"Deep Thoughts": February 2008 Archives

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?!