I don’t love this picture – Clifford does. I think I look too weepy to be pretty – He thinks it captures a perfect moment…
I was at Blacks yesterday trying to develop some of these wedding prints. For ages! Everything is automated now – like a self-serve checkout – and Instagram has taken over the store! There are little books that can now be (self)designed if one wants to upload the myriad of Instagram shots that seem – to the less technologically savvy (me!) – eternally locked on one’s device.
And though I enjoy my iPhone as much as anyone else, and count on it to get through much of my day, I do feel like there is risk of missing perfect moments while searching for the camera app on my cluttered home screen!
This morning dad spoke about faith as happening today. Present tense. The immediate. Documentation of beautiful moments makes sense, especially for a woman who is going to spend the next five years studying remembrance theory! But. My grandfather is dying. My new niece is barely two weeks old. My leg. Choosing to live in those moments, aware, makes all the more.
Not knowing Drake personally – him being famous and me not so much! – I don’t want to assume…but I’m not sure how he’d feel about his super tough “YOLO!” being co-opted by a five year-old at art camp! But when Clifford pointed this little beauty out as we were waiting to leave Elsie’s recent camp performance, I could not just walk by – as both the mini artist AND Drake say: “You Only Live Once!”
Do with this what you will but I see this as yet another nuanced moment of art speaking into my life 😉
I teach a poem by Denise Levertov that describes a stone staircase with grooved imprints from all the feet that have ascended and descended the steps. The question she leaves the reader with is whether one is headed up or down…my students feel really deep when they immediately see imagery of heaven and hell – more power to them really, for I’m just thrilled they’re thinking in metaphors! But for me the up/down quandary posed by Levertov – at least these days – is tied to feeling. Am I up? Am I down? Is it ok to be both?
These two pictures were chosen by accident – the stairway was my goal, a shot taken while Clifford and I were walking one day. We saw the slanted case and said, “We’ll they’ve just given up!” We laughed at the time but I’ve been saving that picture for just this blog…but somehow, when the option to pick a photo came up, I ended up clicking on two – the stairs and then the art piece from the waterfront in Chicago – and I’m liking the random connection!
That piece was amazing to see up close – everyone staring at their individually warped reflections but doing so as a community of the curious. Art in the city: drawing people together.
So maybe I’m both-my body, daily, has slanted staircase moments and yet this city holds some serious art to encounter – pieces that may help me see myself anew…
We have a picture up in our house of me, seven or eight years old, wearing a bridesmaid’s dress. Becca was the bride that Halloween! Somewhere in her house there is another picture documenting her six year-old bridal self with me carrying her train – we are always attached somehow, connected both through our closet purgings and writerly ponderings…nothing too big or small to (overly) analyze and (hopefully) end up laughing about!
On Friday I went with Becca to watch Elsie film her first commercial – we sat on the stairs of some stranger’s house laughing at the ridiculous Christmas location in July, that required four people to keep the fake snow blowing! Becca distractedly kept touching my hair (hers is finally returning to its natural strawberry blonde after I had to – unwillingly – massacre it with dark red dye for a recent play she was in!)…She said, “I could have this baby any day!” Her fingers touched my hair while her eyes stayed focused on her little girl who, like we did, was playing dress up for the cameras…
One of my last – and favorite – memories of our grandmother is sitting at her feet doing her nails. Her back hurt too much at the end and she couldn’t reach her toes so I did them. And like my sweet sister, grandma played with my hair while we sat and chatted about everything, or nothing. I don’t actually remember.
Yesterday our newest flower girl was born. She’s named Violet Grace – Grace in honor of our grandmother, a woman who ran tirelessly in high heels and prayed her way home…
My sister models for me the mom I hope I get to be one day…
Clifford introduced me to his family (and his England) back in October…and much has changed since then! We’ve been through a number of hospital stays, an engagement, an extended sick leave from teaching, a PhD acceptance, a wedding!!!!…it’s been a FULL time…
Yesterday we went to the AGO and came across this piece called “Totem” – immediately Clifford made a link between it and a piece we saw at the Tate called “9 Poems” (it’s noted in an earlier blog if you’re interested in scrolling back). Both are stacked, linked, connected…tangible representations of our lives.
My life is full and each connected element of it absolutely necessary in the formation of a whole life…yet I still struggle with why the ongoing pain in my leg must remain a part of the art object…maybe in another 10 months we’ll happen upon a new work in a new gallary that will shed light and connect all the more the design that seems to take a little distance to see.
Lear writes, “Courage is a state of character that is manifested in a committed form of living.”
I had an appointment yesterday with a doctor who has too many appointments and throw away comments for those of us with too many questions…and I did not come home feeling courageous. The form of living I was committed to last Christmas, before all of THIS…it is seeming less and less familiar so I’m re-reorienting. Commitment to a constant state of reorientation – heavy!
But lightened by loved ones – those who are bounded by the structured life and love that does not succumb to the dizziness of my wannabe “courageous” turnarounds.
The state of my character – shaped, manifested, committed: ringed.
We go back and forth on dinner music – Miles Davis, Mozart for Babies (Seriously! Two hours of goodness – YouTube it!) and Yo-yo ma’s Bach cello suites are on the rotation, each offering a different vibe to channel in terms of mood and conversation! I love them all…
I’m writing this blog midday because my leg hurts and my ankle has blown up like a balloon. I’m frustrated, laying on the couch trying to focus on positive things, feeling stuck here, foot elevated…
The cello sounds cut through and I am soothed…to an extent – the old adage called upon for imagery, a signifier of the beast that needs to “keep calm and carry on”…
I struggle to share these blogs day after day – after a while what can one say about pain? I’m happy to hear my story told when the cello starts – “narrative inquiry” made manifest in dinner music.
We have been receiving picture after picture from friends and family, each documenting our wedding weekend. One of the beauties of iPhones and modern photography is the immediacy of editing – gorgeous effects and filters make an already beautiful day look all the more!
Yet the normal day to day living has started again as Clifford has returned to work. I have begun to work my brain out of bridal mode, looking forward to new courses that I start teaching at York University in late August. In my preparations I have come across Phyllis Rose who writes, “Each of us in the ordinary process of living is a fitful novelist…” Life as ordinary. Life as novel. It is hard for me not to focus on how health has turned into a running thread, continuing to snake its way through my novel – not the one off chapter I hoped would simply come to a neat close.
As I prepare to teach again, moving from couch to coffee shop, preparing syllabi for new students, I have to believe that my new “ordinary” is a narrative worth writing down. Ever the fitful novelist, I must be careful not to filter what story is being told – striving to write the most authentic version (“My leg hurts today…I have to sit down…pass the purse snacks or I’m going to pass out!”) without fear – using those beautifully filtered pictures not as comparison points but, instead, inspiration…
On the big day Clifford had been really pleased at the thought of his father getting to see the big W displayed on the cake-our tribute to the now shared family name: Ward.
But he missed it! In fact most people missed it! Here was the big moment, knife out and cake ready but guests had already moved back to chatting and enjoying themselves…while Clifford and I stood there waiting for the ‘photo op’ that didn’t really happen!
We stood there and laughed – it was a really perfect moment actually for I think it symbolized much of what relationship and the intimacy of coupledom is about: shared moments, glances, the odd eye roll and laughter!
The W is somewhere amidst all of the wedding details still to be sorted through but the top layer of the cake sits carefully wrapped and stored in our freezer to be opened on our anniversary (so I’ve been told is the tradition) – picture ready!
hummingbirdonpause 