sigh...some days just steal your energy

i love when the canola fields are at peak buzz - a yellow so vibrant it almost hurts your eyes, making them feel like they're buzzing, even on a cloudy day. it's even more intense when the sun shines. i ended up taking some back roads today, trying to get to a meeting on time in a town that's not exactly on my usual route. 

it's been a very busy time at work. the kind where you have so much to do that your tasks - done and undone, invade your dreams. the nearly penultimate step of a big project came today and somehow that's always a bit of a letdown. you've been pushing towards a deadline, making it, then it comes and happens and the wind is taken a little bit out of your sails. and you can't even really feel happy about it because it's not quite finished yet, just a big milestone was reached, but there still another stretch to go. 

plus, i didn't sleep all that well last night, knowing i'd have to get up early to make it to the office in time for today's big presentation. so in all, it was the kind of day that just steals your energy. 

it wasn't helped at all by having to rush to a board meeting that was timed perfectly so that i got to enjoy the worst rush hour traffic in three cities along the way. at least i had a good podcast to listen to and those back roads with their gorgeous yellow fields. i made it, about 10 minutes late. we toured another creative group's ceramics workshop at their local kulturhus, as we'd like to have one in ours and we wanted to see how they had set it all up. that part was inspiring and it's not so far away that i couldn't go down there are do some ceramics once in awhile, though preferably not at 5 p.m. on a work day. 

but then we had our actual board meeting and it was especially energy-draining. maybe because my energy was already low and i didn't have much left. there's one member who especially sapped what energy i had left. first, with a too long (though probably actually short) discussion of whether everything we post on instagram has to be posted identically on facebook) - i do not think so. they are two different platforms. and while i agree that if it's something with a sign-up date that everyone needs to know about it, it should go on both platforms, a reel on instagram and a carousel post on facebook should be fine. they don't need to be identical. 

then she ended the meeting with a petulant diatribe about how i bought too many beers the night we hung up our exhibition. when i was reluctantly sent to buy the beers for everyone, there were 14 people there helping, so i bought 22 beers/hard seltzers. one of them was a 12 pack of mini rosé wheat beers, which she thought were weird. they weren't all used that evening, but we agreed we would sell them at our exhibition the next day. then no one put them out and so they weren't sold and she was mad about that, so i agreed that i would go get them and pay creagive back. and perhaps all that was fair enough, but it was presented in such a judging, whiny and petty way that it just drained what little energy i had left. it really makes me wonder if i even want to be on the board at all anymore. i can participate without being on the board. and if not now, when will i ever learn to protect my own energy when i can. 

recovery time

as i get older, it seems to take me more and more time to recover from the big events. back at the end of november, i gave my notice at my job after a tumultuous almost two years of working during a pandemic in a branch that experienced exponential growth because people were sitting at home, working and homeschooling from their kitchens and thinking, "damn, i need a new kitchen." that resulted in a lot of crazy mad ambitious projects that were legitimately "business critical," (though i hate buzzwords like that). 

it was fun and i had really great colleagues, but it was also really intense and hard and in the autumn, i fell prey to the thoughts that many people are having these days...is this really what i want to be doing? do i want to write about black friday deals and affordable prices for the rest of my career? i am approaching an age where i have to think about these things. because soon it will get more difficult for me to switch jobs. even though age is just a number. and with basically 0% unemployment (ok, it's 2.8%, but that might as well be 0%), things aren't that bad. yet. but still, it gave me pause. 

i'd been courted by a headhunter since the summer holiday and i'd turned them down once, but they approached me again in the autumn as fatigue set in. a very big project was dragging out, a boss that went down with stress, tried to come back, couldn't accept the changes that happened in his absence and then left, leaving that very big project in one giant mess and with no one at the helm, made me say yes the second time around. 

but before i said yes, i had a day with the new team, basically interviewing them. it's that kind of job market these days. and i really liked them and it felt like the right thing to do, so i said yes. but i agreed to give my old job an extra month (in denmark, you tend to give you notice at the end of one month and you finish at the end of the next one). i owed that to those good colleagues and we'd been through so much together. and i also felt that i'd poured so much work and caring (i always care too much a great deal) and thought and sweat and tears into the project, that i wanted to leave it at a milestone, rather than just leaving in the middle of everything.

and hit that milestone we did. confetti canons and all. and i felt grateful and privileged to have worked so hard with such a group of talented people. and although i've gone on to that new job with an undoubtedly talented new group of people, damn, i miss them. we went through the hellfire together. we laughed, we swore (some more than others...and by we i mean me), we inspired one another, we leaned on one another, on occasion we had a few too many drinks, we got mad, we yelled, some of us mansplained (you know who you are), then we made up and got over it and got to work again. and it was special and awesome and although i chose it myself, i'm sad it's over. and i miss them so much. 

and it all makes me realize that it's possible to be sad and happy at the same time. i'm excited about what's ahead and so happy to get to know a whole new group of colleagues, but the transition is hard. you don't just get over such an intense period of work in a day. and you have doubts and grief over losing the daily contact with those you shared it all with. guys, you will all have a very special place in my heart. and there will always be a g&t waiting for you if you drop by. but be sure you wear a t-rex or guy riding a chicken costume, because damned if you aren't going to end up on tiktok with me. that's the only way we're going to recover from this...as the danes say (and you're all danes), "you only have the fun you make yourself." i had a lot of fun with you and it was a privilege. thank you all. 

here's to brighter days ahead. 🥂✨ 

we will recover from this, it will just take a little time. so let's give ourselves that time. 

thank you, corona

it's the winter solstice. the longest, darkest day of the year, in what's been a long, dark year. 2020 has tried to kick our asses. and it has mostly succeeded. but, i’ll admit that as far as i’m concerned, it also has been pretty good to me. and i’ll also admit that it feels a little problematic of me to say that. but, honestly, it has. i started a new job two days before denmark shut down the first time and said that everyone who chould work at home should work at home. i’ll admit that i was a little freaked out on that friday. i had just returned from a long-planned holiday in barcelona that we didn’t cancel. we didn’t know then how bad the virus would become. we had planned the previous october to meet sabin in barcelona and have a family vacation. and we did it. husband did go home early, because it had rained all of february and the water table was high and leaking at an alarming rate into the pantry adjacent to our kitchen. but we had a wonderful holiday together and even after husband left, sabin and i enjoyed our time together. we had fabulous cocktails, we shopped and ate great food. it really couldn’t have been better. 

 

on that weird friday, two days into my job and with the virus hanging over all of us, it was windy and i stopped at the grocery store in the little town where i work. the wind blew the car door out of my hand as i got out and i was so distracted, i didn’t even notice that it hit the vehicle next to me. unfortunately, the girlfriend of the guy who owned the vehicle did notice and pointed out that my car door had rubbed the dirt off her door when i returned to my car. her hysterical boyfriend rode his bike over to talk to me. i stupidly and distractedly gave them my phone number and they actually reported to insurance that the dirt was rubbed off their door and convinced their friend to declare that the entire car needed repainting. which ended up on my insurance. but i digress. and it was all because i was distracted. and stupidly and unlike me, didn’t take a picture at the scene, so i couldn’t dispute it. i also stupidly let on that i spoke danish. that was dumb. and possibly 2020 getting the best of me. 

but it may have been the only place where it did. because even two days into my new job, i was already included in a big and business critical project. and we managed to do something utterly amazing that i’ve never seen any other company do so quickly. it was pretty amazing and even exhilarating to be part of. and that damn virus made it possible. it was the kind of project that would been hemmed and hawed about and made into smaller pilot projects over a two-year period and we did it in 10 days. thank you, corona. and it’s continued at the same level and pace ever since and i have been continually amazed at the talent of my collagues and the things we can do together. i don’t think this would have become so apparent to me so quickly without the virus. we may be building the plane as we fly it, but damn, we are flying it. thank you, corona. 

my child hasn’t had the ideal start to college that we would have wanted, but she has had a pretty good time and she joined a sorority and made a lot of friends and one of her good friends from high school has transferred to asu as well. and thanks to my privileged position as an american citizen who is a permanent resident of denmark, i could travel to arizona to help her move out of her apartment and into the dorm. with a pitstop at my own asu professor’s home. and even though corona was raging, we wore our masks, we got some essential help from an old bloggy friend who lives in arizona now and we drank quite a lot of coronas (the good kind) by the pool. it was honestly, a lovely summer. and we never tested positive for corona. 

and now, she’s been home for nearly a month and while the darkness and lack of sunshine has been difficult for her, it’s also been great to have her home. she argues with her father and makes him admit defeat. he has to recognize that he is defeated in his white male privilege by the strong women he has raised. and it’s good for him. we’ve had a corona scare this week. a good friend of sabin’s spent the weekend with us last weekend and then tested positive last tuesday. we’ve been tested and tested again and are still negative. we start to wonder if we have some strange immunity that we don’t deserve. but while we await the vaccine, we will take what we can get. and in the meantime, we will eat good food, laugh and play games together and we will appreciate more than we counted on of 2020. thank you, corona, for reminding us of what’s important.

entering holiday mode

the bags aren't packed, i have a few edits to do, a brief or two, a couple of emails and a few posts to schedule, but my mind is already sliding into holiday mode. i got home around 7:30, went straight to the garden, picked zucchini, onions and one of those weird cauliflower-broccoli hybrids that seems to have happened in one of the brassica beds. i turned the zucchini in egg and bread crumbs, adding sesame seeds for a bit more healthiness and taste. i stir-fried the onions and caulicoli (i just made that name up) and flash fried a couple of pork chops. it was delicious. husband and i chatted and watched a few episodes of wyatt cenac's problem areas (comedy has turned to smart in these days of the otherwise dumbing down of the world, and it gives me a glimmer of hope). we had a g&t and we got ambitious about harvesting mirabellas, black currants and red currants before we leave.  there's also a mountain of laundry to do and the child to pick up from her week at roskilde festival (there were moments when she almost gave up, but she hung in there). but here, right now, this evening, i'm shifting...gearing down, packing in my mind, thinking about which minifigures to take and what sort of photo or audio project to give myself for the trip. i'm pondering what clothes to pack, which bags to take, what book for the plane (clearly my friend richard's halleluja canyon). do i need art supplies? a new notebook? plenty of batteries for the zoom? and how will i get along without the kittens? they'll be cared for by friends, who will stop by to feed and water them. they'll be fine. but i'll miss them. but i'm looking forward to places i've never been...birmingham, mississippi, new orleans, the gulf coast. orlando. it's going to be an awesome trip. but first, some time in the garden and a bit of hanging out with the kittens.

what i have been doing lately

the paris review podcast just finished their first season and it was luminous. every episode is shimmeringly beautiful - a mix of early writing, archival audio and contemporary pieces read by famous voices. it's literary and deep and gorgeously produced. i was inspired by the jamaica kincaid piece in episode 12 - what i have been doing lately. (you need a subscription to read all of it, but you can hear it for free on the podcast.) and while i cannot hope to compare to her writing, i do feel drawn to trying my hand at it...tho' i suspect mine will have a less dreamlike quality.

what i have been doing lately...by me.

it's 4 a.m. i'm awake, kicking off the covers, it's clear outside and i can see the light of the partial moon illuminating the heavy frost that's on the grass. there are a zillion stars in the clear sky. i reach for my phone. what has the spray-tanned buffoon done now? has there been another school shooting? are those articulate florida teenagers winning or are they being snuffed out by old, stodgy white men? not yet, it seems, tho' they are trying (the stodgy men, that is). bob is snuggled between us, stretching out his long body, trusting that we won't roll over onto him. oddly, husband isn't snoring, which in turn makes me wonder if he's still breathing - i feel a rising anxiety at the thought that he's not and i flash back to a similar feeling when sabin was a baby. he is. as she always was. i don't feel panic at being awake, because i'm taking the day off. i can sleep in if i want. when it comes to it, i don't, because of that gorgeous sunrise you can see in the photo above. instead, i get up with husband and the child, who aren't taking the day off, and then i switch batteries on the camera and go out into the cold, clear, still, very frosty morning to capture that pinkish orange horizon. i breathe in great lungsful (lungfuls?) of cold, crisp, clean air. frannie follows me, rolling and flirting at my feet. molly trots over, her compact little body, covered in thick, grey tortiseshell fur. she stretches up a fence post in her version of a catlike sun salutation. freya eventually shows up as well, tho' i don't see where she comes from. her back twitches in anticipation that i will pet her. i do. i feed them all in the greenhouse and they eagerly dig in. i find it hard to leave the sunrise, it keeps getting more and more spectacular and intense as soon as i turn my back on it. so i go back to the edge of the trees and snap a few more photos. more than once. eventually, my hands are cold and my toes too in my rubber boots and i head for the house. i love the still, cold air. birdsong has begun and despite the frost, it sounds like spring. the birds have sex and light and warmth on the brain. i go in, light a match and put on the kettle to make tea. molly comes in with me, hopping up on her chair in the kitchen. it's her throne. i make a cup of tea and crawl back in bed with karl ove knausgaard's autumn. musings he ostensibly wrote to his unborn daughter, but which amount to deep, philosophical (a)musings on everyday things. tho' they are not poetry, they remind me somehow of neruda's elemental odes. i read a few and never do go back to sleep as i had hoped. i get up and do everyday tasks - laundry, unloading the dishwasher, reloading it, taking out the trash. there is a kind of time for thinking and processing in such mundane tasks, so i feel no resentment or frustration over them. i dress, put on some makeup and then it's time to go get the child. i have to run a few errands before she's out of school - grocery store, h&m. she's in a good mood - there's a party tonight for the whole school. and the sun is out, so her mood is vastly improved from the teenage stormcloud of the night before. we listen to the criminal podcast on the way home and she predicts the criminal's sentence before they even say it. she tells me that in addition to studying criminology and criminal justice in sunny arizona, she will likely go to law school as well. i have a moment of awe, observing who she is becoming and how much herself she already is. i feel more a witness to it than responsible and that feels like a privilege of which i'm probably not fully worthy. we drink aloe water - golden kiwi flavor - and pick up some more at the grocery store because it's delicious and it's on sale. we laugh easily about how much we love the feel of the little bits of aloe between our teeth. we get home and while she gets ready for her evening party, i lie down for a bit with a couple of cats. i don't snooze, but lazily check instagram and post a few of the photos i took earlier. it feels like a luxury. i take her to the train. she's happy - the sun is shining, her makeup is perfect and she's looking forward to a nice evening with her friends. i come home and husband is here, but he has a headache, so now he's lying down. i leisurely make a light supper of fishcakes and homemade remoulade. we greedily eat it all up while we watch john oliver and he makes us laugh and feel better about the state of the world. i sit at my computer and write this and husband surfs the auction sites - looking for an oven and stumbling across other interesting things...a vending machine (we could fill it with affordable art), some rugs and a couch that has potential. it's friday night. it's cold and clear and i am glad to be at home.

* * *

so tired of explaining things to idiots.

* * *

so glad i didn't have boy. 

tho' boys need feminism.

* * *

speaking of things i've been doing lately,

have you listened to the podcast i'm making at work yet?

taking the time

we've had an unseasonably cool spring. but at last the beech leaves have sprung forth. there is no color of green quite like it. i pulled over today on my way home and took a little walk in the woods, to soak it all in. some days, when you're feeling down and everything seems like too much and you have a dull headache, you need to do that. to indulge in the moment. to take the time. to breathe. to soak it all in. to let go of it all and just be.

while i was making dinner, i watched the first two parts of a documentary on loneliness that DR has made. the last episode will be broadcast this evening and i saw an ad for it yesterday and realized that a person who i know is one of the lonely people. well, i actually, i don't know her, i've just seen her around. when i got involved in my community culture house, she was there at that first meeting as well and wanted to be involved. but somehow, she didn't make it onto the board. i've seen her since a few times, also in connection with the culture house - she bought some cool chairs when we had the big sale before we emptied the building, so i know that we'd have that in common. but still, tho' i chatted with her about the chairs, we didn't really take it any further or become friends. and now there she is, on a program where she is standing forward and admitting that she's lonely. that some days the only people she talks to are at the grocery store. and it fills me with sadness. everyone wants to make a human connection, but somehow, we are so full of ourselves and our own lives that we don't do it. especially here in denmark, where there are few of the casual conversations you can fall into if you're waiting for a bus or in the checkout line if you're in the US. and that lack of interaction has consequences. like a woman being so lonely that she's willing to go on television and say so. right here in the happiest place on earth. (that last sentence is in the sarcasm font.)

and it feels a bit like all of the walks in a beautiful, bright green spring forest won't make it better. we need to do more. we need to really see one another. acknowledge one another. interact. be more open. talk to each other. say hello to our neighbors. drink a cup of coffee. chat. take the time.

life lessons revisited

three years ago, almost to the day, i did a post on life lessons. on this rainy, grey, early dark (after the time change) afternoon we have going on, with candles glowing on the window ledge above my desk, and a contented cat in my lap, it felt like a good time to revisit the notion and make a new list. which is not to say that i don't stand by the first list, more just that i do love me a list...

~ words matter.

~ to appreciate the sunshine, you need a little rain.

~ time really does fly.

~ moisturizer is really quite important.

~ people will often disappoint you, but you will get over it.

~ it's good to see the place where you live through fresh eyes.

~ you grow more patient as you age.

~ but you also tend to take less crap.

~ you are never too old for glitter nail polish.

~ you are never too old to dress up for halloween.

~ nothing beats a logical argument. but those are few and far between.

~ so much of who your child is is already there in the child. it's up to you to nurture it.

~ everyone is pretending at something.

~ don't ever go to work for a friend.

~ a glass of wine has healing powers.

~ sometimes you just need girl talk (best paired with above-referenced wine).

~ it is possible to do something creative every day.

~ many of life's most satisfying moments happen in the kitchen.

~ spending time alone is good for the soul.

~ chickens are smarter than you think.

~ a good night's sleep will restore you.

~ there is always a good book to read, it's just a matter of finding it.

~ the internet is huge.

~ blogging is cheaper than therapy.

~ sometimes you don't know what you think until you write about it.

~ you're never too old to learn something new.

~ you can learn from your mistakes, but it might take a couple of tries.

~ it's totally normal to listen to the same song over and over again.

and that's my list. for now. play along if you'd like (please let me know, so i can read your list as well). it's surprisingly cathartic.

* * *

you never know who those people are.

toto, we're not in kansas anymore

during my usual sunday morning troll of the internet, i watched this wonderful TED talk by pico iyer on the subject of home:

as one who is by choice displaced, i often ponder what home means. quite often here on this very blog. i think that instead of getting easier to answer, the longer you are gone from home (your original home, the place of your birth), the more muddied the waters become. you begin to feel that place isn't home and this place, where you live and make your life and even find a lot of happiness, sometimes even on a daily basis, definitely isn't home either. and it leaves you all with what i like to call my mid-atlantic feeling (as in cast adrift in the middle of the atlantic, neither here nor there). and it is, as always, a lonely feeling, tho' it can also leave you feeling utterly unique and who doesn't, especially in their moments of private solipsism, want to feel unique, even if it unique in your own particular brand of lonely.

and so i struggle with notions of home. and making a home. and feeling at home. and maybe it's a normal state if 220 million of us are living outside the country of our birth, as iyer suggests. so maybe i should just lighten up and go with it. because this makes me sound like i'm unhappy and i'm far from that. i just don't really know if i know what home is in this age when so much is in flux. it's where you keep your important books, i thought at one time, but when our books now fit on an iPad, then home is wherever i find myself (provided i have my iPad with me) by that definition.

i suppose, as iyer says, i somehow do manage to stitch together a sense of home (and thus identity), from the various pieces i carry around inside me...where i was raised, where i live now, all of the places i have traveled, all of the experiences i've had, all of the memories i've created. i carry it all within me, no matter where i am. and my actual house is filled with things gathered on those travels...trinkets, statues, glassware, rugs, scarves, so it reflects that sense of home that i attempt to construct, almost unconsciously. and what is a home? a nest, a place to feel safe. a place to call your own. a place to house your important books. and i can't complain because i do have that, even if i couldn't have imagined how it would look and what it would be like, had you asked me to do that 20 years ago.

and so i muddle along, like so many others, constructing a life, a home, a family and filling it with deeds and memories.

looking at life through kittens' eyes

there's a lot to be learned from kittens. they live utterly and completely in the moment. they only do what they want to do. they thoroughly enjoy what they're doing, whether playing, sleeping or eating.

they're not afraid of conflict but they make up quickly afterwards. they cry out when they are hurt or just when they want attention. they let you you know if they are hungry or lonely. they consider everything a potential plaything. they purr when they're happy. when they're hungry, they eat. when they're thirsty, they drink. when they're tired, they sleep. when it's time to play, they play. when it's time to explore, they explore.

they make the most of every moment. they play hard. and sleep hard. they trade on being cute if it gets them what they want. they are fearless. they climb as high as they can and don't worry about falling. if they tumble down, they just get right back up and try again. they are full of boundless energy and when it runs out, they sleep. no matter where they are. they know that the cat on the bottom isn't necessarily losing. we could learn a lot from kittens.

roads taken and not

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

--Robert Frost

i know i've often protested that i'm not a poetry person, but as i contemplate roads, this speaks to me. sometimes you rejoin a road you took before and find it improved. at least that's what i'm hoping.

happy weekend.

morning moon

as a hurricane ravages the east coast of the US, it seems rather frivolous to sit at my desk, sipping a mug of tea, contemplating a blog post and the rest of my day and looking out at the beautiful, cold, clear, sunny autumn day that's going on outside. in fact, i unfollowed one asshole on twitter this morning for blithely posting crap-ass scrapbook pages while the storm raged (why was i following such a person anyway?). it feels odd that life goes on as normal while it's interrupted so dramatically for so many people elsewhere. but i suppose that's true at any given moment of any day. it just doesn't always make the news.

i feel a bit guilty for sitting here, brooding in my own thoughts, pondering things like how i lack a group of truly creative people to hang out with or how i will construct a paleo meal this evening when we have 15 more rows of potatoes to dig and use or whether i'll dare to remove the horse's stitches myself to save another vet visit. people have lost their homes and cars and belongings and the physical evidence of their memories and i'm sitting here with my petty concerns.

but again, it happens every day - tragedies, manmade and natural, befall people all over the world all the time and i normally don't worry about it. i'm only worried today because it's filling my screens and my twitter feed. i haven't even been to new york, so how can it really matter to me?

so not to discount the actual, real misery, but i think we should all have better things to think about. like how we can be positive towards that person who meets us with negativity. because maybe precisely what they need is a dose of positivity coming their way. maybe what would give us the most energy is to simply decide that we will give away all of the energy we ourselves have. maybe that's actually how you make more.

i realize this isn't making that much sense, but the hurricane has jumbled up my thoughts. or perhaps it's the morning moon. and i'm mostly left thinking we should just be a whole lot kinder and gentler right here, where we are now. and that it might make a big difference in the big scheme of things. hurricanes or none.

reality is frequently inaccurate

i am a confirmed collector of quotations. i have small notebooks full of them. many from books and a few from films, but mostly from the clever people who surround me. i remember some years ago, a friend complaining that he could never make my quote book. but if you are trying too hard, you'll never make it. and he did eventually do so, with some quote about biology, as i recall (i cannot currently locate that small notebook, as many of my books are still packed away awaiting the renovations of this house).

but i've found myself thinking about quotations recently. because a lot of them seem to be floating around. there are these trendy postcards with pithy comments on them that i think have been brought on by an odd combination of mad men and pinterest. and those "keep calm and ..." variations. and my facebook feed is full of self-help quotes. platitudes really. and i wonder what it is that makes us need platitudes so much at this particular juncture? they're generally quite obvious and a bit vapid and aimed at boosting our self-esteem. but why do we need that?

is it really more prevalent now than in other times? has world economic crisis really shaken our confidence so much that we need empty reassurance that it's all going to be ok if we just believe, don't look back, crush monsanto, eat right, live in the now, stop medicating, eat raw, grow our own, look for the silver lining?

but what if it's not...what if all of the true Idea People are gone and all we're left with is mediocrity? and these platitudes are the logical conclusion. and what we're witnessing is the end of civilization as we knew it? what if it's not going to be ok?

where are the cutesy 50s postcards about that?

netizen vs. real life

i feel i've drifted away from my former life as a solid netizen, to one that's more present in my real world surroundings. i'm more involved in my local community, i do more activities in my area, rather than just partaking of them online. in general, i find myself living a life that's less isolated, more grounded in my surroundings and far more properly dressed than it was. and i'm spending a whole lot less time online. i think it's made me less in touch with the culture of the blogosphere than i was, but perhaps i just feel less of that culture than i did.

but that culture is also changing. ironically, there are more blogs than ever, but i think people read them less. we read in a different way than we did just a couple of years ago. we read on devices, on the go, rather than sitting in front of our laptops. this means we leave less comments. as much as i adore my iPhone and iPad, i'm not THAT fond of typing anything of any substance on them (and odin knows that all of my comments are full of substance). we might ponder just as much an interesting post we've read, but we don't necessarily let the writer know that we were there. and it might not even show that we were, thanks to various readers and such.

i think blogging has changed, even for me. i'm less driven to share every thought (which largely has to do with the aforementioned, undoubtedly). but it's also because i share those snippets i once shared here in other ways (e.g. on facebook and instagram and less so, via twitter). and all of the pretty things i find, i pin now on pinterest instead of linking and pondering here (come to think of that, i kind of miss the old way - pinterest is actually rather impersonal in many ways).

flickr (with which i've always had a love-hate relationship) is largely over for me as a social network. i don't even bother to add my photos to groups anymore (i'm not even really sure when it stopped). it's really just a place in the cloud to park and categorize my photos and a place from which to retrieve my instagram photos for blog posts without actually plugging my phone into iPhoto (tho' that may be solved by iOS6, i've yet to fully explore it, but i've heard there's now iPhoto on the phone).

i guess what i mean by all of this is that i've moved back towards flesh & blood real life. and i think i miss the matrix a little bit, even as i am slightly relieved to be more present where i am here and now.

how do you think the blogosphere has changed in recent years?

thinking about...

eating local.
very local. as in from our own henhouse.
and spoons stolen collected from airlines in another lifetime.
designer ones, by georg jensen, of course (it was SAS after all).

people who tell lies.

about obvious things that will easily be found out.

why do they do that?

what drives them?

even when they must know they'll be exposed?

is it insecurity?

a psychosis?

obliviousness?

or nothing at all.

it's something i just don't understand.

artist collectives.
hanging out with creative people.
i need more of that.
i've not sewn anything other than patches on husband's work jeans in ages.
how is it that i let myself forget how important that is to the well-being of my soul?

worldwide photo walk day october 13.

i just got approved to lead a walk in my town.

now i've just got to get the details of my walk up on the site.

an old friend.

i wish i lived closer to her.

i'd do something nice for her.

just because she deserves it.

even tho' she's feeling like she doesn't.

a headache that lasted two days.

those are no fun.

i blame a big shift in the weather.

that'll do it to me every time.

it's the barometric pressure.

using a purring cat as a pillow can actually provide relief.

for a few minutes at least.

but going to bed early

and avoiding carbs

are really the best things.

what are you thinking about today?

cognitive dissonance

ok, so i write in library books. so sue me.

i recently read william gibson's book of collected essays, distrust that particular flavor. they represent his non-fiction that's appeared in various magazines (wired, rolling stone, nytimes magazine) and other places over the years. it gave me so much food for thought that i immediately reread it. many thoughts and reactions are tumbling in my head and i still haven't synthesized them all.

but in the meantime, i wanted to share some of my favorite bits (it's my blog and i can use it as my memory if i want to):

"...there's often something in a good translation that can't quite be captured in the original."

"If you are fifteen or so, today I suspect that you inhabit a sort of endless digital Now, a state of atemporality enabled by our increasingly efficient communal prosthetic memory. I also suspect that you don't know it, because, an anthropologists tell us, one cannot know one's own culture."

"...every future is someone else's past, every present someone else's future. Upon arriving in the capital-F Future, we discover it, invariably, to be the lower-case now."

"...imaginary futures are always, regardless of what the authors might think, about the day in which they're written."

"I found the material of the actual twenty-first century richer, stranger, more multiplex, than any imaginary twenty-first century could ever have been."

"A book exists at the intersection of the author's subconscious and the reader's response."

"It was entirely a matter of taking dictation from some part of my unconscious that rarely checks in this directly. I wish that that happened more frequently, but I'll take what I can get."

talking about the digital age:
"All of us, creators or audience, have participated in the change so far. It's been something many of us haven't yet gotten a handle on. We are too much of it to see it. It may be that we never do get a handle on it, as the general rate of technological innovation shows no indication of slowing."

"Emergent technology is, by its very nature, out of control, and leads to unpredictable outcomes."

on Singapore, which he, like me (and i swear i had no idea, tho' he did publish the piece in Wired in 1993) characterizes it as Disneyland with the Death Penalty:
"Singapore's airport, the Changi Airtropolis, seemed to possess no more resolution than some early VPL world."

great turns of phrase:
cognitive dissonance
democratizaton of connoisseurship
terminal documents

on collecting:
"The idea of the Collectible is everywhere today, and sometimes strikes me as some desperate instinctive reconfiguring of the postindustrial flow, some basic mammalian response to the bewildering flood of sheer stuff we produce."

"eBay is simply the only thing I've found on the Web that keeps me coming back. It is, for me anyway, the first "real" virtual place." (he wrote this in 1999.)

on Tokyo:
"If you believe, as I do, that all cultural change is essentially technology-driven, you pay attention to Japan."

"Something about dreams, about the interface between the private and the consensual. You can do that here, in Tokyo: be a teenage girl on the street in a bondage-nurse outfit. You can dream in public. And the reason you can do it is that this is one of the safest cities in the world, and a special zone, Harajuku, has already been set aside for you."

on the media:
"Indeed, today, reliance on broadcasting is the very definition of a technologically backward society."

"This outcome may be an inevitable result of the migration to cyberspace of everything that we do with information."

"This is something I would bring to the attention of every diplomat, politician, and corporate leader: The future, eventually, will find out you. The future, wielding unimaginable tools of transparency, will have its way with you. In the end, you will be seen to have done that which you did."

"A world of informational transparency will necessarily be one of the deliriously multiple viewpoints, shot through with misinformation, disinformation, conspiracy theories and a quotidian degree of madness. We may be able to see what's going on more quickly, but that doesn't mean we'll agree about it any more readily."

"Dystopias are no more real than utopias. None of us ever really inhabits either - except, in the case of dystopias, in the relative and ordinarily tragic sense of life in some extremely unfortunate place."

"If you wish to know an era, study its more lucid nightmares."

On Greg Gerard's Phantom Shanghai:
"Liminal. Images at the threshold. Of the threshold. The dividing line. Something slicing across accretions of cultural memory like Buñuel's razor."

on history:
"History, I was learning, there at the start of the 1960s, never stops happening."
my own scrawl in response to this (because you know i wrote in this library book):
"...it just seems like it does when you're in the midst of it."

"...history, though initially discovered in whatever soggy trunk or in whatever caliber, is a species of speculative fiction itself, prone to changing interpretation and further discoveries."

on whether we'll have chips in our heads:
"There is another argument against the need to implant computing devices, be they glass or goo. It's a very simple one, so simply that some have difficulty grasping it. It has to do with a certain archaic disctinction we still tend to make, a distinction between computing and 'the world.' Between, if you like, the virtual and the real...I very much doubt that our grandchildren will understand the distinction between that which is a computer and that which isn't."

"So, it won't, I don't think, be a matter of computers crawling buglike down into the most intimate chasms of our being, but of humanity crawling buglike out into the dappled light and shadow of the presence of that which we will have created, which we are creating now, and which seems to me to already be in process of re-creating us."

perhaps this is why we like reality t.v.:
"We sit here, watching video of places a few blocks away, and feel--pleasurably--less real."

on the real cyborg:
"...as I watched Dr. Satan on that wooden television in 1952. I was becoming a part of something, in the act of watching that screen. We all were. We are today. The human species was already in the process of growing itself an extended communal nervous system, and was doing things with it that had previously been impossible: viewing things at a distance, viewing things that had happened in the past, watching dead men talk and hearing their words. What had been absolute limits of the experiential world had in a very real and literal way been profoundly and amazingly altered, extended, changed...And the real marvel of this was how utterly we took it all for granted."

"The world's cyborg was an extended human nervous system: film, radio, broadcast television, and a shift in perception so profound that I believe we've yet to understand it."

"We are implicit, here, all of us, in a vast physical construct of artificially linked nervous sytems. Invisible. We cannot touch it. We are it. We are already the Borg."

"There's my cybernetic organism: the Internet. If you accept that 'physical' isn't only the things we can touch, it's the largest man-made object on the planet....And we who participate in it are physically a part of it."

So much food for thought here, don't you think? in any case, it seems we're already in the matrix.

it is a strange and wonderful universe

i read this op-ed piece in the LATimes the other day. it's written by a professor from arizona state (one of my many alma maters or is it almas mater?).  it's an editorial piece about science and the universe and particle physics and quantum mechanics and a little bit about religion - so light reading. it's not too long, so it's worth popping over and reading it.

as i am wont to do, i've been thinking a lot about it and i even shared it on facebook. as much as i loathe facebook (way more than google, but slightly less than flickr), it is a good place for discussion of such things. one of my friends said this: "Very interesting. We come from nothing... and return to nothing. Confirmation of such will only strengthen blind belief in God - simply because the idea of nothingness is just too enormous and unbearable. IMHO." my initial response to that was, "sad, but undoubtedly true." but it haunted me a little bit.

why is the idea of nothingness too enormous and unbearable? because we have constructed it as such, not because it actually IS too enormous and unbearable. doesn't the notion that we are hurling through a universe of ever-receding and ever-expanding, intangible nothingness actually match very nicely a feeling that occasionally nags us from somewhere deep inside anyway?  to try to explain it through some divine creator lets us off the hook in a way that i don't think is proving to be good for us or for the planet.

i am actually comforted by the notion that the universe could have spontaneously been created out of nothing due to some uncertainty principle. this, for me, fits with life in general - everything is uncertain, as much as we try our best to control it. to know that there is an actual uncertainty principle at work explains a lot.  and i don't find at all that it makes life meaningless or purposeless - on the contrary, it seems that more than ever, life is precisely what we make of it.

a world worth living in

september 11. all over the world, people are marking the tenth anniversary. i say marking because celebrating, that word we normally associate with anniversaries, isn't the right word, is it? like many, watching all of these programs and listening to the radio (which is mostly what i did, because i was driving across the country today), gave me pause to remember where i was and what i was doing when i heard about what was happening to the world trade center on that day ten years ago.

i was, just as i did today, driving. that day, i was listening to de sorte spejder, an afternoon radio program that was normally very funny in a biting, ironic way. so when i heard anders and anders talking about a plane crashing into the world trade center in NYC, i initially thought they were playing an elaborate radio joke. then, there was a second plane, and i thought hmm, they're carrying this one on a little farther than usual. i think initially i imagined a small private plane, piloted by a near-sighted, lost midwesterner, but when there were two and then they began talking about the pentagon too, i thought ok guys, this is a radio joke taken too far. but then i arrived to pick up sabin from her daycare and found out it wasn't a joke at all. but far from it.

i don't think any of us could have imagined how that event would change the world. there has been a shift in mentality worldwide. we are more wary, less open to strangers, more insular and protecting of ourselves. we put up with the most absurd things at airport security - removing half our clothes just to enter the airport. we're simply much more afraid. our innocence is lost.

tho' they say it's the most analyzed event in history, i'm still uncertain that we learned the right lessons from it. i certainly don't feel that the lessons we learned have made the world a better or safer place. in fact, i'm a little concerned that the crumbling of those towers started a crumbling of the world as we know it and we haven't yet seen the end of that crumble, let alone started to rebuild it.

so when on the eve of september 11, i saw the sign above on the side of a building in copenhagen, advertising an exhibition about what makes a city worth living in, i started thinking about what constitutes a world worth living in. i think that many of us are in a process of rethinking that.

i'm still thinking about it and don't have any final answers, but i have some ideas. they have to do with performing meaningful work for which i can see the results (and which do not involve selling my soul). they have to do with being closer to and more in tune with nature. they have to do with consuming less. increasingly, i also think that the key is more openness and less expectations. i think achieving these things is a process and doesn't happen all at once. maybe the events of september 11 started us on this path, or maybe it would have happened anyway.

brain fog or how she talked about bin laden and the garden in one post

i had all sorts of bloggy brilliance in my head this morning during blogger's scheduled maintenance downtime. and of course, as soon as blogger was back online, all that brilliance had slouched off into a kind of soupy fog.

actually, it was one of those mornings where i woke up exhausted from involved and crazy dreams involving the american embassy in copenhagen. i'm clearly still scarred by last week's experience.  i felt like i needed a nap already when i woke up.

since i couldn't blog, i actually sat down and worked diligently for two solid hours. i didn't even open flickr or pinterest, which is big for me. i did check in on facebook, to see if my nephew had had his mouth washed out with soap for the string of swear words (which i believe were actually song lyrics) he posted as his status update last evening. (he had.) but i didn't linger.

*  *  *

i checked in a bit on the news. they're beginning to release some information about the documents they found in bin laden's house. what's being said is how involved he still was in the day-to-day leadership of al qaeda. a guy who was holed up for five years in a completely unwired house next to a military academy in pakistan was just working from home? i have my doubts.

i have tried both working at home and having a long-distance manager and i can tell you, that works in the short term, but not on a long term basis. and it especially does not work if you are not connected. it smacks a bit of justification and reassurance to me. yup, he was still really important and running the show. i don't think so.  but time will undoubtedly tell.

*  *  *

we planted the bulk of the rest of the garden - beans, peas, beets, onions, corn, carrots and most of the brassicas (that is my new favorite word). tomorrow, we're going to move out the kale and brussels sprouts (more brassicas) that were started indoors, along with the leeks, squash and pumpkins. the lowest it should go over the next week is 5°C, so we should be out of the frost danger zone.

i also started some asparagus from seed and tho' i completely didn't follow the complicated directions on the back of the package, every single seed i planted came up. but i may wait for their little roots to get a bit more robust before those get planted out. you can't pick asparagus for the first 3 years anyway.

*  *  *

have any of you read jonathan franzen's freedom? i'm reading it now and although i don't even like this patty woman, i can't put it down. franzen just captures something so essentially middle class and midwest, that even when you don't like the characters, you can just so RELATE.

*  *  *

well, i've bored you long enough, so i'm off to see if i can unfollow anyone else on twitter for posting stuff that's just too personal or evangelical.

sunshine helps

these days of endless sunshine make the world seem a friendlier, better place.
it makes it easier to handle all of life's small frustrations.
because they do come anyway, even when the sun shines.
but they matter so much less.
especially in the golden light of evening.

what you can't see is a bit of a nip in the air.
they predict frost tonight.
so all of the little plants are tucked in.
as are the strawberries, which are loaded with blooms.
it's going to be a great year for strawberries.

it's shaping up to be a great year for a lot of things.
but not always in the way you expect.
but i'm trying to let go of expecting.
and complaining.
and fault-finding.
and negativity.
and of fear. mostly of fear.

i'm not there yet,
but i find the sunshine helps.

cooking a life

cross-processed fuji sensia 400

when we moved my friend michelle sent me a little book that she picked up at her local library sale - it's a slim volume and well-loved in appearance by all of the hands it passed through. it's a pleasure just to hold it and think about all of those who held it before me and ponder the durability of words for a moment. all of those words, waiting there for so many people to read them, resting comfortably in themselves, sure of who they are. what a profound thing.  i'm not sure why i didn't read it at the time, but i was in such a haze with all of the changes going on that i didn't even remember to email her and thank her (i did eventually, don't worry). or maybe it's just that the right time to read it hadn't yet come.

the book is called instructions to the cook: a zen master's lessons in living a life that matters by bernard glassman and rick fields. and it's not really about cooking at all, but about living. i'm not normally a big fan of the platitude-ridden self-help book, but this one is different. it's not so in-your-face, it's more subtle. more storytelling without being preachy or full of obvious and overly-positive mantras.

they talk a lot in the book about the importance of the daily practice of meditation. and i think about how sometimes all of those voices in my head seem so LOUD. and how i wish they weren't obsessively counting (seriously, i find i'm at 78, 79, 80, before i even notice i'm doing it - does this happen to anyone else?). well, i tried to meditate and i cannot make it work. i can't sit still, i can't stop wiggling and i most definitely can't clear my head and think of nothing (and their instructions to count slowly to 10 just do not help with that whole counting thing). the only place i can come close to meditation is at the sewing machine and sometimes in painting stones. but maybe that's ok.

but i love the notion that we cook a life...the metaphor somehow captures what happens...combing various ingredients (people, places, experiences) into a life well lived. and considering that some of my most content moments occur when i'm in the kitchen, cooking a life is an appealing notion.

so now, i wonder what's for dinner.