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Category: Introspection

Catching Up

I had every intention of writing a post before this, every intention of writing about my birthday, two weeks past now, about small and joyous celebrations with friends and family. I planned to write a thoughtful post about outdoor concerts and history, and even an Independence Day concert and how nice it was to sit on the lawn, watching a diverse community — ethnically, politically, economically, socially — gather together and listen to music that celebrates the brighter side of the American experience. In this age of pandemics and lockdowns and "me too" and "Black Lives Matter", all important, we also need to sometimes be reminded of the good things that tie us together, even when those good things are only music.

Of course there is no "only" to music. Music is basic to human experience. Just as, for all our failings, we should not belittle dreams and optimism and the hope of doing better, for these are also part of both human experience and the American experience. Our founding fathers, our ancestors wherever they were from, were not perfect people, nor are we. It is good sometimes to be reminded to celebrate the optimism of their hopes, of the historical optimism of our dreamers, even when we fail to live up to them. Because it is my hope that we can try and try again. It is easy to forget that despite all that is not right in the world, there is much that is better, and if we share our dreams, we can be better yet.

Geesh. I didn't think I had that in me.

My goal today is actually to catch up on some finished projects, more of a "See! Look what I've done" post than a meditative, thoughtful post. Although I can't claim that "doing" has actually been one of my goals of late, things still get done at their own slow meandering pace.

I started this cardigan in February, before my life got turned upside down, and I finished it in early July. I am happy with it, happy to have made it, happy at the prospect of wearing it even though at the moment, it is the last cardigan that will fit in my cardigan drawer. Of course I will knit more cardigans, and I will probably have to let go of something along the way. Life really is not about buying things, having things, even making things, although making, communing with both other humans and the world at large is an important part of creating a good life. Having more doesn't make us better people, or even happier people. And my compulsion to knit is more about the making than the having more aspect of stuff, and about the joy of wearing something I made.

My life, as small as it is at the moment, is actually fairly full, and fairly content, if not always pleasant, and I am suprisingly content to knit a little here and there, to take some string and turn it into something both useful and beautiful. I am blessed to not experience the need to rush, the need to butt my head against deadlines. What makes life good is not really about deadlines, about having or doing more. A good life is not even really about how far we can remove ourselves from pain and hardship and tragedy, because these are the reality of existence the everyday presence of the cycle of life. Living a good life is about how we choose to cope with the life we are dealt and for each of us the choices are different. There is always choice, even not making a choice is a choice. Every person's choices are unique to them, to their own hearts and experiences, they are not ours to judge. My choices, or at least my preferences, although I have occasionally bowed to outside pressure in terms of choices, more so when I was younger, revolve around books, the making and sharing of food, yarn and fiber. These are my happy places.

Two weeks ago I finished a sweater, the second of the two cardigans I had been working on. This one is in purple cashmere. Both the pattern, and the yarn are from L'Atelier in Redondo Beach, California. The pattern is called Back to the Future, the yarn, Classica DK, for those of you who care about those things. I had shown you snippets, bits and pieces of the project before, and I assembled it slightly differently than usual this time, knitting and blocking the body, assembling it, then knitting the sleeves, knitting them to fit, and setting them into the finished sweater after blocking.

Of course, my summer shift does not coordinate very well with the sweater, but it is unlikely they will be worn together, at least in public. I have worn the sweater already. Cashmere has that wonderful quality of somehow adapting to body heat cycles, and there are days during my chemo where I am simply cold no matter what the ambient temperature, although mostly the opposite is true. I am not handling the heat of summer well. The garden suffers and knitting thrives. Curling up in a comfy spot, occasionally in a cashmere sweater accompanied by a soft and fluffy blanket, with a book or more yarn is the epitome of cozy comforting self-care.

The second project I am sharing with you today was born from the first. When I finished this cardigan I had two skeins of yarn left. I also had one skein of the same yarn in a green-teal, from a cashmere pullover I knit in 2018, as well as a bag of color samples of the same yarn (shown above). My initial plan had been to make a scarf using the green and the miscellaneous samples, and to turn the two skeins of purple into a hat. But it soon became obvious that although a scarf can be knit from less than 300 yards of DK weight yarn, I couldn't wrap my head around creating said scarf with the 10 colors I had in such a way as to produce a scarf I would actually wear.

Much knitting and ripping and reknitting ensued. Then, after a day of weighing and calculating, I came up with a plan for a simple garter stitch scarf that would use up most of the yarn and would create a scarf of the scale I prefer. The end result is balanced, but not quite symmetrical, which is fine with me as I have always been more interested in balance than in classic symmetry. And there are a few subtle variations mostly due to small variations in yardage. Although all the small samples are the same weight, they vary in yardage. This is not surprising. The white yarn, which is not weighted with dye, has the most yardage per gram, and the yardage varies with each color. I wonder if someone has done a study on this, on the weight of dye as it affects the yardage on skeins. Someone probably has, and I distinctly remember that there are certain yarns that contain significantly less yardage per gram in black than in other colors. Not that I am going to follow up on this; it is just idle speculation on my part.

Here is the scarf in its entirety. I am calling it by the not very creative name of "bits and bobs scarf". I used up all but a couple of inches here and there of the yarn samples, and all but about 6 inches of the green yarn. I was somewhat concerned that I would not have enough to finish the alternating striping at the end of the second end (following the gray) but I did. I also used 1 1/2 skeins of the purple cashmere, leaving half a skein. I can live with that.

I am very happy with the results and it will probably get lots of wear, or at least as much wear as I can manage, depending on the variability of Knoxville winters. I can wear the scarf with the cardigan on many Knoxville Winter days, but it will also look lovely with my muted-plum all-weather winter coat, so that is a distinct advantage.

It seems interesting to me that I have knitted two cardigans and two scarves lately, after not knitting winter things for a while, especially warm winter scarves. I am working on a third scarf now. They suit this time and place in my life. Just as part of living a full and relatively contented life though chemo means listening to my body and letting it claim all the rest it desires, so too the creative life revolves around listening to what my knitting muse desires, not in a mad rush to finish, but sometimes just letting the yarn run through my fingers, happily knitting a few rows, then contentedly caressing and admiring what my fingers have wrought.

July 19, 2021
Through the Window

I have been fascinated lately by views of the world as seen through windows. It is an odd fascination in many ways. The world I see through my windows is the same world I go out in daily: my yard; my neighborhood; the people I see walking, whom I too pass when I am out walking. I am not a prisoner in the house, the world through the windows is not a forbidden world. If it is not raining, I drink my morning coffee outside while I listen to birdsong and watch my fellow inhabitants of this world frolic, play, find their own breakfasts.

So why the fascination? It is really not that surprising, is it? In many ways we live in a world where we are separated, we live in boxes even if they are boxes without solid physical boundaries, they are boxes nonetheless. After the better part of a year spent with COVID-19 restrictions and social distancing, we yearn for something different, yearn for what once was, chafe at our restrictions, mourn the sense of touch, connection, of community. Yes we have friends. Yes, zoom has brought us together, even sometimes deepened connections, and yet we are in boxes still.

I can’t say it is at all bad. Where I live people can go out, can gather to some extent, although I tend to only gather and see friends who also observe social distancing and mask rules. In fact I am fortunate to have spent much of Sunday afternoon with a friend just this past weekend.

We gathered for a concert, a fund raiser for a local organization, ACE, which supports students who are interested in the creative arts and their teachers. The concert was in a spacious yard, seating was widely scattered, and a good safe distance was maintained between musicians and audience. It was a beautiful afternoon. We listened to young people joyfully performing their own music. It was an afternoon of respectful sharing and community.

Afterwards my friend and I sat across from each other on her patio chatting, mostly because I had one more glass of champagne than I should have and was not yet to ready to drive home. As much as I am grateful for the telephone and zoom, an in-person conversation, even at a distance still bears a different weight. After a couple of hours, we adjourned to a patio overlooking the Tennessee River to continue our conversation over dinner. It was in many ways a perfect day, music, community, friendship. It was a day that I might once have taken for granted, and which now seems all the more precious.

And so it seems strange to me that, following this precious break from my isolation, that yesterday I should find myself trudging painfully through the slough of despond, mired in mud deep enough that I struggled to extricate myself. That sense of being inside looking out felt heavy. I felt as if I was pounding at the window crying to be released, metaphorically at least, because I knew I could get in my car and drive anywhere I wanted.

Perhaps it was simply because I had spent time with a friend. Perhaps it was because I had spent a few happy hours with family a couple of days later, again outside, again distanced, this time around a fire-pit. Perhaps it was simply this reminder of all that is missed. Perhaps it was just as I hope that we will come to treasure these times spent with loved ones and community, the darker forces of our world were also too much on my mind. Cynicism battled optimism. I feared that our human default response to fear and uncertainty, the fight for me and mine, often no matter the cost, would win out over our better natures.

There are times when I struggle, times when we all struggle, even as, if we are honest with ourselves, we can acknowledge that it could be far worse. But the heart wants what it wants. We all yearn for comfort, the familiar, safety, and this is always at odds with our equal need for creativity and creation, for something new. But the birth of something new always comes with the loss of something familiar. We don’t know what the future will bring, but we know that as much as we yearn for what was, we can never go back. The world changes. We change in the world. And sometime the dark overwhelms. The point is not to stay in the darkness, not to stay inside, but to step into that world, hard as it is. When the darkness overwhelms I have to remember to take a step outside, through the window and into the world, away from whatever walls I myself have constructed.

It is raining, although at the moment only lightly. Through the window I see my neighbors walking. I need to step outside and join them.

October 29, 2020
Breathe

Yesterday I took a Sabbath day of sorts. The day started out fairly normally. I went to the gym, stopping to admire the camellias that had suddenly burst into bloom after a warm rainy week. This in and of itself is not surprising, this particular camilia tends to bloom sometime during February, March, if it has been a cold winter, which it has not. I posted a photo to instagram, the same one as seen below:

Upon my return I started upon normal household chores: a little vacuuming and dusting, for example. I took the leaves out of the dining table, only to decide I needed to put them back in for a dinner party tomorrow. I fully intended to write a blog post.

But then I sat down to knit and realized that is what I needed to do more than anything else, and so I knitted and puttered for the bulk of the day and well into the night. There was an interruption for a fabulous violin concert, a concert that left my heart vibrating with song and fueled knitting late into the night. I am still working on the pink sweater, the only day I had to work on it for over a week, and I finished one sleeve and made a good start on the second.

I had trouble going to sleep, and I realized that I this too is a part of who I am. When I can devote days to myself, to my “work”, I am happy and calm and at peace. Then I can go out in the evenings and be all buoyant due to the effects of that balance. And I tend to do that. There was a fund-raiser for the YWCA this week, another fabulous party for the opening of the Beauford Delaney exhibit at the Knoxville Museum of Art, (which I will have to write about another time), the aforementioned violin concert, and one whole day filled with meetings, and that same evening as well, a day that simultaneously inspired me, exhausted me, and caused me to question whether a particular cause, much as it is close to my heart, is really the place where my talents can flourish.

I realized that this day (work, meaning creative exploration) evening balance is essential. That the social feeds the contemplative, but the obverse is equally true. That I go out and then sleep well, and that if I start creative pursuits in the evening I loose all track of time and space and am likely to work far too late. I am likely to tumble into the slough of despond, but this may equally be due to lack of sleep as to an excess of alone time. I realize, well have long realized that I am not the “sew a dress in 10 minutes a day” kind of person. I need long blocks: the social block, the creative block — be it writing, cooking, playing with needle and thread in all its many permutations, even gardening — the cuddle with someone on the sofa block, wait, that one is on sabbatical, so the social fills a bigger and more important role. But life is like that too, ebbs, flows, sometimes even tidal waves.

I like sitting in my breakfast room in the early morning, catching up with news, or a book if I feel the world is too intrusive, looking out at the flow of hellebores. I can open the window and hear the birds.

I am only a few pages from the end of the first volume of William Manchester’s life of Churchill, The Last Lion, continually fascinated by Winston: his obstinacy, his brilliance, as I said earlier sometimes his naïveté, by the very complexities of the man in fact, strengths and flaws. I also enjoy Manchester’s prose, and his own comments and comparisons, contrasting time and culture, his and Churchill’s, each with its own biases and blind spots, each population confident in its modernity, its a self-assurance that their own beliefs are the path of the future. I have long wondered, and this book feeds that wondering, what future generations will think of us, looking backward 100 years from now. I suspect each and every one of us would be surprised.

I like the way Churchill needs to keep busy to fight off his own battles with “the black dog”, the way we all have gifts, and strengths, but also weakness. The way he plays with his children, determined they would not be lonely the way he was lonely, but equally never around. I admire the determination to make the most of those times he was around.

And I am reminded also of a smaller book. One I read this week in a fit of early morning insomnia.This would have been Kreis Beall’s The Great Blue Hills of God, a book that I believe is in the small pantheon of books having one of the most perfect opening chapters I have ever read. But even this is subjective, and I suspect that what I see and love in this book may not be what everyone sees. But that is the good thing about books, good books, that they speak to us on different levels.

I am reminded of a conversation at the art opening, about how art, literature, music, dance as well, cut through to the soul, wiping away the fogs and shadows we drape around our lives, and how most of the time we do not want to be impaled, do not want to see the depths of our souls. Some of us are better at the shallows than others, some of us, having fallen into the depths find we don’t really ever want to return to the shallows.

After reading that first chapter, I was impelled into Beall’s book, and it think it was gracefully written, reporting the stages and struggles of her life, looking back with a kind of distance and humility, even though it has been an accomplished and in many ways enviable life, that can only come at the cost of great personal unraveling and reknitting. This is the woman who I found admirable and fascinating. And odd for me, because I too have been guilty of always being busy, of wanting to make things look perfect in a mistaken belief that they will then be perfect, of searching for love and peace through shadows and trappings, I found that I felt indomitable sadness for that younger Kreis, for her own self-described lack of options, even as her life was in many ways charmed. I suppose I am saying I find it odd, because my younger self would have been awed and intimidated by the younger Beall’s accomplishments, but my older self finds this less important than my enormous respect and admiration for the woman she has come to be. But then, none of us, if we allow our hearts to break and mend, are the people we once were.

I shall leave you with the last sentence from that “perfect” first chapter:

Only when I let go of perfectionism and learned to sit with devastation, and from there slowly breathe in meaning, did I discover that what I had built was not a picture-perfect life, but a real and beautiful one, stronger for the breaking.

February 8, 2020
What the Mannequins Taught Me

Meet Abigail and Matilda

Matilda is the older of the two; the one wearing the evening dress, and Abigail is the younger. But even she must be at least 15 years old.

Both Matilda and Abigail were in storage for essentially a couple of years, since I moved out of the condo and into this house. Their rediscovery has been revelatory. First of all, dressing them was a bit of a challenge. Then, when I looked at them across the room, for the first time really in a long long time, I noticed how long, small and willowy Matilda was. Both are my height. Both are wearing my old clothes, garments I have loved and worn again and again. But I never, in my entire life, considered myself willowy.

That seems sad.

I dubbed them Laurel and Hardy, for reasons I will now explain. Size and the perception of size are interesting things. Stan Laurel, for example was not particularly thin. He was of average size but looked small and thin compared to Oliver Hardy who was 6’1” and bulky. Matilda probably is slender but still curvaceous, as was I at that time, but her smallness, as compared to her height, surprised and almost shocked me. She is probably closest to an American size 6, if there is any standard. Abigail is probably closest to an American size 14 or 16, and she looks large compared to Matilda, but she is closer in size to the average American woman.

I named them Laurel and Hardy because of the shock factor, of the idea of the terms “skinny” and “fat” which I have come to realize more often than not have nothing to do with actual scientific data and relate more to cultural norms and biases. When most women say they feel skinny, they mean attractive, and this is triggered by a cultural bias in which women are supposed to be small, take up little space, to be insignificant. Of course many will argue with me. I know women who consider thinness and the ability to wear towering heels as a symbol of power; I may have been one of those women. Turning a symbol of weakness into supposed power is not new, but it may also not be helpful. The same is true of the word fat, at least as it applies to women’s appearance. When I say I am fat, I am basically saying I feel unhappy about myself, and more often than not, that has nothing to do with my actual weight. I am fairly confident that I am not alone. These words are the words of shaming. Matilda and Abigail reminded me of this, and reminded me to stop it. And we all should. But I don’t want to go into shaming and shaming words in this post.

When I wore that evening dress. I did not consider myself willowy. In fact I probably thought of myself as fat. I was probably a good 30 or 40 pounds heavier than I had been in college, but even then, I never thought of myself as thin. I did not have an eating disorder, but I was deeply conditioned into the way I thought about myself and if I had not been “fortunate” enough that I could eat anything and everything and still remain unusually thin, I might well have developed an eating disorder. But eating disorders are not really about weight. And despite the fact that we tell ourselves that “thin” is healthy and “fat” is not, this is belief is based only partially in fact and does not correlate in the way our biases assume. The obverse can just as easily true, and often is.

So, if I was shocked to see Matilda dressed, I was equally surprised by Abigail. I had always planned to pad Matilda out eventually and use her for fitting as I started to sew again. I knew I would never look like Matilda again. Discovering I was celiac (a malabsorption syndrome) and having an atrial septal defect (which made my heart work extra hard just to move my skinny self around) repaired, put a stop to that. But in my head I kept telling myself “if only I can get back to being as thin as Abigail again, I will be happy”. But there are no conditions on love, including self love. I remember telling my (step) children that there is no such thing as “I love you, but…” or “I will love you if….” But did I apply that to myself? to self-love? Obviously not.

So dressing Abigail was a shock. None of my current clothes fit her. In fact I could not get them on her. Abigail is bigger than I am, so why am I condemning myself? Yes, Abigail’s waist is smaller than mine, but Abigail is eternally in her early 40s and I most certainly am not. When I say I am fat, I don’t mean that I am obese. I am not. A little overweight yes. But really I am saying that I can’t walk as far as I want. I don’t have as much energy as I would like. I have trouble with the first 10 or 15 minutes I walk, and in fact may always as that is a residual effect stemming from my scoliosis. Some of those things I can change, some of them I cannot. I honestly don’t believe attractiveness has anything to do with weight. In fact I think almost every woman, or man, I meet is attractive. But Abigail and Matilda reminded me that I did not extend the same courtesy to myself. And this was in large part a big reason that I pulled inward and away from the blog for a while. Because I know my self-criticisms are not true, that the little girl who was shamed is grown up now, that I only have to please myself.

The plan was always to pad Matilda out eventually. I thought I would be padding Abigail out as well, but we will see. She has padding now, and she captures the curve of my spine well because she was made from a cast of my actual body. The dress Abigail is wearing is a dress I loved and plan to copy. I still plan to copy it even though it is a bit big now and I am less curvy.

Abigail and Matilda reminded me to stop fretting. I had several beloved things I had made but not worn for a while, things I would say that will look better when I am ……. Surprisingly, or not actually, they all fit better than I thought they would. I cannot wear them in the same way I did when I was 45, but who cares about that? I have been wearing the cashmere cardigan seen above, knit sometime before 2005, which is when I joined Ravelry. Yesterday I wore a sweater I knit in 2008. The photo below is from 2008. But I am just as happy with the sweater now as I was then.

But this is not really about wearing old things, or trying to regain lost youth. It is about settling into who I am now without burdens. This process of settling is physical, is mental, is emotional. It is time to let go. This is my space. This is my time. Here I am.

February 5, 2020
Meandering and Twisting….Sometimes In Slow Circles

A meandering path:

I unearthed the leaf blower from the bowels of the basement last week. Then I proceeded to blow all the leaves onto the flower beds, thinking the added organic matter and acidity would be useful in the newly added heavy alkaline clay soil. Shortly after I did that, a landscape crew came in and started to blow all the leaves off the beds and up to the street.

Enter screaming banshee white woman yelling “No! No! Stop! Put them back!” Yes that was me. I understand, intellectually anyway. I had been a previous client. Why not try to help and assume the client will be happy to return to the fold? Ahh. No. Protect me from people trying to help. Nothing is wrong with help. But it needs to start from the same frame of reference.

The rest of the week may be a slow week. I pulled my back doing something minor, and foolish, a lift and twist move — the kind of thing we all do without thinking but which we really aren’t supposed to do at all. I am having a bit of trouble moving around. Or I move well, once I get started… until I don’t. Short walks are called for, many short walks, which will hopefully lengthen over the next few days. I don’t know if I can afford the slowness and yet at the same time I cannot afford to not take the time.

And so it seems my walkway is not the only thing that meanders. Life meanders as well, sometimes in convoluted twisty ways that we never anticipate. But so many of the our goals and deadlines, the things we twist ourselves up over, aren’t really what we are supposed to be working toward at all. The goal of life isn’t the next party, the promotion, the next job. Sometimes we forget that we are really just trying to cross the street.

November 20, 2019
Inside, Outside, InsideOut

Sunset at the Knoxville Museum of Art, the evening light reflecting on Richard Jolley's Cycle of Life. I was at the museum for a fund-raising event and the way the light reflected on the glass, particularly the light passing through the two pieces of the final stage, Contemplation, really stuck in my head that particular evening, seeming to draw attention to both inner and outer light, the balance, or lack of it that illuminates our humanity, needing both the interior and the exterior stimuli to feed our creativity and wholeness of self. As I enjoyed the evening, caught up in that externally extroverted sense of social hubbub, I was reminded of this inner light, and the way it sustains us, sometimes glowing from within, other times hidden.

The social season has begun again and the next two weeks will be filled with music and art, some literature, another play, as well as social interaction. I am reminded of how the external or the social also feeds our creativity, or at least, my own creativity — reminded that as much as I need the interior, and feel stressed and drawn when time for necessary quiet is not available, the same can be said for the social aspect of life as well. I need both for balance, and wonder if perhaps the summer was, in itself, perhaps a bit too isolating, a bit too deeply mired in the internal slough of excess introspection.

Or perhaps this is simply the story I tell myself. It increasingly seems to me that as much as well need our stories, both personal and cultural, in order to find our own place in the world, those same stories also have a tendency to mask truth, which always requires communication and a meeting of perspectives. As soon as one claims some hold on truth, "my truth", one is already on a slippery slope.

And yet I continue to feel unsettled, both exuberant, this sense of buzz and excitement fed by the social milieu, while simultaneously feeling overwhelmed. Like Tikka when she wanders around in circles, pawing at the carpet or a chair cushion trying to make just the right spot to settle in comfortably, I feel like I've not yet found that comfortable place where the inner and he outer can meet.

Look at this photo above, of a painting by Karla Wozniak called Synchronous Fireflies in the Knoxville Museum. I was at the museum again yesterday for another event, and I took this photo with an entirely different narrative in mind from the one in which I find myself this morning. I love the exuberance of the painting, the sense of light, of motion and also lushness. It. reminds me of the giddy interaction of social setting, of surprise connections, of this dance of interconnectedness. And yet the lushness, and perhaps this is just the way I am looking at this painting this morning, also holds a hint of danger. It reminds me of how light and perception can change, and the way something that can seem lush, rich, and exuberant in one moment can be transformed in an instant, suddenly becoming dark, dangerous, and overwhelming.

I am reminded of when I first moved to New York state from Texas, of the way I was enamored of the tall trees and the lush sense of greenness, but how at certain times in my yard, in the flush of rain and humidity and summer heat, I would dream that I was being devoured by that very excessive growth. I still feel that way sometimes in Tennessee, although not particularly this summer with my flat brown yard, which bare as it is, also holds a comforting sense of promise. And yet there is still that sense of celebration combined with the fear, (is it fear?) of being overwhelmed, of going too far in one direction or the other. And I wonder if this very feeling is something shared by others, or if I am just being presumptuous, attempting to project my own mistruth onto the world. I wonder if I am obsessing over "my story" or if there is some connection there to something more human and universal.

The flash of the fireflies, the light of the painting reminds me of how social interaction sparks creativity and pulls me out of the overgrowth, the strangling vines and deep much of self-indulgent introspection.

Two other pictures, also viewed yesterday, reminded me of the opposite extreme, at least for me. The photo above if of a print made from the cancelled plate of an engraving by Lester George Hornby called London Bridge. The crosshatched marks are added to the plate to prevent further prints from being made and passed off as originals. But I also find it interesting in and of itself. The pattern of the crosshatching seems to me to add a sense of distance, and even disengagement from the view seen in the print, as if one is standing behind a window with heavy leaded panes looking at the world. For me, this is the danger of too much extroversion, too much social engagement without the requisite private interior time. I feel like a fly trapped in some sticky surface atop the glass, unable to fully become a part of the scene, present but disengaged.

Here is the official print. Notice how we are much more deeply drawn in here, much more a part of the scene. I look at this print and feel palpably drawn into this world, into the detail. This print engenders a sense of connection, as opposed to the sense of separation in the previous print. Perhaps this is what I am trying to articulate, the struggle to find the balance that is needed in order to live in this world, to function on a daily basis in a world that is basically imposed upon me both externally and by my own psyche, and the ability to look beyond that, to be neither mired in the mud or trapped on the surface, to create the life I want, a life that in the end requires that I look beyond myself and into the whole of the community, a communion, in a sense, with the world.

September 11, 2019
Settling In to Small Things

It is raining, albeit lightly, and that does not mean that the trades are not scattered across the place — working on the landscaping, hanging gutters, moving things out of the garage so it can be finished. Goodness knows what else. It also means I have towels by each door, towels for muddy shoes and to wipe muddy footprints, not that there have been clean feet around here for some time. When it wasn't raining, the air, and every surface, was covered with stone dust. You could not walk outside without tracking it in, could not open a door without trails of dust rushing to colonize new space. I have accommodated myself to the idea of dust, of footprints on the floor, both mine and the beasts'. Towels only go so far, and cats are not known for their patience with foot wiping.

The stone masons have laid out most of the back patio and walkway. This photo is from earlier in the week, incomplete, but the work has since been covered with tarps to protect it from boots and rain. Grouting will take place later in the week, weather permitting, although the masons worked through the rain last week, laying and cutting stone under tents. Despite the noise and the dust however, my house is an oasis of peace, if not order.

Everything was moved into the studio on Friday and I posted the photo above on Instagram that morning, happy to see how nicely my rug and the loom looked in the space, in a brief moment of peace before all the boxes appeared. While men moved heavy things, I unpacked fabric and started placing it on the shelves.

But this is not what the studio actually looks like. Below is a more accurate representation. There are a few things I need to do sooner as opposed to later, but I am not forcing myself into timelines and deadlines. I can do whatever I chose, whenever I chose to do it.

That idea, of accepting slowness, of patience, is easier stated than lived however, much as I have long paid lip service to the idea. I realize now that I was only flirting with patience, that I put too much stock in the doing and not enough in the being. Perhaps this is a lifelong journey, one with which we all struggle. After years of stating that it was the little things that actually matter, I realize that I always merely flirted with that belief — I always had a big project in the background, providing a comforting anchor. And now there is none — no project, just life. Or perhaps "just life" is actually the main project and the others have all been distractions. I don't know. I still tend to think a good day is a day I do a lot of things, but what if a good day is just a day I don't worry about what I have done?

I am sure that point will take a while to embed itself into my conscience, and by the time it is firmly established, I may not even remember that it was once a struggle. In the meantime, this morning I poured a perfect espresso, although it is technically somewhere between an espresso and a luongo, but it is my "perfect" and that is all that matters. I think I will putter about in the kitchen, figuring out some of the what and where that still plagues the space, at least until I am tired. I play bridge this afternoon. Perhaps I will run errands. Perhaps I will take a nap, or read, or knit, or all of the above.

July 22, 2019
Ups and Downs…

I wish I could tell you that I was doing fun and exciting things.

I wish I had erudite and fascinating thoughts to share.

But neither one is the case. I am here. I am in, and happy to be in my home, but it has been a rocky week, at least as far as my general state of mind is concerned. This move has been harder than I anticipated, harder than any prior move that I can recall. And I can't explain it.

Sunday was one of my best days in a long time. I awoke with a glad leap, and felt fully myself and full of energy for the first time since I moved back home. I watched tennis, finished the grocery shopping, had a great workout, spent an hour or so doing kitchen prep work: washing vegetables (yes even triple-washed organic baby spinach), steam-sautéeing cabbage, roasting spaghetti squash, browning ground meat, roasting some chicken thighs — prepping food so that it is easy to make dinner (or lunch) on those days when I need to eat, need to prepare a meal, but have neither the time nor the emotional reserves to actually cook. Long ago, when I was in my 20's, I learned the value of some advance prep work and the way a little time spent on shopping day could help with getting dinner on the table in 15 to 30 minutes or so on those days when energy or inspiration prove elusive. I still think cooking is fun, but sometimes I just need something delicious to eat without much fuss. I used to think prep work was a tedious pain, but I've learned to make a game of it and the payoff is definitely worthwhile. Without a mountain of prep, pulling together a simple meal can be quickly satisfying.

The prep work came in handy on Monday. Monday was a different story. Monday morning I found myself fighting back a growing quaver in my voice as I discussed frustration over things not yet done in the studio, minor things to be sure, minor delays about which I had felt a trifle annoyed but not necessarily emotional on Sunday. I struggled not to burst into tears. I found myself hiding in the bedroom or the library, feeling teary and fragile, emotionally far more overwrought than the situation warranted. I don't think it was just the delays in getting into the studio that set me off — probably an impossible to discern jumble of things, a bit of a struggle in the gym one day, even if followed by a really good workout another, the constant presence of noise and workers and interruptions, the sense that I can never quite finish anything, never quite be alone, a conversation with friends where I perhaps allowed myself to be a little more emotionally vulnerable than is my wont — that alone could kick me on the path to self recriminations — but it also seems evident that a supportive response to that vulnerability also caught me by surprise. I am far more prepared for rejection than I apparently am for tenderness and the surprise of it has left me feeling even more vulnerable, a touch more exposed, although I suspect that ultimately it is in a good way.

I simply don't know where I am. I am not referring to physical location here, that is evident, but my emotional landscape still feels a bit jagged and uneven. I am confident in my intelligence, in the many things I can do well, and yet there is a vulnerability, perhaps partly in simply exposing a dream, and the realization that I have stumbled on yet more walls that need to come crashing down and more teary track's through the wreckage.

I am surrounded by energy and excitement. Bluestone arrived Monday afternoon. I was thrilled to see it, thrilled to watch it be unloaded, excited by all progress. At the same time I am also exhausted by the very same hubbub, by the sense of being constantly exposed. By the time every one goes home I am too tired to pull myself together, and I feel as if all my nerves have been stretched thin.

And yet…..

I started unpacking fabric yesterday even though there is still no furniture. Workers are uncovering the windows today. I went out and bought a crochet hook. I can knit tonight.

Part of the back yard is starting to take shape. The stonemasons are here today, placing that bluestone on this patio. As I sit here typing, three men are 15 feet away, finally finishing up the guest bathroom….

Perhaps even here, in my heart and head, as I sit and type, I am creating a new emotional path. Will there be more tears? Probably. But how could there be joys in a world without tears? Perhaps that is all it is, profound happiness, sometimes requiring its toll in profound sadness. I would want to say it isn't so, but I would never give up the happiness, even if it meant fewer moments of tears. Somehow, someday, this particular vista will all fall in place. And then the heart will find new paths to explore, new fields of flowers and new rocky shores..

July 17, 2019
The Bend in The Path

Last night I dreamt that I was on a highway in the rain at night and I was lost…. Last night I dreamt I was lost on a highway, I made a turn onto another highway and suddenly I knew I was on the right path, the path home….. Last night I dreamt I was on a highway in the rain and I was cold and soaking wet…. Last night I dreamt I was on a highway in the rain on my bicycle….Last night I dreamt that I was on my bicycle at night in Michigan, and that I had been riding my bicycle across the country from California….. Last night I dreamt that I had been traveling aimlessly, vaguely headed in the right direction (east), but without a known path I had wandered slightly astray…. Last night I dreamt that although I had perhaps floundered, I had, in fact, found the route home.

Dreams are, of course, often not linear, at least mine aren't. They are jumpy and scattered, oddly fragmentary and yet at the same time whole. Increasingly I tend to view life the same way, although sometimes I wonder if I have wandered off the generally accepted path and find myself somewhere wilderness.

Last night's dream was not, in many ways surprising. I started one project, the house, that was supposed to go one way, follow one path, and that path has changed and grown and become far more complex than I had wanted. What I had hoped would be three discrete projects over a period of years has turned into something that at times feels like a storm crashing around me, even though in the end I know it will all come together.

So too, my supposed idyll in the apartment. I had hoped this would be a time outside of normal life and obligations. A time to explore creative impulses, to reflect and refine. Well reflection has occurred, although I sometimes feel it has been dragged out of me kicking and screaming. Refinement as well. Nothing is as I had hoped it would be. And yet, I am not worse for this wandering and at times overwhelming path. I may even be better.

The sun is out, for a part of this week anyway. The house is coming along. Stucco is going up on the outside walls. The garage and studio are progressing. We are playing with layouts so that the electrical wiring can go in. Floors and tiles are also starting to be installed in the house. In short things are starting to come together. A new path is being revealed. I may grow lost again, but at the moment promise reigns.

This is true personally as well even though the path has not been as simple or as clear as I had hoped. I should not be surprised at that. If dreams are a form of metaphor which helps us to understand our paths in life, I increasingly feel that life itself is a metaphor, and part of our life's journey is actually a job of deciphering and understanding. We can explore, or refuse to explore, to the best of our ability. I often, and I suspect I am not at all alone in this, want to take the easiest, safest, kindest path. I just want to be content, to have fun, to be happy. And yet each time I am turned upside down I find that my previous understanding of happiness was just a reflection in a mirror, that I have never seen beyond the surface of things.

And so here I am again actually, finding myself heading exactly where I always thought I wanted to be, except that the road to this place was not at all what I expected, nor is the place itself quite what I had imagined. Well, I suppose that is not surprising. If life is a metaphor, then the words we use, the understandings we form as we unravel each level, prove inadequate with each layer we manage to peel back. And like any good metaphor, my purpose, my understanding, my meaning, can never be more than a partial view of the whole, and therefore completely different from other's understanding. Different and yet the same because we are all the same matter, all the same energy. All completely alike and completely different.

Quite frankly there are days I think I would have remained much happier had I never fallen into a rabbit hole, had I continued to refuse to delve beneath the surface. I liked my life. It was, by all contemporary social measures, a successful and happy life. Even in the face of grief and loss, I could have clung to that life. Some part of me may wish I had; there would have been less pain, fewer tears. I would not wish it on anyone. And yet at the same time I would, because every time I re-experience joy I see that my former understanding was but a shadow of what joy could be. Make no mistake. I am no wiser. I am just as foolish, just as attached to my own little bits and bobs of this and that as I ever was, even as I realize that they could all disappear tomorrow and the essential fact of who I am, of joy, of sorrow, and also of love, would not change. I am just as lost. In fact the more I think I know where I am going, the more I find I have lost my way.

And yet, I have found my footing yet again. Each time I fall in a hole, I come up simultaneously wanting less and more, being less and more. Who knows what the next blossom will be, or in fact, if it will be at all distinguishable from the blossom that came before. Why blossoms? Well the amaryllis has sent up two more flower stalks, from nothing it appears. I thought the bulbs were spent, done, complete. And yet, new blooms are incontrovertibly present.

February 26, 2019
Further Explorations

Yesterday morning I was out walking Tikka early, well before the sky was starting to brighten with the impending dawn, and I was struck by the scent of the air. It was something hard to describe, not a floral perfume, not exactly the scent of fresh dirt, but of something I could only call hope or growth. It was a warm, woodsy, green but also slightly sparkly scent, not floral, not fruity, a scent of brightness, a hint of promise. I thought to myself, "Ah! Spring!". It may be early yet, there may be setbacks, but spring has announced itself, not just in the hellebores and the leaves of bulbs and buds on trees, those can always be false starts, but something in the scent of the air and soil and the leaves themselves. There are always setbacks but the cycle moves forward.

The house is moving forward as well. Every day I see something new, although at the moment the most dramatic visible transformation is occurring with the garage and studio. Windows went in last week, although they were not completed when these photos were taken.

This wall of windows faces north and north light was one of the most important criteria for my studio. Yes there are windows on all sides of the studio, and good lighting is being added as well, but north facing windows were one of my most important demands for this space. North light is the light I love. I love seeing the sunrise, I love watching the sunset. But if I could only have one window for the rest of my life I would want it to face north.

Here is the view looking out from the very unfinished studio. There is a courtyard below, between the house and the garage, the same courtyard that attracted me to this house in the first place, and a view of the street, where I can, should I choose, watch the neighbors passing by walking their dogs. Of course this also means that if I am working at night, and if I am in the middle of a project the hours tend to disappear, anyone on the street can see me in the studio. I am not sure I that I am uncomfortable with that. I am perhaps more uncomfortable that everyone who can see me can see the mess that often occurs in the sewing room, the mess that indicates that something is being created. It can be limited, but it can't be completely contained.

My entire life is not as organized as my refrigerator. In fact much of my life has been a struggle between these too sides of myself, the organized spreadsheet-loving person who likes things sorted and lined up in pretty little rows, and the more creative impulsive part of me. In my youth these aspects of my character were mostly at war, but now I am finding a sense of balance and peace, Or at least I am trying to find a sense of balance, trying to find a sense of peace. I do not always succeed. There are days when one side or the other is winning. There are days when I have to remind myself it is not a battle. There are days when I need to pull myself out of the fog of melancholy.

I am beginning to understand how these things are related in my soul: clutter, order, inspiration, melancholy. I wonder sometimes if art, if meaning, if transformation, actually exists in the interstices between order and chaos, between our need for security and our need for change. Perhaps this is exactly where I need to be, where I see magic, see creativity, as happening, in the fog between passion and reserve. Passion, discipline, love, mysticism, melancholy, even perhaps moments of despair. Each can be overwhelming, can indeed destroy us, but somewhere in the tension between them lies meaning, is that thing that I think art, life even, is trying to capture. That thing that we yearn to discover.

Order in and of itself can become an obsession, and I try to nip that impulse in the bud. Order can help with life but it can also stifle creativity, at least my creativity. I am all about balance and happy accidents, the ways things just happen to fall. But I am also all about pretty things lined up in pretty ways. I cannot say that I would choose form without consideration for function, but I would never chose function without consideration for form. And I have come to accept that this is one of the reasons that I want my studio to be a separate place from my house. The house needs to work for me to be content there. I like little jars lined up in the refrigerator and I learned long ago, that if I wash the lettuce, dry it and put it in a container, it will last longer, but I will also be more likely to use it before it spoils. If I cut the bell peppers into strips and put them in a pretty container, I will see them and use them. If a whole bell peppers rolls around in the back of a crisper drawer, God help it, because I will likely forget its existence. I hate food waste. I like pretty little things lined up in rows. Spending time prepping and putting away saves me time in the long run, and brings me peace. It gives me more time in the studio, where I and pull things out of drawers and pile things up and let them speak to each other, where serendipity plays a role.

I can't really explain why some clutter makes me crazy and other clutter fills me with joy. All I can do is go with it, and learn to respect my own strengths and failings. Also learn to accept that anything I see as a strength may indeed be something someone else sees as a failing. But who cares. The joy in existence is that each and every being is different. For me, having food prepped in anonymous little containers encourages use and play, and helps me find things. I won't rustle through plastic bags, but I will look at little jewel boxes of color, and use ingredients before they spoil. That is how I ended up with roasted chicken thighs and a simple sauté of bell pepper and baby box choy for dinner one night. I saw the vegetables, saw that I needed to eat them before going away, thought they looked pretty together and so they were, delicious also, simply tossed in the pan drippings from the chicken.

But where am I in all this? I don't know. Someone said to me in a conversation about something, some choice for something, "but you are an artist". I was taken aback. I don't really think of myself as an artist. I don't actually think of myself as much of anything, just myself, just a complex mix thoughts and ideas and activities. I don't produce anything, not necessarily anything that anyone wants. But I do think life is art. I care about the details of how life is lived. Can being an artist be a way of looking at the world? I don't know.

Where am I in all of this? It is worth repeating. Evolving. Aren't we all, always evolving? Or at least that is the hope. Here I am sitting with my grand-dog, Dash. Dash is growing to big to be a lap dog, but he is still a puppy and he wants desperately to be a lap dog, so he tries. I feel that way sometimes, like I am trying to shove too much into my time and space wanting to be — something — l am not sure what, but also content to just be what I am inconsistencies and big floppy messes and all.

February 8, 2019