"Is a dream autobiography or fiction?" (page 21)
This question starts the second part of Lynda Barry's What It Is. The questions come hard and fast after this. . .
"What is an experience?" (page 22)
"Where do we keep bad memories?" (page 23)
"Do memories have mass? Do they have motion?" (page 36)
In between these questions about image and memory she discusses her childhood which was a lonely place illuminated first only by the glowing television and later by fairy tales and books, and, of course, her blinking cat.
It is images like that of the cat, images of what never-was, that I want to explore further in this post along with "What is an imaginary friend? Are there imaginary enemies?" (page 29)
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When I was a little girl I had both an imaginary enemy as well as imaginary friends. My innocent, loving imaginary friends came into my life first. I cannot recall at what age I first started to play with Larry and the Two Kids, but I was very, very small, perhaps about three.
I can see him clearly. Larry wore a yellow shirt and at his sides were two small children--one boy, one girl. On there faces there was just a skein of flesh colored blankness, like a Little People doll with the features rubbed off. The picture seems disconcerting, but it really wasn't. As I picture them in my head the feeling that washes over me is that of peace, protection, love.
They traveled with me everywhere--in the car, to the store, to restaurants. They were my constant companions. My friends that never-were.
I do not remember when Larry and the Two Kids left my life, but their exit was painless, easy, natural. Not like the entrance of my imaginary enemy.
This man, this never-was dream phantom, was not faceless. Indeed his scarred, terrifying face loomed large in my childhood dreams. I was older, perhaps about ten, when he first came to me. Unlike Larry, he only visited in the night, in my dreams. He was a spiffy dresser, this haunting character. He usually wore light color clothes--tan, beige, cream colored, old fashioned suits with high collars and bow ties. He wore small, round spectacles and had gleaming, perfect white teeth. The skin on his face was a shiny, tight red as if he had been burned or slashed across the face and gruesome scars replaced true flesh.
I can see him now in a long ago dream (one of many): He is walking into an old fashioned school house. Alone in the countryside, the little school stands white among green meadows. The sky is steel gray and crowds of children push by him to enter the building. Books in hand and freshly washed, they are eager to start the school day. He stands tall and ominous above them. I know, just know that he will enter that school and hurt every child in there. No one will escape whatever evil he is about to do. He turns toward me and flashes a toothy grin as he shuts the door behind him.
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Come back next week for more light hearted fun and frolic with the Blog of Seriousness and Doom when I'll be talking about the next section of What It Is. ( I promise not to scare you further with creepy nightmare men :-)
Check out Rachel's place, too, for her discussion of the second section of the book.
Friday, May 29, 2009
Thursday, May 21, 2009
What It Is
What is an image? When is the past? What is memory?
These are all questions Lynda Barry asks the reader to explore in her book What It Is. The book is designed as a creative tool or workbook for anyone interested in writing or exploring their past. The text is a mix of handwriting and typeface on legal paper and is illustrated with collages, sketches, and photos. The pages are literally saturated with color and texture.
They are, it seems, alive; alive with pictures and words that grab you, haunt you, humor you, and push you to dive into your own mind and thoughts.
The first part of the book has to do with, as noted above, notions of memory, the past, and image. Right off the bat she delves into the connection between imagery and memory. She begins by telling us of a game she played with her dolls as a child. In the game she pretended to be as still and as silent as the toys and pictures in her room so as to be privy to their secret world. In this world they could move, talk, breathe. . . live. She clearly remembers seeing a picture of a kitten on her wall blinking its eyes as she watched.
"Why," she asks "would an image of something, which never happened, travel with me for all these years?" (page 12).
This leads into bigger questions about the nature of images themselves and how the images we live with in our minds are products of a past that may or may not have ever happened.
For me, dream and imagination have always worked together to create memory both real and exaggerated:
I remember driving though Napa valley one spring night chasing a brilliant moon.
Was the moon really full?
There was a face on my wall as a child. The face looked at me with a crooked, ragged smile and winked at me every night.
But wasn't that only a pattern of cracks in the plaster?
I held my father's hand as we walked to a carnival in downtown San Jose. I can see his white shirt and feel his hand in mine.
But wasn't that actually a dream I had once?
Was any of it real? Or, more importantly, does it matter?
To me these images are alive. They are as real to me as the keyboard I am typing on right now or the glasses perched on my nose. Only that crazy enemy of creativity, logic, makes me question their true, living nature as images that speak of and to my life.
They are "Alive in the way thinking is NOT, but EXPERIENCING IS, made of BOTH memory and IMAGINATION. . ." (page 14)
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Come back next week for further discussion of What It Is. And go over to Rachel's place and read her take on the first section of the book.
These are all questions Lynda Barry asks the reader to explore in her book What It Is. The book is designed as a creative tool or workbook for anyone interested in writing or exploring their past. The text is a mix of handwriting and typeface on legal paper and is illustrated with collages, sketches, and photos. The pages are literally saturated with color and texture.
They are, it seems, alive; alive with pictures and words that grab you, haunt you, humor you, and push you to dive into your own mind and thoughts.
The first part of the book has to do with, as noted above, notions of memory, the past, and image. Right off the bat she delves into the connection between imagery and memory. She begins by telling us of a game she played with her dolls as a child. In the game she pretended to be as still and as silent as the toys and pictures in her room so as to be privy to their secret world. In this world they could move, talk, breathe. . . live. She clearly remembers seeing a picture of a kitten on her wall blinking its eyes as she watched.
"Why," she asks "would an image of something, which never happened, travel with me for all these years?" (page 12).
This leads into bigger questions about the nature of images themselves and how the images we live with in our minds are products of a past that may or may not have ever happened.
For me, dream and imagination have always worked together to create memory both real and exaggerated:
I remember driving though Napa valley one spring night chasing a brilliant moon.
Was the moon really full?
There was a face on my wall as a child. The face looked at me with a crooked, ragged smile and winked at me every night.
But wasn't that only a pattern of cracks in the plaster?
I held my father's hand as we walked to a carnival in downtown San Jose. I can see his white shirt and feel his hand in mine.
But wasn't that actually a dream I had once?
Was any of it real? Or, more importantly, does it matter?
To me these images are alive. They are as real to me as the keyboard I am typing on right now or the glasses perched on my nose. Only that crazy enemy of creativity, logic, makes me question their true, living nature as images that speak of and to my life.
They are "Alive in the way thinking is NOT, but EXPERIENCING IS, made of BOTH memory and IMAGINATION. . ." (page 14)
-----------------------------------------------------
Come back next week for further discussion of What It Is. And go over to Rachel's place and read her take on the first section of the book.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
prom night
on the porch steps,
swaying, iridescent flowers
orange
yellow
teal
silver
blue.
bees lap at the nectar
as they flutter around the bouquet.
the night is spread out before them
waiting for their heady scent to fill the dark air.
swaying, iridescent flowers
orange
yellow
teal
silver
blue.
bees lap at the nectar
as they flutter around the bouquet.
the night is spread out before them
waiting for their heady scent to fill the dark air.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
bobby's birthday
This is the story of an ordinary man with an ordinary life. A simple story but a good one.
Bobby was born on March 27, 1941 to a young farm woman who had moved to The Big City when she married. His father was the cheating type, and he was long gone by the time Bobby came along.
Bobby and his mother lived a hard but good life in St. Louis, she working in a war plant while he spent the days with a kindly neighbor in the same apartment building. Later, when he was in school and the war was over, she took a job as a secretary in a flower seed company.
Like all boys he grew and explored and learned, and by the time he was old enough to deliver a paper he was working, too. Pet shops, the Steak & Shake, the green grocer's. . .the list goes on and on. He was never idle.
Yet, he always had time to read. His mind could not rest, and many of his leisure hours were spent among books.
Bobby grew up and became Bob, and he left home to go to college and to explore the country and the world. His travels eventually took him to Denver where a long haired waitress with gorgeous eyes and a beguiling dimple won his heart.
Bob's heart was full when his first born, a girl, came into his life in 1973. He bought a 10 pound box of chocolates for his wife which was so huge she had to split it with all the other new mothers in the maternity ward.
Time moved on and a second girl was born, and his heart swelled with love and pride once again. Like daddies across the nation, and indeed the world, he danced with his precious daughters in the evenings as they watched the fading light of sunset. Patsy Cline, Hank Williams, the Mamas and Papas, and Glen Miller all played softly from the old reel to reel player while each lady in his life took turns dancing with him, faces buried in his shirt so that Old Spice scented the dance.
He was a engineer now, working on satellites and computers in an age when few even really knew what a computer was. Yet, his love of reading never fell by the way side. Books were piled beside the bed and under it, they were in the family room and in the garage. They littered the foot wells in his car and were stacked next to the wires and electronics on his office desk.
His girls grew and life marched forward. It was when they were teens, they think, that he began to write. A Short Story was published in a magazine once. Innumerable notebooks were filled with short hand, his novel in progress. His greatest piece though, in his oldest daughter's eyes, was a letter he wrote to her when she went away for a week on a high school retreat. Too precious to share with others, it sits neatly in a wooden box he made for her once upon a time a million years ago. She only takes it out on occasion, when her heart feels strong and she thinks she can handle it.
Often she cannot. The words, as sweet and full of love as they are, remind her that he is gone.
Gone because he left this world at the young age of 53. He collapsed from a fatal heart attack at a book store, clutching a novel by Edith Wharton.
At least, they tell themselves, he was in his favorite place.
Happy birthday Bobby.
March 27, 1941 - December 2, 1994.
Bobby was born on March 27, 1941 to a young farm woman who had moved to The Big City when she married. His father was the cheating type, and he was long gone by the time Bobby came along.
Bobby and his mother lived a hard but good life in St. Louis, she working in a war plant while he spent the days with a kindly neighbor in the same apartment building. Later, when he was in school and the war was over, she took a job as a secretary in a flower seed company.
Like all boys he grew and explored and learned, and by the time he was old enough to deliver a paper he was working, too. Pet shops, the Steak & Shake, the green grocer's. . .the list goes on and on. He was never idle.
Yet, he always had time to read. His mind could not rest, and many of his leisure hours were spent among books.
Bobby grew up and became Bob, and he left home to go to college and to explore the country and the world. His travels eventually took him to Denver where a long haired waitress with gorgeous eyes and a beguiling dimple won his heart.
Bob's heart was full when his first born, a girl, came into his life in 1973. He bought a 10 pound box of chocolates for his wife which was so huge she had to split it with all the other new mothers in the maternity ward.
Time moved on and a second girl was born, and his heart swelled with love and pride once again. Like daddies across the nation, and indeed the world, he danced with his precious daughters in the evenings as they watched the fading light of sunset. Patsy Cline, Hank Williams, the Mamas and Papas, and Glen Miller all played softly from the old reel to reel player while each lady in his life took turns dancing with him, faces buried in his shirt so that Old Spice scented the dance.
He was a engineer now, working on satellites and computers in an age when few even really knew what a computer was. Yet, his love of reading never fell by the way side. Books were piled beside the bed and under it, they were in the family room and in the garage. They littered the foot wells in his car and were stacked next to the wires and electronics on his office desk.
His girls grew and life marched forward. It was when they were teens, they think, that he began to write. A Short Story was published in a magazine once. Innumerable notebooks were filled with short hand, his novel in progress. His greatest piece though, in his oldest daughter's eyes, was a letter he wrote to her when she went away for a week on a high school retreat. Too precious to share with others, it sits neatly in a wooden box he made for her once upon a time a million years ago. She only takes it out on occasion, when her heart feels strong and she thinks she can handle it.
Often she cannot. The words, as sweet and full of love as they are, remind her that he is gone.
Gone because he left this world at the young age of 53. He collapsed from a fatal heart attack at a book store, clutching a novel by Edith Wharton.
At least, they tell themselves, he was in his favorite place.
Happy birthday Bobby.
March 27, 1941 - December 2, 1994.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
paper flowers
There are no crocuses poking green sprigs through the soil yet. There are no snow drops blinking white eyes as we stride by. The earth has yet to give up it's first spring shoots.
-------------------------------------------------------
To bring a little spring to our lives we make coffee filter flowers.
You'll need: white, flat bottom coffee filters, water based markers, a spray bottle with water, various pipe cleaners
---------------------------------------------------
When I was in second grade I made my first communion,and my parents threw a huge party in my honor. I was very shy so the attention was hard for me, and I spent much of the party hiding on the side of the house avoiding the dancing and presents and cake. I remember that my mother made beautiful tissue paper flowers to decorate the fence in our yard. They also decorated the lattice work arch under which folklorico dancers entertained the guests who ate enchiladas and beans and Mexican rice.
--------------------------------------------------
Have your child draw various designs on the filters then spray one or two sprays of water on each one. The colors will spread, tie-dye fashion, into hazy, water color patterns. Lay flat to dry on cookie cooling racks or hang on a clothes line with wooden clothes pins.
------------------------------------------------------
Once my family drove to Tijuana on a whim while visiting Southern California. After quickly discerning that it wasn't really a family friendly area the we drove to, we turned around without ever getting out to walk around. A multitude of vendors approached us as we waited in our hot, steamy car to re-enter the U.S. We bought a large bouquet of colorful tissue paper flowers, a souvenir of a not-quite-vacation.
------------------------------------------------------
After the filters dry pinch the middle of one and twist to form a flower. Wrap the very end of a pipe cleaner around the nub of tissue to create a flower. Repeat with the remaining filters and pipe cleaners until you have a full bouquet.
--------------------------------------------------------
Once, when I was a teenager, my out of town cousin sent my Nana (my mom's mother) a box filled with flowers made from blue Kleenex. My Nana treasured these sweet mementos from a far away grand child. When she passed away we found them safely tucked away in a shoe box in her bedroom closet.
--------------------------------------------------------
Take the finished coffee filter flowers and decorate your house, give to friends, or pin them behind your ear. Spritz with a light perfume, if you like. Scent, they say, helps seal a memory.
-------------------------------------------------------
To bring a little spring to our lives we make coffee filter flowers.
You'll need: white, flat bottom coffee filters, water based markers, a spray bottle with water, various pipe cleaners
---------------------------------------------------
When I was in second grade I made my first communion,and my parents threw a huge party in my honor. I was very shy so the attention was hard for me, and I spent much of the party hiding on the side of the house avoiding the dancing and presents and cake. I remember that my mother made beautiful tissue paper flowers to decorate the fence in our yard. They also decorated the lattice work arch under which folklorico dancers entertained the guests who ate enchiladas and beans and Mexican rice.
--------------------------------------------------
Have your child draw various designs on the filters then spray one or two sprays of water on each one. The colors will spread, tie-dye fashion, into hazy, water color patterns. Lay flat to dry on cookie cooling racks or hang on a clothes line with wooden clothes pins.
------------------------------------------------------
Once my family drove to Tijuana on a whim while visiting Southern California. After quickly discerning that it wasn't really a family friendly area the we drove to, we turned around without ever getting out to walk around. A multitude of vendors approached us as we waited in our hot, steamy car to re-enter the U.S. We bought a large bouquet of colorful tissue paper flowers, a souvenir of a not-quite-vacation.
------------------------------------------------------
After the filters dry pinch the middle of one and twist to form a flower. Wrap the very end of a pipe cleaner around the nub of tissue to create a flower. Repeat with the remaining filters and pipe cleaners until you have a full bouquet.
--------------------------------------------------------
Once, when I was a teenager, my out of town cousin sent my Nana (my mom's mother) a box filled with flowers made from blue Kleenex. My Nana treasured these sweet mementos from a far away grand child. When she passed away we found them safely tucked away in a shoe box in her bedroom closet.
--------------------------------------------------------
Take the finished coffee filter flowers and decorate your house, give to friends, or pin them behind your ear. Spritz with a light perfume, if you like. Scent, they say, helps seal a memory.
Monday, February 23, 2009
Christine's Coconut Banana Bread (for Rosa)
I've recently discovered the yummy goodness of coconut oil. If you haven't tried coconut oil you really should. Make sure, though, that you by only virgin, unrefined coconut oil. Unrefined coconut oil retains a lovely coconut flavor and a pearly white color and is excellent for cooking, baking, skin care, and hair care.
-----------------------------------------
Cream:
1/4 cup coconut oil with
1/4 cup brown sugar (dark is best)
Add:
1 beaten egg
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
Then mix in:
1 cup of raw, rolled oats
5 mashed bananas
In a separate bowl sift together
1 1/2 cups white whole wheat flour
1 tablespoon ground flax seed
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup shredded coconut (unsweetened is best, but sweetened will work, too)
Add the dry ingredients to the wet and mix just until combined. Pour into a greased loaf pan and bake in a 350 degree oven about 1 hour or until it tests done. Cool on rack before slicing.
This is great with cream cheese or a little coconut oil spread on top.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Hearts
We are sentimental fools around here.
Valentine's Day requires candy and hearts and flowers and cards in my house. Commercial? Yes. Forced upon us my the greeting card industry? Absolutely. But I've come to the conclusion that life is short and often dreary, so a little extra celebration in the most difficult part of winter is fun and even necessary.
Every year my husband makes True Love Coffee Cake. His mother made it for him when he was a child, and I imagine his grandmother made it as well. This sweet, moist breakfast bread will warm any heart this February 14th.
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Paul's True Love Coffee Cake
Combine:
1/4 c. warm water
1 c. warm milk
1/2 c. sugar
1/4 melted butter
Add two packets of yeast to this mixture and proof
when cool add:
2 eggs, slightly beaten
Combine:
1 tsp. salt
4 cups flour
Mix the liquid and dry ingredients together to form a soft dough and let rise one hour. Punch down and form into two parts; rest for 10 minutes. Roll out into rectangles and spread the following mixture over each one:
1/2 c. powdered sugar
a few drops of red food coloring
1/2 soft butter (more if needed)
Roll up each rectangle, cinnamon roll style, then shape each log into a heart. Split tops and let rise another 1/2 hour.
Bake at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes.
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