Earthquake!

There was an earthquake in Stockholm last night, right here in our area. People heard something like an big explosion sometime after 1 am and some felt their buildings shake and vibrate. They started calling the police to report it. The police sent out cars and helicopters to patrol the area looking for fire or something. But there was nothing to find since it was an earthquake- a 2 on the Richter scale. How crazy is that- an earthquake in Stockholm?
I didn't hear or feel it at all. I didn't really believe it at first but it's there in the papers. Wow.

Yesterday: fighting and making up. Emotional and stormy. Once I get upset about one thing it seems to just open the floodgates for all other feelings that have been kept inside lately. Spent some time down by the water writing, which made me feel a lot better. It was really windy outside, and sunny, and sitting in the sunshine in big gusts of wind immediately cleared some of my cobwebs away. It's hard to feel completely miserable in that kind of wind.

I remembered how I have often had different rocks to go sit on and sift through my thoughts and let myself feel how I really feel for awhile and stare into space. There was a rock down by the water at home, it seemed made for thinking and retreating to. A short walk down the road and then I would perch there, sometimes dangling my feet in the water or picking up periwinkles to look at. It's funny how habits I had as a kid still resurface with me now. I hadn't realized it, but I have several places down on the rocks here that serve exactly the same purpose. Just the thought of "going down to the rocks for awhile" suggests retreat, pause, temporary escape into my own world.

This reminds me of something I was reading on artist Keri Smith's blog the other day about re-creating spaces we made for ourselves as children. Spaces where we can feel safe to play, experiment, and create outside of the usual world requiring products, explanations, justifications. One of hers as a child was a fridge box she cut windows in and coloured, etc.

I made tons of these spaces for myself, with my sisters and friends or by myself: fort, camps, hideaways. I made them in the woods, and under apple trees, and in the woodpile, and in tall grass, and at the beach among the rocks and in my room by hanging sheets up everywhere and pinning them together with clothespins. Some were elaborate, with many rooms having different moods, purposes, or themes. Some had only the bare essentials of something resembling walls: branches woven together, lines of rocks and seaweed, stacks of wood with towels hanging across them...It almost always had to do with making some kind of space one could be inside, no matter how makeshift. A space where you made your own rules, were busy with things you wanted to do. And once it existed, it was REAL. It took on a secretive, magical, cozy feel.

Even as a teenager I still did this, but in a more complex way: twice I gained access to "abandoned" buildings and worked for weeks with friends and my sister Eva to clean out the rooms full of junk so we could then make them into our own space. One was "Jamie's warehouse" up on the hill, an abandoned furniture factory in which everything smelled of sawdust. The other was later, when I was 17 or so; it came to be known as The Hangout. It was the most elaborate of all. It was an old cottage on our property which my father had used in the 70's to shape surfboards in, and later to build boats in. We cleaned out huge amounts of junk and then set about painting floors, putting up art, acquiring furniture from yard sales. We used it as a studio for making things, a party cabin, and a place to sleep in the summer. It was, at that age, a great, great thing to have such a space of our own.

Anyway..I 've lost my thread. I am hungover today and fuzzy-brained. Wishing way too often that I had some cold spaghetti to eat from the pot. (This is somehow one of the best hungover foods ever. )



"Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment." ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

"oh Anna
you're a house with many rooms
and all the secrets deep entombed within you
i know a few"
-the microphones