spider season

Posting once a season whether I need to or not!


The rains have returned, and with them a lot of the hope that seemed lost in July and August. I went outside yesterday to sow a few seeds for winter-friendly crops, cabbages and greens, and discovered in peeking at neglected garden beds that they're not as disastrous as I feared. One of the raised beds has some sturdy parsnips growing in it; the other has potatoes and rejuvenated kale. The carrots that I left to go to seed over the summer did so, and scattered seed around their half of the bed, which is now already starting to produce tiny feathery seedlings. The everbearing strawberries take their name seriously and I brought in a heaping handful of them last night, and the raspberry canes that had all withered over the summer now have bright green, healthy leaves.


There's a lesson in this that I need to take to heart, and carry with me; Depression Brain is quick to declare that things are RUINED FOREVER but that's not what nature does. "Forever" is an awfully long time. Things change, and keep changing, and 'tis a rare wind that blows no-one any good. The rigid patterns that we declare "the right outcome" are never the only ones with value.


Spider season is a good time to meditate on that. They're some of the most maligned and ill-treated of our near neighbors, despite all they have to offer. Around here they become most visible in late August through sometime in October, plump orb weavers spinning broad webs between any plausible pair of attachment points (I've seen them suspended between power lines more than once). Things are changing, they say. We have things to accomplish before the long dark. I try to say hello and wish them good hunting when I see them. I try not to disturb their webs. They're readying to lay their eggs, wrapping up hundreds of them in a tiny silk pouch to safely wait out the winter and be ready to patrol next year's woods and fields. Many of them make a habit of tearing down and eating their damaged webs, reclaiming those proteins to be used again. They know that someone bumbling into their web doesn't mean things are ruined forever.


I should too.

Note to self: first frost at the house this year was on November 10.

The Dark Season is well and truly upon us, which means there's little to no time for doing chores outside on weekdays; the sun's rising as I leave in the morning, and well down by the time I get off the bus home. But I found a warm red coat in the by-the-pound bins at Goodwill last weekend that probably cost me about $5, and now I am considerably more visible in people's headlights when I'm walking home in the dark.

We're currently having what passes for a cold snap in Seattle, the very edge of the freezing Jetstream produced when the remains of Nuri stormed into Alaska. Of course, "cold" around here means the lows are around freezing, which really shouldn't feel like a big deal after almost ten years in/around Philly and one terrible winter in Denver. That was practically a lifetime ago, though. Sometimes I wonder if anyone I knew back then would grok what I've become. The guy I moved to Denver with probably wouldn't. If anyone would, it's probably the Badgers; I hope they're doing well. Jimmi O'Badger, if you ever google yourself, we went to school together and you knew me as Lilith - drop me a line.

The me from back then was more brittle, I think, and also trying a lot harder to front about it. I was a surly little rivethead, who would have embraced news about this "internet of things" concept out of a sense of nihilism: if you can't fight the dystopia, you might as well take grim satisfaction in seeing it coming. Now I'm... well, maybe slightly less nihilistic. Still doing optimism wrong, because now I look at that and think, "It won't be able to last, between the people who refuse to be so intensely monitored and the increasing number of people who just can't afford all those toys. And they're depending on a lot of finite resources to build and sustain that stuff anyway." Which is more comforting than living in the consumer panopticon for the rest of my life, at least.

Plans for the rest of November: pick up the pace on making solstice presents for people; haul tomatoes and peaches out of the freezer and can some stuff now that it's cold out; mow the damn lawn one more time if it's ever dry on a weekend; jury duty; friendsgiving.

"when the zombies come"

I'm pretty sure zombies have infiltrated pop culture more thoroughly than any other monster figure. They've gotten their teeth into literature. They organize flash mobs. They get runners motivated. The military plans for them. They have a lot of mojo right now.

Which is what makes "when the zombies come" such a powerful charm. Not to summon them, of course; not to bring on the apocalypse or anything of that nature. It's a ward against skeptics. It's an answer to questions that doesn't leave the speaker vulnerable. "Why would you bother to learn to [hunt/forage/smith/hand-spin]?" goes the question, with the implied "that's so time-consuming and obsolete." And a wry "When the zombies come, you'll be glad I can [find food/repair our tools/make new clothes]" soothes the skeptic, tells them It's okay, I'm like you, I believe in the same world you believe in, I'm just indulging in play. Sometimes of course the framing goes the other way and they're the ones asking for reassurance: "Can't hurt when the zombies come, huh?" as a reaction to someone learning a forgotten skill. Elaborating on the usefulness of the skill in the zombie scenario finishes the charm.

Because oftentimes answering that question seriously leads to a conversation that's exhausting and awkward. "When a pandemic scare breaks down social services" or "If the drought leads to food shortages" or "When fuel costs make it too expensive to ship cheap goods halfway across the world" are uncomfortable contingencies. They sit in that nasty place where people don't want to believe in them, but they are believable. The zombies are a "safe" disaster, the one we know won't arrive. Looking at the possibility of other disasters occurring (or worsening) and planning for them makes people uncomfortable. Why are you so pessimistic? Come on, they'll think of something! God, you're not some kind of prepper survivalist weirdo, are you?

I don't know. I'll cop to the pessimism easily. We are living, as they say, in interesting times. Climate change is an ongoing disaster all over the place. The global financial system is made up of a terrible baroque assemblage of mechanisms to make numbers get bigger, without a care for how they affect the standard of living of billions of people. The US has committed itself to repeated military engagements in the Middle East, spilling blood to ensure we retain access to oil. I don't have a lot of faith in The System to keep things running smoothly. Learning hands-on skills to take care of my immediate needs makes me feel a little better about my situation.

I have a three-hour class on spinning with a drop spindle tomorrow: one more step toward knowing how food and clothing happen without capital-I Industry. You know. In case the zombies come.

I promised you a knitting post

A million years ago. Whoops! I actually wound up making a version of it over on the author blog, but I think I still need to make a slightly different one over here.

Because it's not just that knitting is a method of soothing the part of my brain that is comforted and calmed by doing simple repetitive tasks, though that's definitely part of it. It's not just the accomplishment of having those tasks result in a tangible reward. That's part of it too, obviously.

But it's also part of the same project as figuring out how to get tomatoes to grow in a Seattle season, and nailing together a compost bin from scrapped pallets with my own hands. It's about having useful skills, about connecting my time and labor more directly to the sources of my sustenance and comfort. (There's nothing like "working" in front of a computer for eight hours to make me go "...this feeds me how, exactly?") Being able to create a garment directly from twisted threads is good for me right down to the soul. (Being able to twist the threads in the first place would be even cooler; I'm signed up to take a class on using a drop spindle this coming Saturday.)

One of my current projects is a set of densely-knitted slipper socks from Andean Folk Knits: Great Designs from Peru, Chile, Argentina, Ecuador & Bolivia, by Marcia Lewandowski. Who is just as white as she sounds, and occasionally the book veers into using-your-culture-for-tourism territory, but mostly she's pretty aware of the tendency to do that and tries to avoid it -- pointing out, for example, that no matter how romantic she finds the idea of indigenous women hand-spinning, she can't argue with their desire to save time by using commercial yarn when she herself relies on her washing machine, dishwasher, and microwave to make necessary chores move faster. So that degree of self-awareness was nice to see.

Anyway, the thing I meant to say about the book: one of the things that's been neatest for me about it is the details about how working with fiber gets integrated with other things: herders working with drop spindles while they follow their animals. Men sharpening the ends of salvaged bicycle spokes to make sets of double-pointed needles. Colorwork designs being improvised to fit the garment as the knitter works. It's a very practical making approach (which doesn't mean it's dreary in the least; the colors and patterns built into these useful items are glorious).

In contrast it feels a bit like USian knitting culture has a strain of, well... consumerism to it. Acquire the best brand-name yarns! Use the most perfect exotic fibers! Stash a monstrous hoard of yarn you will never have time to use! Follow celebrity designers and rely on their technical expertise! Buy individual patterns! Use a vast array of needles in minutely varying sizes! It's a seductive approach that I am definitely not standing outside of -- I've spent more money than I should have on yarn in the last season. And there are some absolutely lovely finished objects that come out of this stuff-focused style. But I really want to try to remind myself that there is a full suite of skills here, not limited to following patterns; knowing how and why a piece is put together a certain way are crucial. Those are the parts that would let me improvise. That knowledge lets a craftsperson produce work that is more than the sum of its inputs.

And that's a goal I'm actually reaching for.

Peace is only for the dead and the dying

When I was a teenager I had a creepy boyfriend (okay, several, but one relevant to this post) who, among his other self-aggrandizing habits, used to insist that the apocalypse was coming, that he would go down fighting in a heroic last stand against The Encroaching Darkness. (We lived in the middle of nowhere, okay. It was grand fantasies or hanging out in the Taco Bell parking lot, as far as entertainment options went.) He had a date set and everything. The date was fourteen years ago today.

So it feels somehow appropriate that my feed reader handed me a great post this morning on the apocalypse NOT coming, and the things that underlie all the dire prophecies. I'm still not optimistic about the large-scale future, but these days I'm a lot more on board with a vision like Kelly Coyne's definition of the Crappening. It doesn't have the bombast and melodrama that appeal to you if you're a teenager or a Hollywood executive, but it does have a higher survivability rate (at least as long as we're using a shorter timeline than Tyler Durden's).

And Coyne's heavy-laden burro is a comforting image for me today, in the same way that the refrain titling this post is a comforting mantra. Peace is only for the dead and the dying. You're carrying something heavy; sometimes things are rough; sometimes you have a long hill to climb. But it's okay: that's life. There are hard bits. It's going to shake you up. But you can still keep going, because that's what you do. The point is not the end of the road. The point is that you're walking.