Enchanting Juno

Interlude: rain

2009-12-10T10:08:17-05:00

I have a story to tell and it is not the story I promised, which I will get to, but its not cooked yet.

So yesterday was rainy. Miserable, cold, grinchy, soul-shriveling December rain which - given that we've had about 4 days of sun since May - I took very very hard indeed.

I woke up in the gloomy half light and heard it. I stuck my head under the pillow. I stayed in the shower too long hoping for it to turn to summer while I steamed. I only partially dried my hair because WHAT IS THE POINT UNIVERSE, WHEN YOU VEX ME SO?

I stomped around my house looking for my favorite Smartwool hiking socks and a merino top. Because I WOULD BE WARM.

I had to wear JEANS. Even though I have PMS.

I muttered. I ranted. I pouted. I had no perspective at all. It was also a day I could not be later, so it was a touch earlier than I like. I assure you I mentioned this in the muttering and swearing.

When I left the house, cold water immediately began working its way down my collar, OF COURSE.

I stalked in a militant and aggrieved fashion down the street.

I live in a Victorian neighborhood, you know this, right? It's pretty. Wee brick row houses with a bit of gingerbread - Victorian but not fancy Victorian. Street parking. Mature trees lining the streets, gas lights and brick sidewalks. There's a creek. It's nice.

I wasn't really noticing all that, not until I put my heel down badly on one of the 100 year old bricks, raised from it's bed by a one of those charming mature trees and lurched sideways which a cartilagey crunch.

Don't say you're sorry. Because, my darlings, I LAUGHED.

For one thing, I have sprained my ankles a zillion times over the years. Twisted, turned, wrenched, sprained, and totally fucked and I could tell within a few steps that this is minor. Painful, but not debilitating.

Mostly though, it was so perfect. I sprained my ankle, this ankle in fact, once about 4 years ago 30 seconds after a tirade about being behind and stressed and overwhelmed. I needed to sit down and my body made me do it. This time, I was acting like a toddler who lost her popsicle in the dirt and over what? Nothing as important even as that popsicle.

The universe is full of swift lessons. And I had to laugh.

In the past I have had a tendency to - when wounded - sort of carry my bandaged limb around like show and tell. Look at my boo-boo. Notice my pain. And I noticed yesterday that I was indifferent to that. I mentioned it, if at all, when asked ...or because I HAD to tell the tale of my comeuppance. But I didn't need my wounds tended in the same way. It was just a thing that happened in a life full of them.

And that maybe has a little bit to do with the other story too.

So I went to this place, and there was this thing, and then my head exploded. Kinda.

2009-12-06T12:04:52-05:00

It's hard to explain.

Let me tell you about my weekend. For one thing, I went to California. For one day. Two days of travel, two nights, one day and 17 cups of peppermint tea. Which really is my favorite. Though the Moroccan Mint (a gunpowder black/mint bled) from this place on St. Mark's is really awesome. That's another story though.

If I'd thought about it I would have stayed a bit longer and seen three or four entirely fabulous people who live within a 100 miles of where I was, but I did NOT think about it and now I know that maybe my mind was protecting me. Because it was one of those things you can only process if it stays discrete.

So I know I have mentioned The Fluent Self before, because Havi has a way of looking at things that stops me dead in my bullshit-generating tracks and makes me go - well ok Undeniable Truth, how nice to see you.

I bought a yoga package from her a while ago and felt compelled to write her an email explaining that I was acting under irresistible compulsion, despite the fact that she was a total stranger to me and I had only been reading her blog for 2 days. It seems reasonable to show her your tender underbelly, is what I am saying. She is safety personified.

So I read her blog and I think it is mostly really interesting and sometimes just a little bit too hippy for me, because I am in denial abut how big a hippy I really am and I would sort of vaguely like to participate in one of her things, but you know, money. And also, you know, weird. I did a free teleclass but had to drop out halfway through when a customer called. I bought a procrastination-o-matic but never opened it. I know someone who participates in one of Havi's programs and has been successfully revising her life at a high rate of speed and that TOTALLY looks good to me.

But though I WANT I am also grumpy and scared and feel totally humorless a lot this year and it all (and by all I mean anything I want or need that's good) seems impossible, out of reach, illogical, unjustifiable. Change is barreling down on me like the meteor in a Michael Bay movie - certain death - no, annihilation - inevitable, and I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO. I have no deep core drilling skills and I am neither NASA nor Bruce Willis.

I'm too cool to run in circles scream and shout of course. I have dignity to protect, dammit, and people are looking. But inside, there is screaming.

So a few months ago I am looking at Havi's blog and for once I am not catching up three days later and she has announced a one day thing on biggification. And one day is SO MUCH LESS terrifying than like, a retreat. And it is only half full. And it's almost affordable cause it's only one day. And I have all these fucking miles sitting around collecting dust for a rainy day and well, if 2009 is not a rainy day I do not know what a rainy day looks like and hey award travel is really easy to book and look, there's still space and in some kind of fugue state I sign up for everything including a room at the B&B where the program is taking place. And I HATE B&Bs*.

(I took out travel insurance though. In case I chickened out.)

It feels like my free will was hijacked by the intuitive part of me that puts up with a LOT of bullshit from my rational mind, but occasionally sticks her nose out and says "oh my god will you stop already, do THIS" when its really important.

And then I put it on the calendar and otherwise blocked it out. Until I got home from Thanksgiving and only had three days to go.

My battery is at 49% and I'm going to go make some soup now and find my power cord. I'll tell you more later.

*not this one though, this one I want to move to.

Happy decorative gourd season, motherfuckers*

2009-11-25T13:57:44-05:00

Thanksgiving packing:

Camera
Ginger Felted Tweed in mid swatch
Charcoal merino/cashmere for top down raglan in progress**
Red cashmere for Shawl That Jazz. Ditto pattern.

Gray Old Maiden Aunt lace 2 ply Wing of the Moth*** in progress. Ditto pattern.

Chinese lace pullover pattern and Polworth yarn to cast on

Knitting from the Top
Sweater Design in Plain English

Vivian**** and Kelmscott***** patterns (I just like to be with them)

Computer (to look at yarns for Vivian and Kelmscott)

Tiniest hairdryer in all the land, assorted toiletries
Birthday present for nephew
Wine for dinner
The Russian Debutante's Handbook

(My knitting mojo is back with a vengence. After 18 months or something. Hi there!)

Am I forgetting anything?

*I blame Danielle (Update: Apparently am quoting McSweeny's without knowing it - go and read.)

** Hourglassy, but top down (Rav link) You should have seen me working out how to cast on for the turned neck hem first. Talk about springs coming out.....

*** Three years it took me to find the right yarn for this. THREE years.

****Ysolda Teague is some kind of genius. That is all.

***** I am obsessed with this pretty pretty thing.

A day in the life.

2009-11-17T13:37:43-05:00

I just had the most amusing conversation with the census bureau.

She called - not that I think the census bureau is female, but this representative of it was. She called because they sent me some damn survey a month ago.

Which I ignored.

Because it said census bureau not IRS, and who gives a fuck.

It turns out it is mandatory (ish) and I have to fill it out every quarter for 8 quarters which is going to go SO well.

She started to make sure they had the correct mailing address and I said, no, no, I remembered it. I put it in the pile of things I didn't really have to pay attention to. Because of it not saying IRS on it.

Which she thought was REFRESHINGLY honest.

I offered to move it to the pile of things to do AFTER I finish the pile of things I REALLY have to do.

But she said no.

And I said, so I really and truly have to remember to do this every quarter for the next eight quarters? And she said YES

And I said AWESOME.

And she said I had a GREAT attitude. Which made me laugh.

So I said I would put it on my pile of things I REALLY had to do SOON.

I kind of love her.

I bet it only take 3 minutes to do. Three minutes and a 1000 dead trees.

Postcard.

2009-11-01T22:37:25-05:00

I tweeted the other day that I thought I had forgotten how to blog. A kind soul emailed me and asked if I was depressed, but I don’t think that’s it.

This has been a year full of stress and it’s easy to point the finger at The Economy but it is slowly seeping into my awareness that perhaps this is just a time of evolution MASKED by the shitty business climate. Or brought into focus.

I wanna run away from home. Except being me I want to run with a wagon full of books and yarn and fabric and a computer and 78 pairs of impractical shoes. The TV can stay behind though. I’m not good at letting go, at leaping.
What I mean is that I want a different life and I’ve kept digging away at it for years and years and changing and learning and taking up new activities until my life is utterly unrecognizable
and all that is so very great and yet, it is not enough. I keep looking around and going, 'there's nothing for me here'. There’s going to have to be a leap, I think.

I keep having dreams where I am massively stressed out by my forthcoming college graduation (which took place 18 years ago) - packing my dorm room and not having enough boxes, not knowing where to send them. Waiting hungover in line to pick up my cap and gown and then not being able to make it to the ceremony in time......my sleeping mind is using the bluntest of instruments to get my attention. Apparently I am working towards making decisions about who I am that are more typically made by those in their early 20s. I’ve always been a late bloomer, what can I say?

I went to Rhinebeck and bought no fiber or yarn, I had a cigarette and found it utterly disgusting and unsmokable, I finished a sweater that fits perfectly and is exactly what I wanted, I keep eating things I think I like and finding them inedibly salty, I take vitamins now, I dyed my hair red, which I have been letting people talk me out of for 22 years. What I am saying is...I hardly recognize myself in some ways. I THINK it’s good, but we’ll see.

I’d love to say I’ll write more, but all this building force toward something feels private and banal in this weirdly complicated way, so it might be a lie. It's not depression though - there's a vibrant kind of tension to it is way too energetic for that.

What's up with y'all?

one man's meat. so to speak.

2009-08-28T11:49:41-04:00

So I am reading twitter this morning. Instead of working, tra la.

And there is a writer I much admire and follow. He puts up links to many things, most of which I have found worth a click through, and this morning he linked to a site full of excellent and erotic photos.

Hey, I like excellent. I like erotic. Let's go see.

Um. Leaving aside ALL discussions of pornography and women's issues - I did after all, freely go look at something labeled erotic - please to explain these. Because I would describe these as being as erotic as an American Apparel ad, and as interesting. They are naked, but not nude. There is no charge to the provocation. They are full of full-lipped, ennui-drenched youth. They drench me with nothing more than bewilderment.

So this idea of how men and women see sensuality interests me and I want so badly to tweet back, can you explain the eroticism here? Because there is a very interesting conversation to be had.

But I don't know this person.

But he published this opinion.

But it seems so intrusive to say - really, dude?

And in the end what I am really saying is "how can you be such an original and wonderful writer and think this is arousing?"

Which is none of my business in the biggest way possible. The heart wants what the heart wants and as long as all relevant laws are respected, that's between you and you and NOBODY else, I beleive that is true right down to the tiniest corner of my soul.

But it's killing me not to ask. Killing me.

What would you do?

(If you were the sort of person to want to engage a stranger in a critical discussion of the nature of eroticism based on a random internet link)

(Oh, look, I AM crazy)

As we age we become our essential selves. Which is to say, still a book dork after all these years.

2009-08-26T16:18:47-04:00

God I'm tired. The last week I have had someone else's trembling, wimpy arms at yoga and I keep falling asleep on the couch. Partly that's Mom in the house. It's been nice to see her (no, I mean it) but takes a lot of fuel also, and partly it's because I had a stupid wrist sprain that kept me from doing full arm intensive poses for a couple of months and I think I've lost some conditioning, and partly I have my period, which gives me a couple of nights of insomnia and - I am like, early pregnancy tired and no, this is not my coy way of telling you something.

But I can't bloody stay awake. Very annoying.

Mom heads home today and after work I am skipping yoga and going for a walk and eating something green for dinner and reading the utterly fascinating book I began last night and then GOING TO BED EARLY.

OK THAT was yesterday and also, a lie

Instead I went to the chiropractor and tried to take a nap, but was foiled by door knocking and phone ringing, and then I went to J's house for pizza & beer and once again I was barely in bed by midnight.

The book is rather good and I am trying to convince myself reading is as restorative as sleep, because my house is littered with good books right now. OK my house is always littered with good books, but in particular I lost all self control last week and will need some new bookshelves as a result. Which is mostly a joke. (20 books and two seasons of Mad Men.) (Cough.)

I've been on this not-buying-stuff kick for the last 6 month or so. Not because I think it a particular virtue or anything, I'm hardly a minimalist, but what started out as a budgetary plan has been interesting for someone who's been a life long accumulator. Perhaps I should not be surprised to find that, for the most part, the things I've been not-accumulating I don't miss, once I got over the habit of shopping all the time. The perfume samples and t-shirts and gadgets and gewgaws are about 80% distraction and static.

Not clothes shopping has actually given me a better understanding of what I really wear and like and find useful, and led me to clear out a lot of things that weren't being used, not shoe shopping has made me more critical of the durability and use of each pair I own - both of these things are going to shape any future purchases in a way I could not have conceptualized last fall. Ditto all the other things I haven't bought, from mascara to a mezzaluna. My relationship with things is changing in a way I like and I really love the corners of spreading quiet in my life as I edit my existing stuff down to something a little less crowded, a little more carefully matched to me, and more wisely balanced between need and want.

Except for books. I'm getting greedier for them as I get less greedy for other things. It's really weird, but doesn't feel like a bad idea, except that I better finish breaking up with my TV and get on it because I mostly can't see my coffee table anymore (there's a little spot hollowed out for my water bottle). I guess my essential book dork has been released from under the materialist burden? Or something. Because books are not material goods, they are OXYGEN. Ideas. Juice for the future. Not stuff.

First up: Mountains of the Mind, which I discovered via the supremely talented Kate @ Needled. Imagination, perception, science and how they give shape to our relationship with the physical world, good stuff.

Hi! I'm a progressive.

2009-08-11T10:49:53-04:00

I like that better than Democrat -which, as we have discussed, I am not really - or liberal which I am, but which is primarily, I think, social & intellectual in its application rather than political.

I think government is useful to regulate and support human endeavor and human society and while I am not at all anti-business, I am opposed to unchecked free markets because people are greedy and short-sighted in fairly predictable ways over the long term and free markets are a pretty accurate reflection of this.

I'm not good at arguing though - I haven't enough historical fact at my finger tips and I tend to get mad and froth at the mouth and frown stubbornly over the underlying ethics of policy, without necessarily having an ability to turn my thoughts and feelings into words (I know the difference between single payer and socialized health-care, but I can't always express it under pressure, for example).

I had dinner with friends Saturday, spent the evening arguing - in a friendly way - with M. While he says he is a Republican, I would say he is in fact a free market conservative of the old school, rather than a modern Republican (I keep waiting for him to notice his party has abandoned him). We agree about nothing, but I think in a respectful way. It was fun.

I thought I would share some of the things I have been reading that left me saying - Dammit, THAT'S what I MEANT - since then.

Jon Carroll on Rachel Maddow: My love is not quite so true, but I do appreciate her for saying things with humor and impeccable calm and well informed decency.

Obsidian Wings (a fantastic site) on the role of progressive politics in creating a society we can enjoy living in.

Shakesville on misogyny and the Pennsylvania gym murders: If I read one more thing that paints the shooter as having been victimized by sexual rejection I will spit upon who said it. I expect he had trouble getting dates because he was exactly the kind of psychiatrically ill person who would say, commit murder to make a point, and was creepy as fuck. Blaming the 30 million women (right) who turned him down is just another way of avoiding taking responsibility for his own life and actions; women are not to blame any more than the Easter Bunny was. Feministing on the same.

Shakesville on the media complicity in breeding poorly informed hysteria about health care change: WORD

Lance Mannion on civility and disagreement: follow the links if you have time.

FiveThirtyEight.com on the conservative/liberal political distribution in the US, kind of fascinating.

I am noticing that Paul Krugman is a recurring theme in all of this. Excuse me while I go follow his blog.

Shakesville on the potential for fascism in the US. For the record, I find this extreme, but it's very interesting, and an idea worth incorporating into your mental filter.

Ta-Nahesi Coates - who may just be my favorite blogger of all time - on the intersection of fear/racism/misogyny that drives explosions of violent resistance to change.

We do live in interesting times.

Looking for magic

2009-08-03T16:55:29-04:00

I started a post about my loathing for self-esteem, both conceptually and in terms of social roles & habits (jargon! artificial praise! in-authenticity!) - but I dunno. It was grumpy. Curmudgeonly. It involved, inevitably, my opinion of self help books. Mostly it wasn't what I want to think about today. Grumpy takes a lot of damn energy.

I need some magic, I think. Yesterday was nice: I went to yoga in the morning and was able to touch my forehead to the floor in siddhasana for the second time. It's so simple and yet feels like ...I don't want to say accomplishment, that's wrong, it's not a trophy for my mantle. It feels elementally right, like I've regained an essential thing I did not know was missing when I find flexibility I did not know was there, or balance or straightness.

All the things people say about yoga - the stress release, the peace, the exercise. None of it's wrong exactly, but the words are placeholders for the experience. It's like a giant secret - you friends say, "oh, you're going to love it" but they can't tell you why, the why is non-verbal, inexplicable in the truest sense, un-knowable until it happens to you. When you put your head on the floor, you're a better version of yourself. When you know where your sit bones are, the world has more solid outlines. I think we are supposed to have strong and flexible as our default condition, like cats and the hind brain knows it. Yoga gives it back.

That is so much better than self-esteem exercises (it was a exercise in writing down the things you love about yourself that set me off)

I had another interesting moment as well. A friend of mine is much in my mind recently and I was having trouble stilling my head for meditation. I finally said - I love you, can you leave me alone right now? And they did. That was new.

(I am starting to wonder if when someone is on your mind it's not because you're on theirs?)

On the way home I remembered what I had forgotten the day before - Toilet paper. I refuse to use un-recycled-paper TP, which means the hippy store, which I had already passed, so I went to Whole Foods, which is the next nearest 7th Generation dealer. When I finished with that, the sky was turning some kind of crazy, lowering gray, with that flat, clear, glowing, sideways light that says run for cover. By the time I parked across from my house it was thunder and torrents and overflowing gutters and no wiper powerful enough to keep the window clear of that volume of water is made on earth.

I thought about waiting it out, but it's just damp you know? It was home-ownership that made me regard weather as an enemy, but really I've loved storms since I was a tiny girl, I used to drag my little chair out on the covered milk porch when I was 3 or 4 to watch the lightening, so I gathered my toilet paper and yoga mat and festooned myself for the journey, all of 12 feet to my door, ankle deep in water, and by the time it shut behind me I was literally wet to the skin, left my yoga gear and sandals in a puddle by the door and sprinted for a towel, shut down the air conditioner and opened all the windows to the sound of water and the movement of real air and ducked out on the deck to clear a gutter and laugh again at how wet I got in 30 seconds. I love that contracted chilled feeling of recently drenched skin under dry things, and curling up on the couch with knitting and listening to the rain.

I worked on a sleeve on and off all day - sleeves in the round on a top down sweater make me a bit mental, all that untwisting, but I'm starting to hit a groove. I want to finish soon - I want to wear this sweater this autumn - and then a shawl I think. It's been a while, but I think I crave the meticulous code of lace, the portable complexity of a big thing in fine yarn.

It is possible I had more magic in my weekend than I initially remembered, which is what I get for listening to radio news while I was still in bed this morning.

Anon.

2009-07-14T11:04:25-04:00

I started this blog....5 years ago next week I think.

Typepad says 701 posts and 10140 comments, though I think some of those posts are still in draft form.

It hasn't been much of a blog for a while, I know. The situation as it stands right now is that my life doesn't feel open. It started last year when I was struggling with a love thing that felt intensely private and rolled from there into this recession. Not the recession itself so much, but the questions of desire and obligation and survival and values and paralysis that have come seeping out of my foundations as my work life has more or less collapsed and revealed the underlying faults.

I just wrote a couple of thousand words about all that but they are chaotic and unformed. They might turn into a thing, or they might not. We'll see. Somewhere in the middle of them I started thinking about identity though.

I started this blog anonymously because - why? Because I hated being looked at, because I did not want my family to accidentally google their way into this piece of my life, because, perhaps, I did not know who I was and naming myself felt like chains dragging while I looked. Maybe I am a coward. It's a bit silly: I never thought I'd meet anyone in real life because of this and now most of my most important people are here directly because of it. I hid my name because it is distinctive and I wanted the freedom to not be spotted, and now, I will actually answer to Juno.

A few years ago I was at the Vermont Fiber Festival and someone was trying to get my attention - I was on my way out the door with a spinning wheel on my shoulder and my brother and his kids and she called and called and I was oblivious. And then sharply - JUNO! and I whipped around and bounded back across the room - with the spinning wheel - to give her a hug.

This is when I started to wonder which of us was which - because in some ways she feels more like me than my birth name. It also feels like a lie though. It occurred to me a few months ago that one of the big problems with my work life is that it exists as wholly separate from my life life. I did that before I knew who I was too - or when I was still trying to live up to some false idol of what One Does.

I think I am going to have to start making all my selves into one whole if I want to keep thriving though. I can answer to both as long as long as they're all part of a whole, not compartments where bits of my soul are divvied up according to use and value.

It's silly, a lot of you know this already, it's almost an anticlimax. But hi. I'm Cassandra Mosle. Welcome to the inside of my head.