Monthly Archives: September 2009

accepting adjustments

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I’m beginning to realize that this part of my life is going to be require a constant acceptance of adjustments. These days I’m making adjustments to articles of clothing that I made, specifically this, which originally blogged about here
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I need to add pieces down the front so that I can button in. I’ve gotten a little wider. Heh. And I am almost finished lining it so that the ugly yellow sweatshirt-base inside is hidden, finally.

There are other adjustments too — medications and expectations. I just don’t have the energy and stamina to do what I used to do. That’s the downside of aging, unless you are wealthy enough to afford massages and personal trainers and hot tubs.

And now I have to adjust my budget to adjust to the fact that I’ve spent whatever cushion I’ve had for fun stuff for me and my family. Many college classmates of mine, as well as relatives my age, have homes both here in the Northeast and in the South, and they enjoy the best of both worlds with plenty of resources to spare. I’m envious. But then again, there are college classmates and relatives of mine who are no longer alive.

I guess I fall somewhere in the middle, and that has to be OK; I will keep adjusting to a simpler life.

Although if we add a puppy to this family, life will not be that simple for a while — but it will be more fun and more work. My grandson, an only and often lonely child, needs a dog who will be more than a pet — more like another sibling.

I like the idea of having a dog. Maybe she (I want to get a female) will encourage me to get out and walk more.

writings from a workshop #2

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(the writing prompt was an acorn)

She is walking today — short stumbling steps — her chipped cane prodding the gravel choked weeds along the length of driveway.

We are walking today because she can, because it’s a mild early-fall morning, because the pains of her age are not so bad, because I am here to help her if she stumbles.

We walk along the property line, a slow unsteady march through light and shadow. The unkempt ground is littered with the leavings of the season — withered crabgrass and dandelion stalks, weathered leaves, and an early harvest of acorns.

I hold her free arm while she beats the ground with her cane, grunting angry words that I can’t understand.

A sharp white stone catches her attention, and she prods it with her toe, strikes it with her cane, sends it out of her limited sight.

She stops before a scattering of acorns, a barrier to her shuffling gait. Grunting, again, she swings the tip of her cane, stabbing at the offending shells, missing more than she hits, the cane tip knocking aside small stones and sending too few acorns rolling into the underbrush.

She is shaking now, from fear or frustration or just plain tiredness. I can’t tell.

I lead her back inside to her chair by the kitchen table, where a doughnut and coffee will take her mind off the recalcitrant acorns.

She will forget her battle with the acorns in the driveway.

But I can’t.

(the prompt was a memory of a piece a jewelry)

How sweet it is to be sixteen. At least it’s supposed to be. I know that I am not nearly as sweet as my parents want the world to think I am.

So they give ma a heart. A 24 carat solid gold heart, heavy with considerations.

A prominent diamond chip marks the day of my birth on the calendar etched into the center of the heart’s face, and lines like rays of the sun streak from the edges of the month of March to the edges of the shiny heart.

I am sweet sixteen, and my wrist is shackled with a heavy heart on a heavy gold charm bracelet. Look, Look, the clanking metal announces: Look how much my parents love me.

writngs from a workshop

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Having strayed so far from my poetic roots, I am taking a brief writing workshop based on the Amherst Writers and Artists Method. Blogging has given me plenty of practice with the first person essay; but it’s poetry where my heart is. I need some help getting my brain to follow.

The writing “prompt” for the exercise was the word “breathe.”

She does not swim –
afraid to breathe against
the weight of water, afraid
of those breathless wet depths.

But she goes to a sweat lodge
where steamy smoke rises —
thick breath steadily blinding
a clear winter sky.

She lets herself be led into the wet
dark already slick with steam
and sweat, cool water hissing,
smoking stones.

Thoughtless with dread
she stumbles out into the cold,
blinded by water and smoke
and a clutch of fear that sends
breath into memory:

— a child’s cry for breath stunted by fever
lungs rattling beneath a tent of steam
thick as smoke, heavy as a depth of sea.

Well, its a start.

knitting as a subversive activity

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Over in the UK, there’s a “network dedicated to knitting & crochet work made for visual arts projects” and they have a website called “Subversive Yarn,” which I have joined.

As my first yarn art project, I am submitting an entry into a “Yarn Art” project, Yarn Forward 2009 , which is on display at Manchester Craft and Design Centre.

The instructions are as follows:

Knit or crochet your knitted strip to measure 7cm wide x 40 cm long. Any colour, yarn and technique is accepted, the brighter and wackier, the better.

stripI’ve done one strip so far, make of random crochet stitches using a multicolored cotton yarn. My plan is to play around and design and do several more and then send them off to the exhibition.

Well, all right, not very subversive or terribly artistically creative, but, after all, it’s my first venture.

After this, at my daughter’s request, I’m going to knit up a “hug me” sweater for our front yard maple tree. (I’m stealing the idea from here.)

Except for working on a sweater for my daughter (which I started a year ago), I think I’ll leave off from the mundane crafty stuff and focus on how to be more subversive. Especially, since I just finished this very mundane granny square vest. squares I always wanted to try a granny square something, and I already had the yarn.

Finally, I finally got my “Crafty Side of Kalilily” page launched. So take a look of some of my other mundane (and, eventually, not so mundane) creations.

I’ll be updating it regularly. The link is on my home page.

show the right the door

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There is no common table at which to sit with the Right. There is no compromise with the Right. To them, a show of compromise by their opponents isn’t seen as an invitation to further discussion and common progress. It isn’t seen as civility.

To them, it’s simply a sign of weakness, the baring of one’s naked throat to their waiting teeth.

The above from the end of a post here.

Their votes didn’t put this administration into office, and they will do all they can to sabotage the agenda that did put this administration into office.

President Obama and the progressive Democrats need to show the Right/eous the door — politely but firmly.

oh boy, oh boy!!

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Maureen Dowd’s column in Saturday’s NY Times calls a spade a spade (no, this is not a racial slur).

She writes:

I’ve been loath to admit that the shrieking lunacy of the summer — the frantic efforts to paint our first black president as the Other, a foreigner, socialist, fascist, Marxist, racist, Commie, Nazi; a cad who would snuff old people; a snake who would indoctrinate kids — had much to do with race.

[snip]

Now he’s at the center of a period of racial turbulence sparked by his ascension. Even if he and the coterie of white male advisers around him don’t choose to openly acknowledge it, this president is the ultimate civil rights figure — a black man whose legitimacy is constantly challenged by a loco fringe.

For two centuries, the South has feared a takeover by blacks or the feds. In Obama, they have both.

Dowd’s piece gives a little history of the South’s failed efforts to fight on the wrong side of national moral issues since the Civil War.

Obama, as an educated, eloquent, and erudite mixed race black man is the redneck’s nightmare come true.

For the rest of us, he’s our last great hope for rescuing our country from the lying maws of the stupid, selfish, and snide.