there's no place like...

as i was packing up the bookshelves in the blue room, i took a moment to arrange these blocks against the beloved blue background. they're letterpress blocks from my dad's letterpress (why didn't i learn how to operate that when i had the chance?). i think they once assembled to spell the name of some or other horse that i had, and i've carried them around the world with me more than once. they're precious and i wouldn't want to be without them, even if they are occasionally jumbled into a box and not used.

moving brings on such mixed feelings. i'm excited and looking forward to the new house and all that we're going to do it to transform it into the house we'd like it to be. i'm going to love having our own lake and a lawn big enough to play football on (not that i want to do that, but knowing that i could is a good thing). space for a horse and chickens and maybe a truffling pig or two, oh and lambs. i'm so looking forward to all of that.

but i've loved this house too and we did so much to it to make it our own and give it our character and leave our mark on it. when we moved in, it was like stepping into a 70s time warp, even the garden looked like some evergreen-covered churchyard, full of low bushes that even looked totally seventies. we leave it transformed and we will miss it.

but as i said when i posted this picture on flickr the other day, we are not our house and we are able to make a home wherever we go. because the things that make a home are all of the things, packed with memory and meaning, that we take with us. even if it is a royal pain packing them all up.

ode to (un)common things

fish by resurrection fern, bowl by artemisartemis, ring from here.

felted stone by me (with fibers from artemis artemis)

i've been struggling to write a post on my all-time favorite, couldn't-do-without-it ingredient over on domestic sensualist. i've been struggling because it's hard to narrow to just one ingredient - is it cream or onion or garlic or olive oil or bacon or...you get the idea. and i'm still not there yet (bee's going to go first), but in my quest to break through, i turned to poetry. yes. me. poetry. weird, huh? since i always protest that i'm not a poetry person. except for a bit of cavafy, the odd alexander blok and teeny bit of  akhmatova and mandelstam, poetry just doesn't speak to me. but then i remembered neruda. and the beautiful edition i have of his odes to common things with beautiful pen and ink illustrations by ferris cook. so, in light of yesterday's post on the simple things and reading all of the other beautiful posts about simple things around the blogosphere, i just had to share neruda's ode to things with all of you. in case you hadn't seen it. and since i don't speak spanish, i'm sharing it in english translation, tho' my edition has both.

ode to things


I have a crazy,
crazy love of things.
I like pliers,
and scissors.
I love
cups,
rings,
and bowls -
not to speak, or course,
of hats.
I love
all things,
not just
the grandest,
also
the
infinite-
ly
small -
thimbles,
spurs,
plates,
and flower vases.

Oh yes,
the planet
is sublime!
It's full of pipes
weaving
hand-held
through tobacco smoke,
and keys
and salt shakers -
everything,
I mean,
that is made
by the hand of man, every little thing:
shapely shoes,
and fabric,
and each new
bloodless birth
of gold,
eyeglasses
carpenter's nails,
brushes,
clocks, compasses,
coins, and the so-soft
softness of chairs.

Mankind has
built
oh so many
perfect
things!
Built them of wool
and of wood,
of glass and
of rope:
remarkable
tables,
ships, and stairways.
I love
all
things,
not because they are
passionate
or sweet-smelling
but because,
I don't know,
because
this ocean is yours,
and mine;
these buttons
and wheels
and little
forgotten
treasures,
fans upon
whose feathers
love has scattered
its blossoms
glasses, knives and
scissors -
all bear
the trace
of someone's fingers
on their handle or surface,
the trace of a distant hand
lost
in the depths of forgetfulness.

I pause in houses,
streets and
elevators
touching things,
identifying objects
that I secretly covet;
this one because it rings,
that one because
it's as soft
as the softness of a woman's hip,
that one there for its deep-sea color,
and that one for its velvet feel.

O irrevocable
river
of things:
no one can say
that I loved
only
fish,
or the plants of the jungle and the field,
that I loved
only
those things that leap and climb, desire, and survive.
It's not true:
many things conspired
to tell me the whole story.
Not only did they touch me,
or my hand touched them:
they were
so close
that they were a part
of my being,
they were so alive with me
that they lived half my life
and will die half my death.

antique locks from the middle east

it seems that no matter how much i try to convince myself otherwise, i really do love things. things of all kinds, but especially old things. or things that are nice to touch. or unusual things. things that have a story to tell. i just can't help myself.

i am not my car

we have an ancient toyota carina - ancient being from the mid-90s. it has 400,000 odd kilometers on it and it uses the occasional (read: weekly) couplea liters of oil. it's dark, boring grey. it has 2 of 4 hubcaps and we did finally put them both on the same side so that it would at least look more or less ok from at least one side. it has no frills whatsoever. no automatic locks or windows. no power steering. but it gets us where we're going (unless we wanted to drive to italy or spain, it might not like going that far). and with car taxes at 150% in this country, we don't even consider replacing it. we have considered not having a car at all and we didn't when we lived in copenhagen, but the reality of where we live is that it would be pretty difficult to get along without a car.

i normally don't put much thought at all into the car. it's there, it serves its purpose and that's it. that's kinda how i was brought up to think about cars. my dad had a old blue chevette that he kept driving until my sister, at the age of 12 (if you recall) finally put it out of its misery. and i had to take my driver's test in that godawful giant old station wagon named lurch.  my first car was a nondescript american-made (i can't even recall the make/model) two-tone brown sedan. the first remotely cool car i had was a little green mustang named iggy that very quickly revealed that it used more oil than gas. tho' during my aberrant years in southern california i got a little car crazy (the peer pressure oh the peer pressure) due to a boyfriend who happened to have two porsches and my little gold pontiac fiero that perfectly matched my hair, i generally could seriously care less about cars.

so it wasn't until we approached the end station that it occurred to me that the blog campers were going to not only see but get into our ancient toyota so i'd better warn them since they probably were far more car people than i am. we had a laugh about it, especially since they approached from the hubcapless side (i should really have parked the other way) and it seemed even worse. but honestly, i didn't really think more about it, except to use it for comic effect in one of my post blog camp posts.

last weekend, the sister-in-law gave us a bad time about the ancient toyota. husband gazed at it mildly, as if it had only just occurred to him that it was getting rather old. because he cares even less than i do. SIL reported that some friend of hers who had met us remarked that it was quite ironic that we had multiple fancy cameras, iPods and macbooks, plus more than one nintendo DS, but we drove that old rust bucket (for the record, there's very little rust on the car, so that's not an entirely fair characterization). middle child's friend apparently had said the same thing. apparently people can't really reconcile wegner chairs, 3 macs (4 if eldest child is here) and a 42" phillips flat screen t.v. with the ancient toyota.

and it made me realize that it's all a matter of perceptions and priorities. we don't define ourselves by our car. at all. and i realize that a lot of people do and that's ok for them. it's just that we don't. which isn't to be high and mighty and all anti-materialistic, because we do define ourselves by a whole lot of other material symbols. like macs and iPods and nikons and designer chairs and pretty refrigerators. husband stubbornly holds onto a 3-year-old sony-ericsson mobile because he extends his not caring to phones (unlike me, i do obsess care about my iPhone). but don't try to take away his iPod Touch or his iPod Shuffle.

the whole car thing is really only a problem when other people, who define themselves by their car,  judge us by our car, because we're not our car. not at all.

oh yay!!!

it's here!!! check out the beautiful new issue of the coolest online 'zine--discounderworld

flickr friends, do you recognize that ice cream on the cover?  it's a beautiful issue, well done stacey!! and if you haven't checked out discounderworld before, do check it out now, not for my sake, but because it's being done in the coolest tool for online viewing that i've seen, well, ever! and because mal of turning *turning is there too! lots of yummy inspiration of all sorts!

keeping you busy while i'm working

because i'm on the road all day today, i give you friday link love:

• check out the top ten "geek" hotels in the world--for the gadget lover in you. and because you can never really get enough of cool boutique hotels. or little pods in tokyo.
  
• because your pictures look SOOO awesome here. go, download this immediately, it's free, it's awesome, you won't be sorry.
• because i'm reading it and you should be too if you haven't already. the enchantress of florence. be prepared to be enchanted.
• because they're beautiful and you know you want some:

• worn--because it's about fashion and it's a 'zine.
• because this is some seriously rockin' ribbon and you always wanted to learn german.
• you are so gonna wanna try to make some of these, honeybees.
• we could all use a little uzbek pillow in our lives.
• they have a sale going on, but really, i go there just to read the descriptions. my dream job (other than being a stewardess) would be to write for them.
• because going here will never, ever fail to inspire.
• and neither will here. where else can concrete buildings and a glass of ice water make your heart sing?

that should keep you busy while i'm away. catch ya on the weekend, when i'm going to collect smooth stones on a beach near a very good friend's house.

the object(s) of happiness

i'm not sure why i've spent so much time of late thinking about happiness, but the fact is, i have. maybe it's my incessant reading of the curmudgeonly paul theroux (it depends on which one you're reading...his more recent stuff (dark star safari and ghost train) is less curmudgeonly). i'm now reading his happy isles of oceania and he's back to being a curmudgeon. and it has a lot to do with his level of personal happiness and it seems his long-crumbling marriage is in the final stages of crumbling in happy isles.

happiness is affected by so many factors. those people around us--the ones closest, but also the random ones we encounter every day. our jobs. our co-workers. our kids. our pets. the food we eat. our homes. things we create. whether we have time to be creative at all. having enough money. whether we have someone to clean for us. staying in a fabulous hotel. taking a vacation. what we read. how much t.v. we watch. movies we see. do these things make us happy or do we seek out all of these things because we're already happy? it's the chicken and the egg, really, which comes first?

living in this grey, dreary climate, i've found that my camera can contribute greatly to my happiness. there was plenty of sunshine the past two days and i took a lot of pictures. so, today, i can look at this jumble of glass beads in full sunshine and remember how wonderful that sunshine was:

and having the picture can help me through the dreariness. i've written before about the capacity of color to make me happy. and i can see that the things i was drawn to photograph in the sunshine of the past two days were colorful. something about the rays of the sun on bright colors is so cheerful. of course, it helps that this home is filled with bright colors, so there must be something to knowing on an intuitive level that they contribute to my happiness.

maybe all of the gloom and doom that fills the newspapers every day is what has me consciously thinking about happiness and what makes me happy. or maybe it was just the cupcake i had for breakfast...

making myself at home

my main weekend activity consisted of painting the low bookshelf seen below which husband brilliantly constructed out of MDF (that shit is heavy) ala handy andy on BBCs changing rooms. and then once it was dry, i got to put books and other fun stuff on it. and we finally got to finish hanging our collection of architectural drawings. my late father-in-law was an architect and he had collected some of them, which we inherited, but we've been picking them up here and there in antique stores for ten years now as well. and now, at last, we have a wall where they can all hang together. the more time i spend in the room, the more i love the turquoise-y teal color we chose for the walls. it somehow brings my molecules into perfect humming alignment. and check out this post for a refresher of how this looked last month and how it looks at the other end of the room.

i had three boxes of books that hadn't been shelved, but instead of putting random odds and ends on these shelves, i went to the shelves in the bedroom and got my best and favorites because they're the books i want near me in this creative space. i also unpacked a box of some of the wonderful things we've collected that i had forgotten about...small brass objects--a compass, an old timeclock that was once used to punch in in an egyptian workplace, a small morse code transmitter found in an antique store in iowa city and our scale collection and a little bitty samovar from tolstoy's yasnaya polyana. getting reacquainted with these long-packed-away things was a bit like having something new. i felt so delighted (and a little bit surprised) unwrapping them from their 18-month old newspapers (yikes!).

and now to the books. i brought out all of the russians...19th century on the bottom left, 20th on the bottom right. my beloved andrei bitov in a place of honor all his own on top right (in original and translation).  homer's odyssey and goethe's faust are allowed to stand next to the 19th century russians. faust because of an extensive paper i once wrote using it together with bulgakov's master & margarita (a highly recommended read, by the way) and homer because of a paper on angelopolous' fantastic film ulysses gaze that i once wrote for a balkan literature course.

and on the top left, my beloved theorists--bakhtin, barthes, kristeva, zizek and the slovenian school (salecl and copjec), plus a bit of lacan (which i didn't feel should be separated from zizek). the little rusty metal horse and bird on the shelves were found in a dingy market in goa and they lend atmosphere to the russians and the theorists.

so, although there's not yet heat in the room--the cute wood-burning stove guy will be coming in the next couple of weeks to install the new wood-burning stove--it's the space i'm most drawn to these days. we heat it up with a little electrical heater and candles and that's actually quite efficient, tho' it is a bit cold out here today because our weather has turned colder. next i have to make window treatments for the six sets of double windows (four of which are actually double doors, which will be gloriously open all summer), finish my fleece-backed cheater quilt (i did finish the top of it that one day that i wanted to, but haven't finished it finished it--i always get stuck on the binding when it comes to quilting), and make a few throw pillows for the couch.

another of the best things about settling it in today was cleaning the floor (both husband and i managed to get a few streaks of that beautiful blue paint here and there on the wood floor) and finding all of our assorted throw rugs. i didn't realize that simple throw rugs could be full of memories. like the main one in the centre, it's one i bought in goa and it's got the perfect shades of blue to go with the walls. and here in front of the couch is a little silk one i bought on my first trip to egypt 12 years ago--it turns out to be the perfect color for this room as well. and then there's the woven one with a picture of houses and mountains that i bought in skopje's old town from an albanian rug seller. it makes me so happy to have all of these history-laden things in one wonderful room. i'm sure that they will whisper to me their stories, nudging me to write them down as they remind me of the good times and they'll be here with us as we create the memories of the future.

because i am addicted to etsy...

these are just the coolest earrings!! so far, i've only bought paper journaling tags on etsy (ok and i just bought some supplies for making my own earrings), but now i'm sorely tempted by these wonderful earrings in the budgie shop from aukland, new zealand. the idea of these lovelies coming to me from the other side of the world may be too much for me. but they would make a mean birthday present (and my birthday happens to be this month--hint, hint!) , so i shall restrain for now. :-)




ok, and then there are these too:



restraint isn't one of my strong points....