Recently in Photographs Category

Okay, okay, okay. I'm doing that thing again where I start writing a post, get distracted before I finish, and it never goes up. So I swear that tonight, whatever happens, I will post whatever comes of this. Kitwich may set the house on fire (she's been playing with matches), and I will still post photos of burning cinders for you.

I might as well; there's shit on TV.

Just to be on the safe side, I think I'd better resort to list format. Because, you know, that is the best way to present a random series of thoughts that aren't likely to lead anywhere except yawnsville.

Okay, so.

1. I watched the Oscars last night, and as always it was about the dresses. And as usual, I spent my time mentally redressing them in what they ought to have worn instead of what their apparently hallucinating stylists put them in. I can just hear those stylists, between snorts of cocaine laced with peyote, in Edna Mode's voice: "But you look FABulous dahling. No, you must believe me. It is chic."

2. My hair is growing at an astonishingly slow rate, now that I've been trying to grow it into a different shape, and I'm on the point of racing into the salon and begging my darling gay stylist (dahling) to shear it all off into its usual form. Somebody pass the peyote-laced barrette.

3. Hmmn, I'm hungry.

4. I'd planned to take advantage of the not-snowing, not-frigid weather to ride to my favorite bike-accessible beach this weekend but blew my wad on Saturday, sprinting about town, and hadn't the legs for a 40-miler on Sunday. Alas.

5. I've been knitting as if it's going out of style - which, given that spring is almost upon us, it basically is. For those who haven't been reading very long (or don't bother remembering such trivia), I lose the knitting muse completely every summer. Some years I make a flimsy gesture in the neighborhood of a bamboo bikini top or something, but it never comes to anything.

6. I am dying for a new nose stud, but to say that I am too broke to afford the one I want doesn't even begin to cover it.

7. Still hungry, and damn I wish my hair would just grow itself into the desired length and shape, pronto!

8. Kissed a boy on the way home, and no, I'm not going to give you further details. It was just a kiss. Some days that's exactly right.

9. Found myself out in a very photogenic neighborhood yesterday just at the right hour when the sun is slanting low and golden, pulled over, dug in my bag, and realized...I'd left the camera at home. Damn. There was good graffiti, too.

10. I had a funny dream about looking through an exotic wardrobe for an outfit to dance in, and all I could find that I wanted to try on were hats. They were marvelous hats.

[Note: I wrote this a couple of days ago and delayed posting because I was trying to track down the name of the tribe so I could link you to it, but since the Internets have failed us thus far, here's the - slightly vague - story.]

I'm in quite a state lately. Boywich was telling me about an aspect of the language of a particular Aboriginal tribe in Australia, which describes a state of becoming, and for which there is no exact English equivalent.

We were talking about the degree to which our language reflects and reinforces the way we experience time. We may talk about the future, but we imagine it as a static point in time. We only ever think of the now. Current events, new, modern, 2.0.

It's not that we don't care what happens next; we just can't conceive of the flow of time. And it's no surprise, perhaps, that for many of us things seem to happen suddenly. We wake up one day and look in the mirror and exclaim, "I'm old!" Death seems to be sudden, even when someone's been ill for a long time.

Because of this, we don't really experience change. We notice its effects but it's hard for us to feel it happening. Or when we do feel it, it's excruciatingly uncomfortable. It makes us feel that nothing is stable, nothing is permanent, we can't rely on anything, and it makes us nervous.

But that's what I'm doing right now; I'm becoming. I'm in a state of tidal change, and boy does it feel strange.

I'm trying to remind myself of all the things I love doing that are states of flow, of motion, of being neither here nor there.

Or rather, of being always in the moment that flows into another one, smoothly and naturally. Bicycling, traveling on a train, knitting.

It's not quite the same as the tribe's perception of time, but it will have to do.

There are days when I feel exceptionally beautiful. They don't come often, and I always feel just a tiny bit guilty for saying anything about them, for having the audacity to claim beauty.

But I also suspect that it's on those days that I come closer to seeing myself truly than at any other time.

Most other days my judgment is clouded by a lifetime of hanging back, of not wanting to be upfront about what I can do, what I know. It seemed always as if for me to step forward someone else had to step back, as if acknowledging that I have beauty, or talent, or grace, meant that someone else was going to suffer.

It's indoctrination, I know. It's not uncommon among women. It's also a crock of shit. This I know intellectually, but not with conviction.

I have this persistent belief that I can't be great and nice at the same time. And by great, I mean Great. As in, possessed of greatness. Special.

"Everybody's special, Dash." -Helen
"Which is another way of saying no one is." -Dashiell

It reminds me of The Incredibles, where the supers (as in superheroes) were forced to go underground, to hide their powers and masquerade as ordinary citizens, not just in between acts of saving the world, but all the time. Basically they were told that they had to sit on their gifts, not show who they were, because who they were made the non-supers feel uncomfortably less-than.

Have you ever watched the way kids treat the geniuses among them? It's not pretty. And I think it used to be worse.

These days there's at least some lip service to the idea that it's cool to be a geek, though I don't know how far down it trickles, chronologically. And there are still differences between chic geeks and real live nerds.

I'm one of the latter. I don't look it, but I am.

Tonight I spontaneously solved an engineering problem - quite by accident. Then I threw my arms up in the air and exclaimed, "I'm brilliant!" After which I felt abashed.

One is not supposed to exult in oneself. One is supposed, above all, to fit neatly into some acceptable pigeonhole, within which one may exhibit a high level of competence without threatening other people, because it's confined to a limited sphere.

One is not, for example, supposed to be both an artist and a writer, and also to be good at science. One should not understand astrophysics. One should certainly not be able to immediately and intuitively arrive at the solution for a complex engineering problem that's taken a team of scientists years to unravel.

Man, I am so busted.

And worse, I was proud of it. I still am proud of it. It was a moment of gleeful insight, and those give me great pleasure.

I know for a certainty that some of the people I've dated have trailed away from me because I was simply Too Much. Too big, too much energy, too passionate in all senses of the word, too fast, too funny, too intense, too serious. Always leaving them behind. Not even trying to. Trying to be kind, to bring them with me, to invite them to play.

On the way home tonight I saw all these things I wanted to show you. An art installation of colored lights that created, as a byproduct, two long beams of reflected color on the river. Like a more cheerful version of the 9/11 memorial.

A driver was kind to me. She (I like to think it was a she) waited for me to get over, when I was expecting to have to wait for her. I was surprised, and turned around while we were stopped at the light to mouth "thank you."

I'd like to do a PSA campaign telling drivers that it's good luck to be nice to cyclists, in the same way that chimney sweeps were considered good luck in Mary Poppins's London.

Wow, that was a mess.

For those of you who didn't notice, the blog was down for about 10 days due to a minor catastrophe at the hardware level. It's all fixed now, and there doesn't seem to be anything missing, and anyway, it's just a blog, not somebody's lifeblood or my novel or anything.

But still, I missed it.

Which kind of surprised me since I've been finding it hard to blog, and I've been posting more intermittently than I did for the first - oh - 6 years of this thing. (Yes, I know the archives don't go back that far; Boywich has the early years saved somewhere safe-ish, and one day he'll get around to revamping this place and adding in all those files, but that has to be done manually and it's a big job, and he's a busy boy)

All of which is to say, hey, sorry girlwich was a blank white page for 10 days. I had things I wanted to say, too - things which would not have fit into 140 characters and so did not appear in the twitter stream. And while I don't remember those would-be essays, I have a minor amount of faith that if there were important ideas in there, they will percolate through my consciousness and reappear.

For now, what I will give you is a random series of thoughts (as opposed to the elegant triumph of organization that's the rule in blogland?).

It snowed again. Fuck. 20 inches. The roads are shite, as they say in Ireland, where it rarely snows at all.

I rode my rollers in the hallway tonight, for a scant fifteen minutes. It's hard riding rollers, and it's only about the third or fourth time I've ever done it.

I also walked, clad in waterproof garments and a certain amount goose down (bad vegan!) and several knitted items, to a pal's house to watch Carl Sagan tell me about Mars. I love Carl Sagan. We're on a first-name basis. I call him Carl and try to remind myself that: a) he was married, and b) he's no longer with us (so sad!). Such a dreamboat, that Carl. Shut up, I'm in earnest.

I am knitting the most brilliant sweater ever devised by mankind (forgive me; I've been thinking in hyperbole all day - watching Carl will do that to you), but I have reached a point of confusion. It's a hazard of seat-of-the-pants design. Yes, I'm calling myself a designer. No, I'm not proposing to make a career of it. But almost every successful piece of knitting I've ever done had its origins in a little drawing on an envelope. That's how my brain works. I'm creative and I don't follow directions very well.

During the last big snow (what, like a week ago?) I happened to walk by a mosque during evening prayer, and the chanting was being piped into the street through a loudspeaker. I stood under the streetlight for several minutes looking up at the falling snow and listening to that haunting melody.

This time, I walked past the mosque again but there was no music, and I was sad.

I have recently come to the conclusion that I am funny and rather brilliant and a mostly delightful companion, and I feel that I deserve an equally delightful boyfriend, and I am somewhat perplexed as to why one hasn't materialized yet. Maybe it's the funny hats.

When you ride the rollers and it is going well, you reach this state where you are floating in mid-air, scarcely aware that you're pedaling at all. It's quite remarkable, but I wish my glasses wouldn't fog up just at that moment. It kind of kills the mood.

I tried, I really did. I went to a party last night (small, intimate) and another tonight (big, anonymous). I had two scoops of ice cream.

I rode my bike in dresses (one black and flowy, one purple and tight). I put on makeup.

I flirted with an unsuitable boy I'd never met and pined (against my will) for another I'd already messed around with and discarded.

Last year I hid in the house and watched a succession of terrible, heartache-inducing movies on TV.

This year, I had the opportunity to be out and socialize. I thought it would help. Nope. Still grumpy. Still hate being in the human race.

Just wish I could ride my bike, alone, forever, into the quiet chill blue starlight. It's all I love right now. (that, and the cat)

Someone stuck a paper heart onto my helmet as I was leaving the party and I pulled it right off.

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood. - Mr. Rogers

Everybody's friendly when it snows. The people shoveling, the lone guy on a mountain bike (I take my hat off to you, brother), the parents out playing with their kids, whose tiny legs barely crest the top of the snowfall.

I go out with my camera (pocketcam, because it fits in the pocket of my coat) and walk, a big red hat on my head and a big smile on my face. I think I must have been smiling, because everyone I passed said hi to me as if I'd been smiling at them.

"Lemme know if you need help getting out." - one shoveling guy to another shoveling guy.

"Hey, take my picture!" - friendly man with a very large snowblower, to me.

I've always walked in snowstorms. It's a habit and an instinct, and by now, a kind of ritual. It snows and I walk in it. I was sick the last time it snowed, and I walked anyway.

I once walked in a bonafide blizzard, where the snow was coming down so fast, and the wind swirling so hard that I had to turn back at the end of my street because I was uncertain as to whether I'd make it home if I went farther.

Today was milder. Only about 10 inches. I waited till the wind had calmed down and then out I went.

I bounced around in the drifts and snapped pictures and thought about how it would be to ride tomorrow in the half-plowed streets. I watched the plows go by, chains on their giant tires. I watched SUV drivers, timid, uncertain how to get started. Then the car service drivers, flashing by too fast. The buses, stolid and unconcerned, neither too fast nor too slow.

Two boys walked by carrying snowboards. I wanted to snap their picture but they were gone. Lots of small children in brightly colored snowsuits, their moms looking surprised by the snow, a little worried that the kids were getting tired from walking thigh-deep.

One little boy flung himself face first into it, laughing. I knew just how he felt.
I leapt and jogged through it, backed into big drifts to take pictures.

I wore Gore Tex pants and hiking boots, nice big ski gloves. I was comfortable. Snow is something I understand.

It was just weird to see it in the city, where everything is ash-grey and blocky-looking. Suddenly my country life invaded, and everything wore icing.

I've been experimenting lately with letting myself do just what I want in a given moment. That will probably sound elementary to some of you, so much a given as to be not worth mentioning. But I have to tell you, it is quite difficult for me.

Not only am I not used to doing what I want, I'm so unused to it that I have trouble even hearing what I want.

I use that verb intentionally because finding out what I want is an act of listening. I hover there, listening for it like the sound of waves. Sometimes I can't tell. Sometimes I have a small sensation of it, a little nudge of energy in one direction over another.

It's like learning a new language.

I wonder if most people learn it in their teens. That seems to be the time of willfulness and experimentation and striking out as an individual force in the human landscape. That I am sitting here in my 40s experimenting and looking for clues like this is sad.
I don't mean pathetic. I mean quite literally that it makes me sad.

I should have done this a long, long time ago. I should have been living according to my own desires for decades, and I am sad for myself that I didn't have the chance to do so. And I'm sad that it's so difficult now, that I essentially have to wrest my life into my own hands by brute force and determination and ferocity.

On the other hand, it's nice to know one has brute force and determination and ferocity at one's disposal. I've used those qualities before, but mostly to protect or help others.

Now they're for me, and that is so unfamiliar it makes me squirm. I was sitting there in front of my oatmeal and my body was jumping around in the chair. Yeah, I'm not that wild about oatmeal; I forget about it on the stove, and I lose interest in it about halfway through the bowl. But it's also that I don't like to sit still. It makes me queasy.

I remember sitting next to summerboy in a restaurant once and him reaching out and clamping my leg down to keep it still. I hadn't even realized I was constantly moving it.

Sitting still feels like death to me, and repression, and lack of freedom. No wonder I love cycling; it's the opposite of all those things. And yes, I am now going to escape from this chair and pump tires and find the right layers for this frigid (high of 22F/-6C) weather and run away away away.

They say in order to love the city you have to leave it, that returning makes you appreciate it all over again.

Bullshit.

All going away did was make me realize how difficult and annoying and stressful (ad infinitum) life here is.

I went to visit a friend, and now I feel how very much I miss him. I went to a place where things are prettier and air is fresher and there are green things and an ocean, and now I feel how little of any of that there is here.

And what there is here instead is: Noise. Lots and lots of noise.

I hadn't realized how much static-level stress all that noise produces in me on a daily basis. That and the overall nastiness of people. I don't know, I really don't, whether people are bastards here on a larger scale or whether that is the true nature of man, and people elsewhere bother to cover it up more often.

But I tell you, I do not like these people. I do not like them in a crowd, I do not like them being loud. I do not like them in cars, I do not like them in bars.

I lost my sunglasses. I played in the cold foam at the water's edge. I rode in rain and then in sun. I hung out and cooked and watched movies and laughed and got sad. I did not knit, or read, or eat too much of anything when I wasn't truly hungry.

I watched some sunsets. I played with birds. Big birds and little ones. I visited a cat and two more cats and worried some about my own cat, who was being watched by a friend but who I knew would be sad and scared and confused.

I had two bad airplane flights. I wanted to take a long bike tour. I thought about how people get into our spheres and make little houses for themselves there. All I can think about now is how come I don't sleep so well or ever feel that relaxed here?

When I got home I overtightened a bolt on my bike and broke it. I fixed it. I spiffed up the bike with new grips and a bell. I don't think very much will change, though.

I'd like to write a book entirely about longing.

But of course, any book I'd write would be bound to be about longing.

I wake in this weather to an onslaught of it. The cloudy day outside, the wind, the smell of half-gone leaves all send my head into a place with a campfire, with a woman in a long muddy dress walking by with a bowl of something hot in her hand.

There's a dog running around barking, and a man sitting at the fire tosses his head back and you see that his beard is mostly red as he confesses that the secret ingredient to his amazing stew is Alpo.

It sounds like fiction, but I've been there. I've been in the place where there are people telling stories, where a two-foot bottle of sake is warming by a giant fire. The first time I ever tried it. It tasted just like the fire.

I don't know what it is about fall, especially the late part of it - the part that's really a teenaged winter - that pulls me into these times. These times that I never got enough of, that I felt, even then, might have been dreams.

There was a man I should have run off with. I wonder now and then what would have happened. I was awfully young. It might not have gone well.

Yesterday I was thinking about all the bloggers writing about the pleasures of being indoors, snug and knitting with friends or loved ones nearby. It seems to be everyone's favorite thing about winter (except for those who look forward to XC skiing).

I am having the opposite response. The cold air makes me yearn for mountains and wilderness and open lonely roads. It makes me want to tromp around in woods. It makes me want to hear wolves.

It makes me wonder if I will end this life as I began it, out of step with the perpetual roll of society. Off the grid, out there somewhere like Jeremiah Johnson, waiting to get eaten by a wild bear. Or maybe just on the bike, with a few cooking supplies and a really good book and that tiny coffeepot. I wonder who would watch the cat.

I know someone who's planning a cross-country ride with his giant dog. I kinda wanted to ask if I could come along.

Well, I am grumpy and exhausted and knitting something pretty. It's a present for a friend's sick mom. No occasion, other than a way to say, "I'm sorry you're so ill and I really like you and I wish I could make it go away but since I can't I am making you something very pretty and soft to wear in hopes it will cheer you up now and then in a small way."

I believe these sorts of gestures count. Both because I have to, and because I know that when I feel shitty a small kindness will often feel big. It will feel like the universe apologizing to me for things being so shitty.

Anyway.

I can hear Anthony Bourdain on the TV, and I am annoyed with him. His whole job is a frivolous, luxurious endeavor dedicated to showing off his rockstarness, and even though I don't usually feel that way about him, at the moment I am annoyed. I am annoyed by the fact that it's trivial, when there are big things to deal with, and the whole venture seems shallow to me.

I'm sorry, Tony. It's just a mood. I usually like you, and I usually think your intentions are good. I think you know your job is trivial, and you try to make up for your good fortune by showing off interesting cultures, etc. But tonight I just can't get it up for you or your silly little show. I am waiting for Sherlock Holmes to come on so I can look at that evil, ugly Moriarty.

There is deep loneliness at the heart of my life, and I usually just ignore it, and solider on, and often take a certain amount of pride in doing so.

Chalk it up to having watched a well-done version of Pride and Prejudice. Damn that Jane Austen. How dare she open up my heart like that? The bitch.

It's outrageous that I'd even consider posting on a day like today, which stands as a dull and scratched example of a day seemingly ruled by Murphy's Law. Plus, there's the whole tower of indignant fury situation leftover from last night. But then I think, why should I only post when I am filled with sunshine and flowers? I am rarely filled with sunshine and flowers, and neither is this city, and there may be a connection between the two.

I took these pics at the beach on a cold but sunny day as the light was entering that rosy zone photographers refer to as golden hour. Or maybe it's wannabe photographers who refer to it that way. I don't much like the term, but I love the light.

I have always liked beaches in winter, and Boywich and I used to go to summer-crowded places and enjoy the desolation of them in February. There's something magical about wearing a big turtleneck sweater on a beach. It's kind of like the allure of a fireplace, writ large and larger and largest. Wild and delicious. My favorite combo.

Anyway, this was a bike ride to the beach, and it would have been perfect had I dressed warmly enough. We were all thrown by the fact that it was nearly 70 degrees (F) in the city, and I wanted to travel light, so I underpacked. Oops. Frigid. I ran around to get warm, carrying the pocketcam in my pocket (natch), and took these.

I haven't been wowed by its low-light performance, but in light like this, the new pocketcam is a marvel.

It's a tiny little thing, even smaller than my last one - considerably smaller than my damn brick of a phone - but it has big eyes.

I love these. The rosy light, the textures, the sense of space spreading out before you. I wish I were someplace like that right now.

We apologize for the recent lack of posts. To make it up to you, the management offers this picture of surly chihuahuas. Enjoy.

This blog will resume regularly scheduled posting when and if the blogger thinks of anything to say that doesn't make her want to hurl herself out a window. It's not that she actually wishes to do such a foolish thing; it's just that she doesn't feel like talking about It. Whatever It might be. Laters!

I do not like endings. Maybe it's because I'm a natural-born storyteller, and maybe it's because, all my life, when I was reading a good book, I never, ever wanted it to end. Whatever it is, I don't like saying goodbye. I don't like changing seasons, and I don't like crossing borders. I want everyone and everything to keep spinning on its pleasant, familiar little axis. And unfortunately, that sometimes extends to keeping things spinning on their unpleasant familiar little axes, too.

I find, since I began dating again after a long absence, that I get more emotional than I expect to about the breakups of even small relationships - even the ones where you've really only seen the person a few times. Or the longer ones that are casual in name, but feel like they went a little deeper than the other person (and sometimes me) wants to admit.

I had a good day yesterday, and a mostly good day today. And despite that, or just next to it, I am a little sad tonight, on the couch with the knitting and the little pieces of memory from last week.

My head swims with this or that image, and I am unsure what to do with it. Chase it away, or watch it flutter by like falling leaves?

It was cold today, the kind of cold that tells me winter really is coming back, even though it felt all summer like it had only just left. I wanted my legwarmers. I knitted a hat last night, and I am starting another.

I miss him. He hurt my feelings on a number of occasions, and for various reasons I decided I needed Out, but I think about tangling up with him, all awkward limbs on the couch, and I'm sad again. I wish for him and I don't wish for him. I had a really nice series of kisses with the other boy to keep me company yesterday, to leave me feeling like sunshine on my face (he always reminds me of the sun, that one. It's his smile). And those thoughts came to me tonight on the couch, too, and I mechanically swatted them away before I realized he's no longer the one who's vaguely off-limits in my thoughts. It's the other one, the boy I spent all summer with.

Every week, we rode somewhere together - errands or the beach or the ice cream parlor. Someplace that could have been romantic and was never quite allowed to be, because we weren't doing that.

That part was a bit of a lie. At least for me. Despite myself, I knew I was getting a little attached. I tried to explain it not once but a number of times, tried to explain about sex and all its tendrils that tangle you together in ways and places you're half unaware of.

He didn't get it. I think because he's young - younger even than his age. When I mentioned that to Boywich, I could hear him nodding on the phone. Of course, he said. Sex is different. It's different than fooling around. It just IS. It changes things. It changes things and it's hard to come back from and resume where you left off. I don't think it'll ever be the same with this boy. Paradoxically, I think it'll be worse precisely because he doesn't know or won't admit that it made things different.

If he understood, if he were experiencing the same thing, we might, after a time, return to just being friends.

I don't know why I think that's less likely to succeed with someone I un-dated for four months than it was with someone I was in love with for nearly a decade.

I love and adore Boywich and always will, but I was able to become his friend, and not to want anything different. We had this conversation not too long ago, in which I remember telling him that he's my person. He's my guy. He's the one I would call in what Tolkien referred to as the utmost hour of need. And he knew that, already.

I am rambling, I suppose, and I want to watch Harold and Maude again. There's a commercial on lately that uses the Cat Stevens song that fits Harold and Maude so well, and it's completely out of place in the ad, but it keeps prodding me to re-watch the movie.

The movie is like a compass for me; it resets my direction when I start to feel lost. I can't even tell you why. Maybe it's the scene with the daisies. You know, where she asks him what kind of flower he'd like to be, and he points to the daisies, and says because they're all alike. And she says, no, they're not. Look closer, and you'll see that each one is unique (I am paraphrasing). And then she says something like, "I think a lot of the pain in this world comes from people who are this (holding up an individual daisy) but who allow themselves to be treated like that (sweeping her arm across the same-seeming field of daisies)."

My next tattoo will be of flowers, you know.

A woman I'd just met started to tell me my fortune the other day, or rather, to describe my inclinations.

Indulgent, she said. Check.

Dreamy. Oh yes.

She was a striking woman. Long dark hair, some kind of Middle Eastern heritage, but she was from Sweden.

I was drinking wine, which I seldom do anymore (and for which I paid dearly the following day). We were sitting on large cushions on the floor at a party.

It was a strange party.

All the women there were exquisitely beautiful. There were only four men, and two of them were a couple. Around them flitted tall, long-legged international supermodels.

Okay, they weren't actual supermodels; they just looked that way. They were restaurateurs, writers, photojournalists. My friends are very interesting, and often quite decorative (or decorated), but they don't look like this crowd.

I teased the host about having a hobby of collecting beautiful people, and he gallantly gestured to me, as if to say, yes darling, that's why you're here. It took two tries before I realized what he meant.

Over the weekend I bartered my playmate into sitting for me and the Nikon, but it took some doing. He dislikes having his picture taken. I often think taking photos requires the same skills as taming wild animals. You have to distract the subject with something - a little soothing conversation, a little soft noise, so they're looking elsewhere, so they forget you're there with a big black lens.

The photos came out beautiful, even for me. I sent him some, and he wouldn't even look.

Sometimes it takes someone else to show us to ourselves.

I think we all have an image of ourselves, or maybe several of them, and having to see the external face and body captured on film or video is unsettling.

It makes us realize that our self-image is of the internal us. And that while we may occasionally meet others who can recognize our Selves shining out of our eyes, or being transmitted in the way we move, laugh, or dance, that's not what is visible most of the time to most of the people we come into contact with.

That's disturbing, and so we hide from it.

I liked that woman at the party. She wasn't the person with whom I had the easiest, most smoothly moving conversation, but she was my favorite of the people I met that night. It was something about her eyes, and her warm energy.

And I'll tell you this - I have fallen in love at first sight a few times. In each case, it wasn't romantic love. It was just - I met a person and instantly felt who they were, could see it radiating toward me.

Sometimes I wonder whether people get that from me, too.

I eat and I eat and I eat, and then in half an hour I am hungry again, and the cat comes over to say hello and perch at my shoulder.

Thankfully she is not perching on my shoulder, as it is hot(ish) and she is furry.

I got this hungry by dint of sprinting 15 miles this morning, then another 8 or so, then the last 7 or so home. So. Tired.

So tired that I had to stop at every light to drape my upper body over the handlebars. So tired that even my friend (boy) said I looked tired, and usually he says something a little nicer, like that I look about 12 in my Oscar T-shirt.

He looked adorable, by the way. In case anybody is asking.

I had a funny day. I did so much riding, and then a bit of hanging out with friends who were equally tired (nobody slept last night, it seems), so that we were a roving yawnfest with very interesting bicycles. It was fun.

I realized today that the odd, confusing situation I am in (with regard to boys) happens to be exactly what I need. It reflects my emotional weather forecast, which is rather unsettled and not quite this thing or the other. It's not necessarily comfortable, but it's certainly interesting. And it's fun. Sometimes it's a lot of fun.

It's strange that I needed to give myself permission to not know what I want. And once I did that, I felt better. Why we think we always have to have so much taped down and clear, I don't know.

Sometimes life is just a muddle, and sometimes that's fine. It's like having your good angel and your devilish angel having a party above both shoulders. Occasionally you get kicked in the head (by accident), but the music they make is really entertaining.

PS. I found the pocketcam I want, but it's twice what I was expecting to spend, so I am going to sit on that for a while and ponder.

PS2. Oh my lord. How can it be possible? I am starving again.

"The best camera is the one you have on you." - Photographer Dave.

The big problem with having the pocketcam die on me, I realize, is that the number of days on which my bike bag is light enough for me to add the Nikon to its load is relatively small. Especially during a summer as rainy as this one. Raingear isn't light.

Nor are locks. Tools. Hand pump. Laptop. Change of socks. Small stash of underwear, toothbrush, and condoms (hey, I'm a modern girl; it's best to be prepared). Contact lens solution and case. Little tin of various painkillers and other needful meds. Little tin of Cinnamon-flavored Altoids. Lip balm.

The pocketcam was obviously not the finest camera in terms of lens quality, but I find myself really missing it.

Because without it, I miss a lot of other things. I miss taking pics of random street flowers. I miss taking blurry barroom shots that give you that magical sense of movement and energy. I miss being able to show you what I see from the bike. I looked down through the bridge structure today and thought, "This is weird. That's water down there. Those are waves. That is a tugboat. I'm riding over a tugboat."

I miss giving you those small doses of my reality that make a blog worth reading. At least I imagine they do.

I look at other people's blogs, ones with interiors photographed in beautiful light, ones with evocative pics of something as simple as brightly colored yarn.

And I think, well....But my interiors never look like magazine spreads.

There's too much dust, for one. I'm not much of a vacuumer.

And for another, I'm a wee bit protective of my private space. I mean, if I want to let the dust-bunnies accumulate and fail to unpack my books for another month, I feel like that's my business.

What it means, though, is that unless I want to subject you to months of Kitwich pictures, I need to start shopping around for a new pocketcam, or perhaps a less-expensive higher-quality used replacement.

Can't really afford it, but I begin to think I can't afford not to, either.

A friend and fellow blogger remarked that we've both been rather quiet lately, and I felt compelled to try and come up with an explanation for it. Everything I said to her was true (already written most of my Big Ideas here long ago, currently in an emotional whirlwind of upish-downishness, feel like I am repeating myself), but it doesn't necessarily explain why.

I am not sure why, in honesty.

I have been grumpy. I have been restless and not wanting to sit still and write. I have been feeling like I have nothing much to say. If I complain about something one night I might be over it by the next. If I wax enthusiastic about something one day I may have waned by the next. Lather, rinse, repeat.

I feel vaguely queasy at the moment, and I got a bit dizzy when I stood up. It's all a bit migrainey round here.

I have been telling myself (and others) that I think I should end an affair, and I have yet to deal with it.

I am, in fact, astonishingly bad at dumping people. Even (or especially) people I am not technically dating. It is hard, somehow. It is hard to say no to a cute face. It is hard not to want someone to be snuggly with. It is all just hard.

"She hates complications." - Nandi
"They do crop up, though." - Mal
"Such is life." - Nandi

It is very warm. I am making the spicy, spicy dal that I tend to crave when it is hot out. I don't know what it is about the one kind of hot that seems to call for the other, but I know I'm not the only one.

I also go through phases where I want the same thing, over and over and over again. An observer might call it a rut, but it feels more as if there's a spicy-dal-shaped gap in my body.

In case reading this is making you aware of your own need for spicy food, here is my rough formula for making the spicy spicy dal (oh I just love even writing that...mmmm). All amounts are approximate, since I just pour spices into my hand and toss them in.

Take a bunch of red lentils, about half a pound.
Rinse them in several changes of cold water until the water runs clear.
Put them in a pot and cover with a bunch of water - you want to have a couple of inches of water over the lentils, so somewhere in the neighborhood of 4-6 cups water.
Add about 1/2 to 1 tsp. sea salt. Set it to boil, then turn heat down to simmer.
Separately, peel and mince some fresh ginger (a piece about 1-2 inches long and an inch wide), do the same for 2-3 cloves garlic, and chop a bit of onion.
Put 2 Tbsp(ish) olive or canola oil in a saute pan, add the garlic, ginger, onion, and also a hefty dose of ground cumin (3-4 tsp.), 1 to 1 1/2 tsp. of hot chile powder (I don't mean the chili powder blend that's designed for making chili; I mean the straight ground dried chiles), about 1 tsp. dry mustard or whole mustard seeds, and a few whole white or black peppercorns. If you have fresh chile peppers, so much the better - you could substitute a fresh serrano or 1-2 jalapenos (depending on how hot they are) for the dried chile powder. Or like 1/4 to 1/2 of a habanero or scotch bonnet. Anyway, saute the spices in the oil, adding a little more oil if necessary, for about 3-5 minutes over low heat. Then just dump them all into the lentil pot. Simmer the vat about 40 minutes, or as long as it takes to cook the rice you're going to eat it over. You will likely want to add more salt at the end, but let it cook first and taste it, since the salt is going to get concentrated as it cooks down. I often end up adding a little more chile, too. Bwahaha. Taste after about 25-30 min. and correct seasoning as necessary. Remember it can be extra-fiery because the rice will chill things out a bit. And because that's what makes it goooood.

Optional additions: juice of 1 lemon. A couple teaspoons of turmeric.
Rice alternatives: Noodles. Polenta.

Yummity yum yum. Yay, fiery.

Tonight I am thinking some bok choy and sugar snap peas in garlic and olive oil to go with it.

It's all very portentous round here of late.

I've been in my new apartment for a while now, but, uncharacteristically, I am still not fully unpacked. I have about 10 boxes full, mostly books and out-of-season or out-of-favor clothing. They are stacked around the edges of the furniture like kelp on a beach.

I know why this is.

Even before I moved in, I was uncertain about this move, and it's not because I don't like the apartment. It's a wonderful apartment. I like the hood, too. The people are friendly, and there's a liveliness here that I find invigorating. The location is magical for serendipitous socializing, and I'd like to stay here a while, I really would.

But I've been afraid the whole time that I won't be able to afford to stay. That I won't, in fact, be able to afford anything. That my whole life structure as I've known it will collapse under its own not-terribly-extravagant financial weight.

It's not by any means an unfounded fear; it's the sort of thing most freelancers experience from time to time, and to some extent we have to learn to live with that in the backs of our minds. But as the work dried up and then the money in savings began to wane, and then to get terribly, terribly thin, I just kept pushing that back into the recesses of my mind. I have no room for that kind of fear in the front, you see, for it would be paralyzing. And it does me no good to be paralyzed.

But all along my enjoyment of this place has felt like a tentative gift, something that might have to be returned in a few months. To someone more deserving? Well, I hope not. I do feel, finally (I think) that I deserve some happiness, and I'd like to be able to experience it here, in this fine hood, in my apartment with the good light and the great proximity to all my friends, and the bike rides and the boys who like to come visit.

It all has the feel of this bedeviling weather we've had. Every time the sun lures us out, it's only ever a few moments between clouds. The threat is ever there; have fun but I'm gonna drench you if I feel like it. Don't get too comfortable.

So I was watching this documentary on Edward Hopper, and he apparently once said that all he wanted to do was paint sunlight on the side of a building.

I came home in light rain today after waiting out a massive thunderstorm, and by the time I sat down at my desk it had turned suddenly strongly sunny out, complete with chirping birds.

Something about the way the light was slanting in made me want to pull out the camera, and it also made me think that Hopper had a point.

I am usually a big fan of color, and my life without strong colors in it would be so empty that I don't even like to contemplate it, but now and then I am struck by the important beauty of black and white.

And even more so, by how beautiful light itself can be - what it looks like playing on a surface, the ripples it makes in reflections, the contrast with a sharp shadow. Positive and negative space.

Positive and negative space has counterparts in life, too, I think. And not just in the obvious idea that life has good and bad, pleasant and unpleasant, virtue and evil. I have been feeling my way around in the nebulous area where the values of things are suspended and one simply experiences them.

{I can hear Boywich in my head clamoring about relativism, but I am not talking about that - not really.}

I guess I am talking about opening oneself to experiencing something before deciding whether one likes it or not, before calling it a good or bad thing in one's life, before making any decisions about it whatsoever.

And no, I'm not quite (or not merely) talking about boys, or sex, or any of that, though those things can certainly be considered this way.

It's more about feeling the shape of something. Things have positive or negative space - they can feel bright or dark, or have aspects of both. Again, I am thinking of bright and dark as merely descriptive rather than assigning a value judgment to them. It's a bit like yin/yang, perhaps.

Sometimes I feel that I can detect positive and negative space, bright and dark, solid and airy, manifest and mysterious aspects in interactions with people, and in the people themselves. We all have things that we present easily to others, that we're comfortable showing, and things that we reserve for ourselves for various reasons, and things that move us in a way that's hidden even from us, things which may in fact be gigantic turbine forces arranging our lives and propelling us in ways we aren't aware of.

There is a certain amount of yin and yang in most people, I imagine.