Days With My Father

This is one of the most beautiful photo essays I've ever seen.  I was moved to tears.  It reminds me of my friend Janet's series of her aging grandmother.  (Janet, do you have those online?)

Anna Watson 2

And here is Neve.  These make me so happy.

Anna Watson

I have a great friend from college who I coincidentally discovered lived a few doors down from me.  (I mean, literally, she's been living like 4 houses away from me for a year or so, and we had no idea!)

She is incredibly talented and I was the recent beneficiary of her talents.  She took pictures of Fiona and Neve.  Here is the oldest and weirdest of the two.  But dang, she can ham it up for the camera.

I will post Neve's session later.  It was equally cool, but so very different.

Click on the title to see her site.  And if you're looking for a photographer in the Atlanta area, you won't be disappointed.

When She Asked, I Said...

"Well, um (clear throat), when two people love each other, their love makes a baby."

This was not enough. "But how does the love make a baby?"

"Daddy and I kissed, and the love in our kiss made a baby."

"Oh. And you had a baby in your tummy after that?"

"Mmm hmmm."

She then instructed me to immediately kiss Daddy when he gets home from work, so that she may have another sibling. Preferably a boy sibling, thankyouverymuch.

That was when I found this in her room, I suppose to act as an inspirational how-to in case the urge arises:

"Good night, Terry." And then BAM- the following morning, reality sets in. "Terry? Terry?"

It all seemed like yesterday that I was pregnant. And as quickly as I made our son (note the male appendage), he had arrived with similar haste. In Fiona's reality, my gestation period is the same as that of a goldfish.

When I asked Fiona to tell me about each character in the drawing, she explained, "The picture of you with the big belly was from before the baby came out." Ok, gotcha. "And then he pops out, (*POP*) and Daddy is so happy he starts dancing." And I see the post-delivery belly sag. The girl is all about some accuracy. "And then you take his picture. And then we tickle him." You say tickle, I say ticill.

We've been here before. And by here I mean the hell-like place that is somewhere between truth (I hate being pregnant, and I'm too vain to get pregnant and gain 80 lbs again) and fable (when does the stork arrive with our bundle of baby boy joy?). And yet, somehow, this 6 year old girl knows just what to say to make me actually consider the happiness of an addition to casablanca.

THACSOLOTMOMYE

This vacation has been wonderful. I'm sad to see it coming to an end. Between beach visits, feeding dolphins (!), visiting with dear friends, and eating great food, we've also been alerted that our oldest has superpowers. Or so she says. After all, vacations are golden opportunities for delusions of grandeur.

Last night, we were sitting around the dinner table playing our annual Scattergories game with our favorite Brits, when Fiona decided she wanted to go out the back door without telling us. When asked what she was doing, she replied, "I'm going outside to save the world" (with a hint of "duh" in her tone). I told her that it was too dark to be playing outside without us [next to an unlit creek], and that we would take Banjo for a walk when the adults were through playing our game. She clearly didn't appreciate us trivializing her responsibilities to save the neighborhood by referring to it as "playing".

With a stomp and a pout, she went into the guest bedroom and began drawing. I assumed it was cased-closed for "Rainbow Dash" (the super-hero name she gave herself. "Turning bad guys into rainbows" is her superpower. Awesome, right?)

Our game of ridicule and ruthless mockery, I mean Scattergories, ended. (Click on the above link for a Scattergories explanation.) We said goodnight to our friends, and Fiona emerged from the bedroom. She threw a piece of paper at me and ran off.

What I'm about to tell/show you is very embarrassing. I can't believe I'm even able to laugh about this now (on a blog, mind you. NOT in front of my mean child.):

I had no idea that I was looking at the cartogram to my demise. Totally unaware and with a big smile, I asked her to tell me all about "this lovely picture you've drawn". She seemed a bit embarrassed to have to explain to me that each figure was a carefully executed anger-fantasy. (What on earth???)

From the top:

The crown-looking things within circles are her eyes. And those aren't crowns. They're flames.

Beneath her angry eyes is the title of her creation: THACSOLOTMOMYE. Translation: Thanks Alot, Mommy.

The figure falling into a hole? That's me. Falling into a hole.

The picture of a sad woman with the <--> Mom next to it?

And the figure next to the sad Mom? That's Fiona, sticking her naughty tongue out at me.

At the bottom of the page, Fiona is scaring me. And enjoying it.

This is disturbing on so many levels.

We leave for home (reality) tomorrow. There we will be enrolling her in an anger management program. For super heroes.

Don and Tiny

I'm neither sure of the origins of the title or the story behind this cute rodent narrative. (Fiona is asleep now, but if her explanation is good I'll post an update tomorrow.) All I do know is that this was the title she gave Terry, and this is so telling of my daughter.

While her 3 year old sister has a wider vocabulary than her (granted Neve could talk the horns off a billy goat), clearly she has a lot she's thinking about and wants to say. And I love seeing it spill out onto paper.

My mother (an old fashioned Italian woman) is positive that it has something to do with "serving a man". I'm sure she was clutching her chest with bursting pride as she made this observation. Ah, madonne.

Isabelle Abramson Ceramics

(found on ffffound)

A Good Song Part 1: The History Of Liking

After years of being told by parents, teachers, doctors, optometrists, friends, and diary entries from the days of yore that don't lie (and should be burned) that I am over-emotional and sensitive, I decided to turn a new leaf in college. I would try my darndest to remove the emotional tendencies from my artistic vocabulary.

Was that beautiful? No, it was sentimental.

Was that ugly? No, it was an accurate portrayal of the reality of life.

Am I a good artist? (Or, will I get my BFA when all is said and done?) Good is too subjective. But here's your degree.

It has been ingrained in me that loving something for nostalgic purposes, or sentimentality, or for the sheer fact that it stirs emotions within you is a form of weakness. The farther I move from the days of college and wanting to believe that I have the omniscient ability to remain objective in all things, I'm realizing that I am still emotional and sensitive. And not an art robot.

Although, in the case of music especially, I find that I have a hard time liking something upon first listen. Or even more so, I hate that unless I can connect a song to a memory, or a feeling, or a particular experience (pleasurable, mind you), I probably won't like it. Time, space, memory, and all of those other humanly sensations factor into my loves and my dislikes.

I wish I could be more like those whose range in tastes and genres seem to be influenced more by their ear than their id. I don't know this to be true in every case (ahem, Josh?), but I'm reminded that some people* love mediums in art for just that: the love of the medium. The stirring of emotions seems to be a byproduct of their initial interest.

In my case, I do not like most kinds of jazz (for example) because it makes me nervous. It never really stood a chance. And I hate that. I want to go to a night club with Mr. and Mrs. Huxtable and I want to like free jazz, so-help-me. So stop making me nervous, with your beeda-bahdo-dop-DEE-DEEEE-DEEEEE!

I remember sitting in my experimental sound class listening to Steve Reich's Come Out

(which I do love), and thinking,

"Now do I really like this, or do I just get it, therefore liking it?"

(as I would later discover that Reich was one of the easier artists to listen to in a cold, dark, screening room at 9:00am, unlike some of his other Minimalist or Fluxus buds.)

And the bigger answer:

"Dera, you're over-analytical. Stop thinking so much and just enjoy."

Or as a professor once said to me, "You're too self-correcting." How does one correct that problem?

So, when I'm not over-analyzing, over-correcting, and over-emotionalizing everything, I am over-delighting... sifting through the photo-albums and home videos in my mind that accompany the precipitating sounds.

Now, I have to admit something. This was not the post I set out to write. I wanted to write a 2 sentence blurb about one of my favorite songs. I should know better. Every thought has a precursor, every interest has a story. Hopefully Part 2 to this post won't need any more forwards or introductions.

John Cage

George Brecht

Steve Reich

Phillip Corner

My favorite ivory tickler, Schroder.

* Magical Metal Playground is a shared blog of some friends, some family, and some people that I may have to wait to meet in Blogger Glory. I was flattered to be asked to write on there, as most of the other writers are either amazing musicians/artists or just have amazing musical/visual lovelies to recommend.

On Record

When I first met Terry, he embodied everything I wanted in a man. He was tall, handsome, kind, gentle but masculine, he made art (that I fell in love with before meeting him actually), he liked my food which made me feel like a rescuer (some inherited busomy Italian gene?), he was weird in all the right ways, he was of pedigree extraction (McKay's and White's probably had high tea while the Bennett's and Angileri's were drinking homemade wine from the bathtub), and he was forward thinking, I thought. He was always thinking, in fact. And drawing. Quiet. Funny. Musical. The list could go on and on, for the record.

However. He once said something to me, very early in our "courting" days, that struck me odd and out of character for someone who I had classified as "forward thinking".

We were looking at something drawn, perhaps a childrens book illustration or something, that I mentioned I liked. He, without a second thought, said:

Terry: "A woman drew that."

Just by his tone, I knew that was not a good thing.

Me: "How do you know?"

Terry: "It looks like butterflies are about to fly off the page. It's flowery and curly and... look at how she drew the man in the book."

The man looked just like the way I'd have drawn a man.

Terry: "He's soft and sweet. I bet she was in love with him when she drew him."

By the way, Terry and I met in art school. Where I had planned on making art. For a statement to come so easily from his mouth, as though he'd thought this gem up long before then and waited for the perfect time to reveal his true chauvinistic side (once I was locked into the relationship, I guess), I was annoyed. And paranoid that I was one of those Lilith Fair artists. I shouldn't have cared, but it sunk deep at 18. Not completely his doing but having played a big part, I changed my major to experimental video. A major deserving an explanation for another post.

Since then, the issue has come up as we see illustrations, cartoons, and art made by women who draw with their {a word that looks like Regina, sounds like angina} apparently. Or so says Terry. And I still find offense in that after all these years.

Last night, he said it again:

Terry: "...like that time you drew me when I went to your mom and dad's house for the first time?", har, har, har.

I remembered exactly which drawing he was referring to, inside the very first sketchbook I kept in college, as sentimental as his shoe boxes full of concert stubs he's stashed away under our bed. I drew his profile sitting on the couch watching tv, and it was a darn good portrait, if I may say so myself. It wasn't sappy. He was fully clothed. It was just his profile. Because he was there. What hurt most was that I had no idea, 11 years later, that he thought it was bad.

Terry: "I never said it was bad. I said it looked like a girl did it. And you're a girl."

Me: "Don't patronize me. You think it looks fairy-ish."

Terry: "I think it looks like you loved me when you drew it."

Me: "Then I need to draw a picture of you now..."

Terry: "It was cute. Don't get your feelings hurt. I loved it. It was like this...", he pulls out Fiona's sketchbook and starts drawing.

{5 minutes later, and stifling a mouthful of laughter}

While he drew this, I tried drawing him again. And it looked like this:

I made his hair extra fluffy and lips extra pursed just to make him extra mad.

Instead, he tried to make me feel better with these:

Terry: "Ok. Well, here's how I would have drawn you in 5th grade."

"...or like this":

I laugh. Things are better. But, for added insurance...

Terry: "And here's how one of Banjo's {rhymes with witches} would draw him."

My Thing

We pull up to my parents house early Saturday afternoon. My dad has already begun building the coop, to which he has no connection. No connection, that is, other than his connection to me by way of being my father. He won't eat the eggs they will lay (I think him and my mom are secretly part of the pasturization safety committee), he could care less about Ginger, our current neglected chicken, and he is certainly busy making other things, coops being at the bottom of that list. Regardless, he has already been to the hardware store and back, and he's begun building the frame for this marvelous chicken chalet. He has an enthusiastic way about him, in spite of the fact that he's committed an entire Saturday for this.

Before Terry strapped on his tool belt (a welcome sight for these lumberjack-loving eyes), my dad shows us his latest creation, a stunning oak and mahogany communion table for his church.

A brief history about my parents: they make stuff all. the. time. Like, quilts by the week, new lovely wardrobes for my children every year, mandolins, violins, and pieces of Shaker-style furniture far more often than you'd think those things could be manufactured by 2 people who complain about their sciatica and poor arch support. (I still swear that they're hiding a sweatshop on some secret floor of their home.) Paintings, drawings, and other types of 2 dimensional art as often as I make shopping lists. It's inspiring and maddening all at once. Every time I visit them, I notice new "mades" all around their already lovely home... things that my mother has clearly already forgotten she's made (a new set of pin striped curtains say, or a new table runner on the salvaged wood dining room table my dad made), having moved on to other forms of creativity that my brain has barely even had time to think about, let alone do.

Last year: "So, mom? I started my garden last week... wanna hear what I'm planting?", I glance out the living room window to see a veritable rain forest of lush zucchini vines, their fruits waiting to be picked. My parents don't even eat zucchini! My mom, "Oh honey, that's wonderful!"

Everything they create is practically perfect, and always at the highest level of craftsmanship. I keep telling myself that it's due mostly to the luxury of being newly retired, stuffing those memories of my homemade childhood Christmases when I unwrapped gift after homemade gift that have now made their way into the arms of my children. Just thinking about how much they do makes me want to unbutton my pants and eat a log of Pillsbury cookie dough on the couch.

This apparently does not go unnoticed by even the young:

Fiona: faint nail gun and table saw noises coming from my dad's workshop downstairs, "Mom? Why does Papi make stuff so much?"

Me: "Because it's his 'thing'. Everyone's got a thing, you know?"

Fiona: "Yeah. Mina Ro's (my mom's) thing is sewing me dresses."

Me: "Yes."

Fiona: "And Mina Lani's (Terry's mom) thing is doctor." Just to clarify, my mother-in-law is a nurse. Her 'thing' is not doctors, although not a bad hobby if you're single I suppose, but the practice itself.

Me: "Yup."

Fiona: "Daddy's thing is drawing, because he makes cartoons." Sort of. He does the ecards and design on the website for the network you'll never be allowed to watch, and the one your grandparents think is porn.

Me: "Mmm hmm."

Fiona: "And your thing is 'making-up'."

Me: "Making-up? What's that?", visions of me picking fights with people and quickly saying I'm sorry. Just for fun.

Fiona: "You know? Making-up beds."

I've got to go now. I'm going to unmake my bed, and then remake it again. {Chills}

Shameless Awesome Offspring Update

This was found in Fiona's sketchbook tonight, after she went to sleep. Although she's not awake now to tell me exactly what this picture is all about, I'm pretty confident that she's depicted a happy mother/daughter elephant duo. This makes me really really happy.

Saved By The Scanner

So I've been trying to de-clutter our house/lives, which, if done properly, would involve giving away certain family members. You see, this isn't a matter of permanently doing anything. This is just the act of removing relatively unimportant objects of the past in order to replace them with the unimportant objects of now. Yes, literally as we speak, two members of my family are creating tangible evidence of their existence, of which I'm somehow responsible for the finding of it's home. The third family member is dreaming of how she will suck up space tomorrow.

If left to Terry, every scribble, every thought put to paper, every piece of material memory would be saved and improperly (but lovingly, I'm sure) stuffed into a garbage bag. And then the day arrives that he forgets what was in the first three garbage bags that are collecting dust in the laundry room, which he's been stepping over for the past 10 years, and he curses, "why am I always tripping over garbage bags of {beep}?", and I'm to blame for not having made our home look like the showroom of the Container Store.

Being the clairvoyant member of our family that I am, I take measures ahead of time to secretly throw away the majority of the crap that my children deem priceless, without their knowing. Plastic tiaras: you had a good (brief) life here, but I'm afraid it's your turn to meet the kind folks at Salvation Army. Star Wars Happy Meal toys: I wish my husband never saw you. You'd have never made it past the box if it weren't for him. He's at work now, so I'll do you the favor of reuniting you with your Happy Meal toy relatives at Goodwill. Sticker books that were filled within the first hour that my children had you: they never really loved you. Stickers are only fun if they're pressed on hard-to-remove surfaces. And that is why your destiny is a landfill. Pez dispensers: I'll take my chances at not debuting you in 30 years on Antiques Roadshow.

I have little to no guilt in that arena of organizational life. But I could seriouly lose sleep over how awful I feel when I secretly throw away my children's artwork. First of all, Fiona has been drawing since day 1. I'd say she averages about 5 drawings a day since 16 months old. At least. Without even doing the math, I can assure that's more garbage bags than we have room for in our teeny tiny laundry room. It's a scenario I'm all too familiar with: standing over a trashcan with multiple pieces of construction paper in my hand, heart heavy as I'm executive assessor of toddler talent. What's even more sad, is that her little sister has only shown interest in drawing and painting within the past year, obviously not having had the same amount of time to refine her visual art skills as Fiona. Her interests just lie elsewhere- movement, music, interaction, words- but her artwork rarely goes on to the next round. "Auf Wiedersehen, Neve."

A few days ago, as I was scanning in drawings that Terry did for the prior two posts, I kinda got into this weird scanning frenzy. I wanted to scan everything I could get my hands on. Bedspread, pages out of vintage storybooks, swatches of vintage fabric, the dog's ear, etc, etc. Before scanning the children themselves into our computer, it dawned on me: I could scan in their work! No more crumpled pieces of construction paper! No more saved paper placemats from the pizza shop decorated with bored scribbles! No more sunday school craft projects that were done by teachers! Oh, happy day! Apparently, if you were a toddler craft that wanted to make the cut around here, you should have had a Bible verse written somewhere on you. Ex-southern baptist guilt saved you from ruin... until today.

Today, bags of "borderline" art were tossed out with moldy cheese, but scanned into existence forever. (Or until someone steals our computer.) I kept the stuff that is priceless (which was more than I'm really willing to admit.) And even major-motor-skills Neve got her own virtual folder of drawings and scribbles.

First Place:

"ASTRONAUT SISTERS"
or
"STUCK IN SPACE WITH HER? WHERE'S A BLACK HOLE WHEN YOU NEED ONE?"
or
"TRY TO STOP ME FROM EATING FREEZE-DRIED ICE CREAM HERE, MOM."


Second Place:

"HANSEL AND GRETEL"
or
"ALL SMILES BEFORE YOU GET SHOVED INTO AN OVEN"
or
"THAT'S WHAT YOU GET FOR EATING MY HOUSE, YOU LITTLE..."

Third Place (Most Improved):
"A FACE by Neve"
or
"I'M STILL UNSURE ABOUT THIS NEW TOUPEE"
or
"TRANSCENDENCE THROUGH FAITH"


Most Likely To Be Shown To Other Mothers by Your Own:
"MALCOLM'S SCHOOL" (this is an aerial view of the lunchroom of a "big kid school".)
or
"MY MOTHER WANTS ME TO BE THE INTERIOR DESIGNER SHE NEVER WAS"
or
"I'M BRILLIANT"


Honorable Mention:
"A FRAMED PICTURE OF GRANDMA" (even after she tried explaining that these two main images were framed photographs- the one on the left of a grandma, I still don't think I got it.)
or
"GRANDMA + DOOR + BIRD IN FLIGHT + ? = FREUDIAN NIGHTMARE"

I NEED YOU TO...

INSPIRE ME, NOW!
{my newest favorite art/design blog}

{apartment tees}

{growing poems}

{theft-proof sandwich bags}

{embroidered-word sheets, designed to imprint sayings on different parts of your body depending on your sleeping positions.}

also: there are some beautifully inspiring pieces of eye candy, like this set of photos, that you can find on fffound.com.

Be mindful, what tickles my fancy is different from those of Terry's. It's fun to scroll through both sites with a partner.

"I Wanna Knit Knit Knit You From Your Head To Your Toes"

I wish I knew how to track down this artist. I could probably google "knit tv oprah", but I'm feeling too lazy right now. Terry found it on fffound.com (a wonderful site), and left it sitting on the desktop. I, in turn, discovered it, and haven't stopped thinking about all the other tvs that this person may have made.

My first instinct was to send this to Sportweasel and ask her to knit one for me. But then I couldn't think of anything to put on the screen other than my face. And that's not clever. That's vain. I'll just stick to my original request for knit food.

(food images found on fleegle's blog)

StumbleUpon™

I was just turned on to a Firefox add-on called StumbleUpon™ that is kinda blowing my mind. I felt I should share. Go there and read the description, as I'm having a hard time thinking of how to describe it. All I know is that once the Stumble icon shows up in your toolbar, based on your interests (which you check off during set-up), each hit of the Stumble button generates one great site after another. Assuming we share similar taste and interests, you'll be amazed at what's out there that you've never seen.

WARNING! This is, however, a HUGE time waster (something Terry and I need not promote, seeing as how we reign supreme in that department already).

These were found on I site I "stumbled upon" (ugly chuckle) earlier. He is an installation street artist who made my night. I'm so inspired after seeing this stuff... look at his site right... now!