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Archives for July 2011

The best thing about going out is walking home afterwards

July 29, 2011 by Susanne 1 Comment

Really. That’s always my favorite part. When I go out, to a concert usually, sometimes to meet people, or go to a restaurant, afterwards I take the train back, and it usually takes some time, and then after that I walk home.

Where I live now I have a ten to fifteen minute walk from the station, depending on which train station I get off. Usually it’s the fifteen minute walk because that means the train ticket is much cheaper. And I don’t mind the walking.

When I still lived in Munich I sometimes walked home for hours. Sometimes on high heels. You know how that goes, you are at a party, and it’s a bit out of the way, and you think you just walk to the nearest subway station instead of taking the bus because there aren’t that many buses in the middle of the night, and then when you arrive at the subway station the subway has just left, and that means you’d have to wait for twenty minutes, and so you decide to walk to the main station which is only thirty minutes away, and when you are there you decide that it wouln’t make much of a difference if you walked all the way.

Of course it helps if there’s someone walking with you. You talk and walk, two things that go together very well. But I also like walking alone.

There are women out there who don’t walk anywhere when it’s dark outside. For them each shadow must hold something evil ready to leap out at them. In all my years walking home after going out nothing has ever happened to me.

It’s usually pretty quiet then, there aren’t many people or cars around, and I can just walk home, think about the evening, maybe listen to some music on the way. Walking home makes a great transition between the buzz of the city and going out, and the quiet of my home.

My husband and I have taken to go to these free improvisation concerts lately. They start early, at 8, and they don’t last all that long so every time we go we plan to go for a beer afterwards. There’s a really great brewery next to the place where the concerts are; perfect.

And each time so far both of us just went out of the concert place, up the stairs, and then walked to the train station instead of taking the subway. We both declared that we’d rather go home soon. That meant walking for fifteen minutes to the train station, waiting for the train, taking the train, and then at the other end walk fifteen minutes again.

We have our best conversations while walking, and especially when walking home. Usually we then change from jeans to sweatpants, open a beer each, and talk some more but really, walking home is the best.

Filed Under: life

Sitting, waiting, wishing

July 28, 2011 by Susanne 2 Comments

I spend a huge amount of my day sitting around and waiting. Waiting for my son to leave for school in the morning, then waiting for my husband to come to breakfast, waiting for my son to come back from school, waiting for work to start, waiting for students, waiting for phone calls, waiting for the time that I finally have time for myself, waiting for that miraculous space in my head that will enable me to make art at last, waiting for the weekend, waiting for Monday, waiting for my life to pass by.

Waiting for the time I lose weight, waiting for the time I suddenly get a grip on my life, waiting for the night so I can get some sleep – the list goes on and on.

And while I’m waiting I’m sitting in front of the computer, reading blogs, checking e-mail, reading and writing on ravelry, checking twitter. I sit there and tell myself that later I’ll surely do something productive, finish writing that knitting pattern, play the piano, sing a bit, finish sewing that skirt, edit that story. And then the next student comes, and I teach, and part of me waits for the lesson to be over, and then comes the time I’ve been looking forward for hours, the one hour of glorious free time that I have all to myself, and I’m all set to do, whatever, one of the things that are so important to me, only first I’ll check e-mail, and twitter, and ravelry, and then I have to go to the bathroom, and then I get hungry, and then there are only ten minutes left, and there’ll be another glorious opportunity, two hours later anyway.

It’s not that I don’t get things done at all. It’s just that a lot of my time and energy goes into the internet equivalent of watching soap operas. And all the time I fool myself, I list the things that I achieve, and it sounds mightily impressive until you see me sitting here on this chair all day long, looking into my monitor.

“I don’t have time for that.” I say. And I’m right in a way but in a different way this is like my son telling me that he has no time to pick up his room because he has to watch his favorite show on TV. Because there are only 30 minutes in an afternoon, aren’t there?

So for quite some time now I have been fighting this feeling that I’m just waiting until my life is over. Until my husband is dead, or my son has moved out, or something. It’s like I’m waiting for some magical transformation of my life, and then, at that point, I will emerge from all the waiting with my life suddenly just the way I’ve always imagined it.

I started to meet with a bunch of other women who meet every other week to help each other reach their creative goals. The last time I went there I told them that it’s not the time that I lack. It can’t be because I have two hours each day to waste on the internet. And one of them said, “Only two hours? But weren’t you the one who put a timer on her router?” Yep. That was me. The timer cuts me off from the internet between 10 pm and 8 am. I also disabled the wireless so I have to be near the ethernet cable to go on-line. Still, that leaves me with a lot of hours to spend sitting in front of the monitor, doing nothing productive.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the internet, and e-mail, and ravelry in particular but the question is how I feel after a day of checking in with my imagenary screen-friends, when I haven’t sung or played, or written, or picked up my bedroom.

So each day I try again, I kick myself in the butt, pick up after myself, exercise, do something productive on the computer, tear myself away from the screen to live my life here, in the moment, right where I am. I turn the computer off, I pull the ethernet cable out, I carry my laptop to the kitchen where I can’t connect to anything but myself. And then I hope that this day I will manage to spend my time with something else but sitting, waiting, and wishing.

(I know that “Sitting, Waiting, Wishing” is the title of a Jack Johnson song, and when I first heard that I instantly thought that line describes my life very well at the moment. I did have to look up the lyrics, though (not the chords by the way, interestingly I know those almost by heart by now) and the rest of the song does not have much to do with me.)

Filed Under: creativity, life

Story of the Month – Kissing Edith

July 26, 2011 by Susanne Leave a Comment

It has been a while since I last did a story of the month, I know. Not because I didn’t write any, mostly because there was something or other I wanted to fix on each of these stories before posting it. Sometimes because only half the story is on the computer, the other half I wrote into a notebook. And then there’s this one story that might turn into a novel – 18,000 words into it it has barely begun.

This one I wrote not for the monthly meeting of our writer’s group but for something called an Anti-Slam. I was quite nervous beforehand. We had a time limit, not more than 10 minutes of reading, I didn’t quite know who would be there, and how they would respond to my stuff. And then there’s always the strangeness of being a German who writes stories in English. That made me insecure as well. I was the last to read that evening. I usually like to go first. So there’s nothing to compare me to, and I get it over with. But not this time.

Kissing Edith

I met her in a class on the peoples and cultures of Nigeria. It was one of those classes that are always full to the brim at the beginning of the semester, with only three students left at the end. I don’t really know if she stayed. She was sitting next to a friend, tall, dressed in khaki pants and a tight tee, her skin tanned and smooth, and her hair – dark blonde and very short. She seemed calm, and strong, and competent – all things that I longed to become. One day.

I did meet her again, at university big band. Me, sitting in the back with half a dozen other singers while the band played one instrumental after the other, and her, standing in line with the other saxophone players, most of them male. She wasn’t bad, not bad at all, a woman who managed to look elegant and graceful in wide pants and sneakers.

So we met twice a week for half a year at least, maybe longer. I don’t recall for how long exactly, this was back in the days when I was young and naive, only a few years out of school. She had a nice smile but she didn’t talk much – unlike me – and she had this sparkle in her eyes.

Back then, I was living from drama to drama, a budding jazz singer drifting from boyfriend to boyfriend. There was always the love of my life, just out of reach.

Though we talked here and there, we never had coffee. I would have liked to know her better but she was always with a friend, and always on her way to somewhere else.

The class on Nigeria went on. The following semester she wasn’t there anymore. Asked about it she said that she didn’t study cultural anthropology anymore. She still came to band rehearsals. Then she didn’t. My life changed, and it didn’t, always drama, always upheaval, always the elusive boyfriend, and always singing jazz.

I met her again, one night, at the jazz club. That jazz club, you know. Apparently she was working there at that time. She sat at the entrance, selling tickets, and we talked a bit. There wasn’t time, much, because of the other people behind us.

I don’t remember who went with me that night. Or which band played. It might have been that one time that weird New York hard bop band was playing. Or not.

Later that night she served drinks. Once she had a little break she sat down at our table. We talked. She was looking as stunning as ever. „I’m going to Linz to study jazz.“ she said. I asked her about the earring she was wearing on the left. „That’s Hekate’s double axe.“ she said, „It’s a feminist symbol.“ And she smiled, that charming smile of hers. Looking at me with a kind of sparkle in her eyes.

„Oh, feminist. I like that.“ I said.

I didn’t get it at that time. In fact it took me years. You know, that double axe is not really a feminist symbol alone.

I was young and naive. That’s my excuse.

These days that I’m neither. I wonder.


Filed Under: story of the month, writing

Sunday evening

July 24, 2011 by Susanne Leave a Comment

It’s gray outside, and almost raining. I bet this was the rainiest July in decades. It has also been the busiest July, and I can’t quite point my finger on a reason for that.

I’m feeling completely exhausted with one more week to go until summer break. I hope next week will get a little less busy.

These days I’m even too exhausted to knit or spin much. Or blog.

As usual it’s only a lot of small things. Bake a cake, go to a party, bake another cake, housework, students, teaching, exercise, move things from one place to another, meet people, meet some more people, talk to people on the phone, talk some more.

I’m really looking forward to summer break which is probably a mistake because I usually don’t like summer break.

On the bright side I’m reading lots of books, I’m exercising, I’m making music every day again, the never-ending turtleneck of doom is growing. I’m even thinking that I might finish it some day.

I think next week I’ll post the last story I wrote.

I know there’s a reason why I usually only post pictures in July but this year there was such a lot of rain.

 

See you.

Filed Under: life

Handgemacht – Folge 15: Tour de Fleece

July 4, 2011 by Susanne 4 Comments

http://creativemother.de/audio/Handgemacht15.mp3

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

  • Tour de Fleece
  • Knitmore Girls

Gestrickt und gesponnen habe ich:

  • Ebony Turtleneck Vorder- und Rückenteil fertig, erster Ärmel Schulterkugel fertig, ruht,
  • Keltischer Sommer Socken, ganz fertig, fehlt noch das schicke Foto und Fertigstellung des Musters,
  • “Irgendwie Türkisch“, zweiter Socken bis fast zur Ferse fertig,
  • Sock Leftovers Blanket, ein halbes Dutzend kleine Quadrate mehr,
  • Mossy Turtle, ruht.
  • Spider Socks angefangen, der zweite ist schon fast fertig.
  • melierte Merino-Seide auf der Bosworth Featherweight unverändert
  • Farbverlaufswolle weiter gesponnen, lange noch nicht fertig
  • Polwarth von The Painted Tiger erste Spule fast fertig, genauso wie das Mal davor

Es wurde sonst noch erwähnt:

  • Abby Franquemont

Das große Tour de Fleece-Projekt:

  • ein Kilo “Indian Summer” auf meiner Bosworth Midi zu Wolle für den “Wiseheart Sweater” verspinnen.

Gesamtmenge:

indian summer 2

flauschig:

indian summer 1

die Spindel nach dem ersten Tag:

TdF2011-1

und nach dem zweiten:

TdF2011-2

Filed Under: crafts, Podcast

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Handgemacht mit iTunes abonnieren

Subscribe to know when Susanne’s next book comes out

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Manic Writing & Such

500words-150w

Archives

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  • blogging about blogging (21)
  • blogher (1)
  • changing habits (53)
  • crafts (55)
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  • reading (9)
  • Rhiannon (5)
  • script frenzy (2)
  • self-help (40)
  • sewing (7)
  • spinning (31)
  • story of the month (13)
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