contents of the brain

Ten days of prep; eleven days before we get on the plane.  Going back to Hanoi, Vietnam. Soon.

I’ve made a long list a few weeks ago—finding, buying, arranging for, packing, and some home tasks because I love coming home to a cleaner house than I usually live in. I always do this. Tasks that are too arduous and not at all important fall to the wayside, but a few non-essential tasks get done along with the travel tasks. The big one this time is going through clothes—Julia’s and mine—and culling what we do not use. I haven’t done this with Julia since we moved into this apartment. She was resistant, but she seems to be happier in the morning picking out what she will wear for the day. I parted with just a few old things and a few things that either don’t fit anymore or that I haven’t really liked for a few years but hated to get rid of because they were perfectly wearable. Someone else will benefit and enjoy—at least that is what I tell Julia.

I am on the part of the list that is starting to be about packing. I’ve decided to take very few clothes—4 days’ worth (except for underwear) to be exact—and to plan to buy there.  We did that anyway last time, so might as well travel with loose bags going.  Julia is on board, and it will be interesting to see if she can buy clothes there and wear them. It will be harder for her than for me. If it is too hard, we’ll just be washing those four changes every four days.

I am not taking jeans, which is a first for me.  I live in jeans and usually travel in them even when I don’t use them when I arrive somewhere, but Vietnam is in the 80’s and 90’s right now, and when we come back in June, we’ll be close to that here.  I keep saying all that to myself to convince myself to do as I’ve planned.  Funny, how compulsive or obsessive I can be! It does help me understand Julia just a bit when I dig down into my own muck. 

One of my plans for this trip was to find ways for Julia to be a bit away from Ed and me. I have been looking for a companion or somewhere like a day program setting where she might spend a few days or a day a week. Although pursuing this pretty strenuously, I may have completely failed.  I was very excited to connect with one center that seems to be centered on training young adults on the spectrum for work by running a café, bookstore, and media center (not sure of this last one). I was corresponding with someone who is or was a director, and he invited Julia to visit and possibly take part. Then, last week, I received an email from him that is confusing, so I don’t know if any of that will happen. Julia is excited about some independence, and I still hold out hope I can find something.

My task list divided into daily tasks was created by AI.  ChatGPT, to be exact. I’ve been playing around with AI and was feeling overwhelmed when I needed to make the list. And AI did a decent job of a list. I’ve been modifying it as I go along. Today, with the big event of the day cancelled, I can do a few things on the list that I thought I would abandon—some gardening and clean-up of a file drawer—as well as reconnoitering the contents of the green toiletries bag that usually has everything from bandaids to nail clippers to antibiotic ointment. My pharmacy in a bag. Ed always says that I can get all of it there, which is true. Absolutely. But when someone needs to get rid of a headache, it is so nice to have it instantly instead of finding a pharmacy and trying to explain my needs to someone with limited English, and me with less than limited Vietnamese. 

And the cancelling of the day’s event, a brunch, also gives me the breathing room to sit down and write. Something that I have been neglecting. I started and did not complete a post about my quick trip to Virginia to my brother-in-law’s funeral. I will finish and post, not today.

There you have it, the contents of my brain this morning.

(I seem to have lost the “continue reading” sign, so for now, this will be all on the front page. Damn!)

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no kings, #3

Metaphors are rolling around in my head today, colliding and bouncing off each other.

“If we come together, we can mend the crack in the sky.” A line from a piece we are learning for Music Sunday by Jake Runestad. The easiest part of the piece, sung in English with the melody that is on repeat in my head, “If we come together, we can mend the crack in the sky,” is a Somali proverb.

And these words and this melody stand in opposition to Leonard Cohen’s “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.”

I sing in my head, back and forth in conversation, as if they are both questions, as if they are both answers.

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blocks, creativity, and journeys

I am still fumbling with my latest draft of the memoir. It is close to complete but still does not completely hang together. It needs two or three more pieces written to make the story complete as I have imagined it, but those missing pieces are not going to hold the whole thing together.  I don’t seem to have the will to write them. I am not giving up, but the process is stuck right now.

Come to think of it, I am fumbling with way too much right now. I am painting poppies. I finally have an idea for a large watercolor—finally figuring out a way to use the big and lovely paper that Ed gifted me with. Should I have put that paper away as soon as I got it—saving it for a time when I feel . . . . what?. . . competent? . . worthy? . . . at least not wasteful?  It was not his intention to intimidate me with good watercolor paper, but nonetheless, it has. I have shunned the idea of taking some formal lessons, opting for coping online videos and relying on my own ideas. Perhaps it is time to change my plan, but this is not to decide today.

I am having a challenge to read what I want to read and write much of anything. I want the balm of spring!

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late in february snow

It is still February, and we are being blanketed with more snow than I’ve seen in my six and a half years here. Admittedly, I said out loud yesterday that I was tired of winter and ready to shed my heaviest jacket and spiffy new red hat.

Woke up this morning to inches of snow and a wind that brings our temperature of 26 to zero. More of winter than I’ve ever seen here. Nostalgically, at least before the dig-out begins, my mind goes to Madison, especially that first winter of 2007, when David’s newly found heart condition left me in charge of snow removal, and I couldn’t quite fathom how fast and often snow could fall and accumulate. But there were often moments of sitting by the fireplace in the living room, watching the creation of a wonderland of the weather outside. The challenge of the eventual clean-up competing with wonder and awe.

 A snow plow just came up the street, pushing a huge scoop of snow. I’m beginning to hear about tomorrow’s cancellations. HILR may pivot to Zoom for all classes, a small, almost happy remnant of Covid days. Resilient, to be sure. And this is not a play-outside-in-the-snow day. Cheshire reminds me that children were supposed to be going back to school after winter break.  Pity the parents.

The windows are speckled with drops of ice that were liquid when I first woke up. Looking out the window is like trying to see out of an abstract lace curtain. Snow is blown onto the corners of the windows. Trees and bushes and power lines sway much more than usual in the wind. The sky is the recognizable gray of a winter storm.

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traveling companions, pt.1

Breakfast in Hanoi 2023

We are booked to return to Hanoi for more than a month in late spring. Airline tickets are bought. A deposit has been paid on the apartment we stayed in back in 2023. The official purpose of the trip is to attend the high school graduation of Giau, the son of the young woman Ed has guided since she was a teenager. It is sweet to be invited back for this moment, to witness a milestone in a family whose lives have been woven into Ed’s life over time and now into Julia’s and mine.

This time, planning feels different. With a place to stay arranged and a beloved pho shop just a stone’s throw away, I can already envision some of the more intriguing details.

One of the things I would like to arrange is a companion or guide for Julia while we are in Hanoi. I briefly flirted with this idea on our last trip, but became overwhelmed by the logistics and let it go. This time, I am sending out feelers and following up on any small clue that might lead somewhere. The hope is modest and specific: that Julia might spend a morning, an afternoon, or even a day exploring the city without me. Maybe a museum, a park, or a place to do art or crafts. Not every day. Just sometimes.

Independence is complicated to teach, and travel has always been one of the most meaningful ways Julia develops those skills. Since she is now 25, I would love for her to have opportunities to move through the world with a little more autonomy, even while far from home.

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just a bit of musing

Emerging from a week of a cold. Kinda, sorta awful, but nowhere near as bad as last January with RSV.  I’ve coughed and had swollen—or what feels like swollen—sinuses. A quick nurse video visit with advice, no cure last week right after my birthday weekend. Not wanting to get any sicker than I was, not wanting to feel worse than yesterday’s death, I made a morning and evening list of mostly non-negotiable tasks which I have been following.

And yes, very slowly, or so it seems, getting better. 

Still coughing and exhausted.  I have exactly a week before the HILR spring semester and I am aiming for full, or almost full, recovery by then.  

The gym and physical activity are suffering right now, but I am taking the fact that I am missing physical activity as a good sign of recovery. No way was I thinking about exercise last week.  

The cold—the weather cold— feels very oppressive.  Gentle walking feeling impossible and that will last longer than a week.

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looking back at birthday weekends

Julia and I have birthdays a week apart. We have celebrated separately and together, had parties, and just stayed home.  It is January and cold. This year we’ve been out and about for both weekends.

We, our trio, spent Julia’s weekend in New York City. Friday evening to Monday morning.  We saw two plays.  “And Juliet,” a musical, is a wild romp. Lots of fun, old pop music that most of the audience knew by heart. Everyone sang, including Julia, who followed some of the audience and got up to dance a few of the tunes. The cast is splendid, and the script is very clever. Fireworks and confetti were the icing on the cake.

On Sunday, we saw “Liberation.” A memory play about a young woman of today confronting her deceased mother’s 70’s conscience-raising group. A seven-woman cast with a strong script. The nude scene at the beginning of Act 2 was only slightly shocking. Five minutes into the scene, having no clothes on was simply the costume that the characters wore. It was a pleasure to be in the theater that night. Unfortunately, the play is set to close on February 1.

On Saturday, we saw “All that’s left of you,” a new film set in the Occupied West Bank, tracing the life of one family from 1948 to the present. It is a small, quiet movie, emotional, and heartbreaking. With only a limited release, it will be hard to find but totally worth pursuing.  

Also, on Saturday, we did one of the tours at the Tenement Museum.  Julia and Ed had never been there. I was there a long time ago. We did the 1902 Women’s Tour that featured a story about the Kosher Meat Boycott of 1902, organized and led by the neighborhood’s women. It was as good as I expected it to be. We all would like to return for another tour. Julia wants to see a Chinese immigrant story from the 1980’s next time. The 80’s just doesn’t sound like history to this old lady! To Julia, ancient history.

Besides all that, we saw friends for Friday evening dinner and ate Korean and Mexican food, but missed the street of Indian food in Jersey City that our hotel was close to. I guess we will have to go back. We stayed in Jersey City and used the Path Train. The rain/snow mix was icky to walk around in, and so, we didn’t do much strolling around. However, the mix was so much better than just plain cold rain, about which I reminded everyone every few hours.

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my word of the year

Yesterday, all I wrote was the date and then something or someone called me away. I have been busy since the year’s beginning. I don’t want to list all the important tasks that came my way, but, but, but…

Yesterday was my birthday and, as a friend described it, my personal New Year.  I owe myself some recognition, some noting, and some planning for the new year.  That planning has, in some years in the past, been a list of resolutions. There was at least one companion who disapproved of the making of resolutions which seemed to them to be limiting in scope and bound to fail. (I’ve probably written about this somewhere but not going to check now.) I have found resolutions to be maps, suggestions, reminders, and the making of them to be a good time of reflection and quiet resolve.

At least one of the resolutions, learning to live with dualities, was on my resolution list for years, seemed to grow my soul into understanding and acceptance. I had no idea of how to do that growing but my insistence that it remain on the resolution list reminded me of its importance until one day, I had that a-ha moment of recognizing how and what I was doing.

My goodness, I fear that makes little sense, but I don’t want to stop and add examples.

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always through, no matter what

A boy bringing in the new year.

“Get your shoes on. It’s time.”

Four days after Christmas, a few more days after Solstice, and one less than a few days after Chanukah. There is still New Year’s to look forward to or dread, but we are still in that breathing time amidst all these holidays. These are always days that I don’t expect to do or accomplish much. Not that these days are just for rest but for playing with paints or starting a 1000-piece puzzle or clearing that little pile of things with no place they belong on the kitchen counter or piling a whole bunch of papers from all over the house onto the in-box on my desk to be sorted at some unspecified future time. Nothing is resolved, but small movements towards big steps are being taken.

Yes, it has been like that these last few days.

Julia went to her day center last Friday. Ed and I went to the gym and then spent the afternoon on our laptops, reading, writing, and planning a weekend in NYC to see a friend’s play and to celebrate Julia’s 25th birthday. It will be cold—we remind each other a few times, thinking about where we will stay and how we’ll feel about public transport in the middle of January. And walking.

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those thousand-mile journeys

The picture is of the window ledge over my kitchen sink. It is, for the most part, my plant hospital for plants that are not faring well and need special attention. Most of those plants heal, start thriving, and get put in the living room that gets attention but not daily and more light. But what I wanted to write about is the parable I see in the two paper white bulbs growing in water that are close to the window in the back of the photo.

I love paper white narcissus for the winter holidays, although many years I start them too late or forget to find/order some at all. This year I remembered and may have a few blooms by New Year’s.

These two healthy bulbs were ordered from my favorite bulb distributor and put in water on the same day. The bulb on the left took off like gangbusters. I think it was in water less than two full days when tiny roots appeared, the greens followed quickly, and a tiny bud has formed. The bulb on the left was the opposite. It has taken a few weeks for any roots to appear. They are short, and there are few of them. The greens have hardly begun. 

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