Author: lizardek

17
Feb
2008

A PLACE FOR EVERYTHING…FOR NOW

There is a weird dichotomy that goes on in my brain when it comes to living space. No matter where I’ve lived I’ve worked very hard to make my home perfect: attractive, comfortable, a place of peace where there are beautiful things to look and where everything you see as you look around you is right where it belongs. I’m one of those people who move things back to their spot if you happen to pick them up and move them a few inches off-base. My mother-in-law, while helping me spring-clean in the past, hopefully never noticed that after she...

15
Feb
2008

LIGHTENING UP

Amazing how Friday comes along all bouncy and sunny and nonchalant; all “what cryck in the neck? what? where? hey! vanilla hearts for Friday fika! Awesome, dude!” and then I got a lot done at work and I left on time and the sun was shining and we went out for sushi and it was gooood and then we went and bought a bunch of junk food and there might have been melty brie and crackers involved and then we…I mean I…oogled Viggo for an hour and a half while simultaneously fending off questions from concerned fellow watchers: “Does he...

14
Feb
2008

FLASH UPON THAT INWARD EYE

I don’t like beech trees hedges at any other time of year than spring. The dried copper-colored leaves shake in the wind; rattling like great skirts of beetle carcasses, husks clacking together. Though the sun shone today high in a pinked sky and made me happy by still being up past 5 o’clock when I finally left work, it wasn’t enough to shake my mood. Not even roses waiting for me on the table with the smiles of my family and shouts of “Happy Valentine’s Day!” have worked long enough to shake this mood loose completely. This mood that has...

11
Feb
2008

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN EXPLORING AND BEING LOST?

I got lost today on my walk. Sort of. Work was a giant stressball of crazy busyness and then I had to race home, get the kids and shove food into their faces before running out the door again to take Karin to karate. It’s 20 minutes away, in the little town of Eslöv, which has the reputation of being the most boring place in Sweden. (I actually don’t agree with that assessment, but whatever, I don’t live there, so what do I know?) Anyway, the 20 minutes means it’s not worth dropping her off and driving home again as...

09
Feb
2008

FOR FAST-ACTING RELIEF, TRY SLOWING DOWN*

It seems to make the walk go faster, when you’re on a treasure hunt at the same time. The air is warm and the sky is the sort of mottled white and blue that means it will probably be overcast by evening, though it was sunny for awhile this morning. People are out walking, with their dogs or their walking sticks or their baby carriages. We saw a family bicycling and children out playing soccer in the schoolyard. Martin’s list today consisted of: a flag something yellow a woman in a garden something that’s not the color it used to...

07
Feb
2008

AH, THERE YOU ARE

Do you ever stop and think about the fact that all the people around you, the people on the bus, or the woman riding horseback in the field by the road or the folk that wander purposefully up and down the aisles of the grocery store you’re in, ALL those people are thinking and doing and living their lives just like you? Sometimes it freaks me out a little bit. It used to freak me out a lot when I had this kind of epiphany every once in awhile in Chicago, city of 9 million plus souls. And half the...

06
Feb
2008

THUD

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’m NOT all that. Maybe I’ve been fooling myself all along. Once I thought I might set the world on fire somehow, in some small way, but right now I’m just flagging; fatigued. Maybe I need to take a closer look and face the facts: I might be neither as young nor as good as I think I am. Thought I was. Thunk. If I were a leaf I’d be spiraling down through the air toward the long decay on the forest floor. Drained of suppleness but bright in color, my deciduous heart. Anger comes first,...

04
Feb
2008

BITS OF TID

Approximately 40 minutes into The Two Towers and on the screen Frodo and Sam are leading Gollum by a length of Elvish rope loosely tied around his neck, after capturing him on their way to Mordor. Gollum is writhing and squirming and howling “It burns! It burnsss!” and flinging himself melodramatically to the ground, grimacing and crying and gnashing his teeth. Anders, Martin and I all literally sit up and look at first Karin and then each other, and then simultaneously burst into laughter. Our own little melodrama queen gazes on, completely oblivious. *** What a shitty start to another...

02
Feb
2008

WHEN YOU REREAD, YOU DON’T SEE MORE IN THE BOOK THAN YOU DID BEFORE, YOU SEE MORE IN YOURSELF

For someone as perpetually busy as I am, a weekend with no plans is both soothing and disorienting. I’m constantly torn between the need to relax and the urge to fill my time. I need the downtime, my shivering soul protests, but my brain won’t stop buzzing. Everywhere I look there is, of course, something to be done, a project half-finished looking at me reproachfully, dust bunnies prowling under the bed. The bathroom needs scrubbing and I dutifully swab the decks but my heart’s not in it. Laundry goes in, yet another load in the endless cycle. I close my...

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