Consider this post my attempt to park the bike and watch the water.
I am nearly two thirds through NaNo month, and I have logged 100k words on the site. This was my 7th NaNo reaching fifty thousand words. I have written entire novels of 75k during NaNo in past years, usually beginning with a short story and then forging on.
This morning I passed 50,000 words on NaNo. I’ve given up on the plan to stitch ornaments to go in the holiday cards. We stayed home last weekend and I was supposed to be stuffing squashes and making applesauce this afternoon. Instead I spent four hours recreating the emergency manual for our condo because I only had the pdf and could not figure out how to revise it. So the document got another complete edit, which is a good thing, and I sent a brand new pdf off to the man who did most all the original work. And I looked up photos of my classes.
Years ago I taught a short story by Michael Cunningham in which a teenager runs through a sliding glass door during a party. (This was before building codes required tempered glass in such doors—a change triggered by a real life incident of a child bleeding out from cuts sustained by running through such a door.) In the story, the boy stands in the middle of broken glass and pulls a shard of glass from his neck. Moments later he bleeds out in the arms of his girlfriend. Every year students would bargain with that: What if he hadn’t pulled out the glass? What if someone had put more pressure on the wound? What if…? Just as in real life, we sometimes bargain with outcomes we cannot bear. Even in fiction.
An internet friend announced on her blog that she has decided not to send holiday cards this year. Her habit was to send nearly 100 cards. Receiving about 20 in return last year has forced her to confront what seems a lack of interest.
I am wondering about the same thing.
This is the season when in years past I would make a decision about sending cards.
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I was reading an article from The Guardian on how to deal with Christmas get-together challenges. The author led with “the turkey doesn’t fit in the oven.” [I love that turkey is the English Christmas dinner centerpiece, even though what they serve is a “New World” food, not actually indigenous to Europe. So are tomatoes, potatoes, what we call corn, and many squash and chilis. Often an “ancient” European, middle eastern, or Asian recipe includes an ingredient that simply was not available more than a hundred or a couple of hundred years ago—hardly ancient. When Shakespeare mentions “corn,” he does not mean the New World maize but another grain, probably barley.]
The article about the holiday dinner was funny and also spot on.
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No, water is not supposed to be running down these stairs in “Sally’s Alley”. This is just up the beach beside the massive concrete bulkhead that used to contain a swimming pool. Gary calls this a “water feature” suggesting we have seen too many British gardening shows.
Heavy rain. Hard blow. High tides. The holidays. And knitting.
We went to bed too early last night and we are awake too early. Continue reading
from A New Zealand Prayer Book:
“It is night after a long day. What has been done has been done; what has not been done has not been done; let it be.”
Find time to not do a thing but notice.
Last evening my husband and I watched The West Wing episode, “In Excelsis Deo.” I showed it each year to my students. (Though I struggled to show it this past December because the internet rarely worked in the college building and the projector was often down.) I would hand out a page identifying the characters and I used to pause the episode several times to provide information: The story of the gay teenager beaten to death was true, homelessness is disproportionately high among veterans of every war, and the man threatening to out Leo is shut down by members of his own party. In those days there were a lot of Republicans who also had moral standards, who were determined to “act like it.”
I miss that. If you have never watched the series, I urge you to find it on Netflix. It is a reminder of how governing is supposed to work.
Sleeping in . . . will not happen. Of course it won’t. Tomorrow is Christmas and even though I do not have to provide a holiday meal for anyone, I did make 5 panettones today, plus the stuffed baked potatoes with and without dairy, and the pumpkin custards with and without dairy and refined sugar. This evening we are invited to a Christmas party, taking along chocolate pots de creme, rugelach, and roasted broccoli. Later will open presents to one another and light the candles on the little German whirling forest.
In the morning we drive over a mountain range. Our older son and his family have colds and our younger son and his wife work in theater and The Nutcracker has not yet closed and been loaded out. They will all be exhausted but determined to feed us well, and they will smile past sleep. Perhaps we and the other grandparents will commiserate while all the youngsters doze sitting up.
Here is a short piece from 10 years ago when I was still running and more of us lived here. It was written with my students for the Idyllic Place assignment in 2008:
The Still Day
The day is overcast and I am not working. The dog and I have had our run, my husband is at work. A wood fire burns in the living room stove and I have set my watch to beep at me every hour or so, a reminder to add logs throughout the day. Outside, wind blows and waves move forever onshore. I am curled in a chair with a book, a good one with characters I like, adventure and the promise that the story will turn out well with my heroes better off than they were at the start. Maybe they will fall in love, maybe they will save a life, maybe they will suffer and experience loss but at the end they will know they are stronger and wiser than at the start.
The sofa is squishy under my body, but I need another cushion behind my back to get comfortable. Yeti is upside down on her loveseat, one lip dropped away from her teeth and her eyes tight shut. The cat sleeps on the little wing chair that used to be my mom’s favorite. She’s been there since Gary left for work, and unless I disturb her, she’ll still be there when I put down my book and go downstairs to begin dinner.
I wear my pajamas of red and pink pencil-striped cotton jersey and my orange cashmere robe that I bought on eBay. I have a jug of water by the sink, but I am cozy, my feet tucked under and finally warm, my head resting on the corduroy cushion, the book pressed open against my knees. I feel heat at my core and know a hot flash is coming, but I’m alone in the house so I stand and shed my cozy robe, sweat begins breaking on my skin and I strip off the socks on my feet and the top of my pajamas. I head for the bathroom and pour water into the jug, gulp it down, replace the lid, and rest my palms on the edge of the counter. I breath in and out and check my watch to see if the fire needs tending, my pores close and the sweat begins to dry. I replace my clothing and head down the stairs to put wood on the fire. I’ve left the curtain open at the base of the stairs and I feel cool air drifting along my bare feet as I turn down from the landing. But now I close the curtain so the downstairs will have a chance to heat up.
The air over the stove shimmers from the heat rising off it, and I can hear soft sounds from inside the steel that reassure me even before I touch the handle: my fire is still burning. The handle squawks when I turn it and the door squeals as it opens.
Gary is retired now. Me too, mostly, and I gave up running more than five years ago. The dog and cats have gone over the rainbow bridge. But this morning we got to pet two dogs on the beach. Life still goes on.
Below: another Swanson-Vance creation, a winged cat from 1979, the same year we moved home to Oregon
The year is not over, but with Hanukkah already past, five days to the beginning of winter, and just over two weeks till 2019, “the season” is closing in. The day before yesterday I wrapped gifts for twenty people. Yes, I am amazed too. We sent out fewer holiday cards, but we did get them out.
It was been an interesting year, and by “interesting” I mean in the sense of the Chinese curse: May you live in interesting times. I mean both marvelous and traumatic for me personally. A man who pursued me on the beach, screaming obscenities, pretty much ruined summer, and then the Kavanaugh hearings brought up old stuff I could have lived without reliving. The determination of people to deny a bad word about the dead, the continuing horror that is the current national administration . . . I did not sew a dress. I did not bellydance for an hour a day. I recklessly ordered a custom desk, but when it arrived it was nothing like what I asked for and it took a month to get the brute out of my office space.
I might not be blamed for feeling a little down.
Instead, we feel cheered to have paid off our mortgage this year. We are not yet accustomed to having disposable income. There is a large open space in the middle of my office space that I quite like. I read several dozen books and gave away books, and there will be more about that later. Reading aloud to my husband is something we have enjoyed in the past. Just now we are beginning the fourth book of Patrick O’Brian’s 20-volume series. It’s my third time through and it’s better each time.
We replaced our skylights, repaired some plumbing, and I painted the entire upstairs myself, including floors. We have been seriously divesting lovely things we do not need, have no room for, and our family doesn’t want either. The attic contains only a cardboard box and plastic tubs to catch the leaks, and no rodents. It’s never permanent, of course, but Gary got the job done. (Next year, the roof itself needs replacing, obviously, and the deck now has holes large enough for both my feet to step through.)
We went on vacation, several times, and not merely 6-hour daytrips to Portland that we have counted as “vacation” in the past 16 years. We went to Canada for two nights, Seattle, Forest Grove, Nye Beach, and Decatur Island. Nine days away. Imagine!
I sold a story and an essay—yes, actual money changed hands. I did not find an agent for my newest novel, but that is the result of my determination to indulge in an unpalatable structure. I am working on something else now. Plus, during NaNoWriMo, I wrote a lot of new material, and in the new year, I will work on that too.
On the visual arts front: I knit hats and sweaters; wove blankets, scarves, and shawls; and pieced one completed quilt. This was not all I had planned and a baby blanket is still waiting for me to complete a warp on the loom so that I can put on a blue-gray warp. Still.
Gary and I picked up half a ton of trash off the beach, and gathered an assortment of seaglass, shells, and pebbles that I have only half-sorted.
I taught Writing 121 and 122 last school year, and I have begun teaching that series again this month with a large class of willing and capable students (hooray!). This Thursday, a half dozen former students will be speaking to my college class about their college experiences. I will have made at least three batches of “the chocolate thing” from a Canadian recipe. (That making will happen after I get home late from school on Wednesday.) It is cream, good chocolate, egg yolks, and a tablespoon of orange liquor for nuance.
Confirmation of my order of The Speed of Darkness by Muriel Rukeyser revealed the cover image, which I immediately recognized. I thought: I have that book already, downstairs in Ian’s old bedroom on one of the poetry bookcases. I have not yet looked to be certain it’s there. If this book was inherited from my aunt or mother, and I have possessed it all this time without reading it, well, that would be both bad news and good, wouldn’t it?
My husband is most pleased that I am regularly using my grandmother’s desk. It is tiny, a ladylike drop-front desk of satinwood, and unsuited to spreading out. I must confine my mess to a narrow surface and that might be a part of the appeal. I generally sit on the sofa with my laptop, or in bed as I am now, typing this post, but I open that drop-front desk each morning and sit at it for a time, and then in the evening, I plug my laptop in on a chest to my left and close my grandmother’s desk. Gary finds all of this precious.
The tree downstairs has a thousand LED lights and is decorated with glass birds and tiny stuffed, winged animals made by Margaret Swanson-Vance of SewWing Studios. Some are more than 30 years old. This flying tiger has painted embellishment by her husband, who has passed (marked T W MS ’94 ‘Nar Bachcha’). The silver-winged pig at top is brand new. Upstairs is a little white paper tree in the front window. It has only a few lights and white ornaments, some of which are also from Margaret. A unicorn is on its way.
I have learned to bake panettone this fall. The sourdough start has not died but provided waffle batter, sweetrolls, and crumpets throughout the year. I did not make jam or jelly, but there are packets of fire-roasted peppers in the freezer, and we picked up tamale-ground organic masa from Three Sisters Nixtamal. For our Christmas there will be tamales! I plan to bake panettone, rugelach, and pecan cookies for the holidays, too, though it’s tight between the beginning of Winter Break (this Friday) and Christmas Day (next Tuesday).
We’ll manage in joy.
IMPERFECT PATIENCE 