paisleypiper's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- building happiness This weekend, I kept noticing how tightly composed all of the elements of my weekend were. It has been a great weekend. Happy. On Saturday, sitting in a mediocre restaurant I noticed that I spontaneously volunteered that I was an under-achiever but that I was a happy person and did not want the stress of a major job. The description of myself and happy, together in a sentence, rolling out of my big mouth, made me even happier. Productive. Last night I made large silver gelatin prints of my series which I call Urban Renewal. The photographs look through old shells of buildings at new �infill� development. Kind of like going from Kansas to OZ, but I have a certain bias towards the old that comes across in my photography. Plotty I talked on the phone to a neighbor about how out of hand Citizen Gerta has become, telling city officials that whole blocks of our neighborhood need to be completely destroyed due to blight and substandard small houses. Who needs a neighborhood president who doesn�t like the houses in the neighborhood? So I asked my neighbor to please run against her in January or to help me look at a way to start a new organization. I don�t want to sit on a prospective gold mine. I want to protect one of our city�s historic neighborhoods from ill-considered development that will be empty and truly blighted in twenty years. I want to live in the first historic neighborhood in this city that has small houses, not mansions. I want a lot, I know, but I am willing to chip in, when I am not feeling completely jaded, that is. Getting the binder project out of our lives.This morning, there was a wonderful This American Life on NPR about neighbors and stories about living together in difficult situations. This was a stroke of airwave irony. Quinn and I worked on assembling the first volume of the vast binder project and listened happily to program after program on our local NPR affiliate station. Until, the jazz ladies came on. This is our local program and it features two society ladies who discuss their jazz favorites and are always telling their listeners things like �this piece may scare you.� Or, �this is actually scary.� Or, �this is good piece for those of who like this kind of stuff.� It is just jazz, ladies, not a hold-up. Backyard cookout. This afternoon, Quinn and I went to a cookout at L.�s house. Recently, L. has changed her entire life � she graduated from graduate school, her partner left for her another woman, they sold their house because it was too much house for L. to afford on her own. And L. moved back home with her parents for a short while until she can buy another house. And she had a cookout with her family there. This is not something I would have done, but I do not have her family. To begin with, her mother is kind of madcap but really nice and wore matching lipstick and dress flip-flops. She was a wonderful hostess and completely happy to meet L.�s friends. L�s father is hilarious and I really enjoyed talking to him. Then there were the friends. Some of them I knew, some I didn�t, or maybe met once. I have a great memory for people and always wonder if they remember me as vividly as I remember them. Quinn only knew L. and had perhaps the same distant memory of going to the movies with two of the other women and L. several years ago when we had completely different lives. Children. Several of the women had young children who played and sat on laps � not too many tears. I enjoy watching L. with children. She is completely natural around them and comfortable and loving. She can multitask with babies in tow. She can carry on two conversations � one with the baby and one with an adult, without treating the baby or the adult like a meatloaf. I am completely uncomfortable around babies in large group situations, but in small groups, children like me. In large groups, there is an extra dose of attention of that comes with interacting with a baby that makes me shy. I once wanted to have child, when I was younger. But now I am at peace with not having a child. Sometimes I question Quinn endlessly about her experiences, perhaps as some sort of vicarious living. And peace aside, I cannot have children anyway. So sometimes peace comes when there is no point in fighting it. Instead I fuss over my friends and conceptualize my internal clock as my novel. Built for cleanness and the quiet life. L.�s parents live in the suburbs. Nice house huge yards, open space, green sort of suburbs. I must admit, it was a nice setting for a cookout. No dive-bombing mosquitoes. Plenty of places to park. No loud noises or disruptive neighbors or neighbors having more fun than the people at your event. Lots of shade and room for small and large group conversations. The environment built for today�s lifestyle and the suburban preference is so strikingly different. Sometimes I can understand why people like it. But I am comfortable with the grit of city-life. It has never seemed like an option to me to live in the wide open spaces suburbs in a big house that actually gets completely clean. Milton. Since class is so not what I had hoped as a graduate student (we are going around in circles explicating lines) I started reading How Milton Works by Stanley Fish. I love it. It is, so far, a wonderful book � much more exciting than class. And, I must admit, more exciting than the Milton I have read so far this semester. Just why that is, I do not know. It has something to do with everything else that Fish brings to his analysis. Another happy weekend. But here it is, Sunday night, and I don�t want to turn in and call it a day. I want another beer, maybe some popcorn. I�d like to watch a movie. Work some more on the binder project. I want to finish my pictures from the Baby Doe memorial and develop and print them. And then there is always Milton. Long after I am gone, and no one remembers me -- not even with plastic flowers stuck in the ground by a slab -- English grad students will say "there is always Milton." 11:14 p.m. - 2002-09-08 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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