restingmotion

The View Through The Trees

One of the things that I found truly oppressive to my spirit this spring was just how overgrown the perimeters of the yard had become.  I knew they were overgrown, but I hadn't actually thought about it and how much psychic weight all those leaves and vines carried, until I had time to sit back and actually take a look.

Last week we had over a dozen large trees taken out, for the most part trees that we at the bottom of our cliff and which had finally grown up high enough to begin impinging on our view of the Hudson.  This week I had the small brush person here cleaning up the woods along the perimeter of the driveway.  When I first moved here I could see the rock ledge between my house and the street year round, and I could see the house as I rounded the first bend in my driveway.  These views had been obscured by trees and shrubs for years, since G stopped spending many weekends cutting back trees and brush 5 or 6 years ago.  No wonder I had started liking the winter view more than the summer view.  Now that is about to change.

 

Here are some before pictures:

And here is the view coming down the hill now, from roughly right behind where the chipper is standing in the above photo:

And here is one end of the large rock outcropping between us and the street:

You can only see a large vague dark shape in the background.  The rest of that outcropping is still hidden by brush and small trees.  We had only scheduled 2 days of cutting and chipping and needed three, the last day will be the end of July, but already it is a great improvement.  Rather than feeling like I am descending into the bowels of the jungle as I approach my driveway, I am filled with lightness and relief.

 

I will spend some of the weekend redistributing the piles of wood chips more evenly among the trees, and cleaning up some of the small things.  But mostly I am still working on the finer points of the front yard, although it is much improved over last year.

 

More Flowers

This small intermingling of pink astilbes and hydrangea with the small blue browallia blossoms strikes me as perfection every time I walk in and out of the house.  In fact, I have been known to walk outside to just sit and look at this small shady bed at the base of my front walk whenever I need a calming moment.

 

 
Nearby, the lilies are just beginning to bloom:

I meant to move these lilies last fall, as they don't get quite enough sun and reach over far to the side, stretching themselves toward the light, which of course means they are all the more easily trampled into the ground come a summer thunderstorm.

 

They share the bed with dahlias, which seem to be happy enough with the light and this relatively dry site.

 

Reading on the bike, or in the armchair

I've just finished reading My Life In France by Julia Child and Alex Prud'Homme and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Julia was, I suppose, a rather late bloomer and this story of her life in France and how she discovered her passion is fascinating.  Julia's voice comes through nicely, the same voice that one finds in her cookbooks, although the book is about far more than food and cooking, and it is partly this voice that keeps the book so enthralling.  The book was pieced together from conversations with Julia, and this conversational quality is one of its strong points.  The book is both rambling and focused, both qualities of Julia Child that I recall from her PBS cooking shows.  Julia doesn't necessarily always bother to translate, just as one would not if one were sitting down and chatting, and in the cadence of the words one can imagine the voice, methodical and practical but also filled with passion, emotion, and memory. I'm surprised this languished unread on my shelf for so long.

 

During the early days of Julia's stay in France, she and her husband were acquainted with Hadley Mowrer, the former Mrs. Hemingway.  This reminded me that I had recently read The Paris Wife, the novel based on the marriage between Ernest Hemingway and Hadley Richardson (later Mowrer).  Julia points out that Hadley was not particularly intellectual or sophisticated, which is also obviously played up in the novel.  The novel had been enjoyable enough but ultimately fell flat.  It seemed obvious, and this may have been the case, that both parties may have truly been in love, but they also married idealized versions of themselves, each of them looking for something or someone to fill a void they felt within themselves.    Their relationship never developed beyond this phase and of course failed because grand illusion can never be sustained indefinitely.  Hadley seems to have had no passion of her own, no interests other than being Mrs. Ernest Hemingway, as if she hoped he would fill her up and be her passion.  But of course Hemingway had his own devils and certainly couldn't sustain himself, much less someone else.  The crumbling of the illusion was obvious long before the end of the book.  I have to say however that I am now interested in reading a little more about Hemingway, a subject that held little interest before reading this novel.

 

Somewhere between the above two books I read The Churchills:  In Love and War.  I can merely say it was okay in a big curl up in the armchair with a glass of wine and indulge in a bit of gossip kind of way.  It was fairly quick to read, and offered very little of substance, and was basically an entertaining bit of fluff.  I'm certainly not above a bit of fluff here and there, and the book did round out my mental images of a few people who, heretofore, had been vague names on the pages of multiple books and histories.

Dressing for Myself

I love perusing the fashion magazines although I can't for the most part say that I actually read them.  More likely I pore over the pages, studying the photos, looking at trends, seeking out individual items I like but mostly looking at colors and shapes and details that inspire me.  

 

But the truth is that although I might buy new pieces, or make things based on trends, I don't actually think about being current or fashionable when I dress.  I like to hope that my appearance is not completely at odds with my environment or what is current.  I buy new things, but if I love them and love wearing them, which are not necessarily the same thing, I will wear them long past their "wear by" date.  And when it comes to sewing, well all bets are off.  I sew what I want to wear when I sew it.  The same is true for knitting.  And although my choices are undoubtedly shaped by  what I read and see around me, I don't usually start a project thinking that I want to knock-off or create a certain look copied from what I see in magazines or on the street.

 

This hasn't always been true.  When I was young I did knock off particular looks.  And I still keep files on things I like and how they are made, but I worry less about how close I am to the original.   Perhaps I just worry less about what other people think, which should, I would hope, be a normal part of aging.  I don't have to dress for work, although it took me a long long time to banish work-related clothing from my wardrobe, probably as long as it took me to stop defining myself by what I did versus who I am.  

 

So there we have it.  Dressing for who I am.  Who I am now.   Well, I still mess up a lot and don't always get it right, meaning I don't get it right for me.  I am still evolving.  Hopefully we are all still evolving.  But getting it right means wearing something comfortable, something in which I feel confident, and appropriate.  I don't want to look the crazy old lady that everyone stares at the grocery store because she has too much makeup and looks like a clown.  Nor do I want to look like that middle aged lady who has pursued youth at any cost, and usually the costs are great and are apparent to everyone except the person who has staked her all on the pursuit of eternal youth.  Some days I don't mind standing out but I also have days where I just want to be a member of the chorus.

 

So what do I have?  I am a tall-ish middle aged woman who remains a little heavier than she would like in a world obsessed with thinness, but who also recognizes that her body might be telling her that this is where it wants to be now.  My thighs are thicker than I would like, as are my arms.  But this has always been true, even in my teens and twenties, so I might as well embrace them.  My almost 53-year old middle is thicker than it used to be, my chin is rapidly becoming one with my neck, and arthritis has made my knuckles thicker and knobbier.  It could be worse.   I won't deny that there are days it feels worse to me than others, but generally, if this is the price of being 53, I can live with it.

 

And I can still dress the way I want.  I just can't necessarily dress the way I did in my 20s, or 30s or 40s. And I'm okay with that. I don't want to be who I was in my 20s and I don't want to dress the way I did then either.  I am beginning to learn to just let it be.  I am just beginning to let myself wear what works and feels comfortable to me in the life I lead without worry.  If I turn off those inner voices filled with regret and shame and rules and conventions, I can still pretty much tell if something works or doesn't, if it works for my view of myself.

 

Which finally gets me round to the picture above and what I am wearing. We took the scenic route today, the route through a mountain of verbiage that just wouldn't get out of the way.

 

This outfit mostly works for me.  The shoes are new, purchased on sale.  I am not one to only shop sales as I tend to wear popular sizes, but these olive sandals just kind of fell into my lap.  My previous pair of olive sandals were 5 years old, or older, and were falling apart.  Like the originals these have this kind of modified wedge heel which is very comfortable, although the new ones are taller, nearly 4 inches whereas the originals were 3, and they have a buckled ankle strap.  I love ankle straps even though my legs are somewhat short for my height.  Of course with pants it doesn't matter, and the 4 inch heel lengthens the leg very effectively.    I've worn the shoes three or four times, for most of the day, and my feet are only tired, but not sore, after 8 or 9 hours.

 

The pants are old, I don't know how old.  I bought them years ago from Athleta. They were a couple of inches longer than the catalog said they would be, and I wanted to wear them with gym shoes to work out and wear to and from the gym.  I didn't want to gather them at the ankle, I thought that looked silly, and it probably would look silly if they were gathered at the ankle.  For some reason I did not send them back.  And I did not think of wearing them as a casual pant with heels.  I was still defining myself by my work clothes back then.  I put them in a pile to be shortened, and by the time I got around to them I was to fat to wear them.  I don't do that kind of thing anymore.  If I don't wear something right away it goes back or gets passed on.  I put the pants in a box labeled try again at XXX pounds.  I found the box in the top of a closet last week.  I am at XXX pounds.  Everything in the box was too big, some things were so large they were comical.  Only these pants fit.  And now I love them.  I love them with heels.  I don't actually wear them with the legs straight, although they are nice enough, but I love them with the gathers around the base of my heel.    They are light and cool and airy and I feel like skipping when I wear them.  At 53, clothes that make you feel like skipping should be embraced.

 

The rest of the outfit is nothing special.  The tee is nice.  It would be nicer if the arm were cut in a little more, baring more of the shoulder, but I love the color and the neckline.  I could open up the armhole, but I probably won't get to it before the season is over.    The necklace is very nice, green amethyst on a gold chain, and the color works well, but it is a tad to delicate for the outfit.  I bought the necklace to go with a delicate dress (the Stella McCartney) with which it is perfect.  I didn't have anything I liked better with this outfit so I wore it.  

 

But the necklace is important because it fills a gap.  So many of my pieces are statement pieces, and I don't have many pieces I can wear inside a neckline.  There is a lot of real estate from my chin to my bustline and dainty pendants and chains tend to look lost.  With this piece I am finally recognizing the possibilities of layering necklaces, and of delicate pieces.  Perhaps that is also because I am wandering back to shirts and blouses instead of tees, but that is a subject for another post.  The day I wore this outfit I took G to our favorite jeweler so he could pick out a birthday present for me.  While he was working on that task, I looked at other, similar, chains, playing with colors and lengths and the possibilities of layering necklaces.  To my surprise I really liked the look, and I would have never tried it were it not for that Stella McCartney dress.

As I said before, hopefully we are always evolving.

(click on photo to enlarge)

More Flower Photos

There has been much hustle and bustle around here and little time for reflection or even knitting.  But there is always time to stop and admire the flowers.  These are large zinc boxes in front of the garage.  

I tend to think the whole space is a little too messy, but I haven't found quite the right planters for the look I want. Although I was initially unsure about the plantings, they are filling out nicely and I have come to appreciate them a little more.  

These two small planters at the north corner of my garage were just finished Monday.  But they are already starting to pick up a bit.

Watching Nixon in China

Last week I mentioned that I had watched the Metropolitan Opera's production of John Adam's opera, Nixon in China on PBS.  I believe I said it went "on and on".  Mater called me on this, having recalled that I had long wanted to see this opera and asked what I actually thought about the opera.  This post is in response to that question.

 

It is  true that I have long wanted to see Nixon in China, probably since I first heard of it being premiered in Houston in 1987.  Soon after the Houston Premier, the opera was performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and I really wanted to go. G was not interested.  This was in the first year or two of our marriage and he wasn't interested in John Adams, and was especially opposed to going to Brooklyn to hear John Adams. I didn't want to push it, and the train situation was more complicated then.  There were fewer trains this far up in the suburbs, and the last train was not very late, before midnight.  It was highly unlikely that I could make it back to Grand Central in time to catch the last train and I didn't want to drive down to Brooklyn by myself. 

 

24-odd years later G sought me out after seeing an ad for the opera on PBS, and asked me if I would watch Nixon in China with him.  Of course I said yes.  Wednesday night we settled down on the sofa to watch and listen.  G made Brandy Alexanders, rather large ones (Brandy Grandes as Duchesse remarked), I had my knitting, and I was grateful for the large screen television I bought when G came home from the nursing home and the excellent sound system, both added to the experience and made watching the televised opera truly gripping.  I almost managed to stay awake through the entire performance, dozing off only during the intermission.  Televised intermission interviews aren't nearly as interesting as intermissions in a real opera hall with all the excitement and hubbub and people-watching.

 

But what did I think of the opera?  

 

I actually enjoyed it very much, if you can use the word "enjoy" with this opera as it is not an opera one really watches for pleasure and light entertainment.  It is true that in the end I was struggling, and I was tired enough that I wished I could see the last act again.  This may not have been the case had I seen it live.  There is something about being there, in the flesh as it were, even if you don't get the camera close-ups of the singers, and although I have been to longer operas, performances usually start at 8, whereas in Eastern Standard Television Time, it started at 9, which I still feel is a late start.

 

The opening was truly dramatic and gripping with the plane descending, the Nixons disembarking, and the chorus singing an oddly matched combination of lyrically beautiful phrases, occasionally chopped up into odd bits, and accompanied by staccato and ritualistic music that seems to be harsh and clipped in contrast to the words.  I don't believe I had noticed this previously, when I was just listening to the opera, but I am not sure I really thought about the words, just the music.  Seeing it is different.  Seeing it with subtitles is different again.  I found this opening scene powerfully unsettling because of this profound disharmony. It was however a good opening for an opera that was, overall, also profoundly unsettling.

 

I felt that all the performances were good:  Madame Mao's vocal pyrotechnics, the rich sonorous voice of Chou En-Lai had philosophic overtones, Chairman Mao's rapaciously self-satisfied  outbursts, and the contrast of his emotionally overblown character with Nixon's sharp, contained, and ultimately repressive voice.

 

James Maddalena as Nixon seemed to capture that self-consuming angst that seems to be my overall impression of Nixon, and the complexity of the character comes through in the contrast of the public and more private scenes, although Nixon almost seems to be an over-contained character, chained by his own self-importance. 

 

In fact, I found the staging, with the sharp contrast between public and private, large scale events mixed with private moments, shocking.  An introspective character, alone on the vast stage was particularly unsettling, really driving home the lonliness and disconnect of the individual versus the drama of the political.  

 

Pat Nixon, sung by Janis Kelly, was particularly effective,  and she brings a real contrast on an emotional level to the politicking and sonorous self importance of the other players on the scene (with the exception of Kissinger.  I suspect there must be something brilliant in casting Kissinger as a buffoon.) The scenes where she is taken to a glass factory, a commune and a school are particularly tender and touching, a times filled with a naivety that was at times uncomfortably striking given the overall tenor of the opera. 

 

I found the ballet particularly difficult.  I was aware it was there, I knew the music and the story, but seeing it was completely different.  I was aware that there was a contrast between the story of the ballet and the and emotional reactions of the Nixons, particularly Pat, to the story. But seeing it on stage, with the blurring of the lines between dance and reality with Mrs. Nixon taking the performance as real and attempting to come to the aide of a young dancer was horrifying poignant with its commentary on the mental compartmentalization  of art, life, and politics which defines how we often perceive the world.  The blurring of art and life is a kind of microcosm of the opera itself, which also seems to push boundaries and blur the lines of what we we think we see in life, which become even more sharply emphasized with the shrieking of Madame Mao, angered at this perceived misinterpretation.

 

The Nixon's reaction to the ballet also seems embody one of the central dichotomies of the opera.  It is as if she expresses pure emotion and feeling in contrast to Nixon's calculating exterior, a shell of a person from which feelings have been excluded and synthesized into small vignettes which are only shadows of the actual experiences, to be echoed later in the closing act.

 

The final act was the most difficult for me, not because it wasn't good but because I was growing tired, and the reminiscences and philosophizing closed the opera with a rather open-ended question.   I would have liked to have the opportunity to go out and talk it over, to gauge other reactions to the piece.  Here is where I specifically missed attending a performance and the discussion afterward.  G was already over tired and bored as well.  The companionship is good and sweet but the ability to converse and dissect, to analyze a response and compare reactions is long gone.  I was left with no option but bed.

 

After all this, I think I still want to see it again.  I would like to be present at an actual performance, although watching this performance has made me see the opera differently than I had perhaps before.  It is an opera that needs attending with someone, an opera I would want to talk about afterward, that requires its own kind of muddling through, an opera that makes demands and therefore not an opera that makes for an easy evening. This of course also makes it an opera that most of my friends who eschew attending.

 

 

A few flowers

I hope I've learned a little something from watching Celeste put together the amazing planters she did for me last year.  

 

I somehow feel I have to live up to the standards she set, but I also want the planters to have my own stamp, to be more "me", whatever that means.  

I'm kind of working on them in bits and pieces between work on the other flower beds and the general plantings around the house, depending on what I find at each foray to one of the local nurseries.    The only problem with this approach so far is that I can't necessarily find a particular plant again if I decide I really like the effect it creates.  Hopefully this will help spark more creativity.  It may just lead to overblown messiness.

 

Blue Teasel

Finally something new to show.  

 

I actually finished knitting the pieces of this sweater back in April, blocked it, and then got so wrapped up in other things that it just languished.  This was unfortunate because we had such an extended period of cool weather that, had I finished it, I could have been wearing it.  Now it is more than likely too warm, but I did manage to wear it yesterday evening as we had a blustery day and  the temperatures dropped back down into the 40's.  This is a welcome change after a Memorial Day weekend with daytime temps in the 90s.

 

I based the size of this sweater on another sweater which is a similar shape except that it has longer sleeves and is knit in a different yarn.  To tell the truth, I am not as thrilled as I expected to be as I love the original.  If I had knit the pattern in the recommended yarn it might be more like the first, as both yarns have a substantial amount of rayon, but then again, I am still sometimes surprised by yarns and the fabrics they create.

 

It is not a bad sweater however,  and I suspect that much of my disappointment can be chalked up to the usual end-of-project-discontent.   It is quite possible that, come cooler weather, this will be my new favorite.

 

Pattern:  Teasel from Rowan 43

Yarn:  Classic Elite Soft Linen, 35% linen, 35% wool, 30% alpaca in color 2204 Titian Blue.

 

I deem this a moderate success, but as I said, it could still become a favorite.  I love the sweater, I just don't love the way I have put it together so far.  There is much room here for interpretation.

 

As to other knitting, I am finally reknitting the purple cabled shell from January.  It is going well now, at least in some modified definition of well.  I mean, I am enjoying knitting it except that I am knitting about 2 rows a night, which means I might be finished by Christmas .... eek.  Its not the sweater, its just my general state of exhaustion, what with working in the yard, and wearing my many hats and what have you.  Oh, and I knit 18 rows Wednesday night in a music and brandy filled hazed as I finally saw Nixon in China (broadcast on PBS) which went on and on until midnight, and G, in some kind of fog, remembered a drink we drank when we were dating in the early 80's (Brandy Alexanders) and made us brobdingnagian versions (about 16 ounces each).  I knitted and I survived.  In fact I knitted well, without a single mistake, which must be some kind of record, considering the alcohol.  I would take this under advisement as a suitable path for knitting success except that I was so grumpy Thursday morning as to place almost put a damper on the whole day.