Recently in "Deep Thoughts" Category

I don't normally go in for advertising slogans, except to notice them in a professional sense (I sometimes have to analyze them for work purposes).

But there's one that's coming to mind today because it slots in neatly with what I wanted to talk about here. It's that USA Today tag: Characters Welcome.

I love people who are odd, unusual, unique, maybe a bit off-kilter - just thoroughly themselves. I mean, I don't love every crazy homeless person who bangs into my knees with a pilfered shopping cart full of their prized bottlecap collections.

But my favorite humans do tend to be those who have their own way of thinking, perceiving, talking, dancing, two-step shuffling down the street. Those who favor rare nerdy-looking bicycles whose frames are constructed like airplane wings.

Those who wear clothes they dyed themselves because they really like the way the fabric takes the color a little unevenly, as if it's been waving about at the bottom of a coral reef for a while.

I like crazy cat ladies and men who paint their fingernails blue, artists who make elaborate virtual pieces in Second Life that cleverly piggyback on the environmental programming that rules the movements of clouds, in order to create slow color changes in their "sculptures."

I like people who talk to themselves, especially when the conversation looks interesting.

I liked the guy with the crab codpiece whose skin was not only painted blue but also precisely stenciled with a ghostly white webbed pattern.

So why, when I'm newly dating somebody, in the phase where I am certain that I like the person but it hasn't yet moved into the boyfriend stage (and may never do so), do I fall prey to the fear that the guy (one of whose proclivities is mentioned above) won't be similarly enchanted with my own unique character?

I mean, there are objective signs that he's down with at least aspects of my particular idiom (to borrow a Pythonism).

He didn't bat an eyelash when I introduced him by name to my bicycle (and vice-versa).

Our conversations typically rank fairly high on the geekometer, and he doesn't seem put off when I do my deep sea diving act.

But I can be really, really earnest, and I suspect there are times when I resemble a large, enthusiastic dog, and, well, that can scare some boys off.

I dunno. It's just nervous-making, that early time. And I don't have much of a strategy for surviving it.

A friend was advising me today to try and just stay in the present, which is funny, because I'm quite spectacular at doing that - in every other area of life.

Sigh. I am trying. Somebody pass me the Zen.

PS. Shut up, Boywich, I know what you're thinking, but I have become spectacular at it in the past couple of years. Really.

PSdeux. Aren't they wonderful, these faces? Click to embiggen, of course.

I wasn't going to post tonight, but I've had a little bee buzzing around in my bonnet all day, and now I just read two other blog posts that seem to tie into it.

A friend recently turned me on to a severely sarcastic (funny but also disturbing) blog dealing with bikes, and - more accurately - fads surrounding bikes, particularly in this city.

The weird thing about reading a blog devoted to commenting on Bike Culture is that I had been blissfully unaware until very recently that there was such a thing.

That's not to say that I haven't noticed the Central Park roadie fashion show, or the tendency to one-upmanship within cycling clubs throughout the suburbs, or even the fact that track bikes are what the cool Billyburg kids are riding these days. But a Culture, and for that matter, a Couture surrounding bicycling just never entered my radar. And I think I wish it hadn't.

There's nothing that can ruin one's joy in something one loves so quickly as the feeling that one has to dress a certain way, or own the latest version of whatever it is, in order to be cool enough to participate in that love.

Honestly, I don't know what to make of it. Yeah, I'm more immune to this sort of thing than I used to be, but it still sort of makes me want to run screaming from the room and go hang out in a big field alone. Which is pretty much how I always reacted to that stuff when I was in school, once I recognized that I was never going to fool anybody into thinking I was one of the cool kids.

Anyway, posts here and here are very much worth reading, for a similar take on a different hobby. Franklin puts it with his usual eloquence, and in words I swear I've used myself before (though not here) - the idea that because we are unique, we are inherently valuable.

And don't come writing me asinine comments about Hitler being unique but not valuable. I don't give a good god damn about the logic of the argument; you know exactly what I mean.

PS. At least somebody still thinks knitting is cool.

The Naked Science episode on TV right now is discussing "extremophiles" and the possibility that they may live or have lived on Mars. Sometimes I think there is a human equivalent to these microbes.

For those who don't know, extremophiles is a nice logical name for microorganisms that favor difficult environmental conditions - extremes of temperature or radiation, chemical environments that would be toxic to other forms of life, that sort of gig.

Don't you know someone who lives like that in an emotional way?

I do; a friend of mine was just telling me about his regrets at having left a relationship that I'd call doomed. The person he broke up with was married to someone else, lives more than a thousand miles away, and has - shall we say - lots o' baggage, in the forms of multiple dependents and health issues.

I told him it was okay, nay, good, to make an intellect-based decision in a situation like that, but I don't think anything I said penetrated to the decisionmaking center of his brain. Or, as he'd put it, his heart. He's probably still gonna get back into that mess. See? Extremophile.

I have apparently (I hope) grown out of such behavior, though it took me years and years, and it's not like I don't occasionally relapse and be drawn to something that's not so terribly healthy for me.

Though I think that the fact that for the past several years I've been able to eat healthy foods and only healthy foods with no difficulty whatsoever suggests that I probably have that ability in other areas of life.

At the moment, I am feeling very anti-complications, and anti-"settling." Anti-settling for less. Anti-settling down. All that.

I'd rather be airborne, thank you very much, and the concept of being tied to someone else, of having to give a good god-damn what they think of my every little decision and behavior, well let's just say it's an unsavory prospect. Apart from the sex, of course. That sounds appealing.

MASH. Embalming fluid. Baby's first pedicure. I can't figure it out.

Had one of those days where the stress was like someone set a big bomb ticking in my head, and all I could hear was the tick-tick-tick, barely being able to keep working over that sound. Went out for a walk and got into a mental fight with somebody at my client's office.

The weather was (again) too unsettled and stormy for safe biking (I don't mind riding in rain, but I don't want my boyfriend to rust).

Now I am sitting on the couch knitting my bicycle bag strap pad (say that seven times fast; I dare you) and thinking about the email "conversation" I had with Juno today, about the role of scent in personal identity, or more properly, about perfume as a form of self-expression, like smellable art. I hadn't ever thought of it that way, but I like it. And then I think about the larger ways that we tell tales about ourselves: our clothes, our tattoos, our jobs, our houses, our hair.

I guess I tend to think of the physical containers we occupy as so often getting in the way of being seen for who we are that it seems weird to also have most of our self-expression be centered around outward manifestations of personality. Or rather, to have to drape our expressions of self around the random containers we inhabit. But then, maybe adorning and/or altering our bodies (whether in temporary or permanent ways) is a form of bringing the self to the surface. Even if it doesn't necessarily make the same kind of sense to a viewer as it does to the person doing the expressing.

I mean, it's like art: people get tattooed because the design has some kind of meaning for them, but then everyone who looks at it has to have that meaning explained, anyway.

I am rambling, once again. It's not a fully formed thought, but then, this is a blog, not a novel or a treatise, so who the fuck cares.

Micro, macro, that's how my brain likes to go. I say this because I just looked over at my cat and had some sort of formless thought about her that brought me into the room again. That's pretty much her job, I guess.

Anyway. I am in love with my tall socks lately. Well, love is too strong a word, but you know what I mean. Lots of late suppers and long brunches, bike rides in the park, that sort of thing.

I've been a little quiet here lately, I know. Partly it's because I have been busy like one of those ants you see scurrying so fast they can't even move in a straight line. But partly it's also because I'm having a lull in wanting to post. Or all the things I would say are simply very trivial - the same kinds of things that I always say.

It's not that I don't have thoughts anymore; it's just that I never have them in the right way or at the right time to want to post them. And maybe they are private thoughts.

And maybe spring is just a time of shifting, stirring the pot, watching the colors meld and change and alchemize into something entirely new. I don't really know.

It might be that like so many other bloggers, I am getting a little bored by the medium itself, or by the specific parameters of this one (not that I necessarily adhere to much of a theme, but it can still get stale). Or it may be that I am tired of talking here, in this space, in this particular way, and am simply taking the time out to just talk to my friends. I don't know. Again.

Boywich asked me recently if I had decided whether to keep Girlwich up or take it down. And the funny thing is, I hadn't even remembered mentioning that I was considering taking it down. I've been wanting to start some other things - pure photo blogs, or photo projects with small stories attached to them. And to some extent, keeping this one up interferes by taking up the little time I do have to devote to such things.

But I haven't quite decided what to do yet. I know at least one other blogger who's in the same kind of boat at the moment (or a related one; kayaks and canoes, as it were), and that makes me feel better.

It may just be a cycle of nature, to get tired of one's blog in the same way that one gets tired of one's room as a teenager and wants to redecorate.

I've had several conversations in the past few days having to do with art - whether it should stand on its own two feet or whether one ought to need context - historical background or a curatorial explanation - to understand it. I am of the former camp, but much of the art world (I am told by those in a position to know) is in the latter. And those who are in the business of art call my camp formalism and say it's something to rebel against, which is puzzling to me, given how restrictive the idea of needing a translator in order to approach a piece of creative work seems.

I have the urge to expand this dichotomy to life. I suppose because it sticks in my craw in some way, but also, maybe, because it seems to express two different larger viewpoints: the one that wants help making sense of something and the one that wants to figure it out for itself.

I suppose it is clear which one of these hypothetical views I fall into. I would like to think that I can respect either viewpoint, but I am not sure I am that magnanimous. Or am I? I truly do respect the beliefs of highly religious folk, not because I share them in any way (I don't) but because I can see and acknowledge and even admire how much strength and peace their faith gives them.

Okay, so there is one example. But on the other hand, I have been feeling contemptuous lately, and I won't go into the details, except to say that when someone else's lack of courage or spine directly affects me, I am not so forgiving about it.

And on the third hand, it is precisely those kinds of situations (ones that call for courage) that show us who we are, and if I am lucky enough to be a strong, brave person, perhaps I can just be proud of that and walk on, standing a little taller in my boots with that knowledge.

Then I happened upon this jewel of a series. And I remembered the crucial thing: that I am an artist, that I have always been an artist, and that when that part of me is walled off from my daily life, I suffocate and die. It happens bit by bit, so that it is hard to notice it happening.

Oh, it's not that I never do anything creative. But the work I get paid to do is not creative, and it's been a long time now, that I've been pecking away at it, trying not to notice how much I hate it.

I am usually able to ignore it by the pure expedient of not throwing too much time at it. I work in spurts, so that I have weeks where I don't do much of that sort of work, and then weeks where I work round the clock to make some money so I can ignore it for a few more weeks.

But that plan is not really working for me, and I've known that for a while. I just haven't known why or what to do about it. I am still not sure of the next step, exactly, but the larger answer is clear. I need to make art, and to make it for a living. Somehow.

Somehow I have to do that, even though everyone has told me, my entire life, that it is impossible.

So the thing that made my cry while watching this beautiful series was here was the lie. The people who have said that have been lying. Because here are tons of people making things, and making a living at it. And god, they all sound happy. They sound just like I sound when I am playing, only they are working. Why? Because my play is their work, and their play is their work. And that is all there is to that.

From where I am sitting now, it could take any one of a number of forms. There are the photographs, there is a novel, there are plenty of other things I like to make and play with, and some of them are quite saleable, I think. I just need to hop tracks. Maybe I will go take some pictures of trains, as Boywich suggested the other day - just to get in the mood.

"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.

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.

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.

I am lonely a lot lately, which is weird because although I live and work alone, I don't always get the big big pangs for human contact. So I wonder if there is some particular thing I am missing. And if I could even put my finger on it.

I suspect it is love, but I am - well, suspicious of that whole equation - that if one is lonely, one must be wanting someone to love and be loved by. I think that whole cultural concept is flawed, that it's cover for something else. Something less effable (if I may butcher "ineffable" in that manner) and deeper into the core of what humans want, need, and/or seek out and mostly fail to find.

Or maybe I am just shying away from examining my own feelings more closely by trying to make it all about some big universal human need that no one has bothered to properly explore.

A little from column A, a little from column B, I suspect.

Anyhooo. Yes, lonely. Coltrane not helping. Cat asleep (what else is new?) and not helping much when she is awake, though I expect it'd be worse without her. Not wanting to do the work I have in front of me. Feeling semi-motivated to do creative work instead, but once I put that aside to wait until my other work is done, well, you know what happens. The time, she vanishes.

I am also struggling a bit with myself because I am inclined to feel depressed and discouraged by the knee thing, and to be afraid (very afraid) that I have just queered my chances for enjoying my new bike.

Also, a report from some x-rays indicates that my tailbone is not in such good shape after all, and I have to start a new round of PT for that, too. Which also makes me nervous re: bike. I have a lot invested in that bike - much of it emotional (though a not insignificant financial investment), and I really really REALLY need it all to work out, and to be able to ride it and ride it until my lungs turn blue throughout the spring and summer and fall and for the rest of my life ad infinitum.

Please!

"Where is fancy bred? In the heart or in the head?" - William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice. Also, Willy Wonka, in his Chocolate Factory.

More adventures with my darling Nikon, and a ride over bridge and dale to meet the fair Annabelle for dinner and wine. And a stop at the bike shop to chat with the friendly neighborhood Bike Boys, in all their slim legged glory (hubba). And some work on my novel. And some knitting with pretty girls in a bar.

And...why oh why isn't this the way every day goes? Okay, yeah, that was two days' worth of stuff, but you know what I mean.

Annabelle said, "You're silly when you're on the bike."

And I said, "Well, I get a little giddy, maybe."

But the truth is, I can't quite sort out whether it's the rush I get from being back on my favorite mode of transportation, the wee little bits of endorphins it affords me, or the special bikemen brand of testosterone that I keep getting high on whenever I am in that bike shop. Whatever it is, I like it. I like it very much.

I also like getting creative work done, especially when it includes three of my favorite pastimes (writing, taking photographs, and knitting).

I am almost done with a new hat, which is Malabrigo repurposed from an abandoned fingerless mitten concept. I got one mitten done, wasn't happy with the fit, and determined that really, the yarn wanted to be a hat, and the fingerless mittens wanted to be made from something DK. And within minutes (or so it seemed) two skeins of beauteous DK weight yarn appeared in the mail.

I am revving up to start work on Snow White. It's that darned tubular cast-on that's been intimidating me, but I will just have to blindfold my fear of it, and get on with it. And that's really all I have to say for now. I am not feeling replete with wordyness, but I have lots of pics to show you. I guess I shall have to dole them out over a few days.

Oh, and hey, did everybody see the eclipse? An eclipse in a clear sky and something like five inches of snow, all in one weekend. Not too shabby for boring ol' February.

PS. The title of this post refers both to the photos (natch) and to what seems to be happening to me lately. Somebody's been clicking my embiggen switch. And I think that somebody is ME.

I've been thinking lately about love - not so much the state itself as the desire for it. Being in love is very nearly like Lt. Commander Data's description of friendship:

"As I experience certain sensory input patterns, my mental pathways become accustomed to them. The inputs are eventually anticipated, and even missed when absent."

Which is to say, if one spends enough time in close proximity to another human being, one will either end up hating them or loving them.

But the desire for love, the deep yearning for it, may contain any number of things. In my case, a large chunk of it is the desire to be seen, and also to have someone to show things to. I want to be able to point to all of the things that set off a harmonic vibration in my strings during a given day, and say, "Look at that! Look at that! Look at that!"

Of course, having a camera is helpful for that kind of thing, too, and there are certainly other people to whom one can show things. But there is something about being able to have a person who is close to you in that particular way see what you are seeing, or at least see their own interpretation of it, and maybe talk to you about what they see in it, and then the two of you get off onto a tangent having to do with all the pieces of the universe that swim in your respective brains like great shining fish - well, that is love, for me. Or that is what I look for.

I can't say that I've exactly found it, ever.

Bits and pieces, from time to time. Little ends and suggestions and scraps of it. Boywich was more cerebral than that, and too depressed, much of the time, to go all the way there with me. And maybe just not built that way. A few others before him happened on little instances of it, but for the most part those dances were about expectations of each other, and potentials unfulfilled or not even possible.

I am not saying that I expect to find this kind of thing "next," or maybe ever. But I am writing it down as a sort of birthday request unto the universe, in case it might be asking me what I'd like this year.

Some days I want to make a list of my favorite things, but these lists only hold true for that day, or even that moment, when I wake up, having had an eight-hours-of-sleep night for the first time in a week, and feel great, and smell faintly of dulce de leche body oil (don't ask), and think that life might be all right, after all.

I don't mind that these lists are fleeting; in fact, I think they're truer because they're fleeting. The hardest thing to bear about life seems to be that it is fleeting - not just the whole but each section of it. A day flashes by, a year, a brilliant moment that you'd like to capture in amber and hang on the windowsill to watch the light shine through, forever.

No, I haven't suddenly fallen in love, unless it is with me, with life itself, with the sound of Coltrane and the morning light. Sometimes I am just in the vibe, in the groove of the jam session that is being alive in one's own small, breathing, juicy-fleshed container. It's all good. At the moment. That's all we ever have, remember?

Things I Love Today:

(no numbers here; they are not joyful enough)

-apricot jam. also, cherry.
-the fact that ma petite chat is snoozing in the treehouse I built for her.
-bananas. and my foresight in having bought some when I was seriously craving them yesterday.
-A Love Supreme. It's about God.
-Boywich. Happy Valentine's Day, Boywich. You are a sweetie. (no, I did not sleep with Boywich. I mean, recently.)
-the way my Nikon sees me.
-the way I saw me, last night, naked in front of a mirror. For once, I saw the beauty of that.
-the way my teapot looks like it's having a conversation with my toaster.
-the five ideas for photo projects I came up with last night.
-the fact that I am not, in fact, cool at all.
-my new messenger bag.
-oatmeal.
-knitting with other people.
-two shades of blue.
-my mom.
-my two measuring tapes: one has Pinocchio's nose on the end, which "grows" longer as you pull it out, and the other my mom gave me when I was in the hospital.
-that was several years ago today.
-it was all fine.
-when I got home, Boywich had filled our entire house with roses. Every room.

"I ran to the devil. He was waitin'...I cried 'Power!'" - Sinnerman, Nina Simone

Boywich and I used to have conversations about feeling that we were beings placed out of time, or into the wrong time.

Mostly we would talk about being Renaissance people - built to do a variety of creative things, none of them fitting very well into this century's model for gainful employment. At times, the conversations were also about being built along more Romantic lines (as in Romantic poets, not romantic holidays, which I deplore) than is currently fashionable.

I blame rock n' roll. Rock n' roll made it cool to be, well, cool - detached, devil-may-care, nothing could get a rise out of me. Ever since the 60s, it's been de rigueur to wear a cool, unmoved, unruffled veneer in social (read: romantic) situations.

I don't fit so well into that mold. And yet I try to practice it. And what happens is that: a) my face flushes like beetroot and gives me away and/or; b) there is a disconnect between what I say I am feeling or doing and what I am actually feeling or doing; and c) if the person on the receiving end of that is even halfway awake, they notice a) and/or b) and draw their own conclusions from that.

It's a problem. I really ought to either come to terms with the fact that I am a furnace in a world that values the walk-in fridge or find some other way out of the dilemma.

But I've been so well-schooled - at, well, school - that it's hard to leap into some unknown alternate future in which I display my furnacelike tendencies openly with no fear of being mocked, crushed, or otherwise mauled in emotional vice grips.

Boywich used to chide me for hiding things and letting them "squish out sideways," and I knew he was right, and yet I couldn't help doing it. He's still right. I'm still doing it. I'm trying to be cool. It doesn't work for me. I'm hot. So very, very hot.

* Note: The title of this post is also the title of an excellent live album by Bauhaus, which was not made during the 60s.

I go to my fathers, in whose mighty company I shall not now feel ashamed. - Theoden, King of Rohan, his next-to-final words.
It wouldn't sound strange, perhaps, to a friend who knew me really, really well, but I imagine most people who'd met me casually would be surprised to learn that I identify with soldiers, and that I have a taste for movies about pitched battles.

The man in the bicycle shop I found this weekend might believe me, though. He was a small man himself, built as light and fleet as a dove. Or something thinner - a sparrow, perhaps, but a sparrow made of steel. I liked him right away, especially after he took seriously my assertion that I wanted to build my own bike rather than have them do it. His eyes widened a little and his manner changed when I started talking about horizontal dropouts and bottom brackets and toe overlap, but he hadn't been patronizing even before that, and that is a rarity in a bike shop owner/mechanic. Unfortunately. You girl-bikers will be nodding your heads now.

Are we so used to taking the measure of a person based on their exterior dimensions that we fail to see what real strength looks like when it stands in front of us, no matter how small or tall the container? Yes and yes. And yet, it sometimes shines out so hard from a face that it's a wonder we aren't blinded in the light of it.

I see it in my own eyes in the mirror, every damn day, and every damn day I encounter the people who misjudge it, or gloss over it, or just have their eyes closed to it.

I've been thinking a lot about perception, having recently realized just how generically someone was viewing me: as an interchangeable girl. I am shocked, actually. It seems impossible that anyone, having been that close to me on more than one occasion, could look at me and not at least catch a glimpse of what's behind the eyes.

I've said it before and I'll say it again; the container I inhabit is the least interesting part of me, so I often assume it's the least noticeable. I barely even feel its presence, despite my love for it as a suitable home and my consistent efforts to treat it as well as I can manage.

In case you're wondering (or peering between these lines), I think I'm over the blonde. All of a sudden. Because, all of a sudden, I see that he doesn't see me.
And I think that's the unforgivable sin.

PS. So I spent some time with my boyfriend instead. His name is Nikon, and he - despite being a machine and a lens rather than a being of flesh and biology - seems to understand me. He always knows just what I want to say, and takes seriously his role of helping me in that endeavor. (Click on any pic to see it full-sized.)

Later...Note to self: Do not make grand pronouncement about being magnificently over da blonde in Dietrichesque fashion and then watch movie starring actor who looks just like him. Dumbass.

Of all the things I've learned to do over the years, one of the skills I'm most glad to have is my ability to cook. Especially when I see how much poorer a quality-of-life people who cannot cook seem to have, regardless of their income. In fact, there are lots of people who make far more than I do (especially in this town) who don't eat nearly as well.

Because I am a natural cook and I learned so early (at the knee of Julia Child, as it were), I find it hard to imagine being intimidated by ingredients, and hard to imagine having to follow recipes to the letter, or being afraid to improvise. I've thought many times that I'd like to write a cookbook that would help people to learn in approximately the way I learned - that would be more like having a pal in the kitchen to encourage and guide experimentation, which I feel is the key to becoming what I think of as a real cook.

I did write something like that, once, for a friend who'd asked for a cookbook that explained the ultra-ultra basics. I did little diagrams of what a medium or low flame on a gas stove looks like, and added in some silly cartoon vegetables to make it extra-friendly. Really, my aim was not just to explain how to do the basics, but to make the whole thing seem less mysterious, and less like a chore.

I am reminded of all this by the smell coming from my stove, where I've got some apple/pear sauce with ginger and cinnamon and cloves and maple syrup simmering. And also by how nice it was to make soup earlier and eat it, and to feel so very content from those simple acts. There is something primal about cooking - something that puts us in touch with the elements of the earth, with our own creativity, and with the unique joys of smell, taste, and satiation. I hate the idea that there are people who miss out on that, who maybe even live their whole lives kept alive by restaurant food, without ever having the smell of something wonderful simmering in their kitchens.

"You go to my head with a smile that makes my temperature rise. Like a summer with a thousand Julys."

"You give me fever when you kiss me, fever when you hold me tight. Fever in the morning and fever all through the night."
Today is one of those Mondays that seems to have an atomic weight of 50, compared to ordinary Mondays, which have atomic weights of 30-35, and to ordinary other days, with their weights of 25, and ordinary lightweight Fridays, with their weights of 18-20.

The sky is grey and low. The cat is alternately hyperactive, needy, skittery, and purrful. I am slow and tired and on a slow angry burn about something that has little to do with current circumstances and much to do with my heavy, heavy past.

It is no wonder, I thought earlier today, that I seem to have an urgent need to be physically strong. I am perpetually carrying giant rocks around. I'd like to hurl them at something and watch them smash. Well, I am working on that.

"Here's how to be an agreeable chap: Love me and leave me in luxury's lap....When I say, 'do it,' jump to it!"

So here is the on-the-train project I've been working on in bits and drabs (that phrase being my own concoction compounded of dribs and drabs and bits and bobs, methinks). The beautiful Verde Esperanza crack (Malabrigo) wanted to be a drop-stitch scarf when it grew up (it told me so), and I am liking the result so much that I am not even going to weave anything into the dropped stitches a la Bob + Weave, as I'd originally planned. It reminds me of waves, and I am way into waves lately.

"And if I fell into the spell of your call, I'd be caught in the undertow."

Sure do wish y'all could hear what I hear sometimes. Today it is Shirley Horn, giving a little maniacal laugh at the end of that song.

PS. In case you are wondering, those pale weights holding down the edges of the scarf so you can see the dropped stitch portions are two of three beachrocks that my neighbor brought me a while ago as a thank you for looking after her cats.

I saw Sarah Jessica Parker on the street, suckling at a cigarette as if it were her last meal. At first I thought it couldn't be her (though it looked a lot like her), because she looked awful - creepy almost.

Then I remembered the Rule of Celebrities. Which is, roughly speaking, if you spot someone in NYC who looks like somebody famous, it is usually them. To wit, my two Lance sightings. On the first one, my eyes registered that it was Lance, but my mind talked me out of it. The second time there was no mistaking him, which made me realize that the first time, I hadn't seen "some guy who looked like Lance"; I'd seen Lance.

I think we expect celebrities to look luminous, the way they do on magazine covers and in movies - to look different than we do. So their reality looks too small to be believed.

In a similar way, things like Writing Novels for A Living look too big for a regular-sized human like me to be able to accomplish - even though I know in my head that the people who do that for a living aren't any bigger than I am. (I refer here to psychic size rather than physical height, for those of you who are snarkily giggling behind their hands right now.)

Eh. In other news, I am considering converting my road bike to a fixie. You know why? Let me give you a list.

A) Because when I went for a ride, my chief complaint (apart from frozen feet because my bike shoes are held together by electrical tape) was that it wasn't enough exercise.
B) Because I really kind of dig tinkering with my bikes.
b-sub1) Because I get to play with tools.
b-sub2) Because I know for a fact that a girl working on her own bike = hotter than hot.
b-sub3) Because it is very satisfying to fix something myself.
C) Because I have always hated my drivetrain.
D) Because there is just nothing cooler than a road bike converted to a fixie, except:
d-sub1) A road bike converted to a fixie by the girl riding it.
E) Because, when I mentioned this plan to Boywich (soliciting his advice on the conversion because he knows about such things), his response was: "Well, if you meet a cute fixie-riding boy and tell him you did the conversion yourself, he will cream his shorts immediately."
*Side note: I love Boywich.

PS. These pics are Rhinebeck leftovers. I still have a camera, and I even have new yarn to photograph, but I am too tired/lazy/rained-on (take your pic - ha ha) to take new pics. And really, who can argue with pretty wool?!