fragments of memories

i was reading this piece in harper's on memory. and the list of memory fragments in the fourth paragraph made memories start to flit into my mind. driving along I-80 in iowa in 1982 and seeing the ditches alight with fireflies - the first ones i'd ever seen. we just didn't have them in south dakota. i suppose it was too dry. 

or a memory of lying on the dark blue scratchy wool carpet in our house in town, tracing the outlines of all the weird bumps that formed the pattern, thinking about how god had a big book with everything i'd ever do written down as a plan. and trying to defy it, thinking, he wrote that i'd move my arm right now, so i'm not going to. and then thinking, no, he wrote that too! 

then a memory of lying on a bridge on a hot summer night, down in the pasture by the lake we'd rented for our horses, surfaced in my mind. it was that life-changing summer where i broke up with my california boyfriend and decided to go to the university of iowa. i can hear the sounds of the crickets and cicadas and the splash of the water flowing under the bridge, the whisper of the wind gently moving the grass, the feel of the warm air on my skin. i don't recall any thoughts that were in my head, only the sounds, smells and the physicality of it.

some memories are so clear, or at least the fragments of them are. and i feel like i don't really choose them, they're just there. 

and now i'll go back and finish that harper's piece. just wanted to capture these fragments here. i'm going to see what other memories surface in the next days and try to capture them as well. then i'll see where they take me.

fragments of niceness

i spotted this art project in the heart of copenhagen last week. #fragmentsofniceness by artist kit kjølhede. the sun was shining, i'd just come from a good meeting with my favorite colleagues and i was feeling buoyant. the bright colors, the happy snippets of conversation overheard in copenhagen spoke straight to my soul. what an admirable project - with all that's bad and awful (and orange-tinged) in the world these days, this was precisely what i needed. hell, it's what we all need!

this hasn't been an easy time. a not-very-well planned or communicated reorg about six months ago created a period of limbo and inertia. in such a situation, there are always some ambitious types who take advantage of the vacuum and grab more than they should. and in the absence of clear messages, everyone makes up their own stories and runs with them. and it can create a negative, unproductive space. i believe this is compounded by the darkness of the winter months in our northern climes. but things are beginning to be brighter and it's not just welcome rays of actual sunshine, but things really are becoming clearer. maybe we can only appreciate clarity when we have been wandering in fog.

and maybe the best way to break free of the uncertainty and negativity is to focus on the positive. to laugh instead of bristling and feeling angry. to help instead of hinder. to be open instead of closed. to overhear the positive and nice things. to listen instead of refusing to hear. to seek out nice things to say. and even more importantly, to think. to make sure the inner narrative is positive and open. to say yes to life and possibilities and new challenges and to let go of what's not working. 

i'm ordering a set of these postcards from the artist to hang up to remind myself to look and listen for positivity around me. i really do believe that you attract what you are looking for. and i also admit that of late, i've been looking for ghosts and schemes and lies and games being played - and guess what, i've found all of those in great quantity. well, no more. the time for negativity is past. 

this is the season to embrace change. it's boring when everything stays the same. this is the time to seek the most amazing stories and tell them well. this is the time to let go of what's not working. and to let go of things which are working but not moving anywhere in order to move on to newer, more exciting things. hanging on to the past isn't productive or healthy. it's not how we grow and learn and evolve and become better, stronger, more capable versions of ourselves. and while this may all sound dire, it's really not. it feels like stretching long unused muscles after a winter hibernation, feeling them out once again, exposing them to the warming rays of the sun, getting to know them and put them to good use.

of course, not everything needs to change - home, husband, child, cats and garden remain the fertile ground from which to grow, they are most definitely my own very best fragments of niceness. that and my t-rex costume. everyone should have one of those. they cheer you right up.

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amazing 9-year-old slays new yorker cartoon captions.

and for a bit more low brow version, check out these shitty captions for new yorker cartoons.

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if you find yourself rolling your eyes at the crystal-obsessed, this is for you.

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and one more from the new yorker...

molly ringwald is such a good writer.

grief does strange things - a fragment

you feel so many things when someone close to you dies. and one of the most unexpected things you feel is anger and impatience.

while i sat on the plane, wondering what i was heading towards, i felt so angry that others felt ownership of what was MY father dying. and it only increased, completely inappropriately, at moments when i least expected it. STOP saying you're sorry. STOP saying you'll miss him. it wasn't your FUCKING father who died. leave me alone with this, it's MINE. GET AWAY FROM ME!! and stop thinking it's about you.

but that faded.

but now a favorite aunt has also died. and i just read her obituary and it MADE ME SO ANGRY and i can't really explain why. but it's at least partially because a few paragraphs cannot encompass a life of 89 years. she was SO MUCH MORE than the vapid, emptiness listed in her obituary. GIVE HER CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE! she was this amazing, centering presence at the heart of our big family and the sentimental way in which that was expressed does not even remotely do justice to her.

WHO WRITES THESE THINGS?

at least with my dad's obituary, i knew who wrote it because it was me.


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i'm clearing out my drafts folder...i wrote this 6/3.2015 and never published it. i'm not sure why, perhaps i felt too angry at the time. but today, 24/3.2016 it seems like time to publish this, even if it is but a fragment...

fragments from my draft folder

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drunk j. crew is my new favorite tumblr.

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guess what i'll be doing doing this summer...filming this.

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whatever you think of him, this speech is filled with logic. and yes, i teared up watching it. whatever you believe. get out there and vote. and please think of all of our children when you do so.

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and speaking of the ignorance rampant in the world, the bbc is discussing it here. and i have to admit it makes me fearful of the world we're leaving to sabin. (3/3.2016)

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we are in the age of the fetish of everything. (26/4.2015)

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a friend recently shared a link to  this blog piece, written by a dane on how weird he realized danes were once he had spent some time out there in the world. she thanked me for hanging in there anyway, which was pretty sweet. (28/9.2014)

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my bloggy friend jessica of scrumdillydilly, who i've been reading since, well, forever, recently wrote a great post about the insecurities brought on by the internet. (17/7.2014)

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an interesting piece in information on the constitution of the modern family in denmark, where 45% live in a non-traditional family - with traditional being original mother and father and children living together under one roof.(23/3.2014)

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mel's beautiful words on instagram....This is the book that started the flood. In 2010, my teacher asked me to write in a journal - I only know the year because of the dates in these pages. The wife of a writer, we had lots of blank books lying around - gifts from friends and family - and after many failed attempts of my own over the years, I was skeptical. She urged me to try - pen and paper, by hand. The first weeks worth of pages are here, on 20 lb printer paper - temporary, disposable. Another teacher said - it doesn't matter what you write - it's space just for you. That unlocked something and after five days I pulled this empty book off the shelf and the words started leaking out of my pen. This is the book that showed me that the stories I told myself weren't always true, that the wild thoughts up in my head are not representative of reality. That the approval I'd been seeking was really my own (those words exactly came out on the page). That no feelings are unacceptable and allowing them space to say their piece helps them move on through. That the most important relationship of my life is the one I have with my own self, and that that relationship reflects on every other. This is the book that cracked the dam.

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i'm doing a bit of spring cleaning in my blog drafts folder. nearly 20 items had accumulated there. mostly fragments. some links. passing thoughts, awaiting deeper analysis. they had begun to weigh me down, and yet i didn't want to lose them either, so i decided to go through them, combine them and get them out of the way. hopefully to make room for new, fresh, livelier thoughts and words. 

fragment from 2013

janteloven (the law of jante) is what you might call the general danish philosophy to live by. and apparently it turns 80 years old this year. it comes from a book written by danish-norwegian author aksel sandemose, who, despite being born and dying in denmark, moved to norway for long enough to be deemed norwegian instead of danish. apparently after a stay in denmark he noticed that the following ten "laws" appear to be the general philosophy.

1. you shouldn't think you are anything (du skal ikke tro, du er noget.)
2. you shouldn't think that you're as much as we are. (du skal ikke tro, at du er lige så meget som os.)
3. you shouldn't believe that you're smarter than we are. (du skal ikke tro, at du er klogere end os.)
4. you shouldn't kid yourself that you're better than us. (du skal ikke bilde dig ind, at du er bedre end os.)
5. you shouldn't believe you know more than us. (du skal ikke tro, at du ved mere end os.)
6. you shouldn't believe that you are more than us. (du skal ikke tro, at du er mere end os.)
7. you shouldn't believe you're good for anything. (du skal ikke tro, at du dur til noget.)
8. you shouldn't laugh at us. (du skal ikke le ad os.)
9. you shouldn't believe that anyone likes you. (du skal ikke tro, at nogen bryder sig om dig.)
10. you shouldn't think you can teach us anything. (du skal ikke tro, at du kan lære os noget.)

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a fragment begun 11/5.2013 and never published. unfinished thoughts. growing dusty among my drafts.

fragments from august 2014

like much of the world, i've been watching with fascinated horror the news of the malaysia airlines plane shot down over the ukraine. the tragedy of the loss of so many people from the AIDS community on their way to a conference in australia is stunning in and of itself. i read this piece in the nytimes,


but speaking of social media, there was this article about a woman who had made her living on facebook, but now had decided to break up with it.

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fragments written 20/7.2014, found among my drafts. unfinished thoughts.

back to basics

i remember a time when i rushed to my blog to share every stray thought that excited me. or to share all of the good links i came across in the course of my day. things like this - the whole voynich manuscript, online and available for your perusal - maybe you'll be the one who cracks it!

but my blogging is diluted these days by other venues - primarily facebook, but also pinterest (for the pretties i used to share), google+ (where i put links to articles and websites that i want to find again - does anyone bookmark in a browser anymore?), twitter (for the quickie shares that reach a different audience than those i put on facebook). not to mention instagram (i'm julochka there too, look for me) (tho' i mostly post all my instagram photos to FB, twitter and flickr as well). it's all very diluted. and i think i don't want it to be. i want this to be the space which serves as repository of the things which interest me at a particular moment - my memory, if you will. i'm not sure when it changed or how or why, but it did. and i'm going back (well, not entirely, as i do like pinterest as a format - it's what i always wished flickr could be - a place to categorize and save pretty and inspiring images and be able to find them again). and speaking of flickr, is it dead yet? i use it only for my 365 project and as a place to easily retrieve instagram photos for use in blog posts. but i want my blog to be where i store my memories and my thinking and well, my brain. somehow i got away from that.

thoughts like these:

~ what if the voynich manuscript was just someone's art journal and they wrote it in a language of their own, so no one could read it?

~ is handwriting inherited? in my own handwriting i see shades of my dad's and my aunt's. is how i write (scrawl, scribble, whatever you want to call it) mandated there in the very architecture of my hand?

~ this is very interesting - niels peter flint on micro living:



i'm clearly not thinking big enough.

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and as for pinterest, i've decided to share some highlights here. i currently have 98 different boards on pinterest. here are the ones starting with a: art journal/collage and atmosphere. check them out, i guarantee you'll find pretty, inspiring things.

a saga in stitches

these small works are part of anne brodersen's sagaland series, inspired by a trip to iceland.

she's used photographs, printed on ordinary paper and soaked in some kind of solution as the base. i didn't quite understand how it works, but i will take a class with her and find out. as you know, i love the idea of stitching on photos, so this version of that idea is very appealing. i think it turns a photo into something somehow natural and earthy and i like that idea.

today i'm baking cakes - red velvet with a raspberry curd layer inside, covered in merengue buttercream and sabin's made a rich vanilla sheetcake that we're going to decorate as an iPhone. photos and a report of our television debut, as well as the results of the contest sometime on the weekend!

happy weekend, one and all!