restingmotion

Break Time

 

The fountain by the small back patio is up and running, for the first time since I moved into this house.  Already, I feel its calming vibes.

 

But you can expect a blog break, beginning today.  Yesterday I burnt my right index finger, picking up a roasted eggplant by the stem.  The eggplant itself had cooled; the stem had apparently been transformed into a still-burning piece of woody charcoal.  I should have known better.  Now I do.

Above is a picture of my index finger, all bandaged.  Yes it is dirty.  Friends drove me out to an Azalea nursery in Sevierville, where I purchased 17 azaleas, some of them good sized.  I purchased 7 evergreens and 10 natives,  6 varieties in all.  Despite the fact that I was trying to be careful, and I can't really do much with my right hand, certainly not with that index finger, the bandage did get dirty looking for tags on plants.   It is OK, I was due for a cleaning and bandage change anyway, and my finger remained clean.

 

There are things one never things about until forced to do so, the importance of the index finger is one of those things.  I can still walk and go to the gym. Salman Rushdie's new novel is waiting for me on the sofa.  I may not manage to vacuum the floors.

 

And now that is all I can type for today.  I won't tell you how long this brief post took. Have a good week and I will be back soon.

Weekend

Last night was spent with my favorite grandson, celebrating his 13th birthday and a lovely evening was had by all, with the exception perhaps of a certain one-year old grand puppy who was frustrated that all the people were having fun together and that he was not included.  How can grandma come over, after all, and not include her grand-puppy in the festivities?  

And this morning I was there at the Farmer's market bright and early, before one of the stands I tend to like to frequent even opened.  In fact it was not open both times that I walked by, but there were plenty of other opportunities. I love spending early Saturday mornings at the farmer's market, when there is a full selection of produce, but mostly because there is time, time to wander amongst the stands,  time to account for what you see, to make mental notes, to create fantasy dishes and menus, and to dream of what I might want to eat, might want to cook before heading back for a second round and settling into the business of actually shopping.

As I wandered back to my car, laden with two heavy bags I wondered if perhaps I had perhaps over-indulged.  I always start with a list, I try to think while I shop, but I still occasionally get carried away and today I was rearranging my menus in my head as I walked back to the car.  But as I was thinking about these small personal things I was also watching people at the market,  wondering about my own excesses and also the simple pleasures of life, time with family, walking the dog, and a certain amount of focus on the personal and the small, as opposed to the outside world, knowing full well that we were all there, in downtown Knoxville, the morning before a football game, each in our own bubbles, some in bright orange bubbles, planning on a day celebrating a football game, me thinking of soup and homemade sriracha, perhaps some time curled up with a book, bumping up against each other, every bubble as worthy as any other.

And so it seems it has been a good Saturday, playing in the kitchen, taking a nap, reading the score and libretto to the fabulous opera performance I attended Thursday night, the US premier of City of Ashes by Evan Fein, with libretto by Knoxvillian Emily Anderson.  In fact, I had read the libretto several times before attending the opera, and I wish I had had access to the score before the performance as well.  But perhaps then, I would have known too much.  Sometimes it is enough to be surprised by something new, to be carried away in the moment.

 

In fact, although I might have wished I could see the opera again the second night, I would have missed that 13th birthday for anything. I would not have missed wandering through the farmer's market.  I would not miss curling up on the sofa with a book or a score or some knitting.  I recognize that all of this is part of the process of settling back into my life, a small life really, a life shaped by my birth and race and education and fortunes in the world, but my life still.  

 

 

 

 

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.

 

 

Little bits of Life

A spice order arrived from World Spice yesterday and as I unpacked the box and then filled jars and grinders, the entire kitchen was filled with the aroma of spices.  I felt like I was in some exotic spice market and the experience followed me throughout the day, the aroma of spice a part of my skin.  Appropriate then that I was reading Elif Shafak's 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World, where memories often begin with recollections of evocative scents or tastes. Shafak's prose often captures an almost poetically sensory sense of place and time that can feel palpable to the reader.  

I really only filled the tall salt grinder, the matching pepper grinder had already been filled as Tellicherry peppercorns were one of the very few spices I replaced before moving.  In fact, I should have ordered spices earlier,  and it was only as I was setting the table for a dinner party that I realized I did not have salt for the table.   I managed to put out small cellars with Maldon flakes but although I am happy with fingers in bowls of salt, not everyone shares this predilection.  But now the grinder is filled with chunks of Himalayan pink salt, oh I know, how trendy of me, and I concocted a blend of six peppers for the smaller funky-looking grinder.

 

I actually bought that grinder just so I could fill it with mixed peppers.  I didn't need it but somehow its weird almost alien looks drew me in. I can't say it is beautiful and yet it is in an odd beautiful-ugly sort of way.  I like that It is made of local seed pods.  I actually like that its strangeness draws attention to itself.  Perhaps I just like it because it is unexpected.

 

And while I am thinking about scent and sensory stimuli, I am reminded that the scent in the air changed a couple of weeks ago.  It is still hot, too hot to plant in my yard, and I don't think the sprinkler system is fully in yet, or if it is, no one has told me how to use it.  But the air now has a subtle scent of autumn about it, a whiff of dust and decay, most apparent in the hours around dusk and dawn.  This morning also, my toes were cold.  That is probably more about me than the actual weather.  The house is the same temperature it has been, but somehow my body is sensing the shift, and whereas a cold floor was deliciously soothing in the summer, it is now becoming chill.  I needed new slippers in the spring but delayed purchasing them until after the move.  It is now time and so slipper-buying will be added to today's list.

 

I can't say that I am really settled yet.  I still feel like I am in a somewhat transitional space although I admit that this may be primarily because the yard remains so unfinished.  I don't expel it to feel finished anytime soon as I have deliberately decided to only put in certain areas or larger items now.  I want the garden to evolve over time, and yet at the moment perhaps it remains a little too bare. Or perhaps it is all just in my head.  I am unpacked but I feel like I am standing on an empty set.

Not a set like the set for Million Dollar Quartet, which I saw at the Clarence Brown Theater last week.  It was a fabulous show and a fun evening.  The actors were incredibly talented and good, but I felt the show worked better as an event, something like musical entertainment, than it worked as an actual play exploring that particular moment in the development of Sun Records. But that may just be me -- I always want something to think about, I always want discovery and meaning.  It is likely that my brain looks for it, refuses to take the passive, easy, way out.  I felt there could have been, perhaps should have been, more of a story to be told even thought the characters themselves, the relationships between them and the music was fabulous. 

 

Perhaps it is just a symptom of my own pensive state of mind, but this exploration of the early days of rock reminds me of the cultural shift that had started over a decade previously, a shift sparked by the horrors of WWII and the changing of the American cultural landscape that it sparked.  Rock wasn't really something radically new, but merely a specific symbol of a change already well under way, even though it may not have been visible as such at that particular time.

 

I wonder if we are  in the midst of another shift....

 

 

Meanderings

I experiences a bit of a petulant moment on Saturday as I was out shopping, whinging to myself, quietly, under my breath, about why there was only one store in Knoxville I could count on for having Belgian endive in stock (or escarole for that matter).  Both are vegetables that I would consume regularly, perhaps weekly, if they were widely available.  But, as is usually always the case with these small annoyances in life, the situation is as much about ourselves as it is about the situation itself.  Of course my formative adult years, ie. my formative cooking years, occurred in the Hudson Valley where both escarole and Belgian endive were indeed widely available in most grocery stores.  It was a different time and place, with a different population, holding different expectations.  It is on me, when moving, to realize that expectations and norms are different in different spaces.  I should be grateful that I can find Belgian endive, and that the store in question is on my list of preferred stores (following last spring's spreadsheet comparison).  I do in fact know where to go to get the things I want, and there are in fact probably many things in the store that are considered essential in this region, things that I never buy. In the end, it seems it is all about how one looks at the world, and how willing one is to adapt.  And therefore I musk ask myself:  Why whinge?

(chilled tomato soup with an endive and shiitake salad, a soup I've been making for over 20 years)

 

Of course I live in an age that celebrates the individual, which has not been the case for most of human history.  I am not always convinced that this is the best course.  Not that I don't believe that all people should be treated fairly and with dignity, but because I doubt that a society can successfully survive on individuality without developing a class of winners and a class of losers, or in fact whether even a person can live life solely based on his or her own desires without hurting others in the process, even inadvertently.  Then I move on from there, thinking that we are not really living self-actualized individual lives at all.  That each of us is a slave in one sense or another to this vision of society and culture, and that there is no way for some people to make it to the top without forcing other people to be on the bottom.

 

Oh dear, this is not at all where I thought I was going with post this morning.  And yet here I am.  

 

I realize the precariousness of my position because my life, and the very things I waste energy fretting over (endive?, landscapers?), where and how I live, are all a part of this same view of society that I am currently questioning, and I am unquestioningly not on the bottom of the heap.  And so it seems I must hold my own good-fortune lightly, recognizing that were it all to disappear tomorrow, both the gain and the loss would be but a blip on the course of human history, and in fact should have nothing to do with the joy and purpose to be found in human life.  Perhaps even my insistence on endive is a failure to adapt, an insistence that the past, my past, was somehow superior to the present, a dogged persistence in holding the ideals of the individual over all the rest.

 

Oh there is the rub.  But how did I even get into this reflective state of mind?  Blame it on books, because a lifetime of reading has shaped me, both fiction and non-fiction.  Fiction makes us more empathetic, more human (and yes people have studied this); non-fiction forces us to think about the world in new ways.  And the books I have just read, both non-fiction, have put me in a questioning mood.  But to blame my own inclinations solely on books is also misleading -- there is truth there of course, but such a simplistic explanation is acceptable only to a fool. Of course books alone do not make the person, so do our environment and the people we encounter, both willingly and unwillingly, but books force us to perhaps look outside ourselves, to open ourselves up to greater encounters with others. Although l cannot blame books entirely for who I am and how I think, they play a role.

 

 Perhaps this is why books are so often banned?  Thinking truly can be subversive, the ability to look outside of one's self and one's circumstances revolutionary.  Or madness......  Or adulthood. Who was it that said the difference between looking at the world as a child and as an adult is the ability to step outside of one's milieu and self and look upon the self as if an outsider?  But that too is revolutionary because the path of self-actualization of seeing the self as it truly is also means letting go of the idea that the world can revolve around one's own needs. The life of self-gratification is the life of a child.

 

Admittedly one of the books I have been reading, Debt, by David Graeber has perhaps provoked some of my more radical questionings, but I do not think radical questioning of one's basic assumptions is such a bad thing.  Debt, has, in fact, been one of the most intellectually stimulating, enjoyable, and thought-provoking books I have read in a long time.  It is not so much an economics text as it is a study of the history of debt as in idea, both economic and moral or cultural, and Graeber is best when he looks at the historical and anthropological record and pulls big themes and ideas together. He gets a lot right, but he is also sometimes a little loose with the details.  I am not convinced that is important here as the aim seems to be to provoke and challenge the reader to think and perhaps stand up on his or her own opinions.  I certainly don't agree with everything, but I do agree with some of what Graeber says and he has made me think and reconsider many a treasured bias, which proves useful even if I return full-circle to my previous position, now more fully informed.  I think it is a book everyone should read, but which most people won't read, as it is too full of philosophy, history, and just plain old challenging and upsetting ideas.

 

The other book is in many ways less challenging but still thought provoking.  It is not so much a book about nutrition as a book about the way corporations and the drive to constantly increase corporate profits have reshaped the way we eat and even the way we think about and crave food.  This is not necessarily to our benefit, or to the earth's although Moss doesn't go into that in detail.   He does talk about how sugar specifically, and the combination of sugar, salt and fat are used to create desire, and to change the nature of what and how we eat, of the very way we experience and think about food, and this is sobering.  And he discusses how a drive to increase corporate profits has lead to the way we eat today, across all fields, not just prepared food although that is increasingly the bulk of what we eat, but also dairy and even meat production.  He doesn't really go into the implications, or the way the corporatization of food has altered the environment in ways that we, willing sheep that we appear to be, have allowed because we assume that this is the way things are and must be.  

 

I suppose I am channelling a bit of Graeber here but also my own natural inclination to question everything even if I don't find answers right away.  Graeber tells us that we aren't asking the right questions.  Moss as well, although not as explicitly.  He shows us a problem and leaves it up to us to decided if we want to ask those tough questions or not.  As for me, as I stated I have long thought that our ability to question is one of our greatest strengths.  I also tend to think there our choices are rarely binary.  If we see the world as black or white, yes or no, this or that, or even this is the way it has always been and anything else is chaos...... then, I've long been with Graeber -- we are asking the wrong questions.

 

 

 

 

Dreaming of Mythical Trees

I've been thinking about trees.

 

For a while now there have been talk about a tree in the front yard, and in that same period my mind has been circling around the idea of a magnolia, a small magnolia, if there is such a thing as a small magnolia.  But as I look at the space, and look at various magnolias in my neighborhood on my walks, I realize that what I have really been dreaming about is a mythical magnolia, one that is all blossom and seed pod, and pretty leathery magnolia leaves, but which really isn't about the tree itself, its own needs and the demands it makes on the landscape.

 

How often do we do this?  Make decisions based on illusory dreams or on an illusory understanding of the world itself based on assumptions and circumstances we simply take for granted?  I do this all the time.  I suspect I am not alone.  It is too easy to move forward with the dream, without thinking about the consequences only to set oneself up for disappointment later.

During this time since the driveway has been poured I have been thinking about the garden.  It seems I spend lots of time thinking about very small things.  I hope this will play well with the final result, but it may not, and I accept that the plans and the dreams are just as important to the well-being of the gardener as the garden itself.  But as I walked and thought and looked at my garden and the rough plans for what this garden may eventually be, a few points have become evident.  

 

The first problem I noticed and the biggest one is that there is too much sun.  Yes I want a small vegetable patch.  Yes, I want some roses and peonies and herbs and sunny flowers, but the sun and I are not friends, or more exactly we are friends at a distance.  I love the sun as long as I don't have to be in it for very long.  The sun does not love my pale northern-European ancestry as reflected in my pale skin that burns and gets rashes from sun exposure.  I need more trees to protect myself.  I also need more trees because my dream garden is  filled with hydrangeas and azaleas, hellebores, Daphnes, and ferns.  I love cool colors and shade loving plants.  I have more than enough sun for a brief flirtation with roses and irises, dalylillies and peonies.  

 

I need shade and so we added trees.  It was only as I started thinking about those trees, that  I realized that perhaps my dream of a magnolia is really an impossible dream.  I want the flower and not the tree.  Most of the magnolias in my neighborhood actually look at little junky at their bases, have nothing growing beneath them.  The larger ones look like a great place for imaginary jungle exploration, magical worlds to tempt childhood imagination, but they don't fit in my dream garden.  Thiss tree is supposed to be in my front courtyard and I do not like trees surrounded with a circle of mulch.  My dream garden leans more toward cottage-garden informality than toward manicured landscapes.  I love a tree surrounded by irises or hosts and ferns, a tree blending into the landscape, not a specimen.  Perhaps a magnolia is not for me, not at this time, not in this place.  

 

Luckily there are many other choices and my head is dancing with the possibilities.  Just wait and see.

 

 

Pouring the Driveway

Yes, I know it has been over a week since the driveway has been poured.  I am driving on it now, and pulling my car into the garage, for the first time in over a year. And yet it seems I have been busier  than ever.  Or perhaps just more panicked. And so, better late than never.

This photo was taken about 5:45 AM just before the first concrete flowed into the space.  The crew had been on site, setting up, since before 5, and they were there, working until about 6::30 in the evening.  This photo was also posted on Instagram.  Apologies to those who follow me there.

Walking into the house after walking Tikka, just about dawn.  The first time I saw the lights in the studio in the dark or near dark.  The crew is busy on the other side of the house.

Even though the pour was a week ago, and even though most big things were unpacked, except in the studio, it seems like last week was the week of delayed panic, a kind of second-flush of unpacking and settling.    The big piles of things you see here are still in the front yard, although the job is supposed to finish up the end of this week.  I will believe that when I see it.  But at least I am able to pull in and out and park.

This is the last week of summer, the last week of August, the last week before Labor Day weekend here in the US,  In many ways it is an arbitrary transition. Schools have long since started in this part of the country. The art and social seasons are gearing up.  But the air and the light have already shifted.  The sun is different in the sky, the air smells more of autumn, of decay more than new growth.  This all means that I need to get busy.  What isn't put away and settled this week may remain on hold until winters settles in.  Hence the push.  This is made more imperative by the fact that I can actually get in and out of the house now without climbing through a construction site and walking to my car, parked somewhere up the street.  I have no more excuses to hide behind. It was such a minor problem really, a privilege even, but during that phase all I really wanted to do was hunker down.

So the books are all organized, which means I can find things. My desk/office corner is organized.  Perhaps I am just too deeply wedded to a sense of order.  But, despite the fact that when life grows too calm something in my psyche needs to create a small storm of chaos -- a disruption which leads to creative discovery -- a constant sense of chaos and disorder creates an atmosphere of unending low level stress that seems to magnify over time.  

CDs and LPs have been unpacked, sorted and put away, although the CD player has developed a glitch and may need to be sent out for repair or replaced, much to my annoyance.  An upgrade to the stereo system is not a possibility at the moment.   But much as I am annoyed, life goes on, and the turntable is working beautifully.

I still have a lot of unpacking in the studio, and this will be my focus this week.  Ideally, I had hoped to be sewing all summer, learning to  warp the loom, and generally playing with fiber.  Despite initial promises that the studio would be done 2 weeks after I moved it, it was closer to two months.  There was an initial flush of unpacking, only to be followed by a period of moving the things that had been unpacked, or repacking, when it was decided that some more work needed to be done.  My frustration increased, but luckily in many ways I was also distracted by questions and other tasks, the ongoing hardscaping, the "punch" list and various interruptions.

But all in all it is good, and I am happy.  It is far from done.  Well, a garden is never done anyway, and aside from a flush of larger plantings to take place sometime in the fall, much of this garden will evolve slowly.  I make mistakes when I do too much too fast.  I remain a bit overwhelmed, and slow to find focus.  The fact that we are moving into fall, that winter is coming, and that next spring is far away is probably a good thing for me and my garden.  It gives us time to get to know each other a bit before taking the next step. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Last Big Thing

I took the picture below about 5PM yesterday.  The preparatory work for today's concrete pour was winding down, and I was entranced by the warmth of the late afternoon light across the front yard and the driveway.  Workers were beginning to drift away, although a couple would be here for another hour, hopefully (at least in my mind) not the same ones who had been here before 8 in the morning, but I know that is just wishful thinking. I've worked with some of these people for a year, they feel like friends.

The pour itself started at 5 AM this morning, and they tell me that it will wind up, that they will be washing and cutting, sometime after 10PM tonight.  if the weather holds and they are able to finish the pour today.

As they have been cleaning up, framing the driveway for the pour, and generally getting everything together and in place, the yard has been becoming just that, a yard, a place to live rather than a construction site.  It is still a little of both but it is beginning to look like the place I imagined.  Better in fact.  And that is a testament both to my dreams and ideas but even more so to the fabulous people who have been helping me realize them.  You can't really see the future driveway in the picture above, just a bit of crushed stone on the right side, where it will meet the pavers, but it is there.  The area of dirt in the back will be grass, even though I think our obsession with grass and lawns is environmentally ill-advised, and it might well evolve into something else over time.  The areas covered with black landscape fabric will eventually be planted, but they may also just exist as swaths of mulch for a while, as I figure out what I want to do and buy plants.  It is too hot to plant now, too late in the season to order plants if I intend to be particular, and I do, so this will be a garden that evolves.  But evolving gardens is something I can do on my own.

Here are more pictures from yesterday afternoon.  At one point there were several large mechanical creatures crawling around my driveway:  loading, unloading, thumping, packing-down.  The house shook. Tikka retreated back under the bed.

But I can really imagine it now, imagine how it will look, someday in my dreams, when I've figured out plants and all that.  Which may never happen.  I am not interested in a landscape, in hiring someone to toss in a bunch of plants so it looks manicured and neat.  I am interested in a garden.  Of course there will be the public face, and the more private inner circle.....I don't quite know how that will evolve yet.

But it will. In the photo above I am looking west, into my neighbor's backyard -- the private space.  And I want my own space to be just as nice, not in the same way, but in my own way.  A part of me doubts I can pull it off, not because I am not capable, but because I always have more plans than patience, and I tend to start and never finish.  Or maybe I am gaining confidence in my own dreams, and my ability let them fly, as long as I don't let those dreams run away with my common sense.  Piles of dirt can become gardens with time and vision and work.  I wonder if it is foolish to think about 20-year gardens when I am 61. But why not?  The worse thing that can happen is it can become just another overgrown hunk of yard, but it will be my overgrown hunk of yard.  Or I can decide I am no longer interested in DIY gardening and capitulate to the landscapers.  At the moment I think having something to work toward, even at my own pokey pace, is a joy. This hunk of dirt isn't just a hunk of dirt.  It is life.  It is potential. It is its own field of dreams.

During a final walk-through yesterday evening, we paused and looked in toward the patio.  That patio, its placement and charm, is one of the things that attracted me to the house.  Silly I know, to be drawn to plants (most of which are now gone) and ephemeral stuff.  But I have maintained the feel of the space, and the intimacy of that small space is still there, but better.  One plant I love may or may not survive the work, but others are thriving and a few things I disliked are gone. The colors of the bluestone make me smile and echo the colors of earth and sky and plants all around.  In fact the whole back yard is evolving from a space that was just an afterthought, a place I would rather not think about into a space I love. As I mentioned in the first paragraph, it doesn't quite look the way I imagined it, it is better.  What I really wanted was a feeling, a space that felt a certain way.  And I think we are on our way, this back garden and I.

In fact the thing that has really amazed me is that it is turning out so incredibly nicely. Deep in my heart, throughout this whole process, I have feared this would prove to be a mistake -- a folly on a grand scale.  It happens a lot.  But fear is not necessarily a bad thing.  I think it drives us to push ourselves, and even everything had not turned out as well as it appears to be so far, despite upsets and changes, I think I would be glad to have done all this.  Perhaps fear is even a good thing.  If I am afraid of doing something perhaps it is exactly what I need to do, to push myself, and the fear itself can also be a system of checks, a driving force toward compromise and a brake on arrogance.  Of course the fear can also easily get out of control so who knows.  This is all just posturing after the worst of it is over.

 

Of course I still have to see the actual driveway.  But whatever happens it has been an adventure.

Tikka remains unconvinced

"Mommy, I gotta go....  Why can't we go out the front door?"

 

"They are sealing the stone.  We can go out front again in a day or two. The job is almost done.  It will get better"

 

"You keep saying that but I don't see it.  I have to walk to the back of the house, and go down a bunch of stairs to get...where?  There is just this funny plasticy-feeling landscape fabric that I don't like.  And the ground is uneven under it. I can't see the dips and then I fall on my face.  Once I cross the void of blackness I still have to walk cross more pavement and jump over funny white plastic tubes... all for what?  No grass.  Not even dirt.  Just rocks and gray dusty stuff.  This is what you call an improvement?.  We got to go out the front door yesterday -- at least it was a shorter, easier walk to the gray dust. When a girl's gotta pee a girl's gotta pee.  This is ridiculous..."

 

"Good girl!  Want a Treat?"  

 

"Oh yes mommy!  I love treats.  And I've earned them after all that.  But now I need to go back under the bed."

 

 

Recovering from what I didn't know

This post is about a path, my own path, and a question.  The path was set by dreams and questions of the things I want to do in this latter part (third? is that too much of a wish?) of my life.  The question also. 

 

At the beginning of the year, in my first post of 2019 in fact, I wrote that I was returning to the gym and walking on the treadmill, focusing on health not fitness.  I did write about walking slowly, deliberately, about focusing on proper breathing, and proper hip motion. I wrote about some of the background, about why I now needed to focus on these things, the natural breathing and moving that most of us take for granted, and which somehow I had lost.  Not lost motion.  Nor lost breathing.  I managed both of those, but did I manage them well or had I somehow lost something that should come naturally?

 

In January I managed to avoid admitting was how difficult this was, and what a tenuous, perhaps even questionable process I was undertaking.  I avoided mentioning that I fretted about whether I was pursing a pipe-dream, fretted about risks (mostly in my head) and whether the gains would be worth it (they may well be).  The goal was to walk slowly, breathing solely through my mouth (hence no talking), to walk slowly enough that my pulse stayed only in the aerobic zone, and did not cross the anaerobic threshold, even for a moment.  The goal was to learn how to breathe again. The goal was to build basic aerobic capacity, which will lead to stamina, not necessarily for fitness, at least not in the short term.  At this slower aerobic pace, breathing through my nose should help strengthen lung perfusion and build capacity, at least as much as can be done given my structural fault-lines. 

 

What I didn't say was how slowly I had to walk, and how difficult that was, not so much physically, although it took concentration, but emotionally and psychologically.   I was a person who put in my 10,000 steps every day.  Who lifted things and walked and who considered myself basically healthy if not fit.  I knew I had a long way to go, that I had become soft and sluggish, and I did not like my sluggish self.  But I was not prepared.  I was not prepared for how little I could do, for how long it would take to improve, and for the way the process would trigger my inner demon, the inner voice telling myself that I can never be enough.

 

When I started in December I was walking so slowly that the act of walking itself had to practically become a meditative action.  I had to hold on to the treadmill firmly with both hands, I had to take agonizingly slow, long deliberate steps, purposefully rolling through my stride. Eventually I worked up to a speed of 0.8 miles-per-hour, which although still horribly slow, would allow me to read on an iPad.  I worked through all my back issues of the New Yorker.  I walked for 1 hour, eventually working up to 2 hours, less than 2 miles, deliberately choosing times that the gym was fairly empty because I was embarrassed.  But I couldn't increase the speed.  Even at this pace my pulse stayed just below the aerobic/anerobic threshold.  I knew it had to get better.  I doubted it would ever get better.  I would leave the gym and walk across the parking lot in the cold air, walk up the stairs to my apartment, and my pulse would rush across that line, and I would fret.  MY team -- doctor/trainer -- told me that I was supposed to avoid high pulses, although they also told me that this would just slow the process and I would get there.  I remembered back, when we found out I had a hole in my heart, in my late 30s, when just getting out of bed and walking to the bathroom put my pulse somewhere in the 80% of max range and my doctors muttered about how I did any of the things I did.  I remember that I survived and I recovered.  I could survive this too.

 

But for months nothing happened.  I stayed mired there.  I eventually got my speed up to 1.2 mph.  But I couldn't go any faster.  If speed was worth, I was worthless.  I knew this wasn't true, but my inner demon continued to chip away.   I needed an incredibly long, slower, almost stretching walk to move from a junctional rhythm into a normal rhythm, but even that was nothing new.  I had always needed that, and it wasn't until I was older that I learned it wasn't "normal".  But what is normal anyway.  And does one have to be normal to be healthy? Chalk it up my scoliosis, to that previous atrial septal defect and repair; I will never be normal.

 

In my previous life, when I was fit, I would warm up on a stationary bike, which always seemed to stabilize me and allow me to push harder than anything else.  But I couldn't pedal a bike, even at no resistance, without my pulse racing. I missed the ignorance of those days, the way I took for granted that I could do anything I wanted to do.  I wanted some of that blissful assurance back.

 

And then there were the setbacks.  I had a couple of colds.  I discovered I am allergic to cats, and forced confinement in an apartment with a cat meant I couldn't breathe.  I got a sinus infection.  I got the flu.  In May I stopped trying altogether. I was packing and preparing to move.

 

After  I moved I decided to start again.  I found a gym buddy.  I went to the gym 6 days a week, occasionally 5.  I still do.  Immediately I learned I could walk at 1.6 mph.  Such a simple thing but I was euphoric.  Breathing through my nose is easier.  I do it most of the time now, and can tell I take deeper, longer breaths.  I was able to use a recumbent bicycle, granted only at level one, but that in and of itself was a huge motivation.  I can actually get better.  I am actually getting better.  

 

I can now ride the bike at level two occasionally, I can increase my speed or resistance for short bursts before my pulse rises too high.  I can walk at about 2 to 2.2 mph holding on, but only 1.8 if I allow my arms to swing freely.  In fact I really can't do that last thing yet, walk on a treadmill with my arms at my side.  What happens is that the pace is too slow and I want to walk faster, as soon as I walk faster I stop rolling my hips and my gait becomes more marionette-like. As I speed up and my gate changes my pulse changes as well.  I don't feel bad, if anything, psychologically, I want to push harder.  But the goal is not pushing harder, not yet.  I know pushing harder will actually push me back, and I will have to slow down.  

 

Now that I am finally progressing I can see that there are benefits and I want to be the best, healthiest me I can be.  I know that although I have trained myself, without even really meaning to do so, into believing that doing more faster is the way things are supposed to be, this is a myth.  It is one of the myths of the culture I live in, like the myth of fitness.  Fitness is good, but it is not health.  I want both, or as close to both as I can achieve, but of the two health is more important, and it is a somewhat fluid state.  I need to start with health.

 

Does this seem like a project? a long term-goal? I suppose it is.  But it is not.  Sometimes it feels more like an anti-project.  Don't push, keep those goals flexible and even wishy-washy, accept that some days will be slow and others surprisingly fast.  I still have to work on keeping myself from pushing.  But the effort is paying off -- in my breathing, in my stamina and long term energy, which still has a way to go but which is increasing, and even in an increasing sense of calmness and a willingness to just sit back.  Sometimes we think we are moving forward when are really digging a hole.  Sometimes just moving is enough.