The Many Questions of Fish: Take Two

"Mom, hey Mama? Is it possible to make a giant robotic stuffed animal to help old people but then the makers make it turn EVIL?"

"Hey Mom? Why does the government steal from people? Is it because they're butt faces?"

"Hey Mama, would this be a useful grenade: a tomato grenade?"

"Mom? Hey Mom? Why is the liberty bell in a huge glass dome? Isn't it easy to rob?"

"Hey Mama. How much do miners get paid? Is it like the highest paying - uh, duh! They mine for GOLD!"

"Hey Mom? How big is Brazil?"

"Mom, Mama? Who invented paper? Was it the Egyptians? Or the Romans or the Greeks, no not them, they invented wrestling."

Button, button. Who Ate the Button?

Picture it: adorable baby girl in adorable little red-checked shirt and matching shorts. Adorable shirt on adorable baby has four equally adorable strawberry buttons:

Imagine it: put adorably dressed, four-button baby down for her nap.

After nap: adorable baby has only THREE buttons.

I searched the crib. The floor. The changing table. Behind the changing table. The diaper pail. The drawers. The car seat. The highchair. The carpet. The chairs.

The nurse asked how big the button was. Smaller than a dime? Yes. Is she eating/breathing ok? Yes.

It will pass.

She kindly offered an X-Ray, because some mothers worry ...

The button never did "show up" (ahem). So we may never know if Rowdy ate her button, or perhaps the cat ate it. Even the dog. Or no one ate it and it will turn up someday in some random spot - behind the refrigerator, perhaps. Ah, the mysteries of parenthood! 

The Many Questions of Fish

Little Fish is in a delightful phase I don't remember St. Nick going through at age 8ish. He asks questions.

Yes, of course Nick asked (and still asks) questions. But his questions are more, um, grounded. Take, for example the question he asked about a year ago. "Mom, when did you and Dad have sex to make the baby?" Hello math lesson.

Fish's questions are ... different.

Fish's Picture - Intended for use on t-shirts

Hey Mom? If we had a baby polar bear would we keep it in the freezer?

Hey Mom? If you had on a meat vest and saw a pack of wild dogs and ran away would they chase you?

Hey Mom? What if you dropped a potion in a cemetery and all the people came up out of the ground as zombies?

Hey Mom? Mama? Mom? Wouldn't it be cool if gravity didn't exist?

Hey Mom? Where do homeless people go to hang out?

Hey hey Mom? Did Clifford get so big from radiation? Or from steroids?

This was from one ten minute drive. One. Ten Minute Drive. What's more fun, no matter what I'm doing Fish never hesitates to come ask me one of his questions. Just a second ago: Hey Mom? Don't you think the Lego makers should start making Power Miners again? He was on to something else before I could remember what "Power Miners" were.

Uncomfortableness in the Eyes: The Four Hour Workweek

I'm reading Timothy Ferris's book, The Four Hour Workweek, and although I have no desire to be part of the New Rich or to outsource scheduling of doctor appointments to someone in India, I do like the idea of independence: both personal and financial.

So far I've been confirmed in a number of things, like my selective ignorance (I hate watching/reading news - if it's important, someone will tell me). I've also been challenged. What Time Waste activities keep me from being productive? Um, not blogging. Nooo, certainly not that. Or email. Or Facebook. Or mindless Google searches for nonsensical things like, "Can Babies Eat Beets?" or "What to do if Baby eats a button?"

Ferris suggests certain exercises meant to make the reader embrace uncomfortableness, to release fears. The first one was simple: make eye contact. When speaking, when walking around, whenever. Just make eye contact and hold it. I thought, sheesh, I'm great at this!

Then I went to the shoe store. A man stopped me and started cooing at the baby. I looked at little Rowdy and smiled. She smiled. We all smiled. The man asked questions about her, I answered, but all the while I was looking - not at him - at the baby! It didn't occur to me to look at him consistently until the second time I ran into him. Then maintaining eye contact - wow, it was hard. Painful, almost. With his wife it was somewhat easier, but still unnatural.

I've had similar results at the grocery store, Blockbuster, other random places. Hmmm. Is this the first step toward something new? I don't know. But stay tuned for updates. This book is giving me ideas. And you know what happens with ideas. They sometimes lead to ... adventures.

Dangerous, they are. Dangerous.

Yes, this is Fish trying to fry an egg on the driveway. No, it didn't fry. It might have, but he sprayed it with water.

Beyond the First Right Answer

This morning I saw a video about creativity by National Geographic photographer Dewitt Jones. I have a page of scribbled-in-colored-pencil notes with countless lessons, all applicable to my work and life. But one lessons stands out:

There's more than one right answer.

Obvious enough. I can write a poem in free verse or as a sestina; both can be good, or "right." But what struck me was the quote,

"Anybody can come up with one right answer." The key is to look for the next right answer ...

I don't have as much trouble doing this with writing. Particularly after finishing the MFA. Perhaps it's the confidence that comes from training in technique (another point Jones made) that leads to freedom and desire to experiment. I'm more playful in writing than I ever was pre-MFA. My picture book isn't working in prose? Try it in rhyme! Let's make the characters centipedes, set it on Mars.

In other arts, however - poetry, photography, rugs - I have a harder time. Photography is the easiest example.

Jones shared a bland snapshot of his daughter. The sort of picture we all have crowding albums and memory cards. Blown-out highlights, crowded frame, random use of color. He pointed out that if he judged himself on that shot, he'd put his camera away forever. But he didn't stop there. He pushed on, and the next image was tighter, more sensitive and evocative. Ahh, he'd found the Right Answer.

That's where I usually stop in picture making (and poetry and rugs). "Oh, good! I got it!" I think, and the terror at having to put away my camera or hang up my rug hook subsides. For a while. Because who knows if there will be another great shot? What if there's not? Then it's proof I'm a hack, I can't do it, I don't have the gift, my "right answer" was just a fluke, luck.

Jones urges us to look harder, to shift perspective, trust instinct, slow down. To look for the next right answer not in terror, but knowing it will be there. The next shot of this same subject was a close-up of his daughter's face. Sensitive, full of texture and mood. Breathtaking. Another right answer.

This is what I need to do, to let go of the fear, the frantic judging of my self-worth by the image on the LCD screen. I need to let myself fall in love with the world. Because that's what creativity is.

I assumed Jones's glorious images were moments of inspiration, a gift. But he said that it takes him fourteen-thousand "answers" to get those thirty or so "right answers" that end up in a National Geographic story. Just as I read somewhere else that your first hundred thousand photographs are practice.

Dewitt Jones doesn't stop at the first right answer, and neither can I.

RUMInations

Thirteenth century ecstatic poet, Jelaluddin Rumi, has been part of my daily literary meal of late. Sandwiched in time between St. Francis of Assisi and Meister Eckhart, Rumi's mysticism is stunningly present, green and alive. Qualities I strive to live: presence, awareness of all that lives around me.

For example, today the undergrowth in the forest went from swollen gray sticks to pale green and vibrant crimson, with sprinklings of white and yellow. What seemed dead yesterday was only dormant. A month or so ago I noticed the fragile stems of apple trees at the orchard had plumped and reddened. I couldn't see it when I looked straight on, but against the backdrop of snow, as I walked past, the trees were obviously changing, awakening.

As I've planned this rug, I've kept lines of a Rumi poem in my mind:

Lord, the air smells good today,
straight from the mysteries
within the inner courts of God.
A grace like new clothes thrown
across the garden, free medicine for everybody.
The trees in their prayer, the birds in praise,
the first blue violets kneeling.
Whatever came from Being is caught up in being, drunkenly
forgetting the way back.

I want to be "caught up in being", and that is one grace of hooking. I cannot hook fast, I cannot hook without looking at the world, I cannot hook without feeling the color of each and every strip of wool as it slips between my fingers.

Some of my initial sketches and color plans including the very first where I copied the Rumi poem from a source now unremembered:

And a warm thank you to Mary Logue for suggesting I might find Rumi inspiring. As always, she was right.