Growing Versions

Tiny hairs are going up on tiny necks.  They are embracing the night and the nocturnal animals and the role playing until tomorrow night(probably all this preparation will have a lingering effect for a while after that). My son has grasped counting down thanks to Hallowe'en.  He keeps us up to date on how close the big night is.  Both kids are primed and ready to be finally ready for whatever it this night of walking in shadows (not to mention gusts of wind and rain) has to offer. After all the hype and 2 (and counting) Hallowe'en parties and planning and revising of Hallowe'en costumes, it is almost finally here--along with a post-tropical storm.  The good thing about this weather is that the long underwear and snowsuits are not required, although the rain boots, and potentially, a recycling bag with a head and arm holes cut out of it will be in order,but it will all hardly deter us.  I look forward to finding out what my son ...

Torrance Community Dance Group performing to "Praise You" by Fat Boy Slim I can't help it. Each and every time I see a flash mob on youtube or anywhere, I burst into tears.  What is it about those daft moments set to music in airports, food courts and supermarkets?  They are designed to throw us off kilter.  It does not matter how ridiculous, in fact, the more ridiculous the better. The unexpected break into song and dance jolts me out of my insular, tunnel vision and invites me to have the lines between me and everyone else around me blurred.  The world is ruptured just for a moment.  I am split right open. One of these days, I am going to get up the courage to be part of one or even instigate one.  Have you ever been in one or witnessed one?  What was your experience?

Don't ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up. Robert Frost

I was invited over to my neighbour's house the other day for Thanksgiving dinner.  Like many Thanksgiving dinners it took all day to prepare.  My neighbour had to go to the farm and pick the carrots and dig out the potatoes and she had to climb a ladder to get at the apples for the pie and she had to "borrow",  not   kill, a turkey from her other neighbour.  The house she lives in is amazing.  It has a loft that you have to climb a tree trunk to get to and it has a compost toilet. She invited me to go to her house for Hallowe'en, when the time comes.

It became a joke between us.  On a regular basis, when we were commuting up to 2.5 hours a day, I would exclaim: "Wow, look at that, they tore that old barn down." or "Look at that huge new development. That really came out of nowhere!" My husband would jokingly respond, "Yes, dear.  They tore down that barn 1 year ago at least." or "Yes, they've been building that strip mall for 6 months." My observation skills when I was commuting were exceptionally dull.  Months and years would go by of me driving day in and day out and I would not see major (never mind minor) changes in our neighbourhood and community. Finally, after 7 years, we were lucky enough to be able to make the decision to move to the city so we wouldn't have to commute.  Right away, I noticed a difference.  Even though we still used the car a fair amount, at least at first, we are able to walk most places.  It was like I got new glasses.  My observation skills sharpe...

"What I've discovered is that in art, as in music, there's a lot of truth-and then there's a lie. The artist is essentially creating his work to make this lie a truth, but he slides it in amongst all the others. The tiny little lie is the moment I live for, my moment. It's the moment that the audience falls in love."   Lady Gaga "There's a robot.  Do you see Mama his big eyes?  He's a tall Robot and he is right over there."  Do you see him?  Have you seen him before?  I was pleased to realize that I could. When I was about 6 or 7, I occasionally used to lie on my back at the foot of my bed and stare up a patch of stucco on the ceiling.  Repeatedly and for what seemed like ages at a time, I would stare up at a cluster of tiny peaks of stucco that I could see with my 6 year old eyes was a little village inhabited by little creatures (half human, half smurf) marching around it.  It was animated enough by the tiny shadows cast by those t...

I'm waiting for the next ...development ...person ...inspiration ...story ...incarnation ...dream to make me see things in a whole new way. I'm not sure what, but I'm waiting for something.

My daughter uses her hands to explain things, tell me things and invent stories. I do too.  It's like she has learned somehow, from me, from teachers, that to explain something accurately, you must use your hands.  It seems like a conscious decision she's made, not just a reflex. She is well equipped to play charades, but for her brother it has not been easy to play charades.  Re-creating concepts/things with ones hands has been out of reach.  But, suddenly, without warning over the weekend, charades has become a game that all four of us can play together.  Out of the blue, he started challenging me to guess what he was acting out. Before, someone always got left out or misunderstood or misinterpreted and it was just not worth the heartache. But now, we've all grown into charades.  He's learning from his sister how to use his hands. The latest charades included: writing with a pen that is running out of ink, Santa coming down the chimney, ...

The latest version of a Hallowe'en costume that my son would like to be created for him (by magic I think) is a raining cloud.  A cloud that "you could fill with candies". I am thinking about that would be possible. I really am, even if the possibilties far outnumber my skills to implement them.  It is fun drawing plans in my head.

We had to wait for a long while recently.  We were waiting for a drive and, as it happens occasionally, we had a long stretch of waiting to play without back up (i.e. money or technology or books). A wedge of dread sat in my heart at first.  Great!  2 kids, $1.35 and about an hour and a half to play with. At first, the kids were content to make a big project of selecting something from the vending machine for $1.35.  That took about 10 minutes.  Reading all the little signs in the entrance of the building we were waiting in (and spinning on the high stools) took about another 10.  Okay.  Just 1 hour and 10 minutes to go. Then, the kids decided to go outside.  There is a chain of very interesting boulders just outside the doors.  Voila, 1 hours and 20 minutes vanished without a trace.  The kids did rock climbing, story telling, timing how long they could balance and conducting races from rock to rock.  It turns out there is ...

Stress always makes me see things like one sees things underwater. It is like a buzzing, flickering fluorescent light that distorts the way I perceive things.  Tiny, manageable details become overpowering, magnified and refracted as they are through my bulging eye ball, puffy with stress. Meaningless glances or happenings appear threatening.  I struggle with keeping perspective during these periods and I am currently trying to prepare a strong counterweight in my mind, so I can have a safe place in my mind to retreat to when this happens again. Then I came across this quote and it reminded me that refraction can work for me, not just against me.  "The base of all artistic genius is the power of conceiving humanity in a new, striking, rejoicing way, of putting a happy world of its own creation in place of the meaner world of common days, of generating around itself an atmosphere with a novel power of refraction, selecting, transforming, recombining the images it tra...

Coraline  is an impressive movie.  It is not only a beautiful example of animation, but also a powerful tale that easily hooked into my imagination.  Coraline lives in a house that is attached to another house (like ours), except the other door leads into another world that is similar but not identical  to the world Coraline knows. Through the other door, her parents look similar but they have button eyes and there are a host of hall-of-mirror-distortions for her to wrap her head around and ultimately escape.  It seemed initially like a benign enough movie for a then 6 year old.  We watched parts of it here and there, always stopping short of watching the whole thing right to the end.  It was a bit of a novelty in her mind for a long while that she had watched most  of a scary movie. However, one fateful day last summer she watched the whole  thing, from start to finish.  It turns out that its persuasive powers are strong and...

This picture kind of sums up where I stand at the minute.  I am boring holes into the things around me in an effort to see them more clearly and suck juices out of good things but I can't help feeling unnerved by storm clouds just above the horizon line.  When I took this picture I was oblivious to the stormy sky along the edges and focused on those ripe round orange fruits all around me.  It almost took my breath away when I took a look at the pictures later.  Those clouds are menacing, yet those pumpkins are so full of water and goodness and vitamins and food.  The clouds are just passing through.

My kids are continually coming up with Hallowe'en costume ideas.  And I do mean continually.  I never thought I'd be participating (however unwillingly) in serious Hallowe'en costume brainstorms more than once in the month of April, for example.  The list of possibilities is long and growing everyday. I cannot sew and I can barely tape straight so we are limited in what we can hobble together from the dress up box, second hand store and the grocery store. The possible contenders include: a lamp (a persistent contender), a drain pipe (what is that white tube hanging off the side of the house?), followed by a suggestion that I also be a drain pipe and then we could drain into each other (fun!), a witch's cat (with the proviso that I also be the witch), a scary faced ghost, a vampire, a happy ghost, a spooky ghost, spiderman(again), tiger (again),a spider. Even as a  young adult who was free to attend boozy dress up parties I had a hard time getting into it. ...

"Some pig" Charlotte's Web, E.B. White When I was about 10, my parents decided to hire someone to change the wallpaper in my room.  One day when I came home from school, I discovered that most of the paper was stripped but the person doing the work drew my attention to one remaining shred of wallpaper still on the wall.  In a dark corner behind the door, there was a small square of wallpaper upon which there was a tiny message.  " This is my favourite room ever."   It was signed by the little girl who had had the room before me.  This hitherto invisible message briefly had light shone on it to be read.  In return, I left a similar message for whoever came after me. I don't know if it is just my eyes or the season or all the walking I've been doing lately but there are spider webs everywhere I look.  I think perhaps I have just decided to see them.  They are so hard to capture with a camera because they need a dark enough background and ...

You will find truth more quickly through delight than gravity. Let out a little more string on your kite. Alan Cohen I ca n do a lot of thi ngs. My kids are co nsta ntly updati ng me about all the thi ngs they are lear ni ng to do. Today, my so n informed me that he does n't  need  help any more ope ni ng the straw o n his juice box.  Sigh. I worked for a lo ng time to prove to everyone around me all the thi ngs that I ca n do.  Since childhood, I've made quite a long list . So, yes,  now I ca n make espresso, a nd write a fu ndi ng proposal a nd give a resista nt toddler a ntibiotics, a nd I ca n unclog a toilet and clear a jam in a photocopier.   The problem with my list is that all of those things involve gravity.  I'm going to start attempting things that defy gravity for a while. It's time to make a new list.

Of course it was.

I found myself distractedly fingering the place where the bra and bra strap meet the other day. As I waited for the light to change, I realized that I was subconsciously expecting to feel the bump of the breastfeeding clasp under my shirt, anticipating the release of the clasp.  But, alas, that bra is either packed away or was so full of holes it required more drastic action and its requirement is, for the time being at least, unnecessary. Someone I know who grew up smoking, and finally quit after 20 years, told me once that for a good 15 years after quitting he still reached for his phantom pack in his breast pocket each and every time he got into his car. I have found myself going to call a friend and stop myself from using a phone number that has been out of service for years.  I always marvel at how my fingers remember passwords that other parts of my brain cannot.  If I am forced to write down a password without a keyboard, I inevitably get it wrong. The oth...

The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears or the sea.-Isak Dinesen    

We've taken to drawing together in the evenings.  It is relaxing and it is one of those things that is fun enough that it drowns out the impulse to flick on the t.v. to cope with the record rain fall we've had this month. The great thing about drawing is that anything is possible. Anything.