Face as canvas

Body crayon-faced boy on swing, Berkeley, CA.
Courtesy his sister, who knows whereof she colors all over someone’s face, based on personal experimentation. I can’t say what in the Sam Hill they were aiming for here. One version was a dog, I remember that. But it kind of took off from “dog” and headed in more of a “Dali” direction.
Feeling a bit less verbal here, a bit more photographic. For perhaps evident reasons. World’s a bit spinny lately.
To Boston

Robert Indiana sculpture, W54th & 6th, NYC.
Whenever I hear the sound of an ambulance, I pause and do a little tonglen. It’s a Buddhist meditation practice, intended to take in pain and send out compassion and relief. Wherever there is an ambulance or fire engine siren, I know someone, somewhere, is in distress. So I try to do what I can to relieve it. Not much, but something.
From the other side of the country, I’m not sure what I can do. But I can say that doing tonglen, as a distance healing of sorts, also heals the healer. A bit. Here is a pithy instruction in how to do it from my main teacher, Pema Chödrön. Mostly it’s breathing in and breathing out, but slowly, and with very focussed intention. If you are in distress, or feeling very heavy hearted about others in distress, it may help.
And may love and a sense support from near and far flow in abundance to all who need it in Boston right now.
Weekend bonus shot (Monday edition), 04.15.13
View from below, Memorial Stadium, Berkeley, CA.
I was heading to an event up there, on the balcony of the top floor of Cal’s remodeled Memorial Stadium, overlooking the San Francisco Bay. Having managed not to read the directions explaining how to enter the building, *cough*, I had a little time to spend outside it, watching my chums schmooze.
Driver’s seat
Yep, I’ve ridden in her car. As a passenger. And yep, she drives fast and doesn’t really spend a lot of time looking in the rear view mirror. Only when necessary.
Into the woods
We’ve spent the better part of a week up in the woods at a very generously loaned cabin in the Sierra Nevada foothills, and in a brilliant display of irony, on the last night here, the WiFi kicks in. It’s been a fascinating learning experience: because Mrs. Dad and I had anticipated working nights when we were here, and because cell and internet access have been spotty but not consistently inaccessible, its elusiveness held our attention. Here we are attempting to remedy the “nature deficit disorder” * rampant among us all, big and little, and we wind up in a background wrestling match with internet connectivity.
We were like those sad-sack pigeons (were they pigeons? some sad bird) in that experiment (did B.F. Skinner do this? some craven behavioralist). First, birds were rewarded with a food pellet for pecking a button. All went well; before long they figured out that when they were hungry, a simple peck on the button would deliver the goods. Next, the pellets were consistently withheld. At first the birds pecked and pecked, to no avail. But eventually they figured out the pellets weren’t forthcoming, so they gave up. Meh. But in the third iteration, the pellets were delivered at utterly randomized and inconsistent intervals, whether the bird pecked at a button or not. Sometimes the peck worked, sometimes not. I’ll spare you the gruesome details. But suffice to say, the pigeons went berserk.
Scientific method
Watching the kids rummage around our backyard this past Sunday as they tracked down a few dozen plastic candy-filled easter eggs put me to mind of my daughter’s insatiable and scientific curiosity, as witnessed in her science notebook.
Below are notations made by her sometime last year, ’round about two months after Easter. I think they speak quite well for themselves.
This year they found all but one egg. I quiver in anticipation.
- Brandon@TiredOfWorking: Nice photo and this has to be one of the more inte...
- Sammy Be: Hey! I met you at mom 2.0. (Ukulele) You're so ri...
- Tarja: Polly! Hey, it's Tarja from LTYM! Been meaning ...
- Lynda M O: Seems like it's right roll-y for some others clos...
- Lesbian Dad: Agreed: so many fantastic images come when you giv...
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Whose shoes is whose? Or, find the lesbian!
June 5, 2007
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If ever there was a time to step up, it’s now
September 11, 2008
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We get what we get
March 11, 2009
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The turkey baster has no clothes
June 13, 2007
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I highly recommend the venue
July 14, 2008
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From our kids to your families, OK and beyond
May 21, 2013
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Weekend bonus shot, 05.12.13
May 13, 2013
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Weekend bonus shot, 04.28.13
April 28, 2013
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Face as canvas
April 26, 2013
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A cookie story in four parts
April 25, 2013
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I'll be reading, along with over a dozen other fantastic local lady-writer-parents, at the San Francisco Listen To Your Mother show, Sunday, May 12th at the SF JCC. Check us out!
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