What I control.

(Gah, my blogiversary is sneaking up on me - I think it's tomorrow - and I am sufficiently bouleversée that a blogiversary is something hard to think about right now. Maybe I will have to postpone it and do a belated blogiversary)

I'm revisiting the thing I talked about the other day. ("comfort, clean laundry, and pie." Which I think I should write out on a little card and post up unobtrusively in my office).

A lot has been made of the "new domesticity" - I remember it beginning with the upsurge in knitting, and it's just continued on through with things like the craft blogs and the books (some books better than others) that came out of the craft blogs. And the "slow foods" movement. And cocooning, which I think has been going on for at least 20 years now? I think that's when Faith Popcorn first mentioned it?

And a lot of people seemed kind of...puzzled?... by the concept of New Domesticity. I remember reading some people's interpretation, and it seemed almost a bit hysterical* - implying that women were being dragged by their hair back into the kitchen, and presumably the unshoddening and impregnation would come shortly after.

(*yes, I am using that word here ENTIRELY intentionally).

And I admit a certain puzzlement at THAT reaction. I tend to be of the "if you're not hurting anyone or doing anything immoral, I don't really care what you do" school of thought. Sure, some people would rather remove their own wisdom teeth** than bake a cake, but fine, whatever, that's them. People should be permitted to do what makes them happy (given the two caveats above). And for me, and for many other people, what makes them happy is knitting. Or quilting. And for others it's baking bread. Or building dulcimers. Or trying to recreate foods like Pop-Tarts in a healthier and home-made form. Or painting. Or making their kid's room "just so." Or whatever.

(** I actually knew a person (now deceased) who claimed to have done that when he was in the army in Korea. Apparently dentistry was not high on the agenda at that point in time, and the teeth were really bothering him. I am not sure whether to believe that or not. And as I said, he's now gone, so I can't press for more information)

I think actually part of the reason for the "new domesticity" is a desire to have control over a little corner of the world - and regardless of what some claim, much if not all of it did NOT start in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks; the resurgence of knitting was already well underway. (I know. I took knitting back up again around 1997 and already there was lots of stuff on the internet - dear old Woolworks, for example, was there, with its index of free patterns. And there were sites you could order yarn from. And there were some other pattern sites, and there was the Free Patterns Knitting Ring.)

I suspect that part of the desire to take crafts - or things like baking - or things like making a nice home - or even things like housework*** is related to two desires: first, to have a sense of control in this crazy world, and second, and relatedly, to feel a sense of mastery or skill.

(***I have a large, and rather persnickety, book called "Home Comforts" that is essentially the care and feeding of a house and its furnishings. Fascinating stuff, but I twitch at the advice about doing things like changing pillowcases daily.)

I think a lot of people in this world do kind of grasp at an idea of having control. The world can be a scary and unpredictable place, and so being able to do things like make sure the laundry is clean and there is a comfortable place to sit in the living room and that there is pie when someone's birthday rolls around - well, that's bringing a bit of order to an uncertain world.

And also, I think a lot of people do so much "virtual" work, where there's nothing to be able to point to at the end of the day and say "I made that" (and that's part of my periodical career frustration, I am sure. I need tangibility) that people want to do stuff like play instruments, or write poetry, or, heck, write blogs...so that the time they passed becomes visible, or at least can be experienced for a time (as with music, but then the tangible part is the learning, the improvement). And so they feel some sense of control in the world: putting THIS precise word exactly HERE. Building a dollhouse to your own exact architectural specifications. Going old-school photography and using film and a darkroom. We are made to use tools, and I think maybe we get a little sad when we feel too cut off from tools.

And likewise, the question of mastery: developing a skill. Being able to sort of quietly admit to yourself that you're good at something. (And sometimes, the pleasure is actually in being SECRETLY good at something; being good at something outside of your work or the other things you "must" do.) And there is also a degree of control in the mastery, too: being able to make the piano make sounds that are concordant and that (at least somewhat) match what the composer wrote out, being able to take a few yards of cloth and make a blouse, being able to take a mile or so of yarn and convert it into a sweater or a shawl. It makes you feel (well, it makes ME feel) that the world is a little less random and disturbing, and that's something I need right now.

Because. Because I got a phone call from my parents yesterday. On top of all the other stuff going on, a family friend is in the hospital with leukemia. Apparently the chemotherapy wasn't enough and they are prepping for a bone marrow transplant. And while a person can pray, that's ALL a person can do in this case. (And, well, I suppose, get on the bone-marrow registry. Though this person already has a good-match donor)

I got this news about an hour before my piano lesson. While I was perhaps a bit distracted, still, it was strangely a bit of a relief to sit down and play. Because it was all I had to think about at that moment. And I had some measure of control over it. (Though still, when I'm tired or upset about something and trying to play, sometimes my fingers will do random unwanted things, like my pinky finger losing tone and hitting a key I don't want it to hit).

And I came home and read journal articles. And you know, it really was pleasant. I just sat down and read, read about a floodplain forest in Arkansas and some of the upland forests in Georgia that are a little bit like our upland forests and I found some articles cited in those that I want to look for, and I can see that people are still using the same field techniques I learned back in the day, and the analyses makes sense and use the same techniques I plan on using.

And I was learning stuff. Learning about how the composition of southeastern forests is somewhat different from that of midwest forests (I'm primarily a prairie girl and have done comparatively little intensive study of forests). I learned that winged elm is sometimes called "wahoo" as a common name. And it made me happy, because even when data are a little bit messy and hard to interpret, still, there's something, I don't know, kind of predictable about them. Or, the fact that you don't control them doesn't matter as much...I've often said that one reason I like ecology is that getting an unexpected result, one that disproves your hypothesis, is often more interesting than actually supporting it. And leads to new studies.

And I sat and knitted on a simple pair of socks while I read, and I played some music.

I think I need to get back to listening to music more again. It's one of those small comforts of life that makes things so much better. Yes, I can make music now, but it's also nice to be able to listen to other people make it.

I pulled out one of my sets of CDs. (Yes, I still use CDs. I know lots of people who have gone entirely digital with their music files, but I still like having the physical CD. That may be partly because my old laptop suffered through two fairly catastrophic failures, including one that required "cloning" the hard drive, wiping it clean, and then getting (most) of the stuff (I lost some data from my dissertation, luckily I had other copes) back on the cleaned and fixed drive. And if I do get an e-reader - and I'm seriously considering the cheapest of the Kindle models, now that I read they've improved their interface for .pdf files - I will still keep my book-books. And certainly continue to buy book-books even as I buy or download (the older ones, for free) e-books.)

But I also like having the physical object, just because the object qua**** object can be pleasing sometimes.

(**** I once SWORE I would never use that term, because it sounds so pretentious to me, but it actually kind of works here.)

I decided I wanted to hear some Mendelssohn. I have a three-disk set of his symphonies. I bought it a while back (well over a year) from either Amazon or ArkivMusik. I had wanted a version of his Restoration Symphony and also his Scottish Symphony. What I finally chose was a Chandos set - a boxed set.

And I have to admit, I was very pleased with it when it came. Not just for the music, but for how it was packaged - a square, shiny black box made of very heavy glazed cardboard. And inside, there was the obligatory explicative booklet, and the three CDs. Each of them in its own little paper sleeve.

You have to understand. I grew up in what was still the vinyl era. Yes, my family had an 8-track player and a few tapes, and when the Walkman came out, I got (a knock-off brand of) one. But my earliest memories of recorded music - and really, my main memories of classical music and of the soundtracks/operettas my parents listened to involved records. (I remember, for example, either having my mom help me put on - or when I got older, putting on myself - the record that had the soundtrack to Sound of Music and dancing and twirling around the living room, and acting out some of the scenes from the movie. Yeah. I was kind of a weird little kid.)

So the little paper sleeves put me in mind of the records my parents had - especially the SRS BZNESS classical multi-sets, like of the Beethoven symphonies, all in their individual sleeves in the box or folder. And it made me smile, because I could see in my mind's eye where we used to keep the records (even though my parents have not lived in that house for 20 years) and how it felt to pick them up, and how there was that sort of tense moment, as a kid, when I soooooo carefully put the needle down, terrified of scratching it.

And I do think there's a pleasure - and a comfort, too - in nicely presented objects, in things that are neat and precise and maybe designed to remind you a bit of their historical antecedents (I kind of love Deutsche Grammophon's CDs, because many of them are actually printed to resemble a very small replica of a vinyl record).

And so, I will try, in these coming days and weeks, to remember that there are some things I have control over. Some things I can make comfortable and nice. And to be grateful for those things and celebrate them. And to try to let the things I don't have control over go. (I'm a lot better about doing that for things OTHER THAN THOSE which involve my work, sigh.)

oh look, it's the random maunderings tag again....