The Written Picture

Spring is Springing

Something out there is stirring and opening a sleepy eye. It's growing and getting tangled and wild. We'll spend all summer pruning it back and tamping it down. Or trying to anyway.

It brings sudden storms.

And hints of toad song from ditches and creeks and ponds. That eternal trill. That constant sad note.

It moves the curtains in and out like breathing.

Everything is just coming to life and something about it haunts me.

I love the rain

• I love raindrops dripping down glass
• I love the first rumbles of thunder
• I love lightning in dark windows
• I love puddles and their reflections
• I love the patter of rain on the roof at night

 I know I'm supposed to complain. But I can't help it. I love the rain.

(Color version here.)

Sometimes I don't take pictures

I didn't take a lot of pictures this Easter.

Sometimes my camera keeps me from seeing. It makes me think I've kept a moment safe from time, but then later my memories are only of photographs.

Sometimes I don't want to see through glass. I don't want to be separated.

Sometimes the sweetness of a moment is that it's ending just as it's beginning. And you love the moment more because it's not so easily gotten.

So I didn't take a lot of pictures this weekend. Instead I just enjoyed it.

I Shoot Ballerinas (Senior Portraits)

This is Erin.

She's a ballerina and a soon-to-be European History major. Even though she's from a small town, she's not exactly a small town girl. She's been to Paris. Twice. She loves Marie Antoinette, dances on pointe, and has been a gypsy in Kansas City's Renaissance Festival. And her 18th birthday was a formal masquerade party in a tea room.

Last week, we finally finished shooting her senior portraits. I say "finally" because we started in October.  Normally I wouldn't spend an entire school year shooting one person's senior portraits, but Erin's different. I've known her mom for years and our daughters have danced together for a long time. So we've spent the last year working on her portraits. For one thing, we had to wait for snow. 

For another thing, Erin had a lot of ideas and this was my gift to her and her mom. I wanted to make it good. I'm sad about saying goodbye to her in August when she goes far away to college... sad that my daughter won't dance with her any more.

But I can't wait to see what she does next. 

Notebooks, Journals, & Illustrated Lists

I'm more than a little obsessed with paper and journals and notebooks. For the last 7 years, I have written in a notebook nearly every day. I take a break once in a while. In 2007, when we went to Washington D.C., I didn't write for 4 days. That's the longest. And occasionally I won't pick up my pen on Sundays. And last Christmas, I didn't write, but the Christmas before that, I did.

I write all kinds of things. Complaints. What the sun is doing. What the sky is doing. The leaf shadow on the floor. What we did the day before. Something that is haunting me. I have written short stories and am revising two novels while probing ideas for more.

My obsession doesn't stop with spiral notebooks. I am a list maker. And a note keeper. When I start a new project, I always make notes for it. And whenever I make notes, I have to make drawings.

Sometimes I start thinking I need to keep a regular illustrated journal. I do that for a while before it ebbs. Sometimes I dabble in watercolors. My mom is an artist and  gave me lessons - just the basics. She taught me to love a quirky imperfect line. And to love sketches and sketchbooks. Whenever I see a little line drawing with watercolors splashed on it, my heart melts. Same with hand drawn diagrams. Or labels on sketches. Or lists. I'm crazy about that. I love handwriting on pictures.

Once I kept a J. Peterman catalogue I got in the mail and used it as a journal. I made notes and lists and drawings in the margins. I smeared it with paint. It was a record of my days.

I obsess for a while and can think of nothing else other than what I should draw or what I should keep in my little book. But it always ebbs again.

The one thing that never changes is that every morning I write in my notebook. I love the pen in my hand. The weight of it. How it whispers across the page. How I fill empty lines with all the things I didn't know until I wrote them down.

Note to self:

Holden Caulfield & Mark David Chapman

I just read The Catcher in the Rye for the second time. I first read it when I was 15 after I'd seen an article in People magazine about Mark David Chapman, the man who shot John Lennon. Chapman described how he planned to hold up The Catcher in the Rye after he killed Lennon and refuse to say anything else. That would be his grand statement to the world. Instead, in real life, he apologized. Which seems a little Holden Caulfield-ish, if you ask me.

I grew up a Beatles fan, even though the Beatles broke up several years before I was born. I used to listen to my older brother's records over and over, pretending I was one of their back-up singers or something. I remember hearing that Lennon had been shot. I remember staying up late as Q104 played one Beatles song after another. And I remember staying home from school the next day in my fuzzy pink robe. Staying home because John Lennon was dead.

I was intrigued when I read the article so I checked the book out of the library. I wanted it to tell me why Mark David Chapman shot John Lennon.

It didn't.

I don't remember much about that first reading except that I felt like I was peeking into someone's thoughts or looking through their window or listening in on a phone call. It felt private. It also felt like not a whole lot happend, but that's what I liked about it.

Now I'm 24 years older. I'm a parent. I still listen to The Beatles. And I still feel like I'm peeking into someone's most private thoughts. But I'm also different. This time I see how funny Holden is. And how sad. And lonely. How he seems to know the rules to the game but can't or won't play by them. And now, I also know a little something about being disillusioned. And sad. And lonely. But I still can't decide if Holden is crazy or if the world is. Maybe both.

Anyway, I've always felt a little sorry for The Catcher in the Rye: banned, burned, and blamed for the murder of John Lennon. I think that's kind of lousy, if you want to know the truth.

 * * *

I'm working on reading 52 books in 52 weeks. This is number 19.

Little Buddy

This is my little buddy.

When he was born, we started calling him, Bud or Buddy. Sometimes when we went somewhere, people would say, "Thanks, Buddy," or "Here ya go, Buddy," or "How are you, Buddy?" He would look at us and say, "How do they know my name?"

Here are some important facts about him:

He's 6.

He can ride a bike without training wheels.

He is learning to read.

He likes to wear his hair spiky.

He likes muscle man shirts and motorcycles and SpongeBob.

He says funny things, like, "I wonder if bad guys eat lunch."

Or "I wonder how dogs work."

And he always picks me flowers.

Thanks, Buddy.

 

52 in 52

I had this crazy idea in January. While other people were busy making resolutions, I decided I'd read 52 books this year. One book a week. It seemed doable. And so far I've read 18 and will finish my 19th this week. 

Right now, I'm in the middle of The Catcher in the Rye. After that, I have high hopes for The Pretty Little Liars series, the Stieg Larsson books, Deanna Raybourn's newest one this summer, and (if I'm feeling really up to it) Middlemarch.

52 books in 52 weeks. What's the worst that can happen?

 

Seven-Five

My dad turned 75 yesterday. SEVENTY-FIVE. Three-quarters of a century.

Normally, this would bother me EXCEPT:

• He walks 4 miles a day
• When former students walk with him, he has to slow down for them
• When we hike in the mountains with him, he has to slow down for us
• He can still solve mathematical equations better than anyone I know
• He doesn't have plans for stopping anytime soon

Sometimes I see people that look "elderly" but then find out they're 5-10 years younger than my dad. Sometimes more. So I can't think of him as old. He's proof that you keep going, that you don't stop, that if you want it, you do it.

Thanks for that, Dad.

And Happy Birthday to you.