My mental circus, inside and out.

It's that time again when we desperately search for hope amidst the cynicism of our national politics.  Two must-read articles:  McCain's courageous and principled stand against torture and Ron Rosenbaum's excellent defense of Obama in the hand-over-heart controversy.

Posted by: EmmaPele at November 16, 2007 19:43 | link | comments

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The gloom has settled down on the Michigan landscape, yet there is still much to love about autumn here, including the yellow maple that hasn't yet shed its leaves. Ok, so Emma, sans car, has been spending a lot of time at home, and thus has become obsessed with interior design blogs.  Like really obsessed with stuff like the Florence Knoll womb chair and the Yanagi butterfly stool and flying vee shelves.  The space is very nice here at home anyway, without any more or any less stuff, but Emma is feeling hands-on creative, tired of academic abstractions.  She has probably never said this, but she used to upholster furniture for a living.  She's taken chairs down to their springs and built them up from there, and sometimes she gets to missing this kind of work, resurrecting something that's spilling its innards and  looks like it's ready for the garbage dump.  Something about that economical rebirth.  Everything outside is getting ready to go dormant for a few months, though that has a kind of spare beauty too.  But Emma is afraid of that pull towards hibernation.. you can feel it sucking you out like a riptide, and you're flailing and flailing against going down into that long cold sleep.  That's Michigan, you see, the heavy blanket of clouds and soon snow that make you appreciate a good down cover.  Emma's daughter and her grandson are out in the garden now, their hands in the soil on this last semi-warm day, to plant the bulbs, always that promise that something beautiful is going to come up, that you're going to live that long.  Emma's friend tells her about seeing an elderly neighbor being carried out on a stretcher. . . the last thing she saw was those flowers she'd planted, watched them fading away, fading out.  Our many  longings for and attachments to these fragile things.  Like beautifully designed scarlet womb chairs.

Posted by: EmmaPele at November 13, 2007 05:00 | link | comments (2)

So in July, Emma gave her car to her son, thinking she'd go down to the dealer and get a new Honda Civic.  Three months later, Emma still does not have a car.  She discovered that walking or bike riding to work every day was extremely enjoyable, since the path is mostly through the woods and along a river.  When groceries are needed, she borrows a car from one of her kids.  And she really doesn't have much of a social life, and if she did want one, she'd have people over.  So then she began to think, wow, this is saving me a ton of money plus reducing my carbon footprint.   Emma is going to see how long she can go, once the snow starts pilng up.  She really doesn't have any particular desire to have a car yet, but who knows when the weather gets really crappy.   And she supposes that next summer she might get restless for a car, have that freedom just to take off to the dunes or the lakes.  But it is amazing how little Emma really needs what she has always considered a necessity.  What else does she think she needs, but really doesn't?

Posted by: EmmaPele at November 02, 2007 18:36 | link | comments (3)