or the crystal potpourri bowl that surprised me, hiding a sunflower the way it did. that was the night setting, I think, on the last camera, or possibly the one before, back in texas when I was painting help me on the fence but using different words. sometimes it's hard to know what I mean until I say the wrong things a few times. and maybe it's not even the wrong thing so much as just an unclear translation of the idea struggling inside.
back when I was vague and cynical I wrote a poem about the words struggling out of our mouths (the ubiquitous our, I suppose, the our of they say) and hanging in the air, waiting, like smoke. I was an english major. it was expected, and even encouraged, the cynicism, handed out with black sleeveless turtleneck shirts and diet pills.
it was entertaining for awhile, but then the eye-rolling and sighing got to be such a drag, darling, so I switched to drama briefly and imagined other lives. but that only suited part of me, so I switched to education, thinking that it would be a good solid career choice. the diploma's somewhere in the garage. I'd make a most unsuitable teacher, ignoring deadlines and fudging numbers.
lightpainting, though, that's what I was going on about. the fireworks setting on the digital camera, tealights, drawing upside down and backwards, lefthanded with the camera, completely and blissfully unaware of the passing of time.
if time indeed existed in the shed last night, or in those moments this afternoon while the sun shone for the first time in what seemed like forever and you could almost feel the bite of it, and hear the bamboo crick-cracking as it dried and straightened. and then one glass of sort of sangria with two swizzle sticks, a neon yellow palm tree and a flamingo almost frighteningly pink. and three peach slices at the bottom of the glass like fish, slipping down my throat at the end for dessert.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
I don't expect you recall the chili pepper light roses.
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4 comments:
I love the comment "back when I was vague and cynical" juxtaposed with that last beautifully written paragraph. I don't find much about your posts either vague or cynical - the last one with the flowers was precise and refreshing!
I would have loved to have a teacher that ignored deadlines and fudged numbers. It's the way I like best to live!
thank you, pauline. I think about teaching sometimes. but I'm so flighty by choice and by nature, and though it's entirely possible that I could be a good teacher within the structure of the public school system, I know I'd feel frustrated and unhappy by the way the school day is (to me, it seems) unnaturally fragmented. if I ruled the world (as my girls say) then there would be no compulsory schooling, but only pockets of self-directed learning, mentoring, long or short days spent experiencing the world and absorbing the knowledge through work and play, as little paperwork as possible.
oh the papers the school sends home! it seems like they exist to fill recycling boxes, the worksheets. it's possible to learn about nature with a pencil and paper but it wouldn't be my choice. and I recognize the limits imposed on teachers by the system and admire their dedication, I couldn't do it myself. well, no, I could. but the cost to me, and then to those I affect so strongly, wouldn't be worth the benefits, or at least that's my reasoning. and obviously some of that is prompted by self-interest, what a dishonest person I'd be not to acknowledge that. when people say to me, oh you've got it so good, your days to yourself, must be nice, the implication is clear, at least to me - now that your girls are in school you should be out earning an honest living somewhere, making something, selling something, why should you be allowed the luxury to work at home for room and board and a small personal allowance, what gives you that right, what makes you so special?
I do. I make myself so special. and until I'm forced by circumstance to to go out to work, I choose not to. but this year I do believe I'll begin to exchange some of what I make (when I'm not doing laundry or making meals or taking out splinters, or getting ready mentally and emotionally to mother with as much care and precision and attention to detail as possible, the unpaid work that generally goes unnoticed) for money, or trade it for products and services we need, firewood or patio bricks or homemade jam or a rental goat to eat the overgrown blackberry bushes and supplement the compost pile. the sabbatical is almost over, and even if it looks to many people as if I've been on vacation, I know what I know, and what information and resources and inner clarity I've been gathering. I don't mind blooming late, and with both abandon and deliberation.
I've always liked the quote, "What others think of me is none of my business." and if I could stay home and learn and teach the way you've described rather than be caught up in consumerism and the "democratic" way, if I could find a means of support other than "going out" to work, I would. But I must be looking in the wrong places.
what a dream world it would be if we could all do whatever suited us best, whatever we were best suited to. I know I have a privileged life in many ways, I'm aware of my ease. I sometimes see only the things I don't have. peace and quiet, or enough of it anyway, to do the things I want to do, to do them fully, the freedom to do them fully, I suppose. I could make the choice but then the other choices I've made would have to suffer. of course, knowing that I'm lucky and feeling lucky, or being able to recognize it at the time (and not only in reflected epiphanies) are very different states of mind and heart. different ways of knowing, maybe that would be a better way to describe it. I don't know, it's late and I'm tired and I keep hearing the chocolate ice cream in the freezer calling me, very softly and luxuriously, like a card my aunt sent me once about heeding the call of the wild pie, and the picture a woman on her knees on her bed, doubled over with a pillow clutched over her head, trying not to listen to the pie tempting her from the top shelf of the fridge in the next room. so with the ice cream singing in my head it's hard to concentrate, and see? now I've gone on again for far too long. honestly. I love to hear myself type. it's such a cheery clackety noise, so companionable, like a cat purring, or a dog's nails clicking across the floor.
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