Wouldn’t it be nice to every once in awhile, sluff off the old things that we are holding onto, or that are holding onto us, the attitudes that define us, the thoughts that won’t grow up? The boys’ Alligator Lizard shed it’s skin yesterday. It seemed like a very cool thing. Something we should learn about in more detail, come Science Night, but it wasn’t until this … Continue reading Shedding our Skins
This time is the time I feel closest to the page; here, at this table, with a warm cup of coffee, now, in the wee hours, dark all around me, sun not ready to peak over the ridge for several hours, children still tucked into bed, silent for these few hours. Silence. Golden. Shimmering. Silver-plated. Polished. Vibrant. In a few more minutes, there will be … Continue reading This is the time I feel closest to the page
It’s like a fireworks: well, no, it’s really like a Persian rug.” Rainer Maria Rilke It is a comfort that even great writers fumble over themselves to find words to describe loveliness in nature. This morning I sat back and watched as Rilke stumbled to describe a few twigs of heather included in a letter. I don’t mean, he fell down, but his heart and … Continue reading Come here, You!
There is nothing like the smell of fresh Rosemary fresh between fingers, fresh from the garden, dirt under nails from digging, dirt on knees; you could say from praying, but it isn’t, really. Unless praying is cooing to the plants doing well, inhaling deep to fill the lungs, and knowing each miracle of bud unfurled is another occasion for wonder. Worn, green fingers smell of tomato plants, mix … Continue reading All this Talk of Rosemary and Religion
This morning, I started out my reading time with a little poetry from Billy Collins. The title of this article is a line from his poem Canada, from the book, “Sailing Alone Around the Room.” What Collins does best is turn an apparently simple phrase into a numinous moment. –The New Yorker That started off innocently. I just wanted to share the quote on the … Continue reading Endless Visibility that Hands you the Horizon on a Platter
A Red-Breasted Robin perches on a limb at the edge of an airport runway. As a plane approaches and slows to zoom onto the landing strip, I wonder at the bird eagerly watching. I remember standing on the Golden Gate Bridge to watch The Fleet Come In many years ago, and marvel at the Blue Angels flying formations and daring feats of danger and bravado … Continue reading Bird on a Limb
T.S. Eliot is another one of my favorite poets. The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock, perhaps, being one of the most haunting and beautiful poems I have ever read. He has a way of speaking that is lilting, and ominous at the same time. This morning, I read East Coker, one of the poems in the book, Four Quartets, by T.S. Eliot. Here is a … Continue reading Between the Two World Wars
Just thinking of the word Perspective tweaks my brain a tad. There are so many points to consider. Last night, my boys and I worked on the idea of a Vanishing Point in art. We looked at some YouTube videos of learning to draw a scene based on a single vanishing point, and all the lines you should draw across the scene to make sure … Continue reading Spatial Relationships on a Flat Surface
In only seven stanzas and a little introductory phrase, a quote by Paul Cezanne, I am plunged into the world of beauty, where art, science, philosophy, farms and haystacks, baseball, the history of architecture, and the heaven of geometry with its lines, vanishing points and theorems converge to dance, intertwined and deeply in love.* That is the Poetry of Billy Collins. His ability to pull … Continue reading All the World, In Brief
Another night. Another gift. Dinner was amazing – homemade hot-dog buns, homemade mayonnaise, homemade relish, homemade potato chips. Big, honkin’ Hot-dogs. Delicious. Then while Bean was humming sweetly to himself in the tub, Scott and Ben were imitating one another sprawled out on the floor in front of the wood-burning stove. They were both exhausted from a long day of work, for Scott, and school, for Ben. Both … Continue reading Planting Seeds of Hope: in Hums and Laughter and Poetry
Ever since last week, I cannot help hearing the name Dessa Darling, a poet nearing Pop Icon status, and wrecking my serenity just a tiny bit. Only a tiny bit. Of course I’m happy for her. She is all over the internet, Twitter adores her, she was interviewed on The Splendid Table over the weekend on NPR, for Pete’s Sake, to learn about her eating … Continue reading Nostalgic Poet Mama, with a Downright Ugly Twinge of Jealousy
Thanks to my son’s take home Scholastic News magazine, I learned that November is National American Heritage Month. For Language and Literature night tonight, I pulled a free printable from TeacherVision to learn about Picture Language used to communicate between tribes. Both the boys tried their hands at telling a story with just the main points, without the filler words, and with only simple drawings. We … Continue reading In the Corners and Cobwebs of Every Civilization…Were the Poets and Artists
“There’s a great — with the significant risk of sounding a bit pretentious — there’s a great Camus quote, in which he says something like, I may paraphrase, but, ‘A man’s work is nothing more or less than the slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in the presence of which his heart first opened.’” … Continue reading Great and Simple Images that Open our Hearts
The last thing you hear on the audio version of this recording is someone saying into the microphone, while the crowd is going crazy, “The Blues Does Not Get Better Than That!” This is Part 2 of the Video of about 12 minutes of performance for a 70th Birthday Bash for John Mayall. This was playing on Pandora while I chopped onions for a stew … Continue reading I Chop Onions and Get Lost in Melancholy for a Moment
`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe. These are the opening lines of the famous poem, The Jabberwocky, by Lewis Carroll. We read poetry last night, my 4- and 8-year old, snuggled on each side of me on the couch. We read some classic A. A. Milne poetry and … Continue reading A Happy, Jumbled Mess of Wordplay and Childhood Memories
(Inspired by the first five paragraphs of Sven Birkerts’ essay on Emerson’s “The Poet” – A Circling, Poetry, April 2012) This, then, is why and how, and all the other important questions rolled into one. There is no burning question worth it all, after all, if soul is not mentioned, understood as primal and holy, outside of any sect or belief. Soul – quiet being, … Continue reading The Soul In Poetry
Over dinner we got into a big discussion of not judging a book by its cover. We talked about the people we met at the Art Gallery, who were disabled, and how some people would look at them and think that their life is difficult, and they wouldn’t take the time to get to know what is inside that person. We don’t want to look … Continue reading Classify, don’t Stereotype – Sort, don’t Judge
Our lives are very busy with art and life and living and creating. It’s not always easy to keep up with all that the boys do, but I figured if I take one night a week to try to sum up the last weeks events, we should be able to keep a rough idea of the meanderings of these artistic children. Ben reading original poetry … Continue reading The Art of Living Life as Art
What I want is a Stage… and an Audience… and a Community of Artists! Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are … Continue reading Who are you Not to be?
The Valentine’s Day card Ben and I made on the computer to pass out at the 2nd Grade Party My seven-year old hates Valentine’s Day. He will make that known to anyone who will listen to him. Yet he pours out his heart in letters to his little girlfriend back in California. These two have been an item since the middle of Kindergarten. At the … Continue reading Do not go gentle – but Rage, Rage!
Today I may flywith my hair stickingstraight outin every directionfrom the electicityof a circular slide. Spinning dizzy on a grassy fieldmay happen next, or rollingdown a hill, arms plasteredto my sides, in recklessdisregard for my ownequilibrium. Doesn’t matter. It’s the weekend.We have bigger plansthan we are capableof fulfilling. And that is halfthe fun. We are rambunctiousand effervescent. We are loudand joyful, running with ourwings out to our sidesmaking buzzing sounds. … Continue reading Twirl – Preparing for a Weekend of Crazy
(Although, if I must be confined… here is where I’d want to be banished!!) Today I am feeling less than authentic. What happened, I wonder? In an attempt to connect and get to know other writers, I joined up with a bunch of groups and got myself bewildered and directionless. Sadly, writing is a bit of a lonely enterprise. It always has been. These days … Continue reading Standing Myself in a Corner
The poem I read this morning from the little City Lights Pocket Poets Anthology, edited by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, was The Origin of Baseball, by Kenneth Patchen. It didn’t have much to do with baseball, really, more about everything else in the world. The main character of the poem was frustrated by the stress of life, the people without enough food to eat, and the people … Continue reading That and the Whack of the Bat
These were the first words in my head this morning as I sat up in bed. I knew it was time to write, and it is the last day of the month. The last day of the first month of the year. We are 1/12 of the way through 2012, one egg less than a dozen. How much closer are we to our dreams? New … Continue reading One Egg less than a Dozen
It is so lovely to be getting lost in books again! It feels like I’ve never left, like I haven’t spent the last few years being too exhausted to read. I wasn’t too exhausted. Somehow, I got stuck in thinking I was, being a new mom. We always have read great children’s stories, but once I got the kids into bed at the end of … Continue reading Lost in a big pile of Books
