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?

when is a cold the flu?

you have a cold - it's the kind where you're achy in your shoulders, your ears are ringing, you're coughing up small balls of phlegm from a very sore throat and though your nose isn't stuffed up,  every breath you take is too cold on your sore throat. and it does no favors for your general mood. and by you, i naturally mean me. on top of it, there's another mass shooting at a school, and another bunch of horribleness flares up on facebook among the gun-toting set. i hate being confronted with the wilful ignorance of people i grew up with. the world is becoming so polarized, i honestly fear for all of us. and there's no sense engaging with the deplorables, no amount of logic or reason will seep through their thick, redneck, racist skulls. they sent out their useless, ineffectual, insincere thoughts and prayers and next week, there will probably be another shooting and nothing will be done about it. especially if the perpetrator is white. hands will be wrung and more white supremacist mental cases will buy assault weapons. and that orange jackass in the white house will pose for photos with his grimace and a thumbs up and then rush off to his tee time. and if your head is all stuffed up and your ears are ringing, you might feel rather hopeless about it all.

and it will be compounded by other things which facebook brings to you...like awful, sad stories of a horribly sick little girl who is also being slathered with hopes and prayers - everyone apparently conveniently forgetting that a god that would turn a fever into pneumonia and cardiac arrest in a little girl, doesn't seem all that merciful or inclined to perform miracles. but on that front, you can kind of forgive the thoughts and prayers, because they probably at least bring comfort to those involved. you just mostly wish that facebook didn't involve you in these things.

and you wish this stupid cold or flu or whatever it is would run its course and loosen its grip. hmm...maybe a few thoughts and prayers sent my way would help...

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knausgaard's journey to understand russia.

beautiful.

makes me want to dig out my turgenev.

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and it turns out john b. maclemore of s*town fame made some music.

it involves ambient and field recordings mixed with tor lundvall's work.

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do you know jonathan pie?

you should.

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the food you take you with you when you immigrate.

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i like these short, short stories.

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need more podcasts?
there are some new ones on this list.

happy 19th anniversary to us!

the view from sunday night

a luxuriously lazy weekend - sleeping in, leisurely tidying up, sorting and throwing out a bunch of old papers (what a relief that was!), hanging with the cats, and husband, watching netflix (altered carbon = meh due to odd casting, dirty money = too distressing, comedians in cars getting coffee = just what i needed), baking bread, making spelt "risotto," because it's what i had in the cupboard, roasting a chicken, getting all the laundry done, catching up my 365 tumblr, planning husband's birthday dinner, photographing the first snowdrops - in the snow, no less, making and keeping a vow not to get dressed all day, cutting out and painting pages of an old book, reading a frivolous and unserious novel. it was, in other words, exactly the weekend i needed.

we are so pressured these days to make sure every moment has meaning, but sometimes, what you need is to slow down, stay in your pajamas, read a rather trashy novel (carl hiaasen's skinny dip, in this case), light some candles, drink coffee with extra cream, snuggle with a cat and damn any guilt feelings over any of it. down time like this is as important as all of the things we chase and the hours we work to make and do things that are important to us and/or our jobs. and i would do well to remember that. 

maybe allowing yourself a shouldless day* is the best way to take care of you and give yourself the mental space for the rest that life offers. and by you, i mean me. but i do also mean you. 

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collect all the books.

it's good for you.

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the case for reading bad.

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some cities are just better for revolutions.

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magazines - collected.

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lovely, lovely audio stories (in danish) by julie thing.

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what you leave behind when you immigrate.

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*shouldless day - from the episode of death, sex & money with ellen burstyn. 

triggered

just when you think you're completely healed and over your year in lego, something happens that opens up the baggage and you're right back, smack in the middle of how terrible it felt. it turns out that feeling rejected and like i don't belong triggers that awful feeling in me again.  yesterday, i posted one of these ducky swim ring photos in the toy photographers group on g+ as a contribution to their inspiring hashtag - #nofigurefriday. i posted it and then left to go pick up the child. when i got back, i refreshed the toy photographers page to see if anyone had commented and to see what others were posting.

weirdly, my post was nowhere to be found on the page. i refreshed again and scrolled down and down, thinking perhaps g+ stacks the posts strangely by column. there were other new posts there that had come after mine, but no sign of mine. my heart actually began to pound and i could hear the blood in my ears and i flushed in embarrassment - had my post been deleted because it wasn't good enough? did i put it in the wrong category? i had selected "photo challenge" because of the hashtag, but what if that was wrong? were they really that strict? had i been too silent for too long, so i was no longer welcome to contribute? what was going on?

notice in all of those thoughts, i immediately felt that i must have been inferior and deserved to have my photo deleted. it didn't make me angry, it made me very sad and it made me feel like i didn't belong. i posted a comment, asking what happened to my original post and people jumped in, giving me helpful advice about how to share in the group, as if i were tech-challenged. that didn't help me feel any better.

later, i got a report that it was some kind of issue with g+ and that a lot of posts weren't showing. but that somehow didn't make me feel better either. i still feel wary and hurt and have a nagging feeling that i don't really belong in that "community." i wonder if it will fade with time, or if my lego wounds are so deep, they'll never really scar over.

the view from sunday night

foggy and snowy - it made for a grey landscape, but it was still and quite beautiful, and at least it makes it seem less dark, even if it is still a bit dreary. i took a solitary walk down to the lake with the camera, following deer tracks in the snow. there's a regular deer highway down there. what is it about a walk that settles the soul?

three swans and a bunch of ducks? geese? they were a bit far away for me to see, even with the zoom, and i'm not a birdwatcher anyway. there's but a thin layer of ice on the lake, no skating this year, but just that open spot they're hanging out in. i wouldn't walk out to it tho', that's for sure.

as i crunched through the snowy landscape, i thought about how nice it was that i didn't take my phone with me. so for a few minutes, i could escape from the latest antics of the cheeto in chief. i could have a small break from the constant humiliations he rains down on us...i very sincerely often feel embarrassed when i read the latest news...deportations of lawful greencard holders, absurd claims, baldfaced lies. there's just. so. much. and my overwhelming feeling genuinely is embarrassment. it's embarrassing to think that people in the land of my birth are indisputably that stupid. they knew he was a sexist, lying, cheating, racist son of a bitch with the attention span of a gnat and they elected him anyway. it's humiliating.

but, for a few minutes out there in the hush of the foggy, snowy, still morning. i could just breathe in and let go.

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fire and fury - a postmodern book for a postmodern presidency.
and to think i once loved postmodernism.

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podcast pioneer (or rather) storyteller extraordinaire joe frank has died.

i only recently heard some of his stuff on home of the brave.

a small, not very coherent, collection of thoughts

i know this is a very serene picture, but i'm not feeling all that serene, there are a lot of things bugging me and they are all tumbling in my head. i'll get the trivial out of the way first...what the hell is a groom's cake? what groom wants a cake? (i need to be where facebook is not...so much for the new "re-focused on what's important" timeline, zuck.) and believe me, the cheeto satan does not weigh a mere 239 pounds. what a shithole. or is it asshole? or is it shitty asshole? yes. yes. and yes.

and now on to the less trivial...several times of late, i have read heartfelt, earnest facebook versions of life stories featuring the storyteller patting themselves on the back for never having accepted any kind of help...be it food stamps or financial assistance of other sorts. as if that's something to be congratulated for. as if needing and receiving help is a horrible, awful thing. honestly, is that where we are? if so, that just utterly sucks.

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when you're crabby from being hungry, it's called hangry, but what's it called when you're crabby from not sleeping well?

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if someone says your podcast trailer sounds "so npr" and also "so american," is that an insult or a compliment? i suspect it was an insult, but i'm choosing to take it as a compliment.

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reading studs terkel's seminal work - working - from the 70s. and i'm realizing we haven't really progressed all that much. it's fascinating and deep and comforting and also disturbing. i have a library copy, but i think i'll have to buy it. so i can write and underline in it - things like this: "i think most of us are looking for a calling, not a job. most of us, like the assembly line worker, have jobs that are too small for our spirit. jobs are not big enough for people."

that said, i genuinely do love my job. but i fear that's the exception, not the rule.

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a friend went to a course with tom of holland

and i want to too!

i have a whole stack of things that need mending.