.  All this sounds, in many ways, negative but I assure you it is not.  Circumstances are what they are.   Passions too, those things that drive us, ebb and flow.  And yet these things are not the source of joy, or even happiness.  All of this to say, in a rather complicated way, that I am doing well.  There have been dips and bumps but overall this has been a very good period in my life, even if it is not a period defined by outward accomplishment.

     

    Perhaps that is exactly what has been needed.  This has been a fallow period of sorts, a drawing in, of coming to terms, and of growth, of replenishment.  It seems to me more and more that I know I am changing, that I have changed, but I don't yet know what will come of all that.  My own tendency to want to do all the things , if not moderated, leads to the internal stripping of nutrients from the soil of my soul.  And yet rest alone is not the answer.  But what is rest anyway? Rest means not only resting while giving the body time to heal, which perhaps is not rest at all, or it touches on only one aspect of the complex face of rest, because healing itself is hard and active work for the body.  Rest can also simply entail the quiet drawing in of nourishment. Not passive. Not empty. Stasis, not in its sense of inactivity but of equilibrium.  

     

    Balance.  I've never been a person given to balance.  But perhaps balance itself is something to be explored further.  We tend to simplify: advising ourselves that balance entails a form of compartmentalization, our efforts and indulgences parceled out in given packets of time or energy, or thought.  Wake up, meditate for 15 minutes, shower, work x hours, exercise 30 minutes a day, knit for 1 hour a day.  This is not balance as the earth knows it. Think of the thunderstorm and the rainbow, the powerful force that also opens the opportunity for new growth.  The harshness of winter followed by the languor of summer. Even the fallow field is hot with activity, activity that lies just below the surface. Replenishment. Fallow. Balance.

     

    Meanwhile I have read, as I mentioned, in stages.  Most of my reading has been lightweight, completely fitting in this period of rest and regeneration. Occasionally I have ventured into something deeper. Occasionally something haunts my thoughts.  I don't think I will discuss these books or even necessarily rate them. At least not here. At least not now.  They are just part of what has filtered into the soil that is the field of my soul.  Some of it good, some of it not, and yet all a part of the cycle of life and growth.

     

    1. Lauren Groff.  Matrix: A Novel.
    2. Amy Greene. Bloodroot.
    3. Kreis Beall. The Great Blue Hills of God.
    4. Joyce Maynard. Under the Influence: A Novel.
    5. Anuk Arudpragasam. The Passage North.
    6. Lilo Bowman. Love Your Creative Space.
    7. Kevin Kwan. Crazy Rich Asians.
    8. Kevin Kwan. China Rich Girlfriend.
    9. Kevin Kwan. Rich People Problems.
    10. Robert A. Weinberg. The Biology of Cancer.
    11. Judith Krantz. Scruples.
    12. Colson Whitehead. Harlem Shuffle.
    13. Diana Gabaldon. Outlander.
    14. Diana Gabaldon. Dragonfly in Amber.
    15. Richard Powers. Bewilderment.
    16. Matt Bell. Appleseed.
    17. Damon Galgut. The Promise.
    18. Diana Gabaldon. Voyager.
    19. Diana Gabaldon. Drums of Autumn.
    20. Diana Gabaldon. The Fiery Cross.
    21. Bryant Terry. Black Food.
    22. Mabel Dodge Luhan. Lorenzo in Taos.
    23. Diana Gabaldon. A Breath of Snow and Ashes.
    24. Paddi Newlin. Hidden Treasures.
    25. Diana Gabaldon. An Echo in the Bone.
    26. Louise Erdrich. The Sentence.
    27. Leo Tolstoy. Anna Karenina.
    28. Andrew Sean Greer. Less
    29. Patrick Radden Keefe. Empire of Pain.
    30. Diana Gabaldon. Written in my Own Heart's Blood.
    31. Laura Bates. Everyday Sexism.
    32. Mary Dan Eades. Caddo Bend.
    33. Stanley Tucci. Taste: My Life Through Food.
    34. Heather Cox Richardson. How the South Won the Civil War.
    35. Diana Gabaldon. Go Tell the Bees I am Gone.
    36. Lee Child. Better Off Dead.
    37. Stuart Woods. Chiefs.
    38. Iona Wishaw. An Old Cold Grave.
    39. William Davis, MD. SuperGut
    40. Anthony Doer. The Shell Collector.
    41. Patti Smith. Woolgathering.
    42. Bridget Quinn.  Broad Strokes.
    43. Omar El Akkad. What Strange Paradise.

     

    Looking at the list, I see much rereading (marked in blue):  19 of 43 books.  All were intentional, for one reason or another.  One thing that did stick out is that I belong to two book clubs, and between them almost every book this year has been a reread for me, sometimes of books I would not otherwise have reread.  Only two of my first reads were for book clubs.  In many ways that seems to fit into the theme of the year, a period of gathering in, of reevaluating.  Looking at the list now, I am filled with wonder.  What I see are roots sprouting, spreading, intertwining.  What I see are roots that belie the arbitrary categories by which my trained, educated, conscious mind wants to organize the world. 

     

    I don't quite know what I think about this, about what is worth rereading and what is not, what is worth rediscussing and what is not.  Often I am surprised. Other times I am disappointed, but I realize these things are all about me, not the books, not the people with whom I am discussing the books, me. I see books as living things, the thoughts or ideas of a writer taking shape through words. Reading can be an act of relationship, even though may not be as complex as an ongoing active relationship with a person.  Or is it?  My relationship with some books is more multifaceted and complex than my relationships with some people.  And yet, with either, it is up to me to hold up my end.  Each of us is exactly where we are, exactly where we can be, in this moment. And that is all.  Expectation is about the person who is doing the expecting, about their own internal struggles, although they may not see it as such. As humans this is part of our struggle. We lead with our own preconceptions, with expectation; I am not certain we can completely abandon its grip, but I do believe we can chose to set it aside.  We are our pasts, our presents, even to some extent our futures although we know not what they may be.  Judgement closes us off from the world.  So does passive acceptance.  If we are not in struggle, we are not, perhaps, in relationship.  

     

    And yes, reading has brought me to this point, at least in part.  Books are like the seeds, old and new, that sit in the soil.  Then, when I am in the world the thoughts that have been slowly taking root sends out little shoots of understanding, of empathy.   The source of insight is irrelevant, sometimes even surprising, and often more multifaceted than we think.  Whenever someone tells me they are a simple person, when I say this myself even, I think "no, you are not, you are minimizing the interleaved depths that have made you what you are."  On the other hand, we are all, in once sense, incredibly simple.  We are all incredibly complex.  We all hide parts of who we are from ourselves and from others.  This we call survival. 

     

    And, after saying I will not read books, I am reminded of a quote from a book:

    "Books contain everything worth knowing except what ultimately matters."

                        Louise Erdrich, The Sentence, page 3

    Like books, like thoughts, like a fallow field, there is a lot hidden in that sentence. Its meaning, when first read, belies its depth, its contradictions.  Intentionally, I choose not to discuss.  Not today. Think about it,

     

    But for me, enough with thinking.  I am here. I am hopeful. I am filled with thoughts and dreams.  In the end that is the crux of it, circumstances be damned,

  • Here and There; Everywhere and Nowhere; Does it Matter?

    I was at Big Ears this past weekend.  I am home. Technically I suppose I was always home as Big Ears takes place in Knoxville.  And yet the festival offers an opportunity to check out of the routine of normal life and to step into something different, perhaps unknown, definitely unexpected.  I suppose that is one of the things I love about this experience.  I am not convinced that I am the best judge of what is new, or "avant-garde" or even good, but what I love about this festival is the opportunity to step through the looking glass in a way, to just go, to listen, perhaps to be surprised by joy, to let your world be filled with something perhaps unexpected.

     

    Anyway, I wasn't really planning on writing about Big Ears in this post. I may do so in some future post.  I am still processing everything in my head and heart.  I've written about my experiences at Big Ears following every festival, and it seems to almost foreign to admit that I may or may not do so.  And yet, look at my record this year. There has been much I intended to say that I have not.  Despite that, I find myself oddly content.

     

    Life is not about the writing, after all.  To make one's mark, to write, to post to social media, the attempt to claim one's presence and worth — this is all too human, this striving.  But life is lived with or without public acknowledgement.  One has walked x number of miles whether or not one has worn a smart watch and recorded the same.  This year, despite multiple, broadly expansive to-do lists, I have mostly not done, and have been content, happy even.  I can say that honestly even though in some ways it has not been the best year, certainly not the year I was hoping for.  

     

    But happiness, and whether or not life is good, actually has nothing to do with the things that happen all around one.  It is an internal thing, perhaps a state of acceptance.  Many good things have come this year.  There has been time with family and friends, although perhaps not as much time with family as I might have hoped.  I have traveled, and read, and played with textiles.  I have been lost in thought slowly drinking a cup of coffee or tea.  Mostly I have been in the moment, even when those moments were in the hospital because my heart went back into flutter, and the one thing I did not want — more time in hospitals — came to pass despite my protestations.  I am ok now.  I remain content even though I have been trying for a week to open my new bottle of eye drops and failing with every attempt.  I am happy even though I am behind on more things than I can count.  I am happy and healthy, at least in so far as any almost-64-year-old can claim to be. I can choose to be happy, to celebrate the good that has come, or I can hold onto bitterness over that which has not come.  I think I choose the former. 

     

    I may yet write about music and the discoveries of Big Ears.  I may yet write about that trip to the literary festival back in January.  I may not.  I may do less, but I hope to enjoy it more: to savor a properly made coffee Americano: to exist in the moment of idle chatter with a friend;  to spend hours ripping and re-knitting without regret or recrimination, to stay up in the wee hours listening to music, or reading a bodice-ripper.  I know I will write, here even.  I have not given up on seeing myself as a person who maintains this blog, I merely accept that the path is full of curves and I do not yet know, or even need to know, the destination.

     

    At the moment all I have are questions and vague thoughts.  I am not certain that anything about our sense of timelines and obligation has much to do with the ebb and flow of life, but that it is rather something we impose on ourselves and each other.  I wonder if a good life is not so much about what one has accomplished but rather about those fleeting moments of just being present. I wonder if perhaps I like music more than I like people.  Music never breaks one's heart.  Only people do that.  Music never disappoints; mostly our disappointments are caused by our own self-imposed expectations.  And yet a life lived without the risk of a broken heart is a life not lived at all.  And how can there be music, or art, or even joy and love without pain and heartbreak? What makes a good life is not all the things that have been made and done, it is in the breaking and rejoining, in the birth and death and yes, rebirth.

     

    It is not that I love music, or art, more than people.  I love.  We are a communal species. And yet that power of creation comes from the inward breath. The power of happiness exists only within us, it is not a gift that is given to us depending on circumstances, it is a gift we give the world despite circumstances. 

  • A Few Scattered Things

    Not much has happened and yet I want this blog to represent more of my life than mere book posts, even books and the ability to escape into the pages of a book is much of what makes life tolerable.

     

    Colorissimo Scarf

     

    1. I finished another knitting project, an open-work wool scarf knit out of a DK-weight wool, Colorissimo by Lana Grossa.   I am very happy with this project and look forward to wearing it even though I can safely assume that it will be a few months yet before this appears regularly in my wardrobe.

     

    2. I also realized that I made an erroneous assumption somewhere along the line.  I started the year thinking I would continue this blog, and also reconnect with my sewing and knitting blogs.  For a few months I manage to do so.  Then life intervened and I struggled.  At some point I decided that running multiple blogs was a silly idea and I abandoned it.  I was wrong.  

     

    I realize now that decision was fueled by exhaustion, by my inability to really keep up with much of anything in life, in fact fueled by chemotherapy and my struggle withe the initial adriamycin/cytoxan regimen.   My mistake was to assume that,  because my previous goals seemed impossible in that moment,  they would also be impossible in the future.   Life under my current paclitaxel regimen is easier in many ways than that previous regimen, but not without its complications and difficulties.  Still, my head, at least is clearer.  Although I realize that all of my assumptions about life and my priorities pre-2020 are no longer viable, not all of those assumptions should be tossed into the refuse bin.  

     

    Hence I have resumed writing on purlsandmurmurs.  This week I wrote three posts on that blog, two catching up with finished projects, and one about the newly completed scarf show above, basically bringing that blog up to date since my last post in April. I will continue with both blogs and eventually reengage with my sewing blog as well.  I am now imagining a trio of overlapping circles.  They do not have to be completely separate; there will be some overlap between them, but overall they form a balanced whole.  

     

    Navillera1

     

    3. Following a recommendation on Frances's blog, I watched the Korean Series Navillera on Netflix.   I thoroughly enjoyed this program and felt it was incredibly well written and balanced with good development of all the characters, both the primary characters and the supporting roles, throughout the program.  It helped me considerably with my knitting, but as the program was in Korean with English subtitles, it would have been easy enough and engaging enough to enjoy without a knitting project in my hands.  Indeed there were quite a few times I needed to look at the TV and not my lace crossovers, which also provided the necessary balance my neuropathy-addled fingers needed.    

     

    As an aside, I cannot begin to tell you how hard I find it to take a photo of a picture on my TV screen.  Just capturing the photo above took me days of repeating and freezing the screen and balancing my own native inclination to shoot everything crooked and out of focus.  My brothers will tell me how much this frustrated them even when we were in high school.   I must have taken well over 100 photos.  Apparently my personal sense of being somewhat slightly out of focus with the world is deeply embedded.  But then I suspect that life without challenges and complications would be a boring life indeed. 

     

     

  • Monday Morning

    Why is it that I post the least when I am also doing the least?  Is lethargy a deep soul-sucking sinkhole?  Do I simply have nothing to say?

     

    Long ago, when George was still alive, he would occasionally see me quietly lost in thought and ask what was on my mind.  Often I would reply "Oh, nothing." and his response was invariably, "I don't believe that for a second."  He was correct, but I often wasn't ready to share, or it seemed irrelevant somehow.  Is that where I am now?  My mind has not particularly been at rest, but my body, and my energy, oh my, they have been mired deeply in the mud.  Don't mind my ruminations then, rough as they are, at the moment they are all I have.

     

    Sneedville1

     

    Admittedly, it hasn't been all bad.  I went up to Hancock county to see a friend's new farm.  There was fabulous food and fellowship, and an overnight as well, my first trip away from home since chemo started.  I had to take a nap and retire early, explored less than others, communed less as well.  But there was something about stirring, half awake, hearing the murmur of voices late in the night, that was soothing — such a change from over a year in an empty house, alone.  It was good for my soul.  

     

    Sneedville2

     

    I posted this photo on Instagram.  It seems I have been remiss, even there.  Early morning fog on the river.  This morning scene, and the entire visit in its own way, brought up bittersweet memories.  The morning fog on the Hudson as the nights cooled.  The many trips George and I would make on weekends, hiking and wandering in the Takanics, the Berkshires, the Green Mountains.  These are all a part of the Appalachian chain, and there is some similarity in the sense of place to me.  This is one of the things that made me feel more comfortable as I moved here from New York.  For whatever reason, I always preferred these various segments of the Appalachian chain to the Adirondacks and Catskills, which are separate ranges.   These places always felt like home, even though I certainly was not "from" that place.  We would spend many a weekend wandering and exploring. George would talk of retiring to Vermont, either in a small town, or on a small farm, but only if it had a flat driveway.  He was tired of plowing our steep hill.  He wanted to be away from people. I would agree, but only if we could go to New York or Boston, or somewhere three or four weekends a year for live music.  At that point I didn't know George would never voluntarily retire. Sitting on that front porch, looking at that fog, made me think not so much of Tennessee, where I was, but of the Berkshires and southern Vermont, of dreams and longings.

     

    I don't actually know if I was yearning for something real or something imagined.  This could have all been a whisper of discontent, rising out of my general dissatisfaction with life at the moment.  Chemo is not fun.  My first infusion of paclitaxel, or Taxol, was a bit of a shock, despite having being reassured that most people found it easier.  It is possible that my worst days on Taxol are not as severe as my worst days on doxorubicin, but the truth is that, aside from the day after treatment there seemed to be no best days. I don't know if that is because of the Taxol or if it is because I experienced some complications and the second infusion was delayed a week, until tomorrow.  Today I feel better than I have since June  (the last time I missed an infusion due to health issues), but I am still tired and short of breath, and have a few remnants of peripheral neuropathy.  Six more weeks. 

     

     

    The other news, which is sad news indeed, concerns this little guy.

     

    Moises

     

    Moises went outside last Tuesday, as is his way, and for whatever reason, either initial willfulness or a dreadful accident or encounter, he never returned.  People keep telling me he might yet show up, and he might, but it seems past the point where one might hold one's breath.  He is generally not one to wander far.  I knew when he decided, at age 10, that he was going to become an outside cat, that this day might happen. That was four years ago, and I was probably more upset about the possibility at that time than I am now.   I know he was pissed at me.  I went away for an overnight.  I took him to the vet.  Moises would tell me he would rather go die in a noble battle or in the woods than go to the god-damned vet.  Fourteen and a curmudgeon.  Nonetheless I miss him.  I still hopefully look out the doors, step-outside, call his name.   

     

    It has been a hard year.  Strange that, only a year since I broke my nose, found out I had a heart issue.  I lost Tikka last August.  Poncho. Cancer. Moises.  It feels like a lifetime. Life is not really about avoiding pain or loss; they are inevitable and we see that constantly in the cycle of the seasons around us.  As much as we hope we can escape, it is impossible.  It is not the avoidance of pain that makes us who we are, but the experience itself, the diving into it, the refining, much as raw gold is smelted and refined into something beautiful.  That doesn't mean that the dive itself is fun, and that we don't sometimes cramp up and think we will never make it through.  I will make it through.  This is only a moment.  

     

    Who will I be when I reemerge?