chronicled & illustrated

it’s slip-sliding thru new b,
originally uploaded by nuanc.

I arrived home from my trip to Maine last night around 12:30am.

The day started off hard and just seemed to—not get worse—but just stay hard to the end. Saying good-bye to my son and granddaughter was emotionally hard. Physically I’m at low ebb with a cold coming on. I had three hours of work to get the rented house back in shape before leaving. This became complicated when I hit my head on a wall lamp causing the thing to crash to the floor and smash into smithereens. And then, an 11 hour drive.

I kept comforting myself with how much worse it not only could be but has been! I was remembering the day I left to drive home from Maine last March. It was bitterly cold with high winds and I had to muscle my luggage down a narrow set of stairs and over slippery ice to get it into the car. Then as I neared home late, late that night, heavy blinding snow made the last 3 hours literally life-threatening. Yesterday was NOT that bad and I made sure I never forgot it!

But it made me wonder what it is that makes me do that. I always compare whatever I’m struggling with with something worse that I’ve been through in the past. When I was young and hadn’t been through much, I used to compare a challenge with the time I had to give an oral report on the Algerian-French War in French! Now it seems silly but then, to give an oral report was bad enough, but to do it in another language seemed like an impossibility. And yet, I did it, (I got a ‘B’ and was grateful) so I used it for years as proof to myself that I could do impossible things!

If I can’t come up with something worse that’s happened to me, I comfort myself with the fact that it’s not anywhere near as bad as what others have been through. I clearly remember being miserable during a 24+ hour car trip with my first husband, two young sons and a mother-in-law in a small car. I was sitting in the back literally on the edge of a too small, non-ergonomically designed seat with everything in my body tired and achy. But I was thinking that it simply wasn’t that bad because imagine the poor pioneer women in covered wagons!

Can’t I just be miserable?

Evidently not. Oh, I do my fair share of moaning and groaning. I can be a real baby when sick or injured. But if it’s something I have to get through, it seems to be in my nature to mentally sustain myself with reasons why it’s not that bad. I can then realize that packing up the car on a muggy day in June is certainly preferrable to a blizzardish one in March. That a late night drive alone in familiar territory with a loving husband waiting at home to give me a warm, hearfelt embrace when I FINALLY pull into to the driveway is really just something to get through and not something to wish away. My life is and has been easy and full of many days without danger or real hardship. I know I should not forget that.

I can still feel buffeted and bruised by my day yesterday. Take a day to recover my bearings. Do blog entries. Open mail. Wash my hair. Be with my husband. And remember things like…

…when I was in Junior High School, I did a dramatic interpretation from a play called All the Way Home by Tad Mosel (the playwright’s name is not from memory but from Google). I remember little about it except that the right to do it at a speech tournament was ‘willed’ to me by one Cheryl Somebody, a tournament-winning actress who had gone on to high school at the end of the previous year. What I do remember is that the excerpt required me to sing Swing Low, Sweet Chariot at the end. This isn’t another story about hard things I’ve been through, as for some reason, doing acting wasn’t nearly as difficult as oral reports in French! My now-husband was in that Speech Class and still talks about being wowed by my sweet soprano tremolo. I tell him it was nerves he heard, but that he believes differently makes me smile, makes me happy. I’m not much of a soprano anymore but he and I still sing together at home—where I am now once again pleasantly ensconced.

This is my wonderful 2 year old granddaughter, Cadi. I’m in Maine right now for her birthday celebration. This was taken on my first full day here. I got to stay with her while my son had some well-deserved r&r. Cadi and I took a walk into the little town where there is a school playground.

I took a dozen or more photos but this one and only a couple of the others are decent. Cadi’s difficult to take pictures of as she moves fast, does not—to say the least—like to pose and often looks away if she sees a camera.

I like that in a little girl. While there’s nothing wrong with a child who knows how to “turn it on” for a camera, it’s pleasing to me that Cadi doesn’t see the need to do so. She’s been seeing images of herself on my laptop screensaver and she definitely enjoys the photos. “Dat’s Cadi,” she tells her dad. She seems to remember certain ones, what she was doing and where she was, even though many of them were taken at Christmas. But she obviously doesn’t like them enough to make herself available for my lens. She’s got more important things to do with her time. Right on, Cadi!

Now, I just need to get a camera with a faster response time!

The jacket and hat that Cadi is wearing were brought from Cape Breton. I ‘won’ them in a silent auction at Girl’s Night Out, a fund raiser for the Sydney women’s shelter. It was made by a local woman who’s name, unfortunately, I didn’t get. I planned on giving it to Cadi as a birthday gift but didn’t really have an expectation that it would fit or that she would like it. But the day we were going to the playground was a little cool and Ty hadn’t brought her a jacket, so I immediately busted this out. She took right to it and especially loves wearing the hat. And doesn’t she look grand in it? I love it when a non-plan comes together.

dragonfly on obi,
originally uploaded by nuanc.

On Saturday I leave for my long-awaited trip to Maine. There I will stay in a simple, familiar rented cottage near the water within walking distance of shops, restaurants, library and post office. I’ll be less than ten minutes from my son and granddaughter, Cadi. My other son will be flying in from New Mexico and staying with me in the house. We’re all getting together to celebrate Cadi’s second birthday.

I am very much looking forward to going, but I am in a pre-trip slump. I only just realized that this is often what happens a couple of days before a trip. I become almost immobilized. This afternoon, rather than do anyone of the myriad of things I could do to get ready, to clean house before leaving, to work on my website, to work on the projects lined up in the sidebar of my life , instead I went downstairs, got a piece of cake and watched junk-tv >PSYCHIC TWINS!!< and (at the same time) played alchemy on my laptop for approximately two hours.

It's so unusual for me to watch tv in the middle of the day, that when I do, there is a residual feeling that I've done something >a little< wrong. I haven't always felt guilty about goofing off. I used to watch a lot of tv. I used to waste a lot of time. Perhaps I still waste as much time as I always did but now when I waste time, it's on the computer so somehow it doesn't seem quite so vapid.

Anyway, this blog, my life, my writings are NOT about beating myself up. I used to do a lot of that too. But I'm past that. If I need to eat cake and watch tv for a while, I'm just grateful to have the time to do it. No, this is about reflecting on energy levels. I would be lying to myself if I didn't acknowledge that there has been a LOT going on in my life for the last two weeks that have led me to need a day of goofing off. And even though events lately have had an unusually dramatic flair, it's always the case that an upcoming trip is preceded by a set of more or less engaging life events. So maybe that's my answer to the pre-trip slump.

Perhaps it's because a trip marks the beginning of a new story. The slump is me resisting or not quite knowing how to write the last sentence of the story I'm in right now. Tomorrow as I flash through packing, cleaning, doing, I'll jot down the final sentence and period. I'll write the words, "THE END" and when I get in that car early on Saturday morning and begin that almost-impossibly long, increasingly familiar trip, it'll be a brand new page.

THE PHOTOGRAPH: taken in my dining room. The dragonfly (my favorite bug!) is pinned to an obi that I picked up in a textile fair in Connecticut years ago. The sun has faded the fabric which was old when I got it. I’ve thought about moving it out of the sun but I have decided in favor of letting it age where it is. It’s a small vignette in my home which I never think about but which love.
ROLLER COASTER: on the level
WRITING: NetWorld – a short story
LOVING: this blog
NEEDING: a good long walk by myself
HOPING: for sunny weather in Maine next week

deep pink blues,
originally uploaded by nuanc.

The photograph is a mock-up cd cover that I did for a utata project last summer. The guitarist is my son Carson who is a singer /songwriter in Albuquerque. He’s been slowly working on a web home for himself and his music all this year, and is, in fact, my inspiration for moving my website-family to wordpress. I THINK it’s been a good move. He’s on my mind, because I just took a look at techornati tags this morning and found that he’s put in a link to my zine. The “web” is indeed a fine metaphor.

I brought this fun project out of the archives because it relates to one of the themes of my life this year. That of self-promotion. I’m terrible at it and always have been, but I have accepted that as a fault; something that I must overcome. Even as I do it (mainly on the web, at this point) I feel that others won’t like me. It’s an old primal tape running in my head. Mustn’t draw attention to ones achievements. Particularly if one isn’t absolutely sure of that those actions/behaviors/products can be counted as “achievements.” Yes, there are always doubts.

And yet, I’m pushing myself to make connections, promote my sites, feel happy that my photo was the needle found in the haystack of flickr for the german beer ad. Perhaps age has taught me a few things—usually three or four words at a time: Things take time. Little things add up. Life is too short. People like success. Pride cometh before a fall—

Oops.

Old tapes.

I titled this Pridefall because those two words are firmly associated in my mind. I have experienced the relationship many times. Pride makes us boastful, boastfulness makes us vulnerable to tripping because our nose is in the air? I don’t know. It’s a firm relationship, but not a useful one.

I’m proud of my son and his music. I’m proud that he’s hung in there with his creative endeavors even as he works so very hard at his academic and teaching careers. And in that, there is no fall. Being proud of others is ok.

By the way, the title of the album and band on my mock-up cd cover are not my son’s.
His site is carsonmetzger.net. Go. Find out his names. Read his words. Listen to his music. Go see him perform. Understand my pride.

Eyes cracked open at 5:27 am today to see a thin layer of snow on every little branch outside our window. By the time I got up several hours later, it had begun to rain and wasn’t as pretty. But—as a relative newcomer to Nova Scotia—this is my record for the latest snowfall of the year.

My husband tells a story about his first summer here in Cape Breton, back in the early 70’s. He was, for a short time, living by himself in the country and because he’d come here to farm, was putting in his first vegetable garden. He woke up on the morning of JUNE 17th to find a layer of snow breaking the will-to-live of his fledgling plantlets. The short-term ending of the story is that he—having absolutely nothing else to do with his time—propped up each and everyone of the bent seedlings and about 80% of them survived the snow!

The long-term ending is yet to be written but over thirty years on, the weather in Nova Scotia has changed. Whether for better or worse, is a matter of personal opinion, but few can argue that it’s rapid and scary.

A week ago this was the view outside our window. Those are firetrucks in our driveway at 3am. It’s a tradition locally for kids to set fire to the grass and woods in the middle of which our old house happens to sit. The spring has been very dry and these fires literally made the national news because of the sheer number and the toll it was taking on the island’s volunteer firefighters. Yay for volunteer firefighers! Come to think of it, Yay for paid firefighters!

This is the second time the fires have come close to our house but the first time that I seriously considered packing up those things that are most valuable to me. I found that a worthy exercise.

One surprising thing to me was that my journals (there are dozens of them!) are more important to me than my paintings. I’d hate to lose either but found that the journals represent my history, the art represents momentary self-expression. I guess for me “chronicling” beats out “illustrating.”

What I learned:
• Keep all stored photographs in one place.
• Have a box with the VIPs (Very Important Papers): wills, birth certificates, insurance policies
• Mark files in the filing cabinet that are irreplaceable. How about a gold star?
• It takes longer than you might think to get THE most important things together.
• Better safe than sorry.

Reading: Tales of Protection by Eric Fosnes Hansen
Writing: Words of Paradise – a novel set in Canada, the US and the island of Tobago in the 60’s
Working on: EPIC’s website and this one
Upcoming: a trip to Maine for Cadi’s 2nd birthday and to see Ty and Carson
Mood: calm
Physically: achy
Progress since yesterday: this website—do you like my new beaded curtain?; the book for Book Club on the 26th