the Village Knittiot

Time is a curious thing. Some days it seems to stretch on infinitely in a dozen directions, but more often than not it flies by so quickly that I can hardly catch my breath. This seems to be more and more the case the older I get. My husband says it is because the greater your years are, the larger your frame of reference becomes. So, the smaller increments of time begin to pale in comparison.

This morning I was reminded that the summer is more than half over. I don’t know how this happened. Or how 9 weeks could possibly have passed since I started my new job, but these are the facts.

Over the past several years, time has started to feel like an enemy. I remember being in college and suddenly realizing that there would never be enough time in my life to read all the books that I wanted to experience. This train of thought snowballed from there and I felt remorse at all the years I had been so relaxed, all the mediocre movies I had seen more than once, the lazy summer afternoons in high-school where I could think of nothing better to do than lay in the shade of our porch and smoke until my mother came home from work.

And the pressure that I began feeling — to accomplish something, make things happen, build a life, read more books, create more, figure out who I am, etc. — has become almost an obstacle. When faced with blocks of time there is a sense of paralysis as I try to decide what will I do with all this precious time. There are usually 15 things and a million, and sometimes, I spend the entire amount of time switching indecisively back and forth between them — poke at my GRE study, pick up my novel, get sidetracked by a comic book, try to do some research on the web, attempt to write a blog post, get distracted by other people’s blogs — and then my time is up and I have not done any of those myriad of things to a point of satisfaction.

Meanwhile, the time goes whipping by me and there is this pervading sense of dissatisfaction. I stare into the past and try not to get bowled over by the future. I try not to imagine my life away and measure out my days with numbers — of books, school years, children, knitted items, writing projects, etc. Alfred Prufrock is always rumbling around in my head and for god’s sake, I just wish he would dare and shut the fuck up about it.

A few months ago I read an interview with the author Kazuo Ishiguro in which he talked about why he had decided to focus on his writing rather than doing many of the things his fellow authors do — teaching, writing screenplays, contributing to magazines, speaking in public, and so forth. He said he had realized that he had x number of years left before he wouldn’t necessarily produce anything else of value and that if he focused, he would have x number of books. It seemed so final to me. X number of years, x number of books, death. How do you stay in this moment and allow time to stretch out infinitely in either direction and embrace an entire lifetime right now? How do you plan for the future and still be mindful of exactly where you are at this minute?

This morning in my inbox was an e-mail from Amy Krause Rosenthal. She wrote the book Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life which some of you may remember me writing some awfully nice things about earlier this summer. It is also the inspiration for the “Encyclopedic 100 Things About Me” (B is forthcoming — who knew it would be such a troublesome letter?). In the middle of her book at a couple of points she does some really neat interactive things that tie into her website. One of them was to ask readers to submit their own “Purple Flower Moments.” If you don’t know what that is, you’ll have to read the book, or at least pick it up in the bookstore and flip to “P” and read it. Her offer was a pie to the 100th person to do so, and in good form, she followed through on it. I wasn’t the 100th person, but she so liked what I wrote that she sent me an email, which basically said, she doesn’t usually respond to the Purple Flower Moments, but that she had to tell me how much she enjoyed reading what I wrote. I am pleased beyond words. When a “real” writer likes your stuff enough to take the time to e-mail you and say so, it sort of puts a little spring in your step. Especially since I was so critical of what I wrote after I submitted it. They actually post the submissions on her website, and mine was on the front page for a few days and everytime I looked at it, I just saw only what was wrong. I think I am going to take a vacation from criticism for a little while in honor of praise.

Wonderful knitterly moments are happening these days as well. Mi madre was visiting over the long fourth of July weekend (don’t worry, I will spare you the blurry photos of us knitting in our matching pajamas — yes, we have matching pajamas, don’t ask) and the only somewhat decent local yarn shop was having an insane sale where I got 30% off enough purple Rowan cotton glace to make a sweater. The picture makes it look like stockinette stitch, but it is really moss stitch — almost as boring, but it is nice to have some mindless knitting to breakup the lace merino shawl I am still working on. This is my first project using cotton and even though some people have tried to scare me about knitting with cotton, it has actually been wonderful.

Really though, isn’t this my second sweater this year in about the same shade of purple? Perhaps it is time to branch out…

I also got my very first pair of Addi Turbos and my hands are so happy I feel as if I have a new lease on knitting. It will be a long time before I buy anything else. Brand loyalty? Only when they deserve it.

Finally, I feel I must insert a brief apology to mi profesora de espanol. I posted my (very valid) irritation with her in the previous entry without at least giving a nod to her intelligence, passion and kindness. If I had been in her position, I probably would have resorted to arbitrary acts of unassigned homework inspection too in an attempt to get the ninos perezosos to do something. She turned out to be such a fantastic teacher that I wish she was teaching my next section — which starts at the end of August, but has a less crazy schedule.

Anyway, more later. It’s nice to be back…