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Update

Suddenly a lot is happening at the house. This is good because everything looked like a disaster for far too long. It is also good because I seem to have too many pots on the fire at the moment and I can simply entertain you with a couple of pictures. Or so I hope.

The windows are finally in, and wallboard is going up this week into next week. This is the breakfast room, looking toward the kitchen and the new back entrance. It amazes me how happy a simple thing like windows makes me. The window openings were simply covered in plywood for far too long, and this made the house look sad and abandoned. Now, it is almost as if it has eyes again. The house once again feels like a happy place.

I am especially entranced with the increased light in the dining room. At the moment it is a little brighter than it will be because there is still an opening directly into the kitchen, But I know the light will be good, simply because that wall was covered with plastic (and a refrigerator) not that long ago, and the room was still brighter than it ever was during that first year I lived in the house.

And the hall. I want to dance in the hall. Doesn't it look so promising? So bright and welcoming? The French doors will eventually open onto a deck, although at the moment there is nothing there, just a drop to the ground, but the sense of promise is still present. The reflective covering on the floor makes everything seem brighter than it will be when I actually return, when the wood floors are once again uncovered, but the sense of promise remains.

In the meantime, I am scattered, with too many things going on. I don't understand why I believed moving into this apartment would be like a retreat, a creative time freed of normal distractions. Hah! I completely underestimated how much attention and energy this job would take. However, I suspect if I had fully understood how much I was getting into I wouldn't have leapt. And yet, I wouldn't have it any other way.

January 30, 2019
Coming Home

Lenten roses preparing to bloom in deep shade of my side garden.

A little over a week ago I was admiring the lenten roses blooming in a friend's yard. Simultaneously I was filled with joy, and with sadness. The joy was at the intrepid beauties of this world and the idea that spring would indeed come, that despite cold and frost and possibly snow, these small blossoms would carry on and persevere. My sadness was more personal. I was sad because I was thinking about the lush field of hellebores that had surrounded my house and which have now been mostly lost. I was sad because I had given up more than I wanted to give up. I was sad because I had not expected how poignantly I would feel the loss of the old and familiar even as I accept and know that the new is good and indeed where I need to be. I was sad because I wanted to be home.

Home, and the subject of our own human longing and need for a sense of home, has come up in quite a few conversations over the past couple of weeks. It has been a steady track in the background of my own thoughts as well and I have come to a new understanding of home and what it means, at least for me. But first I probably need to deconstruct.

Home is one of those complicated terms with layers of meaning. Home can simply be where one lives. It can be the people one loves, the place where one spent one's childhood, the place that shaped the person we became. Home can be many things. It can be everything and it can be nothing. When we meet new people we often ask them where they are from. At least here, in the Southern United States, we are asking where they were born, where they grew up, who their people were. It is a question that sometimes comes up early in conversations here, but this is not true in all cultures or societies. Although the idea that where we are from is an important part of who we are is universal, it can also be a question that delves too deeply into the personal for casual exploration.

The idea of "home" is actually both simpler, and more complicated, than simple explication would allow. Home can be the place we make, the people we choose, but it is also shaped by the people we are. Tom Wolfe wrote a novel called "You Can't Go Home Again" and he was right. But we often misconstrue the message. It is not that you can't go back to your childhood town and pick up again. You can. But that place is not the same. You are not the same. None of us are the same people we were. We are not the same people we were last week, although we tend to think we don't change that much. The changes are so incremental we don't notice them until something happens that shocks us into awareness. Something like tearing apart your house. Or worse: divorce, death of a loved one, loss of one's career, home, way of life. Life is full of loss. Mostly we inure ourselves to the small losses, and yearn for a better place, a place without loss, a place we call home.

Two things, two contradictory things, struck me last week. They were not a part of this lingering conversation about home and yet they played into it. One of them was the "Violins of Hope" program performed in Knoxville last weekend. I attended, although reluctantly and mostly because I felt obligated out of family history and loyalty, but in the end I was glad I went. Musicians from the symphony performed on the old instruments. The readings were well done and the entire evening was poignantly beautiful. And yet I struggle with the entire mentality of "never forget". We are already forgetting. We forget that Jews were not the only victims of the holocaust, that twelve million were killed directly by the Nazis, including a far higher percentage of the Roma population (although a smaller number of actual individuals). We forget that between 38 and 55 million people died in WWII if we include military casualties. I am not saying this to negate the impact on the Jewish community, which was intentionally attacked, but it is only one story. We forget that genocide plagues human history. We forget that bad things do not happen in a vacuum, that bad things sometimes happen because good people turn their eyes away, yearning for the past, for better times, forgetting the past was never as we remember it. We forget and yet we do not. Is there a cost to not forgetting? yes. Is there a cost to forgetting. Also yes. Is there a cost to defining oneself by one's losses, not by one's gains?

The other thing that stuck in my head was a line from Haruki Murakami's novel Killing Commendatore. It is not the most beautiful or resonant passage I recorded from this novel, but it struck me in this moment of my life.

"You have the strength to wish for those things you cannot have."

This sentence captures in some essence much of what this book is about, as it is a novel about art, and love, and transformation, mostly about transformation and how art and love are about transformation as well. The ability to undergo transformation is a rare thing, and it almost always comes out of some deeply unsettled place, if not outright darkness, and yet, if we succeed it always results in something I will simply call beauty, even though that may not be obviously evident on the surface of things.

So, here is my question, or the line of my thoughts anyway. Not all of us yearn for home. Most of us are content with wanting whatever we can achieve. And yet the echo of that yearning still exists deep in our psyches and we are right to be afraid. To wish for the things you cannot have takes strength, and if you fail the costs can be great as the journey often involves dismantling so many of the things we believe about ourselves. But when does yearning for home become destructive? When is yearning for "those things you cannot have" lead to insight and transformation, and when does it become "never forget" and the road to defining oneself in the past, the road to death?

But back to the hellebores, and my own ever-changing understanding of home. There is a mythical place called home — the people I came from, the place I grew up — but I recognize that although those people and places shaped who I am, I also recognize that they are no longer home, if indeed they ever were. For a long time I made my home, not in a place but with a person. George was my home and I thought my house in Hyde Park was my "forever home". But that was an illusion. The house was only home because George was my home, and then I began to lose George and I found that I was homeless once again. Although I grew greatly through the love offered in that relationship, I also stopped growing. That is one of the funny things about relationships. We strive to be vulnerable and open ourselves up to each other, to grow together, but there is also the danger that we will stop growing and allow the relationship to be a substitute for inner growth. I sometimes wonder if this is more of a danger for women, who are often subtly taught to subvert their true natures, to become vulnerable in order to be cared for, or for people who have been damaged through early experiences, but I suspect it too is universal. I suspect it comes out of fear, fear of being alone, fear of not being good enough. Most of us never really find our true selves. Many of us never really even try.

Anyway George died, and once again I had no home. I had he house we bought in Knoxville, but I gradually came to see that our house was not my home. It was the place I bought so that George could be near his family, and I as well of course, but actually it was the place I bought so that George could die and I could start a new life. Eventually, that house held me too tightly to past and I had to let it go.

When I bought my current house I fell in love. Yes, you can fall in love with a place, although I realize now that I was also falling in love with the person I could be but was not yet. I felt instantly at home. For a long time I felt it was the place that was home, the physical house. I have no regrets. I am glad I bought that place, it was a refuge during a very bad year, a year when I learned another place I had thought was home, was not really home, just another external structure upon which I had built false home, to which I had given too much of my heart. I was looking for home in all the wrong places.

What I have discovered, although it has just now truly become coherent in my thoughts, is that I have found home, and it has been with me all along. I thought it was my house, and so it was, is and will be again. But that is not my true home. My house is home because it is the place I can be my true self. It was not the house that offered me security, but myself, even if initially I didn't realize the extent of how that worked.

What I realized most forcefully of late is that the search for home is a false search. Home is within each of us all along, it is our true selves, our best inner nature, and we carry it with us wherever we go. Other people, other places, cannot build home for us, but we can let those people and places in and welcome them into our homes. Or we can continue seeking. But if we keep on seeking, letting the external define us, if we keep looking for some kind of external validation or sense of home, we begin to define ourselves by the past, by our emptiness, not our fullness. And home becomes a place we can never reach. You can't go home again because home was never a place. You take it with you everywhere, the more you run from yourself, the more you look for an external place to fill the internal center, the more you obscure the path to that center and the further from home you ultimately find yourself.

At the moment, I am completely at home in my apartment. This was not initially the case because I moved here thinking that it would be holding station, never intending it to be "home". That changed when the scope of the job changed. And now I can say I am at home here. This is reflected in the fact that I am comfortable, and that I am cooking, sewing, planning out projects and, evenly more importantly, perfectly content to be doing nothing here, content to just be myself. And when I move back into my house it will be my home as well. Until it isn't. Until I change yet again. I hope that when the time comes, I will remember to not hold too tightly onto the past, to live in the present, ever-shifting as it may be, and to remember that home is with me always.

January 28, 2019
The Tendrils of My Thoughts

I am a little scattered this morning. My sinuses are draining, which may account for at least some of the randomness of my thoughts as every time I seem to get settled on a particular track, I am stopped and rerouted by a trip to the tissue box.

It seems therefore that this is proving to be the perfect morning for a few random bits.

I replaced the hose on my gravity feed iron this morning. The previous (yellow) hose had proven to be a problem when I was working on the Christening gown, not surprisingly as it was actually a piece of medical tubing I had dug out of George's box of essential supplies after he passed away. The hose had served for a few years, when I was only sewing lightly and in short bursts, but it did not stand up to the prolonged heat necessary for a larger project. This is not surprising; it was never meant to go on a hot iron. Admitting defeat, I ordered a proper hose, one intended for use with a hot iron. Yesterday I removed the old hose, which also required some scraping, soaking, and general work to remove areas of melted rubber from the metal parts of the iron. This morning the new hose went into place, and I am ready for prolonged work in the studio, without the frustrations of working with inadequate equipment. Of course the problem was one of my own making, but that seems to be often the case with human endeavor, not that I am willing to go down that path very often (admitting to mistakes, not the making of them, a process in which I engage far too frequently).

One of the amaryllis bulbs is about to open. I am very much looking forward to the big reveal.

A friend and I attended a reception yesterday evening, where the upcoming season of the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra was announced. It was a lovely evening, and the presentation was interspersed with musical interludes performed by the symphony's Wind Quintet, Looking at the amaryllis bulb this morning reminds me of one such interlude, where they musicians were playing some 17th century Hungarian dances. The music felt joyous and peaceful, and wrapped itself around my thoughts like the tendrils of a climbing vine, gently winding their way into my thoughts and opening up, like a flower into new vistas.

Such I suppose will be the case with the Amaryllis. I am looking forward to the exuberance of the big reveal, and already in a musical state of mind, I am reminded of the vibrant joyousness of last week's symphony performance, which ended with an excess of joyful exuberance as the Knoxville Symphony and the members of the Youth Symphony performed Dvorak's Symphony #9, "From the New World". I was particularly tickled by this (I have always loved that symphony) because George always hated it, thinking it was far too populist and overwrought. And yet George's memory accompanied me to that concert as the Dvorak, among other things, was paired with one of George's favorite pieces, Korngold's Violin Concerto in D major. It is quite possible that in my youth I felt much the same way about the Korngold as George did about the Dvorak. Anyway, the Korngold was stunningly performed. Tessa Lark brought a beauty and lyricism to the piece, which too my ears had always seemed to full of schmaltz for comfort. I think I believe both new depths and new lightness was revealed, a newly discovered sense of joy, as well as the deep peacefulness that comes when one recognizes how one is shaped by one's past, and yet not necessarily defined by it.

And lastly, Tikka. Here she is sleeping in my closet, her head resting on some metal hand weights. This seems particularly uncomfortable to me, but as it is one of her favorite spots, I must assume our understandings and experiences of comfort are different.

Tikka was diagnosed with Cushing's Disease around Christmas and it took a few weeks to get the details of the diagnosis and treatment squared away. She started her new medicine late last week, and although not all of her symptoms have abated, she is already a much lighter spirited, bouncier and happier dog. I am reminded of how she slowed down over a period of months and how we thought the problem was back or hip issues, both of which are present, but now I see that this disease was probably just building up slowly, see how things can sneak up on us before we realize what is going on, see how powerful healing can be.

January 23, 2019
On Conversations: With Books and With Myself Regarding Books

I am still reading Haruki Murakami's novel Killing Commendatore. I have been reading it slowly and thoughtfully, as there are many passages that interrupt my ability to push forward, leading me to sit back and ponder what I have been reading. I have probably spent as much time musing over the book as I have in actual reading, perhaps more. This is not a complaint. I love a book that demands attention, demands conversation.

But the process has also led my thoughts down subsidiary paths, caused me to reflect on the process of reading, of reading deeply, and my own inner conflict around marginalia and note taking. And that leads me to a question, a question not geared to those who read without noting, and move on. The question is, do you write in your books, or do you keep a reading journal, keep notes in a separate location? To be honest I don't think there is any best answer to this question, although I do wish to explore the issue as it relates to my own mental wiring.

I am mostly of the latter persuasion, but I have not always been convinced that this is the best way. Some part of me has always admired people who mark up their books, who write notes in the margins, and I realize that this is a more complex issue than I had previously assumed, at least in terms of my own psychological makeup. I admit that I don't often know what I am thinking until I write it out, or talk it out, but really there are only a handful of people in the world I can talk deeply with at that level, where knowledge and understanding and vulnerability can be laid out in the open without risk and growth can occur. I treasure those dear souls, but more often I am writing out my thoughts about books. Increasingly, I recognize that I admire practitioners of marginalia because I assume, probably not correctly, that they are smarter and more adept at pulling together their thoughts, than I. In fact, this may or may not be the case, and ultimately it is, altogether, the wrong question.

Perhaps it goes back to childhood, to those days when books were all a property of my parents, where we were not allowed to scribble in our books, to those days when we were taught to wash our hands before reading and hand inspections were routine, all the better to insure that grubby fingers would not mar precious pages. Those rules had something to do with a father who could not stand amateurish efforts, who probably did not want to be forced to encounter immature or silly thoughts. I how those rules fed my increasingly deep-seated insecurities by feeding my inner conviction that my thoughts were not good enough to compete, even in my own books, books I purchased myself, with those of wiser and more mature minds.

When I met George, one of the things he admired, and often mentioned to his friends, was how I would read scholarly journals and books, and that I always had a notebook where I copied out quotes from the books and wrote extensively about my understanding of what I was reading. This habit partially arose in childhood when my parents, increasingly worried about how quickly I plowed through books, required me to write book reports on everything I read.

I got in the habit of taking notes at an early age, rather than using a pen or a highlighter. Because the process of taking notes interrupts the flow of reading, and therefore of comprehension, I developed the habit of reading the book or article or chapter once through quickly, just for general understanding, and then a second time, more deeply, when I would copy, note, and ponder what I was reading. This habit served me well throughout college and grad school. I fretted that I was slow-witted, and needed more time to study than most of my peers, primarily because note taking is slow, but I also assumed that my fellow students, who did not take notes, naturally remembered more of what they read than I did, making the erroneous assumption that their lack of note taking skills was an indication of greater ability. In retrospect, I see that although I may have spent more time initially on my studies, I had the advantage when it came time for exams and term papers, as I already had extensive notes organized, I rarely had to crack my texts to study. I rarely needed to pull an all-nighter, and for the most part I could review my notes and ideas would return to the front of my memory. And so this habit, this habit of writing things out was honed.

I still admire marginalia. I've even gone through periods when I tried it with varying degrees of success. I admit I love reading a second hand book where the original reader has made notes. The notes enhance the reading experience, making me look at what I am reading with different eyes, and act therefore much like a conversation between readers. But for me this is the gift of a double-edged sword, because even as another person's notes can make me look at a book in a new way, they can also prevent me from forming my own independent relationship with the book. My understanding of the book is shaped subtly by what someone else has written. I don't know if this is universal, or if it stems from some insidious remnant of that early insecurity. This proves to be the problem for me with my own books as well. I love rereading books. For the most part, I feel that if a book is worth owning it is worth rereading. The conversation will evolve with each reading. What I have found, for me, at least, is that if I have notes or underlined and bracketed passages in a book, my previous relationship with the book shapes my future reading. We stop growing together, the book and I, just as, with a person, friendships can stop evolving if we refuse to forgive a slight, or acknowledge our separate growth and changes in circumstances.

I love other people's marginalia more perhaps than I love my own, although I increasingly indulge, creating my own small system of notes, even as I struggle with its effectiveness for me. I personally feel less invested in books if I have only marked them up without also writing extensively about the process of reading. I still admire people that write in their books, and still, deep down in some corner of my soul, feel that the ability is a higher calling. I can also admit that, in my youth especially, not writing in my books was something of a self-protective mechanism, a personal wall to protect myself from vulnerability. If no one could read what I wrote, I could feel safe and protected. Notebooks, after all could be destroyed.

Now that I find myself beginning my 7th decade on this planet, most of those early insecurities have been recognized for what they are, and mostly banished to the margins of my existence. But the patterns that I have developed seem to have become a part of the way I think, and although they are now hard to break completely, I believe I can still adapt. I still write out particularly favored passages. The advent of ebooks and ebook readers has made it easier to highlight, and to erase highlights, making the process faster. I can highlight a book as I read it, send my notes and highlights to Evernote, and then edit the whole thing, returning to the book as needed to expand upon ideas. I still make handwritten notes, but I use Evernote as well, both by typing in particular passages, and scanning in handwritten notes on books. This is helpful due to the search ability of Evernote. I can read a book again, and go back and look at my notes, should I desire to do so.

I no longer have my old college notebooks, even my reading notebooks from before I moved to Tennessee. I had file cabinets full of notes and journals and I destroyed them all. Do I regret that? Sometimes. That all harkens back to that deeply seated insecurity, and the entire world-upending changes that I was thrown into with George's illness and descent into dementia. My insecurities came back to haunt me in those days, and I realized I had built a structure of confidence and self worth that was fragile, that was built on sand. When the storm came my identity came crashing down and I was thrown into the pit.

I can ask again, do I regret having destroyed my journals and notebooks? In part, yes, because they connect me to a part of myself. But that part is not lost. I do remember. But now I am, mostly, better at integrating the parts of myself. Now I can move forward. I still take notes, but once in a while I will bracket and underline, once in a while a note will appear in the margins of a book, often linked and connected to something written somewhere, or some computer file. I find myself finding strength and joy in going more slowly, in letting go of the idea that happiness and joy comes from doing more, but rather from enjoying the conversation. Whether that conversation is with a friend, a book, or the way the sunshine hits my face as it breaks through the clouds is irrelevant.

January 21, 2019
Five Things Friday

1. Rain and headaches. That was yesterday. I woke up with a headache and the rain started before my first meeting ended. I was completely scatterbrained and drove past my second appointment and was therefore late. It seemed wise to spend the rest of the day quietly at home, where little actually got done, but I'm OK with that. Cold rainy days seem perfect for random laziness. Perhaps the headache was a gift. The pounding eventually subsided around 6 PM, when I had another meeting, but I still felt subdued and unfocused. I can't explain it but all has returned to normal this morning.

2. A building rises from the mud. Yes. Foundations are in place and they started framing the garage. Roofing materials also arrived and perhaps soon there will be a roof on the addition to the house. That period from Thanksgiving to Christmas felt awfully long, as progress was slowed by rain and mud. Waiting can seem interminable, and although necessary underlayment was progressing, I was feeling somewhat subdued about the project. Foundations, HVAC, and electrical wiring, as necessary as they are, don't look like much when they are going in, and I didn't realize how much I yearned to see something, anything, that looked like I might live in it again. Perhaps I just hadn't recovered from the shock of loosing plantings due to the need to replace and expand the buried drainage system, or the shock of the disruption of the backyard when the old garage was excavated and a buried septic tank was discovered, a buried septic tank that had to be removed. Every day it felt like the mud was increasingly exponentially. In December, that sense of having lost control was palpable, and although it is, perhaps, shallow and frivolous, seeing the framing take shape, floors and walls begin to appear, has lifted my spirits considerably.

3. I made chicken stock this week, for the first time since probably before Thanksgiving. The beef stock surplus is dwindling as well, so I will probably be back on a weekly stock-making schedule before spring is well established. With this batch of stock, I also made a pot Attukal Paya, a spicy Indian soup or stew made from mutton legs and/or feet, except that I used lamb because that is what I find at my local Asian Market. I've been making the soup for a few months now, off and on, but this is the first time I started with a base of my own rich chicken stock before extracting the collagen from those lamb bones. I will never go back.

I tend to pull the lamb out once I've extracted all the flavor, and then drink the pureed soup in a mug, but yesterday I had a bowl for lunch along with some baby bok choy I had seared in some smoked chaabani pepper olive oil. It turned out surprisingly well since I wasn't actually sure what to expect from the oil, a new-to-me ingredient and gift from my brother.

4. I also stepped out of my sartorial comfort zone, by branching out of my everyday boots and jeans mode and wearing a skirt and tights with a favorite pair of everyday boots. Actually, perhaps I found my groove because I was very comfortable and very much myself. Perhaps I am also rediscovering a bit of joy in the occasional jolt of black in my wardrobe. That black knit skirt had not been worn for a while, and now I can't wait to wear it again, black leggings and boots and all.

Of course the proportions worked better with the coat than they did with the sweater underneath, but that is something I can work on. It ended up not mattering much on Wednesday, the day I wore that outfit, because I had two meetings at the house, which is always cold given that it is not yet closed up, and otherwise ran errands. I ended up with my coat on for most of the day, the sweater simply acting as an insulating layer. The sweater itself, much as I have loved it in the past (it is 9 years old) may be spending its last winter with me. It no longer seems to just work the way I want it to work with the things I want to wear.

5. A secret garden. I suppose that best describes how I feel about this small collection of artifacts. Granted, they arrived in this spot because I didn't know where else to put them, but this location, the corner of my desk, has proved fortuitous because I see them everyday and they always make me smile. The glass rose is new, a Christmas gift from my brother, Charles. The silver llamas were my grandmother's, and I see I need to polish them, although at the moment I am also fascinated by the way the reflection of light off the rose plays out in a subtle play of colors dancing across the tarnished surface of the llamas. I don't remember the provenance of the small vaseline glass vase but looking at it I am reminded of where it sat in the house, on a windowsill in the sunroom, the play of light and shadow and the green of oak leaf hydrangeas behind it. Those hydrangeas are now gone, but the vase does not make me sad. There will be new plantings, new leaves, new light. For now however, we just wait, remember, and dream.

January 18, 2019
A New Christening Outfit from Old Lace

I've spent the better part of 2019 so far playing with lace, lace and fabric. I was making a christening gown for a little girl, using one of her great-grandmother's old cocktail dresses. Although the skirt was full, Great-grandmother had a tiny waist and there were many seams and darts, seams and darts sewn through many layers of lace and fabric and tulle.

The first order of business was to deconstruct the original dress. The lace was delicate and fragile, disintegrating in places. I am sorry I didn't take any pictures of the full dress, but it was strapless with a full skirt. There had obviously been a pink ribbon at one time, threads remained where it had been tacked in place, and several areas of the lace had pink stains.

Once the fabric was in pieces, repairs were made, where possible, by appliqué and embroidery, layering lace motifs and creating new lace chains as needed. This was the longest part of the job, but in many ways the most enjoyable.

A week before the baptism, which was this past Saturday, I was given another dress. The dress was mostly tulle, but there was a panel of embroidered organdy on the front of the dress. Unfortunately the organdy was very white, and the original lace was off-white with a yellowish-green cast. The two did not look good together and I could not quite figure out how to combine them in one dress in a way that would satisfy me. I decided to keep the dress out of the original lace, and use the organdy as a coat. I also decided to use a third shade of white, an off-white silk satin organza which was sitting in my stash, as a lining for both pieces.

The organza was a remnant from Miriam's wedding, and as I hadn't yet used it for anything, I decided that it had been waiting for just this occasion. It was off-white, with a beige-cast, more yellow than the white organdy, but not as yellow as the lace, although you can't quite tell that in the photo above, taken late in the evening under artificial light, before the dress was finished. The firm hand of the satin organza also provided stability and protection for the lace.

Both garments were finished with a simple bias binding at the neck. The dress was tied at the back neck with a ribbon, but I could not find a ribbon to that worked with the hybrid color of the coat, at least not on short notice. The coat remained open.

The coat was made in a simple, sacque shape, and was really the simplest part of the outfit since no great efforts were required to preserve the fabric.

But the two garments worked together, and better yet, looked adorable on Annalyse.

(all photos are mine except for the last photo, from the baptism. This photo was used with permission of Annalyse's grandmother)

January 16, 2019
The Week in Review

The first full week of 2019 has come to a close, and already I am not managing to maintain a schedule. But are schedules necessary? or are they artificial constructs?

Actually, if this first week is any indication, 2019 is off to a good start. A week ago Sunday I had a lovely lunch with my step-daughter, chatting and laughing, regaled with tales of her recent trip to California, and getting caught up on visits with her childhood and college friends. Lunch was at one of my favorite spots in Knoxville, a place I got to eat twice this week, and it was half-way from my house to the UT campus, where I had a concert on Sunday afternoon.

In fact, I was so enjoying our lunch and the conversations that I was late to the concert, late enough to miss the first piece, but I did make it in time to hear Mozart's Oboe Quartet in F Major (which was fabulous, by the way). This was followed by a Schubert Octet, also beautifully performed, but long. I must admit I grew restless and slipped out the door early. This had nothing to do with the concert and everything to do with me, a result of over scheduling and a yearning to be outside. Luckily, being late to begin with, I was near the door, making it easy to slip out again about 3/4 of the way through the piece. I spent the remainder of the afternoon planting bulbs, the 400 bulbs I reported planting previously, before impending darkness and the increasing cold drove me inside. Mozart was bouncing around my head the entire time I was planting, and afterwards, when I lay on the floor with my feet up on the sofa, allowing my back some time to recover.

There was more bulb planting over the next four days, another 350 bulbs or so, although planting smaller numbers per day was easier on my back. It all seems a little excessive, no? Well yes. I had ordered the bulbs early, almost as soon as the catalogs were available, because I knew some of the bulbs would sell out, ordered the bulbs when I still thought I would be living in my house, before I knew the yard would be torn up, before I knew so many things. Now the whole order seems excessive, and perhaps foolish, but it is too late for regrets. Sometimes all one can do is move forward; sometimes one must just plunge one's hands in the dirt and hope for the best.

Tuesday I went to Knoxville's new Change Center; a trip which filled me with inspiration and hope. And yet, at the same time, my head was also filled with questions. I am proud to be a member of a city that is putting such effort into helping at risk youth and yet I also wonder how I can do more, partly just in volunteering to help on an individual basis, but also what role I can play in bridging the divides in this city that also often seems like two cities, the more affluent, educated, western city, and the less affluent, at risk, eastern city. It is not a situation that is unique to this city; in many ways we are a microcosm of the country, but that does not make the divide any less shocking, or the need any less crucial. We inhabitants of the western city tell ourselves it is not about race, but of course it is and it isn't. Even more than about race it is about class, but class is the thing we hate talking about more than we hate talking about race. Yet neither of those words is enough to contain the problem, they each represent a narrowing and a labeling, and externalizing, if you will. And externalizing and labeling are both forms of avoidance. Avoidance is key. Increasingly I think the issue is one of the walls we build and the bubbles in which we enfold ourselves, ostensibly in the name of protection. We console ourselves with labels, just as we console ourselves with our complacency, with good intentions, by telling ourselves "it is not me". Like so many of the divides in our country, the obvious divisions are all too real, and yet are also a part of a greater and more complex interleaving of issues that play themselves out in our individual lives and in our society, on issues large and small.

And so it seems I have been spending much of this first week of 2019 thinking about bubbles, how we each live in our own little community bubbles, and whether our bubble is one of hope or one of despair, we are too often trapped within it, unaware that we are even encapsulated. Much as I want to help individuals transcend one kind of bubble, I am also torn and worried about all the other bubbles, the bubbles that keep people separate and in ignorance, the bubbles of complacency that, under the guise of security and protection, actually drive us apart. For as long as our lives are contained in our bubbles, and I live in as much of a bubble as anyone else I know, we are building walls that keep us apart and isolate us, many kinds of walls, and many kinds of isms. As long as we live in bubbles, I fear we cannot honestly live in harmony and humanity. I suppose what I am really wondering is how we stop being bubbles and return to be being water.

I don't know where I am going with any of this. I still need to figure it out, but it is good to start the year thinking of things that need figuring out, good to question my own assumptions and biases, even as I live within those biases: lunching with friends, planting bulbs, going to concerts, caught in the activities of my really pretty privileged life. There was another concert on Wednesday, a fabulous concert that stuck with me more than Sunday's concert, and for which I stayed until the end. A concert that had my head spinning, and thinking about harmony and dissonance, and the ways bubbles can be burst, yielding new harmony. There was an hour spent holding a baby on Friday. There was a christening on Saturday, and another few minutes holding that same baby. There is nothing like a baby to bring you to center of all things, the center of life, the center of potential, the center of what we call can be.

But these were all distractions in a life, and I am not even sure they were the essential elements. Or perhaps they are exactly the essential elements. A baby, seeds and bulbs, new life, music, these are all things that unite us and promise new growth, these are all the stuff of potential and promise, fully present before walls and conditions hem them in.

I was thinking about how young babies are just happy to be held, held by anyone who is warm and loving and willing. It is usually months before walls start to go up, before only parents and known people are wanted, before bubbles start forming. We don't tend to think about the artificially of what we impose and what is absorbed. What we think of as common knowledge is really just our own bubble, a reflection, something we've been taught. What we think of as truth is often also only a reflection of what we see inside our bubble. I am no different. I am a product of my environment, my head filled with assumptions and biases I am not even aware I harbor. I acknowledge that we need bubbles, we need filters and membranes, but there is a danger when those walls stop being permeable and become rigid.

I think we need weaker walls, softer walls, walls that are more fluid. How do we let the walls of our bubbles grow softer? How do we stop harming others by protecting ourselves? How do we let our bubbles live in harmony instead of disharmony? How do we become water?

For some odd reason I have been remembering John Lennon this week, remembering particularly the words to one of my favorite songs: Imagine. Only bits and pieces are here.

"Imagine all the people

Livin' life in peace.

Yoo hoo

You may say I'm a dreamer

But I'm not the only one

I hope someday you'll join us

And the world will be as one

….

No need for greed or hunger

The brotherhood of man

Imagine all the people

Sharin' all the world

…

Welcome to 2019.

Perhaps it is long past time we start to change the world. Perhaps I am still a dreamer. But if it weren't for the dreamers, I think we all would have destroyed each other long ago. Perhaps, as long as we are here, there is always hope.

January 14, 2019
Finishing Off the 2018 Reading Roundup

I hadn't planned on two book posts back-to-back, but oh well.

I briefly mentioned over half the books I read in December (two novels by Stuart Woods, two by Maggie Sefton, and one by Marie Bostwick) in my last post, so I will not repeat myself as there really is not much more to say. I enjoyed them to varying degrees, but I remain unconvinced that I will read more Sefton. I won't seek them out, but if I come across one in a pinch, I might yet read another.

I saw Oh Ye Jigs and Juleps at our local second-hand book store, McKay's and picked it up for Mom's stocking. We had a copy when I was a girl, I recall that we both enjoyed it, so it seemed like a nice little trip down memory lane. I reread it before passing it on and still found it charming.

The Lost City of Z had been on my stack for years and I finally read it. It was well written but for me at least, it wasn't worth the wait. The book was filled with hubris and ego and terrible things happening to people in the jungle. Mostly it just didn't capture my imagination, although there were thought-provoking moments where my mind would be sent wandering tangential paths, wondering about all the harm we do and the good things we don't see simply because we never quite escape our cultural programming. Of course Divided: Living in an Age of Walls, also sent my mind wandering down similar paths. This book contained lots of information and facts, and brought situations I was aware of to life in a new way for me, but it felt like a lot of information without a lot of depth. I will probably read the authors other books though.

Somewhere in the middle of the month I picked up and read Mark Sisson's Primal Endurance. This is the book started my thoughts about breathing and health, and led me to a few other books and doing some research into medical books and journals. I don't yet know where this path is taking me, but I am thankful for the insights that have pushed me forward, regardless of where I end up.

I started the month with Louise Penny's newest Gamache mystery, Kingdom of the Blind. I love Penny's novels and this one was no different. I always sink deeply into the story and am carried forward by the way she combines community with moments of insight, beauty, and just plain old fashioned fun, along with a serious investigation. I copied a quote from the novel here, an idea that resonates deeply with my own understanding and experience, and which, not surprisingly, has resurfaced in my thoughts as I held this book in my hand before writing this post. Or perhaps it resurfaced as I reflected on a conversation earlier this week, where some words I spoke, out of habit, not out of thought, were words that were more relevant to the person I was not the person I am now, words related to an idea that will always be in my longhouse, but which can, and should, be allowed to slip away to the corners, not held close to my heart.

January 10, 2019
Popcorn Fiction, or The Return of the Bicycle Book, and Moving Slowly

Sunday night I found myself in the gym walking slowly and reading the current issue of the New Yorker. It was about 8:30 and I needed to walk. I had tried walking around my apartment complex; the air was still and calming; I thought the night air would be soothing. But there was too much human disturbance–an altercation involving several police cars at one building, a fighting couple outside another–I retreated to the silence of the gym at night, not all that silent as the tv was on, although I focused on my reading and not the talking heads on the screen.

I needed to be walking that evening because I had been working in the small patch of garden that remains untouched by the construction at my house, a job that has become far more all-encompassing than I had originally imagined. So much for control. I managed to plant 400 bulbs Sunday afternoon, and Sunday evening my back was stiff and sore. I knew I needed to walk. A slow walk on the treadmill was all I needed, not pushing myself to go faster, but just moving, with gentle focus on small things like rolling my hips properly, not falling into a sciatica-induced marionette-pace, and breathing through my nose, calmly and evenly, my pulse remaining low, in the aerobic zone, focusing on releasing and unkinking. The process was effective, I loosened up, although once I was no longer focused on back pain I realized how exhausted I was overall, and went to bed.

In fact, I have become a regular at the small gym that is part of my apartment complex. I've not really been using the weights, although I might. Mostly I've been walking on the treadmill, walking slowly and deliberately, focusing on stamina, endurance and health rather than fitness. I've been focusing on breathing only through my nose when walking, focusing on breathing and keeping my pulse low, in the aerobic zone instead of the anaerobic zone, and it has not been as easy as I had assumed. Because this form of exercise is different than anything I've done in recent years, I've also returned to reading light fiction. I used to read on an exercise bike at the gym; this was when I lived in New York State. Now I read on a treadmill. Treadmills are boring and I do not find the television to be a motivating factor. With a book on tape I go too fast. With literary fiction I tend to want to stop walking altogether.

Hence there will be an increase in the number of "bicycle books", being read, books I now think of as popcorn fiction, a term I borrowed from someone, somewhere. I started with the last of Marie Bostwick's Cobbled Court series, Apart at the Seams. I read most of the cobbled court series between 2010 and 2013, before this book came out. I had forgotten how much I enjoyed the series, the friendly camaraderie of the ladies whose lives revolve around the quilt shop. Better yet, the book got me through several hours on the treadmill.

When mom was here she read one of Stuart Woods' novels Unbound. It is part of the Stone Barrington series, although Stone appears only briefly. It is more about a character named Teddy Fay, who appeared in an earlier Barrington book, and who apparently now has his own series. I read the book after mom, and I enjoyed it. It makes no demands, moves fast enough to hold my interest, and led me to revisit the series, starting back with the first Stone Barrington novel, New York Dead, which reminded me why I liked Stone to begin with. I still like Stone, and I think Woods has created an appealing protagonist here. It is not an introspective and that is perfectly fine with me. I never read all the books in the series–there are over 40– and they will keep me happily in bounds, at least until I can get back outside.

But at the moment my ability to breathe through my nose and walk, which I find impossible if the air is chill outside, is keeping me in the gym. I've been looking into the different ways breathing uses our lungs, and realizing that I have been a mouth breather for decades, even when at rest. It has been commented upon by doctors and trainers, but everyone assumed that I had to breathe through my mouth because of the way my scoliosis had partially crushed and twisted my lungs. I am not so sure that is true, the part about breathing, not the part about my lungs, I do not have full lung capacity and never will, but I am seriously beginning to think I can improve the function of what I've got by focusing on how I breathe. I realize that I my level of health may not be another person's, but I want to pursue being the strongest, healthiest person I can be, and I have come to realize health and fitness are not the same thing. So for now I am slowing down, looking to eventually find balance, but before balance can come I must first build the fundamentals and undo decades of habits.

And therefore I have been searching for light reading. I am sure I will be perusing the paperback best seller lists, but also exploring older books which I may have neglected recently. I picked up a new-to-me series, a knitting mystery series by Maggie Sefton. I read the first two books, Knit One, Kill Two and Needled to Death. I am not yet sure what I think. I like the lightness of the books, I sometimes find the main character, Kelly, frustrating and none too bright, and the books are light on the mystery side as well, but I didn't really dwell on those things while I was actually reading. The books remind me of my favorite knitting groups, calming and supportive places of acceptance and companionship, not big issues. I realize I may place greater expectation on a character in a novel than I do on people I actually meet and converse with in life. For me the book was more about the circle of friends that are formed, about those non-judgmental circles we form in our lives, where we meet and support other people we might not have met otherwise, where we expand our horizons and form new friendships, where we actually become more accepting individuals.

Well, that is too much to put on a book. But I am reminded not to niggle. I am reminded to read and to walk and to generally move forward, occasionally backward, without rushing and without judgement. I am seeing progress.

January 8, 2019
A Few End of Year Projects

This will be my last post for 2018. My mom is here until the end of the year, and although we aren't doing anything significant, just hanging out, my thoughts are elsewhere, not on blogging.

I have been entertaining myself with small knitting projects however.

First, I started this cowl for myself, using some yarn in my stash, a skein of Manos del Uruguay's Wool Classica in the deep wine color, and a skein of Colinette's discontinued wool, Skye. The cowl started with different yarns and a pattern. My original yarn choices didn't really work and I ended up ripping and restarting the pattern several times because I didn't like the way the color bands were turning out. Eventually I modified it into something I liked. Consider this my practice cowl.

About the time I figured out what I was doing, and just before the final ripping and reuniting of the wine cowl, I decided I needed to change up my planned gifts for my step-daughter Miriam and knit her a cowl. Family Christmas was on the 23rd and I made this decision around mid-day on the 22nd, so off to the yarn store we went. I picked four yarns, two by Luisa Harding (Trenzar), a variegated yarn by Auracania (Alumco) and another blue yarn for the background. I've already lost the tags so I have no idea what yarn I used.

I tend not to be drawn to high contrast, and I was a little worried, as I knit this, that there would not be enough contrast in the final fabric. But we are both happy with the results.

Family Christmas was a lot of fun. Mom carried on the family tradition of wearing one's bows.

I restarted, and finished my cowl. Historically, I tend to knit cowls and scarfs on a whim, often inspired by a particular yarn. Apparently there is a theme. It seems that all of my scarves, except the grey one I knit earlier the year, all fall in the same color family. Luckily my coats are wine, grey and taupe, but I do think that perhaps I should. branch out, just a little bit, in 2019.

See you next year.

December 28, 2018