So, I’ve started knitting again. Some of friends have seen the blanket I made, sewing together patches I had knitted while travelling around North America and Europe in 2003. I have two friends here, Marie and Rebecca, who do a lot of knitting, and watching them has given me an urge to start again myself. So, I found the nearest yarn store and bought needles and a small selection of yarns. The 2003 blanket was colourful—in each country I bought wool that was a colour that for me represented the country: the pale blue of a still-snowy Montreal spring; the lush green of Cambridge’s fields, as on a walk to Grandchester, the shiraz-pink sunset of Corsica, the tomato-red and dazzling yellow of Italy… Well, this is an American blanket, and so there will be reds, whites and blues—but not the normal reds whites and blues of the flag. I want to play with it a little. This is, too, inspired by Lisa Blas’s exhibition “Meet me at the Mason Dixon,” which was also a patchwork derived from nomadism. I’m hoping that I will be able to travel more, and as I go to buy wool (and, a rule, only real—not synthetic—yarns this time) as I go. I think I’ll have to play with the often-jingoistic aspect of American patriotism. And I think it will be calming, for the moments I’m not buried in reading.

One day I’d like to knit a large desert blanket, with all the desert colours. Another year.

The Li-Young Lee quotes, if you are wondering, come from the fact that I’ve been reading the book of interviews while sitting at Barnes and Noble, not buying it. And an awareness that one of the things this hotchpotch of a blog is for me is a notebook. My notebooks are full of quotes. So—apparently a blog of all things. Or simply a blog of the chaos (the secret city?) of my mind.

A brief respite from Independence Days—after Iran today, it’s Senegal this Friday, and then a whole week off. The first half of the year is comparatively light when it comes to National Days. September—with 29—will keep me on my toes.

I’m trying to make some plans for getting out of DC in the summer—I had a slightly crazy notion of going to Costa Rica or Panama as soon as my final paper is in, before I come back to Georgetown to teach in the summer, but I don’t think I’ll have quite enough time to organise it—though Central America will happen before I go home. I feel it. Instead, I’m really thinking about the Four Corners area. Dreaming, really. As usual, I’ve got deserts on my mind.

I think I will start Daniel Deronda tonight. Though I will treat myself to some Lorca first, most likely. Have been reading more Bruce Chatwin too. It seems strange to me that it’s taken so long for me to really fall in love with travel writing—though I think I was always seeking out a very specific kind of travel writing, that is almost anthropological in its scope. Or just plain magical, like the Travels of Sir John Mandeville.