Growing Versions

What I'm really starting to like about photography is being surprised. I look through the lens seeing one thing and the picture itself shows me something more. The act of taking photos makes me notice in new ways. The act of seeing the photographs themselves helps me look again in yet another way. Even the most ordinary, muckiest thing reflects light.  Through the lens I understand that a little more each new day. Light on wall, line separating the sidewalk and the grass, the place where my hand has smudged the glass all absorb light and throw it back. I see that now.

If it takes 10, 000 hours to become an expert in something, he has logged at least 100 towards becoming an expert soft material slide maker.  Most of the time has been spent on the weekends.  Those hours have been poured into perfecting the angle, the materials, and the technique.  I say that the cat bed on top of the change table cover has put the design at a new higher plateau.  Just 9,900 more hours to go.

Ever since we've been sucked down into the rabbit hole of iphone usage in our home, my kids, especially my son, has come up with numerous (too numerous to count) suggestions of  fun iphone games they should make. The suggestions are so elaborate and specific, it is often difficult to find a satisfying match. His latest suggestion is this: He wants me to locate, among the millions of iphone games, a game that lets him go inside things, like a bird's mouth, a tail, or teeth or a clock or a power line or a sock and fingernails and blood. He wants to go inside a basketball.  Anything. He takes it further, then I want to be able to make a house inside a power line. Can you help me find that game? Another common request that has so far been elusive on our search. He wants to find Makers.  He wants to make some things like making orange pie or something that can make orange juice out of anything. He wants a slide maker that connects a slide to your house and makes loo...

Everyone knows the secret to making the right decision is making a long detailed list rationalizing why they should not do something, right?  This should be followed up by a lot of restless to-ing and fro-ing. That's what I thought.  I figured I needed to pour a lot of resistance into the mix and be convinced of something. But that is not what did it. I was asked by someone, "what if?" And my heart woke up and cleared its throat. Ready to answer that question.

The other night, when I could not sleep, I stumbled on a copy of Stuart Little. I picked it up and started to read.  I was instantly delighted by its sweetly spun absurdity.  Stuart Little is the story of a mature-for-his-age mouse in an otherwise human household and how he navigates the world with a jaunty self-possession, despite his small stature.  The story charmed me unrelentingly. On a quest to find his little bird friend who had flown north (because she had been warned in writing  by a pigeon that she might be in danger by nesting in a Boston Fern), he drove a mouse sized car (supplied by a dentist with a love of model boats and cars) and ends up becoming a substitute teacher on route.  I know, its ridiculous, but it all makes sense when E.B. White tells it. He asks one of his temporary students if he can " tell us(the class) what is important." Henry Rackmeyer responds that what is important is "A shaft of sunlight at the end of a dark afternoon,...

"You are usually not so close.  That tree is usually not so far away," he exclaimed all the way to preschool that day. Everything was examined from both ends of the binoculars.  Nothing escaped his notice through those lenses. I am taking some time to do a workshop at a retreat centre this week.  I held my breath a lot (and washed a lot of dishes) making the decision to go through with my plans to come here.  All the routines (however only half working as they are) have been the tracks I have been sliding along.  I didn't want to leave the tracks, the making of lunches and matching of mittens and the reading of bedtime stories, because sometimes it feels like those tasks are the only gluey bits holding us together. I have left the tracks. Usually things are not so close or so far away.

A bunk bed ceases to be a bunk bed if a screw is missing. The door stays locked or unlocked if the key is broken or missing. The puzzle is incomplete without that one little piece. The winter jacket is useless without a zipper. A necklace ceases to be a necklace without a clasp. Even the largest avalanche is triggered by the small things. Vernor Vinge I have been neglecting a lot of little things.  Time to locate the proper bolts, the necessary hardware and the essential paperwork.

air-borne (air-bawrn, -bohrn) adjective (dictionary.com) 1. carried by the air, as pollen or dust. 2. in flight; aloft 3. supported entirely by the atmosphere; flying

(overheard statement last week) " Since when did we stop teaching our kids about consent?" Since never. We haven't really started yet. Let's  start now.

These poor exposed, tender shoots , that's what we're all thinking today. It has been spring for three weeks now. Whatever triggers flowers to bloom has been triggered and so the plants have entered a new phase of their life cycle because that is what flowers do.   They do not hear weather forecasts so they have been ardently dotting the neighbourhood with shades of purple, white and orange for about a week without regard for the impending stormy weather. They are destined to be shrouded in icy crystals this weekend. Yes, they will be blanketed with snow, but it will melt into water and feed their roots. I have to remember this, when I expose my roots, my bursts of waxy colourful petals to the world and I am met with an icy reception, a lull, an unexpected turn of events, a drastic drop in the barometric pressure. Burst forth, grow, come into the world, unfurl your leaves and be triggered to enter a new phase in your life cycle.

A library outranks any other thing a community can do to benefit its people. It is a never failing spring in the desert.-Andrew Carnegie

Who is the monarch in charge of your body?  Or is it ruled by a cooperative or a democracy or a dictator? According to my boy,  the king of his body is his head. For me, I 'd have to say the Queen of me is my stomach.  If it is empty or too full, everything else shuts down. Where is your centre? Where is the nerve that sends out the first impulse, sending it travelling out through your body, issuing orders, extracting levies and demanding obedience?

I found myself waiting with my four year old at an airport recently for a much much longer time than was originally planned.  The flight carrying my husband and daughter was scheduled to arrive at 12:50 but unbeknownst to me, initially, they missed their flight and so we ended up having to wait around until 4:20. I had a lot of pressures of work that were hanging heavy on my mind and there were definitely a lot of different things I could have been  accomplishing  with that time, but it made no sense to get in the car and double our drive just to come back two hours later. So, we had to wait. Amazingly, the hours slipped along in a kind of rhythm all its own--a rhythm perhaps only possible in an environment as bland as an airport. Hour one : We dared not even go to the bathroom in case we missed them. While we waited for the plane to disembark(the one that we thought they were on), we tried to imagine all the questions that customs  were presumably asking them...

Nobody can bring you peace but yourself. Ralph Waldo Emerson

I have had the pleasure of hanging out with my son all week one-on-one.  I really thought I knew him last weekend.  By this weekend, my knowledge had deepened and compounded. Having all that extra, not filtered through sibling/father time has yielded me more knowledge about  when he will jump, when he will cry, when he will ask for milk, when he'll explain something. Now I know him a little better. I know that he does not like to be rushed. He likes to be cuddled a lot more than I realized. He really likes to plan how to build a lot of things. I was making so many assumptions based on partial and biased information before last weekend. "Perspective taking-  Perceiving physical, social or emotional situations from a point of view other than one's own." (education.com)

Above trend gains fast growing continent exponential returns gross domestic product

We have found all the eggs. The birds have flown out of their hiding spots and presented themselves, one by one. Flock by flock. The urge to hang clothes on the line and have the smell of the outdoors on my skin has returned. I am restless now.  I am restless to shirk my status as a specimen under artificial light.  It is time for me to emerge from my hiding spot and come out into the sunshine. How about you?

We were out for a mid-week trip to a family restaurant tonight.  On Tuesdays they have a deal where kids eat for free.  As  a bonus, they threw in face painting today.  My son ran over to the young woman sitting in a nearly empty restaurant full of excitement.  I cautiously asked, "what is available to be face painted?" I suspected she had 2-4 set things she was willing to paint on the kids' faces. Her response sort of surprised me, "Anything." My son readily responded to this invitation to ask for anything. "Okay, I'll have a snake." A few minutes later, one of his preschool friends came into the restaurant. My son explained this thrilling possibility and his friend and his friend's friend promptly went over to ask for snakes too.   My son wondered, "What else should I get?" I, of course, was again unsure if she would even consent to do his other cheek, but this did not hold him up. "She said anyt...