Better Living Through Literature
Words + Projects + Stuff I Like
1. Speaking of Bob Dylan, do we all know and love Nina Simone’s covers of some of his songs? It’s been rainy here and “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” has been on my playlist this week.
2. I just learned about sekkis, or twenty-four “small seasons” in Japan.
3. Related, here’s an Instagram from yesterday. Petals in the rain = haiku.
Here’s a recent long interview with Bob Dylan to pass the time today. He’s just completed his third album of standards and he still has a way with words, even just speaking:
About rock and roll:
“It was skeleton music, came out of the darkness and rode in on the atom bomb and the artists were star headed like mystical Gods. Rhythm and blues, country and western, bluegrass and gospel were always there – but it was compartmentalized – it was great but it wasn’t dangerous. Rock and roll was a dangerous weapon, chrome plated, it exploded like the speed of light, it reflected the times, especially the presence of the atomic bomb which had preceded it by several years. Back then people feared the end of time. The big showdown between capitalism and communism was on the horizon. Rock and roll made you oblivious to the fear, busted down the barriers that race and religion, ideologies put up.”
Since I got my first pair of Vans back in September, I’ve been buying more sneakers. I just bought my first pair of Converse and this passage from Dandelion Wine popped into my head.
“Dad!” He blurted it out. “Back there in that window, those Cream-Sponge Para Litefoot Shoes …”
His father didn’t even turn. “Suppose you tell me why you need a new pair of sneakers. Can you do that?”
“Well . . .”
It was because they felt the way it feels every summer when you take off your shoes for the first time and run in the grass. They felt like it feels sticking your feet out of the hot covers in wintertime to let the cold wind from the open window blow on them suddenly and you let them stay out a long time until you pull them back in under the covers again to feel them, like packed snow. The tennis shoes felt like it always feels the first time every year wading in the slow waters of the creek and seeing your feet below, half an inch further downstream, with refraction, than the real part of you above water.
“Dad,” said Douglas, “it’s hard to explain.”
I mentioned I was making a big blanket cardigan back in December, but I never put up a picture because it’s looked like a gray blob since then. But now, the gray blob has sleeves!
It needs another 12 inches of the body and then a good blocking and shaping, but I like how it’s turning out. Granted, it’s not hard to get the fit right on a giant oversized cardigan, but I did have to rip back the yoke and get the armhole depth right (back in… January? It’s all blending together).
The wool is a delight to work with–Brooklyn Tweed Shelter, in “Narwhal” (aww). I didn’t jump on the BT bandwagon for a long time, thinking the yarn was too coarse and rustic. Surprisingly, it knits up into a really beautiful, soft, light fabric, so you can get a giant seamless cardigan out of it with not a lot of weight or dragging.
I’m going to make it as long as I can until my yarn runs out. I don’t think I’ll have to resort to colorblocking, but I’m kind of intrigued….
“This is no thaw,” said the Dwarf [to the White Witch], suddenly stopping. “This is spring. What are we to do? Your winter has been destroyed, I tell you! This is Aslan’s doing.”
1. I just learned there is a show called “Ants Canada” and that they make YouTube videos and that said videos contain the most EARNEST and EXCITED narration of all time. Also, ants:
2. Some tips for the weekend (via)
This week’s reminder to resist your usual thought patterns and knee-jerk angry reactions comes from David Foster Wallace’s 2005 commencement speech to Kenyon College.
But most days, if you’re aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her kid in the checkout line. Maybe she’s not usually like this. Maybe she’s been up three straight nights holding the hand of a husband who is dying of bone cancer. Or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the motor vehicle department, who just yesterday helped your spouse resolve a horrific, infuriating, red-tape problem through some small act of bureaucratic kindness.
Of course, none of this is likely, but it’s also not impossible. It just depends what you what to consider. If you’re automatically sure that you know what reality is, and you are operating on your default setting, then you, like me, probably won’t consider possibilities that aren’t annoying and miserable. But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down.
Not that that mystical stuff is necessarily true. The only thing that’s capital-T True is that you get to decide how you’re gonna try to see it.
“There are other options.” Sometimes all you have to do is choose the other thing–compassion, kindness, gratitude.
I haven’t sewn a knit project in a long time (2015) but I’ve been on a roll with the Grainline Studio patterns, so decided to try their Linden Sweatshirt.
This was done in a poly/cotton French terry from Fabric.com so it’s a little drapier than a traditional sweatshirt fleece, but it sewed up OK and there’s that Grainline Studio fit that I love (their patterns fit me like J. Crew). I lengthened the body by an inch and did my best at stripe matching. That’s kind of give or take over a raglan seam but check out how the sleeves match the body!
I’m calling this one a test because I got some plain white organic cotton fleece in the same order and I’m going to try shibori dyeing it and then making a sweatshirt. Then my transformation into a hippie who makes her own deodorant and wears tie-dye will be COMPLETE.
Yesterday was the spring equinox, the reaching of which always feels like a major accomplishment. As much as I try to think of the seasons as “not such an awful linear progress but instead a looping and a return,” it’s hard to face six months of darkness. So the inverse–facing six months of sun and heat and long days–is really great. Even if it will probably snow a couple more times.
This time of year, the high elevations are still winter and the mid elevations are sloppy. So we stayed low and got some yard work done for the weekend (and saw some astonishing packaging in passing at Home Depot–bonus!).
