12.11.2009
Oh's Christmas Tree - - tah-DAH!
12.07.2009
Armor All
The world is a sad, scary place.
In the weeks before Thanksgiving, I was inundated with the sadnesses of people I love: a mental ill child, families struggling with finances, a pastor overburdened with hurting people, a young woman who lost her husband, and then two weeks later lost her mother. My aching body. A large lump on my back. A friend's dying father.
I spend much too much time on here. I stare at this:
But alas, Satan dwells there, too. I would only be like David running to the Philistines. And I remember that I must armor myself against the evils of the world.
And I remember, I have only the Lord: He is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. And thank Him I don't have to pay $900 a night.
In the weeks before Thanksgiving, I was inundated with the sadnesses of people I love: a mental ill child, families struggling with finances, a pastor overburdened with hurting people, a young woman who lost her husband, and then two weeks later lost her mother. My aching body. A large lump on my back. A friend's dying father.
I spend much too much time on here. I stare at this:
The map inspires me. I'm the kind of person that reads National Geographics cover to cover. And Smithsonian. It takes me places. The map makes me wonder where I can wander. Like David running from Saul. Bora Bora. Come with me . . .
Halfway between Baja and Australia.
...a part of French Polynesia.
But alas, Satan dwells there, too. I would only be like David running to the Philistines. And I remember that I must armor myself against the evils of the world.
And I remember, I have only the Lord: He is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. And thank Him I don't have to pay $900 a night.
12.06.2009
Everything You Always Wanted To Know About How We Celebrate Christmas **
** but didn't care enough to ask
For the actual FUNNY, original version, go visit Missy!
1. Egg Nog or Hot Chocolate? Oh Egg Nog. I take little sips of it, roll it around my tongue, squish it through my teeth, then feel it gliiiiide down my throat while my eyes roll in the back of my head.
2. Does Santa wrap presents or just sit them under the tree? Who's he?
3. Colored lights on tree/house or white? The little white kind. On the tree. But lately? I've wanted to put up those big fat multi-color ones that can set your house on fire. No lights on the house. Noooooooooooooooo.
4. Do you hang mistletoe? No. No frou frou.
5. When do you put your decorations up? Never. See #4. Unless you make me.
6. What is your favorite holiday dish? Anything that someone else makes.
7. Favorite Holiday memory as a child? My mom and brother sitting there changing all the big fat multi-color light bulbs and replacing with all blue. We were the only classy-looking house of our neighborhood in 1970.
8. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa? I was already too old by the time I came to the U.S. And my parents would never have gone for anything like that
9. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve? No. Umm . . . why?
10. How do you decorate your Christmas tree? Whatever inspires me at the thrift stores. Last year and this year I'm doing red and pink. Yeah that's right. I know you think that clashes. It depends how it's done.
11. Snow! Love it or Dread it? Love. Love love. Want to take the Boo Kidlet skiing this year. Yeah!
12. Can you ice skate? I can remain semi-vertical without holding onto the sides. Is that a yes?
13. Do you remember your favorite gift? Money. Cash. Mullah. Donn.
14. What's the most important thing about the Holidays for you? Shamelessly stealing from Missy: "Oh, I guess if I were really pressed, I would have to say THE BIRTH OF JESUS CHRIST
15. What is your favorite Holiday Dessert? see #6
16. What is your favorite holiday tradition? Not really having one. I like that Christmas isn't about tradition for us. I know that can be all warm and fuzzy and I don't blame anyone else. It's just that I like to try to remember only what He was annointed to be.
17. What tops your tree? A cocoa-skinned, dark-haired beauty of an angel.
18. Which do you prefer giving or Receiving? Giving. My tastes are too quirky to pin.
19. What is your favorite Christmas Song? Hands down: "Mary Did You Know" by Kathy Mattea.
20. Candy Canes: Yuck or Yum? Tonsil-stabbers.
21 Favorite Christmas Show? Hate em all. Hate sappy.
22. Saddest Christmas Song? See #19.
12.04.2009
If
If I could, I'd sing. I'd stand on that stage, belt out a song. Without a frizzled nerve. If I could sing like this:
Heart
or this: (Sorry for the visuals. This is the only one of this song I could embed.)
Kathy Mattea
or this:
Linda Ronstadt
If I could sing, that is.
Heart
or this: (Sorry for the visuals. This is the only one of this song I could embed.)
Kathy Mattea
or this:
Linda Ronstadt
If I could sing, that is.
My Name is Asher Lev
I am having trouble sleeping. I see figures in my dream. Large, looming figures that invade my privacy.
I am reading My Name is Asher Lev, by Chaim Potok. It amazes me, pleases me and tortures me all at once. How can one man say so much in so few pages? How can so much tension be revealed in ordinary words? indicate such caring in just the pouring of orange juice?
And. And it tortures me because it immerses me in issues and questions I have about humanity. Empathy. Clarity. Incisiveness. Blindness. Mutability.
I think it is a fabulous book, but perhaps because I am fascinated by different cultures and have a vested interest in art. It is about a Hasiddic boy, Asher Lev, growing up in a Hassidic community in Brooklyn. His parents are pious and committed to important work. The father travels. The mother worries. He is compelled to travel, to do this work. He is sullen and unfulfilled when he must stay home. The mother too, ends up getting involved with his work. It seems to me, they work and neglect their son.
It becomes evident pretty early on that Asher Lev is an art prodigy. The visual arts are not appreciated or condoned in his community. Most of all, it is not appreciated or condoned by his father. His father has advanced degrees in political science, but he cannot understand the concepts of art that his teenage son is trying to explain to him. He also will not accept this, what he believes is from the Dark Side. It threatens everything he knows about life, a life consumed by tradition and the dicatates of the Rebbe, their leader.
Asher's mentor talks about the aesthetically blind and includes Asher's father. I understand that some people just cannot understand. I can see in my son the inability to comprehend some things, not just moral complexity beyond his years, but even something age-appropriate due to his innate make-up. It gives me an over-view of what it might be like. I certainly don't understand certain things. The stock market for example. In the most rudimentary way, yes. But start talking about trading loans, breaking packages apart and selling them off based on risks and it's all Monopoly to me. Which I don't like to play, by the way. So. I understand that some people can't understand.
Then there are those that won't understand. Asher's father falls into both camps. He shows that despite his intellectual prowess, he is incapable of understanding things like - expressing feelings and emotions with color, form and line. Expressing tension and progression. The interplay of the 2-dimensional canvas with the 3-dimensional world with the multi-dimensional mind. But Asher's father is also unwilling to accept Asher's gift or even see the positive aspects - that his son is talented and happy. Even such a man driven by his desire to travel, at the expense of his wife, at the expense of his only child, will not accept the compulsion his son has to draw draw draw. It threatens everything he knows. To him, art is wrong. And God of Abraham! Nudity is wrong. Not just wrong. Wicked. He holds on to this despite the Rebbe's approval of Asher's gift.
I'm not saying a father should abandon his moral structure for his child's peculiarities. In fact, that is abhorrent to me. I remember some people I knew who were extremely conservative politically, socially and religiously. They found a religion that fit their world order. Until their daughter got divorced. She was an attorney, he was a draftsman. There was no cheating on either side. All of a sudden, this same religion became to themclosed-minded, insensitive and judgmental because it would not condone the daughter's divorce. It never would have. It had very clear, strict guidelines for divorce. Hello!? Needless to say, they left that congregation.
I wonder though, in both fathers' cases, if the forces of the world and not Heaven were influencing them. Is it cowardice that keeps them from incisively reviewing the situation and finding a place of reason in their world order? Is it impossible to see any light? He will not accept Asher's gift, a substantial gift, even though the Rebbe approves. So it seems, it has nothing to do with his religion and all to do with his box. The proverbial round peg. And perhaps his own dream of travelling with his son. Doing this important work together.
Cannot or will not.
Impassive. Indifferent. Callous.
A compulsive man could not, would not empathize with a compulsive son.
Is it any wonder we do not have peace in the world?
I am reading My Name is Asher Lev, by Chaim Potok. It amazes me, pleases me and tortures me all at once. How can one man say so much in so few pages? How can so much tension be revealed in ordinary words? indicate such caring in just the pouring of orange juice?
And. And it tortures me because it immerses me in issues and questions I have about humanity. Empathy. Clarity. Incisiveness. Blindness. Mutability.
I think it is a fabulous book, but perhaps because I am fascinated by different cultures and have a vested interest in art. It is about a Hasiddic boy, Asher Lev, growing up in a Hassidic community in Brooklyn. His parents are pious and committed to important work. The father travels. The mother worries. He is compelled to travel, to do this work. He is sullen and unfulfilled when he must stay home. The mother too, ends up getting involved with his work. It seems to me, they work and neglect their son.
It becomes evident pretty early on that Asher Lev is an art prodigy. The visual arts are not appreciated or condoned in his community. Most of all, it is not appreciated or condoned by his father. His father has advanced degrees in political science, but he cannot understand the concepts of art that his teenage son is trying to explain to him. He also will not accept this, what he believes is from the Dark Side. It threatens everything he knows about life, a life consumed by tradition and the dicatates of the Rebbe, their leader.
Asher's mentor talks about the aesthetically blind and includes Asher's father. I understand that some people just cannot understand. I can see in my son the inability to comprehend some things, not just moral complexity beyond his years, but even something age-appropriate due to his innate make-up. It gives me an over-view of what it might be like. I certainly don't understand certain things. The stock market for example. In the most rudimentary way, yes. But start talking about trading loans, breaking packages apart and selling them off based on risks and it's all Monopoly to me. Which I don't like to play, by the way. So. I understand that some people can't understand.
Then there are those that won't understand. Asher's father falls into both camps. He shows that despite his intellectual prowess, he is incapable of understanding things like - expressing feelings and emotions with color, form and line. Expressing tension and progression. The interplay of the 2-dimensional canvas with the 3-dimensional world with the multi-dimensional mind. But Asher's father is also unwilling to accept Asher's gift or even see the positive aspects - that his son is talented and happy. Even such a man driven by his desire to travel, at the expense of his wife, at the expense of his only child, will not accept the compulsion his son has to draw draw draw. It threatens everything he knows. To him, art is wrong. And God of Abraham! Nudity is wrong. Not just wrong. Wicked. He holds on to this despite the Rebbe's approval of Asher's gift.
I'm not saying a father should abandon his moral structure for his child's peculiarities. In fact, that is abhorrent to me. I remember some people I knew who were extremely conservative politically, socially and religiously. They found a religion that fit their world order. Until their daughter got divorced. She was an attorney, he was a draftsman. There was no cheating on either side. All of a sudden, this same religion became to themclosed-minded, insensitive and judgmental because it would not condone the daughter's divorce. It never would have. It had very clear, strict guidelines for divorce. Hello!? Needless to say, they left that congregation.
I wonder though, in both fathers' cases, if the forces of the world and not Heaven were influencing them. Is it cowardice that keeps them from incisively reviewing the situation and finding a place of reason in their world order? Is it impossible to see any light? He will not accept Asher's gift, a substantial gift, even though the Rebbe approves. So it seems, it has nothing to do with his religion and all to do with his box. The proverbial round peg. And perhaps his own dream of travelling with his son. Doing this important work together.
Cannot or will not.
Impassive. Indifferent. Callous.
A compulsive man could not, would not empathize with a compulsive son.
Is it any wonder we do not have peace in the world?
12.02.2009
Pat Me
I don't do frou-frou. No lace. Nothing scratchy. Nothing fluffy. I hate cashmere. Yes, Clinton. Yes Stacey. I. Hate. Cashmere. When I was looking for a wedding dress, I gave the clerks minor pulmonary infarctions because
1. my wedding date was less than one year away
and
2. I didn't want ANY lace. Of any kind.
So we're doing 2nd grade homework. You know, the stuff I've been struggling with so much? There was a vocabulary word and Boo looked up at me and said,
I'm a goooooood mama!
1. my wedding date was less than one year away
and
2. I didn't want ANY lace. Of any kind.
So we're doing 2nd grade homework. You know, the stuff I've been struggling with so much? There was a vocabulary word and Boo looked up at me and said,
What's "lace?"
I'm a goooooood mama!
Different Gifts
I've been so worried about Boo. He's not doing well in 2nd grade. Despite the fact that I believe teacher is unnecessarily difficult, I am still concerned about his abilities. Well, Boo has an adorable little classmate named Z. We are friends with her parents and have socialized on occasion. Z's mother sent me a note and mentioned this at the end:
I'll take it!
"Oh, btw, Z told me last night that "all the girls in my class want to marry (Boo.)"
Awwww...what a little loverboy. Girls, stay away, he's ours!"
I'll take it!
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