Want to read about what’s really going on in the public schools? You don’t? Oh.
…Well, how about you read Mr. Peabody instead?!
http://mrpeabody.wordpress.com/
Check Out Mr. Peabody October 15, 2009
ah that cool shade August 18, 2009
If I were to drive an hour
at high speeds
and leave the freeway
pass a reservoir
and wind up past large ranch homes
into the golden hills
i could get to a smallish parking area
i could get a permit for the wild
i could throw on my pack and head up a road
down a road
then up over a bit of a mountain
past blue oaks and huge manzanitas and madrones
to a pond where the woodpeckers dance in reflections
i could rise over another bit of a mountain
and then plunge into a deep canyon
a thousand feet down
and, just before the road climbed another thousand feet up,
i would find a creek named coyote
dripping its way down the canyon
if i walked up about 50 yards
i would find a huge boulder,
leaning against two trees
in the shade of that boulder
beside the creek
i would sit upon a sandy beach
in the hot, dusty, buggy summer
it would be cool, soft, nearly mosquitoless
i would gaze into a quiet pool
where water striders dance across the surface
and i would see a large rock
covered in ladybugs
occasionally one would get too close to the water
and fall in
flailing for a moment
until scooped up by a water skiing strider
taking the ladybug like a pigskin
and racing down the field with its prize
another ladybug falls in (just wanted a drink of water)
the next strider races up,
carries it off
on the water they are the superior design
big, strapping athletes
they laugh at the flailing ladies
but suddenly their smirks evaporate
the air is alive with vibration
a dragonfly!
it pounds through the air, stops, hovers, scans,
zooms off
oh mama, what technology!
the striders go back to their catcalls and showing off
skating about their lake with the greatest of ease
the ladybugs huddle, scheming,
they are pooling their money
to hire a dragonfly
Throwing Frisbees at Trees August 15, 2009
Today I threw a frisbee and it exploded into hundreds of pieces. I was at the park by my house. There were those who were impressed. The frisbee wasn’t impressed. It was exploded. I picked up the five pieces (Did I say hundreds? Well, I had to impress you back there in the opening sentence. But now that we’re old friends, it was just five, OK? Possibly four. What am I, Cam Jansen over here with the photographic memory?). I looked at the pieces. They were blue.
A blue frissbee is good for playing frisbee golf in nature. That’s what I was doing. It’s one of my favorite games. (Don’t know how to play? All you do is pick a target and say, “See that tree? The one by the trashcan? Par 4.” That means everyone has 4 shots to get to the tree. After each “hole” or target you adjust your scored based on how you did. If you did it in 3 shots you are now at -1, which is good. If it took you 5 shots you are 1 over, which is a little bad. Oh, you got it? Good.)
Last week I got to play frisbee golf while camping. That’s pretty much the best. It doesn’t hurt to have a cold drink in hand and a small posse of friends, strolling through the woods, picking out challlenges: “Through those two skinny trees and then it’s got to slide over that picnic table and land in that bear locker.” Wasn’t there an ad like this a while back? Michael Jordan and someone calling shots? Obviously written by a frisbee golfer. Most great works of art trace back to this possibly ancient sportsform.
In the old days they didn’t use frisbees, of course. No plastic ’til that guy in the Graduate whispered the word. However, there have always been projectiles (that’s the prequel to There Will Be Blood). I guess it probably started with rocks, especially back when there was a whole lot less stuff to break and fewer people to maim. Or, I suppose, when maiming was no big deal. “See that big guy with the lumpy head?” “Grog?” “Yeah, par 4.”
Last week in the mountains my posse and I happened to “play through,” as they say, someone else’s camp site. It wasn’t on purpose. We were just working our way back to our site, carefully trampling a relatively pristine meadow, and a couple of the boys didn’t make the turn so well (we were aiming for one of our tents). A couple of womenfolk from another camp site exclaimed, “Hey, why don’t ya play out in that big meadow? No one to hit out there?” We hadn’t actually hit anyone, but of course we apologized and moved on.
Later in the game, we found ourselves looping back to camp from another angle of apporach, this time through someone else’s site. However, we were just shooting straight down the edge of the driveway, nowhere near any of the humans as far as we could tell. Several of our frisbees didn’t really make it past the driveway, however, landing loudly near a rather large truck (you can see where this is going maybe). Suddenly a large man with no hair (and not because he was old ’cause he was young enough to maim) leapt out of his truck and said, “What the f#@%!” Then he repeated it. “What the f#@%!” Then he made us to quickly understand that his people were also the people at the next site over, the ones we had already lighlty disturbed earier. “That’s two times!” he growled. We apologized and slunk back to camp (we’re frisbee golfers, man, not kung fu fighters…we just want to play disc in the peaceful woods).
Afterwards we exchanged thoughtful analysis: “That dude was special forces!” “He said two times because one more time and we were dead.” And…”It’s a good thing there were so many of us or we would have gotten our a@#%s kicked.” Good manly stuff like that.
I should say that when not in the wild you can actually find frisbee golf courses. They’re ‘aight, but I’ll take a cross-country game any day. Who wants to follow someone else’s course when you can make your own? The trick is just to not play through people’s space. You can do it if you’re alert.
Today I was at my own park, which is a perfectly great place for frisbee golf. It has beautiful redwood trees, oaks, magnolias, buckeyes, trashcans, tables, benches, play structures, no end of good targets. I was lining up for a deep throw out towards a redwood tree in the middle of the park but I hooked it straight into the brick bathroom building. POW! My little blue frisbee blew into a thousand pieces. I picked them up and dropped them in the cardboard trashcan. It didn’t seem right. After all, printed on the frisbee in clear black letters it had read: Reduce – Reuse – Recycle. And yet, it had also read “Alameda Waste Management.” I called it my 3 R’s frisbee. Still, the truth is it wasn’t recyclable.
Those four blue pieces probably still sit midway down in that trashbox at the park. A skunk strolls by. A deer has hopped down following the creek. There’s a possum. A cat, thinking, ‘I don’t think I should have cut through the park at night.’ Four blue pieces. It was a kind of magic carpet that took me through the forest until it hit that brick wall. Now a raccoon knocks over the trashcan. “What have we here?” He digs down, pushes aside the four blue pieces, grabs a half-eaten burrito, tears it open and eats it. Strolls off, cackling. Back on the ground we find shards of tinfoil, a few black beans and four little blue pieces, quietly reflecting the quarter moon, just cresting the tallest redwood.
Unplug Stuff More July 21, 2009
Driving to the Oakland Airport yesterday I glanced over at the huge billboard with that Chevron campaign: “I will unplug stuff more.” Suddenly it struck me how pathetic this campaign truly was. Look at those words. Is that the kind of specific commitment we are looking for here in the dying days of the world? I will unplug stuff more. That’s like a teenager’s grudging response to a nagging parent. “OK! OK! (and then in mumble) Iwillunplugstuffmore. God! Leave me alone!”
In our case, the teenager is the United States. That’s an improvement, of course. Until a recent election, we were a toddler: George W. Stinkypants. “I’m NEVER gonna unplug stuff more, you poopy head.” (Then he sticks a fork into the outlet).
How about a campaign for grown-ups? What could it be? “I will turn off my computer and TV after 6 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays.” How’s that? Too hard for you? Start with Tuesdays. We’ll take it from there.
Walking Around Inside the House July 16, 2009
Today I returned some shoes to a place where people buy recreational items (I can’t tell you more because they might trace this). I bought the shoes yesterday after trying them on briefly and stepping on the fake rock in the footwear department (this may or may not be a real clue as to what store it was…but I’ll also tell you this: there are a lot of white people there and, in fact, you’ll never feel whiter than the day you drive up to this place in a Prius).
When I got home it was time to walk to the library with my family for a magic show. I put on my new shoes and walked. As I went down the stairs, my toes hurt. Oh no, I thought, I got the wrong size. Then I thought, yeah, but you’re going down a hill. That’s like trying to check how much gas you have when all the gas is sloshing to the front of the tank. Wait ’til you get to the sidewalk and walk a bit. So I did. They still felt cramped. I walked to the library and back. They maybe felt a bit better.
Still, today I brought them back to this recreational type store to check out the next size up. They were holding them for me in Customer Service. I compared the two and found the larger size was a good fit. I brought yesterday’s shoes back to the woman at the counter. She said, “Did you wear these out of the house?”
See, this is where the tension enters the story. You have to imagine me standing there in this store and this woman wearing a green vest is standing there looking at me. To my right is a big canoe. (These are not necessarily real details).
As I say, “No,” she turns over the shoes. On the bottom we find some gooey thing with pine needles sticking out of it and whatnot. I mumble, “I just put them on and walked around inside the house.” I could have added, “The house is really dirty right now,” but I was too embarrassed to think clearly. Instead, I just stared at the bottom of yesterday’s shoes. What the hell was that gooey thing?
“Don’t worry about it,” she said, her green vest flapping pleasantly as she flipped the shoes back over. She handed me a receipt and I thanked her. Then I slunk out of the store.
I wonder how many steps you are allowed to take in a pair of shoes before they become irrevocably yours? And, more importantly, did I overstep?
Those Oklahoma hills where I was born… June 15, 2009
My intent is to read THIS much and write THIS much this summer. Thinking, as of 12:48 p.m. Monday, is that I’ll write regularly on this e-man blog and then more selectively on Facebook. Or should it be the other way around? Well, there’s a bigger audience on Facebook so that makes it an elevated platform for me so that makes it something where I want to be more selective. So, what, my loyal 1 1/2 blog readers aren’t an elevated audience? Well, that depends on if you’re wearing flats or pumps. However, I do value you utterly and completely and thank you for reading and, hey, maybe even responding every now and then (hint hint).
Today I was having a nice slice of Arizmendi pizza (sorry Arizmendi fantatics in exile) and I picked up the greasy newspaper by the window and read this great article on the “reverse Okie” effect. It was in the Contra Costa Times or maybe something called Inside Bay Area, or maybe just Bay Area News Group, but when I googled it just now I only found it in the Charleston Gazette. The fact I found most striking was that in the last four years 275,000 Californias have moved to Okalahoma and Texas, double the numbers which came from those two states during ye olde Dust Bowl (the lesser known holiday football game where each team piles onto an old jalopy and tries to make it to the other side…). My vast Sacramento readership will also appreciate the quote from Brandon Jones of Del Paso Heights, who said praised the job opportunities, growth and vibe in Oklahoma City, saying “Oklahoma City is like Sacramento back when the Kingers were in the playoffs.”
My only question would how many of those 275,000 moved to Austin? That may be skewing the migratory impression a bit. Still, Oklahoma City. Who knew? Add it to your short list, there, 20 somethings.
OK, now go listen to “Do-Re-Mi” (I recommend the Nanci Griffith version) and “Oklahoma Hills” by Woody Guthrie and ponder.
A Question of Scale April 22, 2009
M-boy was confused about what the scale in our hotel room measured. “Let’s see how strong I am!” he said, climbing on. Later he encouraged me to try it. Pointing to the scale he enthused, “Let’s see how old you are, Papa!”
The Poetry Room April 10, 2009
The Poetry Room
March, 2009
The Poetry Room at City Lights Bookstore is sacred ground. I can feel it. As you move towards the back of the store a sign says, “Have a seat and read a book.” The two guys at the front desk waved away my offer of a bag, telling me to keep it with me, as if they knew I needed to sit and write today.
I climb the steps to the poetry room and it is wood and quiet and the shelves are trembling with life. I pick Rilke’s letters to a young poet. While at age 40 I now wake sometimes to find that a foot or knee or shoulder muscle no longer functions, I am still a young poet in geological terms.
“Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write…”
You know a room is sacred when it can absorb the frequent arrival of loud tourists and bring them to a place of quiet contemplation. As I sit on my small wooden chair, reading hungrily through the pages, loud footsteps approach with excited German chatter. Two women with similarly curly hair reach the top step, giggle, and slide quickly into silent browsing. I read on.
“Then, as if no one had ever tried before, try to say what you feel and see and love and lose…”
Out the window there is an old fire escape. Beyond that, a rooftop. Clothes hang from pipes and wires but I can’t see how someone got them there. They hang before a gray sky.
Now a group of four loudly climbs the stairs up to the Poetry Room. They are happy, young, well-dressed and cocky. They too are absorbed. They break apart to peruse shelves, crack books of poetry and beat literature. United we talk, divided we read.
“Write about what your every day life offers you; describe your sorrows and desires, the thoughts that pass through your mind and your belief in some kind of beauty.”
The Poetry Room is empty now. The rain is falling out on the fire escape and invisible hands have removed the hanging clothes from the rooftop. I hadn’t noticed the rain.
They come in pairs and small groups, never staying long. They are loud at first, then split, read in silence, reform and make a loud, nervous remark as they take the first step back down, out of the Poetry Room. Some came awfully close to finding beauty. They pulled at different books, snapped a picture of the Beat Literature sign, murmured something clever to a mate, but then they left.
I’ve been here before and made the same mistake. It’s OK. Hopefully they’ll get another chance.
Today I sat in the wooden chair on those hardwood floors. I pulled a book off the shelf. I read. The room became instantly sacred, a place of absolute beauty. It is ironic but not at all surprising that we humans buzz around rooms like these and then hurry off, never unlocking the mystery. More often than not, the key was right there before us, maybe downstairs, painted on a sign in large, happy letters: “Have a seat and read a book!”
Stimulus March 26, 2009
Stimulus
I am happy because I bought a cup of coffee. I didn’t want to buy the coffee, obviously. I mean I quit drinking coffee last week, but I walked through the doors of Cafe Trieste in North Beach and the doors of Cafe Trieste were still there and they didn’t have a touching handwritten note taped to them, saying goodbye and grazie and we love you guys, and the doors still opened. I walked in to the sound of 5 mandolins and a guitar, playing in the back, and four firemen in the front of the line awaiting lattes and the young and the scraggly and the wise, all wiggling elbows and reading newspapers (remember newspapers?) and interrupting chatter to applaud the musicians. I had to buy the coffee for them.
I am happy because I bought a new book at City Lights, one of the last great singular bookshops. I didn’t want to buy a book. I was very clear on that point. But the coffee from the local coffee shop was singing an aria in my veins and the large sign said so wonderfully, “Have a seat and read a book.” So I thought about them having to box up those books one tragic day and tear that sign down from the wall. So I bought a book.
It was the wrong thing to do for my family’s finances. I knew that I would be reading my new book while my out of work wife scoured craigslist for a job listing. But, damn it, it was the right thing to do for the local economy.
I am happy because I bought a new hat. I didn’t want to buy a hat. We can’t afford me buying another weird hat. God knows I would have thrown it down and walked out into the chilly breeze without a second thought between my nippy ears, but the store where I bought my hat, a groovy, hipster, North Beach clothing store where I got my favorite jacket a few years back, is miraculously still there, one block up from where I always think it’s going to be, 2 blocks from the coffee shop, 3 blocks from the bookstore, and it never opens ’til 12:15 on a week day. We need stores that don’t open ’til 12:15! So, yes, I may be walking around in my new hat, reading my new book while my children are selling lemonade for school supplies, but it was the right thing to do for America and I, a proper forward-thinking citizen, put my country before my own selfish interests. I did my part by god!
I am happy also because I write this while sitting in Le Boulange in the heart of North Beach, San Francisco, California, sipping cool water straight from a Yosemite waterfall and nibbling cripsy toasted ham and swiss open-faced sandwiches, balanced with perfectly dressed leafy greens, my hat sitting smartly on the window shelf, my book tucked away like Christmas. Of course I wanted to rush right back home across that Bay Bridge into the lightning storms of Oakland, scrape out the last of the peanutbutter, the bottom of the jam jar, spread it on the one remaining heel of bread, pour a small glass of milk and share a close-knit lunch with my adorable family…
…but I looked at the sad but expectant faces of the Le Boluange workers, the hopefully painted chartreuse walls, its prominent place on the historic street of Colombus. I imagined it boarded up, somebody has spray painted “Suck it!” on one of the splintering sheets of plywood, the young owners of Caffe Roma across the street peer out the window fearfully. He bounces the baby on his knee, feeds him a day-old cannoli, the recipe passed down for generations, she runs the numbers through her calculator one more time, uno Quattro cinque… her eyes fixed desperately on the keypad…
I had to buy the sandwich, the salad, take time out of my busy life to sit by the window. I had to drink the coffee, listen to the music, buy the book and the hat. It was wrong for me and my family but it was the right thing as a member of the world community trying to right this ship as we spin through the universe and I can allow myself no regrets. I am the human stimulus package. I spend because I care!
The Quantity Collections March 11, 2009
I speak tonight to those of you, like me, who have digitized your entire music collection. The question I pose, good people of the digital age, is are we moving into a generation of quantity and not quality music collections? Has the ease of digital (think about it, when we taped records, we had to actually play the record through, setting the volume levels just right, and be there to pause the tape and flip the record and play the other side) led to a dramatic break with quality control? Do we even know what we have in our collections any more? I say the time has come to stop this insatiable musical manifest destiny. It’s time to say enough, to sit down on the carpet, to take stock of what we have and to realize, frankly, 42% of it is now crap.
Here’s how I found out. Without going too deeply into the technical details, my current home stereo music set-up, involving this very laptop and an old but phat ipod, now requires that I delete an album or two every time I want to add a new album to the collection. Delete an album from your collection? Are you out of your mind? Get a bigger computer! Get a bigger ipod! Put your entire music collection on a satellite hard-drive which is orbiting the Earth and simply pay a low monthly fee to access the songs you want when you want them (some restrictions may apply)!
No, no, I don’t want to solve this problem. I think it’s a good problem. It brings us back to mantra#2 of the Professor Evanowski guidebook: Inconvenience is a Blessing (#1 was To Simplify is to Evolve). It turns out I have dozens, or maybe even hundreds, of albums that I have added to my music collection in the past couple of years, during this digital gold rush, which I never listen to, nor really have any interest in; many I didn’t even know I had!
One of the reasons I have run into this limited space issue is another decision I made recently that was a change in direction. I decided to add (and update) my albums as higher quality, larger files. It was bad enough when we went from vinyl to CD. Now we’re going from CD to .mp3 and the music is getting squeezed into nothingness. It’s as if we were putting this miracle called music into one of those Mr. Diaper thingies that scrunches up the diaper into a tiny little landfill pellet. Do you want to listen to a landfill pellet? Do you?! Do you want to sit in the car?! Well do you?!! (The Landfill Pellets were rockin’ last night, by the way…)
So through this process, I am both improving the quality of the soil and yanking out all the weeds. I want to actually have less music. I’m OK with that. It felt scary at first, hitting the delete button. It goes against my acquiring westward ho american soul. But now it feels like a long overdue Spring cleaning.
I’ll sit back now and listen to some of my music. Let me spin the wheel and pick an album. Wow, hard to choose: they ALL look so good. Wait a second, they even SOUND good, better than ever. Well, almost.
All That and a Bag of Chips March 4, 2009
I had the mango salsa ready to go but I had forgotten to buy the chips. If this makes you re-think my resumé as your personal shopper, well, it should. I have been known to stand in many an aisle like a deer in the headlights. I do all right with a list, but leave me to plan a dinner and shop at the same time and you’re asking for a three hour trip to the local store.
My fantasy (attention all you financial upstarts, poised to make a fortune in this booming economy) is that there will be a market one day with little islands of cooking ideas. The recipe stands in a bed of ingredients. Grab the recipe, grab the ingredients, meal planned. Paddle over to another island, another meal. Load up, off you go. My fantasy now includes the store being flooded and everyone shopping in canoes or at least those motorized bumper boats. Going for that yogurt with honey? I think not. POW!
So I was trying to tell you I needed a bag of chips. No problem. The rest of my family wasn’t home yet. I threw on my yellow slicker and old green backpack, hopped on my bike and pedaled off through the pouring rain. The water was streaming down the sides of the streets. Wherever it hit a rock or a stick the flow split into a less-than symbol < but turned up like a rocket ship, the top of the hill less than the flats below. It was like this long math equation flowing down the hill. As I rode up the water kept saying, greater-than above, greater-than above, and it was greater because I was pushing those pedals around and around with the water streaming down my cheeks and splattering off my knuckles. My heart was beating faster and my lungs were working, and the madness of another day in the classroom was dripping gleefully away.
I got to the market and left my bike lying up against the wall. I didn’t lock it. I’ve been thinking lately about how much we lock stuff up. What are saying to our environment, our community when we lock everything up? I park outside of the house where my daughter goes after school. I hop out and lock the car. I’m only going to be inside for a few minutes but I lock the door. Yes crime is a very real thing in my community, but are there really bands of roaming marauders, desperately trying to get into my particular car? Well, yes and no. Are the odds high that someone bent on thieving will pass by in the next five minutes? I don’t think so. I think the cycle is more like 15 minutes, AT LEAST.
So I left my bike lying up against the wall and went into the market, my pants sopping wet but otherwise in good shape. I quickly found and bought a bag of chips. I climbed onto my bike and rode off (Less than below, less than below, said the little river). I arrived home wet but alive, ALIVE. I took out the mango salsa, ripped open the bag of chips. I took the biggest chip I could find, dipped into under the juiciest looking pieces of mango. Brought it up to my mouth. Ate it.
Writers February 1, 2009
When my students found out they were eliminated from the oratorical fest, they were outraged. When they found out that because they performed in a group of 5 they were judged as a “choral” group, they were confused, and because they were confused, they were upset. They were also disappointed, which made them angry. They talked among themselves in sharp, punchy tones, throwing quick glances and ignoring the next activity I was introducing. I went over to them said, look, you were awesome. In fourth grade you’ll win the whole district. Now let it go. Get over it. They shook their heads. They looked me in the eye and said, “Can we have some paper? We want to write a letter!”
At the moment, though I granted their request, I was actually annoyed. It’s very difficult to be a classroom teacher, in the thick of it, and actually see or hear what students are telling you. It’s hard to respond like a proper human when you’re being tugged in 20 (or more) directions. I’m also not the quickest Hotwheel in the plastic parking lot. Still, sometimes after a few hours or days I remember to reflect on things. Here were some students who worked hard for something. They memorized a poem. They learned dance moves. They practiced a lot. Now, they felt cheated. They tasted injustice. Did they just complain and gripe and give up? Did they throw something across the room? No, they wanted to write a letter.
Then I think about my daughter, my amazing daughter. Tonight at bedtime I was tucking in her brother on the bottom bunk. The pattern is that we read stories together and then she ascends to her lofty bunk. At lights out, little brother asks for a cuddle. Tonight this turned into a bit of a giggle fest for M-boy and me. I believe I was pretending to play piano on his tummy. Having riled him up, I then had to talk to him for a while to calm him down. He was pretty wired tonight (we went to the Exploratorium today) so I asked if he would like me to come in and play a song on the guitar.
When they were babies I would try to lull them to sleep with the guitar but something about my playing usually made them cry. Actually, come to think of it, it was more my singing then my playing. At least that’s the effect it tends to have on Amy. Anyway, M-Boy has been requesting I play piano to help him sleep lately, which is both sweet and great because I’m teaching myself my first ever piece right now and I need as much practice and encouragement as I can get. Of course, if I started to belt out some ballad or something, he might call from the other room, “Um, Papa? Just stick to instrumental pieces, OK?!” Anyway, I leveraged the recent audience for piano into guitar and got approval from both the lower and upper bunk. In a flash I was back with my guitar.
I saw down on the floor and got ready to play. M-Girl threw down a folded up piece of paper. “It’s a note for you,” she said. I asked if I should read it then. She said no.
I played Helpless, at least what I know of it (ya gotta love the “blue, blue window behind the stars / yellow moon on the rise / a big bird’s flying across the sky / throwing shadows on our eyes…”) They listened without comment. Then I went into my song, Oakland Roads, though it had been long enough I couldn’t exactly remember the chords. They listened without comment. Then I decided to sing my wedding song for Amy’s sister, Annie: “Tim and his Four Wives.” “See him that’s Tim and he just married / Andy Annie Anne and Annnnnnna…”
As I was leaving, I opened up M-Girl’s note and read it in the light of the doorway. It said, “Dear Papa I feel left out when you play with M- on the bottom bunk and I’m on the top. Love M-” On the back she drew a picture of bunk beds with two smiling faces down below and one sad face up above. When I looked up from the note she said, “I still love you though.”
I put the guitar down on the floor and climbed up into the bunk. I lay down with her and told her I was sorry. I told her I worried about that all the time but it was just so much easier to hang out on the bottom bunk and that she was bigger and a better sleeper. Then I told her the story of her Aunt Annie’s wedding. The version I tell is where I get to be a rock star on stage in a huge barn filled with hundreds if not thousands of people. (Apparently there was a ceremony and all that mushy stuff, but I’m a little foggy on those details.) When I finished, she thanked me for the story and I kissed her goodnight. I went down the ladder and found her brother had been busy partially destroying his reading light. I moved that out of the way to be dealt with in the morning and kissed him goodnight.
When I left the room I showed Amy the note. It is now pinned here on the office bulletin board. It is a real heartbreaker but it also makes me happy. My daughter felt sad and left out. She communicated that feeling in a gentle and articulate way. It helped the feeling go away. Not only that, we now have a reminder posted for the days and years to come.
We all have different ways of communicating. Some of us can say what needs to be said and can help the world change by speaking out. Our new president, for example. Others express themselves through cooking, mixed tapes, sketches, song, political insight, or maybe by getting under a hood or picking up a hammer or a basketball, knitting needles or a camera. Some of us are writers. We scribble poems and slide them under windshield wipers on old gray Corollas, toss down folded notes from top bunks, and clutch pencils in fists to scribble out letters which demand justice, an end to loneliness and, above all, love.
The Cannonballs of the Polar Bears January 27, 2009
The Cannonballs of the Polar Bears
by M-Boy
January 26, 2009
Once upon a time there was a zoo and a big ball was coming. It smashed up the zoo until there was a cannonball and it breaked everything. Then when the polar came and he was finding his friend, he wanted to be in the story but he couldn’t. So he went back. Then he saw a huge cannonball went past and he jumped on it. And he kicked it away and it fell in the ocean. And a shark ate it. And then everything was pretty.
Then he was going to find his friend but then he saw a shark and the shark said, “I ate the cannonball.”
“That’s good shark, you’re a good shark,” he said. Then the polar bear went back in his cage at the new zoo that was called the San Francisco Zoo. But the Oakland Zoo sploded and got eaten.
The End
The Eyelid and My Left Foot January 24, 2009
Look, people, we only have once chance at this living. Then we become a potted plant. How are you treating your plants these days? Mine are hanging on by a thread.
I’ve just watched “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.” Almost completely paralized, a man blinks out a book with his eyelid. And Daniel D. Lewis wrote a novel with his left foot. And you? Me? You know what we need? Perspective.
We need to be set to sea, floating, considering, looking back on the shores of our life. We need to be thirsty, hungry, lonely (OK, maybe you’re lonely already, but I bet you ain’t too thirsty! Oh, a bit? OK, go get a glass. I’ll wait…). Stand upon your raft and wiggle with the tides. Let the moon shine upon your shoulders. Ponder your insignificance.
Your left foot could write you under the table. Your eyelid is the most well spoken lettersmith the world has yet to know. Stop buying into this narrative that you are whole, that you have limbs and a lunchbox and a retirement plan (the latter is probably toast anyway, so run with this). Your entire body is a writer’s colony.
Why, even your hands could write a book.
The Papa Day Adventures #3 January 19, 2009
[Caution: the following piece may appear preachy at a distance, but please keep in mind I am lecturing myself here, above all]
At Children’s Fairyland today I was surrounded by digital cameras. This is to be expected. Where cute kids wander, digital parents follow. I saw a mom, in slow-motion, come through the magic shoe, buy her ticket and emerge into Fairyland with her hand drawing forth the digital camera in a smoother motion than the Sundance Kid.
All I brought was my worn, old back-pocket notepad. I pulled it out when the kids rode the merry-go-round (alone…everyone was at the puppet show which M-Girl didn’t want to see…actually I now highly recommend hitting up the rides during the puppet show) and I wrote down, “She chooses fairy purple. He rides on Gumby green. They sit on opposite sides, craning necks to see each other around the core of mirrors.”
As I was writing, it occured to me, this is another thing lost in our (my) digital obsessions: observation, thought, reflection, craft. Yes, snapping off 200 hundred shots of our kids, as I often do, and then finding that one of them came out nicely, can be seen as a kind of artistry, but think what we are doing to our brains when we see something wonderful and instead of processing it we point a device at it and “capture” it.
I know, I know, we DO want to capture, to capture these precious moments of their childhood. But…how about living the precious moments instead (or at least MORE)? It just feels a little like the story about the garden gnome that gets kidnapped and then the pictures start rolling in from abroad with the garden gnome posed in exotic locations. Shouldn’t we be on vacation with our little garden gnomes?!!! Wait, what the heck am I talking about?
Again, it’s not a question of extremes, of blanket policies, just an issue of balance. This time you bring the camera, this time you don’t. Can you draw? Sketch your kid. Can you write? Write about them doing something today. Can you talk? Observe and then turn it into a story. Can you cook? Recreate their exploits on the pirate ship with a dramatic pancake and strawberry representation.
What? You don’t think it’s practical to chase your child around with an easel? Hmm, good point.
Well, what if we just give ourselves some boundaries?
[Hold on...M-Girl just came into the room...I'm not making this up...saying, "Papa, where's the camera?" I ask her what she wants it for. She says, "To take a picture of Ponyville." That's her new toy...Man, this stuff writes itself. You've just got to be paying attention.
The Papa Day Adventures #2 January 19, 2009
My daughter decided to write a story today. No, not a story, a book. Sadly, she has a LOT to learn about writing a book.
First mistake: she started by sitting down with her little journal and writing the first chapter. What naiveté! You don’t just WRITE the first chapter. It makes me laugh even now. You maybe write the first paragraph or two, then you TALK about it. You get excited and pace around and tell people you’ve just started something important. You let a few days go by, then weeks. This is called “Living with the idea.”
Second mistake: having read the first chapter, she wrote the second chapter. She had left a page blank for the table of contents, so now she went back and added her two chapter titles to that page, correlating it with the page numbers which she had already carefully added at the bottom of each page.
Homie PLEASE! You don’t write two chapters on the same day and you certainly don’t organize them. This is wrong on so many levels. Gracious, Girl, what is tomorrow for?
Then she decided it wasn’t a chapter book, because that didn’t fit where she wanted to publish it (some web site for children’s books). No, she decided it was a picture book.
OK, look, you do NOT set a clear publishing goal! Think how that could compromise the project! Next thing you know you’re writing it for someone or imposing some sort of structure on it. Soon, the whole thing is moving helplessly forward towards a concrete, tangible goal and then POOF! the whole project vanishes into a state of completion!
Which is exactly what happened next. She erased the chapters from the Table of Contents, disappeared into the office and returned with 6 blank sheets of paper. Then, 30 minutes later, she emerged with the complete illustrations.
So she marches into the room clutching her completed book and apparently I had agreed to type it up for her, or something, but I’m just then checking the score on the Steeler’s game. I say hold on a few minutes. She looks at me then says, “Didn’t you say you want to write a book someday?”
“Yeah…”
“So turn off the TV and write a book! I did.”
Oh, my little friend, if only it were that simple! It takes years, years and years, years and years, and years…
to not write a book.
The Papa Day Adventures #1 January 18, 2009
Amy is on the plane to Obama’s New Town.
We are The Left Behind. We have used our first hours well. Headed straight from the airport to Alameda beach, felt the sand through our rubberized soles. Watched the birds pick and peck in the mud. Made footprints, drew maps in the wet sand. Too foggy to see San Francisco across the water. Hopped back in the car and zipped to Crab Cove.
The Visitor Center was open. Stared at a few fish swimming around. Blissfully learned nothing. Wandered out to the happy muck. Made a sand castle. M-Girl’s design was a complete, circular moat with a pyramid in the center. M-Boy scrambled around on the rocks. Someone paddled out past the low, low tide in a quiet kayak. A yacht motored in from the fog.
Stopped at Jack in the Box for drinks, mainly because one of the three of us had wet his pants and I didn’t want to go in somewhere. This may have been their first non In and Out drive through. I mentioned snacks: cheese sticks, onion rings and M-Boy got upset, “I like our snacks at home. I want apples!” Again, I think we may have created freaks. Still, I was proud.
Thus concludes The Papa Day Adventure #1.
