hanna birke

this is a small section of the road i drive to work.

the drive takes 45 minutes each way and a good portion of the road is like this.  on the way i'll climb one mountain pass and go by 5 lakes.  for part of the drive there is no cell phone service and limited radio reception.  in the summer someone drove off the road every few weeks.  now when i make the drive home it's dark and in the morning it's sometimes icy.  

i'll admit i was daunted by the thought of driving this road 5 days a week when i first started my new job.  

no amount of positive thinking is going to make this drive any shorter or less worrisome.  

but i've also come to see how i manage my mind during this drive does make a difference.  1.5 hours a day is a lot of time to drive and think.  i can use the thinking time to polish up and add strength and solidity to worries and hurts or i can turn my mind away from this stuff and toward pleasant memories, things that are going well, or positive wishes for others.

it was at about this corner a few weeks ago that i remembered a visit with a friend who was soon to be told she was terminally ill.  of course neither she nor i knew this at the time.  i was on my way through her town and as always she offered me a comfortable bed in her guest room and a warm breakfast before i headed out the next morning.  when i arrived she was watching a travel show on New Zealand and we watched it together talking afterward about her own trip to New Zealand.  it was a simple time but filled with warmth and now this evening, the last i was able to spend with her, is a fond memory.

this week i traveled 3 hours south for work training.  for a day i got to sit in a room with 45 other women who do the same kind of work i do.  a large circle of women working to help other women and it was uplifting to be in their midst.  the workshop facilitator was Vikki Reynolds and she spoke about bringing Revolutionary Love or Therapeutic Love to our work with clients.  even though i've long believed this work is about love, not romantic love but a different kind of love, i don't think i've ever heard anyone acknowledge this.  

another sweet moment this week included more birds - mergansers this time - i was at the shore for a few minutes in the early morning and the sun was shining.  i saw 16 mergansers running back and forth on the water.  they would run on top of the water for about 15 feet and then turn sharply around and run back again.  i've read that running on the water is courtship behavior for shore birds but i assumed this was the wrong time of year for courtship.  i asked my mother about it this morning and she says male and female mergansers often inhabit separate areas in the summers and return to courting each other in the fall.  

now knitting talk:  when i restarted the Sound of Waves wrap for my mother i went up a needle size and i think it's turning out better.  

 

i also started a Miura Cowl for myself with some bits of favorite leftover yarns.  the light tan is a merino dyed with cutch, the darker tan is some Blue Sky Alpaca and the very pale pink is some milk fiber dyed with a weak cochineal bath.  the gentle folds in this pattern make it fun to knit.

 

 

starting again

developed the 3rd roll with the Zero Image pinhole camera yesterday.  

this is an intentional double exposure with also a frame overlap.  

i feel like every new camera i've had required bags of learning before there is much competency with it - and the Zero Image  pinhole is no exception.  with other cameras it's just taken keeping at it and i hope it will be the same with this one. 

my POSITIVITY book has been lent out so i can't quote directly from it but i believe Barbara L. Fredrickson says spending time outside in the spring and early summer boosts our mood and going outside to places where we can see for a long way has the effect of opening our minds and helping us think more creatively.  we are of course heading in to winter - not summer - but still i love being outside.

i have a mental list of open spaces around here and most lunch hours i try to get to one of these places even for a few minutes.  one day last week i went to an estuary near work at lunch.  i saw crows, an eagle and a flock of small brown birds.  i love watching a flock take off together and swirl around before they land somewhere else.  i also love this estuary spot and i expected to feel a bit lighter by the time i left and probably i did but the real visual treat that lunch hour was found when i returned to work.  i parked my truck in the work parking lot and looked up to see a maple tree i hadn't noticed before - about 80% of the leaves had already fallen off.  there was a slight breeze and the remaining burnt orange leaves were dangling from the tree like earrings or ornaments in motion.  the movement was amusing, beautiful, memorable.  i sat and watched it for a while and even though i didn't write this moment down until now it stands out as one of the most satisfying moments of last week.  

 i've finally gotten my drawing pencils out again.  a big drawing on the wall feels too ambitious right now but i've set up a drawing table and there's a small sketchbook on it.  small pages feel right.  in the past i've mostly drawn from images or objects but now i've set myself a little assignment to draw from inside so i've been doing tiny simple sketches with lots of cross hatching.  i've long admired the work of Agnes Martin - of course these are no Agnes Martins but it's nice to liberate myself from the expectation of making a drawing that looks like something.  

and in knitting news i'm going to rip out what i've got done on the Sound of Waves wrap for my mother and start again.  i'm about 6 inches into this wrap and there are way too many mistakes in it.  my mother has a high tolerance for mistakes in knitting but there are too many for me - so it's back to the beginning with this one.  that's okay.

on the subject of knitting, my mother loves the swatch for the Sound of Waves wrap by Kieran Foley so i've cast this on.  the rows are 327 stitches long and i'm a slow knitter so a row can take me half an hour.  when i slow my mind down i find knitting long rows relaxing, it's a matter of slowing down inside though.

i've put the idea of an Inspira cowl back on the shelf because i don't have enough of the yarns i want to use to make a full-sized Inspira cowl.  also i'm still sorting out what the winter climate here requires.  i'll need warm things of course but not clothing heavy enough for -30 C weather.  a stranded cowl in worsted weight might only be needed a few days a year here.  so i'm floating a few other cowl ideas around my head.  

the week started with 2 days of suicide intervention training.  important training but not the happiest topic.  by tuesday evening i was tired and discouraged.  when 4:55pm Friday rolled around i was finishing up my session notes and looking forward calling it a week.  then the phone rang and my supervisor asked me to speak with a woman in distress.  i'd never spoken to her before but it was clear she was embarrassed about about calling so late in the day, she was hard to keep on the phone at first, saying she was sorry to be so needy.  i reassured her that a few minutes on the phone was a small inconvenience and that i'd rather talk with her than have her hang up still crying.  besides i find needy women who can use that word and acknowledge their neediness refreshing.

a few more minutes on the phone and it was clear i was speaking with a well-educated and professional woman, a peer or perhaps someone with her life more together than mine.  she was having trouble in with her teenage daughter and she relayed the details of an argument they'd just had.  i listened and when she asked for advice i said simply that i'd have approached the situation the same way she did.  

she sighed and said yes that's the same thing my friends would say.  we talked a bit more and then she said well that was my last 10 minutes before i called you - what was your 10 minutes like before i called? 

without thinking about it i told her i was looking at the time and feeling relieved no one had called the crisis line yet and perhaps i would be able to go home on time.  i think my honesty surprised both of us and we ended up laughing and laughing.  it was good to hear her laughing.

we spoke a bit more about the impossibility of parenting well and staying sanely married and ways to create more harmony in a home and then we laughed some more.  after half an hour she said well you haven't solved any of my problems but you've made me laugh. she thanked me and we wished each other a good weekend and then i drove home - much happier than i'd been at the beginning of the week.  

i think i said this before but Ariel Gore, author of Bluebird: Women and the New Psychology of Happiness, says when we start writing down what makes us happy we might find the things that make us happy surprise us.  

this photograph was taken on Wednesday morning - my neighbor who works on the waterfront asked me for a ride to work and i grabbed this quickly when i dropped her off.  it's the only photograph i took all week that i like.  i was convinced i didn't have time this week for the film cameras and so i took the digital and was frustrated with most of the digital shots.  if i'm going to take photographs again i need to find time for film.