restingmotion

Eyes Wide Open

I raised the shades the other day and I've been enchanted with the light and the view ever since. (pardon my inadequate late-afternoon cell-phone photo.)  Its not that there is anything particularly lovely outside (there is not) but just that Ilike the light, and the fact that the shades are up and the house is open rather than shaded.

The windows in this room, and the screened in porch beyond it, were one of the things that sold me on this particular house but for the last year, the blinds have been primarily kept closed.  George grew so he hated the feeling of the sun on his skin, and became increasingly paranoid about being in the light so we installed blinds, not opaque blinds, translucent ones, and the light was always filtered.  Granted, George would sit in the brightest corner, a point from which he could see everything going on in the house around him, that same bright corner currently occupied by the caramel-colored barrel chair.  That corner was formerly occupied by George's reclining chair (photo here), which he called the elephant, and which I had to remove as its presence became something of an elephant in the room after his death, where it seemed concentrate all the emptyness and lonliness of the house.

The elephant chair, and the closed blinds, were, in some ways, physical representations or symbols of the closing in of George's world, the way the world as a whole was falling away and the present was becoming smaller and smaller.  I recognized the need to eliminate the elephant immediately, although it took me a few days to find the right arrangement of furniture to fill the void left by its absense.  And yet, it did not occur to me to open the windows until last week.  I simply floated around in that filtered light, cocooned until it occurred to me that the goal was not to fold myself inward, but to open my eyes and look outward.  It was time to let in the light.

Now, I love to sit in that corner in the afternoon with a cup of tea and the mail, reveling in the light, often with a cat on my lap.  Sometimes while I sit I think how happy I am, sitting in this corner in this chair, and I recall, with some amusement, that these two chairs barely made it from New York.  I wanted to leave them behind and was talked into keeping them at the last minute.  Once here, they didn't seem to fit anywhere and I was constantly fretting with them and shifting them hither and yon, until now, where they seem to have found the perfect spot.  

How much of our move has followed this same pattern? Indeed, is this not true of much of life?  We are always moving forward, and yet we try to shape the world to our preconceived notions of what we think we want.  And yet past experience is not necessarily predictive of the shape of future events.  Different places, different people, different interactions, allow the light to reflect off different facets of our complex and multi-faceted personalities.  As we grow in experience we can allow ourselves to be open to the new, to let go of expectation.

 

At least this is what I hope.  I'm still working on that one.  I tend to be the fruit that clings to the tree, and yet I don't want to cling until I am too soft to bounce once I do fall. 

The little matchbox girl grows up.

Once there was a girl who liked to build furniture for her Barbie dolls.  She started with match boxes but then her repetoire grew and included all kinds of bits and pieces from around the house, including empty thread spools and scraps of fabric.  She started counting her pennies and saving bits of her allowance to go peruse the aisles of the local art store, as well as the Ben Franklin, where her head would be filled with dreams and she would find many treasures.

 

And then she grew up and went to college, met a man, fell in love and got married.  But the husband came with a house, a house imbued with the history of a family lost.  The old, the dated, even the broken and nonfunctional was caught up in this dysfunctional history, a history that, she was to learn, was long and convuluted.

 

That girl, a woman now, was me, of course.  And for a long time that little girl who built matchbox furniture was lost to me.  But the story of how she was lost, for how long, and why is another story, not the story I wish to tell today.  Today I am simply happy because she is back.

 

However the world has changed and I am no longer playing with matchboxes.  Rather, realizing that I was floundering somewhat, and didn't quite know what I was looking for, much less where to start, I been virtually shopping on the world wide web and gathering my ideas on Pinterest.  Internet-shopping and pinning was a great way to pass the downtime while I was in Dallas at my mom's for a couple of weeks, and it also helped me to focus, both in a broad general sense, in terms of what appeals to me now, and eventually in a more focused way in terms of what I want to do with the house in Moss Creek and where to look when I actually start shopping.  I'm not the worlds busiest pinner.  And the way I look at the world, and the things in it, is very context driven, but I still can't say that my style fits in any particular category.  

July is my play-time month. I seem to be traveling half the month and running around the other half with little time to work on projects.  But I do have fantasy time and this play time is helping me refine ideas and organize what I need to do next.  I don't quite know what the results will be the process is a lot of fun.

 

Photo Credits:
1. Diamond Match box from menards.com.

2. Holland and Co. Dandy Console from Lee Jofa.

3. Crystal Ball Pendant Light from Circa Antiques.

 4. Table by Jeff Johnson. 

 

You knew I'd have to throw something modern in the mix, didn't you? I'm just ornery that way sometimes.  Too much homogeneity dampens the spirit.

Solace

This paragraph, from yesterday's Wall Street Journal, resonates:

 

"The literary classics are a haven for that part of us that broods over mortal bewilderments, over suffering and death and fleeting happiness.  They are a refuge for our secret self that wishes to contemplate the precious singularity of our physical world, that seeks out the expression of feelings too prismatic for rational articulation.  They are places of quiet, useless stillness in a world that despises any activity that is not profitable or productive."

-- Lee Siegel "Who Ruined the Humanities", WSJ, July 13-14, 2013

The Return of the Bicycle Book

Light fiction or non-fiction has, it seems, always been a part of my life, although not employed, as had been the case more recently, as a form of escapist or self-consoling diversion.  For many years I read light fiction at the gym, while pedalling away on an exercise bike, as a diversion, something to alleviate the boredom of the task at hand.

 

Recently I have been reading bicycle books again, or occasionally listening, but the purpose is the same and the requirements are similar, I am resurrecting the term, at least for my own use.  The requirements are simple:  there must be some kid of plot or narrative that keeps me moving, the writing must be light or brisk but it cannot be so beautiful that I want to stop and savour the language, nor can the information be particularly thought provoking, because I will stop and ponder, and stopping is particularly beside the point.

 

Several of the Cobbled Court series of novels I read recently were "bicycle books" in that I actually read them on an exercise bike.   One of the local fitness centers sent me a pass for a promotional one week membership, free of charge, in hopes that I would join and I took advantage, although I primarily just used the exercise bicycle and did a few stretches.  Considering the number of rainy days we've had, that exercise bicycle proved quite useful, and I am now considering purchasing one, or purchasing a stand for my bike, rather than joining an actual gym.  I'd still rather be outside when possible.

 

But back to reading:  These novels worked well on the bike, as they move quickly and are engaging.  Although there were times when I wanted to keep reading after my exercise session, I managed to put them aside, and since these particular novels were short, I knew I could finish them in the next day or two (about 2 to 2 1/2 hours reading time).  They were a good reintroduction to bicycle reading and I will probably soon build up to longer books or novels (I read James Clavell's Shogun on the bike.)

 

But when it is nice out I am walking.  I can't read a book when I walk, but I can listen to one and this has been a revelation to me.  Previously, although I could read on the bike, I could not read while walking on the treadmill.  This ability to read while walking on the treadmill was something I always admired about George.  He would get on the treadmill, crank up the grade until it was quite steep, put his New Yorker or Economist on the stand and start reading and walking.  I couldn't do it.  I would always stop.  I listened to music, not soul-soothing music, usually something danceable, often disco.

 

I listened to audiobooks, usually when I was working in the garden, knitting,  or cleaning house, in settings where I could stop and ponder if I wished.  It didn't occur to me that there might be an audiobook equivalent of a bicyle book because, well, bicycle books were something I actually read while sitting on a bicycle, and, being a fast reader, I needed a tremendous supply.

 

And then I moved to Knoxville and started walking outdoors, in my neighborhood.  It is a lovely neighborhood, and a safe place to walk, but I am not exactly communing with nature.  I need a distraction.  Enter the audiobook.  The pace of audiobook "reading" is slower but the requirements for listening while walking are similar to the requirements of reading while biking: there must be a narrative, the reading must flow easily.  Fiction is good, but once again, not the kind of fiction that makes we want to stop and reflect. Popular non-fiction such as current events, biography, or poplular science can also be good, as long as there is not too much hard science involved. 

 

Sometimes I am surprised.  Of the three books on my current reading list, only one is a bicycle book. I purchased Leah Carpenter's Eleven Days thinking it would be a bicycle book, but already it is a book that makes me pause and ponder, a book to read a leisure.  I am listening to Steven Johnson's The Ghost Map while I am walking and it is proving fascinating enough to keep me moving a little longer each day.  As to John Muir, Travel's in Alaska is beautifully written, breathtakingly beautiful in parts, but there is no real narrative, and the prose is so dense, in places almost poetic, that I can only read a few pages, sometimes only a few sentences, before I have to pause and let the beauty of what I have read settle in.  This is a book to be savoured slowly. 

 

For future reference, books on the list which I read as a "bicycle book" either on the bike or while walking will be marked with a B at the beginning of my brief review.  This simply indicates that it is a book that I found to be a light easy read, not necessarily that I did or did not like it, nor even that it is not worth reading more slowly.