so many things to ponder

whoa, it's been awhile. things have been busy. it's been a pretty intense period and there's no end in sight. i've been trying to take creative breaks - a lovely weekend away with my creative group, the yearly trip with my weaving group, going to weaving, going to a gourmet knitting day, a pampering event with a friend (think facial and foot bath), followed by an art show and a really nice lunch, several work trips to copenhagen - but it has all left little time to think about personal writing. i miss the way this space allowed me to process things and it would be nice to get back into the habit. odin knows there's plenty to process.

today, as i made dinner - a roast chicken, jerusalem artichokes freshly dug from the garden and some roasted beets, plus a salad with avocado, mango and tomato - i found myself pondering topics to write in the way that i used to and it made me think it would be nice to be back here again. 

things that crossed my mind...the need that everyone seems to have acquired to have a diagnosis, the latest james bond, growing older, the individual nature of grief, what lumke would have wanted to be could she have chosen anything, how to best talk about kitchens from a warm, sympathetic perspective, the natural order of adjectives (thanks, molly), an obsession with growing things from seeds extracted in the kitchen (see the mango plant above, which i started myself), old friends i got to see again this week, sharing what i love about copenhagen, our upcoming trip to arizona (i SO need a holiday), tomorrow's make-your-own-ravioli dinner with friends, what tattoo to get next (i'm thinking a cactus), the chestnut man on netflix. so many things to ponder and write about.  

i think i need to start blogging again like it's 2010 and no one is reading. because, after all, it always came back to me. and it's extremely likely that no one is reading.

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wow, what a story that was released on the day of the seafarer a few months ago (yes, i started this post awhile ago). tales of politics, containers, big tobacco, cancer and whitewashed company histories. i worked for maersk for 5 years and never even heard a whisper of this - only that sealand represented the great maersk move towards containerization. that and the banana plantation that they bought somewhere in africa to push containerization of bananas, which were hauled on refrigerated bulk carriers before containers came along. 

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a national geographic piece on adult fans of lego that, if you ask me, doesn't give enough credit to the actual fans themselves. 

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best ad for wearing a bike helmet ever. the danes are just so good at these things.

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fantastic cooperation between marina abramovic and wetransfer.

topography of a life

i'm fascinated by maps. on pinterest, i have a board called topographies, that's full of interesting and inspiring art people have made of maps. but maps are art in and of themselves. they are a representation of a place, not a duplication - a map can never truly capture all that is about a place (borges knew this). they remain but an incomplete illusion. i think it's what makes art featuring maps so fascinating.

just as it's impossible for a map to truly represent a place, it's completely impossible to fully blog a life. for one, no one would want to read it, for another, it's simply impossible to put words to it all. that, of course, doesn't stop people from trying. there are those who blog their breakfast or nightly dinners and then publish books of the photos, in case you missed one of those prosaic shots. there are people who take a photo at the same time every day (or was that just a plot device in a midsomer murder?). or people who simply take a photo every day (i read about a guy who did that for like 30 years).

me, my life and my blog, are all over the place - sometimes it's a craft blog, sometimes a travelogue, sometimes it's about perfume, or raising a child, or living in self-chosen exile, occasionally it's even about politics. but mostly, i blog to think things through, work them out and make sense of the world around me. and it feels pretty real to me. but you can never truly convey what it's all like (especially not the bits inside your head). you can only sketch the outlines. map the topographies of a life, if you will.

i don't share everything, but i do think that because of the immediate kind of person that i am, how i'm feeling is pretty obvious - good and bad. of course there are things i don't blog "out loud" - because they might hurt someone or burn a bridge or get someone (usually me) in trouble (the tales i could tell you of several big corporations would make your toes curl). i also don't blog every worry i have, because to an extent, i want this to be a mostly positive space. but i do blog about those things on my secret blog, because blogging is how i think. or rather, writing is how i think, and blogging is my medium of choice. there's something about that little blogger compose window that just gets the words flowing. and the impossible mapping of a life continues.