Best Practice

I have mentioned it here before, that I was really excited to be away from my office for five work days that didn’t fall in the month of February that didn’t require traveling to Florida. I’m not used to time off. I never saw the point of taking time off if I wasn’t going anywhere. It surely would mean drudgery, housework, boredom, etc. Who needed that?

But after a bizzonkers third market season this year followed by a half hour spent roughing out a vacation schedule for the holidays and February, I discovered I could ALSO take an additional 5 days off (4 vacation days plus Veteran’s Day, which my office observes by giving us the day off) and still have a couple of days in reserve. This time, taking time off without going anywhere sounded like paradise.

I started my vacation from the office with some drudgery and housework, but it wasn’t laundry or dishes or even the embarrassingly-neglected garden. No, it was cleaning out what was passing for a closet upstairs, a catch-all small room about 4′ x 18′ with no purpose other than to store old clothes, hundreds of abandoned CDs, odd bits of small furniture. Shoes. Boxes of photographs and zines. Bad printers and computer towers. Two bags of not-quite-trash that Cody had filled up and, unsure what to do with a collection of old socks, pennies and nickels, and notebooks from 11th grade math, shoved into the closet/room on the eve of his leaving for Cairo back in February. There were small rolls of carpet scrap that had been there when we moved in, still standing at attention under the sloping of the roof.  I made trip after trip out of the closet/room and into our bedroom, dumping random parts of our lives onto the floor, the bed. My recent desire to BE RID of extraneous crap made it easy to donate/throw out the vast majority of what had been kept in there. But why? Why the motivation?

Two things: 1) I have no interest in spending what little free time I have taking care of stuff that no one wants anywhere in the house, including closets, and b) I wanted a room of my own and this was going to be the only way to have one.

An office. A CLOFFICE. Somewhere I could write, process photos, do research, and keep my various and sundry piles and projects without those things getting in the way of our common living space downstairs, because our house is adorable, but TINY. I spent all day Friday emptying the closet, purging it of bags of crappy yarn and extension cords and old, completely useless, why-the-hell-was-I-saving-this-again-never-mind magazines. A path was required to get to the bed.

The next day, I woke up and prepared to go visit my pal B (aka HousePet) in a neighboring state for just over 24 hours, Jim promising he’d work on the, um, cloffice in my absence. I threw my backpack into the Camry and set off, making the drive in about 2 hours. A Gumballhead was in my hand at 1:30 PM, launching a bit of a short bender with B and her husband, M,  the beginning and the end of it taking place in their really great ranch house. The middle part happened here:

Sunday’s was an incredibly muzzy-headed morning. M had coffee out and built a fire by 9 AM. I have to admit, it was a relief to just sit here, talking quietly, wondering what the heck was in that Arctic Panzer Wolf.

When I returned to Illinois in the afternoon, Jim had indeed worked on the cloffice. The plank flooring, which we will eventually paint white, was covered with part of a sisal rug we’d banished to the garage. A small desk was MacGyvered out of two metal IKEA cabinets and a piece of butcher block. A low bookshelf was moved from downstairs. Another bookshelf came up out of basement exile.

So. I have a room. It’s nothing major, but it’s mine. I’m still working on it.

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That was written six days ago. I still love this little room – I’m working in it/on it right now – but having my work up here means I don’t spend a lot of idle time on the computer, which has made a huge improvement in the ol’ Q of L. I even picked up knitting needles again. Jim and I are talking about other projects. PROGRESS.

Speaking of, here are our two wonderful children:

Lilly’s BFF went to CA and came home with this vintage owl pin for her birthday. She’s been raiding my collection of silk scarves lately for adornment. She is twelve and verging.

I took this of Cody today and texted it to Lilly. She couldn’t get over his facial hair, but I think he kind of rocks it. I’m glad he’s coming back here for Thanksgiving, even if it’s just for the day; I miss his big presence in our house. He is eighteen and sorting it all out.

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In My Backyard #15: Turning Inward

WPA calendar, 1939

The backyard scene in my immediate neighborhood is far different in the late fall than in the spring and summer. My own garden stands, almost completely browned from the last couple hard freezes. Only the chard is still green and upright and edible. A glance around the other backyards tells the same story; lots of dead tomato and pepper plants, browned flowers, and withered vines. I’m finally ready to harvest the chard and anything else that lives and then clear some of this stuff out for the season. But where is everyone?

In the spring,  everyone’s doing work outside at the same time on the weekends and after work or school as the days lengthen – we’re helping each other out, lending tools, swapping vegetable starts, splitting loads of compost. We’re hanging over each others’ fences (where there are fences), looking forward to the coming summer and freedom from the tyranny of school schedules.  It’s the same in summer, just add sharing beers in the heat and trading vegetable surpluses.

Fall is the exact opposite. School ‘s back in session and people have returned to their so-called regular schedules. The days started getting noticeably shorter in September.  Tools are mostly back with their owners, and instead of swapping the vegetable starts of spring and the extra tomatoes or jars of peppers of summer, we’re swapping garden post-mortems – what worked, what didn’t, what we’ll try next year – and making tentative plans for get-togethers.

That’s not to say people aren’t out working in their yards, putting things to bed or otherwise taking advantage of what’s left of fall. Laundry on the line gives away the outdoor presence of other neighbors, just not when I happen to be outside. I see my neighbor Sam outside almost every good weather day (and some bad), working on something that probably has to do with the chicken coop.

Now is really the best chance we have of seeing each other. After several years of keeping track, I’ve noticed we all pretty much disappear into our respective homes and lives starting in October, staying warm and keeping busy with school, work, sports, approaching holidays, and maybe an indoor project or two, bumping into each other outdoors on the rare brilliant days.

Today I’m outside with my husband, working. It’s one of those brilliant days in the mid 60s and very sunny, but it’s a November weekday, which means it’s unlikely we’ll see anyone else while we work. Today’s tasks include pulling up tomato stakes, rolling up chicken wire (I call it “bunny fencing”), and pulling up dead stuff. Lots and lots of dead stuff. It’s so quiet – it’s just us, a few birds (I noticed the juncos were back a couple of weeks ago), and the snuffling around of thousands of squirrels and rabbits. It feels good to be out in the sun, but it also feels surprisingly good to work alone together.

Putting things to bed for the year in your garden isn’t a bad or lonely thing – it’s the same turning inward that naturally happens as the days shorten and the weather gets colder. It’s just writ a bit larger. The neighborhood will reconvene to swap seeds in February. We’ll get excited for new projects and share resources and make big plans.

But for now, we rest.

[Want to listen to this piece? Click here.]

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Immerse in That One Moment

Photo by Cody Bralts

I have some time off from my day job coming up, which I’m hoping to use to clear out all kinds of clutter and detritus. There is the closet upstairs, there is the basement, and there is my brain; all three need some help. I also hope to write quite a bit, and clean up the yard a bit, and read and sleep a bit. I might even get to House Pet‘s place this weekend if I can swing a vehicle. It’ll be good to have some time away from my office.

This weekend I spent some time thinking about Talk Talk and Mark Hollis, the band’s singer, as I often do. I blame iTunes for the frequency of these thoughts, as all of the band’s albums, a live thing, and MH’s solo record come up in the old iTunes DJ feature on the regular. This weekend I was mostly listening to Talk Talk’s Live in London release (1986) and was blown away. Again. In a different way than I was last time. I listen to the damn thing about twice a month, and every time it sends me into a different space than the time before.

I found Talk Talk the same way many people my age in the early 80s in the US found them: on MTV, with this video. A couple of years later, there was this video, and then this fantastic video. Then, later, there was this:

Fast forward many years. A couple of years ago, I discovered some video for the aforementioned Live in London performance:

… and realized that they were far more awesome than I ever realized.  O, to have been there in 1986! It still sounds great. As in, I’m playing this stuff right now and it sounds fabulous. Just last night I was reading something, somewhere, on the internet, that said Hollis and Co. might have used Steve Winwood’s “Spanish Dancer” (from Arc of a Diver, 1980) as a bit of a template for some of the sounds/moods on The Colour of Spring. Some might disagree, but considering Winwood played on The Colour of Spring (Steve Winwood! From Blind Faith and Traffic!), I wouldn’t say it’s too far off.

Talk Talk went on to mess with everyone’s minds by releasing ambient, so-called “post-rock” stuff long before anyone knew what to do with such a thing (Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock, 1988 and 1991, respectively). This is “I Believe in You” from 1988:

I hear Winwood’s influence here, too, just a bit. Phrasing, maybe. It could be all that piano. I bet Mark Eitzel of American Music Club gave this song a spin more than a few times. Gorgeous.

Mark Hollis released a self-titled solo record in 1998. I remember the day it arrived at Parasol, where I was working at the time. It was wintry and cold outside and, after I liberated it from the delivery box and put it in the CD player, it sounded like Mark Hollis’ head was in the speaker right near my desk – that voice. That voice! It remains an extraordinary piece of music; it’s spare, with just a suggestion of warmth and light… very much the sound of late winter for me. There was no tour.

Now… nothing. He’s disappeared, retired from the music business, no website, no farewell, nothing. It seems so old-fashioned, this notion of falling off the face of the earth, disappearing. Can people really do that these days?

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My Baby, She’s All Right

Lovely Lilly, whose eyes you see all Halloween-decorated here, turned twelve today. It’s an age I associate generally with Are You There God, It’s Me, Margaret, and an age I associate personally with 7th grade at Ruckel Jr. High in Niceville FL, an age I associate with waterskiing and relative mental peace and Girl Scouts. She’s a wonderful girl. Her best friend, another wonderful girl, is over right now for a roast chicken dinner and brownies and a movie. Lilly’s school friends birthday-decorated her locker, festooning it with girlish messages of loving her lots and like a sister. She is a fabulous companion in the kitchen, at the bookstore, and on the couch with a book. She’s always quick with a hug, she’s very deft with words, a whiz on the soccer field, and she will always be my baby, even as she grows into an amazing young woman. Love ya lots, Lil.

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