we fly so high above the ground; satellites surround us

[ontology]

So, my birthday.

I've been feeling especially out of sorts the past several days, and I didn't want to write it in that mood and sound cross all throughout; I'm not feeling precisely fabulous today, but it's been long enough, and I don't want to forget anything.

So, I was trying very hard to come up with something really special to commemorate the date, because, eighteen, you know? (And there's this ridiculous thing with me and ceremonies you likely all know about by now.) But I couldn't come up with anything much; there weren't any concerts playing in the area, we did the art museum already last year, and this town is fairly dull when one is looking for phantasmagorical birthday commemoration things. (It's fairly dull in general, but especially when you want it to be exciting.) I tried to think of when it was that I felt most myself and happiest and alive: a lot of those times are completely incapable of reconstruction (the first time I listened to Little Earthquakes; star-watching after Nickel Creek's set at Grey Fox; reading Madeleine L'Engle's Two-Part Invention and taking a long, long walk afterwards; Abigail Washburn & the Sparrow Quartet's set at Merlefest; the night I slipped out of the house with my iPod on shuffle and took an impromptu walk to the lake while the sun set over the water and the windows of the church on the other side lit up) -- but there were common elements. I realised that what I wanted the most was to be in the city somehow, and wander about, and take photographs, and discover things, but I didn't really know how to accomplish that. We made some vague, tentative plans to maybe go to State College and the bookstore, but nothing terribly specific -- and then Victoria called (well, emailed first, then called) and said, hey, we're going up to Pittsburgh, would you like to come along? As soon as I made sure I'd still have plenty of time to celebrate with my family, I jumped at it.

I woke up really, really early, which was weird. I think Leandra may have woken me; it was still mostly dark, so I just lay in bed a while and dozed, with all of those strange half-awake thoughts running round in my head. (I often wake up and can't remember what I was thinking so intently about before, and it frustrates me, because it feels as though it was something complicated and important and maybe even something I couldn't get at when I'm awake, but I can never remember anything except the fleeting ghost of the taste of it.) After a while I stopped trying to be asleep and opened lady_moriel  's presents instead. (DRAT YOUR SPARKLY WRAPPING PAPER. THE NOTEBOOK HAS CONSEQUENTLY NAMED ITSELF EDWARD AND IS PONCY. ♥)

I wandered downstairs after a while to make breakfast (for lo, I was hungry), which was sausage, egg, & cheese biscuits (I'd made buttermilk biscuits for this express purpose), and some for Mum and Dad, too, when they got up, and this is a very dull bit, I apologise. The Nielsons were coming for me at ten, so I opened presents from siblings before I left.

Timmy's blank book of art-deco awesome. (The hot pink makes it very Marie Antoinette The Movie, doesn't it?) And Leandra gave me Peppermint Patties! (With a lot of help, I'm sure.) There was also a metal vintage handbag wall decoration, a miniature Converse with a clock face on the side, and a knit hat, from Heidi.

Then, segueing away from all of the dull expositionary stuff about getting in cars and going here and there to pick up people, I went to Pittsburgh. Have I mentioned that I love long car rides? So long as there are no small children or the small children are blessedly quiet, and I don't get sick, and suchlike, I mean. They're very good for thinking, and listening to music, and when there are people about with whom to converse, it is even nicer.

I listened to the birthday mix bornofstars made for me (♥!), and it was appropriately lovely and reflective, and I had a bit of a wonder moment listening to beautiful cello work and looking out my window for just a moment to see trees swaying under a stormy sky. Oh yes, there were rumours of thunderstorms for much of the day -- great bruise-like clouds hovering ominously over everything -- but we never got one. I for one was slightly disappointed.

We talked some, and read some, and some of us did a bit of writing. I think we sang Rest in Peace at some point. It's sort of becoming traditional.

We dropped Mr Nielson off at the airport, and soon afterwards got into the more visually exciting parts of the city. Spectacular architecture!

Then there was an interlude at a fabric shop, where cloth was sought for a dance dress for Hannah, and we looked at various sequiny fabrics attempting to decide which would be most suitable for an Edward Cullen plushie. There were feather boas, and nifty buttons. I designed a lot of exciting clothing in my head.

And I took a picture of me, cos, uh, I could? Anyway I was wearing a lot of my favourite clothing. :p (Victoria's back snuck into my mirror.)

When that business was finished, we went to this lovely little coffee shop, because Mrs Nielson needed coffee.

It was really very attractive and cosy. I was persuaded to try soda that isn't in a can, and it turned out to be brilliant. (It was orange cream, sort of like orange-soda-you-get-at-the-supermarket except good, and without a weird, lingering aftertaste. There was also a softness that must have been the cream influence.) And there was a brownie. It was an excessively good brownie and I ate it very, very slowly in the car.

Did I mention how my soda was in a very, very pretty bottle?

There was more city architecture. This church was spectacular. Especially the multi-coloured roof.

Entering the heart of the city gave me a tiny tiny flicker of one of my wonder moments. I don't love Pittsburgh nearly the way I love Boston -- it's much grimier, and grey-er, and the culture and history don't have the same tang, but it's a city, and it's lovely and strange. One of the things that I love most about cities is how they are composed all many, many disparate things that somehow fit when they're together. Last year I was impressed by the massive trees growing up all over the place, either disrupting the sidewalk or being peacefully built around. Trees being cut down make me sad, and trees in the city are endlessly fascinating. It is completely the fault of last year's birthday wandering in Pittsburgh after the art museum and sighting a glorious tree right in the middle of everything that the short story I am trying to write that is currently blossoming into a short novella is about a dryad in an unspecified city.

Hannah and Victoria, and Rebecca and Georgiana (the younger sisters of the aforementioned, respectively) had dance class, so they were all dropped off, and Mrs Nielson took me to what she referred to as "the hippie grocery store", which was full of fascinating foods and other odd items. I loved it. Even the vegetables were attractive.

And then there was Magical Spike Seasoning, which...made me have convulsions in the middle of the aisle.

After that, we wandered a bit more. This photograph illustrates a lot of why I love the city.

Then? THEN Mrs Nielson and I went to the most phantasmagorically awesome place in the history of EVER. There were bits and pieces of houses for sale -- doors and windows and railings and hinges and bathtubs and sinks and lighting fixtures and here and there furniture and little odds and ends and it was beautiful. Apparently when people demolish houses or replace parts of their houses (such as windows, or doors, or bathtubs, or lighting fixtures), they can take the old ones to a place like this and other people buy them and put them in their houses, or, quite possibly, make awesome ramshackle urban art out of them, which I would totally do if I had a) some disposable income, and b) had any idea how to make awesome ramshackle urban art, which I really want to do now, actually.



First, there was this door, covered in bits of painted wood and pennies. Furthermore, A SLOT WHAT SAYS LETTERS FOR PUTTING LETTERS IN. I would use this door every day. (Mostly because it's a door and one tends to use them a lot whether or not one wants to. But also because it's brilliant.)



The view from the entrance.



I loved this grimy old sink, with all of the mechanical bits, and the grime. Thinking about it as a sink -- i.e. a receptacle in which to wash oneself -- positively horrifies me, but as something to photograph it's fantastic.



GIANT ARCH. From a church, most likely. (IF I MADE HOUSES FROM SCRATCH I WOULD BUY THIS. SERIOUSLY. AND BUILD A FOLLY.)



A long line of doors. I kept saying to myself, perhaps a bit pretentiously, "...as if the world gave up the secret of its skeleton!", and thinking of Sally Sparrow, breaking into old abandoned buildings to take photographs ("sad is happy for deep people").



This bathtub is, again, a world of wrong in regards to a receptacle of cleanliness, but gorgeous as a piece of art, and strangely, spookily fascinating. I loved the faucet and plumbing, like a heart and lungs of rusty metal.



Windows!



There were a lot of old mirrors, and I took pictures of my shoes in them.



This was one of my favourite contrasts of the entire place. The imaginary Folly in my head has a special place for that stained glass window.



A lovely old age-stained, age-cracked print, which I loved almost as much for the clear agedness as the painting itself.

So, yes. That was far more magnificent and magical than I could have planned. Of course it makes explaining What I Did For My Birthday That Made It Brilliant somewhat difficult -- "I wandered around looking at discarded windows and doors and mirrors and things at a glorified junkyard for, like an hour. Then I was kidnapped by hill folk, never to be seen again. It was the best birthday ever!" But it really was perfect, and strange, and phantasmagorical -- I've always had a fascination with objects outside of their natural elements -- people playing large instruments in fields, or furniture by the shore, or even flowers growing out of cement. Here, seeing the bones and limbs of houses, was like stumbling into some odd, in-between world, one of those non-linear books about the nature of story and the universe, a place where anything might happen or be.

After the House Graveyard, we went back to the dance school to pick up the girls; Victoria was the only one whose class had finished just then, so we went wandering off downtown to poke into various shops of the sort one never finds anyplace else but cities.



This particular shop was NOT GOOD. It was overflowing with fantastic, whimiscal, unique, odd clothing of the sort I am always on the look-out for -- often the kinds of fantastically weird stuff I can rarely find at Goodwill -- and made me want to spend great quantities of money I don't even have. (The prices, however, were not actually bad at all, especially as things got cheaper the longer they remained in the store. Someday I shall have to find my way back there.)

I had a massive attack of clumsiness and knocked things over at least three times. It was rather embarrassing, but fortunately nothing was broken. Victoria carefully steered me out, but not before I found and purchased a gorgeous and very steampunk clock pin for only two dollars. (I had been admiring it, but the price tag said ten dollars, and I said, oh no, not for a pin; maybe if I had a disposable income, but the sales-lady said all of a sudden "by the way, all pins are two dollars", and I says, "OH-HO!", says I.)

There was another shop full of strange things that were all obscenely expensive, which was sad, because many of them were fantastic, and I love the way these second-hand shops are full of all sorts of disparate things all jumbled together, leaning on one another and crowding around.

Then we went back to fetch the others, and headed to A Place With Noodles to purchase some dinner. (That wasn't its actual name. I don't remember its actual name.)



Have I mentioned how I love the city? (Yes, I lagged behind everyone else to take this photograph. Shut up.)


This is where we picked up the food we ate. It was delicious. I only ate bits of what other people had, because Mum was making Hungarian goulash for dinner at home. (ALSO WHY I LOVE THE CITY. Lots of little independent restaurants! And bakeries! Gorblimey, I miss the bakeries.)



I wanted a photograph of me, to commemorate that I Was Actually There, and Victoria obliged in the restaurant while we were waiting for our food, because it was that pretty. (Also, clock pin!)



We sat about waiting for a) the food to be finished, and b) Mrs Nielson to come back from fetching the little girls to collect it and us. Victoria briefly borrowed my iPod, and I briefly borrowed her iced tea.

Then there was lovely food (the spring rolls were especially notable, especially as I'd never had them at all before), and the drive back, wherein Moony was borrowed again, and we listened to bits of the Marie Antoinette soundtrack, and some Hannah Fury, and most of Solas' The Edge of Silence, and talked a great deal and wrote some.

Dad had got a Crisis call just before I got home (he works for a counselling hotline as a side job, which means, in a nutshell, that he has to go to people's houses when they've called the emergency counselling number), so fortunately I got back just in time for him to be able to be around while I opened my presents. Now, Mum had been brimming with conspiracy all week, which is not unusual (my mother thrives on conspiracy), but this was a particularly interesting conspiracy, because apparently she was communicating with "some guy" (her words) who needed directions to our house for some reason. I came home and THE BIGGEST WRAPPED PRESENT I HAVE EVER SEEN was sitting in the living room.



I opened it up to reveal...



A GIGANTIC ANCIENT TRUNK.



Inside of it were all of my other presents. Including the trunk and the keychain Mum put on the trunk as a tag, there were eighteen presents in total -- purposefully, of course. Some of them were small and some of them were not as small, and some of them were practical, and some were delightfully frivolous. There was a pair of throw pillows for my bed in attractive Art Deco patterns, and A REAL PILLOW ADSLHGFHG --



-- which was very welcome and important because for the past very long time I have been sleeping on a pair of ancient, flat, hard pillows which give me no comfort at all.



Plus, my favourite pens. (Aside from fountain pens. Which are not entirely practical to carry everywhere, or use on the bed.) And cinnamon Pop Tarts of my very very own that nobody else can eat (it's been a week and they are still in the cupboard! -- Not that I haven't eaten several packets already), and things like picture frames and votive candles and a pink-and-black Art Deco-y message board for my bedroom wall, and Abigail Washburn & the Sparrow Quartet's album, which YAY, THANK YOU DAD. ("THAT WAS THE ALBUM I WANTED ABSOLUTELY THE MOST!" says I. "I thought as much," says he.)



ALSO. My own copy of the Betty Crocker Cooky Book, 1962 edition. With which I am WELL PLEASED. We have had this cookbook in our family for decades, running through two copies -- the second one is now in tatters. A great percentage of the cookie recipes that have become family classics came out of this book. I was worrying about leaving home without one. There are new editions, to be sure, but THEY CHANGE THINGS. Such as WHICH RECIPES THEY INCLUDE.

Fortunately Betty Crocker's recently began reprinting the 1962 edition, due, I imagine, to urgent requests from people such as myself. And now I have MY VERY OWN. (The page with chocolate crinkles fell out of the old family one and GOT LOST.)



After the unwrapping festivities were finished, Leandra had a party of her own in the trunk.

Then there was dinner, which was delicious, and filling, and afterwards my favourite ice cream (peppermint and chocolate -- it was Andes Mint specifically, but any mixture of mint and chocolate will automatically be my favourite), and I went to bed happily exhausted and cosied up with my new CD, which is probably one of the ten best albums I have ever heard, and it was good.

The week since has not been excellent, except for a few bits which were (mostly Sunday), but -- blimey, that's a day I've been savouring for a while.

Comments

[everydayjoy.livejournal.com]

Please may I steal your skirt and please may I step into these pictures? Thank you.

[airys1.livejournal.com]

What a perfectly lovely birthday. It sounds like everything that happened was quite 'you'. Everyone needs days like that :)

[spockodile.livejournal.com]

I think part of the picturability of the dirty sink is that it is a dirty sink. There's a sort of irony there, but more than that, the grime implies age and history, and making one wonder what sorts of things happened in the life of the sink to get it to that state of gross and disuse.

I'm getting the sense that you are fond of things which have connotations of cultural history. That is, things which have been around people for a long time and have become Something More than just a sink, a road, a style of art, a tree, or a way of spelling. You may not find coins particularly interesting, but I imagine that you smile when you see a coin from, say, 1935, and maybe you think about how many hands it has passed through, maybe someone famous, and you see how worn it is and are impressed with the fact it has made it this far.

Or maybe not. Maybe I'm crazy and misreading you a bit. But it's not inconsistant with your hobbies in general, I think.

[tobie-rosemary.livejournal.com]

Yay Sally Sparrow. :) And yay trees in cities. Your story of a dryad in a city sounds very cool.

And getting a trunk for your birthday was pretty awesome!! I'm a bit jealous. ;-P

[bornofstars.livejournal.com]

*flails around at general prettiness and squee*

I also love long car rides, especially in rural areas with rolling hills and fields. I'm so, so glad that you liked my mix. I think that I already said that, but I really do mean it.

Wee converse with a clock in them! Sally Sparrow! The old luggage trunk! (That was quite brilliant of your parents.) Your pretty shirt and necklace and skirt and boots!

♥

(Oh, and I would love to see that story about the dyad. It sounds like the kind of story that you were talking about, where anything can happen and it's all very mysterious and filled with wonder.)

[faeriemaiden.livejournal.com]

Blimey, the other day we were driving home from a friend's graduation party, which was at a park way out in the country, and there was an utterly magnificent thunderstorm, amplified all the more by the lack of electric lights and the sheer openness of the sky. I only wish I'd been listening to appropriate music at the time. ;D

Eventually I will indeed post the dryad story, because I really need someone to either beat it into shape or reassure me that bits of it aren't as wretchedly pretentious as I think they are. :P But I'm trying not to type it up until I'm finished with it -- because I can't type anything up without editing it in the process, and I'm trying very hard to stay focused on actually completing the story rather than going back now and making constant revisions. :P (It's really a mess, too, because a lot of names and character attributes sort of came up as I went along, and the prose style totally changed about four pages in. Aaaaack.) But anyway. Not only is there a dryad, but the protagonist is the proprietor of a small bookshop. ^-^

♥!

[bornofstars.livejournal.com]

Like this one? (http://s125.photobucket.com/albums/p50/RenGreyLady/?action=view&current=bookstore.jpg)

(I drooled over this picture so much the first time I saw it. Just...guh. It's in Amsterdam.)

Your writing woes sound an awful lot like mine; mostly nothing ever gets finished because I keep going back and trying to revise, and then I lose heart because I convince myself that it's rubbish, and then it never gets finished at all. *facepalm*

[lady-moriel.livejournal.com]

*inserts self into conversation*

Depending on when you finish it, your editor is happy to, um, take up that role again. Or possibly help you beat it into shape when she's there in person, which...wow, every time I think about the next couple months I start going "OMG SO MUCH TO DO IN WAY TOO LITTLE TIME AUGH." But yeah.

[faeriemaiden.livejournal.com]

We-ell, the dryad story isn't nearly ready for editing (AUGH I MUST FINISH IT; PLEASE DON'T DIE STORY, I NEED YOU!), but I do have something else you can look over, if you don't mind a) cursing Joss Whedon afresh and b) getting music stuck in your head.

[lady-moriel.livejournal.com]

That reminds me, I need to post my selling-shoes-on-Mars story and see what you guys think of it--well, actually, it needs some edits first, especially since I ended up writing it in two chunks and they need to be knit together, and also because my protag spends a lot of it in an emo funk and he's only sort of supposed to.

Speaking of cursing Joss Whedon, I have no idea if any of the other songs I threw at you were any good for your mix, but I've got one more God Is an Astronaut song that sounds a lot less layered than their usual--I think it's mostly piano. Even if it doesn't work, Darkfall (http://www.mediafire.com/?wybzzhh7ttb) is still pretty (and it has a cool name. That's one of the best things about instrumentals, they can have awesome names that don't actually have to relate to anything).

[shadowempress.livejournal.com]

I think I may come and steal your trunk. I like it. A lot. :D

I would comment on how cool the city is, but I was there, so that would be pointless. One day you must explain to me how you managed to keep people off your Pop Tarts(that name gives me a funny idea which I will tell you later), as I can never keep my sibs away from my stuff no matter what I do. Especially my typewriter.

[faeriemaiden.livejournal.com]

Hey! Mine! :P Anyway it's very heavy.

The real key to Pop-Tart-protecting success is parental orders. Keeping them on a high shelf out of sight (and therefore sudden inspiration) also works. Although I suppose the fact that my siblings are older and therefore somewhat more amenable (in this sort of situation anyway) helps a bit. ^-^