keeping track (and testing memory): part I

Recap of my trip to England and Scotland.

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 16, 2009

I got on a plane at JFK to London.  For the first time, I was served wine on the plane.  At this point, I began to resent America’s drinking age.  When we landed in the morning, I paced up and down the aisles to try to get a view of the outside, the ocean, the sunrise, England.  No such luck—everyone seemed to be sleeping with the blinds half down, and the little windows in the emergency exits were only big enough to see an insignificant fraction of the sky.

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 17, 2009

Landed and Jennie picked me up from the airport.  I hadn’t seen her in over four years!  We talked all the drive back to Aldershot, mostly about her life and our mutual experiences with Grandma and her worrying over us.  Also how we used to “torture” her when we were little…with water and things. Don’t worry, nothing she couldn’t handle 😉

In Aldershot I saw Barbara, and it was cold, and Jennie and I sat in her office and then walked to a little shop to get sandwiches for lunch.  They asked me if I wanted white or brown bread.  Apparently they don’t use the word “wheat” in the UK.  I helped Jennie look through cans in the garage, after being warned by several of her coworkers that I could not be alone in any buildings (lest I see a mouse and slip on some ice and injure myself, or that sort of thing) and Jennie was to be sure to show me the location of any and all fire exits.  The garage door seemed like a pretty good escape route in the event of a freak bread-pudding-meets-canned-peas fire accident.

We drove home and I saw Danny, he was so furry and I almost forgot he’s a poodle, because normally I think of poodles as sort of ugly in all their pampering, but Danny was fuzzy and full, how poodles are meant to be.  Jennie and I drove to town to pick up some Chinese food for dinner, and we had the first of our many dinners in front of the TV, watching British shows like “Eastenders” (a soap opera I unfortunately became invested in by the end of my stay) and “Deal or No Deal” (which I thought was stupid at first, then began to watch because the contestants were all dressed as elves in honor of Christmas, and then stopped watching after my favorite contestant, Sanjay, was off the show…he was very cute, or fit, as they say).  By the time I went to bed, I had been awake for over 24 hours, I think for the first time in my whole life.

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2009

By the time I woke up, Hawkley and the surrounding villages, towns, and counties were smothered in snow.  It was beautiful.  We made it out to Tesco, after some ordeals with the cars (including Jennie having to stay home from work after sliding down the hill in her rental car), and did some food shopping.  I can’t decide whether I like Tesco or Publix better.  Both of them appeal to me in their simple packaging, and the aesthetics of the store.  Much less flashy than Safeway or Marks & Spencer or Piazza or even Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s, both of which I love.  Shopping seems nice when foods are plain, in their packages, not trying to be more than what they are: Ground beef. Chicken breasts.  Biscuits.  Bananas.  Scones.  Yogurt.  Blocks of cheese.  Grapes.  Orange juice.  Cheerios.  These are things I like.

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2009

We went shopping in Portsmouth at a big mall, and it was so cold walking around between the shops.  You would think, being a somewhat cold and northern country, that the Brits would put their malls indoors… nope.  I think part of the mall may have had actual hallways, but mostly we traipsed around outdoors between shops that were well heated, but left their doors open (to invite shoppers in?  and simultaneously waste a ton of energy?).  I found some great jeans…at Gap of all places.  I can’t believe I traveled across an ocean just to shop at Gap.  We ate lunch at a Mexican restaurant, and then, after Jennie and Barbara agonized for a few hours about what to get their friends for Christmas, we went home to the cold and dark and snow.

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 20, 2009

This was the first night I went to the Hawkley pub.  I think Jennie was out sleeping over at James’ house, so Barbara and I went for a drink or two.  I tried cider at Jennie’s suggestion, expecting it to be some kind of warm alcoholic apple cider.  In fact, it ended up being more like beer.  It wasn’t until later, in Glasgow with Eleanor, that I discovered Kopperberg’s fruit cider, which is delicious.

The pub was magically warm, with its little fireplaces, honey-colored walls, low wooden tables and arm chairs.  We sat at the bar and admired the Moose head (which apparently usually has a joint in its mouth) and Bob, a man who Jennie thinks Barbara should date.  It was nice, being able to order a drink and watch people hang out, without any feelings of age-based status.  It was an old person’s pub, it was a young person’s pub, it was a village pub where everyone seemed to be welcome and everyone was willing to be friends.  Or at least that’s how it seemed to me, not being a townie myself.

MONDAY, DECEMBER 21, 2009

Jennie and Barbara went to work today, so I took Danny on a walk in the snow.  There was a footpath to the village center (I think it’s great how there are so many footpaths in the UK!) which we began down, until I realized there was a field of sheep to our left and I had better get Danny on a leash lest he agitate the sheep and end up shot by a worried farmer.  This took some chasing, but I got him on the leash and he pulled me, tripping over snow and his feet, to the end of the path, and then we walked down the road to the village center.  It didn’t take us long to explore the whole village:  a grassy “commons” the smaller than Barbara’s yard, a church (which I tried to go in, but it was locked), and the graveyard.  After a bit more of chasing Danny as other dogs walked by, I decided to keep him back on the leash until we had walked back around to the Hawkley inn (the pub) for a glass of wine by the fire.  Danny sat so nicely by my feet, and I read my book (The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin, recommended to me by my dad, which I was reading somewhat to my chagrin, and yet was determined to finish) until I was warm, and then we walked home.

It took Jennie and Barbara over three hours to get home from work that night.  I cooked cottage pie, and it was after eight by the time they got back for us to eat it.  The snow had been so bad that the roads were freezing, and the little English cars were inching along, getting stuck every which way, forcing some people to walk home or sit in their cars for hours, waiting for help.  This was the beginning of a record in cold and snow to rival the past thirty years, or as the news stations called it, The Big Freeze.

glued

I don’t like being so addicted to things: my computer (which I have been wanting when I am on the train, in a nice café, when I think of things I want to look up, when I have down time); music (which I want to listen to on the train, or all the time, so much that when I hear songs that I know, my body physically calms); money (which I feel guilty about spending, as if  I am wasting, being careless, but then I have to weigh the amount of care it would take to really save as much as I possibly could, and wonder if the worry of all that saving outweighs the niceness of being able to do and buy things within reason, or occasionally even not within reason); quiet (to just sit and do a mindless activity during which I am not obligated to start a conversation or chatter; I have recently been taking out my book as if to read, but often end up staring at the page and thinking, so I can have time and space and quiet to think without being asked if something is wrong or feeling obligated to speak.  One of the nicest things was when I was in St. Andrews on Wednesday and Nina went to study, leaving me to sit in her room and have some quiet time.  I sat on her bed with my cup of tea and stared out the window, thinking, processing, just being.  And then I felt better. Other activities are good for finding this kind of quiet: chopping vegetables, folding.)

Which is harder: doing something you don’t want to do, or not doing something you want to do?

Lately I think it’s the latter.  And I don’t mean not getting to do it, I mean purposely not letting yourself to do it.

I want to write down what I have done every day since I’ve been in the UK.  But every day I don’t write it, there’s another day to write and remember.  The train would be a good time to do this, but I won’t have a computer.  Reading is good, too, though.   But is there a point to remembering days?  The most important ones will get remembered, I think.  Or else the ones that get remembered will become the most important.

story people.

Before Dawn: maybe my first favorite story

Stories.  Short ones.  Crafted by Brian Andreas onto pieces of recycled barn wood, creating tea trays and sculptures and treasure chests and mirrors and coat racks.  There are also books and prints and greeting cards, but mostly, if you don’t have lots of money to buy all those things, they are stories.  Here are three stories that meant something to me (recently…I have a “favorites” list that scrolls down and down and down).

–

connected by a silver cord that hums with sadness the further it is stretched

–

–

If there is any secret to this life I live, this is it: the sound of what cannot be seen sings within everything that can.  & there is nothing more to it than that.

–

–

This is a giant block of whatever is most difficult for you to carry & trust me on this, you’ll carry it more times than you can count until you decide that’s exactly what you want to do most & then it won’t weigh a thing anymore.

–

They have a story of the day email too.  Get it.  Best daily email I recieve.  Story People is like the best song or your favorite line in a book you love.  The stories say things that we all feel, in a way we can understand it.  There’s nothing like reading the perfect story for your day.

excerpts

from “In Praise of Idleness” by Bertrand Russel, 1932

Andy suggested I read this when we were talking about the importance of play.  The first quotation below stuck out to me because it really does make our industrialised society seem a bit insane, and makes me dream of working only four-hour days and then having time each day to write, or dance, or hike, or even sleep a normal amount.  At pretty much every job I’ve had, there have been people who don’t work hard at all, or spend a lot of their work day in idleness but still have to show up.  I would rather work hard for four or six hours, than lounge around and do bits of work for eight or more hours a day.

“Suppose that, at a given moment, a certain number of people are engaged in the manufacture of pins. They make as many pins as the world needs, working (say) eight hours a day. Someone makes an invention by which the same number of men can make twice as many pins: pins are already so cheap that hardly any more will be bought at a lower price. In a sensible world, everybody concerned in the manufacturing of pins would take to working four hours instead of eight, and everything else would go on as before. But in the actual world this would be thought demoralizing. The men still work eight hours, there are too many pins, some employers go bankrupt, and half the men previously concerned in making pins are thrown out of work. There is, in the end, just as much leisure as on the other plan, but half the men are totally idle while half are still overworked. In this way, it is insured that the unavoidable leisure shall cause misery all round instead of being a universal source of happiness. Can anything more insane be imagined?”

This next quotation makes me feel better about how much money I’ve spent in traveling.  I have been working for the past three months, and school year, and two summers.  Therefore, it must be okay for me to spend the money I’ve earned on leisure.

“The butcher who provides you with meat and the baker who provides you with bread are praiseworthy, because they are making money; but when you enjoy the food they have provided, you are merely frivolous, unless you eat only to get strength for your work. Broadly speaking, it is held that getting money is good and spending money is bad. Seeing that they are two sides of one transaction, this is absurd; one might as well maintain that keys are good, but keyholes are bad.”

other people getting published

Once when I told my grandma’s friend that I want to write, she told me it was impractical, but if I must, I could do something functional like transcribing medical textbooks into online versions.  Boy, does that sound fun.

I’ve been reading Joey Comeau’s Overqualified website, which is a collection of real cover letters that he sent out with job applications to dozens of corporations over the past few years.  When I first discovered this website at least three years ago (though now I no longer remember how I first came across it) I mostly read the comic, but soon discovered the Overqualified section and was highly amused.  Now it turns out Joey has turned the letter into a book, which is getting published.  Rock on!

And what struck me was that from this small idea he had, or some way he entertained himself, or some fluke, he’s now getting a book published.  Think about Julie and Julia, that movie about cooking and Julia Childs that was based on a blog written by somebody named Julia in New York.  These things are crazy to me, call them what you will, mini success stories, entrepreneurship, miracles.  What I wonder is if Julie and Joey have forever had burning desires to be published, or if this was just something great that happened in their lives and all of a sudden they were Real Writers.

I’ve noticed by way of this blog that all I want to write about here is writing.  Lots of things happen to me every day.  I’m in England and I’ve seen cute towns and snow and sheep and family and friends, and there’s a lot to write about that might be interesting to read, if only for my mom.  But.  I can’t seem to force myself to write every day, though that was my goal…to write every day for a month.  I thought it would be a good New Year’s Resolution but then realised that I had no computer access on the first because I was in London, then was staying at Benny’s house on the second and third, and I feel weird blogging on other people’s computers.  So maybe I’ll start small and see if I can blog every day for a week.  Except starting Thursday I’ll be travelling again, so who knows what will happen.

I used to have this goal to write in my journal every night before bed.  I think that may have been a resolution once as well.  But now I look at my journal and the dates are separated by three to five weeks, usually.  Even though I always have one with me (there are many; I’ve started at least three or four at the moment and can only think of two in my whole life I’ve finished).

Bottom line:  if I want to get published (ever) I’m pretty sure I need consistency, a routine, standards, discipline.  It ain’t gonna happen from me just thinking about it.  I actually have to write.  Consistently.

I also think my blog needs more links and pictures to be more interesting.  Working on that too. But that’s another issue.