Monday, August 22, 2011
Home Alone
One housemate is out of town for a wedding, the other just moved halfway across the country, and the new one won't arrive for another week, so it's just been me and the dog. I've been taking full advantage of the situation: playing bad pop music on the piano, practicing the mandolin, turning up my "top of your lungs" mix and singing, talking to the dog in Mandarin, having zucchini cake for breakfast, eating the cream cheese icing straight out of the bowl in the fridge, making random things for supper out of fresh garden veggies and questionable leftovers, leaving dirty dishes all over the kitchen, coming home from soccer late at night and making lots of noise. Ah--good song's on. Singing time.
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
The Story of E
About a year ago, I wrote about The Story of B, and how my story wasn't B's exactly, but that I didn't know quite what it actually was.
I started thinking about my story again more intentionally this summer, after reading Paul Hawken's Blessed Unrest and realizing that most of the things I love and do and think are connected to what he calls "the Movement"--the confluence of the social justice and environmental and indigenous peoples' movements. It began with a mental web, during one of the summer's backpacking trips, of how all the books I'd read in the past several months connected in some way to those bigger ideas. But it was more than just the books; I started thinking about the college courses I'd taken, the jobs I'd had, the organizations and activities I'd been part of. They all had something in common. They all had me in common. It sounds obvious, I know, but it gave me a different lens for looking at who I am and what this story of mine might be.
I wanted to see what it might look like, visually, this diagram of things I've read and studied and thought about and valued, so I sat down on the floor one day and scribbled pages of ideas connected with arrows all over pages, until the mass of words and lines was so chaotic that even I couldn't tell what I had written. So I went online to prezi and made my first-ever zooming presentation. Forgive my lack of expertise with the program. Even with the prezi, not everything related can sit nicely side by side, and I had to stop drawing arrows because they were covering up too many of the ideas, but it's a start. I didn't create a path for you to follow in viewing this diagram because it not only is not linear, but it has no beginning and no end. Too many branches and forks. I don't have a path for a web. Explore as you wish. Press the play button down there, and zoom and move.
There are many more ideas that could be added and arrows that could be drawn, but I had to leave it somewhere. It's a work in progress. Not just the presentation. The story itself. Here you have it:
I started thinking about my story again more intentionally this summer, after reading Paul Hawken's Blessed Unrest and realizing that most of the things I love and do and think are connected to what he calls "the Movement"--the confluence of the social justice and environmental and indigenous peoples' movements. It began with a mental web, during one of the summer's backpacking trips, of how all the books I'd read in the past several months connected in some way to those bigger ideas. But it was more than just the books; I started thinking about the college courses I'd taken, the jobs I'd had, the organizations and activities I'd been part of. They all had something in common. They all had me in common. It sounds obvious, I know, but it gave me a different lens for looking at who I am and what this story of mine might be.
I wanted to see what it might look like, visually, this diagram of things I've read and studied and thought about and valued, so I sat down on the floor one day and scribbled pages of ideas connected with arrows all over pages, until the mass of words and lines was so chaotic that even I couldn't tell what I had written. So I went online to prezi and made my first-ever zooming presentation. Forgive my lack of expertise with the program. Even with the prezi, not everything related can sit nicely side by side, and I had to stop drawing arrows because they were covering up too many of the ideas, but it's a start. I didn't create a path for you to follow in viewing this diagram because it not only is not linear, but it has no beginning and no end. Too many branches and forks. I don't have a path for a web. Explore as you wish. Press the play button down there, and zoom and move.
There are many more ideas that could be added and arrows that could be drawn, but I had to leave it somewhere. It's a work in progress. Not just the presentation. The story itself. Here you have it:
Saturday, August 6, 2011
Revenge of the junk in the cupboards
Spoke too soon, apparently, about the virtues of stashing stuff away in cupboards. As I was putting away the grocery bags today, I found a branch in the back of the pantry. Pulled it out...and pulled and pulled...and found:
a potato tree.
a potato tree.
Friday, August 5, 2011
Victory of a pack rat
Confession: I have three cupboards in my office filled with junk that I can't bring myself to throw away because I think one day, someday, it might be useful. Today was someday. I finished planting the fall crops in the garden today and used the junk closet not once, but twice.
Twine that the thrift store guy used to tie a dresser (now fully functional, with the 100+ Disney/Barney/Lisa Frank stickers removed and the drawers glued back together) to my car is now tying up the pear tomatoes:
And an old license plate is now keeping water and soil from escaping through the corner of a garden box where the planks had come apart:
Finally, a valid response to the people who tell me I need to throw this stuff out.
Twine that the thrift store guy used to tie a dresser (now fully functional, with the 100+ Disney/Barney/Lisa Frank stickers removed and the drawers glued back together) to my car is now tying up the pear tomatoes:
And an old license plate is now keeping water and soil from escaping through the corner of a garden box where the planks had come apart:
Finally, a valid response to the people who tell me I need to throw this stuff out.
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Short and sweet
That is the theme for upcoming posts. Ambitious thoughts for long, deep entries rarely make it out of my head and onto the screen. With the end of an adventure-filled summer and the beginning of a new school year just days away, it's time for the annual taking stock of life and reevaluating priorities--and writing is one of them. Four sentences. Done.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)