Bossy

Renee told me to post on my blog so she can test the RSS feed.

We've had such a good weekend.

The end.

Wistful

My cousin's boyfriend did a FB status update about being bored. I don't know if I've ever been bored. Restless, impatient, frustrated, sleepy -- but not bored. I do do wistful though. And there is nothing more wistful than remembering back 17 years to a humid august night at the Michigan womyn's music festival, a field of women teary-eyed as Ferron sang the quintessential wistful dyke breakup song. Flash forward, dinner at my ex's house-that-used-to-be-mine, with my online friend who also used to be a lesbian but isn't any more, Ferron at my kitchen table because the woman who lived in my ex's basement after we split up brought her because her friends, the documentary film-makers, made a film about her. Talking to my dyke friends about what to wear on my first date with some man I met at a pub. Life don't clickety clack down a straight line track indeed.

I've been faithful

to the wee diary book for a week now, and I like the practice. But what I notice is that I can't think of what to write, and then I start to write and then POOF the spaces are filled up. And no backspacing.

My car is all nimble, and in it and with it I'm all nimble. I went to ikea today to get some outside furniture, certain that it would disappear seasonally if I waited. I wasn't sure if the chaise would fit in my car, and in fact, in the box, it didn't. But taking B's creative persistence about these things, and what F taught me about tying things down so they don't flap about, I ended up removing the chaise from the box, levering it and propping it up at an angle with two other boxes, and securing it with my kayak strap to the front passenger seat so it didn't whack my head off. And then I proceeded to shove six folding chairs, a folding table and several armloads of towels, sheets, pillows, a duvet etc. into the space. Then ably hopped up and reaffixed the bike rack to the roof, because it would have become a trajectory in that mess.

When I got home, first I ran off to give K a cheque for my new place I'm renting. Then I steeled myself with some fruit berry candies and managed to wrassle all of the furniture upstairs, hyperactive elevator doors be damned.

In the bath, I was reading Heather Malick, whose vitriol can run away with itself but who is often caustically funny. This is what I wanted to fit in the wee diary:

Trust me to enshallow my love. But I fell in love with France because of the sunlight hitting the Seine in a certain way as I sat at a café drinking table wine. As usual, I qualified my love and this is why I am not what they call a "fun" person. Perhaps the sun is glinting off the corpses of the two hundred Algerians tied up and dumped in the Seine to drwon in the riots of 1961, I thought. But I still fell in love.

Victoria and Nancy-Ann

Two women named Victoria and Nancy-Ann have bought my place. I am guessing these are not the names they use in the world. What a weird mix of euphoria, delight that it’s two women, relief that I can move on (and that I made a modest profit on the whole thing) – and sadness and wistfulness. Walking home from the pub, having a burger and one too many glasses of wine with B, totally happy -- then totally weepy and sad.

Seems inevitable, me with my complicated feelings. (The other day, Alan-in-Moonbean said to me “you know, you light up a room – you have that spark… and then you realize how the wheels are turning and you think, “that is one complicated woman”). Yeah, yeah. Always with the ebullience and the wistfulness.

But, that’s me. Celebrating selling my place by eating hamburgers with my ex at the pub I’ve only discovered in the last year, getting chatted up by a guy named Ian (what the hell IS my demographic, anyway?), fretting about reading in too many different and stupid places about how women “become invisible” in their 40s, trusting that the universe turns up what you need when you know how to ask for it. Trusting that the stance of abundance is the right one.

Example: I did this jiggery pokery trade with L for the lease on my car, content merely to not have the car on my plate anymore – and then she reflects on it and gives me an extra cheque. I decide what I’m comfortable with at the bottom line for my place, and the first offer is exactly that. I end up with $38K above what I paid for it 3 years ago, which is not too bloody bad for this economy.

Oh, and I love my car. But that will have to wait for some non-burbling time.

5 years

I was wandering around my neighbourhood today killing time while more viewers (probably #20 or so) looked at my place and decided not to fall in love with it, and I went into this quirky little store in the market that's kind of a bookstore, kind of a cooking-stuff store. I had the notion that I might buy something for my new kitchen. Instead I picked up this 5 year diary.

It's tiny -- doesn't give you much room for any day -- but I like the idea of the flow of days over time. I was thinking about how different I am today than I was 5 years ago, and all that's unexpected about my life right now. I was wondering of course what May 1, 2014 would look like. I can't imagine.

I've never been great at the every-day-discipline stuff, but I think 3 lines -- a gutenberg-era twitter space -- should be doable. Not quite sure *what* to capture, though. Food? Dreams? (Let's not even GO there, given the horrifyingly explicit electra dream I had last night involving my father and a flowered bathing cap). Sensations? One dominant thought?

Now I just need a really good PEN.

Rain run reset

Today I left my loft in viewer shape, did a focus group in a hospital @ 730 am, took my car for service (summer tires and vacuum, in prep for handing it over to Liz), took cab home in pouring rain, made phonecalls for car insurance and to book a flight for Renee to visit me in May. Hovered over my workspace to not leave even a fingerprint and designed and did slides for a meeting tomorrow, crammed myself into the pandemic anxiety of the crowded streetcar in chinatown , ran off to my tax person (owe too much), went to bank to get certified cheque for Audi, and am heading back to the hospital for another group.

Oh yeah. Then I have a date type thing. Distractions, possibilities. Hum. Unless of course Suzie's anxieties are valid and he's a Craigslist Killer. In which case... bye!

Myself at this station

Once when i got off the phone with my sister, F commented that I had a sort of nest of people who cared about me that he lacked. It was during one of the not infrequent weekends where the space between us seemed to conjure up violent and sudden storms, spring on the prairies -- and he dipped into a fairly rare moment of a kind of regret, noting the way I seemed to pass from hand to hand among warm configurations of people.

I think I've always known that, but deep in the heart of yearning for a lover, the emotional impression of people outside that centre is a pretty thin watermark. But in the last couple of weeks, I've really felt those hands in a new way. Suddenly I trust the constellations around me, feel anchored in them in a way I don't know if I ever have before.

When B and I broke up, I stumbled through an orbit that felt more like the breathless gravity of a black hole. The people around me were really holding me up -- D, Suzie, B, my online community, J&S, R, M -- the many people who gravely and patiently listened to me howl with angst, with fear, with deep sorrow, nodded and encouraged as I patched life together. Then, I gulped at them, wanted to feel like there was something mutual going on, but I was voracious and endlessly needy. That certainly got thinner, but it continued to stretch itself out as I strived to find my feet in work, meaning, writing.

Ending a nearly 3 year relationship with someone you've never lived with is obviously a massively different thing than stumbling in tears out of a 14 year relationship your life is scaffolded around. But even so, I'm bruised, I'm sad, I'm a little lonely. But my world, my night sky? It's complex and unbelievably profound. Multiple constellations, each one signaling love, caring, endurance. Beams of light in silico from my people across the continent, the ocean. Warm chaotic life around tables, food, music, arms around me. Dinner and narratives and hilarity and new lives. Just... all there, all in orbit, keeping me in gravitational pull.

If I flick back through this blog 3 years, I realize that I nested a lot of emerging identities in the push/pull with F. The passion pulled into being first by a Leonard Cohen song years before I met F that formed the underthrum. The StraightCate persona who could navigate and hold the cultural warmth of the dyke community and the hand-in-hand couple across a table, heels of hot boots tucked neatly under. The academic with purpose, drive. Work that comes from someplace bigger. And I think what I've realized is that I found a way to live into those stories that was enabled in the dance with F -- but not shaped by or limited to him. Recognizing that the emotional self of me isn't separate from those parts of me.

This week has been wearing. I flurried my way through decluttering, getting my place into the crisp template of desirable locale. LIsted it. Hoped to sell quickly, resigned myself wobbling hope and disappointment through my fingers like trying to carry too many wineglasses by their stems with every viewing. Fled the place while people tried to imagine themselves here. Planned the business life with D & J. Worked. Hit walls of fatigue. Felt the whiplash shock as every night at bed I faced again the complete disappearance of the person I'd processed my days with for 3 years. Found sleep, imaginative dreams. Launched new stories, a co-edited book, kayak lessons.Felt loved.

Pics

The slightly creepy, smoke-smelling guy with the excellent clothes who came to photograph my loft today left his reading glasses on my bed. He was the sort of fag who, at dinner parties, would definitely fall into some of the worst misogynistic comments about women and their Parts. He made comments about being scared of women, in a sort of mocking moue. I did not enjoy finding his glasses camouflaged on my duvet cover.

However, he took some excellent shots, and now my place is listed for the whole damn world to see.

I'll miss my cork floors and the smick smick noise they make under my bare feets.

Mango Gelato

When I was in BC last week, I think I was simultaneously clenched and open. I think it was kind of like that moment of paralysis that happens when you're scrambling on kind of scary rocks -- where you hang too tightly onto the ledge above you and have to force your fingers off painstakingly one by one, even as you know that as you step down that welled up sense of fear will just vanish. That paradox where I knew how damned sad I was, agitated with emotion, but still able to slow myself down to walk along the seawall (is it a seawall?) and eat a mango gelato.



I'm still hovering in that space a little bit, sped up emotion like having a birth induced. All happening faster, contractions more intense, eagerness to see that baby shot through with waves of pain. In this case, the baby seems to be full package life adventure. Since I got home late thursday night, dragging sadness and metallic exhaustion behind me, I've managed to visit with my sister, get a new iphone, accidentally buy a new car, deal with the recursive loop of problems in Uganda, toss an endless supply of unneeded stuff out of my place (from jigsaw puzzles to paper to clothes), meet with my real estate agent twice, get my place in shape for listing, have it photographed and listed, hang out with my slightly chaotic and sweetly loving chosen family (bosoms indeed), buy some outdoor furniture for my new place, decide NOT to buy a new place in TO but to rent... and do some much-needed work. Phew. My eyes are truly glazing over, but it's not manic energy -- just, putting the pieces in place for what comes next.

I'm heading out to buy some yarn to finish the blankie for paula's almost-here baby, and then to meet D at the gym -- and really, my bed is beckoning, despite the fact that it's 3:36 pm. But it's all okay. Really reminded of the amazing, supportive and loving people in my life with whom I'm pretty much able to be my best self, in all its complicated glory.

Pdx

The last time I was in the portland airport in any conscious way was nearly three years ago. I was enamoured of the free wifi, listening to someone playing the piano, drinking a good coffee. It all felt so civilized, a kind of symbolic space that came to represent "the west" between me and F. He and I hadn't met in person yet, but we were fast-dancing in email, and as I sat on that round bench right over there, I opened one of the emails from him that had me so excited about our potential meeting. A vision of a shared narrative on mountaintops, sharing work, sharing flesh, sharing life.

Today, as I bolt back to Toronto in a little tumult of waylaid plans (L had strep, now there is something wrong with her back, so K and I aren't going to Sonoma after all), and missing the phone that I left in a rental car and lost forever yesterday, I'm wistful. I feel like I want to compress the time continuum, find my way back to that era of open-lunged hopefulness, remeet the playmate I thought I could have and do it right. And just as I feel that, just as quickly, I feel the ironic detachment in that opening -- F termed the shared narrative a "dangerous folly," the belief that two fiercely single-minded people could carve a life together. And, I wanted it... desperately. The big-ness of the leap of crossing borders, attaching myself to a man larger than my life so far.

He was some kind of crucible for me. I refracted against his sides to hack my way through my dissertation, to recrafting myself as a phd. In his encouragement, in his open engagement with my ideas, in the edges that I disagreed so strongly with. At the beginning, the disagreement cowed me -- made me angry and frustrated that I couldn't express myself, couldn't translate. It taught me how much I needed to do that -- and taught me a lot about what happens to me when I'm frustrated.

I was frustrated a lot in this relationship. (And lord knows, so was he). I have the uncomfortable ability to look at my interactions from multiple angles -- from inside me where the small voice is constantly explaining, accounting, justifying some of the moments that defined us as a pair, but also being so clear that I am capable of behaving as badly as a person can behave. Epithets hurled, once an actual small pot of hair gel that miraculously bounced out of the bathtub with a trajectory that smashed up and knocked down a framed picture. Shattered glass in the bathtub, my sense of civility shattered on the floor. Hectoring insistence on being in the centre when he needed space. Mistrust borne out of our jagged beginning, chiseling away at every story to find the weak spot. Impulses simultaneously understood and reviled, even as I was enacting them.

I see myself in my fullness -- from his point of view -- volatile, relentless, self-absorbed. And I see myself weighing all of that, shading it, finding more even tones, distance from the emotion, probing at my own past with an awl to disrupt long-carved patterns.

In this relationship, I simultaneously saw myself as demanding, needs unmet, insistent -- and continually finding ways to let go of my rehearsed, long-scripted expectations as I realized that so many of them were stale, outgrown. Shifts sometimes subtle, sometimes too late, sometimes more in my own breathing space than enacted between us.

Against this backdrop, so many magical moments that embodied that imagined narrative -- hand in hand up a scary mountain, flesh on flesh above life, howling with laughter in bed at his mother's impression of his brother's ex, drawing pictures of what my work could be on a placemat. Hand in hand wistfulness at hope of new work for him. In these moments, and their wake that let me set out for uganda, ride off on my roadbike, accomplish the phd, lift weights, weigh my strengths in his wake, arise ripe and desirable ... a huge part of me still wishes those moments could be strung together to make a whole.

I ran along the willamette this morning, a run between bridges I've now done enough that it's one of "my" runs. One of my rhythms was the chorus of "what will I say at my graduation" that I mentally wrote for the 6.5 years of my phd. Made me so aware of the role of these shaping narratives -- it's in the yearning and reaching for them that we get momentum. When it actually came time to stand on the stage, I still hadn't found the right words -- was rewriting as I sat on stage, forgot to thank several important people, uttered nothing profound. But the practice for that perfect moment was what got me to it. Just like the writing of the narrative of the shared mountaintops with F, on a two-generations-ago now i-book right over there at pdx, was the practice of enacting the belief in love, the belief in growth, the belief in hope and intimacy and connectedness.

Last fall, when I went to germany, I had a narrative that I was going to rent an Audi A3 and drive as fast as I wanted to on the autobahn as I traced over my childhood myths. When I landed in frankfurt, I ended up with the crappiest of german cars, an Opel with a saggy clutch and feeble power. I spent a few moments feeling dejected, and then I just... adapted. It wasn't what I wanted, but the imagined story got me to germany, through the important encounter with my childhood town. My time with F was that epic for me... sliding forward on a narrative that we only ever lived in haiku-length moments, but conveying me into a space where I can see so much more than I did before, can write myself with the same confidence that my niece writes out words phonetically.

This is my new place in White Rock.



Leased for a year, shaped by and holding someone else's hopes, open now for me to write. The emerging narrative is still subtle and vague -- find my writing voice that's been on hold for a year, ride, hike, find some people who could constitute community. Runs along the water. A red mosaic tile bistro table on the deck. Myself, entering anew.

pffffft

blowing off the dust

When I traveled to santa barbara for the first time, for the orientation week for my phd, I took the bus from LAX to santa barbara. It was March, and brilliant sunny, and for part of the ride I had the pacific on one side and fields, green with something unrecognizable, on the other. I toyed with a little metaphor in my learning plan about those fields, that I knew something was growing but couldn't tell what the crop was yet.

On that first ride, in the half empty, lumbering and slow bus, I listened to Emmylou Harris' Wrecking Ball on my portable cd player. Mournful, wrapping my sense in slow motion. The green, the diamond sea pacific, the sun, the bus driver, the woman I'd met at the bus stop who never quite became a friend. Hope.

Three years ago, I came back to my empty loft after being in portland for a month. Played Josh Ritter -- tell me I got here at the right time. No cds anymore. I padded around barefoot, eating raspberry gelato out of the container, filled with the possibility of the man I'd been crafting an imagined future with, tapping into my keyboard in the wide bed in the eeyrie in portland.

A week later, he was wrapped around me, and the song rang in my ear. He warned me then that he thought we'd have trouble with each other's music. He listened so hard, wanted to hear me share myself. So much that didn't fit, so many false starts -- and so much that locked in as though we'd been born to wrap around each other.

Life in orbit for three years, shot through with hope and intense emotion and coffee stains. Airplanes, sheets, beaches, tears, disappointment. Finishing the phd, swinging my own wrecking ball.

Today I sit in the airport -- how many times does this make? -- waiting to fly west to finish our breakup. The raspberry gelato taste still on my tongue, no new soundtrack. Still wanting to grab at hope. Stains under my eyes. Feeling like I learn every lesson one relationship too late.

RED

So I have this two year old ipod nano,
one of the RED ones. 8 gigs. Works fine, though I broke the little carrying case for it. I use it on planes, while knitting, in the car, while walking.

Yesterday I had it on the table in a coffee shop at a meeting I was having in one of my hospitals. A woman I don't know well from my client group came up and started chatting with us. She's in her early 50s, great red hair, dresses memorably. She noticed the ipod, and started to tell a story, almost against her will. Her husband died last year. She had a red ipod, just like this one, that her team had given her. She loves red, it was special, but she's not a music person. She didn't even load it. When john got sick, she loaded it with his music. It was how he coped. Music was important to him, the red ipod carried him through the last months.

At the end, he was doing palliative care at home. There was a problem with the bed company. One night, they did a delivery at 1 a.m. The bed didn't fit together. She had John up in the middle of the night. She loves red, she doesn't mean to be telling this story like this, it's just that the ipod reminded her.

The next day, there were three bed companies there all at once, trying to sort out the problem. The ipod was on the dressing table. One of the men stole it. A palliative bed delivery guy stole a dying man's ipod.

After John died, she used his aeromiles to buy a new ipod. It was like his final gift to her. But the RED line was done. The new one is turquoise, and she's never even loaded it.

She hadn't even seen a red ipod since then. Mine just reminded her. She's sorry.

So I hand her my ipod. "I think you should have this."

"No, no no." She's embarrassed. "I really didn't mean to tell that story."

"Seriously, I'll bring it to you on Wed, at the meeting. you bring me the turquoise one. We'll switch."

She nods, changes the subject. We talk business.

I go home, fall asleep wondering if I want her turquoise one or if I should buy the new one with the video window. Will it work with my car adaptor? I let the sadness simmer at my edges. I sleep fitfully.

This morning, I'm rushing around. I notice out of the corner of my brain that I've left my ipod in the bathroom, for some reason. I grab my brush, which tangles in the earbud wires... and drop the RED ipod in the (not yet flushed) toilet.

Polysemy and Fatness

One of the basic premises of the kind of communication theory I study is that because of the polysemous nature of language (i.e., words not only have different dictionary meanings, they have different meanings in different contexts), the "transmission" model of communications (you think a thought and use language to transmit it to me) is not actually what happens at all. We coordinate meaning together, in interaction.

I have never had such a good example of this as in the email I got from our Ugandan director today:

I hope you are fine and you have grown fat these days. Here everything is OK. The place is carm and Edward is sick he no longer makes noise.

Way to underline the sense of waddle that accompanies January in Toronto, completely with long johns under jeans that are already a mite too tight.

Ah, Freeman. (The other day he reassured me that the children remain Big and Gay).



At least things are carm there.

Knitblog

I have this new knitblog I'm supposed to be doing in two voices with Ali. (Cate and Ali knit? Geddit?) But she's pretty quiet so far.

ANyway, I like having the knitting specific place. I blogged about this infernal shawl.

http://cateandaliknit.blogspot.com/

It has come to my attention

that, contrary to what I claimed in my previous post, I in fact turned 43 on my last birthday, not 44.

Thank you. That is all.

Reflective Meme -- Thanks to Liz

The original one of these in Liz's blog had like 500 points... but I'll peg away until I have to boot the computer out of bed...

1. What did you do in 2008 that you’d never done before?

(Why is my first impulse sexual? Must be the moon).

Went to Africa. Most profound thing I've ever done.

Oh, and stood on a stage as a full-fledged phd.

Acquired a road bike.

Worked in the US under a TN visa.


2. Did you keep your New Year’s resolutions?

I don't think I had any resolutions last year. And yet the year popped with achievements. I think there's a lesson there.


3. Did someone close to you give birth? Did anyone close to you die?
No. and No.

So that's a wash for population change....

5. What countries did you visit?

US (umpteen times), Scotland, England, Denmark, Germany, Uganda. (Am I missing any?) Landed in Schiphol but stayed sky-side, so I don't think it counts.

6. What would you like to have in 2009 that you lacked in 2008?

More impetus to exercise.

7. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Learning to be less tied up in knots. A concatenation of many good things.

8. What was your biggest failure?

I don't really think in terms of failure. There were a few WTF client moments.


9. Did you suffer illness or injury?

Nothing serious.

10. What was the best thing you bought?


My bike, hands down. Makes me alive. Followed up by my plane ticket to Uganda.


11. Whose behavior merited celebration?

The people of America. The amazing people who swept me with emotional curling brooms to finishing my dissertation, and then who surrounded me when I presented it. So many people.

12. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

The people who cheered on Sarah Palin.

13. Where did most of your money go?

Airlines.

14. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

Now I'm thinking about sex again.

My bike.

Finding out we got a grant I was the lead writer on.

Meeting the kids in Kasese.

Climbing mountains in Scotland.

The AMAZING AND DELIGHTFUL capsule hotel in schiphol I slept in on the way back from Uganda.

Hanging out with my nieces.

15. What song will always remind you of 2008?

I guess that annoying Coldplay song. (Hi Liz!)

Also, the theme song from Dr. Who.

16. Compared to this time last year, are you:

i. happier or sadder? Happier.
ii. thinner or fatter? Marginally fatter
iii. richer or poorer? About the same, financially. Lifewise, richer.

17. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Again with the naughty thoughts.

I did a lot this year. Worked out more.

18. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Weeping. (First half of the year, mostly)

19. How did you spend Christmas?

On an airplane, mostly, next to a woman with a wee sweet baby named Gianna. Bracketed by xmas morning with my nieces and late night cheese and wine with F, his daughter and her mom.

20. Any one-night stands?


Not unless you count the deep lust I have for that capsule hotel in Schiphol.

21. What was your favorite TV program?

Torchwood. (I think this was the only thing I watched on broadcast tv, but I did like discovering Dexter on dvd).

22. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?

The woman who wrote this book: My miserable lonely lesbian pregnancy. I wanted to punch her in the mouth the whole time I was reading it.


23. What was the best book you read?

Hm, surely there was something. I think the fact that this is question #23 means that I want to just grab what's on my bedside. Which happens to be A short walk in the hindu kush, which is actually really good.

Actually, I think the best book was A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali. Read it under the mosquito net by headlamp in Kasese, and I could smell the sweat. Harrowing and brilliant.

Last year I would have said Fun Home, hands down. But I don't think there was anything that actually came out this year that had the same impact on me.

I read a fair bit, but it was very in-one-eye-and-out-the-other.

24. What was your greatest musical discovery?

It was a very music-less year. Maybe learning a teensy bit about blues.

25. What did you want and get?

Road bike. Trip to germany. Trip to Uganda. Less inner turmoil. Lots of joy with F. Affirmation with many many important friends. Yarn.


26. What did you want and not get?

An i-phone. And it turns out I'm pretty happy about the decision not to carry email around with me. Though I think it drives Danny nuts.


27. Favorite film of this year?

For the life of me I can't remember seeing any films. I think we went to see In Bruges, because it happened to be on when we had time to go to a film. But it wasn't a film-going year. I saw Rachel Getting Married and liked it, but then I like those overly navel-gazey things. I have a list, but I don't know when I'll make them happen.


28. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

Turned 44. Went for bbq and blues. Wondered why my mother didn't call me.


29. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

Hm. My year was pretty satisfying. There are a couple of people I wish had more peace in their lives. I wish I had a bit more resolution on this long-distance-relationship thing.


30. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2008?


Fleece.


31. What kept you sane?

Anafranil. Zinfandel. A steadying touch in the morning. My bicycle. Listening to people. My online friends. My real-life friends. My real-life friends I see online a lot. Knitting. Sleeping. Conversations with good people on airplanes.


32. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

Well, is there any answer other than Obama?


33. What political issue stirred you the most?

I think slowly starting to understand a little bit more about post-colonialism and what makes Africa the complex, complicated, breathtaking place it is.

34. Who do you miss?

I miss working on my dissertation. And Jeff from the Pittsford Pub.

35. Who was the best new person you met?

That man on the plane between Amsterdam and Entebbe who told me the story of taking his 6 year old daughter with him to vote on Nov 4 and then flying to DC so she could be there that night.


36. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2008.

Hanky Panky underpants are as good as thongs.

Some random bob

I think I blew my blog wad on the kasese blog... and I'm also feeling like this space was good for diverting the demons while I was divorcing, disserting, dissecting every damn emotion I had. But it never had much of a personality, and the voice is so... intra-me. So I've been thinking I need another voice to stretch and another space, one that pushes me to keep the scholar part in the scholar practitioner fantasy as well as pushes me to explore a bit.

While I'm pondering that, some random.

1. A resolution for 2009: wean the computer out of my bed. I don't know when I picked up the habit of co-sleeping with my computer (well, I know when -- as soon as I was no longer sleeping with a woman who forbade it as strictly as she forbade the wet destruction of library books when I dragged them into the shower), but it's supplanted books too much of the time as I topple to sleep. And sure, nothing really wrong with reading a year's worth of Ask the Pilot columns before sleeping (it really just makes my shiny macbook a Big Kindle, I guess), but it seems wrong to fall asleep with $2000 worth of metal on my chest, a hum of anxiety about ElectroMagneticWaves or some such nonsense. I seem to have succeeded, more or less, in prying the need for continual email out of my psyche, in letting my treo self-destruct and not replacing it -- I should be able to shift this too.

2. I knit a dalek. For a xmas gift for F. I was stupidly delighted by it. I'm so weird sometimes.



I got it from this pattern:

Extermiknit!. Which was not too bad, though a bit hard to follow because no charts, and a few errors here or there. But the MAIN issue was the SCALE. Doesn't the picture on that site look like it's a wee cuddly thing, like maybe the size of one of those giant microbes??. Nope. That sucker is the size of a human baby. Stuffed with old tights, some of my sister's old jammies, and black beans. F likes it.

3. For NY's, we were in seattle. The next day we drove north a bit, to a park near Anacortes, and walked out on the beach and looked at birds. I took my camera out of my case to capture a wintry loon (the camera, I note, that I bought after I lost my other camera TWICE in Scotland), handed the case to F and promptly dropped it in the water.

I was kind of content to let it join the sea, but I couldn't quite be certain that there was nothing in the little pocket. So after peering under the dock for a while to try to gauge the tide, we went back to F's truck and ate some sandwiches, then went back. By now, it was following a little course that hugged the (very high) dock, and much closer to shore.

We had the idea to lasso it, but of course had no rope. (For some reason F had removed what looked like a serial killer kit out of the back of his truck -- he was driving around ropes and crampons and an ice axe for a while, for no apparent reason). But there WAS bullwhip kelp, so I roped me up about 15 feet of it, and F took the position of a careful curler on the dock (HURRRRRRY, I yelled, but he didn't get it, not being a canadian) and tried to sweeeeeeeep the case to shore.

He was making steady progress when we caught the attention of a little family on the beach. A harley riding couple, their daughter, her friend. Mr. Harley couldn't resist jumping into the action, and he began hurling rocks at it. Under the theory that if he could hit the spot right behind it, he'd create a little ripple that moved it cloooooser to shore.

So this went on for a while, F sweeping with the bullwhip kelp from the dock, Mr. Harley hurling rocks, us womenfolk encouraging the men in their Hunt. The wee camera case ($15 at Staples, I'll point out) bobbed closer and closer. Sweep, SPLASH, bob. Sweep, SPLASH, bob. "You go bob," yelled out Mrs. Harley, in fact, though when I said, "thank you Bob!" he said, "my name's Ken -- she calls everyone Bob."Bob," he said.

So it came really close, teasing the footing posts or whatever they're called, and I reached in... and stepped in... and the tide kept scooting it just out of reach... and then suddenly, it was 10 feet away again.

"I'm goin' in," said Bob. And he did. Rolled up his pants and rolled into the icy water, impervious. Rescued it with casual aplomb.



Then his daughter took our picture, and they told us about a neat little B&B they had stayed at nearby, and we wished each other a happy new year.

And F went home and washed the seagull shit off his goretex.

Happy 2009!

Make Two

I made a toque:


First cabling project, and I only screwed up the top, a little bit, though I never quite got the hang of "knowing" where a cable should go -- it was a feat of memory and a friendly fashion student at the event I was at on the weekend who was a knitter and had a tapestry needle in her bag.

It's Brooklyn Tweed's habitat hat, and the cables on the top on the sample are crisper than mine. But it was fun and it's CUTE.

The yarn is Green Mountain Mohair, colour Jasper. Same yarn I made L's scarf with in the spring. And I really want to make a sweater out of this yarn.

And I also made a new blog for my Africa trip:

findingkasese.travellerspoint.com.

Subscribe. I leave on Saturday.

My Espresso-ed Self

A few years ago, I did an intensive little training session in ethnography, where our task was to deeply observe a place for a couple of days and to produce fieldnotes and interpretive comments about our observations. We were in DC -- Alexandria, to be precise-- and one of the women in my group, a white American who lives an expat life in Mexico, picked starbucks.

There were a lot of interesting assumptions in her approach -- she's so granola, so anti-globalization, so about localized action, that she took it for granted that all of the rest of use would be as prickly about the creeping fingers of this chain as she was. She was shocked when I said I loved starbucks, loved its predictability, its operational excellence (they are the only coffee shop that quickly and perfectly makes my two shot with room americano without any fuss). Anne still likes me, but I think I still confuse her.

That was about 5 years ago, and here I am, back in the starbucks on Mt. Hope in rochester where a good chunk of my dissertation was written. And I slot right back in -- the staff remember what I like, write my name on my cup, give me a plate for my blueberry coffee cake instead of putting it in a bag. The same older woman who seems to have had some kind of stroke is here as every morning, reading something complicated even as she struggles with speech, the same clusters of verbosely signing deaf people arrive on schedule in the afternoon.

I was talking to Liz the other day about all the travel I do. It makes her agitated just thinking about it -- her homebody self can't abide the notion of not knowing where she'll be in a week, missing her things, her bed. I was musing that really, mostly, it doesn't phase me. I seem to have made transition a place. Some of that is about the journey, the movement, being part of the story -- I guess when you're trying to frame your life as being about possibilities, moving around can be part of it.

There other routines and rituals that show up in travel that echo the rituals of homespace -- podcasts and knitting on planes, podcasts and aussie red licorice in the car, coffee shops as time out of time spaces to work in. And that, for me, is where the affinity for starbucks comes in. It's predictable, I can work here, people are friendly but leave me alone, and I know what I'm getting. (I recognize that this is kind of ironically exact to the stereotypical reasons why americans might choose a holiday inn in Phuket instead of a local beach hut, but hey, I'm just musing here).

The thing is, this transitional life is, I think, a blend between trying to find the predictable grooves so that I can be productive, write things, earn a living, no matter where I am, and the space for discovery and improv. It shifts, but a coffee shop where I know I can work, where I know what kind of wifi it is, and I know what to expect is kind of key. I've had some amazing discoveries of coffee shops outSIDE the starbucks zone, of course -- especially in portland -- but also some that are too noisy, too filled with hissing steam, too much live music, too many people on dates or yammering loudly. Predictable ambience is kind of important when your life hovers in the air.

Ken Gergen (the external for my dissertation and the source of a lot of my theory) wrote an excellent book about the emergent sense of multiplicity that we are all living right now, called The Saturated Self. One of the principles in the book is that we have created the ability to live in more than one place at a time -- that we can be on the phone with Uganda in a coffee shop in Rochester, NY, and we are "in" both places simultaneously. Our management of this multiplicity is one of the most profound psychological shifts of the contemporary world. What I'm beginning to realize is that part of that management is the subtle coordination of life to contain predictable strains and patterns. Coherence and fragmentation, in balance.

Aphorisms

"She doesn't have the sense god gave a goose."

That phrase popped out of my mouth today at lunch with D, and I realized I've turned into a Spewer of Corny Aphorisms. It's been a crazy frantic week, with lots of flying, worlds turned upside down, my american friends suddenly clanging with idealism (such a nice shift from the handwriting of the past 8 years), official notice that I've Finally Completed EVERYTHING! to do with the phd (and the legal right to browbeat people into calling me doctor and to dazzle border guards with documents)...

While I was flying back from Seattle yesterday, I was teaching myself to cable on a complicated little hat and thinking about knitblogging. How the best knitbloggers have life at the core but through the medium of knitting, and some are way too much about their cats and dogs, and some completely transcend the knitblogging... but I was thinking about how knitblogging or writing about flyfishing or political jabber can just camouflage the stories of more jagged life. There I was, cabling and counting and watching depressing HBO shows on the little tv, and wondering how much knitting and knitblogging can become the blanket thrown over the stories you could stifle.

Lots going on in my life, mostly good for me, but some trials for people I care about, and lots of questions about What Next? for me that seem to be kicked under the chairs of the airport lounges that are becoming too familiar. Lots of scaffolds going up and coming down without any real construction, like the fact that I'm supposed to be in Uganda two weeks from today but the backing and forthing and opting out among my colleagues because of the unrest in Congo. My feeling is that going would probably be fine, and I was very geared up in my Adventurous Self, and wanting to do something meaningful with our kids, but it seems like the wrong time now, and I'm frustrated that I might never get to go.

So, Cabling. Aphorisms, learning to knit something new. Next diversion.