restingmotion

Brief Break

I am declaring this week a blog break while I attend a couple of seminars.

More later.

Woolgathering

Somehow, it struck me this morning that it has gotten to be Thursday and my blogging has fallen into arrears despite the fact that I have been working on four, yes four, separate blog posts.  It seems to have simply been that kind of week, and I am hoping, since today is cold and rainy, that I can manage to pull something together, even though I am not inclined toward tackling any of those bigger, although not really weightier, posts or projects. Instead perhaps a few small things that have brought me joy this week, not so much a coherent statement, but a gathering of various bits of fluff.

 

(Success!  I posted to the knitting. blog, and this is now the second blog post of the day, one I intend to finish.)  

Above and below are photos of the finished Autumn Vine cushion.  The lower photo is the pillow in its final home with two other homemade pillows, both of which I have probably posted to this blog over the years.  In the photo above you can see the error in the vertical stripe, where I miscounted once between the green and wine strips. At the time I was constantly tired and suffering from terrible back pain, so I intentionally decided not to rip back. I do love the pillow, inordinately, despite the flaw.  It is not its existence so much that annoys me as the fact that it would have been easy enough to fix.   I suspect there is a lesson in that.

 

Anyway, my apologies for the overlap today.   Both of these photos were also posted over on purlsandmurmurs, along with others, as I wrote a rambling post about pillow placement and the process of finding a home for Autumn Vine.  These same photos will probably show up on instagram as well, so if you follow me there you may face repetitious overload.

 

Yesterday was sunny and warm and I spent some time working in the garden.  I planted a few remaining daffodils, which should have been planted long ago and which may or may not bloom this year.  And I prepared garden beds for fava beans and peas, perhaps some spigariello and other greens.  While I was outside I noticed how pretty the thyme looked in the afternoon sun.

Yes, that photo, too, was lifted from Instagram.  Some thyme plants had clearly survived their first summer and winter, but this was one that I feared had died as it was all dried up and shriveled, at least until it burst into new growth.  Change.  How often it surprises us when we least expect it.

 

In the kitchen I was admiring my new oven gloves:

I bought these small sized welding gloves from Amazon in January, and they are at the moment probably my favorite kitchen tool. I have kept a pair of welding gloves by the gill for some time, but they are too large for me, and although they work when grilling, I need more manual dexterity in the kitchen.   These seem to make everything easier and every time I wear them to lift some heavy pan out of the oven, or remove a hot lid from a pot, I feel like dancing around the kitchen as if I was in some kind of musical.

And while I am on the subject of small kitchen improvements, enter the bar mat.  I Intended to buy this long ago, but instead was making do with a microfiber cloth, or a paper towel, or nothing under the coffee grinder and the constant little bits of ground coffee would drive me to distraction.  Oh I know they are still there, and I still have to clean the mat, but somehow it feels more contained and intentional now.  There are no more little bits of coffee dust skittering across the countertop and the mat is easily lifted and rinsed.  It even cuts down on the noise from the grinder. Such a tiny thing, but it elevates my coffee making experience.

 

Small things, big joys. 

 

 

January Books

I read 12 books in January.  That seems like a lot, even for me.  Not that there is any reason to justify how much I do or do not read. In this year of social distancing however, there are days that reading seems to be my only contact with my fellow humans. I believe reading is necessary, reading for fun, reading for information, reading because it opens a person's mind and understanding, both of the world and other humans but also of themselves.  But I also realize that reading has become a privilege, at least in this country, and that saddens me to no end. But if I delve into this rabbit hole of what it means to be literate, and the implications for society, I will never get to the stated purpose of this post.  Besides I am not an expert and therefore more research would be required. What I do know is this, in an age that is becoming more and more complex, and where more people are going to and graduating from college, the percentage of American adults who are proficiently literate is decreasing.  That is not, and should not be, a comforting idea.

 

In short, yes, I have returned to writing about books. I will post a list, and I will try, hopefully sometimes successfully, to explore what the books I read mean to me. Occasionally my thoughts may approach the idea of a review, often not, and I am sure the process will be refined over time.

 

First, the list:

Michelle Alexander,  The New Jim Crow.  (non-fiction: race, criminal justice)

Colum McCann, Apeirogon.  (fiction: historical, literary, Israel, Palestine)

Diane Cook,The New Wilderness. (fiction: literary, dystopian, mother/daughter relationship)

Adrian McKinty, The Cold Cold Ground. (fiction: mystery, Northern Ireland)

Kiley Reid, Such a Fun Age. (fiction: popular culture, race relations)

Don DeLillo, White Noise. (fiction: literary, postmodernism, sarcasm)

Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers. (non-fiction: culture, sociology)

Stuart Woods, Skin Game. (fiction: thriller)

Michael Curry, Love is the Way. (non-fiction: memoir, faith)

Joe Ide, IQ, (fiction: mystery)

Jess Walter, The Cold Millions. (fiction: historical, American West).

Stuart Woods, Bombshell. (fiction: thriller)

 

The year began with Michelle Alexander's fabulous book The New Jim Crow, and I mentioned it briefly at the end of my 2020 reading review, here.  I had read it in 2018 but I wanted to read it again simply because so much of my own thinking and understanding of race and American Culture and history had changed over the past year.  I am glad I did.  It is an informative, well written and well researched book, a book I would like to say that everyone should read, even as I recognize that this will never happen simply because over half of American adults are, if the statistics are accurate, incapable of reading and comprehending this book.  It is a valuable book, filled with complex ideas and well-researched information.   On the downside, at least for this reader, there is considerable repetition in the opening sections, which I still found extremely annoying, although this time around I perhaps found myself more willing to forgive, understanding that the author may have felt the repetition was necessary given the complexity of the subject.  I disagree but it is a relatively minor quibble.

 

Unlike so many books, Alexander's message grows stronger and more focused as the book progresses.   The book moves from outrage, outrage that is focused but simultaneously still somewhat nebulous (hence repetition) as to details, to a deeply detailed critical study of the current situation, its roots, its history and its entrenched pervasiveness.  The book starts where we are, knowing something is wrong but not knowing how or why, and then delineates the spider web of entrenched biases and systems that have led us to this place, a place in which should never have found ourselves. The last section, with its pointed and often painful analysis of the pitfalls of past reform and its damning account of what is needed, is the books strength. It is a book that is worthy of rereading, and even gains in strength.

 

I went immediately from the complexity of The New Jim Crow into another kind of complexity, this time in Colum McCann's novel Apeirogon. It is a fascinating tapestry of a novel based on the true story of two real men, one Israeli, one Palestinian, who lost their daughters due to violence.  Through an unusual structure of 1001 short pieces, McCann weaves metaphor, history, allegory, fact, place and the very real weight of human emotion: joy, profound loss, grief.  It is a book that often left me in tears, that occasionally rendered me speechless with beauty, which in fact led me through an array of emotional responses. It is  a book that changed my understanding of a place and a people involved in conflict in a way that I might otherwise never have experienced.

 

For this reader, the non-linear structure was compelling.  I found the convoluted interlayering to be reminiscent of the way memory surfaces and then seemingly disappears in our lives, apparently triggered by random events, of the way grief evolves and shapes us.   In the seventh episode of Pretend It's A City, Fran Lebowitz states "A book is not supposed to be a mirror, it is supposed to be a door."  This novel opened a door to me and lured me in, into a world I still would not have seen, even had I visited Israel (I have not).  What I do see, now and in the future, will never be the same.

 

I read two additional ambitiously literary novels in January, Diane Cook's The New Wilderness  and Don DeLillo's White Noise.  Both were interesting, well-written, and challenging,  I could appreciate them both on a purely intellectual level, but I did not enjoy reading either one.   

The New Wilderness takes place in some dystopian, not to distant, future and although the opening scene, of a lone woman, Bea, giving birth to a stillborn child in the forest, a woman who had obviously once lived in a culture at least somewhat like our own, felt compelling, the novel is plagued by inconsistencies and I quickly felt mired down. Nothing in this world makes sense, and although that may be the point -- the very arbitrariness of government and policy and transitions of power, as well as the confusion and blind stupidity this creates --  the act of reading the novel felt arbitrary, illogical, and strained by awkward transitions.  The New Wilderness  felt somewhat like two novels to me: a not very successful dystopian novel which encompasses a novel about the relationship between a mother and her daughter (Bea and Agnes), about coming to womanhood, and about nurture and abandonment.  Agnes herself is richly and fully developed and the relationship between Agnes and her mother is strong and finely nuanced, but finding and savoring that relationship felt much like finding occasional nuggets of gold in a sea of wildly shifting sand.  I am sure there are people who loved this novel but I am not one of them.  The novel does offer much to discuss however and I would be open to a conversation.

 

But what about White Noise? This novel was written in the mid 1980s and I reread it now for book group.  Intellectually it was a fascinating novel, filled with incredibly beautiful sentences and sharp satire, both of which I enjoyed.  But it was flat, intentionally flat, but flat nonetheless.  I know this is the point.  There is no difference in the cadence and emotional resonance of the different voices -- as if the world exists on a flattened plain.  I cannot say it is a collection of beautiful sentences without a plot, because there is a plot, even though it is not a plot-driven story.  In fact, I am not convinced it is a story at all.

 

I think White Noise is an excellent representation of a particular moment in the post-modern absurdist mindset.  A part of me remembers being a student of literature, remembers studying twentieth century literature.  The novel reminds me of my early struggles with Genet and Barth, although I think I prefer both authors to DeLillo.  I could be wrong because much has changed in the ensuing 40 years.  I have changed as well.  Reading White Noise reminded me of the intellectual I could have become, reminds me how grateful I am to have escaped that fate.  While I was reading, I could not help being struck by the cruelty of its intellectual conceit -- the cold sardonicism, the deliberate mocking tone.  DeLillo was writing about how modern invention had created a simulacrum of life, hence the flatness. In fact there were overlapping simulacra here.  I was thinking about the philosophy of Baudrillard, which I had been quite happy not to think about for those same 40 years.  In the end I think DeLillo wrote a simulacrum of a novel, although it did prove good fodder for discussion in my book group.

 

In between all of that intensity, I needed a bit of lightness and escape so I indulged in a variety of mysteries and thrillers.  Adrian McKinty's The Cold Cold Ground is the first in a series about Detective Sean Duffy and both the series and the author were new to me.  I enjoyed it, although I found the character of Detective Duffy more compelling than the mystery itself, where I felt a few plot devices could have been more smoothly rounded out.  I thought the premise and character had potential but the author seemed to get in his own way on occasion, perhaps take the whole thing too seriously, more seriously perhaps than I preferred in a literary escape. I am undecided about following up, although I will probably read at least one more novel in the series to see how it develops.

 

I liked Joe Ide's IQ even more and I will be reading more of this series.  Ide has created an interesting, complex, and compelling character in Isaiah Quintabe (IQ). The story was outlandish and filled with humor.  Yes, there were a few stumbles here and there, but I was having too much fun to care.   In short it is a good, light, escape of a novel and I am looking forward to the next installment.

 

 

To finish out the thrill ride I read the last two of Stuart Woods' Teddy Fay novels, Skin Game and Bombshell.  I had picked up Teddy Fay at my mom's and I found the first two novels fast, mindless, and entertaining, in a kind of action-packed roller-coaster of a read kind of way.  Of these last two, I felt Bombshell worked better than Skin Game, where it felt like Stuart Woods was trying to turn Teddy Fay into another Stone Barrington and it didn't work.  The language is too elementary: The short, to the point sentences, probably written at a 4th or 5th grade level, work well for action, for people acting on impulse, for blowing things up and doing other stupid things, not so well for romance or espionage.   Skin Game, set in Paris, tried to be too complex and it fell flat.  Bombshell, which I read in two hours one evening when I was tired and both my internet and tv were out, provided the perfect distraction of mindless absurdity and action.  I am probably done with this series, but it was the perfect read for its time. And I can see how it would be the perfect book for a visit to my mom, where fast light entertainment that can be easily interrupted is the order of the day.

Kiley Reid's Such a Fun Age is a light, fun novel about a white-influencer-celebrity who hires a black nanny. It is occasionally uncomfortable, very often funny, and it unpacks everyday cultural angst and systemic racism in a very accessible way.  A novel very much of the moment, although, not surprisingly, with very little to hold onto.

 

Bishop Michael Curry's memoir Love is the Way is beautiful, uplifting, and filled with hope and wisdom.  I listened to the audiobook and I think this format works very well because Bishop Curry's inflections and soothing tone, his charming self-deprecation, his humor, add to the story he is trying to tell. There is nothing new here philosophically or theologically, except in Curry's profound understanding of human nature and acceptance of the idea that there are no flawless heroes. He invites the reader to step back and put anger and fear aside, and his faith is inspiring.  Curry has a way of taking a life and crafting a story that reminds us of the things we are all supposed to know but which we somehow put aside, and he does it with honesty and without condemnation.  I would say this a perfect book for those times when you are struggling to find a little hope in the world. I loved the book, not because I learned new things, but because I was reminded to open my eyes and see the things I knew a little more deeply.

 

Finally two entertaining and thought-provoking reads which were thoroughly enjoyable but not terribly profound. Malcolm Gladwell is always insightful, and I enjoyed reading Outliers, which has been out for a few years now.  I already knew some of the information the author explores as much has been written about it, but I was surprised that the book itself still had the power to force me to examine and think about some of my assumptions in new ways.  Gladwell has a gift for accessibility, and for packaging ideas in ways that sneak into the interstices of the mind.

Finally, I ended the month with Jess Walter's historical novel The Cold Millions, which takes place during the free-speech riots in Spokane during 1909-1910.  Walter deftly intermingles history and a few historical characters with fiction, with "what might have been" but it is also a modern story, a story with many parallels to today, written by a modern author.  I thought the author bridged this divide effectively and well for the most part, although at times I struggled with the many voices, the interruptions in thought. The story revolves around two brothers, Gig and Rye, and how the riots impact their lives.  Both brothers are reading War and Peace, and War and Peace permeates this novel, with Walter employing the same structural format (and the same problem of the many characters).  The novel is very much about "the cold millions" who never get ahead, and the men who keep opportunity from them, but even more so it is about how the forces of history exert a power outside of ourselves, how we get caught up into  the flow despite ourselves, and how our choices make or break us.  It is a good read but not a novel I will return to again and again (unlike War and Peace, which rewards the reader for each subsequent effort. I may have to pick it up yet again).

 

And there you have it.  February is shorter, and I have picked up a couple of books I am reading very slowly, a few pages at a time, so the list may be shorter.  Or not. In truth, it hardly matters.

 

On that note, I shall leave you with a few words from the young George Santayana, writing to his friend and former Harvard classmate, Henry Ward Abbot in January 1887:

Did you come into this world because you thought it was worth while? No more do you stay in it because you do.  The idea of demanding that things should be worth doing is a human impertinence. 

Signs of progress....signs of life....

There are occasional snowflakes floating by outside my window this morning.  There are not so many as to count as actual precipitation, more like a random thought slowly escaping from the thick layer of clouds.  It may be a chilly day, a mostly indoors kind of day, although Poncho and I will take a walk, a day for all kinds of preparations and explorations.

 

The plumbers arrived early to repair a venting issue in the studio bathroom; when they are done the studio will become a much more pleasant place to work.  I hope to spend some time there this afternoon, either sewing or cataloging, perhaps a little of both. 

 

 

In the meantime I am working on garden planning and various odd tasks.  There has been a lot of running up and down the stairs, measuring garden beds, thinking about shrubs and flowers, thinking about vegetable crop rotation, puttering, pondering.  At some point I despaired that my garden layout last year was more spur-of-the-moment than well-considered, making the planning process a bit more of a challenge.  But it is a fun challenge.  There has also been much playing with pencil, eraser, ruler, and colored pens.  Making colorful garden plans may not be the most efficient method, but it certainly may be the most fun.

 

 

But even though today is gray and cold the garden is slowly revealing signs of growth.  Yesterday, between playing with markers I was out weeding, planting bulbs, and generally puttering about, happy to have fingers in the soil.  While planting tiny ipheion bulbs I found that the small Harvest Moon sedums I planted last summer, and which I had believed had all died, are starting to poke their heads above ground. A few have advanced a little further than others, but finding the little pink faces peeking out from the mulch while I scattered tiny bulbs was gratifying and encouraging.  As to the bulbs, it seems I seriously under estimated the number of bulbs I would need.  I planted 50 bulbs yesterday, covering only a third of the designated area, but then again, this may be an opportunity once I see what decides to return in 2021.

 

Tulip and daffodil bulbs have been poking their tender heads above ground for some time now, advancing and then pausing in wait for the next sunny day, but had not noticed much else in terms of winter or spring growth yet in the front or back yards.  Yesterday however I walked through the east side yard and was charmed by the hellebores, who are bravely sending out buds even though the greenery itself looks worse for wear.   The hellebores in the front yard may still be hunkered down, but in the east, the blooms are ready to burst forth.

 

 

 

No garden work today though.  I am determined to finish the border on this, the first of the two alpaca/camel blankets that I am restoring.  I absolutely adore the way this is turning out and I hope to have this finished, blocked and ready to use this month, which means that I need to finish knitting the border today.

 

I have to admit I needed all these things this week: signs of growth and blossoming and success, a reminder that whatever setbacks occur, we can always pick ourselves back up and move on.  And now, I have some time before my first meeting of the day, so I can go curl up under a light warm blanket and finishing knitting.

 

 

 

 

Monday Miscellaney

2021 has gotten off to a rather slow start here, at least in my personal socially-distanced bubble, but there are signs everywhere of new life about to burst forward.  

 

I decided to reopen two previous blogs, the knitting blog, PurlsAndMurmurs, which I actually revived in December and the Sewing blog, SewDistracted, which I just started up again this month.  My goal is to write at least three blog posts each week, one to each of the three blogs.  I think this is possible, and will be good for me (yes this decision is all about me) although there was a period last week where I questioned whether I was being too ambitious.  I suppose the question of ambition really depends on my purpose and intention; branching out actually seems to help me focus more on what I need and want these blogs to be, with less angst spent on what some part of my ego thinks they should be.  The fact that I need to make progress in order to record progress also serves as a strong motivation to stop equivocating and start doing something, anything.

 

The blog is a record, a public record yes, but the writing and recording of it has always been as much about my own personal record keeping and the format suits me.  Hopefully it brings some benefit to someone else,   There are links to both blogs in the side-bar on the right of this post, but I have included them above as well.  I have not yet decided about posting Facebook links, but it is a possibility.  

 

I am behind on garden planning, and behind on planting as well.  I have been unwilling to dig in the cold, and the somehow the sun has always appeared on days I am heavily burdened with other obligations.  It will work out, and although it has been cold and damp, it has not been so cold that the shrubs are in danger in their pots. Again, hopefully simply admitting I am behind will provide adequate motivation.

 

A new computer arrives this week.  This is a necessity as my old one stopped working in July.  I couldn’t figure it out and eventually put it aside, which may have been a good thing.  I have been working exclusively on my iPad since then, but the things it does not do well are beginning to weigh heavily.  I spent much of last week trying to trace out the problem on the Mac and backing up recalcitrant data. At one point it appeared I might get the old computer up and running, but that hope proved short lived.  It is possible that, in my oxygen deprived mental state last July I let something in which should have been kept out.  No recriminations.   Focusing on the computer, and the process of saving and consolidating has overflowed into a new organizational flurry which will continue for the rest of this month and until I get everything up and resorted again.

 

Amidst this flurry of administrative work, cuddles on the sofa with Poncho has been a necessary part of my winter rest and recovery phase and a necessary part of my own reawakening campaign.  If I can’t yet fully get out of the house, I can at least make progress on getting out of “self”.  When I adopted Poncho it was all about me.  I needed a puppy to cuddle.  But apparently at least some deeper part of my psyche realized I needed more, and I fell for this older, ill, disabled dog.  I needed to get out of my own head and start relearning how to commune with other living things, to be attuned to their needs and to refine that dance through which taking care of others is also our path to taking care of ourselves.

 

Poncho is daily growing calmer and more confident. He is less needy and more cuddly and playful.  So am I perhaps, certainly more open and more aware.  I cry more easily, but I also giggle, dance, and smile. I am more outwardly focused.  Last summer and fall took a toll,  But, if we allow it, after any descent into darkness (or difficulty) there is a rise into light.  Oh how I love metaphor, and ritual, not in and of themselves, but because of the way they refocus our attentions out of the self, away from the way we let the stories we tell ourselves blind us, and into something new. As usual, the more open we become, the more we allow change to blossom, to allow growth, the more we are able to expand, to focus, to be more ourselves.

 

Until next time...

2020 in Review Part Two: Books and Changing Perspectives

The plan was always to write about books.  The plan was to review last year and write about changes hopes and dreams.  The plan was....the plan was.... the plan was...

 

Then Wednesday happened and 2021 no longer looked like the “happily ever after” coda of a fairy tale.  The big bad wolf wasn’t dead.  We weren’t tripping hand in hand down the lollipop trail.  I was thrown into a sense of turmoil.  I was not alone in that, but I did not know how to react.  Continue with previous plans?  Write something new?  But the more I thought about what I would write the more I also realized I needed to write about what I had planned to write.  Sometimes we can’t go forward without figuring out where we are.  And although I was not the only one shocked by the events in Washington last week, the episode did not spring out of the ether without warnings, and its lasting effects will not simply disappear because we wish it so.

 

And so I find myself back at books.  There is no reason to subject you to the tedious list of all the books I read in 2020; that list is available either by looking me up on goodreads or library thing.  And I continue to either struggle or question with the idea of “best” lists.  How do I compare nonfiction to fiction, and even within those broad categories?   Does a really good mystery compare with a literary novel?  Writing a book is hard, and although I do believe discernment is a necessary aspect of life, I can also say that everything I read satisfied the requirements or reasoning behind my choice. So once again, who is to judge?  

 

What I am actually interested in this year is the idea of change.  What changed me?  In a year where so much of my interaction with the outside world was through books, are there books that profoundly affected the way I see myself and the world?  To some extent all books do that, everything we read, see, do, affects who we are, how we see the world, and who we become.  But in this year that truly challenged the assumptions of many of us, were there books that also rocked my basic understanding of the world and my place in that world?  

 

Yes.  Yes there were. They may not be the “best” books, and they may, in fact may not be the books brought about the greatest change, but they were books that opened a door if you will, and forced me to see something I might not have seen otherwise.  They laid the foundations.

 

In order read:

 

Colson Whitehead’s novel The Nickel Boys shocked me in many ways.  It is a beautiful and yet horrifying novel.  The story flows, the characterizations are strong, and one is drawn in to a novel that breaks one’s heart, a novel that is simultaneously compelling and sickening.  It is a novel that is difficult to write about without giving everything away, but then, as one is horrified and sad, and congratulating oneself on how much better everything is today, Whitehead throws in a surprise ending that works perfectly and hit me like a sucker-punch.  In that moment I realized that everything I assumed and thought I knew was perfectly backward, that we think we see character clearly but what we actually see condemns us more than it tells us anything useful.

 

Then I moved on to The Underground Railroad.  Initially, it came as a bit of a relief; even though it was intellectually more challenging and highly metaphoric, the novel felt a bit more distanced and removed from the highly personal and empathetic prose of The Nickel Boys.  But then it got hold of me and hit me upside the head.  We are often able to intellectualize the past, to protect ourselves from our discomfort.  Our need to think of ourselves as “good” allows us to distance ourselves from the past, no matter how shocking and horrifying it may have been.  But then the masterful way Whitehead uses allegory hit me.  This is a novel that explores all of the ways of slavery, past and present, a novel that belies all the exceptions that we claim for own ancestors, that talks of the work and danger in seeking freedom, and it is a novel that simultaneously, while writing about the past, is writing about today.  Every stop on this railroad, every experiences is its own bubble, as much of today as of yesterday.  We haven’t changed, the world hasn’t changed.  After reading this book I had to close my door for days.  After reading this book I could no longer see myself or a world I had taken for granted, in the same way.  I, in fact, could no longer be the person I had been a week previously.  Who this person would become I didn’t know.  I still don’t know, but we never understand change while we are going through it.

 

Then the world started to shut down.  I shut my door, and in fact, although I thought I would read up a storm, I couldn’t.  I slunk into the quiet.  When I started reading again, I read Tayari Jones’ novel An American Marriage. I expected this novel to be more outraged, to kindle my own outrage, but I found instead was that its heavy, resigned, acceptance served to cement the changes that had begun in my heart. Yes it is a story of a marriage, a truly American marriage even, and it is meaningless to say that this is not “my America” because there can’t be “my” America and someone else’s America.  America is not what I believed it to be.  Knowing that in my head was one thing.  Feeling it in the very core of my being was something else entirely.

 

I reread Milkman by Anna Burns for book club.  Once again it rocked me.  Burns has created a unique voice which allows the reader to experience a particular time and place and to feel both the physical and emotional constraints of that space in a very personal way.  She allows the reader to do this without judgement.  The first time I read this novel,  I understood one thing in a way I had never understood it before.  Reading it the second time I realized that this unique time and space is not unique at all, in its very specificity and distinction, it is simultaneously universal. This story is not so separate from my own life, from any story.  The details change, but we are all shaped by understandings, by what is done and what is not done, what is said and what is not said, by who we can be, and who we cannot be.

 

This lead perfectly into Yoko Ogawa’s beautifully poetic novel The Memory Police.  An island somewhere.  Sometime in the future I suppose.  Things disappear — words, objects, memory — one day they are there, the next they are gone, forgotten. The story begins when our protagonist is a small child.  She worries that the disappearances will be frightening, but they are not.  People accept.  Eventually we learn they are complicit. But what happens when you give up the past, memory, self?   What you agree to forget also takes away from yourself.  What you accept, what you let go of, shapes who you become.  We accept too easily, give in too readily.  What do we lose?

 

These, these were my sucker-punch books.  They shaped the foundation for three other books that have also profoundly affected me, my final triad.  I list them as such not because they are not worthy, or because they do not stand alone, they do.  But my reaction to them was indelibly shaped by my reaction to those previous books.  Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste because it made me think about systemic racism differently, although Michelle Alexander had also talked about the American culture of racism as a caste system in The New Jim Crow, which I read in 2018, and picked up again at the end of December.   I will read Caste again, probably later this year, and I suspect its impact will be more profound on the second reading, which was the case with Alexander’s book.  

 

And then there is is Ta-Nehisi Coates novel The Water Dancer.  I don’t know where to put it.  I read and hear contrasts and comparisons to The Underground Railroad, but I think that is unfair.  The only thing they have in common is that they are both allegorical, and that in an age that doesn’t really understand allegory.    The Water Dancer is a profoundly human novel, and it is about what it means to be human.  Yes it is also about slavery, and perhaps that confuses the issue.  It also employs a lot of magical realism.  But humanity itself is not so easily pinned down.  Our essence is very metaphysical; we do not have the words to explore our metaphysical natures directly.   Coates explores the way slavery shapes humanity on a very personal and humane level.   Rather than discussing the horrors of racism as differentiated from the self, he shows us the way racism shapes and perverts the self.  In doing this he writes a novel about a specific culture of slavery, about its broad ramifications on the essence of what it means to be human, and, through that, about the many many ways we are all enslaved.  I say this not to make less of this book, or to make less of systematic racism or slavery, but because the simple truth that we are all harmed.  We are all enslaved.

 

Where am I going with all of this?  How should I know?  Where is the US going?  I don’t think we know that either.  Last week while I, like many others, found myself watching something I never imagined could happen in my own country, a quote from The New Jim Crow kept running through my mind.  Although Michelle Alexander is writing specifically about mass incarceration, the idea she expresses here relates to so much that is facing us today:

 

The question of how we do reform work is even more important than the specific reforms we seek.  If the way we pursue reforms does not contribute to the building of a movement to dismantle the system of mass incarceration, and if our advocacy doe snot upset the prevailing public on senses that supports the new caste system, none of the reforms, even if won, will successfully disrupt the nation’s racial equilibrium.  Challenges to the system will be easily ignored or deflected.

 

I do know what the world post 2020 will be.  None of us knows.  I do know that I do not want to return to the equilibrium of my former life.  I don’t know the specific of my role, and yet I accept that I have a role to play.  That is true of each of us.  Each and every gift, each and every action is significant in shaping who we are and in shaping the world around us.  I can easily sacrifice some of my comfort to bring more comfort to someone else, for what is my comfort if its price is someone else’s discomfort?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2020 in Review and Moving Forward (Part One)

2020 was full of challenges in so many ways, and not just for me, but I also have to admit that overall I did not have a bad year.  Yes there were challenges, and yes I am very fortunate.  I did not lose my source of income or my home.  I can stay safely sheltered.  Yes I miss seeing friends, but I also realize that this period of sheltering at home has offered the possibility of reflection.  No one likes change, and yet to some extent we are all driven toward it; this is part of the conundrum that makes us human.  I prefer to see the challenges of the year as an opportunity for growth, for evolution.  As much as we would like it to do so, the world will never again be what it was before SARS Covid-19 made its presence known.  Much as we would like the lives we once had, the true telling of who we are is in how we cope with the now and next, not how we yearn for the past.

 

I did struggle with some health issues during the time of our collective shut-down.  Some were self-inflicted, such as a garden fall brought on by stupidity, a fall that kept me from doing much gardening during the peak spring planting time.  Others were through no fault of my own.  In retrospect I can see that I was struggling with one thing or another, either decline or the frustratingly slow pace of recovery from April through November.  In retrospect I can see that I struggled more than I even realized at the time, but there may be a blessing in that.  Either way I refuse to dwell on it.

But there were good things as well.  I reacquainted myself with my love of cooking and food.  Yes, I would like to be feeding others; that does not mean I should not enjoy feeding myself.  I planted a vegetable garden, not as large as I had hoped, but large enough that I struggled to keep up given others setbacks.  In fact the process of gardening expanded my horizons, both in terms of watching plants grow, watching birds and beasts in the yard, exploring new flavors and combinations.  When one cannot go out, perhaps one discovers whole universes in one’s own backyard.

The garden will be here.  More will be planted.  Perhaps there are benefits in taking things more slowly.  I tend to be a person whose dreams are bigger than my ability to execute them.  If I cannot slow myself down, the world slows me down instead.  Perhaps I should learn from that.  Perhaps I never will, but I have hope.  One of the advantages of having too much to do, is that reality puts a damper on enthusiasm and actually leads to more creativity.  I will be planting for years to come.,  I am planting now.  Three cryptomeria globusa nana were planted last week.  I’ve prepped the ground for three more, and they will go in soon.  Baby steps.

I started the year with great sewing plans.  I was going to make 4 summer linen tank/tunics, 5 dresses, goodness knows what else.  It did not happen. I went to a sewing retreat where I fitted a muslin and cut out three dresses, copied from a favorite summer dress from my closet.  Only one was completed, the muted purple Japanese print dress. I wore that dress despite my misgivings that the quilting cotton was perhaps a little too “happy hands at home”.  I discovered that I didn’t care.  There were far too few opportunities to wear a dress, to see a friend, to worry about what others thought.  The dress made me smile, and smiles are always good. 

 

The second dress, out of a muted wine linen with an abstract leaf print, was mostly completed in March but not hemmed.  My intentions were good, but my motivation waned with a general sense of stuck-at-home malaise.  I picked it up again in August only to toss it aside once more.  I had made errors, the correction of which seemed more than my poor, oxygen-starved, brain could handle.  I picked it up again in December to discover that the solution was obvious and easy.  Not perfect, but good.  I have something to look forward to wearing when the weather warms.

 

Two dresses.  Countless face masks.  45 yards sewn. 

 

Although there seemed to be long stretches of time in which I knit nothing, knitting output was the greatest it has been in a decade.  Seven completed projects, 33 skeins used.  Paltry in once sense, and yet more than enough.  How much does one need, after all?  And yet, one should use what one has.   Better garments to wear than yarn on a shelf.

Cozy Cowl Cardigan, knit in Rowan Kid Classic is still my favorite winter sweater.  And one that has been in heavy use since Thanksgiving.  I don’t know if the weather has been colder or if I have been more sensitive, but I am once again happy for cozy sweaters.

 

A prayer shawl, hopefully enjoyed by someone, somewhere.

 

Citron colored socks knit in Lichen and Lace 80/20 sock yarn.  Desperately needed and in now in heavy rotation.  In fact, after 7 months at home my attitudes toward every day wear are changing, and I actually need more socks.  There will be sock knitting in 2021.  Yes, I could buy socks, but I will not. Fewer things, well made, hand made, mended, and even then they will wear out.  But worth every second.  It seems if I have learned anything,  it is to not take things for granted.

 

A throw or lap blanket knit in shades of Blue Taiyo by Noro yarns.  I loved knitting this.  I love curling up on the sofa under this.  I bought yarn to knit another, and other blankets as well.  In fact I have blankets on the brain. I want to knit my own blankets.  Perhaps I’ve gone off the deep end.

 

A summer sweater, knit in lace weight linen, held double.  Started in the summer of 2019 then put aside when I started the fuzzy pink cardigan.  Hopefully this will become another favorite. I almost wore it this past weekend, when the temperatures were in the 60s.  Instead I was pulling up small trees partially uprooted by snow and digging in the garden.  There will be plenty of opportunities for future wear.  Generally the warmer seasons are longer than the colder ones here in Tennessee. 

 

And finally two warm hats from the same pattern.  You saw those both, just a week ago.  A warm head is a happy head.  Poncho and I spend an hour or two walking each day.  Walks with Poncho are slow, and hard on my back (and ears if the weather is cold — hats help) we might spend an hour circling around in front of 3 to 4 houses.  Poncho is cuddly and sweet and may well be another spirit-guide.  Perhaps all the “forward movement” of my life is just a myth, another circle.  I know I’ve said this before.

 

I continue to be thrilled, even as I continue to struggle with the dichotomy of wanting to make more while simultaneously needing less.  Having finally gotten started, I don’t think I will be stopping soon.  But I also realized it is not really about making more, planting more, doing more, about rushing through things, but just about the whole process of life, making, using, eating, breathing.  Especially that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unmuddling

It snowed on Christmas Eve, and Christmas morning I awoke to a winter wonderland.

I suppose this could be considered a gift or a curse, depending on what one was planning.  But Christmas, or the spirit of the holiday, whether one celebrates a Christian Christmas, a general secular American Christmas, or any variation on the theme of winter solstice celebrations, remains.  We tend to get all caught up in the surfaces of things, and forget they are just that, surfaces, and the thing itself is deeper.  

 

(I continue to be fascinated by photos taken through windows, and am amused by the way the kitchen lights appear like small hovering orbs.

I love the silence following a snowfall. It is as if the world has been swaddled in a comforting blanket.  My mental flailings and discomforts are calmed, ready to emerge anew.  Not that much is happening here, it was a quiet but lovely Christmas.  As Covid-19 continues its rampage across Tennessee, I live a mostly solitary life, and, although I have indeed had more than enough of living inside my own head, I am finding that clarity and focus are returning.

 

I started posting to my knitting blog again.  I had initially intended to start earlier in the fall, before my heart and body rebelled, but better late than never.  Nothing profound is being said there, but the blog is fulfilling its original purpose, a record and a journal of my knitting.  I never do well with paper project books.  I tend to lose them, to pile up miscellaneous bits of paper, to toss them all in a fit of declutter mania.  Perhaps though this is what I need in order to find my way back here, to this blog, as well.

I suppose I originally needed to record my ideas for the blanket project, but I quickly realized that I needed the focus of simply recording progress and ideas.   I also posted on the two hats I knit over the holiday weekend.  Both are using super bulky Manos del Uruguay yarns, both using the same “sidewinder beanie” pattern.  Details can be found on my knitting blog (link above) or my ravelry page.  I am not certain that anyone wants the details here.  

 

I desperately needed the hats.  None of my current hats pull down over my ears, my fur earmuff has disappeared, or perhaps in a bit of early move-to-Knoxville craziness I gave it away.  After all, my first winter in this town I don’t think the temperature got much below freezing.  This winter has felt cold to me.  I don’t know if it is actually colder or if I am colder natured, but I am enjoying wearing sweaters and curling up in blankets by a fire.

Christmas Eve and Christmas day were filled with a flurry of Zooming, Texting, Calling, and socially-distanced gift opening. I actually missed cooking however, so over the weekend I made cholent, perhaps not traditional Christmas fare, but it worked for me. I used the same recipe I have used for decades, now online, here.   I stopped making it because I can no longer eat barley, and the initial grains I substituted:  rice, millet, quinoa, somehow left the dish lacking.  Then I found Job’s Tears (Coix lacryma jobi) also sometimes called Chinese Pearl Barley, although it is not related to Barley (Hordeum vulgate).  I had read that they were a good gluten-free alternate to barley and so thought them worth a try.  And I have to admit I am quite happy with the result.

I used to make my cholent with flanken, but that is a cut not commonly found here in Knoxville.  Technically, probably any stew meat would do.  But I also needed pastrami, a good chunk of pastrami, and good quality pastrami does not seem to be a regional specialty either, so it took me a little while to pull together the ingredients.  Hence Christmas cholent.  I am not complaining.

And so here we are on another chilly gray December morning.  The snow is partially melted.  I have a few large shrubs or small trees that have been partially uprooted by the weight of the snow, and they will have to be attended to.  At the moment, however,  I feel hopeful.  Maybe all I needed was a hat.  Poncho pulled me out for a walk pretty much immediately following my shower, and here I am, wet hair tucked up inside my new cap to keep warm, snug, and ready to face the world.

 

 

 

 

Three Things Tuesday

I have been hopelessly muddled in a blog post that, if anything, is becoming more muddled as time goes on.  It seems that all I can do is admit that sometimes life is more transparent than at other times, and move on to something else.

 

So I present a few progress notes.

1. I am still washing blanket squares.  They are filthy and covered in cat hair and the process has been slow.  At least until yesterday, when I made a concerted effort to move forward.  I remembered the large sweater blocking board my mom had insisted I bring home the last time I saw her — at the beginning of the year.  I did not know what to do with it, or where to store it so it was still in the garage. Yesterday I brought it in to the basement storage room and laid it on the floor next to my smaller gray blocking board.  Although you cannot quite tell from the angle of this crude photograph, the white board has three times the blocking space as the smaller gray board. I filled it with wet blanket blocks yesterday.  They are taking about 28 hours to dry in the December damp and tomorrow I will wash the last batch.  This prospect sparks a little happy dance. Of course the job will not yet be done: I will have to begin the process of planning, repairing, knitting and reassembling.

 

2.  Christmas decorations remain in flux, although truthfully I rarely get the decorating done before the third Sunday of Advent (last Sunday) as much as I always intend to do better.  This year progress has been complicated by the fact that I cannot access the holiday ornaments until after I get wet blanket squares off the floor.  So it will be later yet.  There is still plenty of time.   Christmas merely begins on Christmas Day.  I always appreciate the period of preparation, of Advent, with its highs and lows, with its call toward mindfulness and care, with the knowledge that each year’s preparation will follow its own path. 

This rustic tree is out. But by next weekend my grandmother’s crèche and the sparkly glass trees I purchased the year that I spent Christmas in a small apartment will be out and greenery will be up as well.  I am as yet undecided about a traditional tree.  The personal, the intimate, connection and kindness are what matter to me this year, including kindness to myself.  I am not so much about putting up a brave front as about celebrating joy in the midst of darkness.  No floodlights here, merely candles, candles whose light is warmly appreciated.  A phone call or zoom, food delivered, a socially distanced glass of wine or cup of cocoa, a note, all are their own kind of lights in the darkness.

 

3.  Surprises are still welcome.  This blanket arrived.  The purple of the blanket is almost exactly the purple of my couch. Poncho and Moises think it coordinates nicely with their fur.  I assume, in time, all will be revealed. 

 

And so I muddle through.  I don’t think muddling is a bad thing.   Just as the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference, the opposite of confusion is not certainty.  

 

Making and Mending

Over the weekend I finished knitting the trim on oversized boxy linen tee.  I have named it summer sunset, although that is a little bit of a stretch...

Weaving in myriad yarn ends took a full evening of knitting time and I also admit that I approached the finishing instructions — to toss the thing in the washing machine and the dryer with a bit of trepidation, even though I had done exactly this with my swatches, and I had the data to prove this was the right course. But most of my knitting choices do not lend themselves to wash and dry, and I have felted a sweater or two in my time, so experience and knowledge were at odds.

Needless to say the sweater turned out beautifully.  I actually think this will work well as a summer top for all but the hottest and most humid days, but also as a layering pieces in spring and fall, perhaps even the warmer days of winter here in Tennessee.  I an already imagine it with a pink-coral turtleneck and brown chinos....  but today is too cold and I am not inclined to play dress-up.

After the sweater was done I started dismantling a blanket I had knitted at the end of 2004 and into early 2005.  The colors don’t really go with this house, but that was not the reason for disassembly.  The blanket was too large, and I was finding it impractical.  I had knit it extra big, because George was a bit of a blanket hog, but now this larger-than-king-sized blanket blanket dragged on the floor off my queen-sized bed and felt cumbersome for a solo sleeper. It also required mending and was too large and heavy when wet for me to wash it.

 

I spent most of the weekend taking it apart.  Lint and cat hair covered every surface and my sinuses were acting up a bit. I initially thought I would start this back in August, but health issues interfered, and Moises thought it was a perfectly cuddly bed. This weekend I paid the price in sinus congestion for allowing him the luxury.

Now I am washing the individual components.  Once that is done I will lay them out and think about how to reassemble them, making necessary repairs as I go.  There are several threadbare spots and holes.  I don’t really like the way I assembled this the first time around, so my plans are different for this iteration although I don’t know what I will do with the old border, which I removed in its entirety.  I do not plan to reattach it, but it is in such good shape that it seems a waste to discard it, and I am sure some idea will eventually surface.

 

I had thought that this would be my “next” project.  But I see now that it will take several days just to wash the many squares, laying them out n my sweater-sized blocking board.  I will need something to tide me over until I can start the process of renewal and reassembly. Which means, I suppose that I will be sorting through project boxes again later today.

Last but not least, I made a minor repair to one of my favorite winter coats.  The separating zipper tape on this cashmere duffle coat was pulling loose and it had become difficult to zip.  I did not make this coat, but I have always loved an unlined duffle, and almost always had at least one in my closet.  This one is several years old and is by Kinross.  When it finally wears out, I shall make my own, but at the moment, minor mending will suffice.

 

Last night my eyes were too tired last night to be able to even see the eye of the needle, much less thread it, so I put it all off until this morning, when I thought I would go to the studio to use the powerful embroidery magnifier.  Luckily this wasn’t necessary.  Freshly rested, I  threaded the needle and repaired the coat in less time than it would take for me to walk out of my bedroom and over to the studio; in less time, in fact, than it took to make my first cup of coffee.   This is good, because it is chill enough that I want to wear this coat again today.