restingmotion

Dreaming of Mythical Trees

I've been thinking about trees.

 

For a while now there have been talk about a tree in the front yard, and in that same period my mind has been circling around the idea of a magnolia, a small magnolia, if there is such a thing as a small magnolia.  But as I look at the space, and look at various magnolias in my neighborhood on my walks, I realize that what I have really been dreaming about is a mythical magnolia, one that is all blossom and seed pod, and pretty leathery magnolia leaves, but which really isn't about the tree itself, its own needs and the demands it makes on the landscape.

 

How often do we do this?  Make decisions based on illusory dreams or on an illusory understanding of the world itself based on assumptions and circumstances we simply take for granted?  I do this all the time.  I suspect I am not alone.  It is too easy to move forward with the dream, without thinking about the consequences only to set oneself up for disappointment later.

During this time since the driveway has been poured I have been thinking about the garden.  It seems I spend lots of time thinking about very small things.  I hope this will play well with the final result, but it may not, and I accept that the plans and the dreams are just as important to the well-being of the gardener as the garden itself.  But as I walked and thought and looked at my garden and the rough plans for what this garden may eventually be, a few points have become evident.  

 

The first problem I noticed and the biggest one is that there is too much sun.  Yes I want a small vegetable patch.  Yes, I want some roses and peonies and herbs and sunny flowers, but the sun and I are not friends, or more exactly we are friends at a distance.  I love the sun as long as I don't have to be in it for very long.  The sun does not love my pale northern-European ancestry as reflected in my pale skin that burns and gets rashes from sun exposure.  I need more trees to protect myself.  I also need more trees because my dream garden is  filled with hydrangeas and azaleas, hellebores, Daphnes, and ferns.  I love cool colors and shade loving plants.  I have more than enough sun for a brief flirtation with roses and irises, dalylillies and peonies.  

 

I need shade and so we added trees.  It was only as I started thinking about those trees, that  I realized that perhaps my dream of a magnolia is really an impossible dream.  I want the flower and not the tree.  Most of the magnolias in my neighborhood actually look at little junky at their bases, have nothing growing beneath them.  The larger ones look like a great place for imaginary jungle exploration, magical worlds to tempt childhood imagination, but they don't fit in my dream garden.  Thiss tree is supposed to be in my front courtyard and I do not like trees surrounded with a circle of mulch.  My dream garden leans more toward cottage-garden informality than toward manicured landscapes.  I love a tree surrounded by irises or hosts and ferns, a tree blending into the landscape, not a specimen.  Perhaps a magnolia is not for me, not at this time, not in this place.  

 

Luckily there are many other choices and my head is dancing with the possibilities.  Just wait and see.

 

 

Pouring the Driveway

Yes, I know it has been over a week since the driveway has been poured.  I am driving on it now, and pulling my car into the garage, for the first time in over a year. And yet it seems I have been busier  than ever.  Or perhaps just more panicked. And so, better late than never.

This photo was taken about 5:45 AM just before the first concrete flowed into the space.  The crew had been on site, setting up, since before 5, and they were there, working until about 6::30 in the evening.  This photo was also posted on Instagram.  Apologies to those who follow me there.

Walking into the house after walking Tikka, just about dawn.  The first time I saw the lights in the studio in the dark or near dark.  The crew is busy on the other side of the house.

Even though the pour was a week ago, and even though most big things were unpacked, except in the studio, it seems like last week was the week of delayed panic, a kind of second-flush of unpacking and settling.    The big piles of things you see here are still in the front yard, although the job is supposed to finish up the end of this week.  I will believe that when I see it.  But at least I am able to pull in and out and park.

This is the last week of summer, the last week of August, the last week before Labor Day weekend here in the US,  In many ways it is an arbitrary transition. Schools have long since started in this part of the country. The art and social seasons are gearing up.  But the air and the light have already shifted.  The sun is different in the sky, the air smells more of autumn, of decay more than new growth.  This all means that I need to get busy.  What isn't put away and settled this week may remain on hold until winters settles in.  Hence the push.  This is made more imperative by the fact that I can actually get in and out of the house now without climbing through a construction site and walking to my car, parked somewhere up the street.  I have no more excuses to hide behind. It was such a minor problem really, a privilege even, but during that phase all I really wanted to do was hunker down.

So the books are all organized, which means I can find things. My desk/office corner is organized.  Perhaps I am just too deeply wedded to a sense of order.  But, despite the fact that when life grows too calm something in my psyche needs to create a small storm of chaos -- a disruption which leads to creative discovery -- a constant sense of chaos and disorder creates an atmosphere of unending low level stress that seems to magnify over time.  

CDs and LPs have been unpacked, sorted and put away, although the CD player has developed a glitch and may need to be sent out for repair or replaced, much to my annoyance.  An upgrade to the stereo system is not a possibility at the moment.   But much as I am annoyed, life goes on, and the turntable is working beautifully.

I still have a lot of unpacking in the studio, and this will be my focus this week.  Ideally, I had hoped to be sewing all summer, learning to  warp the loom, and generally playing with fiber.  Despite initial promises that the studio would be done 2 weeks after I moved it, it was closer to two months.  There was an initial flush of unpacking, only to be followed by a period of moving the things that had been unpacked, or repacking, when it was decided that some more work needed to be done.  My frustration increased, but luckily in many ways I was also distracted by questions and other tasks, the ongoing hardscaping, the "punch" list and various interruptions.

But all in all it is good, and I am happy.  It is far from done.  Well, a garden is never done anyway, and aside from a flush of larger plantings to take place sometime in the fall, much of this garden will evolve slowly.  I make mistakes when I do too much too fast.  I remain a bit overwhelmed, and slow to find focus.  The fact that we are moving into fall, that winter is coming, and that next spring is far away is probably a good thing for me and my garden.  It gives us time to get to know each other a bit before taking the next step. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Last Big Thing

I took the picture below about 5PM yesterday.  The preparatory work for today's concrete pour was winding down, and I was entranced by the warmth of the late afternoon light across the front yard and the driveway.  Workers were beginning to drift away, although a couple would be here for another hour, hopefully (at least in my mind) not the same ones who had been here before 8 in the morning, but I know that is just wishful thinking. I've worked with some of these people for a year, they feel like friends.

The pour itself started at 5 AM this morning, and they tell me that it will wind up, that they will be washing and cutting, sometime after 10PM tonight.  if the weather holds and they are able to finish the pour today.

As they have been cleaning up, framing the driveway for the pour, and generally getting everything together and in place, the yard has been becoming just that, a yard, a place to live rather than a construction site.  It is still a little of both but it is beginning to look like the place I imagined.  Better in fact.  And that is a testament both to my dreams and ideas but even more so to the fabulous people who have been helping me realize them.  You can't really see the future driveway in the picture above, just a bit of crushed stone on the right side, where it will meet the pavers, but it is there.  The area of dirt in the back will be grass, even though I think our obsession with grass and lawns is environmentally ill-advised, and it might well evolve into something else over time.  The areas covered with black landscape fabric will eventually be planted, but they may also just exist as swaths of mulch for a while, as I figure out what I want to do and buy plants.  It is too hot to plant now, too late in the season to order plants if I intend to be particular, and I do, so this will be a garden that evolves.  But evolving gardens is something I can do on my own.

Here are more pictures from yesterday afternoon.  At one point there were several large mechanical creatures crawling around my driveway:  loading, unloading, thumping, packing-down.  The house shook. Tikka retreated back under the bed.

But I can really imagine it now, imagine how it will look, someday in my dreams, when I've figured out plants and all that.  Which may never happen.  I am not interested in a landscape, in hiring someone to toss in a bunch of plants so it looks manicured and neat.  I am interested in a garden.  Of course there will be the public face, and the more private inner circle.....I don't quite know how that will evolve yet.

But it will. In the photo above I am looking west, into my neighbor's backyard -- the private space.  And I want my own space to be just as nice, not in the same way, but in my own way.  A part of me doubts I can pull it off, not because I am not capable, but because I always have more plans than patience, and I tend to start and never finish.  Or maybe I am gaining confidence in my own dreams, and my ability let them fly, as long as I don't let those dreams run away with my common sense.  Piles of dirt can become gardens with time and vision and work.  I wonder if it is foolish to think about 20-year gardens when I am 61. But why not?  The worse thing that can happen is it can become just another overgrown hunk of yard, but it will be my overgrown hunk of yard.  Or I can decide I am no longer interested in DIY gardening and capitulate to the landscapers.  At the moment I think having something to work toward, even at my own pokey pace, is a joy. This hunk of dirt isn't just a hunk of dirt.  It is life.  It is potential. It is its own field of dreams.

During a final walk-through yesterday evening, we paused and looked in toward the patio.  That patio, its placement and charm, is one of the things that attracted me to the house.  Silly I know, to be drawn to plants (most of which are now gone) and ephemeral stuff.  But I have maintained the feel of the space, and the intimacy of that small space is still there, but better.  One plant I love may or may not survive the work, but others are thriving and a few things I disliked are gone. The colors of the bluestone make me smile and echo the colors of earth and sky and plants all around.  In fact the whole back yard is evolving from a space that was just an afterthought, a place I would rather not think about into a space I love. As I mentioned in the first paragraph, it doesn't quite look the way I imagined it, it is better.  What I really wanted was a feeling, a space that felt a certain way.  And I think we are on our way, this back garden and I.

In fact the thing that has really amazed me is that it is turning out so incredibly nicely. Deep in my heart, throughout this whole process, I have feared this would prove to be a mistake -- a folly on a grand scale.  It happens a lot.  But fear is not necessarily a bad thing.  I think it drives us to push ourselves, and even everything had not turned out as well as it appears to be so far, despite upsets and changes, I think I would be glad to have done all this.  Perhaps fear is even a good thing.  If I am afraid of doing something perhaps it is exactly what I need to do, to push myself, and the fear itself can also be a system of checks, a driving force toward compromise and a brake on arrogance.  Of course the fear can also easily get out of control so who knows.  This is all just posturing after the worst of it is over.

 

Of course I still have to see the actual driveway.  But whatever happens it has been an adventure.

Tikka remains unconvinced

"Mommy, I gotta go....  Why can't we go out the front door?"

 

"They are sealing the stone.  We can go out front again in a day or two. The job is almost done.  It will get better"

 

"You keep saying that but I don't see it.  I have to walk to the back of the house, and go down a bunch of stairs to get...where?  There is just this funny plasticy-feeling landscape fabric that I don't like.  And the ground is uneven under it. I can't see the dips and then I fall on my face.  Once I cross the void of blackness I still have to walk cross more pavement and jump over funny white plastic tubes... all for what?  No grass.  Not even dirt.  Just rocks and gray dusty stuff.  This is what you call an improvement?.  We got to go out the front door yesterday -- at least it was a shorter, easier walk to the gray dust. When a girl's gotta pee a girl's gotta pee.  This is ridiculous..."

 

"Good girl!  Want a Treat?"  

 

"Oh yes mommy!  I love treats.  And I've earned them after all that.  But now I need to go back under the bed."

 

 

Recovering from what I didn't know

This post is about a path, my own path, and a question.  The path was set by dreams and questions of the things I want to do in this latter part (third? is that too much of a wish?) of my life.  The question also. 

 

At the beginning of the year, in my first post of 2019 in fact, I wrote that I was returning to the gym and walking on the treadmill, focusing on health not fitness.  I did write about walking slowly, deliberately, about focusing on proper breathing, and proper hip motion. I wrote about some of the background, about why I now needed to focus on these things, the natural breathing and moving that most of us take for granted, and which somehow I had lost.  Not lost motion.  Nor lost breathing.  I managed both of those, but did I manage them well or had I somehow lost something that should come naturally?

 

In January I managed to avoid admitting was how difficult this was, and what a tenuous, perhaps even questionable process I was undertaking.  I avoided mentioning that I fretted about whether I was pursing a pipe-dream, fretted about risks (mostly in my head) and whether the gains would be worth it (they may well be).  The goal was to walk slowly, breathing solely through my mouth (hence no talking), to walk slowly enough that my pulse stayed only in the aerobic zone, and did not cross the anaerobic threshold, even for a moment.  The goal was to learn how to breathe again. The goal was to build basic aerobic capacity, which will lead to stamina, not necessarily for fitness, at least not in the short term.  At this slower aerobic pace, breathing through my nose should help strengthen lung perfusion and build capacity, at least as much as can be done given my structural fault-lines. 

 

What I didn't say was how slowly I had to walk, and how difficult that was, not so much physically, although it took concentration, but emotionally and psychologically.   I was a person who put in my 10,000 steps every day.  Who lifted things and walked and who considered myself basically healthy if not fit.  I knew I had a long way to go, that I had become soft and sluggish, and I did not like my sluggish self.  But I was not prepared.  I was not prepared for how little I could do, for how long it would take to improve, and for the way the process would trigger my inner demon, the inner voice telling myself that I can never be enough.

 

When I started in December I was walking so slowly that the act of walking itself had to practically become a meditative action.  I had to hold on to the treadmill firmly with both hands, I had to take agonizingly slow, long deliberate steps, purposefully rolling through my stride. Eventually I worked up to a speed of 0.8 miles-per-hour, which although still horribly slow, would allow me to read on an iPad.  I worked through all my back issues of the New Yorker.  I walked for 1 hour, eventually working up to 2 hours, less than 2 miles, deliberately choosing times that the gym was fairly empty because I was embarrassed.  But I couldn't increase the speed.  Even at this pace my pulse stayed just below the aerobic/anerobic threshold.  I knew it had to get better.  I doubted it would ever get better.  I would leave the gym and walk across the parking lot in the cold air, walk up the stairs to my apartment, and my pulse would rush across that line, and I would fret.  MY team -- doctor/trainer -- told me that I was supposed to avoid high pulses, although they also told me that this would just slow the process and I would get there.  I remembered back, when we found out I had a hole in my heart, in my late 30s, when just getting out of bed and walking to the bathroom put my pulse somewhere in the 80% of max range and my doctors muttered about how I did any of the things I did.  I remember that I survived and I recovered.  I could survive this too.

 

But for months nothing happened.  I stayed mired there.  I eventually got my speed up to 1.2 mph.  But I couldn't go any faster.  If speed was worth, I was worthless.  I knew this wasn't true, but my inner demon continued to chip away.   I needed an incredibly long, slower, almost stretching walk to move from a junctional rhythm into a normal rhythm, but even that was nothing new.  I had always needed that, and it wasn't until I was older that I learned it wasn't "normal".  But what is normal anyway.  And does one have to be normal to be healthy? Chalk it up my scoliosis, to that previous atrial septal defect and repair; I will never be normal.

 

In my previous life, when I was fit, I would warm up on a stationary bike, which always seemed to stabilize me and allow me to push harder than anything else.  But I couldn't pedal a bike, even at no resistance, without my pulse racing. I missed the ignorance of those days, the way I took for granted that I could do anything I wanted to do.  I wanted some of that blissful assurance back.

 

And then there were the setbacks.  I had a couple of colds.  I discovered I am allergic to cats, and forced confinement in an apartment with a cat meant I couldn't breathe.  I got a sinus infection.  I got the flu.  In May I stopped trying altogether. I was packing and preparing to move.

 

After  I moved I decided to start again.  I found a gym buddy.  I went to the gym 6 days a week, occasionally 5.  I still do.  Immediately I learned I could walk at 1.6 mph.  Such a simple thing but I was euphoric.  Breathing through my nose is easier.  I do it most of the time now, and can tell I take deeper, longer breaths.  I was able to use a recumbent bicycle, granted only at level one, but that in and of itself was a huge motivation.  I can actually get better.  I am actually getting better.  

 

I can now ride the bike at level two occasionally, I can increase my speed or resistance for short bursts before my pulse rises too high.  I can walk at about 2 to 2.2 mph holding on, but only 1.8 if I allow my arms to swing freely.  In fact I really can't do that last thing yet, walk on a treadmill with my arms at my side.  What happens is that the pace is too slow and I want to walk faster, as soon as I walk faster I stop rolling my hips and my gait becomes more marionette-like. As I speed up and my gate changes my pulse changes as well.  I don't feel bad, if anything, psychologically, I want to push harder.  But the goal is not pushing harder, not yet.  I know pushing harder will actually push me back, and I will have to slow down.  

 

Now that I am finally progressing I can see that there are benefits and I want to be the best, healthiest me I can be.  I know that although I have trained myself, without even really meaning to do so, into believing that doing more faster is the way things are supposed to be, this is a myth.  It is one of the myths of the culture I live in, like the myth of fitness.  Fitness is good, but it is not health.  I want both, or as close to both as I can achieve, but of the two health is more important, and it is a somewhat fluid state.  I need to start with health.

 

Does this seem like a project? a long term-goal? I suppose it is.  But it is not.  Sometimes it feels more like an anti-project.  Don't push, keep those goals flexible and even wishy-washy, accept that some days will be slow and others surprisingly fast.  I still have to work on keeping myself from pushing.  But the effort is paying off -- in my breathing, in my stamina and long term energy, which still has a way to go but which is increasing, and even in an increasing sense of calmness and a willingness to just sit back.  Sometimes we think we are moving forward when are really digging a hole.  Sometimes just moving is enough.

Abandon all hope....

Of coherent thought at least, of being able to string together sentences, or even more so, whole paragraphs.....

 

I am still in nesting mode I suppose, and scattered.  There are days when I have plans and ideas and those plans are constantly interrupted by other necessities.  Then, when all is quiet I pick up the pieces and try to finish the myriad half-done projects.  It is minor.  It is a privilege actually, but that does not mean there are not days when I do not wonder if I will ever be able to think again, much less write.  At least I am able to connect my computer to the internet, and the solution was all my doing.  After a couple of phone calls, I realized that all Apple support was doing was trying to follow a chart, a rote if-this, then-that routine that was skirting around my issues and never getting to the heart of it.  Sounds like a metaphor for my life at the moment.  In which case there is hope after all.

 

This past weekend was the first weekend in which there were no workmen here.  You might think I would have gotten a lot done and I would argue that this was not the case, that I spent a lot of time just reveling in the silence, and that would be true.  It was also a working weekend for me, as the first weekend of the month is my altar guild weekend, and I had a funeral on Saturday and then church services on Sunday.  I don't really like Saturday funerals because they interfere with my Saturday Farmer's Market habit, but in the end, doing what you want to do is not where meaning comes from in life.  Meaning comes from helping others.  And need rarely cooperates with want; helping someone when you are least inclined to do it because you are tired, or frustrated, or had been planning to do something else taps into the essence of our humanity.  When we interrupt our own ego-driven pursuits and help others we open ourselves up to joy.  

 

Besides, altar guild suits me.  I like the idea of making sure that things work, that everything is pretty, and that what you need is there and ready, and not having to be the public face of anything.

I finished organizing the kitchen, putting away the last few things that were stacked up, waiting to find a home.  Oh there are a few glitches here and there, a couple of extra shelves have been ordered, and space is different from my previous kitchens so the organization needs a bit of fine-tuning.  But basically it is done, and just in time as well.  The painters came in and finished up today, installing the hardware for the windows and the screens, my wonderful side-opening screens, there when I need them and out of  sight when I don't.

 

I spent the biggest part of the weekend organizing books.  I'm still only about half done, but it is of course getting easier simply because the pile of unsorted books grows smaller and smaller so finding things is faster.  I actually have far more bookshelf space than I need, which seems like a minor miracle, and I may have to space the books out more on the shelves.  For a few moments I thought of all the books I gave away and donated before moving to Tennessee 7 years ago, but no, there are actually very few books that have been replaced, and a library needs room to grow....

And finally I spent time knitting and reading Ninth Street Women, which I adore.  These women amaze me and I love the way the author interweaves the story with themes from their lives and their art, not necessarily always chronologically but in a way that makes sense  in the flow of the art and the relationships, which, to mind at least, is how our experience of life tends to evolve, chronological yes, because we can't avoid time, but also simultaneously separate from that chronology, because what matters to us, and what shapes us, has its own way of interfering with timelines.  The knitting is going slowly simply because I knit with linen more slowly than I can knit with wool, but I now see enough color that I eagerly look forward to the next change.  My knitting is much like the book in a way then, worth any added effort in the revelation of what appears next.