All the new thinking is about loss.

In this it resembles all the old thinking.

What is it precisely that signals us that we are in a moment that is winding to a close? Something about the light, and the way it quietly fades in the afternoon, signalling you that finally, if you are going to keep reading, you should turn on a lamp? Or that slightly elevated spinning sound that happens before you eject a CD or a DVD? The soundtrack and credits rolling? People starting to pack up their things? Hurry up please, it's time?

And whatever that thing is, is it the thing that makes us want to hold on to some possession, forgetting that, as Crazy Aunt Purl so eloquently said today, "it's just a blanket, it's not a soul"? Do we grasp, then, at a familiar idea? Or spin a new world view to accommodate a change of heart? Or do we instead hammer away as if nothing has changed, as if this present state of things will endure always?

Even as we are aware that we are in this moment, we are already imagining its passing, desiring it, fearing it. Do we panic then because we see ourselves out there, in some unimaginable later moment, doing something we think we might do but that we cannot yet envision? Or is it because we know what we did last time, and please God let us not do that again?

What is it we want when we imagine this future us? What should we hope for? (Wait without hope, Eliot says, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing.)

In these present moments, then, too often we scurry around, collecting, preserving, filing, trying to remember--staving off loss, because we imagine that this future us--wherever we are--will appreciate that, will remember us kindly, will forgive us. Or we decide that this is time we have been waiting for, to clean things out, chuck out the old xeroxes, cull our bookshelves, take a box to the used CD store, defragment all our drives (hard or otherwise). In this way, we tell ourselves, we will be unencumbered--our past will be more visible without these encrustations, and our future freer. We will have room to spread out, we say, with a slight laugh and a glance over our shoulder.

All this prevention, all this remorse--it is all a denial of desire. Or, "Longing, we say, because desire is full of endless distances."

What if instead I lay down the anxiety, and instead surrender? Put away the calendar, let a few things slip, cease taking pleasure at being called a model--instead just think about what each armstroke feels like, whether each hand is taking a handfull of water, whether there is rotation in the hips?

Stop planning: this is a time for relishing the feeling of today.

Run with the speed of gazelles...

You will soar as the falcon soars. . .

A while back, Americo commented, "I found your blog by accident. But I have to say, if that's you dressed up as Isis. NICE!!!"

Alas, no. That is JoAnna Cameron, in her get-up as ISIS! I guess Americo (and maybe others of you?) did not watch the Shazam and Isis Hour.

But this comment reminds me of a note that Tim sent recently, announcing the release of the entirety of The Secrets of Isis to DVD. Hot damn!

Something completely different.

Kudos to Scott, for ignoring the Foxy Asso, and going straight for the good stuff. He wrote: And now for something completely different. I stumbled across the 2nd place winner of 2006's Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest (for the worst unpublished opening sentence written in English during the year) and thought you might enjoy it. The winner was Stuart Vasepuru of Edinburgh, Scotland who won with the submission of

"I know what you're thinking, punk," hissed Wordy Harry to his new editor, "you're thinking, 'Did he use six superfluous adjectives or only five?' - and to tell the truth, I forgot myself in all this excitement; but being as this is English, the most powerful language in the world, whose subtle nuances will blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel loquacious?' - well do you, punk?"

Is being an editor as exciting as it sounds?

Well, Scott, I am glad you asked!

First I should clarify, because I think I have been playing fast and loose with clarity. Sometimes I am an editor, and that can be distinctly unexciting. I am not really the kind of editor that appears in that story, but rather the kind who takes a text but some already acceptable person and makes it more available. The project that I was bemoaning here, here, here, here, here, and here will be published next March, so they say (though they misspelled my first name, dammit).
But other times I am more like Wordy Harry (not as hard-boiled, but still wordy as hell!), and this is one of those times. So, Scott, let me reframe your question to be, "Is being a writer as exciting as it sounds?"

Here is a profile of a fantastic writing day:
4:00 a.m. Wake up, go to the bathroom, try to go back to bed, count backwards in Italian, and finally find that I am not falling asleep because there are mad thoughts churning in my brain so I might as well get up.
4:15 a.m. Turn on the computer, wipe the sleep from the eyes, and try to get adjusted to the lights. Convince the cats that I did not get up to feed them.
4:30 a.m. Read other people's blogs for a while and see if anyone other than spam generators has sent me any e-mail.
5:00 a.m. Get down to work: this requires music of course, and what is better than Bach's Art of the Fugue or the new Vivaldi choral music I bought in Venice, or maybe Beethoven's Diabelli Variations or some late string quartets. The important thing here is that the music be complicated enough to engage the mathematical part of my brain and free up the creative and analytical parts to write.
6:00 a.m. Grunt approvingly at the PP as he brings me a giant cup of coffee.
7:45 a.m. Grunt at the PP as he leaves for work.
9:30 a.m. Realize I have not had breakfast, so go into the kitchen and make some and then stuff it down my maw and hurry back to my desk.
2:30 p.m. Can I be hungry again? Scrounge some lunch.
4:30 p.m. Realize I am getting dopey, so move away from the computer and read someone else's book for a change.
5:30 p.m. Greet the PP when he gets home from work and try to come back to planet earth.

Now you will notice that that timeline says very little about writing itself. That is because that part, the actual writing part, is a mystery. There is something that can happen then (on the good days), and if I let it happen it is almost a kind of ecstasy. Athletes out there would be tempted to call it being in the zone, and I suppose in a way it is, but the only sort of: there is a sense of letting one's work-a-day self go, letting worldly concerns go, and even (ideally!) letting anxieties and insecurities go, in order to let the words come. Come on, words! And bring some thoughts with you!

In this state I might fly from working through a translation of an essay to checking up on some information, to meandering through other parts of whatever I consulted to check that information, to going off on some random tangent, to coming back to the translation, to analyzing the essay I have translated, to making a surprising connection to that random tangent from earlier, to discovering that something I had thought was not going to matter matters tremendously, to realizing that the person in one part of my chapter is not the same one as another part, to figuring out how to rectify that problem, to launching into a massive description of something I had seen a few years ago in a site-visit, and on, and on.

Writing for me is about letting my mind spread out, about letting go of whether or not I am sure that what I am trying to do is going to work and just trusting it. It is about loving what I am studying, and loving what I am saying. Gertrude Stein says that the purpose of poetry is to find a way back to the “thrill” that names hold when first learned, now that “the name of that thing of that anything is no longer anything to thrill any one except children.” I do not write poetry, but even in the world of scholarly writing, we have to find our way back to that thrill--or else who would want to read what we write? Trusting your material and trusting yourself to be thrilling--what a leap of faith!

Before I know it, my desk is stacked perilously with opened books and there are piles of other books and xeroxes all over my study. Before I know it it is 5:30 at night and I do not know where I was all day.

Sometimes when the PP comes home at 5:30, I just cannot bring myself back to the modern moment. Sometimes I look at him like I looked around the house when I was first back from Italy, and had woken up from a nap, and was utterly confused to be in my own living room. Sometimes I have to ask him to repeat what he just said because it seems like he is speaking in a foreign language, or about people I have never met, or I have no idea what he does for a living. And luckily for me, he forgives me for this, because I am not always like this and he knows how much I love to write. This is one of many reasons we call him the Patient Partner.

So to come back to the question: is being a writer as exciting as it sounds? It is, Scott, one of the most exciting things I have ever experienced.

Enjoy the Silence.

My apologies for infrequent posts of late--but they are insincere, because I fear my behavior will not change immediately.

This is only partly because I am so depressed that everyone is dropping or being kicked out of the Tour de France. (This year makes 1998 look ho-hum!)

(Side note: the PP suggested the other night that we start our own cycling team. We deliberated a bit about who might be willing to sponsor us. Thanks to the like of Predictor Lotto and Barloworld [Barloworld? Are you serious???] our thoughts went quickly to the names of French and Italian companies that use English in their names. Like "Glove Planet," a shop in Rome [and I am not making that up, though I would like to be the first American to land there], and "Boy Diffusion," a shop in Albi, France. And an advertisement on Italian TV for "BIMBO BIMBO BIMBO SHOES!" [Additional note: Bimbo in Italian = baby, which is why sometimes you see cars with stickers reading "Bimbo a borda." MAN! Did I want to buy a stack of those to bring home with me, or what??] But it was the PP who cinched it, by saying "Foxy Asso."

[photo lifted from here.]

If you have never shopped for paper towels in an Italian supermercato, then you may never have encountered the Foxy Asso, but I tell you: it rocks. And now it is our sponsor. Team Foxy Asso. Wanna join?)

But back to the reasons for infrequent posting. Mostly it is because I am writing something else, and loving it. Yes, this is what I would call "work," but damn, I love my job.

So sometime in the not too distant I'll have something to say here--and maybe here or there I'll interject something briefly, just to keep you guessing--but until then, enjoy yourselves.

Sigh.

Oh dear.

Brother Vinokourov.

A friend recently commented that she was not sure who to root for in the Tour de France, in these post-Lance years. This was after Christophe Moreau had kind of dropped back, so even her Franco-philia would not provide the answer.

I had a look at the standings and came up with this list of options:

1. Big George H., although he is not set up to win, and I don't think Levi will either, although he may do OK.
2. Vinokourov and his scraped up knees, because Astana really did put the hurt down last night, and I think he could pull it together.
3. Poor Christophe Moreau, because he is French, but he seems to be out, too.
4. Rasmussen, if he does not waste away first, because there is nothing like a.... Oh never mind.
5. The Belgian Tom Boonen, because even after his wreck yesterday he kicked butt today, AND Belgium makes great beer.
6. Alberto Contador, because even though he is Spanish he rides for Discovery.
7. Andreas Kloeden, also Astana, who is supposed to be pulling Vino, but seems to be doing well in his own right.
8. Kim Kirchen because he is from Luxembourg, for God's sake.
9. Thor Hushovd because his first name is Thor.
10. A whole bunch of Spaniards.

But then this afternoon, as the PP and I sat down to watch today's time trial, I said to him, "I think from now on I am pulling for Alexandre Vinokourov." There were good reasons for that. First, I knew that he had been hurt in an early stage, and although I had not seen the big crash (I have since, since it provides such spectacular footage), I did watch a medic in the Astana team car replacing the bandages on both his knees the other night, and that was amazing. It turns out the man is riding with 60+ stitches in his body. As someone who recently had a few stitches in her shoulder, and who was mostly sitting around afterwards as a result, I can say, that is a shitload of stitches!

Second, his team is unbelievable. Did you see Astana put the hurt on the peloton during Thursday's stage? It was a flattish stage, and apparently there were serious crosswinds, which they took serious advantage of. I think at that moment, everyone in the peloton would have been happy never to see light blue again.

Third, he has the yellowist sunglasses in all of cycling.

Then there is this photo:


It comes from Vino's own website (taken by Tim de Waele) and it gives you some idea of all his bandages. But what I noticed right away, and what secured my choice to pull for him, was that little netting he is wearing on his right arm, to protect his elbow bandage. You see, during my little love affair with the PICC line, I had to keep the whole apparatus enclosed in this little mesh sheath, so that all the piping and so forth would not get stuck on stuff or get yanked out accidentally. In other words, I felt just a little connection to this Khazakh, even though I know that there is really no comparison between my fitness level and his. (Or my leg strength. Or my speed on a bike. Or, OK I'll stop there.)
So Vinokourov is now my man. His time trial today, through the streets around Albi, was pretty amazing, too, so I think that bodes well for my choice. (And did you notice that Astana had 3 of the top 4 riders?) Besides, watching someone have such a horrible crash, keep going, ride hard with his team once he is just the tiniest bit recovered, and then pull out such a performance today at Albi? Inspirational.

Go go Vino!

Butter.

You may recall that earlier in the summer, I did a little "coaching." This consisted of about seven hour-long clinics that the coaches from my swimteam put on for kids in the city's summer league swim program. My little niche was streamlines and breaststroke pullouts. In any given clinic, the kids were split into four groups, and each group got about fifteen minutes with each coach (or in my case, "coach").

The whole experience brought me right back to my swimming youth, since it was summer-league swimming that got me hooked on the sport. Unlike a lot of Masters swimmers, I was not really a year-round age-group swimmer (except for one year, and even that was only done in service of making me faster the next summer). At the time, I was not cut out for that much swimming in my life, but I always loved it when summer came around, and for months at a time I could live at Colony Pool.

[Isis taking full advantage of training equipment, c. 1988]

The kids you see on these teams were pretty much like any group of kids. There are some of them who cannot let pass any opportunity to grab another swimmer's leg, or mess with them while they are trying to work on their streamlines. There are some who never listen and then always ask, "What are we doing?" There are others who cannot get the hang of blowing out through their nose. There are the budding Jacques Cousteaux who try on each underwater pullout to break the world record for greatest distance traveled without breathing. There are those who hang on your every word because they want to be the best streamliner evar. And there are always those who really seem to have some skills, who might have a future in the sport.

[These are probably not the two who have a future in swimming....]

But my very favorite thing about summer-league kids (and this was true back in the 1980s, too), is that for some reason, unlike their USA Swimming counterparts, they do not call butterfly "fly"--they call it "butter." "Do we get to swim butter now?" they ask. "I can't swim butter," they warn me before I have even told them what we are doing.

It's a great image, isn't it, swimming butter?

Well, true to my summer-league roots, I can now announce (picture me jumping up and down) that last night I swam some butter. Our pool is temporary back in its short-course configuration (we are hosting the summer-league championships this weekend), so practice was in 25-yard format. We had an open warm-up, so I decided that this was the time for me to try to swim a little butterfly, since I did not have an entire 50-meter lane looming before me. (And let me tell you: nothing looks shorter than a 25-yard lane when you see it for the first time after long-course season. It felt pretty good! The recovery was not a problem at all, and I think that is an indication of how much my mobility has come back. I could definitely feel my diminished strength during the pull phase of the stroke, but still.

And because he always chooses to show up for these momentous occasions, my shoulder doctor was at the pool again, this time not swimming but there with his 11-year-old daughter, who was practicing with her summer-league team for this weekend's championships.

There is nothing like a Dane.

So the PP and I just spent the morning sitting on the couch. I was mostly knitting, starting around 7:30 a.m., and finishing up about 11:50. The PP had already been sitting there for half an hour when I joined him (which means I am making progress on my jetlag--I slept until 7:30--woohoo!). Several cups of coffee, an entire sleeve, and part of another project later, I laid my needles down, exhausted. What a morning!

But the really amazing part is that the reason we were sitting on the couch was to watch the crazy people competing in the Tour de France, who for that entire time were riding their bikes. Hard. In the Alps. I.e., Michael Rasmussen has better endurance on his bike than I do knitting.

Not that that makes me feel bad or anything.

Daydreaming.

17thman posted today about his region's top ten list, and that made me wonder if the Dixie Zone had posted theirs for the SCY and SCM seasons. They had the SCY and also last year's LCM, but no SCM (too short a season?) Then I was wondering whether any of the very few times I had for this year's season might have put me into the ranking. They had! Of course, this only seems to be so because Dara Torres and Sheila Taormina were not racing in the breaststroke events. Looking at the times in those lists makes me hungry: how much time could I drop, if I can get back in shape?

It was interesting being at the meet this weekend, but not swimming. I enjoyed it--and watching my training partners race--but I was sad, too, for the obvious reasons. That energized me to have good practices on Monday night and Tuesday morning--or as good as can be expected after two weeks (of eating Italian food and drinking Italian wine...) away, after the rocky spring I had.

I am starting to scope out meets for the fall. There is one in Asheville in mid-September that I think will be my first--just to see how things are going. My coach said, "Don't expect any world record performances!" Don't worry. I am thinking I will need to enter with nonce times, a bit slower than my actual recent times, so that I do not lose every heat I swim. The goal here is to gain a little confidence back, right? Then there is a meet in Columbia in early November (date not posted yet), and one in Atlanta in mid-November, and I expect the usual mid-December meet in Atlanta. By then, one of my blog-buddies might even be racing down south--how cool is that?

Forgive the Jet-lagged.

I know, I am not supposed to be using my computer when I wake up in the middle of the night, but after lying there for a while realizing a better way to start my new chapter, I had to get up and just do it. And after that, why, the computer is on, isn't it?

Does it happen to you, when you return home after a lot of travel, that when you wake up in the middle of the night you do not recognize your own room? Last night, my first night back, I was sure that for some reason I was sleeping in a bedroom in a palace. Perhaps this is partly a reflection on the size of my recent hotel rooms, but still.

Vow: tomorrow I will try harder to get over this jetlag. Granted, I stayed up until about 10 on Saturday night, after flying home. Then I woke up at 4:30 a.m. on Sunday (good morning! to my body it was 10:30 a.m.). Then the PP swam (count them) seven events in his second day of a swim meet (including the 400 IM and the 800 free--go PP!), and I worked as a timer. Did you know that standing on concrete with a stopwatch for 5 hours will really wipe you out?

So when he suggested an early "dinner" (i.e. at 4 p.m.), how could I refuse? But I should have, because by 6 p.m., when we were watching Shaolin Soccer on TV, I just could not make it any longer. After a few pages of my latest mystery novel, I was out.

To me it looked like the clock said 5:38 a.m., and I thought, Cool, I might as well get up. Too bad it really said 2:38. But as I said: I needed to do that writing.

Now it is done, and I'm going to take another stab at sleep. Perhaps later I will tell you something about Italy.

Nuovo post.

I have never used the Italian-language blogger before. In case you are curious, "preview" is "anteprima," and to see how your post looks on the actual web, hit "Visualizza blog."

But I did not come to this internet cafe to give you Italian lessons. I came to remind you how amazing it is at 6 p.m., when all the church bells in the city go off. Well, many of them. Then a few follow at 6:02, then at 6:05 there are more, then still a few hangers-on around 6:07. Did I say hangers-on? It is now 6:30 and a couple more are going. I had observed this in Roma, and I always took it to be lingua romana for "The sun has gone over the yard arm." Turns out it happens in Venezia, too, where you might be standing just a building and a narrow canal away from a campanile when it lets loose.

Glorious.

Equally glorious was the choral music in San Zanipolo this afternoon. (In case your Veneziano is getting rusty, that is Santi Giovanni e Paolo in standard Italian.) I went in there to see the way the light plays on the stone in the floor, illuminating the entire place with a warmish reflected glow, and the wall tombs carved by Pietro Lombardo. I had not expected to find a choir practicing: there were only four singers, and they were standing on a high balcony, just below the organ pipes. What a sound--and what a way to hear "Maria regina cielo....."

Time to hit "Pubblica post."

Ta ta. So long. Ciao. See ya.

Well, my friends, I must bid you (temporarily) adieu. I am off this afternoon to Italy for one of the most important conferences I will attend this year--and also my very favorite. Or, at least, the last time I attended it, two years ago in Rapallo (also Italy), it was awesome. This is one of those conferences that is not too big, but not to small, and there are some really good papers, but the whole atmosphere is pretty laid back. And what is the subject of the conference, you may ask? The entire thing is devoted to Ezra Pound, the subject of my current research.

The meetings all take place in Venice, which should be gorgeous, but also CROWDED. High season is not my favorite time to travel to major tourist destinations, but so it goes. I am sad to say that Tim's post today about work travel amidst leisure travelers hit it on the head. (But luckily where I am headed, decent coffee will not be in short supply.)

The itinerary is basically this: fly in and out of Milano (where I have never been, but where Futurism and Fascism both began--important to my book), travel to Venezia and spend 7 nights there, then go on a several-stop outing organized by the conference folks (to Verona, Sirmione [on Lake Garda], and Tirol0 [5 miles from Austria], for a mini-conference about Imagism in Pound's daughter's castle), then back to Milano for a couple of days to visit some of the major museums of modern art and design and track down the offices of Il Popolo d'Italia if I can--AND, if I am a very good girl, find a couple fabu Italian yarn stores.

So it seems I am prepared for the two weeks of travel: passport--check, conference paper--check, e-ticket confirmation--check, trenitalia e-ticket confirmation--check, contact solution--check, travel alarm--check, knitting--check. What more could I need? Oh yeah: a prayer that my suitcase makes it to Milano with me.

So have a great couple of weeks, everyone!

Let's face it.

I'm pooped.

I know: it is not an exciting thing to say, and the more smart-alecky among you will remember (much to my dismay) that I say this a lot. Well, too bad. I am saying it again.

I'm pooped.

Whew.

In the spirit of the archive, here are a few things that take it out of me:
1. Funerals.
2. Traveling to funerals.
3. Traveling too many places in too short a time.
4. Not learning.
5. Teaching swim clinics to little kids.
6. It does not matter whether they are cute and attentive or the picture of ADD: it is tiring to teach little kids.
7. Teaching generally, now that we are being honest.
8. The heat.
9. Wait, it's not the heat, it's the humidity.
10. Yes it is too: it is the heat and the humidity.
11. Teaching swim clinics to little kids in the heat. (No, not little kids in heat!)
12. That my shoulder still hurts. Not too bad, but just a little, and constantly.
12a. UPDATE (how could I forget?): Recent surgery. (Thanks, Scott!)
13. That I am about to take yet another trip, this one overseas.
14. See #3+4.
15. A too long to-do list.
16. Making too many plans.
17. Not having things planned well enough.
18. Shopping.
19. Swim practice, when there are too many people in the lanes.
20. Showering after swim practice, when there are too many people in the locker room.

Now that I am thinking about it, 20 does not usually = "a few." See what I mean?

Have I mentioned how tired I am?

Spoleto 5: Jojking and epic.

If you are not familiar with jojk (or yoik) singing from Finnish Samiland, then you might have been just as surprised as many of the folks in the audience at the Westminster Choir concert at Spoleto at the sound of Veljo Tormis's setting of "Raua needmine" from the Kalevala.

Let me back up.

The Westminster Choir gave two concerts in St. Matthew's Lutheran Church, and we saw the second one. The program was mostly contemporary music from the Scandinavian and Baltic (read: diacritical-rich) region of Europe: pieces by Alfrēds Kalņiš, Jaakko Mäntyjärvi, Trond Kverno, Veljo Tormis, and (surprised?) Johannes Brahms. Mäntyjärvi's setting of "Ave Maria" was powerful, with the women's voices whispering prayers while the men sang. And Kverno's "Ave Maris Stella" seemed to gesture in sonically rich ways to chant traditions of early music. Beautiful stuff.

But it was Estonian composer Veljo Tormis' Raua needmine, or "Curse upon iron," was the real knock-out for me. He composed this piece in 1972 against the evils of war, and it was banned by the Soviet government. The piece opened with an abrupt "HWAET!" from the kamchatka, which was some kind of percussion instrument played with a large padded hammer. It scared the living daylights out of the people sitting in front of me, but trust me: it was one of the more suitable epic openings I have heard. Then a number of male voices began to jojk.

Saami folk music is called jojk and is a singing style where melody and verse are of equal importance. Jojk is improvised while singing and can express feelings of sorrow, hate or love. To sing jojk means deeply identifying yourself with someone or something.

Saami nåjd sang jojk and drummed to reach religious ecstasy. Consequently, the church looked on jojk as "the song of the Devil" and banned it well into the 1900s.

Today, Saami musicians still practice traditional jojk but with the accompaniment of instruments. Often their playing is flavored with influences from western music.

Jojk performed in a church! I first encountered this style of singing from Wimme Saari, who often records just as Wimme. His music has a striking combination of this very traditional form of singing with electronic music--and it is absolutely addictive.

All this to say: Tormis' setting of a piece of the Kalevala, usually considered the Finnish national epic, was fabulous. Listening to it, I started to understand in a way I had not before what it might have been like to listen to other epic poems--poems that gave people a sense of what it meant to be them. The words of "Curse upon iron" object to the metal as "You spiller of innocent blood!," telling the story of the ore's (mythic) origins, and how it is shaped by "the forge of death," "hammer[ing] anger into iron." It is epic at its best, and so modern (don't forget the Kalevala was compiled in the 19th century, and I am guessing this version may update it even further):

Brand-new and up-to-date technology,
The ultimate word in electronics
Ready to fly in any direction,
Stay undeflected on its course, hit the target
Paralyze, and knock out of action, obliterate,
Render helpless and defenseless,
Harm and hurt, cause unknowable loss,
And kill, kill with iron and with steel,
With chromium, titanium, uranium, plotonium,
And with a multitude of other elements.
Ohoy, villain! Evil iron!

If only my Beowulf students could have been there!

Back to working out.

17thman posted last night about returning to coached swimming:

It's been a few weeks since my last coached workout and boy did I miss it. I forgot what it feels like to be sore and tired after a good workout. I forgot how fun the chase of trying to catch up to another swimmer or staying ahead of another. Of course swimming at night gives me a buzz so even though my body is sore and wants sleep my mind is wide awake. I'll post more about the workout in a post in the morning.
It's good to be back!

I couldn't agree more.

Sprint set.

Last night at practice I was planning to get out early. It was my third swim in a row, my shoulder was feeling a little tired, I was feeling bombed from so much (relatively) swimming this week, and I have been trying to be careful about not overdoing it.

But as I was getting ready to get out, everyone was standing on the wall, and my coach said, "Put your fins on, my dear." I told him my little cup-shaped fins had been tearing up my toes, so he said try the big ones. They felt OK, so sure, count me in for the sprint set.

The idea was to swim 5 x 50 all out on a 5:00 interval. That meant we had time, after the 50 sprint, to swim about 150 cooldown and then still have over a minute rest before the next go-round. As you might guess, I am not quite ready for sprint swimming (especially after having already swum 1500 meters), and I was feeling solidarity with Joe, and I did my sprints as all kick, all on my back in streamline.

Here are my times:
Round 1 (fly kick) :35
Round 2 (free kick) :33
Round 3 (fly kick) :33
Round 4 (free kick) :32
Round 5 (free kick) :30.5

I managed not just to do my first sprint set in quite a number of months, but to descend! Of course, my times are nothing compared with Therese Alshammer in the 50 fly yesterday, and she was not wearing big fins. Or any fins. Ahem.

Total workout: 2500 LCM

Between Marx and Marzipan in the Dictionary.

So, I may be the last to discover this little tidbit, which was circulating around some knitters' blogs about a month ago. But I plead my illness!

Isis -- [noun]: A real life muppet. 'How will you be defined in the dictionary?' at QuizGalaxy.com

So don't say I never told you so.

(Manah manah.)

R.I.P. Jay Evans Paul.

Born September 1915 in Brooklyn, NY. Deceased June 2007 in Newport News, VA.

And for the record, played a mean hands of cards. And finished my crackers after I licked the peanut butter off them. And never sounded anything by thrilled to hear my voice. And spent every moment he was allowed with his wife as she ailed from congestive heart failure, holding her hand, looking lovingly into her eyes.

Grandpa, I'll miss your voice, and your smile and laugh, and I am sorry I haven't managed to beat you in cards. Maybe next hand.

Spoleto 4: Dresser of curiosities

When Aurélia's Oratorio begins, there is a dresser on stage. Gradually, a hand emerges. Then a head, or later a leg. Or two arms at once that seem contortionist because they emerge from different drawers at remarkable angles. A hand pours wine into a glass held by another hand. A hand dresses a stocking over a foot--then adds a shoe. Amidst much opening and closing of drawers, two separate arms and two separate feet are visible--could they possibly be connected?

Perhaps this is less surprising once we know that the show draws its inspiration from medieval manuscript illuminations of inside-out and upside-down worlds.

The show goes on like that--well, like that if that can happen on stage curtains acting as trapezes or ladders, or if there is any likeness between a chest of drawers and a coat rack. There is a likeness: they both have become frightening alive, as has a coat and a pair of shoes, and the entire rigging of the stage curtains. Puppets watch a performance in a little puppet theatre, being put on by a human head. An old-fashioned chair-taxi (carried by a person at each end, the chair held to poles) enters stage right , but carried upside down. Soon a woman comes down from a "window" in the curtains and catches a ride--she is riding upside down. A man wrestles with a coat, and loses. A man pulls a spangly skirt upside down over his head and chest, holds a woman's shoes on his hands, and using those shoes and his own (on his feet of all places) he performs a beautiful ballroom dance (though there is literally nothing to see above either partner's waist). A man and a woman perform a remarkable dance of putting on and taking off the same coat, while gypsy jazz plays in the back. A woman opens a door in her voluminous hoop skirt to reveal a sort of hour glass, that seems to be consuming her legs and then her hips and then all of her and turning them into sand--which a man later collects with a dustban, dumps into a drawer, and the woman re-emerges. A woman with a whole in her middle enters a stage where a toy train is running on an elevated track, and using her own hole-y body, becomes a tunnel.

When you come out of the show, it is remarkable that the ground stays under your feet.

How then do you look at the woman in the pool the next day, swimming with a lithe body and a long braid of finally contained hair, and believe that she is affected by the elements as we are?

Being coached.

Last night I did the first real practice I have done since I returned to the water. By that I mean that the coach told me what to do, and I did it--instead of just swimming back and forth as best I could.

When I first came back to swimming, I did everything with long fins. Now I am doing almost everything with short fins. Butterfly is still very squirrelly, but the other three strokes I can do pretty well. Pain is light, as opposed to pretty strong when I first came back. And strokes and turns are starting to feel more normal again, although I know there is still some imbalance between my left and right sides.

I'll celebrate this progress by reporting in detail last night's workout. To those of you swimming regularly, it won't look like much, but to me it was a great victory.

Everything is LCM:
Warm-up: 1000 (200 swim, 200 swim, 200 kick, 200 kick, 200 drill) [short fins]
Kick set: 6 x 100 kick (50 easy, 25 build, 25 fast) [2 with long fins, 2 with short fins, 2 with no fins]
Recovery: 200 easy [short fins]
Swim/drill set: 8 x 50 (alternating swim-kick-swim by thirds of a length) [short fins]
Cool-down: 100 easy + stretching and therapy motions

(Not exactly) Spoleto 3: Tropical Storm Barry.

I knew we were at the coast when I realized that the TV in our hotel room defaults to The Weather Channel. Not that I am complaining: I have been known to be a Weather Channel fan. Blame it on growing up in Tidewater Virginia, I suppose, where I learned early the importance of constantly watching hurricane tracks and projected paths, just in case.

Not that my enduring attention to all things weather makes me prepared. For instance, even after a discussion with the PP about packing rain jackets, did I pack mine? (Do I really have to answer that question?) Luckily, a certain outdoor store became the store where I dropped the most money. We called it the store we visited every day, because the first time we bought sunscreen, the second time my (fabulous) new rain jacket, and the third time lots of brightly-colored ankle socks to wear with my sandals. I even spent more money there than at knit! (I must admit that this is partly because I have bought so much yarn elsewhere of late, and I was trying to be restrained....)

Anyway, the PP and I woke up the morning after our arrival to find ourselves socked in. If you have ever lived at the coast you know what I mean: about 98% humidity, no breeze, spitting rain, gray everywhere you look. We realized then that we needed to get that replacement raincoat right away, and hurricane expert Dr. Lyons confirmed our concern that the weather would only get worse. I never got that distinct low pressure headache that Yarngineer described (I have before, and yow they are intense), but as the day went on, the wind picked up.

We could not help but laugh, though, because the night before we had seen The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, a Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht number I had been eager to see ever since I heard Ute Lemper sing songs from it. (Do you know "Alabama Song," which was covered by The Doors? It is from this show.) Anyway, the opera has as a sizable plot device a hurricane, and so we had spent some time during the turn from Acts I to II (I think) watching the storm come in, destroy a city, and then barely miss the city of Mahagonny.

So as we watched the Weather Channel, with its little arrows, they looked for all the world like the arrows on the primitive maps in the show.

But Barry was no hurricane. I realized the difference between people used to coastal storms and those not in watching reactions to the storm. Should we evacuate? asked the PP.

All scoffing aside, the wind was pretty intense, not in a destroying buildings kind of way, but in a way that made umbrellas everywhere fear for their skeletal systems, and it did quite a job on one of the Spoleto banners hanging near our hotel. (That thing being whipped around was like gunfinre.) And we just got used to having the hems of our pants and skirts soaked.

At least now I have an awesome new raincoat.

Spoleto 2: O body swayed to music, O brightening glance.

When Shen Wei writes in his program materials that "I wasn't taught the arts separately, so I don't separate them in my work," he means it.

At first I took this to mean an intimate link between the music and the dance. I buy that: sometimes the music dictates the movement in a way that goes beyond mere choreography.

But he meant more than that, because a ways into the performance of Connect Transfer, it dawned on me (and maybe suddenly on the others in the audience, too) that the large white fabric laid over the stage was not just to allow a contrast with the dancers' costumes. It was a canvas, or a scroll.

The bulk of the movement in this performance was performed on the floor, but it did not look like tumbling so much as dancing horizontally. The movements were circular--not just in the sense of roundness of pattern but also of repetition. Yet this was not dervishness so much as fluidity--as often a gentle motion as a furious one.

When the dancer wearing a mitten dipped in black paint or ink started her pattern, the floor turned into an enormous scroll of running style calligraphy, made not by a brush but a body, or a body and a brush, or a body become a brush. When other dancers appeared with red and then blue and green and yellow and purple--sometimes on their mittens, others on socks or on their backs--the stage had become a brilliant jumble of significant nonsense, and all the while watching it appear on the page was like watching Jackson Pollock paint--if he could really dance.
Makes you rethink textuality.

And the music--written by Kevin Volans, Iannis Xenakis, György Lineti--was a knock out.

Spoleto 1: And that is the longing, and this is the book.

Will you work with me for a moment? I had intended to write a bit about the Spoleto Festival while the PP and I were in Charleston, but my access to teh internets was not what I had hoped. So, if you do not mind, I am going to pretend it is last week. Can you do that with me?

The first time that we ran into Philip Glass on the terrazza of the Holiday Inn (are you still working with me here?), I figured it was not really him, because given that his show, being an American premiere and all, was kind of the headliner for the festival, would he be staying at the Holiday Inn? And besides, everywhere you looked, there he was on a poster or a t-shirt or a coffee mug or another poster or a gigantic banner on Gaillard Auditorium.

See?

So the afternoon before we went to the first performance of Book of Longing, I assumed my eyes were tricking me when I saw him talking on his cellphone in a t-shirt and jeans, and kind of pacing around.

But then after we saw the show, and him on stage--and us in the front row (friends, it pays to think ahead)--then, when we saw him a couple days later, I knew it was him, and felt bad for poo-pooing the PP's sense that we had seen him.

And of course I thought about telling him that for reasons I still cannot quite get a handle on, his piece moved me to tears. Was it just Leonard Cohen lyrics? Or that wonderful relentlessness of his music? Or the intimacy of seeing the performers so close? Or the way the intimate "I" of the poetry shifted in and out of the bodies of tenor, bass-baritone, soprano, and mezzo? Or the weird disparity between the super-erotic lyrics and Leonard Cohen's own self-sketches (rendered into a multimodal array), very much about seeing his own face look old?

But I feel dumb saying such things to someone who obviously knows that his work is important, so I never go up to famous people.

Still, what I really wanted, absolutely desperately wanted to ask him was: What is it like to see your own face, stylized into a portrait made of thumbprints, and of about 30 years ago, plastered everywhere you look?

An offer you can't refuse.

You might be interested to learn your Mob Nickname. Mine, you will not be surprised to discover, is "The Enforcer."

Back up, bitches! We've got some dancin' to do.

Blame Scott.

Scott wrote, "Thanks for the pictures 'cause you're absolutely right, visiting the Foro Italico with only three days in Rome was indeed way down on my list of things to see and do. Truthfully it wasn't even on our list! But now that you've perked my interest I must google this and take a better look at it."

Apparently Scott does not know me well enough to know not to even vaguely encourage me to talk about Mussolini's impact on the city of Rome. I tried to play it cool by connecting to Timed Finals before, but now someone has shown interest and you will all pay.

First, Scott mentioned googling the Foro Italico, which I realized was something I had not done, so here are a couple of links to sites with decent information and photos.

Italy Cyber Guide gives a little of the post-Mussolini history of the site (PP and I were trying to remember when the Olympics were in Rome. He guessed 1964 and was close: 1960). They include a photo of the entire track and you can see the little muscular dudes ringing it, even though they look like little white specks. If you are looking for more close-ups, you might consult this book, which provides thirty-some excellent b&w images of the statues. And this is an absolutely awesome article about the pool and its mosaics--with tons of excellent clear well-lit butt-shots--I mean photographs of the mosaics--definitely check it out.

Sporty types and especially soccer types might be interested to know that the Stadio Olimpico was renovated in 1990 for the World Cup, and that both AS Roma and SS Lazio play there. I see that the Italian Open tennis tournament also happens there. If you read Italian (and really, even if you do not), Wikipedia has a decent, if very brief entry about it, with a couple more photos. And if you want a look for yourself, why not book a night at the Youth Hostel just up the street? Oh right, because we are not really youth anymore. Curses.

But those of you who have visited Roma on a tight itinerary have also seen Mussolini's impact. How could you miss it? He was the dictator of "clear out the detritus" and "let's build wide avenues I can hold parades on."

Did you approach St. Peter's this way?


Before Mussolini's day, you could not have, as the only way into its piazza was through windy little streets. He cleared out a big section of town--full of neighborhoods of windy streets--to build this avenue. If you were to go to the Vatican back in the day, and walk into that piazza, then the world's longest basilica would scare the bejeezus out of you because it is SO MASSIVE, and it is almost impossible to get all of it into your eyeballs. But thanks to the via della Conciliazione, you can watch it grow from a great distance, and get used to it before you walk in. Is that the reconciliation? Or was Benito trying to keep the Vatican from sneaking up on him?

I am certain that most Roman itineraries include a journey to the Roman Forum, and perhaps some of the other fora, like the Forum of Augustus, the Markets of Trajan, etc. Well, before Mussolini, there was not a vast avenue through the middle of those, either. I am talking about the road (now called via dei Fori Imperiali, then called via dell' Impero) that connects the Piazza Venezia (and the Palazzo Venezia, home of his famous balcony) to the Colosseum.



You probably traveled on or looked down that road, but you may not have noticed these maps:

There is a whole series of them, built into a retaining wall, and they document the various stages of the Roman empire--something our Benito was very interested in.

What about these flagpoles?


After the war, Italians broke the hatchet heads off the fasci, but they are still fasci! Anyway, Mussolini built this road specifically to make a connection between his government, housed in the Palazzo Venezia, and ancient Rome. He was subtle that way. And never mind the important archaeological material lurking underneath that roadway.

There is more--like the church that Mussolini had moved so that it would not be in the way of one of his building schemes. Or the various houses--many of them dating from the medieval period--that were demolished to make the tomb of Augustus (previously a closed-in concert venue with amazing acoustics) more visible. But these, my friends, are stories for another day.

Don't you wish you were me?

First, another swim, which went fine, although I was less tolerant of the pain of scar-tissue-bashing than I was on swim #1. Then, breakfast out with my favorite PP (and I even remembered to wear extra layers so in my cold-sensitive post-surgery slow metabolism state I could endure the SuperAirConditioning). Now we are home again, and I am listening to the new Balkan Beat Box, which I just bought at my favorite record store. I'm about to get off the computer and go knit.

Does life get any better than this?

In international swimming news...

Timed Finals notes that Rome is doing renovations in preparation for the (aquatic) World Championships, to be held in 2009 in the city's Foro Italico.

Have you been to Rome? And if so, have you visited the Foro Italico?

I bet you have not, unless you were there for a good while, or have a particular interest in architecture of the Mussolini era. (That obelisk reads "MUSSOLINI," btw.) The sports facilities were built then, and originally called the Foro Mussolini--that's right, an echo of the many other fora in the city from the city's ancient imperial period. Hmmmm... I wonder why Benito was so interested in that era.... Anyway, the Foro Italico is well outside the historical center, requiring a rather elaborate busride (with connections), so that, combined with fascism's non-hotness means hardly anyone sees it.

Anyway, the now-called Foro Italico is in a bit of disrepair.

Nevertheless, short of EUR, it is the best example of how Mussolini's urban vision wanted to build a modern version of ancient Rome.

Check out the statues encircling the running track:

Talk about muscular male athleticism! An entire statue series dedicated to the male bum.

There is a piazza there with (frankly) amazing black and white mosaics. They are an imitation of mosaics discovered at Ostia Antica, an ancient Roman city located between the actual city of Rome and the sea. Here is an example of a mosaic from Ostia:

And here is what the mosaics in the Foro Italico look like:


You probably cannot read the entire text, but it says, "L'Italia ha finalmente il suo impero," or "Italy finally has its empire"--taken from a speech given by Il Duce when Ethiopia was conquered. Some empire. (And sorry for the weird angle: have you ever taken good pictures of floor mosaics?)

Anyway, the natatorium also has some pretty elaborate mosaics, celebrating human athleticism.


I wonder what these "restorations" will look like. I am not a fan of fascism, but it would be a horrible shame if this remaining relic of Mussolini's vision were wiped from the face of a city that bears so many traces of so many visions.

[UPDATE: There is more about the Foro Italico and the wider context of Mussolini's city plan for Rome at "Blame Scott."]

Get this.

I swam at swim practice last night.

It hurt like hell, I was horribly out of shape, my strokes were completely out of balance, I am not adjusted to LCM, and it was the best time I have had in months. I did a total of 2000 LCM, with breaks at almost every wall. Of that, 1600 of it was swim, with long-blade fins, 300 kick with long-blade fins, and 100 BR kick with no fins.

I have not been to practice at all (or had any real exercise) since April 16, and before that it had been since the end of January since I had swum in earnest, instead of kicking. Sure, there was a period in March when I was doing a little swimming here and there, but never more than about 1000 yards.

Did I mention how great it was? SO great. I looked at my arm in the morning and saw that it looked completely healed, and then I was buoyed along all day at the thought of being in the water again. When I got there, I was scared out of my mind, and let me tell you: nothing says, "Welcome back, Jerky!" like seeing the pool formatted for LCM for the first time.

Even with the big fins, and my ebullience at being in the water, I had more than a few "WHERE IS THE WALL?" -s.

I did some freestyle, a good bit of breaststroke, and some backstroke. The BR was easiest of all, since it is an underhand stroke, and I have more mobility there, but even so, I could see that during the power phase of the pull (which, believe me, I was doing gently, not powerfully), my right hand was near the surface (as normal) while my left was a good 8 inches lower. That's OK: I'll get that back. Freestyle was tough: I had to really work to get my left elbow high and around. And backstroke was maybe in between, although I know my hand was entering the water at between a 1 o'clock and 2 o'clock position. Maybe this is a good thing: I usually tend to overreach. But it was hard to keep the arm in the right position during recovery, as it was so much easier to recover wide. I am stiff today, and I slept like a baby last night. Isn't that great?

But here is the really random part: Guess who was at swim practice? You're right! My shoulder surgeon! No I am not making this up, and it was not some kind of pain+euphoria-induced hallucination. He is a triathlete (and he swims with a torn rotator cuff...) and had been talking about coming to our team's practice. Last night was his first time. How weird is that? Because we only have a couple (50 m) lanes, he was even in my lane.

It is not very often that you can ask your lane mate, "This pain is good, right? It's beating out the scar tissue?" and have him say "Yes, it is excellent therapy," and know that he is not yanking your chain.

Walking, talking question mark.

So is it a bad thing that now I take a shower every single day, and wash my hair when I do not need to? That I stand there and relish that wonderful water flow for longer than I should?

The little PICC-line hole in my arm is healing so beautifully. I have been cautioned by, oh, all the mothers in my life not to swim too soon, but to let it heal up completely. No worries! It is doing it on its very own. But I am feeling that itch for chlorine.... Patience, young Jedi.

And I have agreed to help the real coaches of our team teach several swim clinics this summer to summer-league kids. I am so excited about that. The way the clinics work is that there are four stations, and I am in charge of streamlines and pullouts. This is cool for two reasons: 1. I probably would not be the best flipturn teacher, since it has been so long since I learned that skill, and 2. I have pretty rockin' streamlines and pullouts, if I may say so myself. Or I should say, I HAD. This will motivate me to bring the mobility back in time to do the demonstrations I need to do without flinching.

Is this some kind of joke?

Dear Experienced Knitters,

Are double-pointed knitters some kind of devious trick designed to insure that new knitters lose their mind, or else their eyesight? I have been trying to learn to knit socks using #2s, and HOLY MOTHER OF ALL THAT IS HOLY I AM LOSING MY MIND. I know that some of you swear by these things, but how in the world do you use them? How do your fingers not cramp up? How do you even see what you are doing?

Help me, experienced knitters. You are my only hope.

Bliss.

Let me tell you, my friends, how to take the perfect shower:

1. Wait three weeks and one day since your previous shower. During the intervening time, you may bathe and you may wash your hair in sinks, but you will never feel your regular clean.

2. Choose a shower with fabulous miraculous wonderful beyond your memory water pressure.

3. Use scented soap.

4. But stand there for a while in the water falling down on your head, before you break out the soap or shampoo or washcloth.

5. Take your shower in a house with a smoke detector right outside the bathroom, but do not remember to disconnect it. This way you are never certain whether your perfect shower might end at any moment, with chaos and loud noises and drippy tracks from the shower to find a chair and then try to disconnect the damn deafening thing.

6. Find out afterwards that someone did a deal with the gods, so the blasted alarm never once interrupted you.

7. Wash your ears for the first time in two weeks and one day.

8. Wash your hair with both hands because now both arms reach (somewhat) comfortably over your head.

9. Let the water rush down over your hair and body for as long as you can possibly stand.

10. Isn't that amazing?

What a lucky goddess.

My apologies for wiggly post last night--but thanks to those of you who sent such supportive things. All the nice things that so many of you have written over the last couple of months, as I have been enumerating blah after blah--well, it has reminded me what a lucky goddess I am. And how much goddesses need friends.

A simple question.

How do you tell a person that you have had enough of them in your life?

I am not talking about those people who honest and truly you have had enough of--the people you wish you did not work with, the people you should not have dated, the people who cut you off in traffic.

I am talking about the people you love. What I am wondering is, when do you say, if you are in a position of having to say, I am ready to go now. I will not see you again. You and I both know this and it is the way it is.

How do you say to this person, thank you for everything you have done to make my life richer, to be a very real piece of my experience on this earth. Thank you for being one who had the brilliant smile, one whose voice always lit up when I walked in the room, one who made me feel so valued, so precious. Thank you, and now I have had enough, and I am going on my way, so that you can do the ugly things you have to do between now and the end of your life, but I will not have to see them. How do you say to that person, I have more important things to do now? Than spend days with you as your body betrays you? Than deal with what those drugs are doing to your brain, even as they are helping you deal with that pain? How do you say, I am going back to my life now.

Can someone please tell me this?

WOO-HOO.

FORGIVE ME FOR SHOUTING.

IT IS JUST THAT MY PICC LINE IS OUT, AND I AM ECSTATIC.

I CAN LIFT THINGS WITH MY RIGHT HAND AGAIN, TAKE SHOWERS, AND IN A DAY OR TWO, GO SWIMMING.

I CANNOT LINGER HERE. I NEED TO GO HAVE A LITTLE PARTY.

R.I.P.

I could not possibly say it as well or as boldly as QueerJoe, so just read his post.

I'm nobody, who are you?

Magpie tagged me with this fun meme, and she picked a good moment, because,

I am in the mood for a meme.

I am blogging while infusing my antibiotics.

I am visiting my parents in Virginia.

I am envious and enjoyous of my father's beautiful flower garden.

I am gaining back the weight I lost in the hospital by snarfing down my mother's wonderful cooking. (What could be better???)

I am enjoying seeing friends and family who I only get to see when I visit here.

I am missing the PP, Jacques Monod, and Tut (a.k.a. Sazha), who did not travel with me.

I am sad that my grandfather has terminal cancer, but ecstatic that I am able to visit him this week and plaster his beautiful smile in my memory.

I am in the middle of four knitting projects: one tank-top sweater, one tote bag, and two top secret projects.

I am full of ideas about what to knit next.

I am counting down the days until I get my PICC line out.

I am counting down the days until I can get back in the pool.

I am frequently frustrated at what a production being a non-driving invalid is.

I am enjoying having the windows open and breathing in the spring breezes.

I am learning patience.

I am tagging [UPDATE: names deleted--let's have a free-for-all!] anyone in the mood for a meme.

PICC up the pieces (say what?)

I was thinking yesterday, as I was infusing my antibiotics, what an amazing piece of technology the PICC line is. Thanks to it, I do not need to have someone prick my arm and find a vein every time I need my antibiotics, and they can draw blood through it, too. Basically the way it works is that they put a needle into a vein in your arm, then somehow feed a lengthy tube up the vein until it reaches a more central vein. In my case, the intravenous line goes from the middle of my upper arm up to where my shoulder and neck meet. But here is what it looks like on the outside:




That little golden ball you see is the antibiotic, and these things are also amazing. They are sort of pressure-packed, so that as soon as I unhook the little valve in the tubing that connects the antibiotic bomb to my PICC line, the pressure of the ball starts pushing the drug into my body: no need for gravity to do the work, as with a traditional IV, and therefore no need for one of those metal carts you usually see with people on IVs.

Today we went over to the infusion center again, for what I hope to be my final blood draw. (Typically a home health nurse would come to the house to do that, but because I will be visiting my parents next week, that is not possible, and they must do blood tests and change the dressing on the line once a week.) There was a bit of a wait, because it was busy in there today. The PP was waiting in the waiting room (of all places), and got to talking with the other people waiting on people getting their infusions. (Many people either choose to--or must, for reasons of insurance--get their antibiotics infused in the doctor's office, so it is open seven days a week.) It turns out that everyone in there was there because of an infection that resulted from surgery. And I learned in the conversation in the infusion center itself, that one woman, whom the others call "Saint Teresa," had been coming in there since the fall of 2005. That is once a day, every day, every week, every month, for more than a year and a half!

The whole experience has made me both marvel at the achievements of medicine, and wince at the reality of how dangerous it is to be hospitalized. And it is all a lesson in patience.

Start wearing purple for me now.

I am chipping away at my list of 10 things to return to my life. Technically, first I need to add number 11, the thing I had forgotten on the original list, and it is a double, namely

11. Wearing pullover shirts and back-clasp bras.

I hope there might be progress on this one over the weekend, but I can tell you that there has been significant progress on #4, 6, 8, and 9. Last night I made the (albeit, very simple) sauce for the fish that the PP grilled. Now granted: this is not the same as cooking an entire meal, but it is a start! And now I can read THREE paragraphs and sometimes even FOUR in a row! And my hair is looking less and less stupid. And I can even sleep for a while on my right side. Life is great, ain't it?

But most important, NUMBER ONE. That's right, folks. I am cutting back on the pain meds, which means that I got to have a glass of wine with dinner last night. HOW GREAT IS THAT???? I can tell you with complete honesty that the lack of wine in my life was making me wanna walk like a camel. And I can further tell you that the juice of the vine has never been so perfect, so delicious....

But what I really wanted to tell you is that the Start Wearing Purple Sweater is DONE. I had been lacking the #9 circular needle to finish the neck, but I got that on Thursday, and yesterday I did my first ever circular knitting (Magpie was right: it was no big deal) and finished the darn thing. I may have mentioned that my cat Jacques Monod is in love with the sweater. Here is photographic proof:

The night when I blocked it, I had it lying on a towel on the kitchen counter, drying. I was in the other room, but I heard this sound, like a cat jumping onto the counter. When I got out there, there was Jacques Monod, rolling on her back, on the sweater. I wish I could have gotten a photo of that.

Anyway, here is the finished item:


The pattern came from Hip to Knit, and I made it with this yarn (Hibiscus Heather). The PP thinks it is so awesome that now he wants one. Luckily it is a unisex pattern, so I do not have a big math project ahead of me. [UPDATE: He changed his mind, and picked out something else so we will not be too his-n-hers.]

Please note that this is the world's simplest sweater: there is not even armhole shaping in the front and back pieces, which is why the shoulder line hangs down my arm so much. But I am extremely proud of this, partly because I managed to finish the thing, and partly because (and please forgive me for boasting) it fits perfectly. This is partly luck, and partly the miracle of making your own clothes--namely, that you can tailor them to your bodily irregularities.

Here is my situation, and it makes shopping for clothes a challenge: swimmer shoulders. No, no, no, I am not talking about rotator cuff problems (for a change), but rather about having more developed shoulders than the typical female. Hence, I usually have trouble finding tops that are comfortable but not sacks. Granted, the sweater is sack-like, but I achieved precisely the sack that I wanted by shortening the sweater itself (I am short-waisted) and lengthening the sleeves (I have longish arms--no ape jokes, please).

And it really is rather smashing, isn't it? Perhaps I'll have another glass of wine tonight, just because I am so awesome.

Self-rumination.

Magpie did this, and you know how I love a bandwagon--particularly one devoted to poetic form!

You may often have wondered, "Isis, what form of poetry are you?" Well, thanks for asking:

Short, terse, unfriendly, Yet sometimes quite emotive; I am the Haiku. What Poetry Form Are You?

But if you are not satisfied with that, the quiz notes that if I were not a haiku, I would be a triolet:

If they told you I'm mad, then they lied. I'm odd, but it isn't compulsive. I'm the triolet, bursting with pride; If they told you I'm mad, then they lied. No, it isn't obsessive. Now hide All the spoons or I might get convulsive. If they told you I'm mad then they lied. I'm odd, but it isn't compulsive. What Poetry Form Are You?

Oooh! French troubadour forms!

Top secret news for fans of Isis: not long ago I was invited to take over editing a fairly well known handbook of poetic forms. I have been struggling with whether to agree to do so. I wonder if this is some kind of sign?

I'm sew tired.

I am about halfway through the sewing needed to finish up the Start Wearing Purple sweater. Too bad it will be all done just in time for Not Sweater Season. But still--I never tire of the magic of mattress stitching, even if it is tiring doing all the work.

For those of you who are not People of the Knitting, mattress stitching is used for attaching two pieces side-by-side. So, for instance, I am using it to join the front and back of the sweater, and to turn the sleeves from flat pieces into little arm-holding tubes. The magic of the mattress stitch is that you wind your darning yarn back and forth around the stitches on each side, and then you tighten it up, and PRESTO! the gap between them disappears, and unless you are looking closely, the two pieces look like one solid piece. Pretty cool, eh?

And I have not knitted all day, even though today is my "day off": no doctor's appointments, no visits from nurses, no visits from physical therapists. I suppose if I get this sewing done, then I can get back to the good stuff.

Of course I am short one #9 16" circular needle set needed to finish the rollneck on the sweater.... Perhaps I can bribe a friend into taking me to the yarn store this afternoon.

In other news, I have started a list of things I used to take for granted that I should not have. Here are the first 10:

1. Drinking red wine.*
2. Being able to lift more than 5 pounds with my right arm.**
3. Driving.*
4. Reading more than a paragraph or two without nodding off.
5. Showering.***
6. Bowel regularity.****
7. Swimming and/or exercising at all.
8. Making it through the afternoon without a nap.
9. Cooking for myself.
10. Putting my hair up in a way that does not look stupid.

----------------
* I can do this again once I am off the super-duper pain meds.
** I cannot lift more than that now, because more lifting than that could put stress on the PICC line. We do not want to have to reinsert the PICC line.
*** Cannot get the PICC line's dressing wet.
**** Sorry for TMI

I want to be starting something. (also shoulder update buried rather deep in)

It is knitting that has saved my sanity this time.

Too many of the things I often rely on--swimming, drinking, you get the idea--are verboten these days, so it is so very lucky that I took up knitting back in February. The knitting did not get much press at the time, because I started knitting the same weekend our house was overrun with gypsies, and after that, what kind of story does knitting make?

At that time it made a knit, knit, knit, knit, knit kind of story, because it took me a while to learn to purl. But then the story went scarf, scarf, scarf, scarf, as I made one for the PP, one for myself, one for my dad, another one for the PP, another one for myself, one for a friend, another one for myself. Or maybe it was more like scarf, scarf, scarf, hat, because I did make a hat for the PP, too. Alack and alas, all this happened too late in the spring for him to really wear them, but he was a Boy Scout growing up, and he likes to be prepared.

Then I thought SHAWL, so I picked out a pattern, ordered some yarn, dealt with some ridiculousness around the order, and finally got the yarn. By then, though, I was working on a sweater, better known as the Start Wearing Purple Sweater. Presently, however, it is the Don't Start Wearing Purple Yet Sweater Bits, but the point is I have not yet started on the shawl.

Plus then some other things happened, like I picked up a knitting magazine and found a pattern for an actual summer knitted garment that now I am making. Plus I tried out a hat pattern I was eager to do, had fit of fits trying to achieve gauge (live and learn). Also other things I do not want to detail here for now.

But the point is that although the shawl remains unstarted, the hat is now finished (I look smashing, if a bit hot, in it). Also, the Sweater Bits are drying from their blocking baptism in the kitchen. And perhaps tomorrow I will sew them up.

The PP has been wondering why I have had all these almost finished knitting projects with little stringy tails hanging off them, waiting to be finished. "Because that takes sewing," I said. "And what I like is knitting."

But today, because it was the kind of day when things don't exactly go according to plan, I have been sewing. As I said, the hat is done. I have even secured some safety pins and added them to my notions bag.

Aha! And even the notions bag is exciting, because I BOUGHT IT TODAY. Do you know what that means? I WENT TO A STORE. It was so exciting. I even dressed myself first. I bought toothpaste while I was there.

The real reason I was at the store, though, is that I was getting my pain and nausea meds refilled, from new scrips from my shoulder doc.

More exciting than all this, though, is that I got my stitches out (no more dressings on the left shoulder!!!!!) and the doc says they look great. Plus he moved my arm around and said I am making good progress on my physical therapy. He told me that during the surgery he had a good look around in there, and saw that there is a small, but not dangerous, tear in my labrum. That, he said, might have been causing the pain I was feeling, but it is not a condition that will worsen with use. He confirmed that there are no tears in the rotator cuff and that the tendons look good. He did find some "debris," which he removed during the flushing out of the joint. This included not just some stuff that was a product of the infection, but also some material that he himself debrided from the bursa, and which may have been irritating the labrum and/or other parts of the shoulder. In short, he thinks that it is very likely that the pain I was experiencing will not recur. AS LONG AS I DO MY ROTATOR CUFF EXERCISES REGULARLY.

All that remains now is to get the antibiotic regime completed and get the PICC line out. Once that happens, and the incision point for the PICC heals, I can GET BACK IN THE WATER!!!!!!! The shoulder doc wants me to start swimming again as soon as I can, to regain the strength in and around the shoulders, so that the joints do not weaken further.

But the best part about all this is that the prospect of getting back in the pool in a few weeks does not seem like an eternity. It would have, in the past. I know that part of what makes me more calm about that timeframe is the HELLISH PAIN I have gone through in the last couple of weeks. But another part is the knitting, which I now dearly love, which gives me something else to be excited about, which produces soft pretty things from the work, and which is rather meditative in the process.

I have started several new projects, and although I was going to start yet another one tonight, I backed off that, because it requires a cast-on technique I am less comfortable with, and I did so much physical therapy tonight that I was pretty sore until I took an extra pain pill. So tonight it is the easy new project--seed stitch, seed stitch, seed stitch. But that is fine: I love seed stitch, and I love the process.

Thank you, Knitting.

Friday Random 10: Driven by a strange desire Edition

Here is something I am looking forward to, more than I can really express: being able to sleep on my sides. I had been accustomed to avoiding sleeping on the left side since I started having trouble on that shoulder, but I am SUCH a shoulder sleeper, that I spent much of the night on my right side. As the pain in the shoulder got really bad after the arthrogram, though, even that got difficult, because having the shoulder lean left or right felt bad. And now, with the PICC line in place, I cannot do it at all.

Occasionally I have tried sleeping on my stomach with no pillow. I told my mother that on the phone recently, and she said, "I thought that was bad for you." I asked her, "What, are you worried about SIDS?" She laughed and reminded me it is bad for your back. I told her I was not really thinking of this as a long-term but rather a temporary solution. But that does not work so well either.

So it is all night on the back for me. Not that I sleep that constantly, because of the drugs and all the napping.

But one of the interesting things about all this is that I seem always to be on the verge of dozing off. That means that often I start dreaming before I even fully fall asleep, which makes the veil between the waking and sleeping times a very thin and fluttering thing. These are thin times, as the Celts would say.

Or maybe it seems that way because of all the time I have for contemplation, which makes me more open to noticing small pleasures and surprises in life. Yesterday the doctor changed my antibiotic, so I had to go to the infusion center at the hospital to have it infused (instead of doing it myself at home). When I got there, there were three people receiving their own particular infusions. I was struck that in however long they had been coming there daily, they had all gotten to be . . . I am searching for my adjective here. They all seemed to enjoy talking to each other, and seemed to enjoy each other's company, and seemed to be doing something more than just passing the time. They reminded me of the retired men you see eating breakfast together at Hardee's, or a knitting group, or people taking a water break during a pick-up basketball game, or a Red Hat Society, or a book club, or the French Table, or any such group of people who do not necessarily have more in common than that one shared interest, but there they are, having a great time. They had given each other nicknames, they liked to tease each other and the nurse, and it was the most warm, friendly group of people you could imagine. As people came and went, the conversations shifted slightly, and of course there was some talk about the infusions themselves, but mostly it was this strange warm thing in an otherwise sterile, artificially lit room.

I felt like I had been given a glimpse of something special, a world usually roped off from the well. It made me feel less bad about my own situation, and not because these people were so worse off, but because they had taught me something, all without really thinking about it.

Haven't done this in a while:

1. "The Carnival Is Over," Dead Can Dance, Into the Labyrinth
2. "Jolie Blonde," Queen Ida and her Zydeco Band, Caught in the Act
3. "Come Running," Van Morrison, Best of
4. "The Kraken," Squirrel Nut Zippers, Perennial Favorites
5. "Anansi Abstrakt," D. J. Spooky, Songs of a Dead Dreamer
6. "Great Balls of Fire," Jerry Lee Lewis, Best of Sun Records, Volume 1
7. "Grace Under Pressure," Jade Fox, Gilles Peterson Presents: The BBC Sessions, Volume 1
8. "What Is It This Time," Jamie Lidell, Multiply
9. In 3's," Beastie Boys, Check Your Head
10. "Alla Gossar (All the Young Men)," Triakel, Nordic Roots: A Northside Collection

Phenergans Wake: The short version.

There was one point this weekend where the nurse said, "I am going to give you the Finnegan injection first. That should help with the nausea."

"Finnegan?" I said.

"Phenergan," she said. It turns out to be an anti-nausea drug, not a major late modernist epic of surreal proportion. Though the experience was surreal too.

* * *

When I went to see the shoulder specialist on Friday, he determined that there was indeed an infection in my shoulder joint: hence some of the pain. In addition to the regular scary things about infections, particularly those caught in a hospital (in my case, the hospital where I got my arthrogram), the bacteria can degrade the cartiledge of the joint, so he wanted to get it out immediately.

Hence the surgery scheduled for Friday afternoon (i.e. cancelled physical therapy appointment, which, Joe, I believe might be the same as physiotherapy). So I went home and grabbed some things, and the PP picked me up and took me to a different hospital for the surgery. The checking in took a good long while, because it was short notice, but eventually we were checked in and waiting for a good long time in my new room (private!). They had to wait for my breakfast to be digested, and run bloodwork, and then wait for an operating room to open up, and then I had surgery around 6:00 p.m.

It seemed to go fine, and in addition to flushing the infection out of the joint, the surgeon got some "debris" out, which he thought might be related to the original pain. The whole procedure, including the knocking out and coming to, lasted about two and a half hours.

Then I spent the rest of the weekend and most of Monday in the hospital, letting the anesthesia wear off, taking pain medication, letting the wound heal so that they could take the drains out, getting my strength back so I could walk easily to the bathroom or up and down the hall a bit, removing the old IV line and putting in a PICC line (is like an IV but which can stay in the body for many weeks), and beginning physical therapy to get range of motion and strength back in the shoulder.

Now I am home, having come home last night around 7:30 p.m. I can hardly express how relieved I am to be home, but perhaps this example gives some sense: it is so nice not to have anyone come into my room at 11 p.m. (after I've been sleeping a couple of hours), turn on the lights, empty the trash, turn off the lights, and slam the door on their way out. Not to mention all the needle-sticks. And not to mention that for my first meal after 24 hours of fasting (with some IV drip I guess) was a breakfast consisting of a biscuit, sausage links, and grits. (Had no one heard of soup?)

But we are home. I still have a PICC line in, which allows me to get my antibiotics injected everyday, and it allows them to draw blood without sticking me yet again. Last night I had a bath! I am still taking some pretty prime pain meds and yes, the pheneran for nausea. I understand the antibiotics will probably go 2-3 weeks. In the meantime I do physical therapy 3 times a day, and a therapist comes to the house 3 times a week.

Just wanted to fill you in. Obviously I will not be thinking about swimming for a while, but once the PICC line is out, I may begin some water therapy.