I got my hair cut, and although I like the way it looks, it reminds me of the last summer I lived in New Mexico, when I was 7 and had a similar haircut and no front teeth to speak of. I feel as though I have been partially transported back to my childhood, and have permission to do funny foolish things, like build playhouses in the hedges. Village Green, look out!
Posted by: Sally Ingraham | March 10, 2008
Transported
Posted in Non-sense, Personal | Tags: age 7, Haircut, New Mexico, teeth, Village Green
Posted by: Sally Ingraham | March 8, 2008
Spring Social
I went out with a couple of friends last night, after a very busy evening at the movies. (Everyone in Bar Harbor wanted to see The Bucket List, apparently!) There was live jazz at McKays, and although we got there late, we were in time to catch the last couple of sets. There was an upright bassist, and singer, and a saxophonist. They were pretty good.
I found myself fascinated, and a little puzzled by the bassist. Not the man himself, but his left hand making it’s way seemingly effortlessly up and down the neck of the bass, picking out a random but overall cohesive collection of notes. 
And constantly doing so, without hesitation.
I couldn’t quite comprehend how this all was done, because my own musical training is so based upon structured melody, and jazz is several steps off the sidewalk in that regard. Oddly so though, for the overall sound is pleasing and melodic, yet the individual notes are often in slight discordance.
There is probably a technique to playing the bass in a jazz ensemble, and less mystery than I am conjuring up. As I sat there last night, though, watching as much as I was listening, I took a certain delicious pleasure in my puzzlement. It is exciting to witness something that tugs you beyond your range of experience.
Jazz is fun! Jazz is like spring weather – both make you feel a little more awake and alive. We’ve had some lovely mild days with plenty of sunlight this week, and I can feel the little blossom inside me getting fatter and starting to uncurl.
As my friends agreed last night, the spring weather is making us feel remarkably social. We’ve had enough of curling up on the couch with books and DVDs. We desire lively people and laughter.
We desire jazz. 🙂
Posted in Movies, Music, Non-sense, Restaurants, Weather, Work | Tags: Jazz, McKays, spring, The Bucket List, upright bass
Posted by: Sally Ingraham | March 6, 2008
Long Way to Nairobi
My brain is still too foggy to organize much original thought, so I’ll offer up a couple of comments made by Joseph Karangathe, in order to keep this little blog from languishing too much while I get over being sick and get done moving house.
“If you just get money, it only makes you disturbed.”
I intend to put this sentiment somewhere prominent in my new room. 🙂
“It’s a long way to Nairobi. A very long way. I don’t know how I’m going to get there, but I just start walking. And someone comes along who is going the same direction. Someone picks me up on a bicycle and takes me part of the way. I get off and walk. Then maybe in the next town I meet someone who picks me up and takes me a bit further. Then I walk some more. The most important thing is that I know where I want to go – and that I just keep walking.”
– both quotes from Hope’s Edge by Frances Moore Lappe
Speaking of walking, between being sick and moving and bad weather I haven’t gotten outside to take a really good walk, camera in hand, for awhile. I miss my collecting trips. I’ll have to do something about that…
Posted in Books, Non-sense, Photography, Reading | Tags: Frances Moore Lappe, Joseph Karangathe, Nairobi, Sick, Walking
Posted by: Sally Ingraham | March 3, 2008
Sick of Bill Conti
I spent most of yesterday sleeping, while my boyfriend tinkered around the house and made astonishing amounts of food, which he would try to get me to eat any time I seemed awake enough to do so.
I was ill for the first time in almost a year, and although I can readily admit that I was not very sick, I certainly made the most of the situation. Sleeping for most of the day did seem to help a lot, and today I feel much better.
Because my boyfriend felt too lazy to figure out how to operate my iPod, he kept a steady stream of movies playing, so that he would have some noise to keep him company while his little girlfriend slept the day away. Grumpy Old Men, The Princess Bride, French Kiss, and The Thomas Crown Affair wove their way through my dozing dreams.
I appreciate the fact that he stuck to mellow movies, but now, a day later, the dashing leaping almost frantic piano score of the Thomas Crown Affair is still running through my head, imprinting itself further on my soggy, still sickly brain. Oh, Bill Conti, why couldn’t you have stuck to writing the scores for things like Rocky and other movies I don’t have any interest in seeing…?
I want to take my poor head back to bed today, but I have to work and move to my new apartment and do other things that prove again to me how far I have come from my childhood, when getting sick meant lying in bed for days on end, reading book after book after book after book…. 🙂
Posted in Movies, Music, Non-sense, Personal | Tags: Bill Conti, boyfriend, iPod, Sick, sleeping, The Thomas Crown Affair
Posted by: Sally Ingraham | February 27, 2008
Banana Chandelier
I must say, if I was clever enough to figure out how this was made, I might make one for my new apartment. 🙂 
The creator, Anneke Jakobs, claims on her web site that she will fly to wherever you live and make one for you though, so I guess I’m all set if I really want one!
I am again amazed by the things people can come up with, and the ability some have to look at a cardboard box and see it as something entirely different. Ordinary objects transformed. I love it. 🙂
Posted in Arts and Crafts, Non-sense | Tags: Anneke Jakobs, cardboard, Chandelier
Posted by: Sally Ingraham | February 25, 2008
Ten Steps to Save the Planet
I had the disconcerting experience the other day of picking up a novel to read, and then setting it aside, completely disinterested. I didn’t have the slightest desire to read about imaginary people and places. Having just finished several collections of essays and articles, one by by Kurt Vonnegut and one by Alice Walker, I thought I had satisfied whatever craving it was that prompted me to pick up those books in the first place. I thought I could go back to my normal reading fare. I was wrong. No piece of fiction could satisfy my sudden urge to consume facts and learn something about the world around me.
I went to the library and picked up two new books – Safe Trip to Eden: Ten Steps to Save Planet Earth from the Global Warming Meltdown, by David Steinman, and Hope’s Edge: The Next Diet for a Small Planet by Frances Moore Lappe and Anna Lappe. I came home and settled on the couch and read the first 10 pages of each book, and then sighed with relief. This was what my mind craved.
I am realizing that the trouble that has touched my life recently has somehow been exactly the sort of “rude shock” that Frances Moore Lappe describes in her book.
“Something must shake us up, rattle us out of our resignation or depression, or simply galvanize that vague sense that there must be more to life. Something must create internal dissonance.”
Oh, I’m full of internal dissonance now! Whereas before I was apt to believe that the world was falling apart and there was little or nothing I could do to help it, now I find that I was, once again, just absorbing the ideas of people around me. This winter as I have wandered the paths and trails of Acadia, and have seen nature come to life for me in an entirely new way, I have discovered how much I love it and how much I care about what happens to it, what happens to the wild places of the earth, to the earth itself, and the people who dwell here.
I have found that my head has been cleansed of the thoughts and ideas of others. My mind has been de-cluttered, and my old resignation and stagnation have been swept out the door. I find myself open and ready for new thoughts, and yes, full to overflowing with “internal dissonance”.
“In such special moments, we can choose. Do we suppress the discomfort? Or do we listen to it, delve into the disconnect, and make the leap necessary to put the world together in a new way?”
Putting behind me my days of inaction and ignorance and selfish uncaring, I choose to leap. I resolve to look at the rapidly deteriorating world around me, and see it with the eyes of hope. I choose to question the ideas that I have accepted all my life, and I choose to believe that there IS something I can do, that I CAN make a difference.
Maybe there aren’t truly “Ten Steps to Save the Planet”. Maybe this is as scary a place as I’ve always thought, trying to move forward without a map. I choose to stay here though, in this moment of liberating dissonance, “making the path as [I] walk.”
Posted in Acadia, Authors, Books, Environment, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Personal, State of the World | Tags: Acadia, Alice Walker, David Steinman, Frances Moore Lappe, Kurt Vonnegut
Posted by: Sally Ingraham | February 22, 2008
Lunar Touched
I was reminded again of Kurt Vonnegut’s words, “…someone somewhere wants us to like it here” when I watched the lunar eclipse the other night from my back deck in Seal Harbor. It was just so cool to see! I felt like a kid, full to bursting with excitement, ready to jump up and down one minute, and then the next minute gone still against the glass of the sliding door, wide-eyed with wonder, leaving fingerprints and breath fog on the window.
The lunar eclipse was pretty neat, but moonrise that night was fabulous. It amazes me that you can see the moon every night, and it’s just there hanging in the sky as usual, and you don’t really care. But then, every now and then, it rises huge and round and catches your eye and you go still inside for a moment – you have a ‘wow’ moment.
“Wow,” you say to anyone nearby, or maybe just to yourself. “Check out the moon tonight!” And you get this big rush of pleasure, and probably find yourself grinning foolishly.
At least I do. 🙂
Posted in Acadia, Environment, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Maine, Weather | Tags: Kurt Vonnegut, Lunar eclipse, moon, Seal Harbor
Posted by: Sally Ingraham | February 20, 2008
To Work or Not to Work?
Somehow, I have gone from having no job, to having two jobs and working seven days a week, from ten in the morning until almost ten at night. How did this happen, I wonder?
I overdosed on helpfulness, I guess.
I never really mind working a lot, because I fall into a rhythm and the work becomes what I do and what is interesting to me. Except now, after picking up my writing again and getting really into taking pictures, not to mention taking on the training involved in preparing for my marathon and a half in May, I find that I am resenting the work. Or at least, resenting the fact that I don’t have the energy to work two jobs and then go home and walk five miles. I don’t even have the daylight…
At least the jobs are interesting – a fairly unique movie theater with a laid back working atmosphere and minimal stress, and helping my friend clean and organize and build things in her gift shop. Today I got to play with power tools, drilling large holes into the backs of her bookshelves and cabinets so that we could feed plugs through them and light up the shelves. My ears are still ringing, and my right forearm is going to be sore tomorrow!
It’s been busy at Reel Pizza since the movie Juno arrived. I am told the crowds we had last Friday and Saturday night were summer-like. It was somewhat satisfying to watch middle-schoolers trample each other in their eagerness to get into the theater. Although part of what I like about the job is the chance to interact with people, there are of course people I would rather not deal with – teenagers and middle-schoolers being at the top of the list. They are just so damn annoying!
Ah, customer service.
Hopefully the job at the store won’t last much longer, although I am expecting to work there during the summer. I want a little more free time to play and write and take pictures before I buckle myself fully into the working girl seat. My month and a half long vacation to Australia depends upon my making and saving money by any means necessary, even if that means forgoing summer in Maine so that I can have summer there. I don’t want to have to give up the rest of my winter too though!
So, I work because I need the money to live and play and write, but while working I have no time to play or write, and the living isn’t as much fun as I would like it to be.
Why are the choices we have to make always compromises?
Posted in Maine, Movies, Non-sense, Personal, Photography, Traveling, Work, Writing | Tags: Australia, Juno, marathon, middle-schoolers, power tools, Reel Pizza, teenagers
Posted by: Sally Ingraham | February 16, 2008
My Holmes/Watson Complex
I find it somewhat amusing that I can be so observant, and then at other times so very unobservant. I bought a bracelet the other day that has letters that flip to spell Holmes on one side and Watson on the other to celebrate my complex personality. (Made by a librarian friend of mine, buying the bracelet is also an act of charity. I am supporting her book habit!)
I have driven up and down Spring St. in Bar Harbor numerous times, but until yesterday when I walked that same route, I had never noticed the vigorous stream that flows beneath the road and then skirts the ball field and dives under Main St., where it passes a little white house, the water now bound on both sides by stone walls. Standing there looking in astonishment at this picture, I felt as though I was beside a canal somewhere in France.
I can’t wait for spring. I want to return to that spot when the trees that hang their branches over the canal have tiny vibrant green leaves on them, and the house looks freshly whitewashed. It will be my little pretend vacation to France.
Walking with my camera in my pocket tends to make me very observant. I become a collector, searching for anything interesting of beautiful. I have found that taking pictures awakens my imagination too. With the lens of my camera I can frame a chunk of the world and see it as itself, or just as easily find myself transported somewhere else – France, or Florida!
Doesn’t this look like the Everglades? 🙂
Posted in Books, Maine, Non-sense, Photography, Traveling | Tags: Bar Harbor, canals, Everglades, Florida, France, Holmes, Watson
Posted by: Sally Ingraham | February 15, 2008
Throwing Stones
“I was struck anew by the ease with which people believe the worst rather than the best about a person, even when the best has been a person’s whole life.”
– Alice Walker, from Anything We Love Can Be Saved
‘ “Where have you been?”
“Just out dealing with things way above my maturity level.” ‘ – from the movie Juno
It has been an awkward week. Some of the storm surf from the hurricane that struck me back in November finally broke against the shore and turned into calm ripples, to speak figuratively. I came to terms with a lot of new and scary emotions and realized that I could handle them – perhaps not wonderfully well, but at least adequately. I embraced my own failings and took responsibility for my own actions.
I accepted the fact that I am no better than the next person, that in truth I was just as ready as everyone else to cast the first stone, especially if it would save my own ass. It’s hard to discover things like this about yourself. It certainly knocks you off your high horse and makes you realize that you were a terrible rider anyway.
I am better off walking, on my own two feet, in the dirt like the simple wanderer that I am.
Here, closer to the ground, I have discovered that my feelings of betrayal can not be so strong or so bitter as I would perhaps like, because I held the people who I think betrayed me to too high a standard of being. I asked too much of the people who I placed all my belief in and hope and dreams upon, when “a complete absence of mistakes, errors of judgement, or emotional and spiritual breakdowns should never be required.”*
People will disappoint me again, perhaps even hurt me. I now understand that when that time comes, I have the duty “at the least, to give a thought to the context of their actions, to study them, to have the humility to place gently at their feet the stone [I’ve] come to throw.”**
I would ask that others do the same.
*Alice Walker, Anything We Love Can Be Saved
**Same as above
what we have here is a failure to communicate 