the only way out is through

i can feel that i'm out of practice at this. i sat down at the computer to write after some surprise overnight guests (the best kind) left this morning and nothing really wanted to come out my fingers. it didn't help that our internet at home was iffy after being unplugged in the night during a lightning storm. instead of fiddling around and troubleshooting it, i headed for the library, but it's hot here and that's not helping the flow of ideas. i never used to lack ideas to write about, but my writing muscle has clearly atrophied. i was thinking that a way out of it would be to muse on a single topic or word, along the lines of john green's anthropocene reviewed podcast, where he rates two random things on a 5-point scale. but i can't even think of a word to muse upon. i think i've bottled up my words and thoughts for so long that they've formed a kind of cork that needs to be removed and it feels like i've misplaced my corkscrew. maybe just expressing all of this will help me remember where i left it. in the meantime, i recommend that you seek more exciting corners of the internet until i find my groove again.

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.

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so tired of explaining things to idiots.

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so glad i didn't have boy. 

tho' boys need feminism.

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speaking of things i've been doing lately,

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

energy leech

i spent the day in the company of an energy leech. you know the type. hyper, never stops talking, never stops offering unsolicited and unwanted opinions, never stops awkward attempts at what's supposed to be flattery, but widely misses the mark. your heart sinks from the moment you realize she's there, wondering why? why? why? and once again being utterly convinced that god must not exist, because if s/he did, s/he would never let this happen. like a black hole, sucking all of the good vibes, energy and positivity out of the room. perhaps that's not fair, because she is weirdly positive, aside from the snide remarks about how you're not taking the right norwegian fish oil and you probably should be (since it's apparently what's making her withstand chemo without feeling a thing (never mind that it probably gave her the cancer in the first place (but i digress. (oops, was that out loud?)))). and in the end, you can no longer see whether that grading is giving things a yellow or green or blue or purple tinge, because she has stolen every last bit of your energy. and did i mention that she never stops talking? and you miss yoga class because the edit runs two hours and fifteen minutes past the scheduled time (did i mention the incessant talking?) and so you stumble onto the street and rush to h&m to get new tights and pony tail holders and stop by sephora to check out rihanna's fenty line of highlighters to console yourself. and you get a golden milk (almond milk + turmeric) to fortify (in lieu of that carcinogenic fish oil), which turns out to be your dinner (by choice). and you wonder if you're too old for such things and if you can bill someone for time you'll never have back.

uploading 63%....

63%...the plumber backed his oddly large truck into the roof and broke some bits off. of the roof, that is, his truck appears to be fine. i am annoyed looking through my instagram feed at people whose work consists of taking the same picture over and over and sharing it every day (says the girl who constantly posts cats)...72%...i'm watching the percentage of my upload crawl ever-so-slowly upward. it's cloudy and grey. again. i'm not really having as bad a day as it sounds...76%...it's just boring watching files upload. and i'm tired of the grey. and i'm really tired of that out-of-focus, bokehlicious, pretentious reflection shot of princess leia. get over it already and move on to another motif...84%...91%...(the ellipses represent much more time than you might imagine)...the millennial podcast announced their last episode yesterday...it seemed as self-absorbed and self-conscious as the rest of it had been...a few recent episodes had seemed like they'd run out of ideas and navels at which to gaze anyway, so it was time...another podcast i'm finding annoying after initially liking it is not by accident. it also has descended into some kind of self-pity party. yes, we get it, being a parent and having a job is tiring and hard and not for the faint of heart...96%...when will this bloody upload ever complete? it's only 18 photos! 98%...i think i'm ready for the weekend to begin...the child is having a few beers in a park with her new classmates after school, so i don't have to pick her up...99%...also, i'm cranky (it is hangry, perhaps?)...so i'm probably not being fair to the two podcasts mentioned above...i'm just in a mood...i'm sure they're lovely people with perfectly lovely navels upon which to gaze...98%...how did it go back down? i think i need me some kitten time...happy weekend if there's anyone out there...99%...100%.

yoga and the unquiet mind

the sound of mats and heavy cream-colored yoga blankets being spread out. yawns and deep breaths as everyone settles in, trying to let go of a busy day and be there, on the mat, in the cool, dimly-lit room. the woman next to me massages her ovaries with abandon. on the other side, someone places a purple block under her lower back and stretches out, sighing deeply. i try to do the same (minus the ovary massage part). try to land there, in the room, in the cool, in the hush, to quiet my mind and leave my day behind. a siren blares outside. i wiggle around on my mat, trying to block it out. the instructor comes in. he's my favorite for now, while my other favorite is on maternity leave. i wonder briefly if that's ok, to have a favorite in her absence. i decide it is and try to clear my mind again. it flits gaily off to my undone to-do list. then to an afternoon conversation, then back to the list. i pull it back to the room, picturing in my mind my straining arm muscles, physically trying to pull my mind back to be here. present. in this room. right now. it sticks out its tongue and flounces off, cursing the travel agency, skating over an unfinished risk assessment, pausing over powerpoint and that two hours i'll never have back.

we start with that half moon pose, lying on our backs, legs curved to the right, left one crossed over right, arms stretched out to the right. i love this pose, except when i get a muscle cramp in my back, just beneath my shoulder blade. it loosens and i realize that i've just counted to 89 without even realizing it. stupid, restless mind. i mentally strain the muscles in my arms again, dragging it back to the room, to my purple mat. telling it to stay. it does, for about two seconds, like a disobedient dog. i'm not a dog person.

i think about the dentist appointment i made, the trips ahead, my undone to-do list, that obsession we have with cake at work, how that woman beside me massaged her ovaries, what's for dinner, yesterday's productive late meeting, how awesome it is to work with creative people. so many thoughts, so loud, so active. SO not present here, in this room, in these long stretches, that my muscles are longing for, but which my restless mind is clearly rejecting.

we do that position where you sit on your knees, feet out to the sides of your posterior and lie back over a yoga bolster. i always put a block under the end of my bolster, so it's at an angle, as my neck doesn't like leaning back. it's one of my favorite positions. mostly because i can do it easily and many others cannot. it makes me feel better about how i can't bend forward and touch my knees with my nose in those folded forward positions that seem so easy for everyone else. i wonder why it's easy for me and i enjoy the stretch on the front of my thighs. it's here i can still feel the remnants of how the nerves in my left leg were affected by my back problems of a year and a half ago, but i find it interesting and not painful. it feels like i'm helping the nerves heal. and for a few minutes, i'm there, in my body. my mind stops flitting around.

but then we lie back on the mat, to feel the buzz of the intense position. and my mind runs away again. back to the list, and the alzheimer's and the travel plans and the dentist and dinner. and as i once again reach 89 in the endless unconscious count, i remember that i'm practicing.

monday funday

i was worried all night about the middle of the night uber i'd ordered for sabs to meet her 6 a.m. flight from newark and so i slept very restlessly. i dreamed that i had put regular gas in husband's diesel quashqai. and then i dreamed that i was reaching into a cramped space to lift out what i thought would be a kitten and i found it was a none-too-happy baby possum. scout, who hadn't been around for over a week, chose to meow plaintively at the window at a little after midnight. so when the dulcet tones of husband's north korean telephone (it's a huawei, which, i realize, is chinese, not north korean, but calling it north korean is so much funnier) called out that it was time to wake up, i wasn't ready. it felt like i'd only just gotten to sleep. plus, i didn't want to be in trouble for the gas tank thing. it wasn't the best start to a monday morning, which can be sketchy in and of itself. so i ate chocolate chip cookies for breakfast and made a pot of tea. i went to sit down at my freshly-renovated desk area to get to work and found scout sleeping in my chair. i couldn't possibly disturb him, i mean, what if he never got comfortable again? so i moved the chair over and brought in another one. let sleeping cats lie, they say, right?

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some moron in the white house (there are so many), did not realize this was satire.

catalog of a day :: the natural order of things

my child is in new york city. she bought me a stick of the milk holographic highlighter, it's hard to find, but she found it at urban outfitters. you can never have too much highlighter. i spent the day at a shipyard. it was full of the acrid smell of welding, containers filled with piping, miles of wires, the clang of metal on metal and beeping cranes. i loved every minute of it. it's raining. i'm watching billions on hbo nordic. and drinking a g&t, made with...wait for it...belgian...gin. it's not bad. it's nice to be home with the cats. and husband (tho' he's at a meeting, so technically, he's not home right now.) if the photo above were a loft you could live in, i'd move there. instead, it's the upper deck of a ship that will be delivered in may. they have a bit more work to do. but look at that light. and that height to the ceiling. i could deal with both of those. tho' i'd probably need glass in the windows. i can't get enough of the marvelous vinyl café. today on the way home, husband laughed so hard at the story about the carwash that he cried and could almost not see to drive. i went to yoga three times this week. the light is returning. i am in the final days of my 40s and honestly, it feels fine. like the natural order of things.

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interesting things to read: 11 non-political stories. this terrifying piece on trump's puppetmaster's plan to destroy the eu. and because you'll need to think about something light-hearted after reading that - this piece on the locations of 80s movies. and this totally amusing piece on (possibly) the world's smallest lego ship.

when i am deliriously tired and hangry

no one should get up at 4 a.m. especially when one couldn't get to bed before midnight. no one should schedule a flight at 6 a.m. no one should ever agree to check two boxes containing an inflatable captain (who turns out to look a lot like a 6 meter tall cigarette with waving arms when activated) on said 6 a.m. flight. (people look at you very askance, and it turns out that not everyone on the flight is checking such an item, despite your attempt to pretend that was the case). no one should drink 4 double lattes and eat half a sandwich and then attempt to download 170 posters from 170 different countries and attempt to post them on a sharepoint-based website from a hotel connection. no one should stay at the hilton in birmingham. if the hilton people had been past the hilton in birmingham, they would have plastered a trump sticker over their hilton sign and run the other way. it's that bad. no one should be subjected to a hotel room without a minibar. no one should expect everyone to care as much as you yourself do. no one should smoke in a hotel room and then give said room to someone who doesn't smoke. no one should take my brand new latte when i'm getting on a plane (and thankfully, today, no one tried. or they would have regretted it.) no one should continuously listen to only political podcasts. (there are not enough pain meds, believe me.) you have been warned.

stedsans: late at night

i love to stay up late. the house all quiet, aside from the odd snore coming from husband in the bedroom behind me. a cat curled up in my lap on her favorite red curly sheepskin pillow (do sheep come in red?). the glow of the screen before me, a glass of wine at hand. the whole vast expanse of awesome that is the internet, just waiting for me to explore it. there are times when it feels like it would be foolish to sleep. i feel wide awake, ultra aware, open to the hum of the universe. those times are admittedly after a late afternoon venti latte macchiato, but they can actually happen on a normal basis as well. i love late nights. and on these long, light evenings, even as i write this and it's nearly midnight, there is a glow on the horizon, although it's raining outside. and that makes me want to stay up even more. i crave this time. to be alone with myself. with the words. with stories. with images. with all of those ethereal blips on my computer screen, left there by others...their thoughts, their views, their ideas, their notions of what's interesting and beautiful. i want to take them all in, touch them, chew them, swallow them, digest them into something of my own. processing, like my aging iMac, steadily, but perhaps a bit slower than at one time. but processing just the same. all by ourselves here in the night.

is this arbness, molly?

ok, it's pouring down rain, my stomach's not right, i've got to fix myself and drag myself to the hairdresser, where i'm afraid i have an appointment with the owner of the salon, who answered the phone when i made the appointment and i didn't have the guts heart to say that i wanted anyone but her to do my hair, my tea's getting cold, i haven't wrapped my prezzies for blog camp, i haven't made all of the prezzies i wanted to for blog camp due to strange and possible case of H1N1 or is it influenza A (i forget which it is we're scared of at the moment), the laundry's not done, i'm not packed, tho' i must remember to pack plenty of eyelashes, i'm quite pleased that waists are coming back up a bit on jeans fashion, i actually wanted to write this all as only one sentence, i wonder if my stomach will let me make it through the hair appointment without embarrassment, why yes - i have been listening to sondheim again, i wonder how long its been since i plucked my eyebrows, i can't really decide if i'm feeling better or not but at least a bit of humor is returning...

thinking and hyperlinks

as we've seen already this week, my mind works very strangely. i can go from a simple teapot to early soviet film in one post. and even (more or less) explain how i got there. and because i just finished malcolm gladwell's blink, i've been pondering thought processes in general.

consider the following series of pictures:

our brains are processing stuff in the background all the time. as an example: i tried to consciously note all of the things that went through my mind as i just went downstairs to pour another cup of tea--a simple and rather automatic act. along the way, i noted that one of the pictures in the stairway was a bit crooked and thought about how they get that way all the time because they're in such a high traffic area. i flashed also for a moment on the ruin of pergamon that was IN the picture and smiled as i remembered the heat and sunshine and how i was wearing white linen and sabin a sundress that day. as i stirred my tea, i looked at the skinny laminx cloth napkin that was sitting on the countertop with a sprig of evergreen still laying on it and one of my precious resurrection fern crocheted stones. which led me to think of the set of my own stones that i sent to margie yesterday. that in turn made me think of some of the stones upstairs in a dark corner of the bookshelves and i wondered if i should have included any of them. i went up, cup of tea in hand and looked at the stones and saw a shard of ceramic with numbers on it that i found on the old base in subic and i remembered the little bottle of sea glass gathered on a beach near there in the philippines. which made me think about how the treasured and revered sea glass is really trash that some jerk has thrown into the ocean in the form of glass bottles which then break and tumble in the waves until they are smooth, pretty pieces of tumbled glass that wash up on shore and which people actually sell on etsy. which made me think of my list and how i need to just get my eyeball pillows up on etsy already.

it has taken me nearly an hour to write and gather pictures for the above (while doing laundry and lighting two fireplaces and a dozen other tasks), but the whole chain of thoughts probably took under 30 seconds in reality. because our minds are fast. they link things and make connections. i've been thinking for awhile about hyperlinks and whether they map this thought process and reflect it. and that's part of why i set all the hyperlinks above.

of course the whole concept of hyperlinks is manmade, so it no doubt reflects something of a human thought process, since it is born of it. (why am i always getting myself into chicken and egg circles?) but is it an example of that sense i get of the internet as taking on kind of life of its own--evolving us (and perhaps itself) to the next level? or is it just a topography of thought insofar as thought can at all be mapped? how many thoughts did i actually have along the way during those 30 seconds that i didn't catch hold of, that couldn't be mapped? would my topography simply have blanks, or would i be able to fill them in if i could tune in to that unconscious level?

that's some heavy pondering for a thursday and i'm definitely not done thinking about it. how about you?

from home to mars

aahhh, now THAT's how to start off your morning. a steaming pot of 2/3 earl grey-1/3 lapsang suchong. even better if it's made in a bright cheerful teapot that at least reminds you of the sun (since you doubt it will ever shine again). although the sun isn't shining, the special nordic spring light is coming back. it's most noticable early in the morning, which i suppose will change once we make the switch to daylight savings time.

we live on the edge of town. across from our house is a soccer field and a park where half the town walks their dogs and a little stream with a little footbridge over it. and small grove of tall pines that sing in the wind. but it is still in town. which is why i was so surprised to see that we have a daddy and two mommy pheasants living in our back yard. and even more surprised to see the male pheasant sitting rather high up in a tree:

the pheasant is the state bird of SD, where i grew up, but i seriously have never in my life seen a pheasant up in a tree. he looked awfully pretty with the evening sunset rays shining on him a couple of days ago (hey, that's proof of sunshine!).

i'm trying to appreciate my last week of hanging out around the house. over the past year, as a consultant with a fast consulting gig, i got to be at home a lot, since much of my work could take place here. it was such a privilege and i feel so grateful for the opportunity. i'll still get to work some from home, since i'm working in a different country from the one in which i live, but i will also have an office to go to here in denmark. i'm looking forward to being around other adult people. i'm ready for it. but i am trying to savor these last days of being at home. the kitchen is the room (other than the studio) that makes me happiest:

part of the happiness undoubtedly stems from the fact that it's clean, thanks to the wonderful aelita who comes every friday. which in turn reminds me of this 1924 silent film from soviet director protazanov--aelita queen of mars:

funnily enough, the music someone has put on this version is by the cleaning women

thankfully, our aelita has shown no signs of being from another planet:

tho' frankly, i would rather like dressing up like that. maybe we'll have to have a protazanov/mars themed party. it's just so charming to see a 1924 futuristic vision.

whoa, how did i start with my teapot and end on protazanov? that was quite a leap this morning here on moments of perfectly clarity. but, i never really know where the writing will take me. thanks for coming along for the ride.