restingmotion

One Week Later

One week since move in day.  I'm still in my new house (no surprise) and I'm even more in love with the place although I am also far more familiar with its peccadillos.  Well, we all have peccadillos.  I have mine, as I enter my 60th year on this planet, and this house, which is 90 this year, has its as well.  Let us celebrate peccadillos.  Much as we may like shiny new things, it is our eccentricities which make us what we are.

Move in day went swimmingly.  All the boxes were color-coded, although the furniture was not.  This was a good thing, as I am still trying to get the tape residue off a chrome table that the movers stuck tape on when I moved here from New York 5 years ago.  At the same time, some things ended up not where I originally intended.  This too is good and bad.   As to the color coded chart, (and yes, every box had matching color coded tape), I own up to being a nerd, an organized nerd who likes color.  Ignore the "Thanksgivings/Petitions", I borrowed the white board from the church.  At the same time, both thanksgivings and petitions are oddly pertinent to the process of moving, so perhaps it was a serendipitous choice after all.

 

I am not unpacked; I am however partially unpacked.  The living room and dining room are more or less set, furniture wise, although there are boxes of  decorative "objects" (pretend to affect a snooty French pronunciation here) still to be unpacked.  The master bedroom is more set, in that both large and small items are in place, but within the drawers anarchy may be brewing.  

 

The kitchen is more than half unpacked, but has also been re-arranged twice.  I am about to embark on the third rearrangement of the kitchen.  Whether this is necessary, or it is a way to avoid scrubbing the stove and oven (which is desperately in need of scrubbing) is yet to be determined.  I am having friends for dinner tonight, and whether I cook on a newly cleaned stove, bite my lips and cook anyway, or order out, is yet to be revealed.

There have been joys and frustrations and an untold number of trips to Home Depot and Bed Bath and Beyond.  Among the joys is my evolving spice rack. A friend sent a house-warming gift consisting of a set of 5 spice blends and a copy of The Spice Companion from La Boite NY.  As it happened the box of spices and their nifty little magnetic boxes arrived just as I was wondering what to do about spice storage. In the previous house the spices were in a shallow drawer, which was not my favorite choice as I tend to like spices in easy sight.  In this house I have fewer drawers, but one empty piece of wall.  I went in for a long-overdue haircut shortly after the spice collection arrived and saw these photos of downtown Knoxville. An idea was born.

 

The lower photo will move up and the spice modules will continue to grow around the photos.  I ordered empty spice sets from Food 52, which I filled with the remnants of my intentionally dwindling spice collection, and the collection will continue to grow as needed, eventually occupying much of this wall.  Apparently I like spice and color. Also apparent is that I am inclined to spend too much time fretting about the details and not enough time getting the boxes opened.   It will all happen in its own good time, and I shall continue to putter, more so than in my last move, as there is no one hurrying me along.

 

(A view of dining room joy. the tiny square hanging in the window may prove to be the new curtain fabric, not that you can tell anything in this photo.)

 

Admittedly there have also been moments when I have wondered what the heck I am doing and if I am even cut out for this.  Friday I returned home tired and hungry after running around, fulfilling goodness knows what errands.  It was late, around about 8 PM.  I had just come from Home Depot and I wanted dinner.  I knew I had some nice ground lamb in the fridge, and an eggplant, and I wanted nothing more than to grill a lamb burger and make some kind of spicy eggplant puree to accompany said burger.  It seemed so easy. 

 

Then I realized that the grill was on the deck, conveniently positioned next to the gas outlet, but was not connected.  Why had I not noticed that?  I couldn't get the cap off the gas line in order to hook up the grill.  It appeared to be rusted in place.  In my limited experience with gas lines (we did not have one in NY) the connections had plastic caps, but not this one.  As I mentioned it was late and I was tired and hungry. I didn't feel like rustling through the box of tools George left me, and which I have still managed to avoid organizing.  I wasn't sure I even had the right kind of wrench, and I definitely did not want to go back to Home Depot.  I ended up making a lamb and eggplant saute, which was perfectly good although not what I wanted.  Worst of all, tired and frustrated as I was, I simply doubted myself and the wisdom of my choices.  How could I manage a house if I couldn't even connect a grill to the gas line?

 

As it happens the grill is still not connected.  I either:  1) Don't have the right kind of wrenches to do the job (possible); 2) Don't know what I am doing (more than likely); 3) Have the right idea but don't have the strength to move the rusted cover (also a strong possibility), 4) Am fully capable and have the right tools but am afraid of the gas line (you have that right); or 5) Am generally in over my head.  I'm opting for the latter, but I still have resources.  I can work a drill or a table saw, even though I may prefer not to, but I really don't want to figure out the gas connection.  Luckily I can afford to call for help. 

 

Of course that means that  if I can't count on using the grill, I have to clean the stove.

 

 

Counting Down

Yesterday Tikka and I drove down to Atlanta and back.  We went to Ikea for some Billy bookcases, and since move-in day isn't until Monday I thought I could at least get one or two bookcases assembled in advance.  I will need more, but they can be delivered at a later date.  This week both the drive to Atlanta (slightly over 3 hours each way) and putting together the bookcases are necessary distractions. 

I'm in need of distractions right now.  I'm tired of going to an empty house.  I love seeing each new improvement, watching it evolve, but I'm also frustrated that all I have been able to do is sit and watch.  I need to put something together, to feel the sense of accomplishment of doing something, even something small like putting together a bookcase.

 

I knew that this week would be the hardest week: the third week between houses, the week after my two short trips, to Chicago and Dallas, the week before move-in.  I don't think I'd really realized that I'd be quite as much at loose ends, quite as emotional, quite as ready to just crawl in bed and pull the covers over my head hoping that I'd wake up and find myself all moved in.  It's not that I have nothing to do, just that  I'm just having trouble pulling myself together enough to focus.  I struggle with decisions.  I want to burst into tears.  They aren't necessarily tears of sadness, and they certainly aren't tears of joy either, although I can't say that I am that far from either one of those emotions.  Perhaps it is all just anticipation and frustration and a feeling of being unmoored.  Two weeks was a vacation, now in the third week I just want to be home.

 

The work is winding down at the house, or is the term finishing up?  The contractors will be done tomorrow, except for a few things that haven't arrived yet, but for the most part they are small things.  Life and work can go on without them. The washer and dryer were probably installed in the new laundry room yesterday while I was driving.  The countertop might arrive tomorrow, or it might arrive next week.  I don't have confirmation on that yet, but I'll manage either way.

Today I have to get those Billy bookcases out of my car and upstairs.  Then I can start assembly.  The rugs also come home today. Once the rugs are in perhaps I can set up the loom, perhaps I'll find other small tasks to keep me occupied.  Monday can't come soon enough.

Two Concerts in Chicago

The weekend before last I was in Chicago.  That first day, the day I arrived 2 1/2 hours later than planned due to flight delays, the day I missed an appointment, the day after I had closed on the old house and was still exhausted from moving out, I went to two concerts.  In fact I was running so late that I almost didn't make the first concert, and I was so tired I wondered if there was any sense in it, but I had bought the ticket, and it wasn't cheap, so I went.

 

I was glad I did.

 

Friday afternoon I attended the Chicago Symphony. Ricardo Muti was conducting the Brahms symphonies, and I was in town for the first two.  I perhaps feared a stodgy performance of Brahms, a gentle dusting off of the standard repertoire, and I feared that I would doze off.  My fears were unfounded. The first symphony opened with a strong sense of controlled drama.  I felt the second movement could have strayed a little further into lyrical territory, but that may be due to my own emotional yearnings more than any understanding of Brahms.  The rest of the piece came together beautifully with a thunderous and convincing release of restrained turbulence in the finale, like a distant thunderstorm approaching only to be cast aside just before its climactic arrival with a sudden break in the clouds and the arrival of a sudden burst of sunshine in the form of a horn solo.

 

The second symphony was also incredible, with an almost a pastoral undercurrent in the opening movement.  That Brahmsian restraint was still present, but it felt more lightly held here.  Again the second movement did not quite live up to my expectations.  It is, to my mind, a slow, ruminative work, deeply imbued with melancholy, yet never quite surrendering.  In this performance the movement felt rushed, as if the conductor had no time for meditative melancholy, or as if going to slowly would flirt too closely with a loss of control, I'm not sure which.  There was a palpable sense of "hurry up"  present in the performance which did not serve the work well.  I felt the conductor and the musicians, the music itself, felt at odds.  Yet all came together again in the allegretto, as if Muti's instincts and the music were more at peace, and the orchestra pulled off that balance between emotional release and intellectual control that marks Brahms's works, that flirtation with the pastoral without ever quite giving in.

 

In the evening I was back at Symphony Hall for a jazz concert.  I found this concert more difficult.  I wanted to go, and I enjoyed the concert overall, but there were times when I was also confused and even bored.  It brought to the forefront my struggles with Jazz; the way my expectations and my enjoyment don't always align, as if there is something I just don't understand, some frame of reference I am missing.  Every time I am bored with a concert, I think perhaps jazz is not my thing, but then, just as I am ready to say "never again", I am captivated by something new.  I wonder this is simply because I have not listened enough, or if it is something deeper.  Basically, the jazz concert reminded me that I really haven't quite figured out what I like or even why I like what I like.

 

The first part of the concert featured Regina Carter playing music honoring the late Ella Fitzgerald.   I felt that Carter successfully translated the theme of Ella's swing into something that suited them both, capturing both a sense of Fitzgerald while at the same time honoring Carter's own talents and interests. I did enjoy most of the music, and I liked the way she started with a reference, and a hit of swingtime but took it in different directions. Yet I also felt occasionally bored, and my mind would wander off, wondering if I was missing some key element.    There were moments that were heartbreakingly beautiful, and other times when I felt that the performance stayed in too long in a fairly narrow stylistic range, perhaps popular, but at times mind-numbing.  I yearned for greater dynamism and a bit more of the wonderful harmonic invention of which Carter is quite capable, but which did not seem present that night.  Or perhaps it was just me.  My neighbors, long time subscribers, seemed perfectly content. Anyway, by the time I figured this out, it was time for intermission and I was happy to stretch my legs.

 

The second half of the program was more to my taste and made me sit up and take notice.  Perhaps I just had better reference points, perhaps I am just more attracted to the edgier world of the SF Jazz Collecive.  Although I am familiar with both Ella Fitzgerald, and the work of Miles Davis, perhaps Davis is closer to my heart.  Perhaps also I am attracted to the way the members of the SF Jazz collective were willing to transform Davis's music, I treasured the riffs and the references.  Both my neighbor, the long-time subscriber, and I were chortling under our breath and rocking our seats during Sean Jones transformation of "So What" and I loved the playfulness of their take on "Feel the Groove".  Woolf's vibraphone playing was shimmeringly beautiful, but my favorite piece was Miguel Zenon's  rearrangement of Nardis with the incredible acuity and audacity of the high-velocity four-horn front line and Zenon's incredible solos.  The piece I least understood was David Sanchez's original work "Canto".  It was gentle and melodic and quite beautiful in places, but I was also bored and felt it lacked tension.  Or perhaps I was just tired.  The concert started at 8 Central Standard time, 9 by my east-coast body's time, and perhaps exhaustion simply played a role.

 

Two wonderful concerts, and they were exciting and soothing the way only music can be.  I missed a concert in Knoxville that weekend, but I think I got the better deal.

Promise

Wednesday there was some excitement at the (new) house:

A painting was delivered.  I was very excited.  Although it had nothing to do with the work that is being done in the house, or the reason I have not yet moved in, I was happy to be able to get the painting up before the furniture, and very happy to see it on the wall.

 

(the artist discussing his work)

Later in the day, I began to question myself.  It was the anniversary of George's death, a date I know well, and I even, perhaps stupidly, used as the alarm code on the old house. At that time, when I put in that alarm, it was perhaps the only number that mattered, the date of loss, of untethering.  Not so much anymore.  But I had forgotten.  I wouldn't have thought about it at all except for a series of family emails commemorating the loss. I wondered if perhaps there was something wrong with me that I did not remember, did not hold that date close, did not feel pain or loss.  For me that time is past, but it is also important to gather around to support each other in our individual paths and struggles.

 

Intellectually I can say it is an interesting coincidence, that this painting in this house, this expression of future movement, should be installed on this date.  George would have found it humorous. But George is gone and I am here, and, although he is always with me, life is about moving forward and letting go, even of love.  In fact love itself is a kind of letting go, of not holding on too closely. You know, of course, that we don't love people less because life moves on without them.  Love is like that.  It makes us more ourselves than we ever knew we could be, but it also gives us strength and resilience, at least if we let it, so that we can overcome great wounds, even when that wound entails the ripping away of a part of ourselves. There is no life without relationship, just as there is no life without suffering, and to thrive we must share in both.  To convince ourselves otherwise is to live in denial, which, is perhaps, not to fully live at all.

 

 

For me, at least, it was better to hang a painting.

 

The past makes us who we are.  The people we have loved, and who have loved us, are our personal saints. They are woven into the fabric of ourselves.  But we are not our pasts.  It is the future that beckons, and the future is what we have been made for.

 

 

 

Catching Up: March and April Books

I didn't really read much in March and April, and much of what I did read, proved to be less than noteworthy.  Never mind, having started something (monthly book posts) I'll stick with the program and subject you to the boring details.  I wasn't really looking for deep reading, my mental processes already being taxed with a few outside projects as well as the rigors of packing and sorting-while-packing.  This could have been part of the problem, I am drawn to things that make me reflect, and am often disappointed by shallow gloss.  And yet life is full of surprises, and sometimes you never know where you'll find some detail you weren't even aware you were looking for.

 

Actually, it wasn't all bad.  There were a couple of books I just loved, and a couple of more that I struggled with, but which won me over and proved to be silent friends, the kind that sometimes catch you by surprise when you aren't looking.   I loved George RR Martin's Game of Thrones and found it to be the perfect distraction and escape, but not without thoughtful passages that also fed my own need for rumination and reflection.  It had been on my list for a long time, but never read, and I impulsively started it one night when I really wanted to disappear into that kind of numbing mindlessness that television can bring.  I believe that the time reading the book was well spent and although I actually spent longer with it than I would have with the first season, the book was quite enjoyable and thought provoking as well. Alas it was a long time before another book so captured my imagination and there were evenings that I did indeed fall asleep into a video-induced semi-coma.

 

Shortly before  reading the Martin, I picked up Adam Johnson's The Orphan Master's Son, which was also excellent, and one of my favorite novels from these two months, but it was not as good of a stress reliever or escape as the former novel.  In fact, it was difficult to get started with this novel, but it did win me over in the end.  It is not a novel for someone who just wants to get lost in an epic tale that carries you away, and it can be difficult with its layers of meaning, truth, fable, surrealism and poignant portrayals of hope and despair and the way they shape and corrupt.  But despite this, despite the pain in this novel, there is also incredible beauty and hope and I highly recommend it, just not necessarily as bedtime reading.

 

If these two novels were my favorites, and they were, with their somewhat overlapping themes but very different approaches, what was the sleeper, the book that won me over?  Actually there were two novels, but they are linked. Both novels are by Rachel Cusk, Transit and Outline.  I also have to admit that, as much as I might have loved the first two novels discussed above more while I was reading them, it is these latter two that are going to haunt my thoughts longer.

 

First of all, I have to admit that I had read a couple of Rachel Cusk's earlier novels, and although they were well written, they just were not quite my cup of tea.  In fact I probably would not have sought out anything else by Cusk except that I happened to read something about her newest novel, Transit, that captured my attention.  After placing myself on the wait-list at my local library, I decided to read the previous novel, Outline.

 

Outline is a slow, engaging novel that doesn't follow a typical novel form.  In fact it is much like an outline where the narrator and protagonist is passive, slowly revealed through her interactions with others, with the ways others respond to her presence. Although it seems a little odd, quite a bit is actually revealed, both about the characters with whom our narrator interacts, but also about our narrator herself, and the period of transition she is going through after a divorce, simply through the situations and revelations others make in her presence and her reaction (or lack of reaction).  I wish I had my notes with me from when I read the book, as there were passages I copied out and commented upon, but alas they are packed  Still, despite not having a clear story-line, the story grew, and the outline of our protagonist's character grew, as if she was slowly be revealed not only to us, but to herself, through the process.

 

Transit is the second novel in what is meant to be a trilogy.  Here, the author is still listening to others, but she is also more present in the story and in her life.  She has moved to London, purchased a house in desperate need of renovation, and has taken on that project, and this has sparked something in herself, as if the physical renovation of the house is symbolic of the emotional renovation she must undergo to become more fully herself in her new life.  In fact she refers to her passivity in the previous novel:

 

For a long time, I said, I believed that it was only through absolute passivity that you could learn to see what was really there.  But my decision to create a disturbance by renovating my house had awoken a different reality, as though I had disturbed a beast sleeping in its lair.  I had started to become, in effect, angry.  

Our protagonist has moved from numbness, to anger, two steps in her transformative process.  And the process here is told with great gentleness and subtlety.  These are books that stole into my heart when I wasn't expecting it, and they will stay with me a long time.  I look forward to whatever will be revealed in the next chapter, and I appreciate the slow evolution, and anticipation, as the novel itself, or series of novels takes shape, from outline, through evolution, to some future state, not yet quite known.

 

In conclusion, following is my actual list, in order read, perhaps an occasional comment, but for the most part not.

Elizabeth Kostova -- The Swan Thieves.  I actually enjoyed this a great deal, beautiful writing about art, slightly less successful as a novel.

Rachel Cusk -- Outline.

Nujeen Mustafa -- Nujeen: One Girl's Incredible Journey.....

Clare-Louise Bennett -- Pond.

Adam Johnson -- The Orphan Master's Son

George R.R. Martin -- Game of Thrones

Stephen King -- Mr. Mercedes

Jimin Han -- A Small Revolution

Rachel Cusk -- Transit

 

 

Camp Grandma..

For the first time in weeks I feel like my brain is starting to fire on all cylinders again, although there are some lags and sluggish moments.  I have not quite caught up on sleep, and I am still too busy to completely unwind, but at least I am no longer packing, no longer feeling quite like I'm backed up against a wall.

 

I thought I'd entertain you with a couple of photos from Camp Grandma, which happened two weeks ago (in the middle of all that packing).  Owen and I stayed in a hotel downtown one weekend, while his parents went off on their own adventures.  I could have stayed home amidst the boxes, but frankly thought a hotel would be more relaxing and more fun. 

 

Friday night was Grandma's choice, as I had symphony tickets.  I had promised Owen popcorn during the concert, but I don't think there was any popcorn that evening.  Some kind of sour candies were a suitable alternative.  But before dinner we went to Nama Sushi for dinner.  Owen devoured his calamari salad and made good headway with my sashimi platter as well, which was good because I needed the help.  We shared thoughts about comparative flavors of the different fish, which was a little more briny, the surprising sweetness on the tongue of certain species, and O was better at remembering which was which than I was.  Dinner was followed by the symphony, and Owen had thoughtful comments about the Chopin and the pianist's technique.  I agreed with all that but was also amazed because I think I would have struggled more with sitting through 40 minutes of Chopin when I was his age.

The highlight of the evening however was watching the rain and thunderstorm and the downtown lights through the hotel window. 

 

Saturday was Owen's day, and since it rained a good bit we got to do fun hotel things like order room service and watch too much tv.  We took Tikka for a walk, went out for burgers for lunch, wandered around the Rossini Festival, put on every year by the Knoxville Opera, where we got to listen to more music and engage in all kinds of fun activities. This was one of the advantages of already being downtown.  We were there when the rain stopped, and if we'd had to load ourselves into a car and drive, we probably wouldn't have made it.  We were in the movie theater watching Boss Baby when the afternoon floodgates opened however and we did have to make a mad dash from portico to awning to covered walkway before finally making it back to our hotel looking like drowned rats and doubled over with laughter.

It was a fun weekend, relaxing and worth the time.  Even if it meant once again packing up until the last possible minute, I'd do it again.

Transition Time

Yesterday was moving day.  I posted this photo to facebook; in fact, I posted it twice although that was accidental.  It was taken just before the first truckload left my old house and went to my new house:

 

I don't believe I realized yet how tired I actually was, as I had probably been running on adrenaline for a week or more, that panicked surge compensating for lack of sleep, and sometimes overcompensating and keeping me from sleep when I desperately needed it. Today all my worldly goods, or most of them at least, are at the new house, piled high to the rafters in one room.  Tikka and I, and a few belongings, are in temporary housing near my new neighborhood as the new house is not quite ready for occupancy.  Tikka is calmer than she was last week, but still clingy, and the exhaustion of the past couple of weeks has caught up with me.  I slept 10 hours last night, and although there are things I need to do today, I could easily sleep another 10, or more.  Today, the exhaustion shows in the deep circles under my eyes, in the way the full weight of my 58 years, and the stress of moving show on my face, in my aching knees and hips, the bruises on  my wrists from lifting and hauling boxes.  Today I am tired, but today I am also content.

 

Two more days and I will walk away from the old house forever.  I loved my neighborhood, loved my neighbors, loved my garden.  But this is the last photo of that house.  There are only a few small tasks to be accomplished before I step fully into transition time, the space between houses, the time in which my only ambition is to have no ambitions. It is a good place to be, and I am privileged to be able to enjoy the opportunity.

 

(this post was posted twice because I accidentally deleted the photo of the rose from the old house from the fist posting).