Photographs: May 2009 Archives

My heart changes so rapidly that I sometimes wonder who's driving this thing.

Yes, I am madly juggling. Yes, that's been a charming change of pace - though not as consistent as one might hope. There are availability issues with both of them.

There are also issues of sorting out which underlying feelings, if any, are which. And which are just free-floating trouble looking for a place to roost.

I never trust myself in these matters.

I suppose that sounds unnecessarily harsh, but you see, I have a propensity to get, as one online dating personality test put it with uncanny (and annoying) accuracy, "sudden and ferocious crushes" that strike without warning and tend to leave me hanging upside down wondering what happened and who made the world suddenly flip on its axis, and hey, can anybody help me figure out which way my feet are supposed to be pointing?

It reminds me, somehow, of lying on the big rocks atop my favorite mountain, and looking downwards into the sky and having this tremendous, delirious, and rather scary feeling of vertigo as my whole being tries to figure out what to do with the whole up-is-downness of it all.

I went for a bike ride today with one of the boys, who is a friend, and I wanted so badly to take him home with me, or at least kiss him, and it just wasn't happening, and I am disappointed.

I don't know whether it's just because I want something that goes in that place that's all woken up and clamoring for attention, or that I've been spending a lot of time with him recently and have discovered that, to my surprise, I like him.

I like him and I am finding him rather cute all of a sudden. And he's not that boy about whom you've heard at length; he's the other one. The nicer one.

What the frack I am supposed to do about it - if anything - I have no clue. Hold my breath, I guess. I ran in the water like a big dog at the beach, with my heavy bike bag on my back, and he was not melted by this, so perhaps it is a forlorn hope.

Because even the blonde couldn't resist the happy dog move.

PS. Pocketcam + golden hour, in case you were wondering.

Once in a while, the city remembers to show its love, in that magic way that only it can. Happily, it decided to do that on the day of our picnic. The forecasted thunderstorm did not materialize, the weather dawned sunny but crisp, and the picnic grounds were green and pleasant.

A local DJ decided to provide accompaniment of his own accord (presumably one of the city's overworked angels had sent him), and then passed a striped railroad cap.

We had all the right ingredients of a successful picnic: too much food, little people and big people, a bunch of lemonade and iced tea, a frisbee, a cute puppy dog, a neighborhood basketball game to watch, and lots of room to run around.

I'd ridden my practical bike, loaded with about a gazillion pounds of pasta salad, and brought my good camera. The Nikon had several friends there, all fancier models, but I still think I took the most pictures.

All the ladies got flowers to wear in their hair or wherever else they liked. There was a bit of sneaky wine and beer. There were a considerable number of homemade cookies. There was a beautiful bundt cake. I ate everything about four times over, and we later adjourned to the hosts' apartment for some after-picnic laughter and more wine.

I rode home in a cool breeze, jacket zipped up, taking it carefully since I'd had a bit of that Riesling.

(Click for bigger, if you like.)

Well hello lovelies.

See my pretty new curtains? See?

Much more fiery than the last batch, and somehow that feels appropriate to me. Yay, fiery.

Some things here are the same, and some are distinctly different, and I am still adjusting to that.

It occurs to me that I've made myself at home in various places by bringing a small group of (unremarkable to anyone else) objects with me. So that my space feels familiar, no matter where it's located. I'm not sure what that means, if anything, though I know that I like to feel that I am entering my own brain when I come home.

I'm watching a movie I've seen before, in which the main character has short-term memory loss and essentially has to reinvent her life every day, to remind herself of where she is and everything that's going on.

It means she approaches each day with a certain freshness, a zest for the most minor things - waffles she ate yesterday but can't remember, kissing a boyfriend she has to re-meet again and again, a pineapple upside-down cake. She paints giant lily plants on a wall each day, and each night her brother and father whitewash over it so she can paint them anew.

There is always something evocative about this movie to me, which is why I've watched it many times.

Tonight what's hitting me is that this is a bit what moving to a new place feels like. It's still me, it's still my things (or some of them - the ones that I didn't get rid of, and the ones that escaped the clutches of the world's worst movers). The cat is much the same. But even she senses that maybe the rules can be rewritten here. She's been climbing on certain pieces of furniture she never climbed on before. She's testing her limits, even as I'm rewriting mine.

I hadn't realized how much my days are shaped by habit. It's disconcerting, in some ways, to not have access to the same rhythms, the same resources.

I can't find some of the things I always took for granted at the local grocery stores: red lentils, frozen lemonade. And the prices are exorbitant compared to my old neighborhood.

I have a shorter bike ride to get to my haunts, and while that frees me up to do a lot more socializing, it also means that I have to think about getting exercise. Which is weird. In the old place, a 40-minute ride was built in.

There are parks and other beautiful places here, but the hood itself is a bit rougher-looking, and I am not sure how safe I am walking home at night.

Essentially, there is a whole new language to learn. The language of days, and I am a rank beginner.