Dora is grateful that I have bought her this nice springy dog bed. They do actually make raised dog beds, on legs, just like this, but why have one of those when you could have a trampoline to lounge upon instead?
We have a new game that consists of her giving me, very nicely, this orange ball, then coming to me when I call her and sitting. I toss the ball to her, and she catches it and retreats to the daybed. After a little hard-to-get, she lets me have the ball again and we repeat this exercise. I started doing it as an impulse-control lesson ---- she really really really wants the ball, and her impulse is just to launch herself after it, even if it's still in my hand. So sitting instead is a real exertion of self-control, which is the point. She's quite quickly learned to respond by sitting instead of jumping, and I'm proud of her. Now to figure out more ways to apply the same idea in different situations, because one of her enduring behavior problems is, in fact, jumping on people in excitement (once she's finished barking at them, which is the whole other thing I'd love to solve but have not yet solved --- that and her over-the-top hatred of other dogs).
The younger set of progeny arrived home sometime early this morning. I was awake enough to hear their quiet feet on the stairs --- remarkably, Dora didn't bark at them. I guess she really does know that they belong here, at least part of the time. I haven't yet seen them today, but did get up and make some blueberry baked oatmeal, which I'll leave sitting out for people to eat as they emerge.
Today I need to finish an essay draft, and I should really turn up and read some poetry submissions at the magazine, before I fall off that map entirely. AND I persevere with Emily Dickinson, who's now 21 and writing to her brother Austin a lot, but less to Abiah Root. In her late teens and early twenties, she seems to distance herself from some longtime friends, or they distance themselves from her, largely, I think, owing to their having made public Christian commitments which Dickinson could not bring herself to make. I don't think that this points to Dickinson as an atheist (she seems emphatically not to have been an atheist) or even really a free-thinker, though her thoughts ranged widely. What I really think it points to is a kind of rationalist Christianity that posited heaven and earth as binaries, opposite poles, instead of an integrated sacramental whole. When ED speaks of her friends' making these commitments of faith ("joining the church," by which is meant the Congregational Church in Amherst), she often invokes the language of bidding the world farewell, and of her being unable to bring herself to do so. I suspect that faith would have come to her more easily, with less emotional torment, had she not felt pressured to choose between the creator and his creation --- if the faith on offer had permitted her to love creation, as she ardently did, for love of the other, which it seems to me that her intensely loving heart was made to do. To turn to an internalized, abstracted faith would have felt to her like a prison sentence, and it's no wonder that her mind rebelled. The Christianity available to her, and pressed upon her, especially in her year at Mount Holyoke, did not promise at all to set her feet in a spacious place.
Anyway, her letters present her marvelously as a person of intense feeling for everyone and everything, and intense interest in everything, of ardent delight in learning and being. She doesn't strike me as a conscious rebel, just as a person wholly alive and glad to be alive --- and reminded of the goodness of being alive by the deaths that attend so many of her letters. Death kept everyone company in the nineteenth-century world, and his long shadow, dark as it was, made the world's brightness all the brighter for its brevity.
So, I'm going to read more today, as well as polishing off this essay and, I hope, conversing with my dear offspring whenever they shall arise from their well-earned slumber.
Wearing:
*Wool& Fiona dress (M) in Teal, bought November 2022
*Secondhand Birkenstock Mayaris, bought April 2024
This isn't really an outfit as such, just a dress and shoes, tossed on and stepped into with no particular forethought. The nice thing about a dress and shoes, though, is that you sort of look as though you did try. This dress was close to the bottom of the closet shelf, and it's been a good while since I last wore it (April 22, as it happens).
This dress is another good candidate for my Norway travel capsule. I took it last year and wore it a lot. It's comfortable, as are my swing dresses, but the elastic waist with the flare of the skirt elevates it just a little, which makes it particularly nice for city wear (though it's great for walks in mountains, worn under a pullover and jacket, and on beaches, too). Today's high is 80F, with intermittent sun and rain and lower temperatures tonight, around 50F. Seems like a good day for 3/4-length sleeves, which are also great for temperature fluctuations when I'm traveling. I wore this dress all through last summer, despite thinking that it would be too warm, and I imagine it will see a similar level of action this year as well.
I'm ten days into my May no-buy (coincidentally, we're ten days into May itself . . .) and not minding it, though of course I continue to notice things I like. It's good to have this reminder that truly, I am not hurting for clothing options. Yes, I wore this dress all last year. Yes, funnily enough, though trends move on, this dress still looks fine this year, and I still look fine in it. The more things change, the more it's perfectly fine for things to stay the same. Actually, this year, I'm appreciating that I've lost a few inches here and there since last year and am fitter, which makes the same clothes fit differently and, I think, better. That's the kind of change I can get behind, because it represents health and strength and endurance, the ability to do more of what I love to do.
On that note, I think I might jump on the trampoline a little before I let the dog out and settle down to my day's work.
BY THE WAY:
Here's my friend Shemaiah Gonzalez on packing light for travel of any kind. As you've no doubt seen, my travel capsule wardrobes are a little different, mostly because I don't take much in the way of separates, just dresses that I wear to do everything. I should probably reiterate that I don't wear dresses (mostly) for religious or moral reasons or anything like that. I just honestly find them easier and, 99% of the time, far more comfortable than trousers and tops. Witness, again, my whole travel wardrobe for Norway last year.
I've added photos of my actual packing, too, for further illumination. This year I'll take the soft day pack as my "personal item," rather than the open-top bag, since depending on the plane, this day pack too will stow under the seat in front of me, with my backpack. I did do that on the way home, and it was a lot easier to arrange things, taking some of the pressure off the backpack to hold it all (especially once we had added three bottles of duty-free aquavit to the equation). AND I'm not taking bulky full-sized hiking boots, just my Xero barefoot hikers, which will pack very flat in the shoe pocket.
Just a month and a week till we leave for Bergen, so you can expect a LOT of ruminating on packing between now and then.