another weekend winding down

i hosted another session about my photo project thru my local library. only a handful of people came, but it was wonderful and intimate and gave me loads of good energy that carried me through the rest of the weekend. i wonder what it is about this project - getting people to take pictures of life in our town over a year and then having an exhibition - that makes me feel patient? it's growing slowly, bit by bit, and yet i'm oddly content with the pace of it, which is rather out of character for me. i'm not really sure why, but i'm riding the waves of contentment it brings and trying to not really question it that much.

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i think a lot about energy and have for some time. i guess it's the one thing for which i can thank my time in siemens. that place crushed my energy like no other and made me so much more aware of what (and more importantly, who) robs me of energy and what (who) gives it to me.

it's what i love about having my own company. i am fortunate to work with two people who complement me wonderfully - they're strong where i'm weak and vice versa - and the combination of the three of us, when we're really ON is quite magical and gives me loads of energy. what's wonderful is that that magic can happen both when we're conducting a workshop in person together and when we're writing on a shared document at a distance, so it's not limited to just one source. their ideas feed mine and i feel challenged and inspired. there's not really more you can ask (tho' a few more customers would be nice).

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i'm rather between books at the moment - does anyone have any recommendations? (they don't have to be about cows, i just liked this photo.) i often feel that way after a bout of murakami. i tried to read arundhati roy's god of small things (i know, i'm behind the times on this one), but it didn't do it for me and i actually put it down, which i've almost never previously done with a novel. it wasn't the book, it was me. i came to it at the wrong time. maybe someday i'll try again. (i felt the same with life of pi.)

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i picked two huge batches of elderberries today. my steam juicer has been hard at work and i've got 5-6 liters of juice to cook up with sugar and bottle in the morning. and more elderberries to pick. last year i made the mistake of only making one batch. husband says we need at least 20 bottles to have enough. elderberry cordial, mixed with hot water and a dash of something warming (rum? vodka?) on a cold, dark, blustery, late autumn/early winter day in denmark is just divine.

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our horse massage therapist is awesome. she's physiotherapist and psychotherapist all rolled into one. tho' she's a bit odd in that way that only a person who lives in her camper van and travels around with her dog, massaging horses, can be, but she really knows people. and horses (of course). and we had an amazing session with her on friday. i say we, because it was just as therapeutic for sabin (and even me) as it was for the horse. total catharsis all around.

but the truth is, horse people are weird. many of them have this odd insecurity that they mask by seeming really, really authoritative and a bit arrogant. i let one make me think matilde had the strangles today. in reality, i think she was feeling a bit lethargic and did in fact have a bit of swollen lymph nodes due to her intense massage on friday. it surely released a whole load of toxins that her body is still processing. but i let this woman make me think the worst. i wonder if i'll ever learn not to let that happen.

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why is it that i liked nigel slater so much better before i actually SAW some of his programs? his writing is divine and there are a handful of recipes from his real food cookbook that are in weekly rotation at our house, but somehow seeing him and hearing him has been a bit off-putting. and i can't really put my finger on why.

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i haven't actually seen these ads on t.v. (my sister, in iowa, actually sent me the link), but i got a kick out of this danish ad which promotes taking the bus. you gotta love public transportation. and if you press the CC button, the subtitles in english will appear.

the best nest, or wherein i come out in favor of the interwebs

little bitty nest in a tree in our back yard. much smaller than it appears.
how does this bird know how to decorate it so well - acorn and all - without the interwebs?

it's a well-known fact that i love the internet - blogs, flickr, twitter, facebook, even linked-in. social media butterfly, that's me. well, sorta. within a small-ish circle.  when i began this bloggy adventure in earnest, i explored a lot of different blogs on a lot of different topics. i've pretty much weeded out all of the scrapbooking ones now, but those were kind of where i started. along the way, i found some people who seemed to have a really cool aesthetic that they were sharing - opening their homes and giving glimpses of their lives through their blogs. some, like me, just to share and reach out and make contact and some to sell their wares. i still read quite a few of those. but i think the blogs i am attracted to most these days share their process. they're pretty heavy on handmade (food, quilts, art) thematically, but i love the insight people are sharing into their creative processes.  but, i still love the blogs where people just show us glimpses of their beautifully-lived, well-lit everyday lives.

and i shudder think back to the time before blogs, where we had to figure out what we thought was cool home decor for ourselves. i guess we got our ideas from magazines then or, if we were me, by visiting the golden nugget in downtown las vegas and thinking that brass, glass and a lot of plants were really the way to go. (it was the late 80s, so sue me.)  now, i know better, because i can latch onto trends (mid-century modern, vintage in general, crocheted blankets) a whole lot faster, just by trolling the flickr groups i'm part of.

but in a way, i really envy people like anne, who despite being an ostensibly poor graduate student is a brilliant photographer and all around brainiac, and she cooks gorgeous food in a very deliberate and thoughtful way. i can tell you that i seldom did that as a grad student. i can recall a truly ugly broccoli cheese soup i once made, but which we ate anyway because it tasted great. but i wonder if i'd have done better if i'd had the internet then. i'd like to think i would have. i know i would have appreciated my hand-me-down furniture - i had a gorgeous danish modern desk and dining table & chairs that had belonged to my mom's aunt (where are they now, i wonder?) - a whole lot more.

even more, i envy inna karenina. at 18, she's already a completely stunning photographer and has that ability i've been working so hard on acquiring, that ability to really SEE and capture the world around her and to live in what seems to be a very deliberate way. i was so clueless at 18. if only we'd had the interwebs back then in the dark ages!

and digital photography, it's perhaps that that's done it more than anything else - i download pictures 3-4 times a day on a good day. in the old days, i would take a few pictures, leave the camera, which was some crap old canon snappy, lying in a corner for months, take a few more, leave it again, then finish the roll and eventually take it to be developed. if only i'd known then how cool expired film and light leaks are. but even now, i only know that because of, you guessed it, the internet.

so, moral of the story? if you want the best nest, you've gotta get online....