Month: April 2013

Celebrations, shopping, setbacks

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Last week was the 44th anniversary of my marriage to the tall, lean, shy cute guy. He is still tall and lean. He is much less shy than he was when we were 24. And he is even cuter. I really lucked out.

We celebrated in Chicago. I went with him for his weekly 3-day work stint and shopped for new clothes while he worked. The way I look at it, his anniversary present to me was the new clothes. Mine to him was looking good in them.

He’s not here right now so I can’t show you how good we both look.

In the evenings we dined out, totally busting out of our vegan gluten-free regime. I did not count Weight Watchers points last week. Consequently my weight rebounded a bit, a minor setback. The pleasure was worth it. I am happy to get back to simple high-veggie, low fat this week.

I’m not complaining but the shopping was hard work. The first day I went to Oak Brook Mall, my old favorite. It was torn up for relandscaping. It was raining. And it was a case of the usual overabundance of bad selections. I have trouble with overchoice, with finding the gem on the rack of garish. Give me a small shop filled with my kind of clothes.

But I dutifully trudged through every department store and every possibly appropriate shop, selecting a few things here and there. The most thrilling purchase? New bras perfectly, professionally fitted! (Too much information? Stop reading, guys.)

At the very end I found the little shop that had my kind of clothes, J. Jill. I didn’t buy much because I was already shopped out. I found the essential black knit dress I’d been looking for to wear under my Congo Cloth jackets, linen crop pants, and a pink linen shirt. Now I know where to go online to look for simple, well-made clothes. Most important, I’ve tried on their sizes.

The second day was more fun. It was sunny. I spent it in my old stomping ground, Oak Park, where we’d lived for nearly 30 years, visiting old shops and new. I didn’t buy all that much–cute shoes at DSW, bargain tees at my familiar Gap. I found a new swimsuit at the Sports Authority where we’ve always shopped. I made a run to Trader Joe’s for tea and wine and to Olive & Well for black current balsamic vinegar. When it comes to shopping I like some predictability.

By the third day I was getting a UT infection from too much rich food and wine and not enough water. That, too, is predictable. This is probably way too much information but it may be of interest to other UTI-prone old ladies who bike: The UTI, which I’d begun treating, got worse after I got out on the bike a few days later for my first ride of the season.

I fought this problem two years ago when I was training for a century. Do I want to have to deal with it again? I’ve been getting ready for a new bike but now I’m having second thoughts. Giving up biking would be a real setback.

Meanwhile, the real celebration is going on in the woods. Spring is busting out all over. I just want to sit and watch.

front porch

The view from my front porch

 

 

Life is like spilled beads

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beadsI dream of sorting tiny beads. It’s not just me. I have kids “helping.” Of course every time the beads come into some sort of pattern they get messed up. And then we start over.

I don’t know what this is about except life. Cooking, cleaning, writing, losing weight, working on myself. Nothing is ever accomplished, done, satisfactory. Expecting it to be so is futile, given the material and who’s working with it. I’m not God the master artist. I’m just a bunch of easily distracted kids and this is really, really demanding work, making sense of life, making progress in life.

I dream this after starting Kate Atkinson’s Life after Life, a novel about the lives of Ursula, who, every time she dies (the first time right after birth), goes back and relives the same life up to the point of that death, which she or circumstances now prevent, until the next death happens–maybe only months or hours later this time. For example, it takes her three or four tries to survive the great influenza epidemic of 1918. After infancy she has vague but urgent premonitions before the last thing that killed her happens and she takes a small evasive action. When I left off last night she was 7 and was beginning to experience déjà vu in other things as well.

This is an intriguing premise for a novel but mind-boggling to think about. (I recommend anything Kate Atkinson has written.) Another mind-boggler I’ve read recently is A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki. That one plays with time and the idea of parallel universes, parallel lives, subtly, not in a sci-fi way.

The thing I live for is to see patterns and connections. Thus the beads in my dream. Now I see them, now I don’t, and there is very little to hold them in place once I do see them.

Take weight loss, for example. I was following a formula that was working. The last few weeks I’ve been following it strictly and it hasn’t worked. The scales register a gain. If it is the scales, why does it act up in that particular way? If it is my body, same question.

And on a larger issue, every time I think I am in general becoming more disciplined and purposeful, I have a day like yesterday when I watch hours and hours of TV and read novels and get no exercise and exceed my food points.

I guess that is no great mystery. I was a tiny bit discouraged by the weight gain. What the heck nothing works anyhow I may as well be a lazy slob.

But church was good yesterday and the dream class I’m leading there went really well again. At first the dreams are like spilled beads and then we begin to see the patterns.

Today I’m ready to get back to the bead sorting. Having fun doing it.bead girl

 

 

Intensive living

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I have a habit of posting really trivial stuff just as horrible news is breaking. Last Monday I wrote about what makes people “like” something I’ve written and then I saw the news about the Boston Marathon bombings. So there it was, the trivia of my daily preoccupations set against something really important.

This morning I was thinking of writing something but first I caught up on the news. Boston is shut down as one of the alleged killers is being pursued. A Texas fertilizer plant turns into an even bigger killer. Chicago is flooded. The Senate chickens out on gun control.

I decided to postpone writing about the Zen of sewing. Maybe later, when the news has calmed down (when will that ever happen).

When I was traveling in Congo last year I would use occasional Internet access to catch up on Facebook and other news and I would think how trivial everything happening in the USA seemed—even disasters—in the context of the struggle for survival that engaged every Congolese I knew.

It’s not that they were leading tragic lives, but they were living more intensely. Everything about life in Congo seemed more intense: pain, struggle, joy, gratitude, love, conflict, beauty, ugliness. Being in the presence of this intensity was both exhausting and exhilarating. I miss it a little now. Perhaps my hesitance to write about my life in the face of Really Big News is really a regret at the loss of intensity.

We feel empathy with those in the news, those who are really suffering. But there is something artificial about the way our national attention swings from one city to another, one distant or not-so-distant tragedy to another, our empathy drawn out over degrees of separation that only emphasize our individual powerlessness to console, heal, prevent, protect.

Living intensely is the opposite of living at the remove of distance, the remove of the news. You can only live your own life intensely, not other people’s lives.

I think of this in relation to Newtown. We have been moved by that tragedy but not enough to enact decent gun laws because too many powerful interests, deep national divisions stand in the way. Too many degrees of separation between our empathy and real change. The “timing” isn’t right; the politicians can’t manage both immigration reform and gun control in the same session.

I’m not saying we are entirely powerless. We can throw the bastards out. But that takes time, organization, determination, working together. It takes intensity, which means bringing it into the days of your own life. Like maybe working in a political campaign.

Meanwhile, I’m practicing intensive living. Some days that just means doing a sewing project and learning something from it. Maybe I’ll write about it, maybe I won’t.

Why do you like me?

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I got a lot of likes from other bloggers on a recent post, My Next Big Thing. A lot by my standards, that is. My likes and follows have been trending upwards recently but this blog has not exactly gone viral.

After blogging for more than two years I am just now learning how the blogging community operates. My learning was delayed because I started out on Blogspot, where no actual networking went on as far as I could tell. I switched to WordPress last October for technical reasons and stumbled into the blogging community. WordPress has a number of features that promote networking. The main one is that when a fellow WordPress blogger likes your post you get an email saying:

“Soandso liked your post on the practical mystic.

“They thought My Next Big Thing was pretty awesome.

“You should go see what they’re up to. Maybe you’ll like their blog as much as they liked yours!”

And then it lists links to three “great posts worth seeing from Soandso.”

Out of curiosity you may check out this fellow blogger who likes what you wrote and in the process you increase the traffic to his or her site (I should give up grammatical correctness and say “their site” since “they” thought my post was awesome). I’m sure a lot of liking goes on purely to increase site stats. But it also connects you to people who might share your interests and it lets you know who your readers are, at least in the blogging world, which may not mirror the real world.

I guess the true test of love is if the blogger who likes your post begins following you, that is, getting an email every time you post. I can’t imagine inviting more email unless you truly care. I now have 56 followers, very modest by blogosphere standards but more with each post.

Since I started getting more blogger likes and follows I’ve been acting more like a community member myself, visiting blogs, occasionally liking, commenting, and following. Very occasionally. There are some gems out there but they’re rare. I am handicapped in this networking business by my writing snobbery. My remaining life is too short to spend reading bad writing and most blog writing is bad: trite, clumsy, sentimental, too much information of the wrong kind.

This is not a reflection on the blogger, just on his or her (their) writing.

Writing I willingly read doesn’t have to be perfect, just show some originality of thought or style. Something genuine. Something promising. Or, of course, a good blog might offer something helpful like recipes, though I will not follow a recipe blog that is badly written. I would like to find more life blogs like my own that meet my snobby standards but so far I’ve discovered only a few. I haven’t been looking too hard because I already spend too much time reading rather than writing or getting material for writing, that is, living. But if you have suggestions, let me know.

I know my writing snobbery puts me on the outskirts of the blogosphere because many terribly written blogs get way more likes, followers, and comments than mine. On the other hand my favorite blogger, the nature writer David George Haskell, who writes extremely well and always has something interesting to say, gets very few blogger likes. Go figure.

This brings me to the question of why that one post got so many blogger likes. It’s not just that I’m generally getting more readers, because other recent posts, which I think are more interesting, have gotten way fewer likes.

Here is my theory. It is because I wrote about being stuck in my writing and I ended the post with a tiny plea for support. “Cheer me on,” I said. And my fellow bloggers cheered.

We all need to be cheered on. Bloggers have recognized this need, both in themselves and others, and they have learned to respond. They respond to the vulnerability, the need for support, the confessions of failure and stuckness embedded in the writing, good and bad, that is being sent out into the ether.

Am I right?

Or maybe it was just some kind of weird, organized like bomb.

Clue me in. Share!

Popping a wheelie

/ njmyers / 4 Comments

Where is my husband when I need him? Usually 100 miles away at work in Chicago. Today he was at least at his desk and picked up on the first ring.

“When are you coming home?” I ask.

“Oh, tonight I think.”

“Good. Tonight. Come home tonight. You’ll never believe what happened.”

“What?”

“I lost a wheel.”

“You left a wheel? Where did you leave …”

“LOST. I lost a wheel on the Element. I was driving back from the mall and I heard this noise in the front wheel so I stopped at the tire place and asked them to check it out but they said they were too busy and it was probably a bearing so I asked whether it was safe to drive and they said sure—”

“Wait. Did you find the wheel? Did you have it with you?”

“Of course. It was still ON the car. It was just making a noise and that’s why I stopped at Zolman’s.”

“I don’t understand. You said you LOST the wheel.”

“Yes. It came off after I left Zolman’s and I was driving home.”

“You got all the way home?”

“No! The wheel came off!”

“But you said you lost it.”

“I MEANT IT CAME OFF! I was south of Niles and the noise was getting real bad and the steering wheel was shaking so I slowed way down and there was a bang and the left front tire went rolling across the street into a yard!”

“But you’re at home. Where is the car?”

“At a garage! I had it towed!”

“Did you find the wheel?”

“YES, YES! THE WHEEL IS AT PETE’S MARATHON WITH THE CAR! A nice cop made the phone call because my cell was dead and then he waited with me and drove me home.”

Aren’t you going to ask if I’m okay? Aren’t you going to say I was very lucky? Aren’t you going to say, that is about the worst kind of mechanical failure you can have when you’re driving and I’m glad you didn’t have an accident?

Instead we talked about the damage to the car, how the support bar or whatever you call it had snapped, probably because the wheel had wobbled loose and put a strain on it and that might not have happened if I hadn’t kept driving when the noise got worse (because the Zollman guy told me it was okay) and so repairs were probably going to be very expensive and maybe this happened because the tires had been rotated recently and we were supposed to take the car back in to check the torque.

This is the same car whose battery died last week when Vic left town, forcing me into a three-day fossil fuel fast. Eleven years old, 166,000 miles. The nice cop says maybe it’s time for a new car.

As for the husband, I think I’ll stick with the old model. At least he’s predictable.

My Next Big Thing

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The truth is, I’ve hit a snag. Flow stopped, motivation gone, I am at a loss for what to do next. I’m retired, I can do what I want, but that is easier said than done. What do I want?

On this warmer but still gray afternoon in early April, with only a hint of green and hepatica (yay, hepatica!)  in the forest leaf cover, I feel like I have started a thought and lost it, mid-sentence. What were all these plans I had as recently as January 1? I had what I thought was a year’s worth of desires lined up. All I had to do was follow through.

hepatica

Yay, hepatica!

Maybe it wasn’t a year’s worth; maybe only three months’ worth.

No, that’s not quite right. Some of those plans are accomplished, ta-da, done! Or almost. I work really fast when I put my mind to it. Others are not yet fully executed. I have done the easy parts and many of the hard parts but now there are some really hard parts left and I am running out of steam.

In the accomplished column is the publication of a book that I thought I would never finish writing and revising, let alone publish. Ta-da, done! I did this much faster than I thought possible and had fun mastering self-publishing, which has come a long way in the last few years.

In the nearly accomplished category: weight loss. I thought I couldn’t do it and then I did it. Ta-da, goal in sight!

Yet to do: get back to biking. But I have made progress by finding the guy who will help me get on the right bike. I will visit that shop outside Detroit again in the next month. Meanwhile, I will start to toughen my butt on my old bike as soon as the conditions are right. (I require temps in the 50s or above but not too hot, no rain, not too much wind. Today is a tiny bit rainy and besides I already got my exercise at the Y.)

However, what is really bothering me on this too-open afternoon, making me feel like a cowardly, unmotivated lazybones, is that I haven’t yet started my Next Big Writing Project.

But come to think of it, that’s not true. I have started the project but it is not yet at the writing stage.

  • I think I know what it is. I want to write about Mennonites in Congo and the power of music and faith in some of the toughest circumstances on the globe.
  • Since making two trips to Congo last year, I have been working on developing a special relationship between my church here and a congregation in Kinshasa.
  • I have revived the Congo Cloth Connection to create relationships and fund projects for women and children in Congo–we’ll do another big cloth market at the Mennonite Church USA convention in Phoenix in July.
  • And I am starting to think about my next trip to Congo.

I am hung up on this last point, however, the next trip. This will be a trip I do entirely on my own except my husband will go with me this time. But no sponsoring project, no special occasion like a centennial celebration, no fellow travelers. I want to go to visit churches and listen to as many choirs as possible. I want to go to write. This would be a research trip for my Next Big Writing Project.

There is a gap between the desire to do a thing–go to Congo on our own and listen to choirs–and making that happen. It is in this gap that the desire begins to doubt itself. Do I want this badly enough to do everything it takes to make it happen? All the money, logistics, contacts needed to travel in that compelling, outrageous country. Just for me. Just to write.

I need to believe in myself both as a doer and as a writer in order to move off square one. I am writing this as a statement of intention. If you wish, hold me accountable. Cheer me on.

Forced fossil fuel fast

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I am in day two of a fossil fuel fast; that is, I am going nowhere by motor vehicle and using as little electricity as possible.

Sometimes I do this on purpose but not this time. The battery on my car is dead and I’ve decided to wait for Vic to come back from Chicago to deal with it. So I am trying to put a positive spin on the situation.

It is appropriate, and maybe a little ironic, that the battery turned up dead two days after we participated in an afternoon of prayer of lament and hope at a site along the Enbridge oil pipeline, which is scheduled to expand this summer so more awful Alberta tarsands oil can gush to fill hungry oil appetites here and around the world. The new line will replace or more likely supplement the old pipeline, which made a big mess of the Kalamazoo River in 2010.

This event was at a retreat center 40 miles away but the pipeline also passes within a mile of our house and through the property of our beloved Community Supported Agriculture farm. Because of the pipeline construction, Bertrand Farm will have to curtail most of its production and all educational activities this summer. Our farmer, Theresa Niemeier, rode to the event with us. Brownie points to us for carpooling in a battered, fuel-efficient Focus.

This was not just a protest against Big Oil. The pipeline expansion is a done deal and besides, in Pogo’s immortal words, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” In the moving rituals of the day at the Hermitage we confessed our own dependence on the oil economy, mourned with the trees that will be felled, and danced our hope and determination to do better.

Maybe the aging Honda got the message and decided to help out by doing a sit-in in our garage. You want to drive less, why not start right now? (And by the way, April Fool except this is real.)

element

And so I am walking the road in the chilly winds rather than going to the Y for exercise, eating up the wilting veggies in the fridge, keeping the thermostat low and the fire high, and hanging laundry out to dry.

laundry

Forced to stay home, I’ve also been out in the woods every day checking for blooming hepatica, our first spring wildflowers. Despite the cold they’ve begun to raise their fuzzy stems and fragrant blossoms to the sun.

hepatica