topography of a life

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

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

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

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

the truth about reality

the truth about all of this truth thing is that what i've been writing this week isn't really different from what i usually write. because with me, you tend to get the truth...if i'm in a bad mood, have a headache, am happy or sad, frustrated, ecstatic - i don't hide these things very well. but, just as a map can't truly depict a place, you can never write everything. and let's face it, no one would want to read it if you did. so we all pick the highlights and sometimes the lowlights. it's just how it is. and it's what i love about the genre of blog - it's really whatever you want it to be. i think i just got a little tired of all of the in-your-face, groomed, styled and curated perfection i was seeing out there.

the truth is that despite living in an old house which needs lots of work, we have a pretty good life. and although all of the changes we've been through in past year and a half have been stressful and even worrying at times, we're happy with where we're at and the decisions that have brought us here. on a still evening, when we step outside and breathe in the fresh air and hear the sounds of birds in the trees or the crunching of a horse, life seems pretty much to be exactly as it should be.

that's not to say that it can't be improved. yes, we should have less stuff. yes, we should have a place to put it all away. yes, i should waste less time in front of the computer and spend more time in the garden. i should procrastinate less and sew more. i should more consistently believe in the things i'm working on and in my abilities. i should watch fewer crappy television shows. but it's a process. and nothing happens overnight. but all of that messy process is where life is lived - in the contradictions, the ups and downs, the highs and lows, the happiness and the unhappiness and the moments of feeling like a heroic parent in comparison to those crazy people on toddlers & tiaras or that awful show about the insanely expensive themed child parties.

as one of my favorite russian writers, andrei bitov, wrote, "unreality is a condition of life." so i think i'll just chill about it. hang out with the cool bloggy people who seem real (you know who you are) and try to avoid all that curated perfection for awhile.

the truth: there's too much pressure on mothers

baby sabin (and smoochie)

a friend of mine woke up very early one morning late last winter to find herself in labor. it was 4:30 or so and her second child, so she decided a leisurely shower was in order. after the shower, she pampered herself with nice-smelling lotion and dried her long, blonde hair. after it was dry, she commenced to flatten it with her flat iron. as one does, when one is about to depart for the hospital to have a baby. after carefully doing her makeup, her baby brain decided that a bit of fake tan was in order and she proceeded to apply the bronzing lotion. about halfway through, she realized that the contractions were coming with what began to smack of alarming regularity, so she called out to her husband that they needed to get going NOW. they deposited their 2 and a half year old daughter with the neighbors, who they had roused from sleep, and tore off to the hospital, where just a few hours later, they took delivery of their lovely, healthy baby boy. her husband, commemorating it on his iPhone (of course), showed her the first photo and to her horror, her mascara had run and her carefully flattened, silky hair was all a tangle. the various drips and tubes running into her arm had left spots of white in the midst of her lovely tan. and she realized that she was reeking of that smell that even the best fake tanning lotion cannot hide. in all, quite the memorable moment. when she tells it, it's so hilarious that you are falling out of your chair laughing, even tho' you might be in the midst of a rather posh bar at the time.

and while i laughed until i cried, i think it's a symptom of the pressure on mothers today. pressure i don't think was on me ten years ago when sabin was a baby. at that time, the only pressure i recall was heavy encouragement from the danish midwives to give birth without drugs. in the end, i was so ill, that i had an emergency c-section and it's still a bit of a fog to me. but i have never felt for one second badly that i "missed out" on natural childbirth and that's the only thing i recall being given some grief over. i can tell you that after having a temperature of 40°C for a week before delivering sabin, i most definitely did not put on makeup or fix my hair.

it's also true that i made all of sabin's baby food...cooking up organic veggies, whizzing them up in the blender and freezing them in ice cube trays to be doled out in baby-sized portions. but ten years ago, that was looked on as a heroic act, above and beyond the call of duty. today, it's expected and you'll be looked askance upon by your mothers' group and your neighbors if you're not doing it. you'll actually have to apologize for using jars of baby food today. bad mother.

i'm not sure if we placed this pressure on ourselves or if it's the culture at large, but i do think that all of this perfection in the blogosphere i'm swimming against the stream of this week contributes heavily to it. why on earth did it even occur to my friend to flat iron her hair, do full makeup and put on fake tan to go to the hospital to deliver her baby? is it one too many shots of perfect princesses emerging as svelte as before from the hospital just minutes after delivering twins? is it glowing reports of natural, organic home births featuring pictures of glowing, dewy, happy mothers and their swaddled babies? is it the stoicism of the 70s parents of today's young mothers - who were all natural and free of drugs (the legal ones at least) and clad in home-crocheted dresses, baby tied to them in a sling after they popped it out effortlessly (to hear them tell it)?

and not to mention the pressure to enjoy and love every minute with your child that today's mothers endure...if you don't spend every moment lovingly teaching your child to play with precisely the right toys to develop their brain, it's practically child abuse. i think there was a time when mothers' groups could be a support group of sorts, where you could discuss your breastfeeding issues and your sleepless nights, but today, there's so much pressure to report that it's all wonderful, your baby is in the 98th percentile in everything, you don't miss sleep, your nipples are fine and your partner is the perfect father. there's no safe space anymore to be real.

i don't know what it is, but i'm glad my child is ten and that i don't have to compete in today's baby race. i'm pretty sure it would been frowned upon to drag a 2 and a half year old across the atlantic and drop her off during a stopover in chicago with an uncle she hardly knew, to stay for two weeks while i went on to business meetings in seattle (because her father was away on a 3-week exercise in norway). it's quite amazing how things change in only ten years. (ok, i admit people probably frowned at that even then, but not to my face.)

all of this makes me glad that there are bloggers who happen to be mothers who are real. go read c is for capetown. it's the only way we're gonna change this and divert all of this pressure and get back to our normal lives.

the truth: it's a mess around here

one of the most disheartening things about browsing blogs, pinterest and flickr is all of the perfection and perfect styling. i don't believe that people's lives are actually so perfectly styled all the time. i do my share of cropping photos and advantageously placing things so as not to include clutter, so i'm not completely condemning it - sometimes we have a need to appear perfect, both to ourselves and to the world. but mostly, i think it's exhausting. and at times it fills me with an overwhelming sense of inadequacy, because my house is full of spider webs and bits of straw on the carpet and dust on all of the surfaces.

paper gets stacked and half-finished projects piled up. and when it gets bad enough, i go on a cleaning frenzy and tidy it all up and feel much better for a few minutes. tho' curiously, i often don't really feel that great during the cleaning frenzy, in fact, i often find that i'm fuming about all manner of little irritations while i manically clean.

probably worst of all is the "dining room." it's the main big room of the oldest part of the house (the part that's going to be torn down) and it is still (after a year) a repository of boxes of things that shouldn't be out where it's cold and damp - fabric, seasonal clothes, pretty paper, books, etc.) they actually can't be unpacked because without having the house finished, we don't have enough bookshelves or space. so it has to be the way it is. additionally, it's the only place where the dining table fits, so it also has to be there. during the summer, we eat out in our terrace and this room is only used for my sewing projects, but now that it's cold, we eat here too.

i think to an extent you become immune to it and you don't see the boxes anymore and just go about living your life, knowing that it's a sort of long-term temporary thing that you have to live with. but there are times when i look at the perfect scenes in the blogosphere and feel rather frustrated by it all. however, this is a process that we're in and it's going to take time.  deep breath.

as much as i love to cook, i'm not that big on cleaning it all up afterwards. maybe because the room itself isn't that inviting with those pink cupboards and the stained, cheap linoleum floor (why bother to try to keep it obsessively marginally clean if it doesn't show anyway). mostly, husband tidies up after dinner (he is such a keeper) and i'm grateful for both that and having a dishwasher. again, it's something that i know i have to live with - next summer the new "curry kitchen" will be in out in the end of the barn and we'll be able to stop using this uninspiring space.

but now you know what it's really like at my house.

anyway, this is the kind of truth-telling i was thinking of (not name-calling or other such nasty things - i get that out of my system on a private blog). i just don't believe that lives are styled and curated in reality the way they are in today's blogosophere.

so now, it's your turn for some truth, are you relieved or horrified?

truth in blogging

the fog is as thick as the proverbial pea soup out there. even tho' the sun tried to break through earlier, it never fully succeeded. just stepping outside sends a chill straight through to the bones. it's really starting to be winter. i'm swaddled in multiple sweaters, there are candles burning all over the house and a steaming cup of tea keeps the chill at bay. but the weather's the perfect excuse to sit down with the iPad and check in on the blogosphere.

i flipped through loads of inspiring words and photos and it seemed as if everything was rosy out there in blogland. but then i read bee's post, where she calls for some reality. and i realized that i too miss reality in the midst of all that perfection in the blogosphere. where are the mommy bloggers who admit it's hard and that they sometimes want to scream or run away? what about the fabulous craft projects that end up looking like a pile of crap instead of a glittering tower of crocheted fabulousness? where are the simplicity people who fall off the simplicity wagon and buy a whole collection of urban decay eyeliners? what about how much time is really spent on pinterest? or facebook? where are the people who have trouble with their apple devices? (ok, now i'm just getting silly, we know they don't exist.) what about sinks of dirty dishes and that pot you just don't want to scrub? or the dirty secrets at the back of the refrigerator.

i call for a moratorium on perfection in the blogosphere and urge you to just let it all hang out. reveal the truth...that we're not composing these posts in full makeup and false eyelashes with our hair perfectly coiffed as a perfect soufflé bakes in the oven (tho' soufflés are easier than you might think). we wake up late, we give the child three chocolate sandwiches in her lunchbox because we're in a rush and all of the sandwich meats are expired, we rush out the door to deliver her to school, one flannel pajama leg stuffed into our wellie and the other flapping on the outside. we fail to brush our hair.  (with we being me.)

i'm going to do it. let it all hang out. the whole truth. for one week.

won't you join me?

expressing

how do you step outside of who you are? your perspective. your worldview. your culture. yourself. how do you express what you want to express without seeming to be all of those things...your culture, your perspective, your view. how do you get to your real self? and how can you possibly capture the words she would truly like to speak?

there is no cloud,

there is no wind,

i sit beside the pond,

the swimming fishes, light, i, flower, water.

the pureness of the cluster of life;

my mother reaps the sweet basil,

bread, sweet basil, cheese, a cloudless sky,

wet garden petunia.

salvation is at hand: within the garden flowers.

--sohrab sepehri

one of shokoofeh's favorite poets

thank you, my dear.