Photographs: February 2008 Archives

There is a magic to randomness, sometimes, isn't there?

Not altogether happy with the recent poem I wanted to post, I decided to open my summer/fall notebook to a random page and see what I could find there.




Look:

From a random page in my old notebook:

His quiet was unknown to her
Always a crowd in his star
Always an orbit to follow

The sand drained in the glass
as she drank it - one scraping grain
against her throat

his mind made up to sell
he canceled the light dinner
the leftover song
the shoes under the bed

His hands were flowers
and wilted
when she sang.

And from tonight's notebook:

His hands come unfolded
and in them are light birds
the wings made of leather
the feathers bells
the feet like seashells
crunching crunching underfoot

as he walks along the shore
dipping his face into the waves
and breathing in.

(both poems copyright 2007-2008 Lizbon Grav, all rights reserved.)

Note that I did not read the old poem before writing the new one. And the funny thing is, every poem I've written in the last several days has a line in it about "his hands." I have no idea what, if anything, is the significance of that, other than that I must have someone's hands on my mind. And curiously, I've apparently had someone's hands on my mind for months, even though the male players in my daily life have changed.

But art is not necessarily a direct reflection of life, and I have known some people who are only imaginary, in much the same way that there are dreams from childhood that might be real, or might not.

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!

Knees are somewhat better today, and I went swimming, and then I had peanut butter and banana and honey and tea, so you know, there's all that.

I also took a pic of my new hat. It's simple, it's ribbed, it might look better if it had a little i-cord something or other on top, but I thought I might try wearing it under the bike helmet, so I left it plain on top.

In other rib-knitting news, I have decided fuck the tubular cast-on. I am just gonna knit Snow White with my regular long-tail cast-on, or maybe a cable cast-on (which I successfully taught myself yesterday while trying unsuccessfully to learn the tubular), and I'll maybe use needles a size bigger or something. I don't care, and this annoying cast-on is delaying my access to the pretty sweater, so off with its head!

For the record, I am not going off completely half-cocked here; I checked Ravelry last night at 3 in the morning and did find someone who'd made a perfectly nice Snow White with a regular ol' cast-on, and I do not generally have a problem with casting on too tightly. So there we are.

Incidentally, I want to point out that the expression half-cocked most probably derives from old-style firearms, which I don't think will shoot half-cocked. (Yep, I was right.)

In any case, I have shot a firearm of this type, and, well, now you know: I know how to shoot. Add that to your list of freaky things you'd rather I didn't discuss here. But, hey, I figure if you wanted to be reading a PG-13 type of blog, you'd have left long ago. (Byeeeee! Have a nice trip...)

Anyway....yeah, rifles. Yarn. Cat asleep on couch, as per usual. I'm gonna go swatch some Classic Al now. Well, after I finish that work I owe that client. And maybe write a poem to end this completely inane and aimless post.

Later: Work done, but sorry, no poem. But I got to talk to my bicycle mechanic about crank length. He was up till 2 am researching cranks for me. Now, that is the way to a girl's heart.

So, while I was at PT (that's physical therapy, for you young 'uns who have no need of it) getting electricity shot through my tender, tender kneecaps, I mock-complained that if Lance Armstrong can do triathlons at the ripe old age of 37, I should be able to do my modest six-days-a-week training schedule without excruciating, crippling pain.

And my PT quipped, yeah, Lance's abilities have nothing to do with genes...

Apparently my genes are at war with me. Being a 40-something athlete is, I am finding, a constant balancing act between trying to generate enough activity to keep oneself strong and healthy and having to curtail said healthy activity because one's body won't tolerate it. I swear, the demands I make of this body are modest. I don't run ten miles at a time. I run four. I swim for 45 minutes. I ride my bike at a modest pace, in a not-terribly-hilly environment, a couple of times a week. I take a rest day, whether I want to or not (I hate them, to be honest).

And yet. Here I am, the day after a ride, and my knees won't work. They won't bend. They are screaming at me. I am, occasionally, screaming back at them. I gritted my teeth throughout the PT. I am a tough-ass little cookie, after all. But holy shit, this hurts.

I never take unnecessary medications. And yet I gulped down a giant prescription-strength Naproxen this morning. I iced the hell out of everything.

None of it helped. The PT said it'll get better, that I should stretch before and after rides, that I should do nothing but swim this week, and that I should get those shorter cranks ASAP. Righty-ho.

Ouch.

PS. Yes, my ass hurts, too. Boo hoo hoo.
PS2. Fuck you, Lance. Fucking superhuman freak. Bastard.
PS3. And fuck all you cute little boys at the bike shop. I bet your knees don't hurt you at all, you sexy little brats. I hate you.

"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.

Hello my lovelies. I've had a busy, eventful, and rather swell weekend, which hasn't left me much time for blogging. Now I am on a long work deadline that will be crunching like a bowlful of headache cornflakes well into the wee hours, and so I really must focus.

But I didn't want to leave you hanging too long. Suffice it to say, I have been busy reuniting with my long-lost love, the bicycle. I have spent lots of time hanging with bike geeks, riding across bridges, jumping curbs, getting rained on, and talking bike parts, to my Turkish Delight (a shiny gold star to those who catch that obscure TV reference).

I also met her - in person, and, well, rather kidnapped her for the whole day, ably assisted by the alluring powers of pretty yarn and prettier girls (and one boy).

It was a good weekend, my friends, but my cat may never forgive me. She hates it when I have a social life. Wait till I snag a boy and bring him home, including, perhaps, an extra bicycle (beyond my two). She will be clawing my eyes out while I sleep. Too bad, dearie, too bad!

Ciao!

PS. Would you like a poem?

His dreams stretch until they are bonds
the sank-low feeling dissipates
as the piles of the shore recede
and his oar swallows juice after juice

his breath appears like a serpent of air
she signs puzzles in his face
the map of lines pointing out
various continents, east and west
her eyes move over the sands

Anytime he believes his heart
can grow new skills
he is done in by the silence
growing in the corners
like an old red dog
raw of temper
and cold of skin

only interested in training him
to stop coming aboard.

copyright 2008 lizbon grav. do not reproduce in any fashion, under penalty of death, prosecution, persecution, perfidy, prognostication, and sloth. Also defenestration.

I've been doing a fair amount of knitting behind the scenes here chez girlwich, though I keep forgetting to photograph it and/or post the pics when I've taken them.

For instance, I made a rather cute little lavender garter-stitch heart pillow for my mom, but it's already been packed and shipped and unwrapped and exclaimed over, so no pic of that. But I guess when you've seen one lavender knitted heart, you've probably seen them all.

There's also the drop-stitch scarf, which was completed sometime last week, and washed and blocked (as much as I ever block anything, which is admittedly not much) and worn and admired by all and sundry. Okay, by two local knitting buddies.

I made myself take some pics, finally, once there was enough sunlight in this apt to do so (it's been a grey, rainyish, snowyish, icyish week, for the most part). And here's one of them, at least. I won't know until I finish this post whether you get the other one also, which just shows the end with the ruffled edge I decided to put on to firm up the drop stitches. It came out rather nice, though of course not especially square or perfect. But then, I am not much of a perfectionist - well, as a knitter, anyway. Other areas of life we can discuss at another time.

And now I am knitting some fingerless mittens, in still more Malabrigo (yes, I know, I have a lot). For two reasons: one, because I only have one pair of fingerless, and if I should (perish the thought!) lose one of them, I am screwed. Also, two, because I need a portable project to carry with me hither and yon. What's that you say? Sox! Yes, sox, of course, but I need a mindless portable project for those times when I am sittin' with the girls drinking alcohol or caffeine in liquid form and knitting away.

And First Sox do not a mindless project make. While mittens aren't quite mindless, I have done enough of them to not get massively confused if my attention strays onto more-interesting topics than row counts. Boys, for example. Bicycles. The various merits of 1/8 in. chains as opposed to 3/32 in. chains. To teflon tape or merely to pack the threads with grease.

Don't worry, the girls don't know what the hell I am talking about when I get like that, either. But it floats my boat.

"Engines make her hot!" - Serenity's first mechanic, referring to his soon-to-be replacement, Kaylee.

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.

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?!