mayfly project, sum up the year in 20 words:
drifting, frustrated, stuck, compelled to leave, packed up, drove and drove, resettled, learned, grew, became, found a home, love. serendipity.
I can't deny that 2003 has been trasitional. And wonderful. I think it will be the year I'll look back on years from now and see as the beginning of my life. The year I stopped waiting for things to happen.
Yesterday was the coldest day of the year so far with a low of 17 degrees, I think, coupled with 40mph gusts of wind. I haven't missed that. The news showed people who wanted to be outside but decided to stay inside their houses or cars because it was just too cold out. I know that with 6 months of residency I can hardly call myself an Alaskan, but I do think I'm entitled to laugh at people who think 20 degrees is too cold to be outside. Can I be a weather snob? Please?
Today, if you believe the weather link on my page, it's nearly the same temperature in Albuquerque as it is in Fairbanks. Global warming may not mean as warm of temperatures there as it does in Albuquerque, but it has the potential to be much more disastrous, what with the icy roads and the melting permafrost and all. Stop driving your SUV's, people. (I'm just kidding. No hate mail, please.)
The exhibit of 19th and 20th century French paintings was fantastic. I fell in love with a Renoir of a girl reading in a garden on a warm summer's day. I tried looking it up online, but it isn't famous and I couldn't find it anywhere. It was lovely, though. I saw two beautiful Monets and imagined him sitting in a grassy field and adding each brush stroke with his own hand. I was amazed by a portrait by van Gogh with swirling strokes of color like nothing I'd ever seen before. How lucky am I that I've seen Monet and Picasso and Renoir and Cezanne and Seurat (all in one day), and even Michelangelo and Raphael and da Vinci and Rembrandt? Pretty lucky, I think. Now I just need someone to take me to the Louvre.
The children's museum was a lot of fun, though I think you have to go with kids to really enjoy it. My mom said her friends have taken their kids and spent 4 or 5 hours there, unable to get them to leave. I took a lot of surreptitious photos of kids enraptured by experiments with water and air and light. There is a bicycle on a cable 17 feet above the ground that you can ride on, a trough full of flowing water and plastic sand that you can mold and erode over and over again, a water maze with rearrangeable plastic walls that you can remove and replace, an entire knee-high area just for babies and toddlers and an enormous elevator full of couches and rocking chairs. There was nothing that wasn't completely open to touch and experimentation. I loved it, though I'd shoot myself before I'd take a class field trip there– you'd never be able to keep track of the kids.
3 more days– what has happened to 2003? If I had to pick a year of my life to relive just for the sheer wonderfulness of it, this would be it.
It was chilly here today, maybe in the upper 20's this evening. Yeah, that's a damn nice day by Alaska standards, but throw in 40mph gusts of wind and it was a little brisk. I went to see Master and Commander with my family, which was tolerable if not my first choice. Then we went out to dinner and got thoroughly sick of each other. That's how it works.
Tomorrow my mom and I are supposed to go to an exhibit of 19th and 20th century French paintings. It sounds amazing. There are works by Monet, Renoir, Gauguin, Picasso, Matisse and Cezanne. We're also supposed to go to the new children's museum. I'm secretly more excited about that than I am about Renoir and Picasso. Shhhh! Don't tell.
My Christmas haul wasn't bad this year. My mom knitted me a scarf from this lovely hand-spun and dyed wool. She also made me a quilt. She found a piece of a quilt I made when I was about 8 and finished it off, with my bit in the center. It's pretty cute. She found me some fur too, which was a little weird, but nice. I also got some nice beaded jewelry, a book about Alaska, the Chicago soundtrack, some darling penguin print pajama pants, a sweet framed picture and some Body Shop Nut Butter (my favorite), among other things. I did pretty well, I think. My love sent me one gift for every day I'll be away. (See how unbelievably lucky I am? ) My favorite has been a pair of kissing penguins– so cute. She's wonderful.
believe we're gliding down the highway
Pseudo Christmas today, as my brother isn't free of the Coast Guard until tomorrow. My mom asked last night did I want Santa to come on Christmas morning or did I want him to wait until the 26th. I thought about it and decided that I'd like Santa to come on Christmas day, like he's supposed to. My stocking was full of personal hygiene items this morning– toothbrushes, nail flies, hair clips, etc. Is Santa trying to tell me something?
We had a Christmas dinner tonight with my uncle and his girlfriend and way too much food. I got 20 British pounds for Christmas. I think they were left over from our trip to London last March. Think I can change pounds here in Albuquerque? Guess we'll find out.
Tomorrow we'll have the whole family, such as it is, here. We'll open gifts and argue with each other and laugh at old family jokes and whatever else we do when we're together. And I'll continue to marvel at time and distance, thinking about how things change and how they stay the same, how some relationships defy time and space and past and future. How some things just…are.
Sometimes I have to fight my need to over think things, to realize that I know where my home is and where my heart is and that that's enough. More than.
Merry Christmas.
sunset and evening star, and one clear call for me
Sunshine and near 50 degrees today, and I carried my jacket with me but never wore it. I noticed something today. I noticed that I'm on edge here, just a little. I'm always on the lookout for someone who might mess with me, catcall me, laugh as I walk by. No, Albuquerque isn't that big, but there's plenty of crime and plenty of people to watch out for, enough for a city much larger. And so I've long perfected that "I'm ignoring you and I don't care" air of nonchalance, but darned if it doesn't take a lot of energy to keep it up. I haven't missed using it. I don't think I was meant to live in a big city. Certainly not in one that requires a particular attitude. I have no attitude to speak of.
I'm basking in the sun, though. I want to pack it up and store it, keep it for a cold and sunless day a la Frederick the mouse. I could almost lay outside and tan in this weather. If, you know, I had a decent bathing suit to wear and wasn't worried about skin cancer. I'll be back in the land of the pasty soon, and then it won't matter.
And I'm counting the days.
