Thursday, June 23, 2011
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
A Moveable Feast
Thinking about Paris this morning, as the trees outside my window wave in and out of shadow. I miss it, I miss living there, suddenly, maybe it is the huge courtyard out of my bedroom window, and the way that sounds carryr across from the apartments opposite, filtered through trees. It reminds me of that time of Parisian night when everyone is getting ready for dinner,,,,, clink of wine glasses, ovens opening and closing, wine corks being popped.
There were two courtyards that I came to know intimately there. They both had this quality of intimacy and privacy, of quietness, and small noises at the same time. They were always cool, and tree-filled, and inspiring. One was filled with plants, and had beautiful tile floors, the other had one huge lone tree. They made me feel safe, as if I were settling the edges of my own mind out into a larger parameter, they became a part of what I was thinking about, mind-encased, and infiltrated everything that I was writing, reading, and dreaming about.
I have been reading Colette fairly constantly, but this morning also picked up 'A Moveable Feast' by Hemingway, having read it twice but not really remembering it.
Even though the book starts with the opposite season, I have the same feelings now, a central spine that that things are set up well now, that they can be new, and are changed.
"When we came to Paris it was clear and cold and lovely. The city had accommodated itself to winter, there was good wood for sale at the wood and coal place across our street, and there were braziers outside of many of the good cafes so that you could keep warm on the terraces. We burned boulets which were molded, egg-shaped lumps of coal dust, on the wood fire, and on the streets the winter light was beautiful." (11)
There were two courtyards that I came to know intimately there. They both had this quality of intimacy and privacy, of quietness, and small noises at the same time. They were always cool, and tree-filled, and inspiring. One was filled with plants, and had beautiful tile floors, the other had one huge lone tree. They made me feel safe, as if I were settling the edges of my own mind out into a larger parameter, they became a part of what I was thinking about, mind-encased, and infiltrated everything that I was writing, reading, and dreaming about.
I have been reading Colette fairly constantly, but this morning also picked up 'A Moveable Feast' by Hemingway, having read it twice but not really remembering it.
Even though the book starts with the opposite season, I have the same feelings now, a central spine that that things are set up well now, that they can be new, and are changed.
"When we came to Paris it was clear and cold and lovely. The city had accommodated itself to winter, there was good wood for sale at the wood and coal place across our street, and there were braziers outside of many of the good cafes so that you could keep warm on the terraces. We burned boulets which were molded, egg-shaped lumps of coal dust, on the wood fire, and on the streets the winter light was beautiful." (11)
Sunday, June 5, 2011
nest house.
Well, I have moved into another apartment these past few days. In the last year and a half that makes for 7 moves. 7!!!!!!!! I usually write through the hardest parts of the move, namely the days leading up to it, the day of, but this time I just couldn't.
I felt something give in me this time, and I understood something of the control I had so desperately tried to keep in all of those past moves. This time I have been more quiet, more insular, more watchful. I am trying to let my new self catch up to me. I hope I have not been shouting about "another big change in my life" to anyone who will listen.
I know that there is something I haven't learned in this experience of life, the experience of change, flux, and that the same situation will keep coming up until I learn how to react differently, or be in this 'space of change' differently. My reaction (and hence stress, anxiety, energy) is the only variable that I have any real control of. If I can stay calm in a year and a half like this last one, that is really saying something.
It has been a goal of mine for years to get comfortable with real change. To live in Santa Fe, Seattle, to get a chunk of relocation money from the city of Seattle and move to Paris, to live in Rome, to move to New York. To move on a frenetic basis, to travel, to decide to leave NYC on a whim and move to a tiny west Texas desert town for a year, sometimes without a plan, a few times finding myself too poor to buy food.
But those situations were few, and shook me to my core enough to react from it, from my most powerful center of survival. The worst and most traumatic move (ill-planned but romantic) lasted exactly one month (almost 2 years ago now), and rattled me so much that I might not be the same person ever again. But everything changes us, every day we are new. Getting out of that situation was the best thing I could have done, and the trauma of it has faded now, melted even into forgiveness. This has been a surprise to me, but also a great weight lifted.
I can still remember almost every detail of that Newburgh, NY brownstone. I have exactly 12 photos that I took of the place, right as we moved in, empty, beautiful, plaster walls, old 30's stove, strange linoleum floors, brass chandelier. I haven't shown these photos to anyone. They are so ghostly, and speak of otherworldly concerns, they seem to be a portal to another time, I think we were trying to live on top of a ghost family that was already there. We tread lightly, even the cat didn't like to touch the floor, and she would sleep on my upturned hip every night.
And so now, with the loveliest of calm energies and quietness, thick walls and weight of a another real brownstone around me, I realize how nice it feels to settle like this, settle like old bones of a house shifting into the earth, like stone walls slumping a little in the sun summer after summer. I have had three of the best nights of sleep in my life here. Ceiling fan, tree aerie, feels like an eagle's nest, quiet, breeze, those linen kind of scrim curtains that seem tropical. The ceiling fan swings a little and makes the sound like a ticking of a clock, probably why I sleep so well, after growing up in a house of a hundred clocks.
I understand now that I need a base in something to reach for those other celestial, exotic, other-place, celestial-thought things. Base in soil, base in rock, base in body. My mind can reach for these now that I have a foundation here. In many ways I have come full circle to this place, it is literally one and a half blocks from my first New York apartment, 6 years ago. I can even see the same water tower I used to look at while writing,,,, but THIS TIME the view is entirely different.
And last night I made one of the best pastas of my life;) I tried to reproduce something I had in Rome once, in a tiny room attached to the side of a church: black and white fettuccine: (namely copious amounts of black pepper and grano pagano parm), I added shitake mushrooms sauteed in butter, lots of sauteed garlic, deglaze with wine and chickn stock. My first meal in the new place was simple, and a success.
I felt something give in me this time, and I understood something of the control I had so desperately tried to keep in all of those past moves. This time I have been more quiet, more insular, more watchful. I am trying to let my new self catch up to me. I hope I have not been shouting about "another big change in my life" to anyone who will listen.
I know that there is something I haven't learned in this experience of life, the experience of change, flux, and that the same situation will keep coming up until I learn how to react differently, or be in this 'space of change' differently. My reaction (and hence stress, anxiety, energy) is the only variable that I have any real control of. If I can stay calm in a year and a half like this last one, that is really saying something.
It has been a goal of mine for years to get comfortable with real change. To live in Santa Fe, Seattle, to get a chunk of relocation money from the city of Seattle and move to Paris, to live in Rome, to move to New York. To move on a frenetic basis, to travel, to decide to leave NYC on a whim and move to a tiny west Texas desert town for a year, sometimes without a plan, a few times finding myself too poor to buy food.
But those situations were few, and shook me to my core enough to react from it, from my most powerful center of survival. The worst and most traumatic move (ill-planned but romantic) lasted exactly one month (almost 2 years ago now), and rattled me so much that I might not be the same person ever again. But everything changes us, every day we are new. Getting out of that situation was the best thing I could have done, and the trauma of it has faded now, melted even into forgiveness. This has been a surprise to me, but also a great weight lifted.
I can still remember almost every detail of that Newburgh, NY brownstone. I have exactly 12 photos that I took of the place, right as we moved in, empty, beautiful, plaster walls, old 30's stove, strange linoleum floors, brass chandelier. I haven't shown these photos to anyone. They are so ghostly, and speak of otherworldly concerns, they seem to be a portal to another time, I think we were trying to live on top of a ghost family that was already there. We tread lightly, even the cat didn't like to touch the floor, and she would sleep on my upturned hip every night.
And so now, with the loveliest of calm energies and quietness, thick walls and weight of a another real brownstone around me, I realize how nice it feels to settle like this, settle like old bones of a house shifting into the earth, like stone walls slumping a little in the sun summer after summer. I have had three of the best nights of sleep in my life here. Ceiling fan, tree aerie, feels like an eagle's nest, quiet, breeze, those linen kind of scrim curtains that seem tropical. The ceiling fan swings a little and makes the sound like a ticking of a clock, probably why I sleep so well, after growing up in a house of a hundred clocks.
I understand now that I need a base in something to reach for those other celestial, exotic, other-place, celestial-thought things. Base in soil, base in rock, base in body. My mind can reach for these now that I have a foundation here. In many ways I have come full circle to this place, it is literally one and a half blocks from my first New York apartment, 6 years ago. I can even see the same water tower I used to look at while writing,,,, but THIS TIME the view is entirely different.
And last night I made one of the best pastas of my life;) I tried to reproduce something I had in Rome once, in a tiny room attached to the side of a church: black and white fettuccine: (namely copious amounts of black pepper and grano pagano parm), I added shitake mushrooms sauteed in butter, lots of sauteed garlic, deglaze with wine and chickn stock. My first meal in the new place was simple, and a success.
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