Exquisite Corpse On the Go

Sis has designed a project. She has launched a series of blank notebooks out into the world with directions on the covers. The idea is one person fills a page with their choice expression, a drawing, a list, a poem, a collage, or whatever and then passes the notebook onto someone else who fills in the next page. The above is my collage for her notebook. I simply collaged it with pictures from an old copy of New York magazine I found in her recycling bin. I had to keep the collage simple otherwise it'd never get it finished (like so much of the rest of my life). She's handed out upwards of 20 books. Granted, she gave a couple to me, one I could pass around my son's group of play mates that we hang out with in the park. She also gave my son Fyo his own book that he could do whatever he wanted with; he proceeded to glue many of the pages together. Whatever. It's his book. Which is precisely the point in a way, to discover new forms of self-expression or even to reconnect to old forms of self-expression. The other point is the sense of community that emerges as the books pass from person to the next and as one person picks up another's narrative thread. When the books all come back, around the end of November, there's to be a big party of celebration and exhibition.

I have a profound love of notebooks, their blank pages and their potential creativity, the promise of an empty afternoon spent delving into an empty page. It was a welcome invitation to receive, as it's been a long time since I've had a moment to settle down and set time aside to just hang out with an exacto knife and a glue stick and just let something emerge. But in this project, it's lovely to watch my little contribution emerge with a greater community's creativity. I've never gotten to participate in any kind of group art project before; notebooks are usual my private space or a space I hide out in. Yet this particular exercise was fun, as I couldn't get too attached to what I glued to the page. It's a new way to engage with the notebook process, by passing it on to it's next contributor - and it inspired me to dig out my old unfinished notebooks and create places I could escape to for a moment here and there.

Rain in the Full Moon

Last night, my husband and I walked out of the grocery store with our children, and as we walked across the almost empty parking lot, we looked up to see this vibrant huge white full moon. The kind of  vibrant huge full moon that almost looks supernatural because it is just so huge and vibrant. It's the kind of moon that children's books and fairy tales are written about, the kind of moon that you would think you could reach out and touch if you were sitting on your dad's shoulders, the kind of moon that you just want to keep looking at and keep looking at until you thought it could swallow you whole. As I looked at that moon, I should have known it was the kind of full moon that stirs up havoc. Indeed, this morning, as I walked through the park with friends, we each shared stories of how no matter what our father's professions were - policeman, veterinarian, even my dad as computer programmar - they all said how during the full moons, people got whacko and they would get the weirdest calls. I was joking when I thought it, but by the time it was out of my mouth and I realized I had said it, I realized it did make some degree of sense, that the moon pulled on our children the same way it pulled on tides.

As Fyo had a morning on Monday that was like no other. Over the summer we pulled him off all grains and sugars (this is a much longer story for the why we did this, but essentially it's about his teeth and what seems to be a mineral deficiency that results in bad teeth), except Sunday, at a friend's birthday party we gave him a free pass, knowing that his friend's parents were ridiculously healthy - if they were going to offer cake, it was a reduced-sugar-sweetened with-dates-or-some-other-fruit-not-so-bad-for-you-cake. Fyo, knowing this, indulged. He grabbed a slice and ran off into the woods to eat it all by himself.

Fyo, in his life, has thrown relatively few temper tantrums. He's not a tantrum child. If he gets upset, there's almost always a very valid reason behind it, and one of extenuating circumstances like he's getting sick or we kept him up late for several nights in a row or something like that. And I guess if Fyo has some sort of actual food sensitivity to things like gluten or grains or whatever, that would be such a circumstance and the tantrum he threw would make much more sense. I do suspect this is the case as the tantrum he threw Monday morning was so unlike him that it would just make sense that it was a result of all the grains and sugar he had on Sunday.

Except for that full moon...

And Tuesday morning, he woke up especially tired again. He cried about things not laying correctly in a bag, the kind of thing that disrupts the order of the world of a small child. I hugged him close as he cried, and then he crawled or did this weird thing with limbs that resulted in his knee hitting my face, specifically my jawbone and lip. My lip swelled and bled in a variety of places. I screamed louder and longer than I have screamed since, well, I gave birth to his sister Lyv. We had already all slept in until 8, I had to put ice on my face and stop the bleeding, so our usual departure time for the park of 9 was immediately pushed back. My face hurt like hell and felt that weird huge swollen feeling where it feels way bigger than it is. As I walked out the door, Husband said, "it's not so bad."

Upon entering the park, my friend saw me and immediately said, "Oh dear, it's really bad." What I didn't know was that my swollen face had turned blue on the subway ride into the park. It just got worse as the day wore on the way that bruises do. Though the clerk at one of our favorite stores pointed out that I didn't have a bruise, I had a hematoma, which is bleeding outside of blood vessels or something related to blood in the wrong places, one of those things that I might have learned in high school biology had I been paying attention.

In the park, it started to rain a gradual gentle rain that steadily got stronger until we all were pretty soaked. Nonetheless, my friends and I let our kids romp up the hill, sit in the grass for a picnic, run along the path chasing ducks from the pond and play on the playground and climb through puddles and all the other things one does as a child in the rain. Until we started to get cold and insist to our children that it was time to go home.

The kids and I were soaked through to the skin, still, the trip to the park with friends was a balm to the soul on a day when your child has literally left you bruised. Many of us have had recent struggles with our children - our children who are usually great and easy going awesome kids. We don't understand. Our children flail and say mean things, while we're left stunned thinking, "but this just isn't you. You are not like this. I can not even see your eyes because you are not there..."

They may be at the brink of developmental breakthroughs. Probably they are in fact. Nonetheless, I blame the full moon. I think we all did.

I have been so fortunate in my life that generally I have found great gatherings of friends during chaotic periods. In Middle School I had an amazing group of friends and not the usual catty gathering of girl bitches. In High School, I had phenomenal friends in my dance company and high school. In college, I worked in a flower store where the I could spend the afternoon working and laughing until my stomach was sore. I could continue my list of how I have literally stumbled into fortunate gatherings of women that have only nurtured my soul, but it would grow boring. Each still serves me daily, but this most recent group of women that meets in the park with our children, well, coming home, I felt only grateful for friends that make me sigh with relief when I find them in the park. That kind of relief when one knows one has found acceptance - that these women will love me and not think poorly of my kid for kicking me in the face. They know what to say and they know that it's not, "Clearly, this is an issue of discipline". I came home feeling grateful that they knew that Fyo's knee in my face was an accident, but that they also knew I still felt like I was struggling as a parent, even if I'm doing the best I can in each moment.

And then I was grateful, because new pajamas arrived.

Sis and I have been discussing pajamas. We all need new pairs and hate it that there's not a reliable source for quality pajamas, at least for women. For men there are, and they come from Brooke's Brothers, the kind of pajamas that get softer with washing and wearing and the kind of pajamas that last. As a woman living in New York, I am slightly irritated that the best place for quality pajamas is the men's section at Brooke's Brothers - especially since I'm a democrat and don't fit the demographic for the store. Still, I fingered the fabric and thought, oh, they are doing something right...soft, but just the right weight for fall nights beginning to get cooler as the season heads towards winter. These are the kind of pajamas to drink tea in and read long novels in - not that I get the chance for that much anymore.

Still, as it rained on outside, and my children cried on inside, I found comfort and peaceful moments in other comforts, like a spouse who just pours me wine at the end of a long day, French Onion soup, with onions from the market that have sweetened slowly over the stove simply because I was able to start them hours earliers during a brief peaceful moment when the children were playing. I felt grateful again when Fyo slurped his soup and said, "Oh. That's good." The kids fell asleep early after a good dinner and I finally have a moment of quiet. As tomorrow's soup simmers on the stove and the rain continues outside, I think of heading to the bath and then bed with my sleeping children. I will dream of small luxuries and peaceful moments in swirling chaos...