May All of Our Names be Verbs

This from the book YEARNINGS by Irwin Kula:

"What makes you unique?" My daughter Gabriella was asked this question on a high school entrance application. The essay was due in a couple of days, and it seemed simple enough. Yet she put it off and put it off. When I finally pushed her to complete the essay, she said she couldn't figure out what to write. "Dad, nothing about me is unique." Had Gabriella entered that notorious stage when girls lose their sense of self in the swirl of adolescence? My wife and I were mystified. Gabriella was a developing artist -- designing her own clothes -- and a talented writer. She was effervescent, living, and always making new friends. Didn't she see how special she was? Her response blew me away. "Yeah, Dad, but lots of other people are those things. And besides, none of it is all of who I am. I'm everything put together, and not even that. There's always new stuff." Her essay turned out to be a critique of the question, an argument against assuming we are ever complete, entirely knowable. AS Gabriella wrote, "What makes me unique is that I am always Gabriella-ing. No one else in the world does that."

Bitchy and cranky, jangly and mean all day long, I'm going to go into my lair and Daisy for a while. May all of our names be VERBS.

Comments

Nesting

This is the kitchen project we just finished. I designed it all with enthusiastic agreement from Tom and the boys. I think I'm fixing up my heart for the next chapter. .... I'm home with a sick boy today... not sure if he's more sick in his body or in his spirit, but a moment of being still never hurt anyone. And here I am being still, taking the time to tiptoe around my sure-to-feel-neglected blog. I'm writing, quite certain that whoever used to follow my writing has long since moved on to other trails through the woods, but knowing that this matters. I've spent the day doodling and exploring the blogs and work of other artists, artists who manage to put more time, more drama into their creating. I've felt inspired enough today to plan out the shelf-lets I want to build in the library to display our printed Instagram photos and the prints of Marcus' incredible panoramics that he took in Home Depot. I've drawn a kookie bird covered in feathe...

Don't Read This if You Don't Like the Word Pee

Okay... so I think I nearly broke the toilet from plopping down on it so hard to go pee. WHY did I plop instead of coming in for my usual graceful landing? Because my best friend encouraged me to go to the gym and take her weight lifting class... and because I did it... and because she's so darn encouraging that I tried to show off how MOST people who don't go to the gym for four months would really stink their first time back... but not me! I decided that I should prove that I am a superhero who can skip the gym for four months and come in looking fresh and fit and strong as an ox... okay, okay... an ox that can lift a 2kg dumbell. I decided that these sleeping muscles could SURELY do just as many squats as that cute 60 year old woman in the front row whose gluteus maximus muscles look nice and bouncy. I'm just going to have to be deliberate about which chairs I go to sit in today. Spindly antique ones are definitely NOT my best option. ...

In Honor of Writing (and Art-ing) Groups

"Turn it over one hundred times, and on the one-hundred-and-first time you'll understand... When you think you understand a teaching, when you have an interpretation of a story or character that feels comfortable or right, it's time to start over at the beginning." Vacation is letting me turn things over, turning over the perceptions, the interpretations I've held on to so tightly. And, I know I said I wouldn't write,but there are some things that just can't wait. This last week I went with my mom to visit the writing group she leads. There were nine women there, all of us interested in improving our writing. Each woman took a turn reading something she'd prepared and our indomitable leader offered us two opportunities for six-minute timed writings (topic one: the eighth dwarf, topic two: shoes). The writing was BEAUTIFUL! And here's what I learned from being in San Antonio, Texas, with a group of women I've never met: There are peopl...

The Days of Day

Search This Blog