Growing Versions

Today painters do not have to go to a subject matter outside of themselves. Most modern painters work from a different source. They work from within. -Jackson Pollock

The light switch is turned on or off. Optimistic or Pessimistic.  Approved of or disapproved of.  Active or lazy.  Pulled together or pathetic.  Faithful or negligent. Filthy or pristine. Outgoing or introverted.  By the book or cheating. Just or criminal.  Qualified or pretending. Not started or completely finished.  Unattainable or abysmal failure. Worth pursing or worthless. Too much or not enough. Embraced or rejected. Hilarious or embarrassing. 100% correct or riddled with errors. Exactly right or catastrophic. Awake or asleep.  Remembered or forgotten. It is time to install a dimmer switch.

The making sense of time chronicles roll on.  My son has declared more than once this week that he thinks we are running late.  When I ask him how he knows this (is it the slant of the light? his insistent internal clock?) he states that he checked the time on the microwave before we left. "What kind of time is this?" he asks.  What number, what happens now? Right now time is still the only time there is but there is evidence that it is losing ground to another "kind of time" which he hears other people discuss, adjust and regulate.  It is not yet something tangible that he can hold in his hand and line other things up against.  Even though the day has a linear progression from morning snack to afternoon snack and bedtime snack, time, expressed as a number, which can be measured against other these things is still vague but slowly and surely taking hold. He  noticed a calendar last night and wanted to know what comes next.  Looking at ...

Cloud, 2012 (Materials: painted wall, hole in wall, stuffing from kid's bed stuffed into hole) I'm just coming off of a busy streak.  Well, a busy chunk of years actually. As a result, my domestic situation has gotten way way off track.  There are literally heaps of unsorted laundry, Christmas ornaments (ugh...Halloween ornaments) jumbled together, and piles everywhere.  The toilets are clean, the kitchen is cleanish and there are clean clothes they just aren't stored  particularly well, but otherwise, we're in a bit of mess actually.  I'm so done with all this chaos and the feelings of perpetual defeat that accompanies it. Yesterday, for the first time in what felt like years, I finally had time to be at home when others were not.  Instead of feeling mired in chore-filled angst, all I could see around me were beautiful canvases. Instead of making me swear under my breath and stomp around, these tiny canvases stopped me in my tracks. ...

Growing up in a small town with gravel driveways and gritty asphalt school yards and few sidewalks prevented me from being exposed much to chalk art and hopscotch.  Seeing hopscotch in action only happened when we visited my city grandma.  She lived adjacent to an endless scroll of sidewalk.  City kid neighbours taught me their versions of hopscotch.  I got taught and re-taught and exposed to it in a bunch of different ways...but you know, if there is an official version, I have no idea what it is. How do you win hopscotch?  What is the goal? Other than balancing on one foot occasionally and alternating feet, is it something more than a coordination activity? I wonder.  Can you tell me? Maybe it doesn't matter.  Maybe the idea of it and the image of it is all we need to believe in its existence.

Do you remember using your toys in ways that they weren't designed to be used to suit your play requirements?  I distinctly remember re-envisioning a kid sized type-writer, back when there were not even adult sized personal computers, into a film projector. I had an elaborate explanation for how it worked that was only slightly more technical than my explanation of how gymnasts fit inside the t.v.  My brother used a kid's record player as a pottery wheel (yes, plugged in and yes, with water). I converted many a thing meant to be one thing and turned them into something else. I look around at my kids' toys and I see a lot of this inventing going on with them too.  The main exception is that they are lucky enough to have "real toy cash register" and I am still tempted to play with it. I got a job at Zellers when I was seventeen just so I could get close to one.  I spent my whole childhood (and some more besides) seeking out a cash register to play with.  The ...

I've been writing creatively in earnest, on a regular basis, for nearly 4 months now.  I thought it was time to take a little time to reflect on my experience with writing so far. 1. I have noticed in the past few weeks that writing regularly makes me experience reading differently. Sentences hold my attention longer. I'm more patient with them.  I am more curious about where the writer is taking me.   I see the sentence as a construction, some good, some better, some that need work.  Overall, it makes reading each one a fun, navigation activity. Last week I read the book, Before I Go To Sleep by first time novelist, S.J.Watson. It is a brilliant thriller that you've probably already heard lots about. You should read it.  As I read, I started to feel a little like I was reading it from backstage.  I still thoroughly enjoyed it as a reader, but in some small way, I started to feel like a writer reading it, looking at the back of the set.  Interesting...

My son loves dressing up.  He also loves being naked.  He spends days at home oscillating between the two. Pants are such an impediment to thinking and talking and doing stuff sometimes, you know? There are times when only being dressed as a Tiger will complete the activities he's embroiled in.  There was a long stretch when any time we had visitors, he would go directly to the Tiger costume so he could be dressed up properly. Spider man is the other go-to costume these days.  He has mesmerised many a kid by showing up at the playground dressed up as Spider man. There is a moment, sometimes several in a day, when something deep inside of him signals that it is time for a change. How about you?

Grandpa wants to play a game.... Grandpa asks 6 year old: “Do you want to have a game?" 6 year old begins: “Ahhh....!" 3 year old interrupts: "I do! ! I’ll pay! Can I play?" Grandpa (holding a small clear plastic box) asks: "Do you know how to play checkers" (flipping over the game) "or chess"? 6 year old interjects: "I, ahhh, think I know how checkers work." “Me too! “, jumps in 3 year old, "I wanna play . . .THIS GAME" (He tries to take the top off of the chess set) 6 year old moves away from the table. "I don’t want to play,"  she decides. 3 year old eagerly says ,"What‘s this?" Grandpa: "You get up in this chair, and I‘ll teach you!" Grandpa: "Maybe we should play checkers?" 3 year old: "No, I want to play with these things!" Grandpa tries to set up the board with the figures in their right places but 3 year old keeps moving them. "Okay, thi...

Look at your feet. You are standing in the sky. When we think of the sky, we tend to look up, but the sky actually begins at the earth.  Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses

My daughter made the transition from handmade tickets to mass-produced ones. This time last year, an elaborate ticket making project and movie afternoon took all day to create. Saturday, my daughter spied an upgrade.  I completely understand.  I remember coveting the "real" waitress pads at the stationary store.  Having a "real" one would make playing restaurant so much more thrilling. My daughter lobbied to get these tickets the other day at the Dollar Store.  She has plans to use them in many different ways.  They are a more official looking version for sure.  Now that she's almost 7, what she wants a ticket to resemble are changing.  I'm curious to see how they will re-appear and be utilised over the coming months and even years.  Right now, they haven't been used yet. They sit there, quietly dispensing an open invitation.  To which events is to be revealed in time.

If a poet is anybody, he is somebody to whom things made matter very little - somebody who is obsessed by Making. -e.e. cummings Do you ever think about all the things we make when we think we are making something else? The snowflake left overs? The glitter stuck in the grooves of the kitchen floor? The layers upon layers? The fingerprints? What shadows do we cast? What beauty do we sweep away?

We are so hemmed in at the moment by all of the stuff we, knowingly/willingly or not, surround ourselves with. I'm getting so weary, swimming underwater like this. The stuff is blocking my way.  The time has come to uncover the floor and the corners.  It is time to make room for the light to pour in. I've got to be tired and cranky for a little while longer as I  make my way to the surface.

Usually when I am in charge of picking up my daughter from school on Friday afternoons, I hustle her out of there sharpish. A few Fridays ago though, although it was foggy and grey, you could feel spring seeping out of the earth.  All the kids were running around with wide open jackets. There is a big hill behind the school and the kids were racing each other up and down it. I was in the mood to let her fully take advantage of this warm spell and not rush her away. After a while, my daughter gravitated down to the foot of the hill to where a gnarled old tree sits.  She tentatively made her way around the tree, slowly but surely issuing suggestions/commands to her younger brother.  They weren't playing a specific game, just warming up.  For whatever reason, I, for once, was not impatiently drumming my fingers but rather possessed by a brief but intense ability to just be  there.   Simultaneously, a boy from her class circled the tree and watched on in i...

I accompanied my mother-in-law to an appointment this week. On the paper, preparing her for the appointment, it invited her bring along something to read or a small craft. As soon as I heard about this invitation to bring a small craft into an otherwise austere waiting area, my mind started to do bouncing somersaults in many different directions. Googly eyes? Glue gun? Feathers? Play clay? Friendship braclets?

I was experiencing a lot of stress late last week.  The kind of stress that churned up my stomach all day long and loaded a spring deep inside of me in preparation for some kind of an emergency that never came.  It was  a stress that  prevented me from processing thoughts properly.  It had been coming on for weeks and it hit fever pitch on Thursday.  On the suggestion of my husband, I went to talk to someone on Friday for guidance and reassurance on dealing with it.   The woman I met was lovely. She helped me re-arrange my perspective and pick up and re-organize the tracks I had so rigidly laid out.  I started to see clearly for the first time in weeks what my role was and what it was not in relation to the matter that was stressing me out.  She helped me gather up all the wisps of doubt and uncertainty and hold firmly onto what I know and be okay not knowing a LOT of things.  My breathing started to get back in order again. Right...

Knowledge is a polite word for dead but not buried imagination. e.e. cummings

My daughter wanted to know if I wanted to learn how to make "displays" yesterday. I said, of course I did, but I had to ask what a "display" was.  In answer, she showed me one that she had made. She explained that first you "collect garbage things and usable things" and then you "arrange them in a design on top of a box". "You can use it for any different thing you want." She walked me through the steps and I made one too. First, we found an old box. Then I found my garbage things and usable things and arranged them in a design. Then we put the two displays together to photograph them.  She chose the multi-coloured cloth to offer a little contrast. I think it's a nice touch.

Recently, my kids attended a magic show at their friend's party.  At the very end, the magician asked each child to select a balloon and encouraged each child to come forward and request it be shaped into one of the following: -a giraffe -a monkey -a puppy -a sword After numerous requests for swords and an occasional monkey, my son was the very last child to make a request. Oblivious to the pre-selected options, he put a great deal of careful thought into what would be the coolest balloon shaped object.  He looked up at the magician, passed him his balloon and asked him if he could make him a sweater. If you could defy physics and find a magical balloon artist, what would you request?

I've tried, I've really tried to learn how to knit.  But I don't have patience and only so-so small motor skills and stretched thin spatial abilities. Oh yeah, and I'm left handed.  I've got it covered with lots of excuses don't I?  I really want to be able to have this productive task/hobby that will produce sweaters and ah..products, but I don't.  I like the soothing clacking sounds that knitting needles make.  I like saving money on oil by having hand-made sweaters.  My kids are approaching knitting from different angles.  My daughter learned how to finger knit last summer and her grandma is teaching her how to knit knit now.  My son "tangles".  Instead of making knots, he connects (or knits, if you like) objects together with string or ribbon by "tangling" them (i.e.motorcycle and lamp).  One is doing the six year old version, the other is doing the three year old version.  I'm doing the "Oh don't worry, I have a lot o...

Approaching high school exams, I would set up camp at the kitchen table.  I would work with intense concentration that was not deterred but rather stoked by the comings and goings of my family members.  I liked working in the centre of the house. If I had to work in isolation, my mind would wander and I had a hard time sticking to my task.  Now, I see that when I do this, and the interruptions come from children and not orderly adults/semi-adults, it takes longer to get things done but I still prefer it over total isolation. Getting interrupted at work has a different impact on me.  Interruptions are harder for me to cope with and manage.  Why is that?  Perhaps its because email can intrude in incessant ways that my mom chatting about who she bumped into at the store can never be compared to. Is it because I can still maintain some fragile level of autonomy and privacy in the midst of chaos at home?  As I work, a part of me, however occupied wi...

I read over the posts I have written so far and was struck by how many times I use the word  realize .*  I'm pretty sure I'm overusing it but I also began to wonder what its use tells me about myself right now and my thought process.  I catch myself "realizing" things all day long. It is not that I do not know some things already. It is just that what I know and how I know those things are constantly being watered by realizations. That same water also floats things I don't know and do not understand up to the surface so I can see them for the first time or in a new light.  How about you? definition of realize v. (from dictionary.com): 1. to   grasp   or   understand   clearly. 2. to   make   real;   give   reality   to   (a   hope,   fear ,  plan,   etc.). 3. to   bring   vividly   to   the   mind. 4. to   convert ...

The Band-Aid has an allure all its own.  Over the past six years, I've come to learn about new dimensions of the band-aid and they continue to bewitch my kids.  Decorated by characters or not, the band-aid and its non-brand name counterparts, fulfill numerous roles. Only one of them involves healing wounds. The Band-Aid is a craft supply, a temporary tattoo, a sticker, an adhesive (when tape cannot be located) and an agent that binds two uncooperative objects (i.e. Barbie and a tiny Barbie hat or cell phone).  Somehow, I thought they would have stopped giving after all this time, but on a semi-regular basis I come to find the tell-tale signs of their use (some argue misuse). The plastic tabs litter the couch where they have been peeled back and chucked hither and yon. The Band-Aid has certain properties that I was unaware that they possessed before I had children to teach me about them.  Apparently, when applied correctly, they can make a minor pain anywhere o...

My daughter went to visit her grandparents last weekend. She did some photography with her papa. They went looking for birds, but they ended up taking pictures of rocks instead. The other day she told me that she is planning to make a website about designing fairies. First, she'll design different hair styles and dresses and wings.  Next, the user will be able to choose from these different choices to customise their fairies. She has been diligently pulling out her "project" folder every evening and morning to work on her designs. I cannot wait to see that website.