Summer Stock 2

Just a quick post for Summer Stock.  I have a feeling this is going to be the Summer of pictures of kids playing on the slip & slide...  Hey, to be fair, I took 1000 pictures on this particular afternoon, but I'm only going to post two of them (for now).  I love the angle of the lighting in these, and there were a few more that were similarly lit, so some of those may pop up during the ensuing weeks as well.

mine

mine and two others

Summer Stock!

Welcome to our backyard water park, where my son and two of his cousins enjoyed a Friday afternoon of fun together!  I bought the sprinkler and the slip & slide last weekend, and saw the pool but didn't get it.  This weekend, I saw the pool on sale for $20, and couldn't resist!  Looks like a Summer of fun (and I can so see myself sitting in that pool with a frozen Margarita in my hand)!

The new pool

A cool surprise to come home to Friday after school!

Now if only I had some...

...girls!

"Take a picture of me throwing water in the air!"

"Take another one!"

Ye olde slip & slide

"She's had WAY to much sugar & caffeine, we're gonna have snacks!"

"I love veggie booty!"

the 'water-pillar' sprinkler was a bit nuts!

Inspiration in Action! (with thanks to A.P.)

It's kind of depressing when I have to get my kid to help me with my homework...really, he's great for inspiration when it comes to creative projects.  I just lay out the supplies I plan on using, and watch him go to town.  He won't be home for another half hour or so, and we have to go to the store because we're out of food, but I've been staring off into space, or looking at portraits for too long, now, waiting for the bolt of lightening, and - nothing.  Well, not exactly nothing, but hardly enough.  I'm just not in the mood to play.  The weather is blech, so I'm kinda blech, and I really want to be in a much quieter place then my apartment, watching gossamer white curtains floating on the breeze blowing in through huge picture windows overlooking a blue sky dotted by white puffs of non-rainy clouds.  I'm not much for the beach, but I feel like there should maybe be a beach out those windows as well.  Why not?  It's my fantasy...  The integral part is the quiet, and the calm.  My apartment is too close to a busy road with truck traffic, and there's too much tension in the building itself.  I really wish I had taken steps to be able to move this Summer, and now I don't know if I can count on being able to stay here for another year.  Again, if it were just me, I'd have no worries about this, just pick up and go when and where I see fit - but the boy.  I don't want to keep moving him around.  And he's got a lot of stuff!  I guess I do too, at this point, doing the domestic thing, and the constant relocation isn't as much fun anymore since I need to get a big truck involved, and find people who are actually willing to help me carry heavy stuff.  Just the thought of it is exhausting.

All that is beside the point - it's just another thing that's weighing on my mind and distracting me from the task at hand.  I have a project to get done.  Instead of inventing an entire cosmology (like I even could), I thought I'd just follow the example of what a saint's book actually is - pictures and stories about the lives of saints.  I got the idea months ago when is a saw a 'book of parrots' done up like a saint's book, and it was so playful and fun it made me feel happy.  So, no, it's not an entirely original idea, but it's my take on a theme.

Maybe I need to be channeling Ralph Steadman...

What sort of deities should I conjure?  Perhaps a prayer to the goddess of kitchen scrubbies, a high priestess of elbow grease?  Patron Saint of Domestic Order, unclutterer of corners, scourge of the dust bunny, Knight of the Rosy Toilet - Citron leSurfectante.  He sounds French.  A demigoddess of folly (Giggles), a sprite of the forest whose laughter falls like joy upon the heart.  It is said her playful spirit comes to those wistful for freedom and adventure; she is known to bestow gifts on single parents.   She was born to the High Priest of Health and Wellness (Rawfoodius, or Veggicus?) and the Goddess of Wisdom (Betty, Madge or Gertrude).  Maybe Monsieur leSurfectante won Giggles' heart with his impeccably cozy, shabby chic interiors and noble deeds of stain removal while he was charmed by her eco-minimalist tree habitat.  And they gave to the world five children:  Spic and Span, The Conjoined Twins of Peace and Harmony; leFrog, The Pope of the Ludicrous; Psychotropic Sam; and Dementia, known for her discontent and self-loathing, requiring the employ of lavish gifts, ego-stroking, and undivided attention to successfully dispel her sour aura. 

Okay, now I'm having some fun!  Which is good, actually, because it freed me up move forward with the project, and on to the next blog post which will be faintly more somber in tone, due to the nature of the subject.  Ooo, heavy, man! 

Selah

dark and casual secrets

     You know how sometimes you want to punch Britney Spears in the face?  Imagine yourself David, triumphant over Goliath...  Hmm, it went biblical there, and that wasn't what I was going for.  I am a proficient typist, no more, no less, though I find the process of using a keyboard foreign and unnatural.  It lacks the sensual, the poetry.  The force behind a more deliberate keystroke.  I feel like using a typewriter, goddammit, to feel my words emblazon themselves across a page, and have them embed within the fibers a certain mystical importance.  I want to photocopy and staple these pages, and hand them out on the street.  I want to leave them in shops, and at gas station counters.  I may throw some out the window of my car.
     It's too goddamn hot, and I'm working on my process, thinking about what the hell went on with my last packet - I waited until the last minute to write the paper, and turned it in a week late mostly ranting about my dad's death, and my feelings around my brother, and Passover, and the whole 'I'm lame and I suck' thing.  So I lost a week of doing this week's packet work, and now I'm head first into a very busy weekend playing catch-up from a whole lot of bullshit....
     Remember the walls the enlightened ones are always telling us we can walk through?  They are inside our Selves.  Well, I do also believe that we can train ourselves to walk through what we think of as 'actual' walls, but that's a different discussion...  I have these three silver spheres, that I allow to roll around my house where they may - I call them clockworks.  Mostly they stay in my room, hovering around the same general area.  Every now and then, one rolls off for a better view, and in days past, they would take long, independent journeys, meeting again after a vacuuming or Spring cleaning.  I mention this, obviously, because one has broken off from the pack and come to rest next to my desk, staring it's reflection at me as I type.  It tells me I need to live Joy.
     When I became spiritually aware, my hair became more sacred to me, and I have used it ritually.  I dyed it blue, and dreaded it when I lived out West.  I cut off and buried one of the dreads with Delia, my long-time traveling buddy cat-familiar, when she died.  I buzzed my waist length mane into a crew cut when I moved to Vermont and started at Goddard.  I saved my son's first haircut hair - but I think a lot of moms do that.  And now, I've been craving the George Clinton 'do.  I think it's time.  I think the ritual is integral to the actualizing process.  I need to bust out the typewriter and get the gay hairdresser on the line, because my Being hears Jonathan Livingston Seagull calling from the other side of this Wall, and he's telling me to turn down the music!
     One of the things distracting me from the book I'm supposed to be reading is the book I have been reading, The Great American Detox Diet by Alex Jamison (she's a vegan chef who's married to Morgan Spurlock of Supersize Me fame).  I read it once before, but I lost interest and never finished it, but this last bought with illness in our house sent me back to look deeper.  Eating and living healthy is something I strive for everyday, and most days I feel I come out ahead.  On others, I fail beyond all reason.  But as I'm reading I'm thinking, "but Alex, I eat mostly organic food, local where I can, use Seventh Generation cleaning products and limit my use of plastics in my home (4000 Legos and too many Bionicles and Bakugan notwithstanding).  I don't clutter my place up with consumerism or advertising, keep the stress down, use biodegradable bath products and minimal make-up only on fancy occasions, why do I still get so sick too often?  Why is my immunity down?"
     I don't get off my ass, out of my house, and out into nature enough anymore.  I internalize my anger, my house needs a good cleaning, and I don't get enough exercise, that's why.  I mean, I used to live outdoors, for goodness sake!  I would bike or walk miles in a day!  Over the years, the shamanic practice of my ritualized spirituality has waned into non-existence with the moving into buildings and setting up house.  I have mourned it, but I have not wound branches into my hair and marched out into the woods to find it.  The idea of a crazy new 'do and the getting out of doors for exercise and ritual feel like the energy between the tines of a tuning fork harmonizing with an instrument singing of joy (I believe I mentioned the joy).  Sweat out those toxins while you dance, sing and shout! 
     I was so 'home insecure' during a time when I would say most women would choose to be more 'home secure' than usual, I find myself singing the lines to a Robyn Hitchcock song in my head - 'everything you say you won't / is what you will eventually' - and I recognize how much I like to be home.  It's right in line with becoming everything I took flight to escape from - family, security, order and predictability, to name a few.  I say I do it for the boy, but with my practiced transience of a former life, the truth has been for some time now that I just want to go Home, and with all the spaces I've inhabited, it still manages to elude me.  I still just don't feel settled.  Perhaps I never will, or will feel so on my deathbed, or when my energy returns to the void.  If I wind the Joy into the crazy snake dance of my sacred hair, will I remember how to be a child of the world?  Will it carry me out into the wind and rain, away from the outer sanctuary to the one within?  Will it bind my intentions like a spell?  I remember a fragment of a Native American poet's words - something about how his Grandmother's magic was in her long, unbraided hair...
     The task is to invent a mythology, like a promotional guide for pretend deities.  What should I call it? 

Selah

(come on baby, gimme your) Meat

Okay, so here's something...I just sent my brother a facebook message telling him straight up about the way I feel he and his wife disrespect me in front of the kids.  Now, before you go, "uh oh...", there's a bit of a lead in -

April 20th, known now to many as national pot smoking day, is my parents' anniversary.  This year, it was also Yom Ha'atzma'ut, Israel Independance Day - double bonus.  Since I was feeling nostalgic and missing my dad, I posted some pictures and Israeli folk songs on facebook, and I even sent a copy of one of the pictures to my brother, asking him if he knew where or when it was taken.  He sent a nice response, telling me what he knew, and added a question about 'where have I been' he hasn't seen me around lately.  I took some time and thought about how best to tell him how I feel without placing blame, and to say that I have been thinking about solutions, but I'm just not sure how deep I care to get into it.  I thought it was a fair note, and nicely written, and I don't know whether or not to expect a response.  So there.  I said it.  I should put it to rest, at least on my end...

I've been remembering to turn on music while I screw around on the computer, and I've been listening to my Pandora station called 'Robyn Hitchcock Radio', although it plays all kinds of other great stuff, too (Golden Shoulders, Billy Bragg, Smog, Pavement, Radiohead, etc.).  Anyway, it was on the other day, and this song I used to listen to back in the early 90's (yeah, way back then) came on, and I lay back on the bed to channel that feeling of being in South Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and my cat, Mr. Spats jumped up next to me and it was just like how Delia (my cat back then) used to, and in my mind I visualized a scarecrow, a Book of Saints, and the work space I'm carving out in what we call the playroom.  Then a Syd Barrett song came on, Giggolo Aunt, and I wanted to call the BF I haven't spoken with in weeks out of that burst of playfulness that song reminds me of, of a time...of a time.

It's been really hard to not have him around, and it breaks my heart sometimes, but it really is the right thing for right now.  I know without a doubt, I'd be using him as a reason to not be doing my work, and I can not do my work all on my own.  I feel terribly isolated, though I still have B who stays in pretty regular touch - and it's actually good to have my mom out of town, I don't like being in the habit of calling her every day, and more than once is just sad!  Love ya, mom  : )  Facebook's gone crazy with all the weird privacy / application things, it's a time suck, and it generally pisses me off anyway, so I'm trying to stay off there and foster more personal and meaningful relationships in my daily life.  Just another baby step in the process...

Which leads me to my point here - how many time do you tell yourself something is 'enough' before it finally is?  I feel like I'm waiting for the heart attack, sometimes, you know?  Like for a building to fall in, or a flood.  I know, I shouldn't even draw the energy to me, but I wonder why I can't just decide to do something and go after it without a piano having to fall on my head?  I've been emptying myself out, crying buckets of tears, seeking out sadness to release the gates, to cleanse and purge.  If I can't cry for myself, I'll cry for someone else, and then come to the mourning slowly, in an hours long ritual of searching into the void for a clue, for a point of origin.  And what do I think will happen in that moment?  Awareness?  Fulfillment?  Contentment?  Despair?

'Oh, stop being so dramatic and get over it already!' is what I tell myself, and what I've been trying to get past, for real, and maybe it's working.  I feel like I'm uncrumpling after being crushed, and I needed a moment to think about how much that hurt - and then get over it!  I still have all the work of writing my way through it, but if I can see past the awareness/fulfillment/contentment/despair and just do what needs doing instead of constantly facing down my own fears, well, then what?  Jeez, it's like that Enigma comic, where all the kids committed suicide because Titus Bird wrote those very words!  Like Faust #12, and Chapter 13 in  A Clockwork Orange...just keep moving forward because there's no way back.  So I go look for my own place to call home, while trying not to count all the ways in which I still feel like a teenager.

Year in Review II

Just a few more things to finish the list out, and then on to new endeavors...

Ah, my boy!  Could a mama be prouder?  The little bugger is just so cute and funny, and full of life and empathy, and creativity, and wonder.  What an excellent little creature I get to play slave to!  To be fair, I'm a pretty lazy slave, and he's getting to the point of being able to do most things by himself, short of cook or drive, but we're working on that...  He's done well in kindergarten, I'm pleased by his enthusiasm for learning (even though he whines about hating homework already, sheesh), and he seems to be socially active within his class.  I love all the little things he builds out of K'Nex or Lego, his awesome drawings, and the stories he's starting to write - we had a great time inking and stamping the other night, and he put together a three page story called six guitars which were flying through the sky.  I just count my blessings with him, as I try to squish him into a little ball on my lap where he hardly fits anymore (my baby!), and come to terms with his growing being.  He still hardly eats, and I worry over his health, but he seems to be growing and developing, even if he is a bit small.  He can have a nasty attitude, and speak with such disrespect it's shocking, but I am strict with him, and I can go a bit overboard myself, so I try to take it in stride and see it as a need for improvement in my own communication skills.  On the whole, I think we do pretty well with each other, but I have to say the future does look a bit scary!  I wish I had more people around and more opportunities to get him together with kids outside of school, as he's got a tendency to talk all day in class to his buddies, and not get his work done.  I think we need a more active social life.  Not sure what I'm going to do about the Summer, if I'm going to try to send him to camp or anything, but as of now, I'm not working, so...no hurry?  We'll see.

I really do need to find a job, though, I can't pay the bills by going back to college!  Unemployment isn't enough, obviously, and my child support is good for keeping a positive balance in my checkbook, which leaves my meager saving that I don't really want to start cutting into.  The whole point of my going back to school was to be able to do a bit better for myself financially, even though I have no idea how that's going to manifest itself.  It still seems completely unbelievable to me that I could make a living with my photos, or my words, or combinations thereof, but I'm beginning to remember what the possibility of that felt like, and I'm letting it lead my process.  It's really great to be going to Goddard, and tying up that loose end - and being at the residency was really fun and inspiring, and enlightening.  I just love to get all excited about stuff and make connections like that, and I hope to be able to bring some of that spirit to the community I live in, and discover where that can lead me.  Who knows, it may lead me right back to Vermont!

It's also mind-blowing to think that 'nexus' (nexus of ecstasy has been the working title for my scribblings for years) may actually see the light of day sometime this decade.  That's such a good feeling!  My only fear now is that once I get done with it, and I do think there's a good amount of work in it, that I'll be done!  Like there won't be anymore!  Ha!  Ridiculous...  I pulled four possible projects out of scrap photos I had left over from test shots and images that just didn't work, and some that just never got finished.  I have quite an archive, actually, and I feel lucky to have been smart enough to document the journey, because sometimes, I forget I was there!  I get so bogged down in laundry and dishes, and jesus have I ever once DUSTED in 2 years?  and what am I gonna do for money will the check clear in time?  that I forget to just sit
                                                                                                             and light some incense maybe
                                                                                                                                  breathe deeply
                                                                                                                                        and slowly
                                                                                                                                    remember to take
                                                                                                                                 one step at a time
                                                                                                                                   let the mind go
                                                                                                                                     and the spirit flies

behold the possibility.

Gosh, there's still so much to do!  It seems like, 'it's been a year, I should be farther along towards my goals', but also, 'look how far I've come in a year!'  I wanted to have 'nexus' all typed out in one cohesive form, and I haven't done that, but now it turns out that might not be the way to go with it, and I might be well on my way to discovering the way of it as part of my project for school.  So it all works out, still, in the end.  Not that it's by any means over, but just a beginning, in the worst, most cliched sense, I'm sorry.  Well, in any event, I'm getting back on track with what I meant to do with my life, before I let all the other dumb crap get in the way - and it was all good and fun dumb crap, and I learned alot, and I could have been doing much dumber crap, but it didn't move me ahead any further in the game, and now I have to cram at the last minute for a change.  I guess this is the part where I give myself a pep talk about how I did alright this year, but I didn't work up to my level of potential, and I want to see some more improvements in the months ahead, and then we can enjoy an unbeatable season - but I have to remain vigilant, and stick to my training schedule or all is lost before I'm even out of the gate.  What the bloody hell am I on about? 

I guess all in all, I've had worse years, and I suppose I'll be reliving some of them as I plod through the writings of yesteryear, but maybe it'll help put things in perspective.  Perhaps I'll see that I'm not so far off from my goals, that I didn't really get too far off the track, that the uncompromising dedication to writing is, in fact, going to pay off.  I see that I'm the same unwavering self I've always been, just not as pretty, and I don't laugh, sing or dance quite as much as I used to - and I want more sleep.  Days of it.  A week even...  Well, it's the weekend now, and it's after noon, so on to the dreaded laundry and grocery shopping chores.  Maybe we'll even go to the toy store, because the kid has $40 he's dying to spend on more crap, like he doesn't have enough, and I 'm running out of room to put it all!  Really, I want to work in the garden and sip cocktails, but I don't want to spend the money on garden supplies today, and the fridge is close to empty.  And the pile of laundry has worn out it's welcome on the living room floor.  Ugh.  Pry fat ass off of bed, turn off computer, take part in real life activities in real time.  Spend time with child.  Enjoy life -->  GO

Oh yeah - any ideas what I should do with the porn?  I had one friend suggest I send it to her, but I don't know what she's planning on doing with it...  Is there still a forum in Penthouse?  Will they pay for it?  Any ideas and suggestions would be welcome!

Year in Review

Wow, haven't checked in for awhile, but it looks like it's time to get with some 'learning documentation', so on we go...

First off, this blog is now a year old, and I want to go back and check in with what's been happening, and comment on what all's gone down this year.  Secondly, I want to talk about the experience of working on my first creative project of the semester.  I have a feeling that may end up being more than one post...

I created the blog and put a few words up on March 11, but the second post, the April 18th post, was an actual introductory paragraph.  I talked about why I was here; my employer thought I could write a blog for the orchard which turned out to fizzle after just three posts - just one more thing neither one of us felt like dealing with!  I liked the idea of blogging, read a few of my friends' blogs, and I thought it was a neat and easy way to do my evening journaling.  It sounds kind of like talking to myself, which, I guess, is what journaling actually is, in a sense.  But journaling is kind of personal, and while I had it in my head that this was the internet, and that gajillions of people use the internet, it never occured to me that anyone I know would read it!  But they did.  Surprise!  It's o.k., I'm an open book kind of chick, anyway...  A year later, I no longer work at the orchard, but I continue to blog.  There seem to be at least 5 people who claim interest in what I may write here, and I still can't tell where the boundry is between personal and private.

I mean, if I'm journaling, then I'm talking to myself.  Getting down all the little things I want to remember about the day, or just sort of take a mental inventory before I go to bed.  It's processing my feelings around what happened in my day and maybe a plan for a better tomorrow.  Checking in.  But in the back of my mind, I'm keely aware that I'm going to put this out there for other random gajillions to read if they so choose, so I hold back - I don't use names.  If you know me, and you know who my kid's dad is, or who I mean when I refer to my BF, then yeah, you can figure your way past my attempt at protecting the anonymity of people who touch my life, whose actions have an effect on me.  That's been tough to reconcile to myself, but I will continue to work on it.  I feel it's my right to talk about what I need, to ask for help in processing a situation sometimes, and also I need to vent.  So I defend my 'tell most' nature, I think it encourages honest discourse.  Besides, if you've got that much to hide...I'm just sayin'.  Don't get me wrong, I have my stories I don't publicize either, so those of you who are close to me - no worries, your secrets are safe!

Another topic I hit the floor running with was the fact that I had reconnected with someone I used to know who I let myself believe wanted to be my Prince Charming.  Turns out he tells that to all the girls, and I was mad that I let myself fall for it at my age, in my shape!  It brings to the surface a lot of what's going on with me in terms of my weight, body issues, and need for companionship.  I know that people who love me love me no matter what I look like.  I know that a person who is going to be attracted to me will be attracted to my many other fine qualities.  I don't feel completely comfortable in this enlarged skin, and I don't believe I'll really let myself get into a relationship before I do.  It's funny, I wasn't going to have kids because I thought I'd never be able to give them what I call 'the white picket fence', but here I am doing an o.k. job at it anyway!  So maybe if I give up looking for love because I don't think I have the things I need to be a healthy partner, will it find me?  The yearly wrap up on all that is, still fat, still single, still chatting online.  Yay.  I'm starting to think that just knowing what I need to do to get healthy isn't enough.  I think it might be time to join some Weight Watchers type thing, where there are other people to help hold me accountable or something...
When I get my life in order - that's when I'll be ready for a boyfriend (in other words, when I'm dead!).  No, it'll happen when it's right,  I hope.

In that same vein, now would be the time to address the yearly review of the BF - for those who may not know, I mean 'best' friend, not boyfriend, when I speak of this elusive form of wildlife.  He is in the same place doing the same thing, and the only thing that's changed is me finally making good on my claim to just be done with it already.  As I read back over the blog, I realized that I've been saying how sick I am of the relationship we have since the second post - so I guess it shouldn't be any surprise that we had a huge argument and I walked away from it all.  That situation has been looking to blow up for awhile now, and I just have too many other things to focus on that are positive, to let this one big negative drag me down anymore.  It hurts and I'm lonely, but ultimately it's the right thing.  Sigh.  Good time buddies...what it is.  More energy to give to my boyfriend, when the Universe delivers him!

Oh my goodness!  A man in the house?!  No way!!  This place is a MESS!  I remember when Zev was a baby, and I was wondering how women had time to get everything done, and they told me, "let your housework go."  I thought, "no way!"  I couldn't do it.  There was no way I could do it.  Now, 5 years later, I look around my house and think, "this is what it means to let your housework go..."  I don't have one of those homes where there's decaying crap in poorly balanced piles to the ceiling and pathways through the clutter, just the ever-present pile of dirty dishes, and unmopped floors.  Too many jackets on the coat-rack, too many shoes by the door - that kind of mess.  Toys on the coffee table (which is really a trunk), a heap of laundry where I dumped all the dirty sheets, towels and blankets on the living room floor, and where they remain, mocking me as I walk past...  My bathroom and kitchen always need a good scrubbing, and if the laundry isn't lying around being dirty, then it is usually hanging around waiting to get dry, or clean waiting to get folded and/or put away.  I seem to always be in a state of 'between' dirty and clean, which, isn't clean.

On the bright side, I'm down to one more box to empty, and then I'll be completely unpacked for the first time in...I can't remember when.  I think I was fully unpacked for a minute when the boy was small, so just over 4 years ago?  This place was a dump when I moved in, much like many of my previous haunts, but over time and with patience, I have scrubbed and painted and decorated, and now it almost looks like something. Without a doubt, way better than it was, but still, the ongoing struggle with the mess.  Also, the garden looks like it's off to a good start this year, my pansies came back in abundance, and I built a pretty rock wall to replace the ugly bricks.  I dug out some of the giant old hostas to make room for more pretty flowers, and perhaps a shrub.  Just needs a bit of soil to fill in where the hostas were and some mulch, and I think we're good to go!

Well, there's a few more topics I wanted to cover still, but I wasn't intending to write an epic poem or anything, and I have other stuff I need to get to today!  I've spent enough time on this post, I've got the next one ready to go, and the one after that planned as well.  I just wish I had some more images to share...need to work on that!  Anyway, sending love and happiness out into the Universe on this Gorgeous Spring day!  Peace, hippies!  Dear god, I'm listening to Steve Miller...must...change......station.........