in a tizzy

I haven't written in a while because I'm giddy. I have a new laptop and it's so different from the reliable elderly PC laptop I've been using for ten years! The old retro-tech PC was just getting too clunky and slow (I could knit three rows on a sock while waiting for it to download something) and not quite worth repairing. After a bit of research and consultation with a very nice computer guy, I bought a MacBook Air. Wow! It only arrived yesterday and although it's user friendly, there is always that unavoidable learning curve thing. I can't seem to download photos to my blog using my usual procedure and being a non-techie-type, I don't know what questions to ask that would yield the appropriate answers. So tonight I'm back to my little netbook for now (which I'm going to keep) until help arrives. And it will. On Friday. But I thought I'd check in here before then. Been running around like the proverbial headless chicken. Dealing with chronic sinusitis, editing, fuzzy deadlines, juggling all the other life-is-what-happens-to-you stuff. But I know I'm going to love the Mac! So sleek, so fast - so expensive. And lest you think I've abandoned UFOs, look at this. Another FO! Yarn/sock antidote to high tech (can't get much more basic than knitting socks with four thin wooden sticks and string!).

Really nice, matched, Opals. So winter-beachy, San Francisco foggy, mountain-high cozy. Love 'em! Hopefully my next post will be made with the new computer and then I'm off with it for while for a writing retreat.

Question: have you noticed that political candidates all eventually quote something of Abraham Lincoln, claim it for their own, and somehow make it fit their agenda?  Poor Abe. Must be a restless spirit these days.

finishing school

what a day! 
Left home on a pale-sun morning, met friend at coffee shop, brought knitting and news. As we talked, drank lattes and tea,  bolts of lightening and rumbling thunder forced us to look out the window. It was snowing and hailing heavily, people began pouring into the Manila Cafe seeking a port in a storm. After a half hour or so the drama stopped, sun returned, people drifted out. When I left I had to clear off four inches of snow from my car. It seems that the squall only hit Ranchos because when I got home, ten miles north, the roads were dry and I was told that no snow had fallen. It seemed that my car was the only one with heaps of snow on it. Very strange. But not as strange as that July 4th a few years ago, when we drove through a snowstorm that stopped traffic on the interstate north of Albuquerque.

count 'em
Finished another cheerful pair of socks deliberately not matched. Who wants to follow rules when colors sing the way these do.

And speaking of finishing, I just finished reading my first John Banville novel, The Sea. He's from Dublin, Ireland, has won numerous prestigious awards and his writing is exquisite.

He has the most uncanny way of dropping gradually deeper and deeper into his characters' psyches while braiding bits of this and that into an elegant compelling whole. His prose has been described as "precise and hauntingly beautiful". Yes. I'd never heard of him but a poet friend talked about his books and told me how she'd recently ordered several from a used bookseller. I was anxious to read him since I respect this woman's own talent and opinion. Highly recommended.

...I felt that I had been travelling for a long time, for years, and had at last arrived at the destination to where, all along, without knowing it, I had been bound, and where I must stay, it being, for now, the only possible place, the only possible refuge, for me..."


...we fought in order to feel, and to feel real...
              John Banville (The Sea)

can you see the air?

Late afternoon on a sunny frigid day spent mostly at table and desk. My bare feet were cold until I remembered the merino/silk socks I'd thrown into the basket by the desk. These Gull Wing lace socks have been favorites for a long time, but I have lots of favorites and forgot them for awhile.

I need to get out and walk but it's so cold! A short trip from the parking lot to the grocery store later will have to suffice. Mostly I'm trying to be grateful and at this hour as I put away the notebook and red-marked ms. sheets it's about yarn and related stuff. Like the wicker mannequin I found at the secondhand store last Friday. Isn't she great? 

She will be perfect for a spring/summer craft show if I do one. A friend keeps asking (we'll share space) but until Wickergirl came along I said no. Dark mannequins wearing wool are just too wintery for the season when everyone wants to lighten up and forget about wool for awhile (even though nights are always chilly up here) - but I'm tempted by a silk shawl tossed gently over WickerGirl's shapely shoulders and sweet breasts....

Segue to the Kokopelli UFO cardi to remind myself where I left off. It moves along fast when I actually work on it so maybe I'll have it in a couple of weeks - if I can just stay focused.

zoom to middle-America

I can focus on yarn, knitting, writing, but can't forget the two people on the line behind me at the prescription counter at Smiths. We waited so long on that queue that my mind drifted to the conversation happening behind me. I couldn't see the two people (deliberately didn't look) but overheard the words. They started out greeting each other with the usual how-are-yous? and great, greats, but before their conversation was done I'd learned that he'd lost his home to the bank, she'd given up her car "because it was either the house payment or the car payment", she was pregnant again with her third, had lost her job because everyone was let go except one, his oldest son left college because he couldn't afford the tuition and board anymore, and there were two other small children to support. I heard, as the conversation got deeper, "it's so hard," "we're just hanging in there" and this: "life is what we do, isn't it? we're here to live life the best we can". This message in a fortune cookie that night...

It seemed like those two besieged people were doing just that.  

calling all dragons!

 

It's New Year's Eve again - the eve of Chinese New Year of the Water Dragon. I spent the afternoon at the Ru Yi Studio of Multicultural Arts where a celebration was happening. There was music, lots of tea, cookies, and about 100 people squooshed into the small space. Pearl Huang, founder of the Taos International Society, held the event to celebrate both the new year and the opening of a new space that will include workshops in language, poetry and music, art exhibits, Tai Ji/Qu Gong classes, and an open studio for artists. She demonstrated the Chinese tradition of honoring the ancestors on this special day and performed the Lion Dance. The dance originated as a means for the Chinese people to ward off evil and malicious spirits, but the tradition has spread to areas all over the world that have large Asian populations. And, really, who wouldn't want to ward off evil spirits? The Lion was designed and sewn by a local fiber artist and was beautiful.

Pearl and an assistant became the great lion.

I met Pearl many years ago through mutual friends. We hadn't seen each other in several years, but the moment we saw each other today there was a dearth of small talk and we were caught up with each other's lives in minutes, immediately launching into what was uppermost in our minds.
     Her father was a cultural ambassador and she carried on his work when she came to America in 1949 from the Fujian province of China. Among other things, she became an interpreter in Los Angeles and taught classes at UNM in Taos. She is an artist and calligrapher. She first came to Taos in 1981, moved here permanently in 1997 and has called it home ever since. She said, "I fell in love with the landscape and the local Pueblo people. The Asian philosophy is very compatible with that older culture here in Taos".

sunday morning sidewalks
Normally I reserved Sundays for puttering, reading, relaxing at home, but I was drawn to this event - not only because my Chinese zodiac sign is the Dragon, but because I was inexplicably compelled. As it turned out (and this will seem weird) I met up with a young man there whom I know only slightly and hadn't seen for a year or so but who I'd briefly greeted the day before in the organic market. The first words out of my mouth when I saw him today were, "there must be a reason why we're running into each other twice in 24 hours". Now this sort of talk is not like me - the words just flew out uncensored. It turned out that we needed to speak to each other and I may have diverted him from thoughts of suicide. I'm still trying to wrap my mind around this. I've been told numerous times that this year is going to change lives in small and large ways and I'm beginning to believe it. Maybe I'll write about the dream. About the restless spirits who want us to dig deeper within ourselves. But not tonight when I'm standing in the gap between the past and the future.

happy new year!

spinning illuminating spells

winter writers
Thursday night's poetry reading was a great success. I didn't make a fool of myself in the introductions (phew!) and the poets mesmerized the attention of a largish audience at the Harwood Museum's beautiful auditorium. Each poet read from her new collection. Award-winning poets Lise Goett and Leslie Ullman raised the bar quite high...

Lise read from Leprosarium, a new collection which she describes as "a way to contemplate how different societies choose to house, husband, or murder the wild and passionate at the core of existence". It has already been called "a powerful statement of feminine eroticism under the aegis of patriarchy". The book isn't out yet, but if you're interested in reading Lise's work, her award-winning book Waiting for the Paraclete is available from Beacon Press.

Leslie Ullman, is truly a remarkable woman - athlete, MFA advisor, poet, jewelry maker. She shared new work and talked a bit about how she considers creative work of any kind (including teaching skiing) as a spiraling activity centered on process rather than product. Her poems embrace contrasting landscapes, relationships, the history of women. She has published three books of poetry. Natural Histories, and Slow Work Through Sand have won prestigious prizes from Yale and U of Iowa. We've gotten to know each other by participating in minor craft shows together, talking endlessly and eating a lot of healthy chocolate.
 
The evening was catapulted into a different sphere with the work of Taos Grande Dame Phyllis Hotch who read from her new collection of poems about aging (she's 84) and her physicist husband's progression into Alzheimers.  Her personal theme speaks to everyone and at the reception after the readings, she was approached by a small press editor who wants to publish the collection (sorry, I didn't get a good picture of her to post here). When I dropped her off at home at nearly 11 o'clock, we laughed about how long it's been since we stayed out late without men, and remember the fairy tale of the twelve dancing princesses? well, we mused, maybe we were two of the older ones who stayed out late and didn't dance (what did they do?). Her previous two poetry collections are: A Little Book of Lies (Blinking Yellow Press) and No Longer Time (La Alameda Press).

All in all, the result of that evening was that I felt inspired (and tired) and filled with my own creative impulses that sort of fogged my brain for other things (like this blog posting). Yesterday was about lightweight errands, preoccupation, and a casual and belated anniversary lunch out with Ron.

I truly appreciate this little hub of artistic talents that I am lucky enough to live within. Oh, and did I mention that Taos is famous for it's winter sunsets?

a date with self

Surprised by big wet wild snow and windstorm this morning (light snow showers were predicted). Have to wrap mind around new weather since yesterday found me walking in Arroyo Seco village snapping pictures on a springlike Sunday afternoon. I'd been at my desk for many hours over two long days and my body was screaming for exercise. For me that means walking with a camera and a coffee shop destination.

stopped by sound of early mountain snow melt flowing into skinny arm of Rio Pueblo running through village behind coffee shop

and unexpected bevy of colorful bandanas cheerfully blowing in the breeze on a shop's front porch clothesline

color patches of next season's plastic chairs and painted tables abandoned, scattered, stacked, waiting

After an hour or so the sky began to darken and the temperature dropped. I picked up a chai latte at Taos Cow and drove home to a cozy late afternoon with books and yarn. Somehow the night felt so good when it came.

Today I'm just missing the sun.
 

medicine powers

Reading the latest issue of Shambhala magazine.
Great essay by friend Natalie Goldberg and lots of good stuff on Thich Nhat Hanh. I'm in that kind of active mindfulness mood today after a magical dream last night. Young turtles emerging from rooms and quiet corners heading west toward the sea. Their shells resembled painted circus-turtles (I once had one named Myrtle that died), but a voice told me these colors were natural. Some had tiny multi-colored checkerboard squares, others wavy stripes, and one sported a leopard print. The images stayed with me all day as I successfully made progress on the oral history manuscript I had hesitated to revisit. After working all afternoon, I checked out animal energies and other symbolic stuff. Well. It seems that turtle is a very important creature. Among other things it's an emblem of longevity and stability, wisdom and many other myths including chaos (uh, oh). As a symbol it appears in some form in every culture of the world. In Japanese folklore the appearance of turtle is an auspicious sign. I know a woman, originally from Hawaii, who considers the turtle her personal totem and for her fiftieth birthday had one tattooed on her shoulder. I gave her a small carved wooden turtle that was given to me because I didn't feel any connection to it. Now my point of view seems to have changed, literally overnight. I remember many years ago when we spent time near Narragansett Bay and turtle appeared. Walking a windy beach the morning after a wild storm, we came across a huge dead sea turtle. I took a photo of it, but when the film was developed the picture wasn't there. Turtle magic? Windswept visions? I don't own any turtle totems but maybe I should. Didn't Jung tell us to pay attention to the messages in our dreams?

other life forms
At a coffee shop I notice this paw print in a Mexican saltillo tile. It's probably a dog paw but maybe it's coyote. Dogs don't seem to qualify as totem creatures. But coyote can show you a trap that you are caught in or a way that you are fooling yourself. Coyote is there to teach us whether we want to learn or not.

just like coyote, we can work with others to get what we want in life
or we can dive into a lake to catch a reflection
               Gary Buffalo Horn Man

it's in the bag

Yeah, it's Hepburn again with her knitting. Carrying her knitting bag on the political campaign trail like Eleanor Roosevelt. The movie is State of the Union with Tracy. Powerful women - Bette Davis, Katherine Hepburn -  knitters! Virginia Woolf, Julia Roberts (same category?), me, you?. But now I have to switch focus for awhile - knitting makes way for editing - like all day today. Work on the manuscripts I've been avoiding through at least a half dozen pairs of socks. In same vein, had lovely casual luncheon yesterday at poet friend's house with three other women.  Veronica Golos recently won the New Mexico Book Award for her poetry collection vocabulary of silence. Came away newly inspired. What creative women do for each other. This year in Taos is the Year of Important Women (or some theme like that). So we all have to rise to the occasion that will begin next Thursday night with three outstanding poets: Lise Goett, Leslie Ullman, Phyllis Hotch. I'll be introducing them (and hope to snap a few pictures too). And, lest you think that my priorities have changed, here's what made me happiest today and kept things in perspective:

a bit of a lull

finished objects like music
start, finish, la, la, la, ufo, ufo, start, start, start, fo, fo - it's a tune I've been playing for a quintillion years. No matter how often FOs happen, they feel fine. The latest in sock pairs? one bamboo, one alpaca. But now I have to get on with other non-knitting projects (ufp's?).

thanks
to all of you out there in cyberspace who check in with this blog pretty regularly. Readership has exceeded the 9,000 mark!

a quotidian yarn

environmentally informed

All of my best laid plans for this Monday got somehow blown away in today's slight cold breeze although the breeze really had nothing to do with it. At end of last week a dental crown loosened and fell out when I was being a good doobie and flossing. The dentist couldn't see me until today so I trotted off to the pharmacy and bought a little adhesive kit and managed to keep the tooth in over the weekend. Now it's all fixed, but I lost most of the morning getting it done and then more time chatting with acquaintances at the organic market. What I've gathered so far:

1. good riddance to the old year, it was a bummer

2. we're not so hopeful about this one either, but most of us buy the myth of new beginnings

3. snow is sparse on the peaks and it's worrisome

4. we're trying to protect ourselves from false spring so as to avoid possible despair

5. the mud will never go away so why bother to wash the car or the floors

6. the bears are hibernating so it's safe to put the garbage out

onward

I'm so easily distracted from my goals. It's taken me most of the rest of today to catch up with the few things on my desk. A very slow computer isn't helping. I've taken to placing unfinished sock projects in various rooms so I can work a few rows wherever I am with my laptop. This UFO was stashed away when I completely lost interest in it - it resurfaced, refreshed. It's Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock and I think it's the limited edition color "He Who Must Not Be Named" from their Harry Potter collection.

how rare is it?

to finish a knitting project and consider it the best most perfect thing I ever made. I'm still totally in love with the Colonnade shawlette/scarf knitted in a mystery yarn color and texture that speaks to my soul. It's so Atlantic/Pacific/sand duney. In a bag filled with dozens of saved labels and yarn samples, I can't locate that bit of paper and string. 

fair and cool with full moon and mud

Light snow yesterday morning gave way to cold sunshine today. Feeling guilty about enjoying the sun and relative warmth. To assuage our guilt about global warming? Or simply acknowledge this gift of January. Cars are heavy with layers of mud - as if we'd just returned from the outback. There were long lines at the car wash today when I stopped by with hope in my heart - and didn't wait. Ah, tomorrow is another day.

panoply of winter being

Feeling a strong need for flowers today, I bought a simple non-exotic little supermarket bouquet. The amount of pleasure it gives far exceeds the price.Who ever thought of selling flowers in supermarkets? Once upon a time flowers were only available in winter at florist shops. But I'm in one of those moods. The days are still fair and sunny and the snow layer on the mountain peaks gets thinner each day. I expect the weather to turn unexpectedly and suddenly and wake each morning with a little bit of anxiety before glancing out the windows. Sun again! I'm sure they're not happy up in the ski valley and are madly making snow at night. But there are lots of happy-looking skiers in town so I guess they're doing their thing up there without nature's help and providing good snow and sport.

color
Graffiti against remaining snow near the park adds welcome color to a dun and white world (that's snow at the bottom third of the photo). I'm reading Virginia Woolf's autobiographical writings in Moments of Being. She wrote that as a child she "walked to beguile the winter dullness" and along with her siblings made up stories that they added to "each in turn". I walk alone with  my camera as an aide memoir and try to conjure up Woolf on a winter's day.

an unexpected something new

Met up with friend Joan this morning at the coffee shop where she presented me with a gift of yarn! Merino sock weight, plant-dyed with brazilwood, by Glenna Dean in Abiquiu. It's a lovely wine-stained color (darker than in the photo). I'm leaving it on the kitchen table so it can tell me what it wants to be.

...windows letting in strange lights; and murmurs and spaces of deep silence. But somehow into that picture must be brought, too, the sense of movement and change. Nothing remained stable long.
Virginia Woolf

set the scenes

onward, but slowly
An astrologer friend once advised me "show up at your desk at the same time every day and the Muse will find you". That's what I'm planning this month - a retreat at home in as much solitude as I can muster while living with someone else. I'll follow my own schedule with no compromise - which could mean working through the night or before dawn. The weather remains bright and sunny with temps near 50. This adds an obligatory cheerfulness that feels quite nice. I could almost start thinking about spring. But that would be very foolish.

and over the pond
I know I'm  late in directing my attention to world news, but I read something even more cheerful than nice weather. Ireland's new president Michael D. Higgins is a poet, writer, academic, statesman, human rights advocate, and champion of creativity within Irish society. He said, "I will be inviting all citizens, of all ages, to make their own imaginative and practical contribution to the shaping of our shared future". Wow! Imagine what the world would be like if all leaders said that (and meant it). Maybe it should be a requirement for political office. lol.
   
moorings
After that bit about Ireland and a letter from my friend wintering in Cornwall, battling heavy winds and her manuscript, I started thinking about the UK in general. I've only been to London so far, but want the rest: Wales (Dylan Thomas), Ireland, Scotland, the Hebrides (and Alice Starmore). Alert now, I pull out the 1997 edition of Aran Knitting. Starmore's book is filled with photos of gorgeous red-haired models with green eyes wearing cabled sweaters amidst Scenery. The first 44 pages cover history, myths, the Outer Hebrides. Those pages never fail to transport me into Cable Sweaterland where I haven't landed in years. The last time (2004) led to a rare perfect cardigan (dark purple, not denim) and an essay that appeared in KnitLit the third (Three Rivers Press, NY, 2005).

As I walked the park contemplating a new thick creamy sweater for a chilly beach, patterns and temptation rose before me like shimmering wraiths. But before heading out to a yarn shop, I'll finish the Kokopelli jacket (it's coming along fast) - honest I will.

...we have a popular imagination that is fiery and magnificent, and tender; so that those of us who wish to write start with a chance that is not given to writers in places where the springtime of the local life has been forgotten, and the harvest is a memory only, and the straw has been turned into bricks.
J.M. Synge (January, 1907)

stop-time

What's more conducive to reflection than the first day of a new year that happens to fall on a Sunday? Although I've been busy all day organizing, culling, tossing, getting ready for a busy month at my desk, I've also been haunted by recollections, memories, and a strong awareness of time passing. It started this morning at the kitchen table with notebook, pen, and coffee in my newest favorite cup (from Anthropologie).

And continued when my daughter called as she walked on a southern Connecticut beach in 60 degree temps!

winter sunlight -
even in December
she walks the beach

I find myself anticipating a good year ahead while at the same time dreading it. The last couple of years have pricked with losses, cheered with gains, and awakened our dormant sense of impermanence. And just as I was beginning to feel that maybe my time to make a mark in the world was slipping by, I read about the passing of poet Ruth Stone at age 96 and was reminded about what she once meant to me.

a slant on aging
Ruth Stone didn't publish her first collection of poems until she was 40 years old. When I met her in 1995 at a poetry event at Caffe Tazza in Taos, she was 80 and completely contemporary in her dress, demeanor, writing. Her hair was long and henna-red. She wore khaki pants and a loose shimmery silk shirt. Her poetry rocked with pathos, humor, clarity. I bought her book Simplicity which had just come out and asked her to sign it.

a moment to change direction
I have to mention here that for those of us in the audience who were already of a certain age, she became our instant role model. When I spoke with her, she looked into my eyes and said the words that she jotted in my book:

Need I say that I fairly skipped out of the cafe? Not because she used the word "beautiful" (I'm not), but because I saw that age doesn't come with rules, and youth and beauty are relative. Stone wrote and published more than a dozen books in her lifetime. She taught until she was 85, received the National Book Award at 87 and was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in Poetry at age 92!

Here are two tantalizing first lines from Metamorphosis

One day you wake up and you have a new face.
What's this? you say