We went to Wellesley College on Sunday to see the daffodils but it was too early or too cold or both. What a wind was afoot!
It was so cold, we abbreviated our walk.
Hellebores were putting on a good show, even if the daffodils weren’t.
A surprise package from Holland came last week. Inside — “Ink Woman,” a collage by the talented Saskia. Totally unexpected!
I just love Saskia’s work. She’s a visual artist with a real knack for storytelling. I don’t know how, but she manages to be both serious and whimsical and her creatures are particularly delightful. I’ve watched her work evolve over the last many years and it’s exciting because she is so very original and keeps taking risks. There’s a fearlessness at work that I admire.
This is a shitty photo but it will have to do for now because she left her post on the windowsill and is hiding from me right now!
The photo above is a little deceptive. It’s shot across the top of my zoom screen toward the window.
PS I got my hair cut this afternoon. It looks very “Karen of the PTA” to me now but I’ll get used to it. I really needed a change. Maybe I’ll post a picture tomorrow. Pretty wiped at the moment.
Here’s a modern day conundrum: we don’t really have winter here in New England anymore and yet — the feel and sight of spring is palpable. Mostly it’s the light.
But also, look at those brave snowdrops! It was 24 degrees when I walked Finn this morning and yet there they are.
Almost done with baby quilt commission. I constructed it so that the longest seams run the width. That’s to avoid how even a small inaccuracy (and I’m taking 1/8”) can get really exaggerated on a long seam.
The brief did not include making the blanket an I Spy quilt but I couldn’t resist including a few critters and a motorcycle.
A storm. “Isn’t it just a blizzard?” asked a friend who’s seen a few more New England winters than I have.
No, they’re bomb cyclones. And they’ve got names now too. I think this one is Kevin or some shit.
Worse, weather people now refer to the process of a storm rapidly gaining strength as bomb-o-genesis, which in my view sounds more like a rock band, a decadent dessert, or a sex toy.
WTF Number 1: What’s with littering masks people? Walk in any direction for a small distance around here and you’re bound to encounter 5-6-7 discarded masks. WTF?
WTF Number 2: I’ve been taking a statin for a number of years and I had to learn about the perils of grapefruit juice from a blogging friend in Maine? WTF doctors? (Thanks for the heads up, Joanne).
WTF Number 3: Local news coverage about safety offered this tip should you fall through the ice: “Use your ice pick and rope to pull yourself out.” WHAT. THE. FUCK?
We walked around Crystal Lake this morning. K wanted to make part of the circuit on the ice but I was too nervous, especially after hearing eerie boing-pong sounds coming from under the ice. Plus, I left my ice pick and rope at home.
Now for my tribe comment — the Irish tribe in case you’re wondering (Ancestry puts me at 98%). It’s not often that I sing out “that’s my tribe” with head held high.
Case in point, the last time I flew home from LA, three guys from Southie sitting in the row behind me spent the final hour of the flight both refusing to wear their masks properly (despite repeated requests from airline staff) and arguing about who was driving whom home. “That’s my tribe,” I thought wearily.
But twice recently watching Maddow’s coverage of stubborn and valiant fisherfolk from County Cork, I called out, “That’s my tribe!” County Cork is even where my maternal grandmother hails from.
If you haven’t heard the story, Russia is planning military exercises off the southwest coast of Ireland. The fishermen of that area intend to head their way and “fish as usual, as is their right.” In a season of handwringing over Russian aggression, I love this scrappy and pugnacious response. And true to the Irish penchant for understatement, the daring offensive is being framed as being about the mackerel and all.
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Short version of WTF Number 4 is the radical right. I put it at the end here so you can skip it if you want but I include it as testimony. It all is so unbelievable.
WTF Number 4: Green M&M’s are no longer sexy enough for Tucker Carlson? Newt Gingrich has crawled out from whatever rock he’s been hiding under to do a Giuliani impression of “lock them up?” Susan Collins is so glad there will be time to deliberate over the next SCOTUS pick since it is such an incredibly important decision? McConnell asks that the Democrats not pick someone “radical” (um, hello Handmaid? Hello beer-lauding blackout-Justice who has recently extolled the SCOTUS previously overturning precedent while failing to mention, of course, that each of those previous times was to expand rights, not take them away?)
Even when lids shut, the tissue aquiver — the scroll of light rolling on, a form ofdamnation.
I want to go through my days, my nights, like a rib cage. Each curving spear connected at a central pole. Sure in form, sure in purpose, protecting the two wind lobes and the single beating fist — lungs and heart safer for the bony embrace.
Instead, a vibrato of uncertainty.
How has the non-tactile flow of damage gained ascendancy over sinew and nerve, crowding out all the places in the body that crave silence?
One day those ribs will spear dirt and crumble. Shouldn’t the body being Hand Maiden to Death wake us out of stupor now and then?
Let me eat a cracker with a smidge of butter. Let me sweep the steps free of snow and then sleep under a blanket that whispers ‘hallelujah.’ Let the sun falling on tabletops stir gratitude.
The Solstice is here. Let ‘standing still’ mean something.
Personal update: the bad news is live-in caregiver up and quit. The good news is that I got to see my brother walk.
