| My Website & Contact Details: |
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| www.theunveiledeye.com
www.xanga.com/EyetoI
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| Writing
Here
Mommy
Look
I am
You
Are me
Baby Momma
Can you see?
Mom, Mama, Mom-eeeeee!
I want!
I need!
Your eyes.
--
I did this Aria sequence a few days ago, in the bathroom. She suddenly grabbed a baby doll, and acted out a story (which startled me, because, unlike most girls her age, she rarely plays with dolls). I felt like I was filming a movie. Brought up some strange emotions. Thrusting the baby towards me, like a weapon.
Made me think of her birth.
Her infancy.
Now, seeing the girl inside the baby.
Who she's becoming.
I love her hands. Fingers. Wrists.
Her wild exuberance.
Several people have asked me lately, "How's your writing coming along?"
Groan!
The past year, with anywhere between 500-5000 photographs to process (weddings and portraits) at any given time, I haven't written much.
It's my one regret, not having written/published a book before age 30.
Oh well. As someone said, "You can write a book when your child goes to college."
My questions lately: who would I write to? who would I write as? who am I? what would I write about?
Overcoming fuzzy-summer-mommy-brain, experimenting with words. Monolithic bellies. (Thinking of the pregnant women I've been photographing. Perplexed that the "monolith" will expel another living person, then transform into jelly belly, then muscle...)
Rivulets of joy.
A bag of Fritos Corn Chips on the bed between us.
Munch. (Rustle)
Cr......unch!
crunchcrunchcrunchcrunch
Aria: "Hmmmm... I like these chips."
(contented humming)
(inhale chips)
Mashed together, side by side
(mindless mastication)
Scoop. Hoist. To the mouth.
Snuggling her blankie.
Gulping water.
Oh crunchcrunchcrunchcrunch!
"Stop that!" she commands.
"Eat only one at a time!"
Puts the bag on her lap.
Swallowing.
(Silence.)
Her hand pauses.
"Mommy? I think it's time to stop eating them. We've had enough."
Just one more...
---
Thank you, Frito Lay, for corn, grease, and salt!
Sitting there with Aria, I thought, "This is as good as it gets."
And most days I ask myself, "What if this is as good as it gets?" If this is all there is, to life?
Being a mom. Raising Aria. Taking pictures. Playing with paint and words.
Is it enough?
What ingredients are missing?
Life is like Aria's "Hidden Pictures" book, which has things (cup, banana, goose, sailboat) hidden on each page. The hidden things are already there. We just have to look. If she can't find everything immediately, she says, "Let's look at the answers!"
Or when she plays Hide & Seek, she says, "Okay...I'm hiding in the cupboard/toybox/tent. Come find me!" (She doesn't understand "hiding" yet.)
Hidden things...which aren't really hidden (with answers available, calling out, "Here I am!")
---
Aria holding a plastic baby. Reminded me of the dream I had before we moved to Oman. (I was pregnant with Aria at the time.) In my dream, I had a baby boy, and we invited lots of people over to celebrate. As I was getting ready for the party, the baby turned into a doll. We went into the lounge, to show everyone, and they cheered, "L'chaim!" (To life!)
The doll didn't come to life.
Aria was born.
She's a helluva lotta life!
--
Writing Quotes:
Jim Shepard (O magazine, July issue, in "It Turns Out That Our Intuition Is A Greater Genius Than We Are")
Grace Paley's nice way of putting it is that we don't write about what we know; we write about what we don't know about what we know. Tobias Wolff's version is that every time you write you're stepping off into darkness and hoping for some light.
If that's true, and we don't know what we're doing at first, then at least for a little while when we're trying to compose something, we need to remember to cut ourselves some slack. There'll be plenty of time for brutality later, when revising the mess we made. But we need to be allowed to make the mess in the first place. When we shut ourselves down prematurely, it's as if we came across a child happily playing in the sandbox and asked what she was making, and when she said she didn't know, we told her, "Then get out of the sandbox. If you don't know what you're making, you have no business in there." Or if she answered, "I'm making a castle," we responded, "Oh, a castle. That's original. No one's ever made a castle before."
That girl in the sandbox has every right to respond, "I don't know if it's original. I won't know until I've made it."
We need to do everything we can, when writing, to stay in touch with pleasure. With fun. With the passionate engagement that we all manage, as children. Not only because that will keep us going but also because it will generate the freedom and the energy that allows us to exhilarate ourselves, and so exhilarate others.
---
Michael Cunningham (O magazine, July issue, in "A Writer Should Always Feel Like He's In Over His Head.")
We know from experience how hard it can be to live, in the flesh, on the earth...
There may be, in the end, no happiness quite so potent as the anticipation of a greater happiness still to come.
---
Toni Morrison (O magazine, July issue, in "I Start Out With An Image, Even If I Don't Know Yet How To Use It")
So, I go forward...starting out with an image, even if I don't know yet how to squeeze it, how to use it. It is trusting that picture that keeps me going.
If your character knows something at the end of a book she didn't know at the beginning, she is in a better position. Everybody wants a happy ending, but the real happy ending is when somebody really figures something out.
What I feel most is that because I am open and available, the universe--the idea--comes to me. It feels a little like being called.
It's that being open--not scratching for it, not digging for it, not constructing something but being open to the situation and trusting that what you don't know will be available to you. It is bigger than your overt consciousness or your intelligence or even your gifts; it is out there somewhere and you have to let it in.
---
Or, it's in there somewhere, and you have to let it out.
---
When I put Aria to bed, she asks for two "God songs."
Current favorites are: I've got peace like a river, I've got joy like a fountain, I've got love like an ocean in my soul!
and
I've got a river of life flowing out of me, makes the lame to walk and the blind to see, opens prison doors, sets the captives free, I've got a river of life flowing out of me!
Spring up a well, within my soul! Spring up a well, and make me whole! Spring up a well, and give to me, new life, abundantly!
"Mommy, what's 'abundantly'?"
More than enough. Plenty. Everything we need.
Natalie Goldberg writes, in 'The Great Failure', "I needed to be reflected in another . . . I needed a reflection of my existence, that I was, indeed, here on this earth."
Aria is in my face.
I haven't done many self-portraits lately. Because, the pictures of her are also pictures of me. My perspective. My interpretation.
Oh, she is definitely herself.
When she shouts, "I am in charge!"
I wonder.
| | |
| InlandAria's morning and afternoon play dates got cancelled. What to do?
Hit the souk.
Destination: my favorite restaurant in Muscat. I don't even know the name of it. Red-juice-place-in-the-souk? I've taken my Mom there, my sister, my father, Aria's big sister... Happy memories.
But first...the sights. I decided to take pictures of things pertaining to women.
Welcome...
Peep show
Whoa! Funny, in a place where most women are covered from head to toe, I saw lots of plastic boobs.
This was on her nighty...
Kind of... erotic and scary.
A baby train?
Incense
I've been thinking about my favorite places in Oman. The sea. The-restaurant-in-the-souk. Sinaw Thursday livestock market (I may go there next week. My last chance for a solo-photo-trip before Hersch leaves on his summer vacation.)
Places that make me happy. Places... where I know who I am? where I can just BE, and not think.
Large juice cocktail. Heaven in a glass.
Aria's ice cream bar, minus chocolate.
My notebook. I'm writing again. Thoughts...
Earlier, Aria said, "Stop! I smell something! I think it's sunshine..."
"Where everybody knows your name..." Theme song from the old TV program "Cheers"?
At the souk, no one knows my name (and I don't know theirs), but we know each other's faces. Bodies. Aria, growing from infant to four-year-old. They know her.
The waiter knows I don't like mayonnaise on my sandwich. And that Aria doesn't want cheese on hers.
I don't know the waiter's name. Or what country he's from.
But I feel... an affinity.
Honor certificate. Sounds like a guarantee which might come with a chastity belt?
Yes, I love that place. The dinginess. The whir of the blender. Mix of locals and tourists. Pyramids of fruit.
On the way out, Aria was stopped by some shopkeepers (they all call, "Hi Baby!"), who draped her in finery, and let her smell their perfume selection (one of her favorite things). I bought the gold belly dancing belt. (Now what should I do with it?)
A wistful moment, looking at this mailbox. Inland or Foreign?
(My fantasy... slipping myself into an envelope, through the "foreign" slot, to New Mexico...)
But no... as I've seen today, there is still much for Aria and I to explore here.
Perhaps New Mexico is a state of mind?
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| Dreamtime
Photos I took this evening:
Aria found a green bottle to play with, and I ran for the camera.
---
I'm suddenly 'turned on' to color. A purple seashell. Yellow spade.
Intake of breath. An 'oof' in my chest. Internal, "That's so beautiful!"
(Even in the kitchen, got teary while cooking asparagus yesterday. It was so...green! A bowl of cherries. Lemons. Sensual fruit. Summer pleasure?)
The orange gladioli in my room (in a hot pink glass vase)... It's as if they're... strutting. Parading. Saying, "Look at me! I'm so bold!" Curvaceous. Spiky.
Loud hues.
---
Whereas the beach pictures are... quiet. Subdued.
Aria in her own world. (That's why I left lots of space around her, for mysterious thoughts.)
Minus the usual clownish grin. But happy in her posture. Her imagination. Sticks as skis. Bottle as spaceship.
Some of the pictures feel like figure studies. Noting the shape of her body. How she moves.
Later she said, "Mom, put down the camera so we can swim together."
I found I could swim with Aria on my back. (And around my neck, and hanging from my arm--she is everywhere.)
An almost-full-moon. Fishing boats tutteling by, bringing in their catch. Black water. Bliss.
I whisper to her, "Will you remember this, when you're a big lady? That we swam in the ocean-dark, together?"
"Yes Mom. I'll remember."
I'm happiest while swimming in the sea.
I felt 100% content tonight. Asked myself, "How do you feel?" Registering the basics: Roof over our heads! Food in the fridge! Gas in the vehicle! Enough work. Enough sleep. Check!
The sea does not care about my problems.
In the sea, my problems (worries) do not exist.
Float. Peaceful.
Simple. Wet.
Paddle. Kick.
I'm glad I can experience it with Aria.
Following me back to the car, she said, "This is all a dream, and I'm dreaming it."
Dream happy.
| | |
| Flower Love
That one makes me blush a little...
I bought myself flowers. Roses and Gladioli.
Put them in vases in my bedroom, the dining room, kitchen.
They smile.
Too bad it's not Valentine's Day...
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We may have home internet again as of tomorrow. I'm working on a long photo/poem/story essay.
---
This is what Aria does when it's teeth-brushing time.
I'm reading "Shantaram" by Gregory David Roberts. 933 pages. Good book for summer.
A quote:
"The past reflects eternally between two mirrors--the bright mirror of words and deeds, and the dark one, full of things we didn't do or say."
---
Hmmmm... trying to think/write deep thoughts, with 4-year-old beside me saying, "Mommy!? Mommy? MOMMY!"
Aria announced this week, "I am in charge of everything in the whole world!"
She says it's time to go.
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