March 2008 Archives

It's cold, and I seem to have instantly caught a friend's cold. Within hours of seeing her. It's a new record.

The city offers bits of color to keep us company, and the daffodils bloom early at the bodegas, and there is good Mexican food in little places where the menu is on a big board, and next to the listing of "hard shell tacos," it says "for gringos and our Texan friends."

So when I order my tacos I feel the need to specify that I want soft ones, so they don't assume and bring me the crispy kind.

But it's still so cold. Every time I go outside I seem to be underdressed, even when I am consciously trying to dress more warmly than the weather forecast calls for. Everyone's cats are shedding despite the low mercury, and I was wondering today whether they might have the power to bring the mild temperatures on. And Annabelle wrote me that she hopes I don't have cause to wear my legwarmers, even though she is sorry about that.

I don't know what else to tell you. I hardly left the house this weekend; I had so much work. These photos are from a marathon photography walk a couple of weeks ago. I took nearly 300 photos in a couple of hours, and am still sorting through them.

Strangely, they have cheered me up a little, with their bright colors and sudden surprises. There were art fairs this weekend, lots of them, and I wasn't able to go, but now I feel like I have seen a bit of that, just from looking at images of the glorious and strange city.

I now have ten inches of legwarmer done. Will I finish them before spring really arrives? Tune in next time, same bat channel.

So I was at the pool the other day, and a woman asked me where I get my bathing suits. "Depends. Sometimes I order from Amazon, sometimes I buy from a swim-specific place."

"How much?"

"Well, I just ordered some new ones - they were on a good sale. About $45 each."

"Forty?! I paid four dollars for this," she said, holding a dripping leotard (clearly not an actual swimsuit) right in my face while I was in the shower.

Now, let's just look separately, for a moment here, at the fact that this woman was invading my shower stall with her naked body (I was wearing my suit; I shower for real when I get home) to ask me the question in the first place.

Oy.

I mean, NYC is a big object lesson in losing your personal space and freedoms in all kinds of ways, but there really ought to be a limit. And I'd like to draw mine at the door of my shower, thank you very much.

Then there is the whole other question of Getting What You Pay For. On that subject, I am about to descend into hitherto unheard-of regions of bike geekdom. Because My Goddamned Knees Hurt. Like Hell. Every fracking day, and for several days after each bike ride, no matter how careful I am, despite my new easier rear cog.

So here we go, with the discontinued obscure expensive-as-hell cranksets in impossible-to-find short lengths. Here we go with the Q-angle, and the vintage parts market, and ohmygodI'vebecomeabonafidenutcase.

But it's not for the esoteric love of vintage parts (not that there's anything wrong with the esoteric love of vintage parts, mind you). It's because, as I keep plaintively crying to Boywich on the phone at all hours of the day, "The world does not fit me!"

Waaaaaah.

Anyway, now that I've got that off my proverbial chest, I can tell you that I have knit eight whole inches of a legwarmer. Whoop de dooh.

And I have to get back to work.

"Sometimes a thing gets broke, can't be fixed." - Kaywinnit Lee Frye

I've been puzzled lately by how heartbroken I've been feeling, given that there isn't anyone in my life at the moment to feel heartbroken about. I was thinking about it all morning, as I yanked my reluctant body out of bed and poured a bunch of green tea into it, and then flung it into the pool and swam lap after lap after lap, finally beginning to breathe clearly and swim those long smooth strokes that I get into after about half an hour.

I still didn't have an answer when I got out.

And I didn't have an answer after I'd gotten home and showered, and kicked the cat out of the bathroom, and thrown some dry clothes on, and called the bike shop, and set off for the bike shop, and hung around the bike shop while they put a different-sized cog on. And I didn't have much of an answer as I rode over the bumpy roads and onto the bridge and through the semi-deserted Wednesday night streets and on and on and on into the mild night.

And I didn't have an answer as I pulled up in front of my building and felt that now-familiar reluctance to get off my bike, ever. I didn't have an answer as I ran into my super in front of the building, and he smiled at me and said hi in his sweet, friendly way.

I didn't have an answer as I slung my wheeled steel bird over my strong shoulder (all that swimming) and hauled it easily up the stairs. I didn't have an answer as I crammed a bunch of food into my face. I didn't have an answer as I stared at the work I ought to have done this afternoon and will have to do this weekend.

I don't have an answer still. But I can tell you this: I am a lot happier now, just sitting in my well-exercised body, than I was earlier today. Which suggests to me that it doesn't matter so much if my heart is broken - even if it turns out to be broken as a sort of lifelong state of affairs - if I can just get enough endorphins pumping through my veins and brains.

I'd forgotten that I didn't get any exercise yesterday (my knees were killing me, so I took it easy), and how glum that tends to make me feel. And how I just sit around feeling old and creaky and eating too much chocolate and yogurt and other things that tend to give me a stomachache. And how I wake up unwilling to face the day.

And how I put on my swimsuit and notice that it's so saggy that it's almost like swimming naked, though without the inherent sensory appeal of that.

I ordered two new suits tonight, even though I have no money to spare, and even though I'd already dropped quite a lot at the bike shop. Because I think these are my loves - the bike and the pool. And love is worth it.

This will have to be short, since I am wiped out. The brilliant combination of very little sleep (even for me), a long night of tax crunching, a long day of this and that, the kind of work-perfect-storm where your head just explodes and explodes and explodes some more, and lots of knee pain in payment for yesterday's ride has me ready to just collapse.

But I wanted to tell you this: I learned a new trick, which does not happen to me that often in the knitting realm, not because there aren't tons of knitting techniques that I don't know how to do, but because I tend to just keep to the known universe when it comes to knitting. I am weird like that.

I do not know how to make cables, and I have never tried. I have never knit a sock. I have never successfully knit anything out of lace. And I tend to avoid patterns that require seams, even though I know damn well how to wield a sewing needle.

I may be adventurous as all hell in other areas of life, but as a knitter, I am a stick in the mud.

So, in that vein, I have begun knitting a pair of legwarmers that are pretty much exactly the color of mud. And sticks. Well, but they are pretty mud and sticks, you see. A lovely variety of browns from Briar Rose Fibers.

I don't have photos of any of the knitting I'm working on right now (I also have a brighter pair of legwarmers and Snow White on the various needles), but the big news about these particular brown 'warmers is that I am knitting them using 2 circular needles, which is a technique I'd never tried before. After attempting to learn Magic Loop and failing to get the hang of it, I wasn't all that wowza about doing the 2 circs thing, but someone convinced me to learn it as part of the Learn to Knit Socks Already initiative. Well, the socks will have to wait till I've got enough legwarmers to see my biking self through the spring, but step 1 has been accomplished. I have about 2 inches worth of ribbing done, so I think I can officially say that I've learned the technique.

All very exciting for you sock-making, lace-knitting, cable-contortionist fiends, I am certain.

But that's all I've got right now, gang. That and a bunch of complaints and tiredness and yearning for milder weather.

There are a lot of tall interesting things in the city, but sometimes it is also important to look down.

I wrote that last night and then discovered I had nothing else to say, and that it was 4 am, and I was so exhausted it took a herculean effort to haul myself off the couch to brush my teeth and proceed bedward.

And now I'm in an absolutely foul mood. I get that way sometimes, though these days it always seems to surprise me when it happens; I guess I've become more accustomed in the last year or so to feeling happyish. I can't say I've missed the depression - it's not a whole heck of a lot of fun, though there are certainly a few things going on right now that would account for it.

I have to both work and do my horrible frightening taxes this weekend, and I haven't yet decided which to do first, or how to arrange them. I am usually better off if I take one day off on a weekend than if I work both days, but this is a lot.

And there is also the fact that I need to bring my bike back to the shop sometime this weekend to get a little more work done on it, and I have a (brand-new! whoopee!) pain going on that is making me think tomorrow would be a better day for that. Which would mean today ought to be the work day, but I don't want today to be the work day. I am exhausted. And working on taxes would definitely push me over the edge of mere rotten grumpiness into dangerous dark despondency and possible fury.

So... I don't know.

Annabelle asked me to write her a poem about transformation, and it came out all fakakta'd (my very bad spelling of a Yiddish word which roughly translates to fracked-up). That is to say, it came out as more of a short story than a poem, but I reproduce it here for the sake of having something else to say other than massive grumbling.

***

All day the wood dreams of being a bird
his soft molten heart unfolds in the sun
watching them dance from branch to branch

One morning he tried to grow wings, one by one
stretching each cellulose fiber
breaking his own bonds in the attempt
But he was still a block of wood

---

One day the eagle saw him basking in the window,
watching the lesser birds flit
Sparrows would come up and chatter
the ravens mocking,
then flapping slowly off
to find treasure

The eagle stood
on the very edge of the sill
preening one long feather
and asked
Why should you wish to be like us?

When you are as stable as the ground
smooth as the sea
and live twice as long as we?

The wood looked into the light
and answered
What is the good of living twice as long
if you cannot bend your nose into the sky?

So the eagle grasped the wood,
one end in each long claw,
and flew him all day about the earth.

The wood saw the purple sea below,
the spiky tops of trees
the blood of antelopes slain on the plain
the dartings of the lesser birds below.

Once the eagle put him down on a stone
while it swept down to eat a rabbit.
When it came back, its claws smelt of blood,
and some seeped into the wood.

Once, they rested in a field,
and the wood was washed in lavender petals.

At the end of the long day,
the eagle asked the wood
where it would like to rest.

Could I live at the top of your nest, Eagle?

Yes, my friend.
You shall guard my chicks and be
the marker for other eagles
to know this den is mine.

---

Every evening when the eagle came in from his hunt,
he would clean his feet
on the wood, and then grip either end
with long claws
- and off they'd fly to hunt bats.

All words and images copyright 2008 Lizbon Grav

I bought a blood orange today, though it had been renamed "pink navel" (no doubt by some horrible citrus marketing subcommittee), which is roughly the equivalent of NYC real estate agents renaming Hell's Kitchen "Clinton."

Basically, that's what's wrong with trying to make something interesting more palatable for the masses. It loses its juice.

I am wearing my "I Learned to Knit in Prison" t-shirt, and just had my head shorn (thank the fracking gods), so I am feeling butch, I guess. Speaking of feeling butch, I found myself in an interesting conversation the other day; a guy was telling a female friend of his that when he'd first met her, he'd thought she was gay.

We were trying to figure out why that was. She thought it might be her arms, because they're "ripped" (her term). He suggested it might be because he used to work in a lesbian bar and tends to just assume all women are homosexual until proven otherwise.

I commented that I have often wondered whether my short hair gives some people the impression that I am gay. But it's hard to figure out, because any guy who thought so would probably just keep his distance, and actual lesbians tend to be able to tell the difference, regardless of hair length.

Anyway, the girl with the ripped arms didn't strike me as gay; just awesome. She's a racer. Make that a serious fucking racer; she beats most men.

And she's very pretty, and not what I would think of as butch, so I still don't know why men would think she was gay - but apparently her friend is not the only man who's made that mistake.

Stereotypes, baby. Can't live with 'em, can't shoot 'em.

It'll be an interesting summer. I am now a bit ripped myself, and we shall see what happens when that is on display. I like it, and I'd like to keep it if I can.

Annabelle sent me a text message today that sums up the last few weeks rather perfectly: "Not a bad day. Just sort of blah."

Well, I suppose blah is more the final analysis than an accurate description of the tenor of individual moments. There's been a lot of up and down. The downs mostly having to do with parts of my body deciding that they've had enough work for one lifetime thank you, and they are gonna crap out when I least expect it.

The ups mostly having to do with the selection of bike parts.

Yeah, I know, but it really does float my boat. Before you go scoffing and laughing, consider how your yarn shopping behavior would look to someone who doesn't give a hoot about yarn.

Okay then.

So here I am with a cat being as in-the-way as possible on my lap, fourteen tons of work to do in not so many days, a nightmare tax bill looming over my head, relatives continually begging couch space (like, every weekend this month), a half-busted tailbone and assorted knee issues, a new and glorious bicycle awaiting my love, and, oh, I don't know, a half-dozen other things preying on my limited attention.

I somehow have no time to grocery shop, do laundry, clean my bathroom (and no cleaning supplies even if I had that time), and anything else that tends to keep body and soul in working order. My hair is two weeks overdue for a haircut, I am out of face wash and paper towels, and you wouldn't believe how hard it is to find a 15 mm wrench that isn't "too long" or racheting in this city.

I ended up buying a whole damn set of metric wrenches at Home Depot, but I may return them if I can get a single one at an auto parts store someplace. And as you might expect, auto parts stores are not quite as thick on the ground here as they are in the burbs and boonies, where people actually own cars.

Now you begin to see why I have been light with the words lately. Because all my words are boring.

I attribute this to several things:

1. I am doing a project with Annabelle that involves writing every day.
2. I am really, really busy.
3. I am in an interesting emotional state - one that involves change and moving forward, and those tend not to be chatty times for me.
4. I am in love with two things: my bicycle and my Nikon. So they are getting all my juice. And neither of them are especially wordy creatures.
5. I don't have a 5, except to say that sometimes a girl needs a break from showing off her punctuation prowess to the wide world - or even the small and lovely network of readers she has mysteriously managed to amass (I still don't know how that happened, honestly, but it's an awfully cool thing).

So, 6. I appreciate your patience and just bear with me for a little while. I will at least show you some pretty pictures now and then. Or maybe often. I have been very fruitful in the camera department lately.

Love,
Lizbon

PS. Blanket statement: All of my photos are clickable for bigger (and sometimes worth it), and also copyright of me, so please don't steal 'em. Thanks.

Plenty going on, but I don't seem to have much to say about it. There are times, I guess, when a girl just wants to live her life without having to pontificate about it.

It's the time of year when everyone seems to be restless, urgent for the weather to change, fractious and frowsy and jumpy and annoyed at having to keep putting on coats. I am perpetually underdressed, hurtling around with my chin tucked down to try and keep warm.

Hopping on my new bike and dancing on up the bridges and laughing out loud at the joy of that.

I was in a bar the other night where there was a large row of radiant heaters in the ceiling, beaming down what felt like rays of sunshine on us. I kept getting the feeling that I was lying on Jones Beach, until I looked again at where we actually were.

Oh, my mojo is wonky wazooky these days. I'm up, I'm down, I'm all around the town. I wake up feeling hungover (having drunk nothing to induce such a feeling), swim for 50 min., feel like a new little superhero, go down to my management company to re-sign my lease (I missed a bunch of pages - d'oh!), come home, dechlorinate, have a brief meeting with a potential client who probably can't afford me, call bike shop, eat something or other, work a bit, daydream about this and that, IM, waste time, buy a new saddle, watch a Robert Redford movie with half an eye, work some more, play with sweet kitty cat, blah blah blah.

Really, I seem to feel best while I am in the pool. And just after (well, once I've dried off and warmed up). In the pool I am a superhero. Out of the pool, I am mortal, oh so mortal. And I have not the power to change myself into a tall blonde 20-year-old. And I have not the power to will the universe to act according to my specifications and/or desires.

And I had to put on a Clark Kent suit yesterday, which always queers the mojo in some way, even though I stripped it off at the earliest possible moment and changed it for a Speedo.

Not knitting. Can't be bothered. I feel the early spring loss of all interest in knitting coming on. Whoop de doozle.

On the plus side, I received a magazine with an illustration of a wiggly blob on the cover and under it the caption: Is this the shape of the universe?

So I figure, compared to that, I am in reasonably fine fettle, all things considered. Sort of.

When the going gets tough (it is), the tough head to the source of their obsession: for me, at the moment, that is the bike shop.

I stood around for hours, I chatted, I slavered over my new cranks (gorgeous, lightweight, strong), I petted both a nice dog and my soon-to-be new bike.

I dawdled, I dallied. I avoided work. I came home and did some work. A little, a very little.

My cat welcomed me home with purrs and yowls, in her inimitable way. She likes to perch on my left shoulder (I never put her on my right, as it is tattooed, and I do not wish for nice big cat scratches to complete the look) and rub her head against mine, and purr her little ass off, and dig her claws in for purchase, because much as she trusts me otherwise, she will never, ever believe that I have a good enough hold on her.

I thought about bikes, and the many ways in which they set us free. The way our eyes light up when we find the right one.

I thought about the various people who came through the shop while I was there - messengers, people looking for parts, people buying new bikes or asking for the shop to keep an eye out for the perfect thing for them (as they did for me). The girl who bought the incredible vintage handmade Bianchi, which the owner had saved for her, and sold to her at half what someone else had offered for it, because he knew it was her bike. Meant for her.

I thought about the girl who's bought my old road bike. It's perfect for her needs; she's a triathlete short on funds, and it's a racing frame, and it'll cost her half what a new one would, and I put few miles on it and treated it gently and put new tires on it right before I sold it.

I came home and dug out some extra tubes for those tires. I'm going to bring them with me for her, next time. I may offer her a spare racing saddle I have, as a gift. Bikes make people happy. It makes me very happy indeed to think that my bike will be making someone new happy. I kind of love her, and I've never met her.

I remember how Boywich felt when he sold his touring bike. He'd never quite felt the big love for it, and then he found someone who was looking for just that bike, to take on a long tour in Australia. He felt so good about seeing it go to the right person. I know just what he means.

I'd like to meet her, shake her hand. Apparently, at the last race she went to, they laughed at her bike. That won't happen this time. I hope she wins!

I've been having an interesting conversation (or rather, interchange, since there aren't technically voices involved) with Claudia about street photography, as a specific art form. Turns out, there are actually classes on the subject.

I'd never really thought about it as something that one might teach (or take) a class on. It seems so organic to me; you learn by doing, and maybe the streets teach you a thing or two about looking at things, ordinary things, and seeing their magnificence (and/or horror).

I find, for example, that the best shots come from the split-second pics I take without thinking: zap, zzap, zzzap. The faster I go, the more good stuff I seem to get - I think because then it all happens at the level of dreaming. It also helps that I am not burning film, though honestly when I shot more film, I - er - shot more film. I mean, I used to rip right through it, roll after roll after roll, because, you see, I'd already discovered the rule of unconscious genius. The more unconscious the artist, the greater his or her access to her particular genius. Well, that is my theory, anyway, and were I to start a school (a project I occasionally toy with), that would be part of the foundation of its curriculum. Developing the ability to be awake and yet only half-aware (or less) of what one is doing. It's a talent, honestly. Or a skill to be honed.

I don't know why, but I feel there is a connection between love and the unconscious. I think the things we adore, the things that TURN US ON are operating at the same level as art-making. They are tapping into parts of our brain of which we are only (if that) dimly aware, and which are perhaps meant to stay dreamlike.

Mystery is good.

***

The sands flame again
flowers crushed to ash
her feet held aloft
a bird untold
how to begin flight.

When again
he comes over the hill
bearing fruit in his trousers
She can't see the sun behind
his shoulder

That Laurence of Arabia
moment when he smiles
the blinding smile
That look of winter
in his one blue eye
(the other black, a dark
sea, an omen, a bird
she can't touch)

words and images copyright 2008 L. Grav. all rights reserved.

Another night at the wine bar, another day of photographs and cold wind, and strangers spitting on me and saying really horrendous things to me (the former I shrugged off; the latter made me cry, but only after I'd walked several blocks).

I wrote a very good poem the other day, on a piece of drawing paper, and it's been fluttering around my apartment, alighting here and there as if it has wings.

Someone is eating a slice of cake on TV, and I wish I could pull it out of the screen and have some. I thought today what a thin little line of people separates me from nothingness, from being completely alone in the world. Don't tell me that isn't true of you as well.

Well, maybe some people with large circles of friends feel more protected from the edge of the black. And maybe that is the real reason people feel compelled to have families. It's not even about posterity or immortality; it's an attempt to insulate themselves from loneliness, from the truth that Malcolm Reynolds puts so clearly, "Everyone dies alone."

So I suppose that being able to keep walking after a terrible old man says something terrible to me in response to being asked if I can take his photo - I suppose that is some sort of victory, or the only kind that we ever get.

The strength to just keep walking. Not, perhaps, to avoid crying when one is hurt; just to keep moving.

Yes, I know I spelled that the British and/or Canadian way. It is a more colourful spelling.

Give me your drab, your colorless;
Your huddled February-weary yearning to see stars or sun;
The wretched creatures of the dank snow-melt;
Send these, the sunglassless, the wind-tossed, to me:
I lift my crayons beside the technicolor door.

Okay, okay. I'll give you a little more to go on, though, really, I do think that sometimes there are no words needed, especially when one has many many photographs to play with. I am not going to go into gory details, but I have not been having the easiest couple of weeks, and I am not in the mood to discuss it. So let's just leave that by the wayside. Don't be emailing me with sympathetic whathaveyou. It's nice and all, but I don't need it, and I don't really want it. I'm in one of those moods. Everybody who knows that kind of mood, raise your hands and grumble in chorus. Very good! Now let's hear the same thing, only in Swahili this time.

Anyway, the city continues to give me its little difficulties (nothing major on that score; it's not the city's fault) and also its little gifts to try and cheer me up. I got two large boxes of $1 strawberries today. In March. Yes, that is my neighborhood telling me it still loves me. Just ask it.

"I'm gettin' hungry. Peel me a grape!" - if that line doesn't reverberate gorgeously in your chest, you clearly haven't heard Shirley Horn's recording of it.

Again, I seem to be running out of words. There is always the temptation to just shift into the abstract and be a purely visual creature. My friends tend to be artists, so they don't mind when I do that. And we all kind of look at each others' work and dig. But here, as in my professional life, I am expected to sling the Big Big Verbiage, phthwap! onto the page, and make with the grand pronouncements. I guess I just get tired and long for a damn pencil after a while, preferably the colored kind.

But let's see what mundanities I can ply you with. I've been quietly buzzing along on Snow White, though I've reached a point in it where I really need to email the designer and ask her if I can put the increases closer together to allow for my royal shortness of torso, or whether that will Frack the Math.

Speaking of Frack, there are mere weeks until the return of BSG, to which I am looking forward, despite its having jumped the shark to some degree a couple of seasons ago.*

End vhat else? as anyone's Yiddish grandmother might say.

There are no boys to speak of, which is perhaps just as well, since my body is currently far too broken to have much fun with them, had I them available to have much fun with. I am writing lots of poetry, which, now that I think of it, often coincides with a void in the boy department. So there's that. What is bad for the sex life and bad for the blog is good for art. So screw everything else. Art rules.

*Nota bene: Please don't be emailing me correcting my spelling of frack after you've followed the link to the sci fi channel. There should be a goddamned "c" in there.

Later additions...

From Band of Brothers: The tale of the Battle of the Bulge, as it is told today, is of (Gen.) Patton's army coming to the rescue of the encircled 101st Airborne division.

No member of the 101st has ever agreed that the division needed to be rescued.

From the back of my napkin at the bar last Sunday:

In the candle a hand
beat like a heart
and she heard nothing
but the drums
in her eyes
The sand rained
like a scratchy fog

and still the shells
fell, and helmets
ripped like cotton drawers.

In the end his hands were
small brown birds
that she let go.

copyright 2008 Lizbon Grav. all rights reserved. usual threats apply. hey, that goes for the photos, too.

One of the lessons the city teaches is the beauty of simple things. And that un-pretty things can be beautiful, too. If you look hard enough.

I've really got nothing else to say, so I am going to let the pics do the talking today. (Click for bigger if you've got the bandwidth to do so.)