Nature writing, knitting, and Metropolis

It was a rough ten days of intense and ongoing anxiety, but Friday evening I came up for air and changed plans to allow some me time, including dishes and laundry then hanging out and playing Civ-III. When the dishes keep getting done, it's a healthy indicator I'm looking after myself better.

It's hard to see my career plan forward, however I dug an important, useful book off my shelves: The Sierra Club Nature Writing Handbook by John A. Murray. It's like a course textbook with numerous assignments, so I've been giving myself homework. I tried tackling it a few years ago, which led me into reading Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac. Beautiful book, unfortunately the reading distracted me and I never returned to the Handbook. Now I have more focus, structure and support, so I'm giving it another go. Being my own taskmaster is the only way I can see going back to school for now. I need it.

Recently I finished a long, tedious knitting project in grey tones. I'll have to post a photo later because the item is a gift for someone who might read this. It's satisfying overall, however the key to enjoyable knitting, for me, is playing with colour combinations as I go, as in a painting. So I've resumed an old project which feels more like a daily adventure.

Yesterday morning I bought groceries at farmers' market. It was a sparkling fall morning. The alpaca people had some new alpaca-wool yarn in four appealing colours.

Then I drove to Toronto through an unexpected change of weather. The city was buried in fog. It began with ground fog around Milton. The low morning sun cast the landscape in an eerie golden-grey light.

djjo and I went to the Bell Lightbox to see the most recent reconstruction of Metropolis, a 1927 German silent film that has influenced and inspired many science fiction movies since, such as Blade Runner. The opening credit sequence of Futurama is another example. I saw the previous incarnation of the movie for the first time with Danny last weekend. It was heavily cut after its premier, and missing sequences have been lost over the decades, however in 2008 a copy 30 minutes longer than other known survivors turned up in Argentina. The restored version makes more sense.

15 authors

I'm doing this meme because this is what's on my mind today anyway.

The Rules: Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen authors (poets/playwrights included) who've influenced you and that will always stick with you. List the first fifteen you can recall in no more than fifteen minutes.

1. Ursula K. LeGuin
2. Annie Dillard
3. Luci Shaw (poet)
4. Cyrus Cassells (poet)
5. Barry Lopez (nature and fiction writer)
6. C. S. Lewis
7. Wendell Berry (nature writer and poet)
8. William Shakespeare
9. J. R. R. Tolkien
10. Timothy Findley
11. Robertson Davies
12. Rohinton Mistry
13. Mary Stewart
14. Salman Rushdie
15. Mark Doty (poet)