Better Living Through Literature
Words + Projects + Stuff I Like
It’s my nephew’s third birthday today! I didn’t think he could get any cuter, but he really does every day:
(This was from his birthday party Saturday. Note the blurry delight on his face and note the train cake, which my mom made and my dad decorated.)
Happy birthday, Bubbs! I think I speak for all Kaminskis when I say you’re our favorite member of the family.
I don’t have anything to round up today. I blame a combination of fabric anxiety and a case of “let’s organize all the closets instead of sewing!” (plus a work event last week and a burgeoning social life).
The stack of vacation fabric is still calling to me, but now other new fabrics are calling to me, too–more knits, since the last dress I made was so easy and stretchy:
(Jungle print ITY knit from Michael Levine Fabrics. I could stand in front of my houseplants and blend right in!)
Here’s a thought from E.M. Forster’s Howard’s End to start your week off:
Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer.
“Only connect” is also going to be the tattoo I’ll get when I turn 35 (much to my best friend’s chagrin).
1. Here’s something to think about, especially if you’re still kinda sorta trying to be a wolf and a lion:
(via)
2. And here’s a Rumi quote to think about if you need to get over yourself:
“Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion.”
3. Apparently it’s Friday Inspirational Information this week. I’ll take it.
1. Sometimes I take pictures of my outfits and put them on Instagram:
2. I think this is a valid fear and that there should be a word for it:
Today’s poem is by Robert Hass, one of my first loves, from Sun Under Wood. It’s not seasonally appropriate but the happiness and “the wakefulness of living things” are right on:
Happiness
by Robert Hass
Because yesterday morning from the steamy window
we saw a pair of red foxes across the creek
eating the last windfall apples in the rain—
they looked up at us with their green eyes
long enough to symbolize the wakefulness of living things
and then went back to eating—
and because this morning
when she went into the gazebo with her black pen and yellow pad
to coax an inquisitive soul
from what she thinks of as the reluctance of matter,
I drove into town to drink tea in the cafe
and write notes in a journal—mist rose from the bay
like the luminous and indefinite aspect of intention,
and a small flock of tundra swans
for the second winter in a row was feeding on new grass
in the soaked fields; they symbolize mystery, I suppose,
they are also called whistling swans, are very white,
and their eyes are black—
and because the tea steamed in front of me,
and the notebook, turned to a new page,
was blank except for a faint blue idea of order,
I wrote: happiness! it is December, very cold,
we woke early this morning,
and lay in bed kissing,
our eyes squinched up like bats.
Here is a story about why I’m glad I can sew. I got the latest Boden catalog, which featured this cotton skirt in a buffalo check. For $98.
My friend had just mentioned seeing a similar fabric at IKEA, so I went to check it out and got a yard of it. For $9.
Not only did I save $89, I’m going to be able to make a gathered skirt (using this tutorial) instead of having to settle for the pleats on the Boden one, which I don’t like on me.
And that is why I’m glad I can sew. Now I just need to find time to actually sew it up.
Xerxes the Swan Decor kicked things off with his Easter bonnet and a new garland:
On Saturday, I went up into the foothills to a new trail and saw yellow flowers under the scrub oaks:
And saw that the snow melt is getting going, too:
And on Sunday there was an egg hunt in my parents’ lovely backyard:
And my nephew being adorable (and eating ALL the sugar):
Hooray for spring! And weekends.
1. Today is Good Friday in the Christian calendar. That means I have to listen to at least some of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, which is s a religious experience all in itself. You can listen to an intro to the piece and why it matters on NPR, or just jump into a full version on YouTube.
2. If three hours of Bach is a little much to commit to, there’s always Wagner. The “Good Friday Music” from Parsifal is also themed appropriately and is only ten minutes. The link goes to a Met performance, with good video notes: “…the radiant Good Friday Music is a poignant meditation on the chief themes of the opera: suffering, compassion and redemption.”
3. My inner hippie has no problem with Easter in its broadest form of “suffering, compassion and redemption” (with some pagan spring celebrations mixed in, too), but she also feels compelled to follow all the religious music with this:
Here are some deep thoughts about having a choice (via Mystic Mamma)
Life, as you know it, is not all roses. If there are thorns, you don’t have to keep on pricking your fingers and getting your heart hurt over and over again. You are not obliged to keep the hurt.
If you ride on a train that does not take you where you want to go, get off the train and take one that takes you where you would like to go. You do not have to stay on the same old train. You are not obligated…
If you take out a book from the library, and you don’t like the book, you don’t have to read it, or read it over and over. You do not have to be loyal to that which does not nourish you…
Be your own free agent. Bless yourself. Bless everything. Then transcend what does not add to your happiness, let it go, or think about it in a different way. Do not keep unhappiness to you. Make room for happiness.