feijoa

this week on the organic farmer's market, a long-forgotten childhood taste. my grand-mother used to get them for us from Baku. turns out, she would have had more luck in Auckland, NZ. still, felt very clever explaining to the girl at the market (who knows much too much about fruit and always makes me feel like such an idiot) (yes, i come from a family where fruit knowledge can make you or break you) what they were called (feijoa) and what you can do with them (open your mouth and eat). the best thing, though, is the scent. through the paper-bag, across half the living-room, i can smell them. like bubble-gum, says Marc. like paradise, say i.

(day 2 word-count: 3904. i wouldn't say we have flow (although thank you for lovely supportive comment, Jost), but we're moving. i managed to suss the editor by adding an extra challenge. i promised her i wouldn't spend more than 45 min. a day on the novel; that way even if i end up producing nothing but shite (unlikely, but don't tell her that), i wouldn't have wasted too much time on it. speedy shite, you might call it (the real reason for the added speed factor being that she can't read that fast, but don't you go telling on me!))

day 1

word-count: 1740

(every single word is bloody awful (or maybe not by itself, but taken in conjunction with the word before and the word after, and the word a bit further down the page...), i have no idea why i am doing this to myself or to you (the poor people who will be asked one day to glance at this rubbish), there is no way i am going to be able to produce so many words a day for a month, no matter how bad the words are, taken alone or together, i have children to take care of, food to cook, yoga to do, and what's the point anyway, there is no story, no characters, no dialogue, no poetry even this time, actually, by comparison with this stuff, that first novel was pretty much a nobel prize in literature, and maybe that's the only purpose of a second novel, to make you realize the first one is worth resurrecting, arggghhhhh!)

(i seem to remember there was something one could do to one's internal editor during nanowrimo, send her to the bahama's to get a suntan, or lock her up, duly tied and gagged (especially gagged) in some dark humid dungeon... whatever it was, it hasn't happened, they must have forgotten to pick her up, or maybe she managed to escape, she is a crafty little thing, anyway, please to come back and take her away before i wring her neck (problematic, because we share one). please please pretty please)

play

- mama, kom, laten we een spelletje doen die ik verzonnen heb!
- wat dan?
- nou, ik maak hier een stapeltje van stukjes hout, zo, en dan nemen we ieder een stukje hout, en dan moet je probeeeren om je stukje hout op de stapel te gooien. en degene die niet wint, die mag iets leuks uitkiezen.
- wat dan?
- nou, een stukje hout.

- mama, come, let's play this game i made up!
- how does it go?
- well, see, i make a pile here with these bits of wood, and then we each take a bit of wood, and then you have to try and throw your bit of wood onto the pile. and the one who doesn't win gets too choose a nice gift.
- like what?
- a bit of wood.

two tomato plants

the one on which i lavished my love and care.

the one i threw on the garbage heap.

why does this smack of 'deep wise lesson to be learned'? and what lesson is that(other than 'sell the garden!')?

anniversary

eight years ago, on a beach in California, Marc and i were taking photographs of our shadows on the sand and promising each other love ever-lasting. we were crazy in love, so we meant it, even though we didn't know what it meant.

four years ago, in an ugly grey townhall building and in the presence of ten people, Marc and i were trying to avoid being photographed and promising each other love ever-lasting. we were pregnant and no longer in love, so we meant nothing much and knew even less.

yet another four years and two babies later, we're back to taking photographs of our shadows and promising each other love ever-lasting. sort of knowing what it means. and meaning it too.

fall knit #1

the fall 2007 collection includes (well, so far it's more 'solely consists of'...) this little cashmere number (wool and pattern from La Droguerie). seriously cute, though i say so myself. and i mean both the creation and the slightly puzzled-looking model.

(speaking of the model, ladies and gentlemen, we have figures at last. Antoine went for his first check-up last week, and it's official: he is a big boy. at 7 weeks, he was at least 61 cm long and weighed 5650 gr.)

bakfiets

'Look, mama, i have a bakfiets too!'

fallen leaves

sweatshop

my dear friend Pauline, midwife, mother, poetess, photographer, seamstress and many other things is having a no-spending year. for an entire year, she is purchasing nothing (well, unless it can be proven to be a) absolutely necessary and b) not obtainable in any other way). how cool is that? 'very' is the answer. anyway, i finally chickened out of joining her (my latest excuse is the woolies, must have woolies, ... and gardening tools, and a bakfiets, and ...). still, it is an inspiration to spend radically less, as in NOT buying a Petit Bateau winter coat for Isabelle that we cannot afford in a hundred years, no matter how cute, but making her one instead. like this princess coat from last year's Ottobre.

the only problem being that i cannot sew. at least not clothes. at least not that i know of. whenever i gather my courage and open a pattern, some word jumps out at me (usually in the first line) that i don't understand, and i give up. but not this time: Pauline has kindly agreed to coach me long-distance and to do so here. so if any of you at any point want to either add your expertise to hers, or alternatively learn to make a coat together with me, that's the place to go. I warn you, though, be prepared to see/hear some seriously dumb questions ('there is no such thing as a dumb question', says the patient but tired teacher's voice inside my head, 'oh yeah? try me!).

polaroid

on authorship

a while ago i wrote about quoting sources, and this week Marc asked me to no longer add his name to the photographs that i post on this blog (mind you, i'd stopped doing that anyway, but more out of laziness than anything else and assuming that you all know the really good ones are his) because, as he says 'although they were taken by my hand with my camera, they are never the photographs i would have chosen and you combine them in your own way'. i've been thinking about this, how it adds a whole new dimension to the idea of authorship. he says those photographs are mine, not his. so apparently you don't even have to click on the button to be able to claim a picture as your own. then again, would he feel that way if it wasn't his best friend and other half posting them but some unknown person on internet?

and in the end, methinks, who cares? it's all ego games, isn't it? the bottom line is still: either it's a photograph/text/sculpture/ painting that moves you or it isn't. who cares whose camera, whose eye, who clicked, and who bought the film roll?

unless, of course, it pays for the bills. but we're not quite there yet. in the meantime, i like to think of us as a joint venture. in more ways than one.

chinoiserie

the craft

'who's the old witch?' i asked. turns out it's me. with a well-filled baby-sling. trying to capture a confused yellow buttery flower (it's October, it's too late, go back underground!!) with a polaroid camera. 'aaaah! now i remember'.

this is not a post about polaroids or buttercups. this is a post to say that the writing bug has caught up with me again and i decided to join the NaNoWriMo. Yes, world, be prepared: novel number two is on its way (what happened to novel number one? some of you may wonder. please not to wonder).

how did it happen this time? pretty much like the first time, which means there is a pattern here, which means my muse is consistent, which means I HAVE A MUSE, and SHE RECURS. that makes me a writer. officially.

so here is my muse's modus operandi: some autumns, i notice this sticky image in my head, a photograph, either an existing photograph or an imaginary one, which becomes imprinted on the back of my retina and simply will not leave. shortly afterwards, a piece of music becomes magically attached to the photograph. the two together act like a magnet: they attract dreams, thoughts, characters, plot lines, dialogues, and many many pieces of dried fruit.

i have to tell you, i'm looking forward to the ride.

walk

conversation

he turns to me
this man
with the eyes of my son
with the eyes of the sea

he turns to me

'the truth is the way', he says
just like that
'the truth is the way'

just like that

the curling light smoke

of
a
little
inconsequential
lie

caught out between lips and hand

'it is' say i

and extinguish
that small stubb
of shame
in the ashtray of my mind

autumn evenings

knitting on the couch, with a sleeping infant in the sling, a purring cat under one (woolen-sock-shod-) foot, Marc reading up on art history under the other. autumn music on the stereo. howling wind outside. hot yogi tea and white grapes within reach. more of these evenings to come. life at its very sweetest.

birthday gift for Isabelle's friend

finished just on time for the party, using Hillary's birdie pattern. i personally think it's very cute, but it did remind me of why it is exactly that i am not setting myself any goals involving deadlines for the time being (the stress, the stress, the stress!).

la mer du nord

my son's eyes are like the north sea: bright blue, murky green, sandy brown, dark dark grey, and many shades in between. it just depends on the day. on the mood. on the weather.

Sammy's recipe against depression

Ingredients:

for the filling:
- 3 morning pages
- 1 inner dialogue on paper between shrill unhappy voice and wise still voice
- 1 five-minute cuddle with Marc (or other loving sane person in the household)
- 1 conversation with loving sane person from outside the household
- 1 prayer to the universe, spoken out loud

for the topping:
- 1 cold shower
- 1 walk outside
- 1 'facing the challenge of tomorrow' meditation
- 1 nourishing food (optional)
- 1 nourishing piece of music (optional)

Consume all ingredients, one by one, sequentially, in any order you like. Repeat every day.

perspective

i bought this beautiful book as a gift for myself (and for one other special person) and it is even better than expected, amazing appositions of word and image, and would you believe it, on the very day it got here, i found it on the coffee table (which should really be renamed: it hasn't seen any coffee in years and has long been requisitioned as a drawing table by you-know-whom), defiled. thoroughly scratched through with blue ball-point pen (i.e. impossible to remove). she said she was just colouring it in. i threw a fit (obviously), all the while beating myself over the head for being so materialistic, and assigning such value to such unimportant things as books, while a wide-eyed child was needing my attention (this did not help the fit, or the child (obviously)). and even once the fit was over, and the wide eyes back to their still-rather-too-wide-for-comfort self, i could be heard muttering under my breath what sounded remarkably like "my pretty book, my pretty book is ruined, whaaaahhhhhh".

then a wise woman dropped by. said twenty years from now, it's the scratching on the cover that will bring tears of joy and regret to my eyes, it's the blue ball-point markings that will make it my very favourite, my very prettiest book. so i decided not to wait twenty years.