restingmotion

Blue Skies

A few days ago there was an article in the Wall Street Journal on Stress.  You would have found me over there at the extreme end of the red zone; exhausted, absent-minded and make mistakes in the simplest of tasks. 

 

We closed yesterday and the relief  was palpable.  Even drive home, through rush-hour traffic in pouring rain did not dampen my spirits.

 

Here is a photo of the house-in-waiting, empty and echoing with unfulfilled promises.  Or at least that is how I felt at the time. I have to thank almost everyone involved, and most of all our builder for working with me to allow me to move our belongings in before closing.  That house is no longer empty but it is far from unpacked.  I have created small islands of calm amidst the boxes, the sitting room shown in this photo is now cozy and comfortable.

 

Posting may be erratic for another week or so, but I will try to get back on track.

 

 

 

 

 

Moulting

We are still in the hotel.  Enough said.

 

Much as I am tired of living in a hotel, and much as I am very much ready to be in my new house, living in 550 square feet of space for a little over month has not been as much of a trial as I had anticipated, and this is making me rethink all of my previous assumptions about both necessary space and necessary possessions.  Compared to our present location, the new house seems enormous, and the thought of all the things coming from New York seems overwhelming.  If I was worried about downsizing, I am less worried about it now.  

 

Knoxville itself has been a bit of a surprise as well.  Granted it will take me a while to get settled, get involved, and really make myself at home, but I cannot say that I miss New York state or the Hudson Valley.  In fact I am more relaxed here.  Things are quite different, and I too am probably somewhat different, or at least different parts of my personality are getting to come out to play.  There are no expectations here and I have nothing to prove.  It is quite liberating.  

 

As you can see from the photo above, the moulting process has already begun.  And the truth is that I am completely enamored of this new haircut.  In fact, I can even honestly say that I am, at the moment, completely enamored of my face, vain as that may sound.  Good photos are good, but even terribly awful photos where I am frowning or scowling show a dimension of myself that I had allowed to slip behind a curtain.  I am still not able to reconcile the self I see and the self I feel myself to be, and a part of me still feels that every photo should be burned, but despite all that I spent a terribly embarrassing amount of time yesterday playing with the camera taking photos of myself.  I am intrigued by how such a simple change can completely alter perception. I felt like a teenage girl practicing poses in front of the mirror, searching for this new person to be revealed. 

 

I am actually not sure about my ability to replicate the styling, and am a little curious about how this will turn out when I try to do it at home.  My new stylist, Jared, used a flat iron before styling with a round brush and the blow dryer.  I'm used to the round brush, or multiple round brushes, but no one has ever used a flat iron on my hair before.  I am intrigued enough that I bought one today, although I am not at all convinced that the blow dryer in the hotel is up to the styling task, weak as it is and given its penchant for shutting down after about 5 minutes and not restarting for another hour.   But I hope even the un-styled version will be nice, and I will learn.

 

As to other details, the teal top I am wearing is a new purchase, a wedge-shaped, lightweight wool crepe by Eileen Fisher.  The spring EF line has some lovely teals and perfect soft summer greens.  I highly recommend checking it out if you are attracted to the softer summer colors.  I'd share some pictures but haven't found anything online yet, and aside from the bathroom mirror,  good photographic settings seem non-existent, unless I wish to go lay things out in the hotel parking lot.  Not.  

 

The bracelets are iron and the necklace is Brazilian agate.  They were both gifts from G and may be worthy of another post one of these days, as they are rapidly becoming a part of my everyday uniform.

There is one more picture I want to share, but don't worry, I'm not going to inundate you with a gallery of ridiculous expressions.  The first picture is the one G likes best, but this one, with its multiple layers and partial views is my favorite.  I like the reflection of my eyes over my face mocking me, and the smile in the mirror.  The whole is a sum of the parts but each part in and itself is another whole,  granting a glimpse into the dimensions hiding behind the whole.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Notes at the end of the week

Here is a blurry cell-phone shot of my knitting progress.  The second sleeve for this sweater will be finished tonight.  It should have been finished before now, but I have fallen asleep on the sofa two nights running. I'm not yet that near done; Once I sew the shoulder seams, I have a large, roughly 8-inch shawl collar to pick up and knit.   

 

Temporary residence is getting wearing.  Luckily it looks like we may be in the house and living amongst the boxes within 10 to 11 days.  We close on the new house next Friday, and our old furniture is scheduled to arrive on Saturday.  Even if there are delays I hope it will be here no later than Monday, and we are in, even if still unsettled. 

 

These photos were taken at the beginning of the week.  Since then, more has been accomplished.  The floors have been put in.  That annoying little granite backsplash/ridge above the countertops has been removed and the tile backsplash has been installed, although I haven't seen it yet.  

 

G was surprised that I would chose such traditional cabinets.  Apparently my style is quite modern.  I reminded him of the agreed-upon parameters (stay within the builder's standard options).  I can always reassess in a few years.

 

For now I am ready to settle in.  

 

 

 

Azar Nafisi's Things I've Been Silent About

I picked up Azar Nafisi's book, Things I've Been Silent About on a whim when I was at the bookstore contemplating looking for another copy of her previous book Reading Lolita in Tehran, which I had read, loved, and then lost when I lent it to a friend. In the end I bought this book and promptly let it sit on the shelf for a few years. I am glad that I finally read it.

 

I picked it up in November but did not get very far before I had to set it aside.  The book seemed to intense and difficult for me at that time, filled as it was with strife and very personal memories.  It required more energy than I had available.

 

I started reading it again last week, finishing it on New Years Day.  This time around I was able to engage with the book more fully, though I still found it to be a difficult read in that I would need to walk away and clear my head after certain sections before resuming.  It is a story that is profoundly private and yet vividly public, about a turbulent life which was also wrapped up in a turbulent place and time, it is a story about Nafisi's family and how their story is also her story and how the woman she became is shaped not only by the private drama of her family and her childhood struggle but also by the public drama of the culture, both social and political which surrounds them.  

 

Nafisi tells the reader in the very beginning that this will be a very personal journey:

I do not mean this book to be a political or social commentary, or a useful life story.  I want to tell the story of a family that unfolds against the backdrop of a turbulent era in Iran's political and cultural history.

 

and later:

 

Perhaps the most common of all narratives is one about absent parents and the urgent need to fill in the void created by their deaths.  The process does not lead to closure -- at least not for me -- but to understanding.  It is an understanding that does not necessarily bring with it peace but perhaps a sense that this narrative might be the only way through which we can acknowledge our parents and in some form bring them back to life, now that we are free, at last, to shape the boundaries of our own story.

 

As usual in my pseudo reviews of books, I am not interested in going into the details of the story as it unfolds.  It is enough to know that Nafisi was a fighter from childhood and that her parents were difficult.  The children were caught between an angry controlling mother and a charming dreamer of a father, both parents completely entangled in their own personal fictions.  It is no wonder that Nafisi became a student of literature, nor that she would be drawn to Nabokov, just as it is also no surprise that she would be a rebel.  These skills help her to analyze her own story and the story of her parents as if she is analyzing a literary text and her storytelling skills help her balance the touchingly personal with the analytic.  

 

She is not completely successful in maintaining this difficult balancing act, and there are times when the book becomes shrill and querelous. Although Nafisi has told us upfront that this is a personal journey, she also tells us she is interested in those fragile intersections -- the places where moments in an individual's private life and personality resonate with and reflect a larger, more universal story.   To some extent she is successful in accessing those intersections, but perhaps not completely so.  

 

At the end of the book I was left with the nagging sense of something unfinished, of a story that was yet to begin, although I do think this was intentional, that Nafisi had indeed found an understanding that had been elusive before, and understanding that allowed her to move forward.

 

I will leave you with her closing words:

 

It was only after their deaths that I came to realize that they each in their own way had given me a portable home that safeguards memory and is a constant resistance against the tyranny of man and time.

 

 

A New Year's Miscellany

New Years day was spent quietly ensconced in our small temporary abode, reading and knitting.  

 

A little time was spent in my tiny, oven-less, two burner kitchen preparing a News Year's Dinner with a nod to Southern tradition:

Local Tennessee sausages with black eyed peas, and collard greens sauteed with garlic, ginger and tomato.   Not beautiful perhaps, but warm and comforting food nonetheless.

 

A new USB cable arrived for my camera so I attempted a WIW photo (what I wore) on New Years Eve.  The camera works slightly better than my cell phone in this tiny space, but is not ideal.  We spent a casual New Year's Eve with family and I wore this outfit during the day as well when I was out ordering a few pieces of furniture we had scouted out during the previous weeks.  Quite frankly I was quite happy to end the year without resorting to bulky coats and winter boots. 

 

On New Year's morning there was more banging and yelling than usual from our neighbors and much revving of engines in the parking lot. None of us have grown accustomed to having the great world in such close proximity.  Moisés returned to a favorite hiding spot. I seriously wished I could join him.

I'm off to see what everyone is up to on this Visible Monday.  Have a great week!