I have heard more than once that the fact that our kids' lives are chock full of video games, ipods, baseball, ballet and TV, that they are lacking the free time necessary to nurture their creative spirit. I thought about that a lot because I want my boys to be creative, to be inventive, to come up with ideas that are new and unique. I want them to write, to draw, to make music and to be one with the artistic world. So I am concerned about this.
Now my boys, ages 7 and 4, although not as wired as some and not as over-scheduled as others, I still began to wonder, when do they have time to let their minds wander, to imagine, to pretend, to let it all go. Then I thought, when to I!
I don't watch TV, except for the World Cup, and I try to read a lot but still, there is not much time when my mind is free to do its own thing. I usually am working, listening to the radio or talking to the boys. So I thought about that and I realized that I could give my mind some free time if I just turned off the radio, in the bathroom, in the car, and while at work. If I did that for just a little while, I found that all sorts of great ideas would come into my head and take up residence.
Since I started that, I have been much more prolific in my story ideas and in the plot development. I dream of characters, situations, locations, and all aspects of writing. I also dream of the future, think about the boys, imagine all sorts of possibilities and just let go.
I feel a bit more relaxed too since I am no longer listening to all the tragic, heart-breaking news every day. Some would think that I am running away from the world but I know it's there if I ever want to go back to it.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
The Grass is Always Greener ...
I am a young mother, a mother of three boys. I spend my days waking, feeding, clothing, shouting at and kissing the owies of my kids. I wash, clean, cook and fold laundry in the tiny back room that we call a laundry room. My husband is clean, kind and responsible, if a bit overweight. He leaves our tan suburban two-story house each morning promptly at 7:00 and doesn’t return until the lights are out. He often travels for work and can be gone for weeks. When he’s gone, I pay the bills, take out the trash, drink cheap wine from Trader Joe’s, and wait for him to return. I wear housedresses, aprons and pajamas nearly every day. My feet are comfortably familiar with my bunny slippers. I never put on make-up and my face and hair look dreary and old. I am thirty.
Every week day, after the children have gone to school, I get on the computer and check my email, a note from my husband, an announcement about the school play, and three spam emails offering a variety of sex products. Then I go to my online book group. The members are from all over the world, including Chile, Israel, Scotland, and France. We read a book each month, last month it was A Year of Wonders, by Geraldine Brooks, and then we post comments and thoughts on what we read.
My favorite member is Adele. She is Brazilian. She is well-read, worldly and vibrant. She posted a picture of herself standing in a jungle with a monkey on her shoulder, red-black hair spiked like a cactus, khol around her jade green eyes, and an exotic copper medallion hanging from her neck. Her English is impeccable but she is multi-lingual and has worked her entire career in embassies all over the world. She lives in Paris now but has lived in Israel, Mozambique and Laos. She is not married and has no children, except for the young people who camp on the floor of her Paris apartment every spring and summer, returning year after year. She is not as young as she looks.
Her emails are smooth and clean, like reading someone’s dreams. She uses a formal calligraphic font and prints large. She keeps them short but they are full of images of her petite apartment filled with souvenirs from her years abroad, sitting in a sidewalk café watching the rain, taking the metro to her job near the Champs-Élysées, or playing on the beach near her childhood home in northern Brazil. My responses are pedestrian and mournful, how I wish to travel and see the world, how I have only been to Chicago and Saint Paul but that Michigan is a lovely place to live, really. I think about sending her pictures, but decide against it.
Her comments on the book each month are complex, demonstrating how she delves into the hearts of the characters, recognizes symbolism and seeks out the social and political statements in every work of art. I make the usual mundane comments about the use of language or how a particular character speaks to me. Adele, on the other hand, looks deeper, at the rhythm of the words and the musicality of the language. I envy her perspective but do not look at the world with her eyes. I am too worried about homework and chicken nuggets. My life is Kmart and hers is a Turkish market.
So I read the book again, to look for the symbolism, to seek out the social and political statements, to delve into the hearts of the characters. After all it will be hours before the boys get home from school.
Every week day, after the children have gone to school, I get on the computer and check my email, a note from my husband, an announcement about the school play, and three spam emails offering a variety of sex products. Then I go to my online book group. The members are from all over the world, including Chile, Israel, Scotland, and France. We read a book each month, last month it was A Year of Wonders, by Geraldine Brooks, and then we post comments and thoughts on what we read.
My favorite member is Adele. She is Brazilian. She is well-read, worldly and vibrant. She posted a picture of herself standing in a jungle with a monkey on her shoulder, red-black hair spiked like a cactus, khol around her jade green eyes, and an exotic copper medallion hanging from her neck. Her English is impeccable but she is multi-lingual and has worked her entire career in embassies all over the world. She lives in Paris now but has lived in Israel, Mozambique and Laos. She is not married and has no children, except for the young people who camp on the floor of her Paris apartment every spring and summer, returning year after year. She is not as young as she looks.
Her emails are smooth and clean, like reading someone’s dreams. She uses a formal calligraphic font and prints large. She keeps them short but they are full of images of her petite apartment filled with souvenirs from her years abroad, sitting in a sidewalk café watching the rain, taking the metro to her job near the Champs-Élysées, or playing on the beach near her childhood home in northern Brazil. My responses are pedestrian and mournful, how I wish to travel and see the world, how I have only been to Chicago and Saint Paul but that Michigan is a lovely place to live, really. I think about sending her pictures, but decide against it.
Her comments on the book each month are complex, demonstrating how she delves into the hearts of the characters, recognizes symbolism and seeks out the social and political statements in every work of art. I make the usual mundane comments about the use of language or how a particular character speaks to me. Adele, on the other hand, looks deeper, at the rhythm of the words and the musicality of the language. I envy her perspective but do not look at the world with her eyes. I am too worried about homework and chicken nuggets. My life is Kmart and hers is a Turkish market.
So I read the book again, to look for the symbolism, to seek out the social and political statements, to delve into the hearts of the characters. After all it will be hours before the boys get home from school.
Lisbon 1995
It was 1995, and I had settled in Lisbon, a bright city resting on the banks of the Tejo. There were several lovely neighborhoods in Lisbon, including Bairro Alto with the streamers of bougainvillea draped across the western hillside, and the Alfama, a cluster of white Moorish houses huddled on top of the eastern hills, but I lived in the Baixa, the valley that ran north from the river.
The Baixa moved at a staccato pace. It was the center of commerce, busy, gritty, and loud. The narrow streets were full of buses, trolleys, and cars and had broken mosaic stone sidewalks that were covered with dog shit and spit. The praças or squares were a mass of African immigrants, hundreds of them, smoking, chatting, loitering. People moved here and there, opening doors, buying snacks, rushing to and fro.
My apartment was on the Rua da Madalena, on the east side of the Baixa. This street was quieter and lined with small bars where old men in their tweed caps ate sea snails and lingered over their Sagres beer. The cafes were always busy, serving petite cups of black coffee as thick as crude oil, which the patrons slugged back while standing at the bar. Even further up the hill was a shortcut back to the quiet neighborhoods where African families ran small restaurants that served curry and goat stew while people sat near the open doors, smoking cigarettes and laughing loudly.
The building I lived in was one of those built after the earthquake of 1755, a building of beautiful white stone quarried from the banks of the Tejo that had acquired a thick layer of grime that covered all seven stories. The entrance to the building was a heavy wood door about eight feet high beyond which was the entryway, a vast empty space lit by a single light bulb hung from a ceiling many feet up. It was gloomy and, on dark days, you had to feel your way back to the stairs.
The apartment was a seventh-floor walkup. There was no elevator. The climb up the stairs was slow and arduous, especially if you carried groceries or a bag full of teaching supplies. The steps were cut of stone and had worn away in the center from the thousands of feet that had climbed them over the two centuries. The banister was a bare pole, hardly visible in the dim light. At each landing there was a wood door, closed and uninviting. The door on the seventh floor was equally uninviting and the key was heavy and difficult to turn in the lock, but once it did, the door opened onto a room that shone with light.
The apartment was small and there were French doors on either end. The floor sloped noticeably from the living room towards the kitchen where the French doors led to the void, a space where the church around the corner and the building nextdoor came together in a triangular space, seven stories high. The void was where pigeons roosted on the ledges of windows and women hung their wash out to dry. There was nothing to see but grimy walls covered with pigeon guano. Occasionally the sound of a radio playing fado would waft in during the springtime.
The highlight of the apartment was how the roof hung down to the edge of the bedroom window on the west side. On those summer evenings when bands played and fireworks were shot off over the Praça do Comercio, brave, young men would climb out onto the orange brick tiles and watch the sky and the river explode in a shower of colored lights.
The Baixa moved at a staccato pace. It was the center of commerce, busy, gritty, and loud. The narrow streets were full of buses, trolleys, and cars and had broken mosaic stone sidewalks that were covered with dog shit and spit. The praças or squares were a mass of African immigrants, hundreds of them, smoking, chatting, loitering. People moved here and there, opening doors, buying snacks, rushing to and fro.
My apartment was on the Rua da Madalena, on the east side of the Baixa. This street was quieter and lined with small bars where old men in their tweed caps ate sea snails and lingered over their Sagres beer. The cafes were always busy, serving petite cups of black coffee as thick as crude oil, which the patrons slugged back while standing at the bar. Even further up the hill was a shortcut back to the quiet neighborhoods where African families ran small restaurants that served curry and goat stew while people sat near the open doors, smoking cigarettes and laughing loudly.
The building I lived in was one of those built after the earthquake of 1755, a building of beautiful white stone quarried from the banks of the Tejo that had acquired a thick layer of grime that covered all seven stories. The entrance to the building was a heavy wood door about eight feet high beyond which was the entryway, a vast empty space lit by a single light bulb hung from a ceiling many feet up. It was gloomy and, on dark days, you had to feel your way back to the stairs.
The apartment was a seventh-floor walkup. There was no elevator. The climb up the stairs was slow and arduous, especially if you carried groceries or a bag full of teaching supplies. The steps were cut of stone and had worn away in the center from the thousands of feet that had climbed them over the two centuries. The banister was a bare pole, hardly visible in the dim light. At each landing there was a wood door, closed and uninviting. The door on the seventh floor was equally uninviting and the key was heavy and difficult to turn in the lock, but once it did, the door opened onto a room that shone with light.
The apartment was small and there were French doors on either end. The floor sloped noticeably from the living room towards the kitchen where the French doors led to the void, a space where the church around the corner and the building nextdoor came together in a triangular space, seven stories high. The void was where pigeons roosted on the ledges of windows and women hung their wash out to dry. There was nothing to see but grimy walls covered with pigeon guano. Occasionally the sound of a radio playing fado would waft in during the springtime.
The highlight of the apartment was how the roof hung down to the edge of the bedroom window on the west side. On those summer evenings when bands played and fireworks were shot off over the Praça do Comercio, brave, young men would climb out onto the orange brick tiles and watch the sky and the river explode in a shower of colored lights.
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