eddies in the space-time continuum

i found an old ring in a box today, one that i hadn't been able to find for some years. i even swear i'd looked in that box already, several times, but today, there it was. it's the black hills gold ring with the marquise cut diamond. the ring was my mom's and the diamond a remnant of my first, mistaken engagement. i would occasionally have pangs of sadness that i had lost it, but apparently i only mislaid it. for about a decade or so. i hardly ever wear gold jewelry anymore, but i'm glad i finally found it. the other ring is my mom's engagement and wedding ring. when i found the lost one, i went digging in a more recent jewelry bowl, looking for mom's ring. they kind of fit together, but also don't. but it was in a way that was pleasing to me today. i think it's part of the always surprising grief process. i even put them back on after my shower. i just need to be wearing them right now. for some reason unknown even to myself. they make me feel close to mom in a way that i seem to need right now. which is perhaps why that ring showed up today in that box that i swear i had looked in before. perhaps it was there today because i needed it to be. when things like that happen, i always think of arthur dent, stuck on that planet where he perfected the sandwich made of some strange beasts that periodically ran through, slipping between worlds on some eddy in the space-time continuum. today, an eddy brought the ring back to the box where it belonged. just at the moment i needed it.

* * *

in these days of zoom meetings, what's on people's bookshelves?

* * *

whenever i had a break today, i read some of this old interview with murakami in the paris review. that made me happy. and made me want to write. and maybe even made me want to go for a run. but not so much that i did so.

* * *

there were a bunch of great quotes in the murakami article and i want to save some of them here, capital letters and all:

"When I start to write, I don’t have any plan at all. I just wait for the story to come. I don’t choose what kind of story it is or what’s going to happen. I just wait. " 

”I myself, as I’m writing, don’t know who did it. The readers and I are on the same ground. When I start to write a story, I don’t know the conclusion at all and I don’t know what’s going to happen next. If there is a murder case as the first thing, I don’t know who the killer is. I write the book because I would like to find out. If I know who the killer is, there’s no purpose to writing the story.” 

”When I’m in writing mode for a novel, I get up at four a.m. and work for five to six hours. In the afternoon, I run for ten kilometers or swim for fifteen hundred meters (or do both), then I read a bit and listen to some music. I go to bed at nine p.m. I keep to this routine every day without variation. The repetition itself becomes the important thing; it’s a form of mesmerism. I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind. But to hold to such repetition for so long—six months to a year—requires a good amount of mental and physical strength. In that sense, writing a long novel is like survival training. Physical strength is as necessary as artistic sensitivity.” 

”All human beings have a sickness in their minds. That space is a part of them. We have a sane part of our minds and an insane part. We negotiate between those two parts; that is my belief. I can see the insane part of my mind especially well when I’m writing—insane is not the right word. Unordinary, unreal. I have to go back to the real world, of course, and pick up the sane part. But if didn’t have the insane part, the sick part, I wouldn’t be here.” 

“…a sense of humor is a very stable thing. You have to be cool to be humorous. When you’re serious, you could be unstable; that’s the problem with seriousness. But when you’re humorous, you’re stable. But you can’t fight the war smiling.” 

”Experience itself is meaning.” – Murakami (i might have to have that one tattooed.)

kind of appropriate that, since the other phrase i'd like tattooed is from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, "reality is frequently inaccurate." said by Ford Prefect, not Arthur Dent. and one more, from Bitov, "unreality is a condition of life." that's it, my next three tattoos.

bringing back finishing friday

it's -15°C, so perfect for staying indoors and reviving the old concept of finishing friday.  i've got a stack of leather that's ready to be turned into iPad cases, some stones waiting for their feathers, a couple of sweaters in need of repair (not pictured), a scarf i'm working on for myself (there will be no way to finish that today, at the rate i knit), and book 3 of murakami's 1Q84. the book has to be back at the library in 10 days (not that it will take me that long to read it), so i fear that the book will win out. tho' it's nice to feel the inklings of creativity beginning to return, so perhaps a bit of sewing or painting will be in order as well.

happy weekend, one and all. what will you finish today?

my world now has two moons

murakami, like no one other than dostoevsky and perhaps gabriel garcia marquez, can transport me to another world and leave me seeing the cracks in this one and wondering where i really am.  the power of words to transport is awe-inspiring, to say the least.  i'm nearly done with 1Q84. tho' it will remain in my mind for a very long time.

if you haven't read it. get it. now.

don't trip on the baggage

"the world is, after all, an endless battle of contrasting memories." - murakami, 1Q84

i'm grateful for the thoughts you shared on my language post last week. both in the comments and via email. the post was some initial thinking about some situations i've found myself in of late and all of your ideas have helped me sort out a bit further what i'm feeling about this issue. it is to an extent, as jessica suggested, a question of whether you feel you belong or not. and the ever-present (if you're me), resistance to belonging fully.

in one of the settings, i've made an active decision not to belong anymore and tonight will be the last time i put myself through what has become a nearly painful evening. the decision to withdraw from that group has more to do with pony abuse, tho' it's also connected to language abuse, than with not feeling like myself. mostly, i think tho', it's a clash of values - or perhaps culture. in my model of the world, it matters more to do all you can than to righteously follow arbitrary rules. i also value good arguments and "that's how we've always done it" is simply not a good argument. once i've lost respect for a person or a group, it's over for me. quite probably my own shortcoming, but nonetheless true. i just hope that i can hold my tongue tonight.

with the other group, i hold back because i'm new and i'm getting the lay of the land. i can also see that my purpose for being involved is different than what the group is currently preoccupied with. but i think it will be ok, as there's room for both my purpose and their preoccupations. but i definitely do hold myself back because it's all in danish in a way that i wouldn't if i could speak english in that context. however, that's not all bad.  it's a good lesson for me to learn. and a bit like taking your husband's last name when you get married, it's a way of starting with a fresh, clean slate. and life doesn't present us with that many chances to do that.

but back to language and the way it constructs us. how we articulate, the words we choose, the history and weight behind those words (both our own and linguistically) - it all matters. we use language to include and to exclude - think of the way doctors speak so that patients can't understand or how when you join a new company and don't yet know all of the acronyms - language is both a way of marking who belongs and perhaps more importantly, who doesn't.

but things do get interesting when the intersections of language involve other languages and other histories and other memories and other baggage. or maybe i'm just preoccupied with all of this because reading murakami makes me even more introspective than usual.

on reading crap novels. and then not.

i have a problem. it seems pretty insurmountable. i've lived with it for years and i doubt i'll ever overcome it. once i start a novel, i am compelled to finish it, no matter how crappy it is. recent cases in point: iain banks' dead air. jennifer egan's a visit from the good squad. anything by hanne vibeke holst (i've recently read dronningeofret and kongemordet (HVH has her finger on the pulse of danish politics, but as a writer is somewhere between dan brown and steig larsson - in other words - mediocre at best).

it's actually rather strange, since what i studied for rather longer than most was literature. so what is it about a crappy novel that makes me unable to stop reading it when i discover it's crap?  why is it that a conscious awareness that life is too short doesn't even make me stop. in fact, i'll stay up late, frantically reading, rushing towards the finish. just to get it over with. why, oh why do i do this when there are so many good books in the world that warrant my attention?

when i think about authors that have truly captured my attention and deserved to be read to the end and then read again with a kind of manic attention, only two come to mind. only two authors have written stories and created worlds so compelling that i felt quite literally sucked into them...a part of the book and the universe it described. books i looked up from and was surprised to find myself in my own home (or on a plane or in a hotel room or in the car or the bathtub). worlds so deep that i felt i lost a little bit of myself there. and i mourned quietly when i was finished with the book and found that i wasn't inhabiting that world at all, except in the pieces of it i indelibly carry with me, because it was so well-written.

so why is it that when books don't do that, don't even come close to that, i still can't put them aside?

maybe it's because it's so seldom it happens.

there's only one dostoevsky and only one murakami. the rest don't even come close.

an interview with megan of running wild

megan runs marathons. and usually, something like that would mean that we have nothing in common and so our paths would never cross. but, being a runner, she's also got feet, which meant she was a shoe-in for being part of the shoe per diem project(pun intended). :-) actually, back when i first got acquainted with her, she was known as OP - the optimistic pessimist. and i always thought that was a very clever bloggy name. but anyway, on to her interview. being both horrified and fascinated by runners (especially after reading murakami's what i talk about when i talk about running), i had to ask her about that. and she scores extra points for actually mentioning him!

1. you are a running madwoman, what drives you to do it, even if no one is chasing you?

At first I was driven to run just to see if I could do it. I can’t really say that I liked it all that much and at some points I hated it. After my marathon, something just clicked; it was one of the most soul-searching times of my life.

Now I’m driven to run for two reasons:

#1 – Physically, I have to.
Not running isn’t an option. My body is used to running and when it doesn’t get taken out for a run it gets antsy. I often tell people I’m like a dog that needs to be walked. If I don’t get out for a few runs in the week I physically feel bad and pace around a lot.

#2 – Find my center, emotional stability, inspiration.
Running has allowed me to reach a level of peace and calmness that I never thought possible. All day long I’m a mother, a daughter, a friend, an employee, a student…I’m somebody’s something. Running is for me, it’s mine. It’s my time to purge and process all that’s happening in my life. I have the best ideas when I run. I’ve often thought about taking a piece of paper and pen with me as my thoughts aren’t always as clear after the run. At some point it became less about the exercise and more about feeling inspired. In a way, running is my art.

2. if you were going to run away, where would you go? and would you literally run?

Currently, if I were to run away I’d go to Hawaii. My running partner is going there tomorrow and I miss her already, AND that’s where Haruki Murakami wrote some of What I Talk About When I Talk About Running – an inspirational book for anyone, even non-runners. There were times where I just kept chuckling to myself and nodding my head in agreement while reading this book. I’d love to channel Haruki while running on the beaches of Hawaii.

Would I run there? Of course not! I’m not exactly known for my light packing skills. That and the whole issue of the ocean.

3. the best thing about 9-year-old boys?

What isn’t great about 9-year-old boys? Their views on life, food, and bugs. Nine is by far my favorite age to date. He’s independent enough to do his own thing, but still loves spending time with me.

One of the things I love most about him is his innovativeness. His way of exploring and trying new things never ceases to amaze me. I often wonder if we put 9-year-olds in charge of world issues if they could do a better job than those currently in power. Sure this would result in entire towns made out of marshmallows, lego sculptures in every city, and mandatory weekly nerf gun exercises, but hey, we’d have world peace.

4. the worst thing about 9-year-old boys?

Laundry time. Ughhh. Yuck. I’m seriously contemplating starting to wearing gloves. It’s something new and unusual every week. Although, I must admit I do get a kick out of wondering what would inspire him to put what he puts in his pockets. What must be going through his head at that very moment. I have yet to find a living creature, but it’s only a matter of time.

5. iPhone or blackberry?

iPhone – a no brainer. Just yesterday my neighbor had a confused look on her face starring at her blackberry. She said she’s had it for a week and can’t figure the thing out. She was planning on watching the CD to help her figure out how to use it. As I struggled to understand her woes, I caressed my iPhone and thought about my first week with it. There was no figuring it out or watching of a CD. It was completely intuitive. I shudder to think of having anything other than an iPhone at this point in my life.

6. your wine of choice?

Inspiration Red from the Imagine Moore Winery in New York. Ménage a Trois

7. what's your starbucks drink of choice?

Carmel Frappucino

8. your guilty pleasures?

Starbucks, sea salt & vinegar potato chips, going to a movie in the middle of the day on a weekday, chinese food in bed on a rainy day, The Real World....the list just goes on and on.

9. your life philosophy in one sentence?

Keep moving, no matter what – mentally and physically.

Seriously – if you become stagnant why bother? No matter how tough stuff gets if you keep moving forward, things will get better.

10. what child-like traits do you retain despite ostensibly being an adult?

Lying in the grass, watching the clouds for hours.
Giggling at words that sound dirty, but aren’t....caulk anyone?

* * *

thank you, megan, for answering a few of my questions.

but damn you for making me think running might be a good idea...

go check out megan's blog and stop by to see what shoes she was wearing today.

shadows of thoughts

reading murakami (again again) and feeling thankful that my chairs and lamp still have shadows.

many thoughts are swirling in my head, but they have yet to coalesce and form shadows...so please stand by....

shifting forces of gravity

i did something this week that feels like a major step for me.  husband is always teasing me that my friends are all virtual and the things i find of interest happen in places far removed from where i live. so when i read in the local newspaper that a new association of local artists was forming, i decided to get involved where i am. and i joined.

in order to do so, i had to say that i was an artist.  that felt really strange and like a major shifting of gravity beneath my feet. related to this step, i also worked on setting up my long-procrastinated etsy shop this week. i still haven't listed any items, but i'm getting closer and i will let you all know here when it's up and running. and i even called it shifting forces of gravity, because that's what taking this step feels like.

i'm not sure what kind of artist i am and that's a little bit the issue. i've tried so many things over the past year, in my process of getting back in touch with my creativity, that i've been kind of all over the place (see yesterday's post for evidence of this). a bit of painting, some sewing, some quilting, a few little clay robots, gocco prints and of course, my photography. i'm leaving the door open and we'll see where the muses take me.

i think one of the places i want to go is back towards these driftwood people that husband and i made together a couple (or is it 5 or more) years ago:

"great love"

j & j-p, 2002

easter island meets denmark

j & j-p 2002

at the time we made these, we also made a few others for friends and family as gifts. it was a really interesting process. we'd lay out all of the driftwood on the table and see which pieces spoke to us. then, husband would fashion the metal wire into arms and legs if that was what was needed or attach them and do all of the hammering and drilling and screwing bits. i did the painting and the actual composition. it was a great partnership and i'm not sure how we drifted away from it. now that he's got his workshop and i my studio, we should be able to go back to these collaborative pieces.

i'm brewing a post on my sources of inspiration these days and will share that will you soon. happy weekend one and all...

p.s. shifting forces of gravity is totally a murakami thing. :-)

strings of memory unravelling inside of me

wow, how did it get to be friday already? this week has flown past. late last sunday night, i promised that before the week was out, i'd write about my favorite murakami, so i guess i'd better get to it.

drum roll, please...and my favorite murakami is......

hard-boiled wonderland and the end of the world. or is it wind-up bird chronicle? or is it dance, dance, dance? i have a hard time with this question. for one, because of murakami's recurring themes--realities which bleed into one another, seedy hotels, wells, young disturbed girls in need of mental help--his books blur together for me a bit.

i do think wind-up bird is the best and i certainly learned the most from it, including some things i didn't really want to know, like the art of skinning someone alive with a very sharp knife. but my sister has that book right now (she was a little miffed i hadn't warned her about the skinning), so i can't really refer to it in writing this, so i think i'll go with hard-boiled wonderland. you see, i need to refer to the actual book in order to write this, because what i love most about murakami is his language (tho' i realize there is a level of absurdity in that statement since i'm not reading it in the original japanese, therefore it's actually his translator's language). my extensively underlined, scrawled-in copy of hard-boiled wonderland is translated by alfred birnbaum and i actually find his translations less smooth than those of jay rubin, but not knowing japanese, i don't really know who is capturing the style and language of murakami's original better. but, as usual, i digress.

often the turns of phrase i love most are just that, turns of phrase, fragments, not even whole sentences. things like:

• invisible airborne sediments of time
• tapping into something beyond memory
• time folded back on itself
• a remnant torn from a bolt of the sky
• a distinct plum pit of chaos at the center
• the cut ends of my memory
• awareness spliced together
• the smell of memory, real memory
• the screen of consciousness

it's clear, looking over this list that i'm drawn to issues of time and memory. i knew that about me already. if i'd written that dissertation, i'd have written on conceptions of time and memory in eastern european postmodern fiction. i think one of the things i love about murakami is he transports me almost instantly to the higher level of thinking about these issues that i had achieved when i was in graduate school. it makes me feel good to know it can be instantly turned on again and that i haven't lost it completely.

i've always been interested in the intersection of memory and fiction, because isn't a memory already a fiction in a way, since it can never truly capture the reality of a moment as it was? does your memory of a real event actually change the event? or even construct it? i love that murakami explores these questions and that his gift is being able to express them so well. i often feel he has tapped directly into a thought i've had but had been unable to articulate.

in graduate school and for years in my journals i have written from a quote, just to see where it takes me. i'm often surprised where i end up. it's always interesting to see what comes out my fingers onto the page. all of my copies of murakami are full of underlinings and scrawlings and scribblings in the margins that will provide me fodder for this way of thinking through writing for years to come. here are just a few:

• "memories feign through scarcely perceived doors of my being."
• "i began to feel a string of memory slowly unravelling inside of me."
  
• "without memory to measure things against, how could i ever know?"
  
• "even without you knowing, you function as yourself."
  
• "as you create memories, you're creatin' a parallel world."
  

what would it mean for a string of memory to slowly unravel inside of me? would it be the dissolution of a relationship? or would it be an unfolding of a long forgotten memory (a paradox in itself), a resurfacing of a moment of perfect clarity, brought on by a scent or a certain cast of light? what would the unravelling feel like? would it make me feel free? or sorrowful? or joyful? lighter? heavier? reading such a sentence makes me want to be more conscious and on the lookout for such moments. perhaps strings of memory unravel inside of me all the time and i'm just not conscious of it. perhaps i can tune in and become more conscious of such moments, just by reading such a poetic sentence.

for me, this is why reading enriches my life--especially my inner life, but also my external life. reading murakami has sparked many an evening philosophical conversation with husband. he hasn't read any of it, but it's enough that i have. then i throw out some of these thoughts and we have endless hours of conversation.

i think murakami somehow confirms the vague feeling that i have that we are living simultaneously in multiple realities and that if we could just tune in a bit better, we could become aware of them and use them together in a more harmonious way. there must be moments of overlap. i feel quite certain that i'm living at least one parallel life in my dreams and i have flashes of this parallel existence in my waking hours, which no doubt help me cope with the reality at hand. i already think that creativity can flow between these realities that lie within us, and that talking about inspiration and having a muse is another way of trying to capture this. murakami just expresses it all in a way that speaks to me and makes me feel it might be possible to tune in and live more fully in all of my realities. which is why i'm also a bit apprehensive for the day when i've read all of his books and don't have any left. what if i'm not there yet when i've read everything he has to offer?

favorite reads of 2008

a new year, a new box of beautiful pencils. since i decided to draw my purchases in 2009, ala kate of obsessive consumption, i felt i needed good tools with which to do it, so i got these lovely pastel pencils. they are beautiful, vibrant colors, but have a tendency to smear, so i may go back to my favorite stædtler triplus fineliners. but in the meantime, i am enjoying just looking at them in their pristine loveliness and they were pretty cool for drawing the embroidery thread skeins, so they do have their purpose.

i got a bit of alone time today. i warmed up the atelier and have had a couple of hours to myself out here (ya gotta love WiFi), listening to alanis, painting a bookshelf, looking through books, checking out my latest dozens kit, taking pictures of my pretty pencils. painting is so therapeutic, somehow in the methodic repetition of the strokes, my mind clears and find that i'm feeling peaceful and content again.

i'd also like to think that it's because we really got the colors right out here...the peaceful, yet creatively stimulating, warm teals, the old sideboard, being surrounded by all of my best creative supplies. but maybe it's also because i did get the tree taken down and that's not weighing on my mind anymore. the kids cleaned the bathroom sinks and swept, so that's not bugging me anymore either. whatever it is, i'm feeling much better.

* * *

now that i'm feeling in less of a deep blue funk, i think my head is clear enough to make the list of the best books i read in 2008. early in the year, i tried to keep a list of all the books i'd read. i did an installment of it in february and one in april and then, sadly, i didn't keep up the list. i did, however, keep reading. and reading. and reading. and i'm not sure i could accurately reconstruct because a lot of books were shelved in this house since april i might not remember all of those i read.

i discovered several new authors in 2008--haruki murakami and paul theroux and norwegian author eric fosnes hansen. i realize murakami and theroux aren't really "new" authors, but they were new to me and i went a bit nuts reading them, especially murakami. i think i only have two of his books left that i haven't read. they're on my shelf, being saved for a special occasion because i'm a little afraid of being in a situation where there's no new murakami left for me to read.

but here we go, my favorites reads of all those books i read in 2008 (not in any particular order other than the order in which they came to mind):

1. nigella lawson, nigella christmas. my new speciality--the julelog cake--came from this one, along with much of the other food i made in this house from thanksgiving through new year's eve. it's beautifully photographed, the recipes are easy, there are lots of pomegranates, and nigella writes like a dream. i want to lick her words off the actual page.
2. nigel slater, real food. most of the food i made in the first half of 2008 came from this cookbook. the coq au riesling sustained us through our kitchenless summer, because it worked a treat slow-cooked all day over the old rusty wood-burning stove in the yard.
3. jamie oliver, ministry of food. on those days when you're not inspired to cook anything, you can open this book and find something fast, easy, healthy and wonderful. jamie oliver has done marvelous things to make people all over the world into cooks, even when they thought they weren't. 
4. paul theroux, ghost train to the eastern star. this was his update of the trip he took 30 years before and which launched his career as a travel writer with his great railway bazaar. what won me over is that he may dislike singapore even more than i do, but he wrote so eloquently about it. but most marvelous of all is his mode of traveling for the sake of the journey and the experience. i hope i will be a better traveler on my next trip now that i've read him. and the best moment of the book is when he's in tokyo, hanging out with murakami!
5. paul theroux, dark star safari. i'm reading this right now and although i'm not finished, i'm putting it on the list (i began it in 2008). i am in love with africa thanks to this book. it makes me want to go back to egypt with a new attitude and i simply cannot wait to see what he says about cape town, which is one of my favorite places in the world.  i just ordered a couple more paul theroux travel books on amazon because i can't stand the thought of being without when i'm done with this one.
6. erik fosnes hansen, tales of protection. i discovered this norwegian author in an oslo bookstore on one of my frequent trips to oslo in 2008. especially the first tale in this book of three interwoven stories is haunting and will make you look at bees in an entirely new light. the underlying theme explores coincidences and whether there really are any. 
7. haruki murakami, wind-up bird chronicle. this is the murakami that started it all for me. i hadn't been so drawn in by an author since dostoevsky. and it left me in the same fractured mental state, seeing japanese everywhere and generally having murakami moments. the only thing i didn't do was manage to spend time down a well, but i probably would have had i come across one.
8. haruki murakami, hard-boiled wonderland and the end of the world. this was my other favorite of the murakami i read this year, although this isn't to say that i didn't like norwegian wood, kafka on the shore, after dark and all the rest. there's just something about these guys who live in overlapping realities that i find so appealing. reading him puts me a heightened state of mind that is what i imagine cocaine is like. that's it, murakami is like cocaine to me. 
9. elizabeth gilbert, eat, pray, love. i know, it's one of those women's magazine must-read books, but this book was just what i needed at the beginning of 2008. to read of another woman's journey back to happiness after my bad break-up with my job, was just what i needed. and gilbert is funny and smart, if a little navel-gazing, but what do you expect in such a book?
10. robert scoble and shel isreal, naked conversations. the book is a couple of years old and that's a lifetime in the days of web 2.0, but it holds up well and offers tons of great ideas and advice for blogging in a business context. it made me realize that what i'd really love to do is find a way to blog for a living. i'm still pondering how to go about that one.

there are many other books i read and i might do a second installment of this list sometime later this week. i'd love to know the great books you read in 2008.

pure point of view

how many versions of me did i set free in this mirrored ceiling in tivoli last night? and what are they doing right now?

parallel worlds in the mirror

what if, when we look in the mirror, we leave an imprint of ourselves there in the glass? a version of us that remains behind after we walk away. think of the infinite number of times you've looked in a mirror. the multitude of selves left behind. what are they doing? do we leave one behind every time we use the mirror, so the mirrors in my home, for example, are filled with hundreds of me. versions of me, one from every day, sometimes several times a day. do they have an entire existence over there in the mirror?

do my mirror self-portraits with the camera have a sort of doubling effect? think of the multiplicity of images. in the early days of photography, it was feared by some to capture the soul. i personally think the soul is more elusive than that. but, do mirrors and photos (which are a mirror of sorts) capture some fragment? something that remains. i don't have the sense of being less for losing those fragments of self, but i do wonder if they carry on parallel life over there in the mirror. a reality that, while different from the one i have here in the world that is not in the mirror, is a reality nonetheless.

how do those mirror selves fill their time? do they have entire lives going on beyond the glass? can they move beyond the confines of the mirror's frame? or do they wait there for you to return? i have this feeling that it's a bit like i think it is with my dream world--another life or lives going on over there entirely. because once you've left the fragment behind, you lose control of it. it separates and goes on to its own existence. you and yet not you.

is time the same over there in that mirror? or does it stand still--for example, the fragment of self you leave in a hotel room mirror, where you won't return to, do you age, or do you remain the age you left in that reflection? in your home mirrors, time must move at more or less the same speed as it does in this space, because there are so many new versions of you that you leave in those mirrors.

do you suppose it would be possible, if one were wearing the right lenses or was in the right frame of mind, to catch a glimpse of all of the people who have ever looked in that mirror? so the antique mirror we have in the hall would contain all of the people who looked in it before us and we would be shocked at how many people were there if we could just get our focus right and see them. i would really love to be able to do that, if only to see what they were wearing.

can you tell i'm reading murakami again? this time it's after dark.

of murakami, reality, home and possibilities

"it's no wonder you like to read books about reality, since you live so far from it." -- monica, starbucks, copenhagen airport, 10.09.08

my sister meant it better than it sounds. we had discussed murakami in the car all the way to the airport. i had said that what i like about murakami was his exploration of reality or rather realities. she said that likes how the language makes you trust those jobless, 30-something male characters. i was on my way to oslo, she on her way to chicago. they were calling me by name overhead, but i still had to get a grande latte.

what she was getting at was the crazy reality of our life at the moment. we've just (almost) finished getting our house the way we want it and now we're considering moving. not just down the street, but to another country. and at the moment, we don't really know which country. will it be norway or singapore? they sound diametrically opposed, but what they have in common is shipping. both are big locations for shipping. and i'm in shipping. and husband is considering getting into shipping as well. and there are exciting opportunities in both places. for both of us.

but it's all up in the air right now. theoretical. the stuff of pure possibility at the moment. and the subject of much conversation and speculation and scheming and imagining. how to make it work. scheming ways of having it all. it's hard to imagine parting with our house at the moment (i will definitely be taking that red smeg, no matter what, even if i have to sail it to singapore). but, could we afford to keep our house and buy another home? (that depends on the offers really and those are also theoretical--strong possibilities, but not definite yet.) norway is really, really expensive and if i think that, in comparison to denmark, it must be super, hyper expensive, because denmark is pretty expensive. if we had a house in denmark and an apartment in singapore, is that really realistic? how often will we get back and use the house in denmark?

in other words, where will life take us?

and this, combined with our home improvements, have had me thinking about home and what it means. and i'm not the only one, tangobaby wrote about home recently as did hele at truth cycles. it must be something in the air.

what is home, really? is it a place? a house? an apartment? fabulous red appliances? or is it a life lived together with those you love most? can anywhere be home, as long as those you love are there? could an artificial disneyland of a place like singapore really be home? or will it be the mountains of norway? or will we stay in the house that we have spent so much time and labor (not to mention money) getting exactly as we like it? which reality will we choose?

or is it really that we love dreaming towards some new possibility? that looking forward towards the next big thing is what we do, it's what makes us us. it's where we feel most at home, dreaming and scheming and looking at the next fork in the road and choosing which path to take. so perhaps that's my answer...we take our home with us, wherever we go. maybe it's not a place at all, but is within us. a reality that we make every day, as we live it and breathe in the possibilities.

i have to say i like that idea. and i'm looking forward to seeing how this all pans out as the picture gets clearer in the coming weeks.

* * *

and with jon stewart's daily show playing in the background, recapping last week's convention farce, i become painfully aware that my musings and considerations are luxury problems indeed.

eddies in the space-time continuum

it's been one of those weird days. i initially woke up rather early but then, since it's saturday, went back to sleep. but it was that weird kind of sleep where you have very vivid dreams and awake from them feeling exhausted. i dreamed that i was in a plane and we were landing in way too narrow a space between some really tall buildings and it sheared the wing right off. and then i dreamed something about a cat. and then there was this strange man in a long black waistcoat and a tall back hat, but i don't really remember what he wanted.

and so i got up and made tea to make it all stop.

it felt like it took awhile to come back in touch with this reality. i always have the feeling that i'm living a totally other life over there in my dreams. i even have recurring locations where many things take place (but that's the stuff of another posting).

anyway, i went through my day in this strange, murakamiesque state, slightly out of synch with reality. i spent a lot of time looking for various things...like plastic trash bags and a paintbrush. i kept thinking i saw them, but when i reached the place where i thought i saw them, they weren't there...which i why i think that there have been eddies in the space-time continuum today.

some days are just like that.

on language and translation

my ponderings on kitsch and reading murakami have me thinking about language. and its connection to culture. do specific languages express something about their culture? can things be more precisely expressed in certain cultures/languages than in others? what does it do to the meaning behind a word to translate it? can translation at all capture the essense that's there in the original.

a word like kitsch, english has taken wholesale from german, so although without the cultural context, you may not understand it in the same way, the essence must, for the most part, still be there in the word. that is, if meaning adheres itself to words at all, which is probably a debatable question as well.

i'm, of course, reading the murakami in english translation and have a number of times along the way wondered if i'm missing something, not being able to read it in the original japanese. however, even in translation, it seems to me to be full of fresh ways of expressing things, which i have felt must come from the japanese words themselves. the translator, jay rubin, must surely have made word choices based on what he knew of both languages, since that's what the job of translation is all about. this has, for me at least in my reading, resulted in new and interesting ways of looking at things, even in english.

some examples:

"There is a kind of gap between what I think is real and what's really real."

"The best way to think about reality, I had decided, was to get as far away from it as possible..."

"Here in this darkness, with its strange sense of significance, my memories began to take on a power they had never had before. The fragmentary images they called up inside me were mysteriously vivid in every detail, to the point where I felt I could grasp them in my hands."

"Memories and thoughts age, just as people do. But certain thoughts can never age, and certain memories can never fade."

looking at these passages i've selected, i get the feeling that these are ways of expressing thoughts i've often had on reality and memories, but couldn't actually GET to the right words to convey them. the words themselves seem simple and logical. the first one is arguably what Plato was getting at with the allegory of the cave, so it's not really a matter of the thought never having been expressed previously, it's more, for me a question of capturing it more powerfully through linguistic means. because thoughts are so fleeting and elusive, it's difficult to wrestle them into words and sentences.

in all of my travels, i am struck again and again that globalization isn't all it's cracked up to be. although we may all have access to blue jeans, we are not all the same, but i do wonder what it will do to the world that everyone increasingly speaks english? will there be a resulting poverty of meaning and expression as people muddle their own language with english? i definitely hope not.

i guess i shouldn't worry that much. most everyone in denmark speaks english and while there are many loan words--computer, business and the like, there are some things that are just expressed better in danish.

• numse - the very best danish word. it's a cute word for bum.
• skumfiduser - marshmallows.
• -agtig - a great suffix. the closest english equivalent is -ish, but that doesn't do it like -agtig does.
• offentlige - "public," as in public sector, but there's SO much more in the word than there is in the word public in english. it encompasses an entire way of dressing and decorating and behaving and even a certain kind of haircut as well. a very powerful word meaning-wise. and a word that could only have ended up so loaded with meaning in its cultural context.

oh well. who knows, perhaps my musings are all for nothing...maybe in ten years we'll all be speaking chinese or even hindi. imagine what we'll be expressing then!

this is how i feel...

...reading haruki murakami's wind-up bird chronicles...

a bit blurry and possibly even double-exposed...

but the colors are brilliant...