I crave a regular creative outlet. So even though my work has kept me incredibly busy lately, I still need a bit of space for “play.” The past few days that space has been filled with a bit of artsy photography with the Hispstamatic filter. I know it’s awfully trendy of me (it seems like everyone on twitter is Hipsta right now), but it’s been a great way to keep my creative juices flowing…
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the impact of “perspective” on the way we view our lives. For example, if viewed through a particular point of view, my life would look like this:
-i had cancer and lost my leg. i’ll never run again, and walking is often painful. people stare and say rude things to me, especially if i’m not wearing my prosthesis. the simplest of things can be hard. i fall sometimes, which is embarrassing. it’s not easy to get health insurance. it’s also quite difficult to be employed with a visible disability. everything is harder for me than for most people. the chance of me getting cancer again is high, due to the types of treatment that i had. i feel unattractive because my body is scarred and assymetrical.
Or through a different lens, I could view it this way:
-Having cancer and losing my leg hasn’t held me back in any significant way. I’m still healthy because I can exercise and eat well. I have medical insurance that allows me to buy hi-tech prosthetics to increase my safety and agility. Having a disability helps me to meet more people than I would otherwise, and has enriched my life as a result of a wider-ranging social circle and new opportunities. There’s rarely anything I can’t do if I put my mind to it and try hard. I have a good parking space nearly everywhere I go & strangers tend to help me if/when anything goes awry with my leg.
My days tend to be a mix of both ways of viewing my life. Sometimes I get stuck in feeling sorry for myself, and other times I feel as though I could conquer the world. I think I tend to the latter perspective–life feels very fragile and brief, so I don’t want to fritter it away feeling bad about the ways things have turned out for me.
This video is so chock-full of great amp-humor, I hate to even write much to accompany it. Those who know me well will really “get it.”
Last night I got out my bike and went for a ride. It’s been a really long time since I’ve ridden, and I have good excuses for not riding: most of all, that my current prosthetic leg tends to come off after about half a mile of pedaling.
I only went about 1/3 of a mile when my chain locked on me. I had to walk the bike home. But I persisted–I riffled through John’s bike supplies and found some chain lube, which I applied liberally. Then I spun the wheels round and round until they stopped sticking. Then I got on and cautiously (just in case the chain froze again) went back and forth between my place and my garden. Then I wheeled up and down the nearby hill and did donuts in the parking lot.
I was pretty oblivious to anyone around me as I was biking in the dark. And I suppose I did look rather strange on my red tricycle in the dark, smiling from ear to ear. So when a car-full of college kids sang out to me as they drove slowly past me in the parking lot, I was rather startled at first. They intoned the slightly-altered chorus of a Queen song, “I want to ride your tricycle….” (btw, I do love me some Queen). I suppose they might’ve meant it rudely–after all I was quite an odd sight out there. But I took it as a compliment. :)
After I got home I realized that I haven’t really biked much at all since my surgery two years ago. My lower leg was burning a bit around my incision, which wasn’t an entirely-comfortable feeling. I suspect that there some scar tissue in there that’s getting a good stretch.
But it feels great to be back on three wheels again. I’ll be getting a tweak to my leg soon that will hopefully solve the falling-off problem, so I hope to be biking more often from here on out! :)
Just finished handwriting my first letter to John in Seattle (where he’s studying SF writing this summer). But before I wrote to him, I read through many of the weekly letters that I sent him while he was in Japan on his LDS mission. He left for two years just shortly after we met. Those 20 year-old letters are so embarrassingly sappy to me now, and have moments of discomfort that make me cringe. How do you negotiate sensitive topics while halfway around the globe from each other, with a lag of weeks between correspondence (we weren’t allowed to talk on the phone, nor could we have afforded it)? There was so much unsaid, so much reading between the lines…so much wondering who we would find when we reunited…
And even though we have many ways of keeping in touch now–it’s still gonna be one long summer apart from my love :(
Picture above was taken the Sunday before John left for Japan, following his missionary “farewell” meeting at church. We were so silly & dramatic back then!
Methinks that if GameBoy takes a pic with the Yeoman Warders when we’re in England next month, he might just be taller than they are :)
(Oh, how I miss my cuddly little boy, and oh how I adore the one who now looks down at his mom!)
My plans for this trip had to change at the last minute, due to my confusion over the ferry schedule back to Seattle. So instead of an extra day to explore Vancouver Island, I gained a day to explore Seattle (how odd that it is, really, considering that in just a few days, John will be settling into making this city his new temporary home…). One of the joys of such a spontaneous change is that I was able to quickly make contact with a Seattle blogger that I’ve followed for several years. She and I shared a friend in Sara, but have never met. We also share a love for gardening and the Japanese culture, as well as experience with cancer.
The change in travel plans has meant less time as a tourist—I never did even make it to a tea shop in Victoria—but more time talking with fellow travelers at my conference. Last night I ended up sharing dinner with a woman that I’d just met, after we learned that we had children of similar ages and temperaments (and we’d bought similar take-home gifts in the UVic bookstore). As we walked on we realized that both of our spouses build/manage databases and we also share a passion for 19th-century women’s history. Sharing a cab to the ferry this morning I had similarly provocative conversations with scholars from California,New York, and Illinois.
As I write this, I’m looking out over the rolling waters of the Juan de Fuca strait and dreaming about paddling those waters someday. My very small taste of the Pacific Northwest & Vancouver Island has me convinced that this is a place to return to again soon. A place that I could even call home someday. But even more than the connection that I’m finding to the cities and structures of the area, I’m feeling full of the conversations and connections that’ve emerged in the past few days. I’m coming home full of ideas and possibilities, ready for even more such experiences at the conferences coming up in July, and for my research projects.
I’m working on gathering the statistical information for the maps that I’m making this week, and I just encountered the image above in a scanned googlebook from the 1870s. It actually gave me the creeps–like those goosebumps that I get on the back of my neck when there’s an odd breeze blowing through an empty room. And it sort of reminds me of the creepy nineteenth-century spiritualist images, too…
PS: The bunny reference has to do with the overabundance of the creatures on this campus. Being very careful of the ones with fangs, I promise!
There are parts of my life in which I’m extremely old-fashioned, and others that I’m completely hi-tech. For example, I’d choose a turn-of-the-last-century house, a vinyl album, and vintage clothing over the same items new. But I’m an early adopter of most social technologies–first using BBSs, email, geocities, and listservs back in the early 90s, blogging for nearly a decade, and now an avid twitterer.
I don’t see much of a pattern in my proclivities. But it does seem that I prefer old *things* and I prefer new *methods.* So my car is 13 years-old and my laptop is seven and my SIGG bottle wears its battle scars proudly. But I usually know whatever the “new big thing” is on the web, follow twitter trending topics avidly, and enjoy discussing the latest tech news.
The old and new are on my mind today because I’ve gotten several comments lately about the fact that this blog still lives on blogger (an artifact from the day when blogspot.com was the latest shiny tool). I’ve actually re-built this site several times on wordpress, and yet each time I’ve started the process of migrating the content, I’ve changed my mind. It’s likely that I’ll actually move forward with it soon, as part of my online portfolio project–but it’s hard to move on from a space that’s been ‘home’ for so long. It feels like that comfortable pair of jeans that just keeps emerging from my closet even though it’s well past time for them to become quilting materials.
Picture above shows the bunnies congregating at the University of Victoria
Yesterday I sailed away from the United States and entered Canada. This is my first trip to Canada that was more than a day-long jaunt or a layover. I love the variety accents. There were French-speaking teens surrounding me on my ferry ride. The restaurants give me “evidence” rather than a credit card receipt. It is not cold here, but it did rain yesterday.
Perhaps the best part of my travels is meeting several online friends in real life–I especially appreciate the ‘taxi’ service from @leisurelyviking and @jcmeloni. Traveling tends to reaffirm the faith I have in the connectedness of our world, as well as the deep-down beauty of stranger-friends.
I am here for an intensive summer workshop. I’d kind of forgotten what it feels like to be a student and take lecture notes. But it’s all coming back very quickly…And I love that my instructor’s recent research focuses on literary journeys through the Lake District of northern England. I am now scheming a jaunt to that region either before or after my conference in London next month. Such scenery. Such history. Such adventure! :)
PS: This journey marks my first out-of-the-country trip on my own. Also, my first by-myself ferry ride.
This past few months have been full of unknowns for me and my family. For example, we learned that there was a strong chance that our apartment would be demolished this summer, but were given no certainty or specific timetable for that event. A few months ago I’d also received word that a job offer was imminent from Chapman University, but then time marched on with nothing concrete happening on that front. And so forth…
Well, many of those unknowns have recently become decided. Our apartment will not be demolished but my beloved community garden (also on university property) will. I received my formal job offer this Friday. I also learned that I received funding to travel to an international conference in England later this summer, and the issues with my health insurance company were recently resolved in my favor. And I received word that I earned only one fellowship to support my studies this next year (at the Huntington Library–lucky me!).
Whew, there’s something so very comforting about having fewer unknowns looming on the horizon. I like to think of myself as someone who sees the world in a rather rosy light, but there are times when things seem so uncertain that it’s difficult to not let that overwhelm me…and eclipse my daily joys.
Last night I sat in the garden with two dear friends and started remembering all of the stories that are held in that soil. There are memories from when my kids were small and we saw fairies in the dew that gathered at the joints of the cornstalk leaves. There are times with sunflower houses, bean teepees, spontaneous potlucks, and BLACKBERRIES. There are bumblebees and gophers and rats and those damn peach-thieving squirrels. There are plants that just keep growing, and some that don’t make it after all. There’s mud and sweat and tears. There’s silence and birdsong. There’s the smell of lavender at dusk. And there is knowing that no matter where I go, I will always have a garden.
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There are so many unknowns with travel, so many connections to make (or not make). And I’m afraid. So much could go wrong!
Here are the three of us in Rheims, France. We’re behind the Basilica de St Remy, just after the Jean d’Arc parade in 2004. Isn’t the lavender gorgeous?