"Deep Thoughts": October 2008 Archives

Hot chocolate with a layer of cinnamon edging the cup like frost.
Music spiraling out to settle on limbs like so much soft, dreamy lead.
The periodic trilling of that puzzled cat.
A very, very good book, its pages splayed out like hands.
The lady at the PT office calls to see if I am coming tomorrow.

No, still a bit sick. But not all bad.

The interesting thing about being sick, for me, is that it makes me realize just how much I don't stop, in the ordinary course of my days. I don't sit still. Boywich said to me once, sometime in the past year, "You're like your dad, not a little. You go-go-go!"

And at the time, I think, "No, no no. Look at all these pics of roses I've taken over the years. I stop, I think, I contemplate, I..."

No, he's totally right.

I don't really stop much, unless forced to do so. Heck, I've been wanting for months to take a pic of the way the city gets very golden, lit up like someone's tinfoiled it, at the bottom edge of day, and I haven't done it yet, because I just don't want to stop, pull over, and take out my camera.

I was reading this lovely post, and thinking how right she is, that a huge part of the reason to go on vacation is because it's so conducive to letting one's mind wander, to seeing buildings and people and trees and window displays and gardens like art.

I managed, suddenly, on my second day off (translation: confined to the indoors because of illness), to write my graduate school essay. Yes, I'd been brewing ideas about it in my head, mostly when I'm falling asleep, for weeks.

I'd made an abortive attempt a while ago and decided I wasn't ready yet, that things had to crystallize. Yesterday afternoon, in the midst of knitting and watching TV, I found myself making notes for it in grey Crayola marker, and wishing I'd thought of writing with that colour before; it's so evocative, it seems just right.

"Notes for essay"

Blueprints
Tacking
Telling myself stories

Sometimes ideas spring to life fully formed, and other times they get built like Legos. You get a brick at a time, not really knowing how they'll all connect, but trusting that your inner self knows, and that when you finally sit down with all your pieces, you'll be able to just hum and build, hum and build, the way you sat and built imaginary cities as a child.

It always works, my friends.

Mostly writing stories and making art involves acquiring some faith. Faith in the process, faith in instinct, faith that one's self knows where to go. If I could just get the art of living my life exactly as I write, I think I'd do very well indeed.

Tea and a walk now. Can't sit still forever, after all.

Oh my darlings, I had this long post written, full of post-cycling energy and musings on age. And then I had to run out again before I could get it posted (I have to read them and ponder for a bit before they go up), and now I am feeling like it's a bit too personal, too close-up and detailed a slice of this particular life.

It's not that I don't discuss personal matters here (hell, I talk about sex - or at least the wish for it - all the time), but some posts that don't make the cut do so (or don't so) because they're a bit too revealing in other ways. Because they tell you where I was on a certain night, or because they contain pics of the bicycles of people I know.

And then I take a step back and decide that that's unwise, and that it would be better to put up something knitting-related, especially since it's almost that biggest of weekends in East Coast Knitting.

But I can't get a good photograph of the one finished Special J mitten because I have not yet perfected the art of photographing one's own arm, and, selfishly, I am tired and don't want to try. Especially since I may be on call for some amateur messengering tomorrow.

Some friends of mine are staring a very big job in the face and I offered to help pick up some runs if they just need bodies and don't particularly need things to arrive at the ungodly pace with which they normally deliver their packages. (Lord, are they fast)

I am not fast. I am cautious. But I do have a messenger bag and several bicycles, which I enjoy riding in all sorts of weather, so I could put these items to good use if need be.

Anyway. Here's some random pic to keep you entertained while I cast on for the second mitten, because if I wait any longer, I fear we may encounter the dreaded Second Mitten Syndrome. I promise to corner Special J and make her model them for me when they're done. She has such pretty hands, anyway; they'll look much better on her.

But before I go, let me just say this. One of the interesting things about growing older is that you find (or I do) that you are no longer the "est" at much of anything. You're not the fastest, youngest, prettiest, most precocious, or any of those other superlatives.

And you have to come to terms with that. I've also been coming to terms with the fact that my "good" parts (or best parts) are not immediately visible - not just because I'm more interesting than I am nice to look at (mind you, I think I'm quite nice to look at, but I think I'm nicer to look at on the inside, if you can follow that) - but also because I don't necessarily parade my big big brain around in all circles of life.

My work is solitary, and it's not even got that much in common with my real interests, and in any case, none of my friends really know what it's about or would even have the context to appreciate it. And I'm certainly not the fastest, youngest, or cutest cyclist out on these roads, so that's right out. I don't race. I don't (most of the time) messenger. At first (or second, or twelfth) glance, I am unremarkable. And I am middle-aged.

It's weird. I don't feel old, but in a way I sort of drift among several worlds, not being completely part of them, but feeling relatively welcome in them anyway. I like the feeling welcome part. That is new for me. It's nice.

It's still odd. I wonder if I look like a conundrum to some people. A young/old, single and not-terribly-unhappy about that, childless (delighted about that), independent but not too prickly sort of woman. It's nothing really remarkable, I guess, except that it seems a little unusual to me. Or maybe that's just because I was watching Masterpiece Theater until five in the morning last night, and it would have been very unusual in that world. I would have been an "old maid," if you can believe that.

Oy. Where's that cat of mine?

PS. Actual conversation yesterday, with my favorite young redhead:
Me: "Is it wrong that I am already building up another bike in my head?"
He: "No, it's awesome!"

I went to the eye doctor last week, and he gave me a choice between seeing near and seeing far. When I was younger, the walls between daily flotsam and deeper meaning seemed quite thick.
That is, people didn't talk much about why we're here, or what they care deeply about, or how they love the people who are important to them.

I've been feeling, lately, like there are no walls. Or that it's a thin, translucent curtain. That we duck back and forth between the things that matter and the things that occupy our hands. And sometimes the things that occupy our hands become very important - sometimes they are the things that keep us upright and able to walk.

My friend's mom died on Sunday. I knew she was going to, and he knew she was going to, and I don't think that makes it one iota easier for him. If anything, it's as if she's dying twice; once the long slow crawl toward death, the kicking and screaming (literally, from the sound of it), the pain of her leaving him by inches, against both his will and hers, and nothing either of them could do about it.

And now, the absence of her. He looks like it feels sudden. I don't really know.

He's very young.

I went to the place where he works, specifically to see him. He wasn't scheduled to work, and I knew, somehow, that he'd be there. Because if it were me, that's where I'd be. At a place that feels normal. Where there's something for my body to occupy itself with.

Our bodies really have a lot more say than we give them credit for. It's they who decide when we are leaving, what we can do while we are here, in some cases whom we love, even.

It was with my body that I wanted to comfort him, and couldn't. I am not talking about sex here; merely ordinary affection, which somehow seems like the only real thing I could offer. He's just a friend. He has a girlfriend; she wouldn't be happy about it. I don't want to make a mess. But I did have the strong impulse to take him into my arms.

I think maybe cookies are in order. But they won't do anything, other than say what I would like to say with my whole body. I am so sorry. I am here.

I am listening to unfamiliar music and finding it the same as I did when I bought my first record album at age 11 or so. Unsettling.

For someone who feels music pretty deeply and fully, I don't really buy it very often. I tend to shy away from that as a "frivolous" expenditure, which is odd considering that I will toss any amount of money at impulse purchases of other kinds. I think I just forget that one can have new music.

People sometimes send me things that I like, and Boywich recently sent me a whole mess of things, some of which I just adored. But last week I bought this, because I'd watched a movie that had its title song in it, and remembered how much I liked that song. Anyway.

Half the album is lilting and good, and the other half sounds awkward to me, and I wonder if, after playing it into familiarity, I will feel differently about it.

I do the same thing with people, I realize. And with many areas of life. I feel uneasy with newness, in all forms, even new things that I might later grow to love. And I fall in love with people, things, and places after they become familiar. And in some cases, perhaps primarily because they have become familiar.

Isn't that weird? I keep wondering about life lately, not just the meaning of it, but the pace of it, the texture of it, what am I to take from it, and do I need to take anything? Do I need to leave anything? What is it? Some of these songs seem to be asking that.

Maybe all songs are always asking that, except the ones about love, which are asking that in the form of an assumption that successful love is the answer to that. Maybe that is all anyone or anything ever asks, in any form, at any time: art, commerce, war, feeling, everything we do and everyone we are, in every context. The world (and by that I mean nature) has either no answer or the very simple answer - you look at it, listen to it, and it just is. It's beautiful, but not gentle. It's beautiful and wild and terrible. Yeah, just like that. And that is how I always seem to feel inside.

The house still smells like acorn squash, from the one that was baking last night at 2am.

(Boywich used to call me the Master of the Nonsequitur.)