Connecting to Time – Summertime – With Watermelon

Posted July 28, 2010 by ManicDdaily
Categories: children's illustration, Uncategorized, Vicissitudes of Life
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Watermelon Time

Despite the date, despite the heat, it hasn’t felt like true summer to me yet.  Partly this has been because of the lack of extended vacation time – that purposeful indolence that I always associated with summer as a child; partly this vagueness results from the general disengagement with time that seems to go hand in hand with growing older.  As you age, time seems to slip through your fingers like extremely gritty sand–with a fair amount of discomfort (itch/scratch/burn) but too fast to truly grasp.

And partly, I realized last night, my disconnect from this summer has  stemmed from an inexplicable lack of watermelon.

Where has it been?  Why haven’t I bought any?

I’m not exactly sure, but I suspect it has to do with too much rushing about, too much uncertainty.  The purchase of a whole watermelon is a commitment.

Whatever.  I had my first pieces of the season very very late last night and finally July felt somehow real, a part of my personal mosaic of “July”,  one more member of the conga line of continuum.

I love watermelon.  In a childhood without much A/C, it represented a hand-held cooling system.

And the piece I had last night (in a similarly unairconditioned, thirsty state) was just as sweet, delicious, cooling as I always remembered it.   I remembered a lot of it – the melon was like my own red/green, seedy, crunchy/soggy madeleine.  The inner fruit self-moistened, no tea necessary.

The “Proustian”—errr—ManicDDailean results tomorrow.

Comments: Be the first to comment

Dog Days Of Summer (Any Day Around Now In Which You Have To Do Something)

Posted July 27, 2010 by ManicDdaily
Categories: children's illustration, dog, Vicissitudes of Life
Tags: , , , , , , ,

Hot Dog on Summer Dog Day

At a certain point mid-summer, the days become dog days even if not beastly hot.  If, that is, they are work days.

Many, in my generation (boomers), were lucky enough to be raised on summer vacations.  I say, raised “on” rather than raised “in,” because summer was a halcyon time of little supervision; we were hardly raised at all during those hot months, but were out in the street, a back yard, someone’s basement, the pool (or a slow rota of all of the above).  Adults were there but not right there.  They were sort of like life guards  – near enough to be summoned in a crisis, occasionally blowing a figurative whistle, mainly just hovering somewhere vaguely above us, and (on weekends at least) sunning themselves.  Their reprimands could usually be avoided by some judicious tip-toeing or scoots.

There is something magical about unstructured time, especially for children, and especially when screens (other than perhaps sunscreens) are kept, more or less, off-limits.  Unfortunately, today’s kids experience unstructured summer days less and less; school is succeeded by various day or sleep-away camps, summer schools, prep courses, and when all parties (parents and children) have vacation, it’s such a brief, valuable, time that the conscientious working parent feels (rightly) compelled to spend it actively together with their child, doing something planned.

I started to write – what about some good old-fashioned boredom?  But I’m sure modern kids get plenty bored; it just seems to be a more frenetic/passive kind of boredom, a boredom fed by digital or electronic current, or, at a minimum, a current of someone else’s control or content.

Adults suffer too.  We were raised on summer vacations, remember!  Days and days of trying to think up something fun, sometimes succeeding.

Comments: Be the first to comment

Body of Apricots

Posted July 26, 2010 by ManicDdaily
Categories: Uncategorized, Vicissitudes of Life
Tags: , , , , , ,

Apricots

Hard to adjust to a new day after the death of a friend.  The burden of sadness seems to sink into one’s joints (not to mention eyes, chest, forehead).

All day yesterday, I was poignantly conscious of the joy of a body.  What a delight it is when it works.  To simply move — to move simply– is an actual physical pleasure when all the parts are in order, more or less.  To stretch one’s legs, swing one’s arms, feel gravity beneath the feet.  To be touched by air, much less another person.

To eat!

Apricots!

Even less than ripe apricots!

So tart, almost like plums.  (Less than ripe plums.)  With that same inner coolness, but a soft blushed cheek.  Peel.  Skin.  Body.

Comments: 2 Comments

Blog Birthday

Posted July 25, 2010 by ManicDdaily
Categories: Blogging
Tags: , , , , , ,

From "Thin Birthday"

Today is the one year anniversary (ironically, the “paper” anniversary) of this blog.

I have made 473 posts and gotten over 10,000 views.  (A small number for a blog, but amazing to me.)  Writing the posts, drawing the pictures, and putting them out into the world with a click of a button has been fascinating; doing this on a daily basis has been both stressful and freeing–yes, it’s been a lot of work, but because of the pace, I have been continually forced to move on from whatever I just did to embarrass myself.

I first want to thank all of you who have followed the blog, or even just occasionally checked in.  If you are a regular viewer, you must know that I have an (a) obsessive and (b) moody temperament; this combination has occasionally translated into repetitive and tormented checking of “stats”, a whole new form of masochistic escapism.   However, you regular viewers have really done a lot to buoy me up over the last year, you irregular viewers to thrust me into momentary despair. (Ha!)

I especially appreciate your time and interest since, as some of you may have already realized, I am not a natural blogger.   Yes, I write and draw fairly quickly, but I don’t really know anything.  (Oops!  Important caveat – I do know quite a few things in the area of my non-blogged profession.)

But I can’t give advice on household management, money-saving, science or health. I’m not even particularly political, though because a daily blog works a bit like a newspaper column, I tend to sound off in that area.

I’ve said before that my subject is “some overlap of stress and creativity”.  (This may be a cipher for “whatever stressed me feels like creating that day”.)  But as the year mark passes, I really would like to move more into the area of creativity and a bit further from the area of stress.

This, of course, is easier said than done.  And I’m not quite sure what I even mean by it—I hesitate to spell it out yet in the light of that uncertainty.

Any ideas?  Suggestions?

Thanks again.

(And as always, check out 1 Mississippi by Karin Gustafson – publicizing that book was the real reason I started the blog, but I’m afraid I haven’t done a very good job of it.  It really is a cute book–discounts are readily available if you write me.)

Comments: 5 Comments

No A/C (With Anteater)

Posted July 24, 2010 by ManicDdaily
Categories: children's illustration, news
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Anteater with Brain Freeze

My sweaty brow turns now to Stan Cox, an agricultural scientist and author of Losing Our Cool: Uncomfortable Truths About Our Air-Conditioned World (and Finding New Ways to Get Through the Summer), a book which argues against the excessive use of air conditioning in the modern world because of its negative environmental and societal effects and its effects on overall health.   Cox, who lives surrounded by cotton (barely) and fans (liberally) in Salina, Kansas, had the nerve to write an opinion piece in the Washington Post in the midst of this record hot summer, explaining the downside of air conditioning.  He received 67 pages of negative emails, which included death threats, and the epithet “Idiot!”  And these weren’t even from his family!

I know it’s hard to make a choice against A/C.   A New York apartment without it feels not only muggily hot but horribly grimy.

And yet, and yet… if you just stay still enough (so that the sweat congeals to a 98.6 degree layer between your skin and the 102 degree world), and keep your rooms dark enough (so that you can’t quite see the grime), it really is quite liveable.

I can hear some of you thinking—”you call that a life?”  or, “but why?”

All I can say there’s something kind of lovely about heat-enforced laziness; and the relief that comes as evening falls, as cold baths are slithered into, as icy smoothies are sipped (despite the brain freeze), is really pretty cool.

(PS – I’m trying to branch out from elephants, but if you like elephants, check out 1 Mississippi by Karin Gustafson on Amazon.)

Comments: 2 Comments

Cancer – Fight For the Miraculous – Hard with Cannons

Posted July 24, 2010 by ManicDdaily
Categories: Vicissitudes of Life
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Trying to regroup a bit today, not to think too much about sad things, after the death of a dear friend.  Cancer does keep popping to the brain, though in a curiously disengaged way.  Not so much why people get it – that one’s a bit too scary.  As an inhabitant of New York City who’s ingested all kinds of particulate matter, and still makes decisions that are not proactively anti-carcinogenic, I prefer not to think of it.

What comes to mind more easily is how people fight cancer, and why?

I, thankfully, have not had a personal reason to study these issues minutely, but I have to confess to some general bias against Western medicine.  It’s always seemed to me to specialize in cannons;  approaches to illness that involve heavy artillery used on a landscape (the body) which is nuanced and delicate (despite all those limbs and outgrowths), a landscape which one would just as soon save more rather than less of.   I am skeptical enough that the concept of a “surgical strike” seems hardly more precise to me when conducted by people in masks around an operating table than by pilots over a tableau of largely civilian dwellings.

I don’t mean to say that modern surgeons aren’t capable of precision (the whole skill seems to me to be absolutely amazing).  But I do think that the medical profession sometimes underrates the complications attending the procedures, the truly difficult healing processes and side effects.  The body is so complex and self-regulating;  it doesn’t particularly like to be messed with (even when its systems are out of whack.)

Pharmaceutical applications seem even less precise.  Dealing with my father’s diabetes has been an interesting lesson in this, his blood-sugar-lowing medication having been the prime cause of every emergency room visit and hospitalization over the last few years.

So complicated.  Does early detection of cancers save lives, or does it just extend the counting period?  How much good do chemotherapy and radiation do against aggressive cancers?  Does this good outweigh their stress on the healthy parts of the body, the body’s own defense mechanisms?  Or would the healthy parts of the body be weakened even faster by the cancer itself? Does the fight for extra time actually give extra time or just wear the patient out?

Of course, each case is different;  results are not fully knowable in advance.  And though experts seem to be getting better at identifying really aggressive cancers, those marked by a terrible predictability,  they have to allow for the slim chance; some possibility of unpredictability, some miraculous outcome.   Of course, it’s difficult to force the miraculous, but, as modern Americans – proud fighters, believers in belief itself, and above all, dutiful family members  – we cling to these slim chances, feel bound to try for them.

A difficult arena.

Comments: 3 Comments

Lost Friend

Posted July 23, 2010 by ManicDdaily
Categories: Vicissitudes of Life
Tags: , , , ,

A dear friend died today.  She was 58.  Like me, she was a Gemini, however, she was not “manicddaily”, but “steady-steady-daily”.  She was a wonderful person, invariably, profoundly, kind, while also persistently dogged, someone who saw things through; who sustained others through setbacks, who nurtured family and friends with a sweetness, and a sense of calm and security, even through terrible crises.

One of these was 9/11.  She lived right across the street from the World Trade Towers; she kept her family life and hopeful life and just plain daily life going through the torturous months of smoke and crowds and police lines, fear and sadness.

She was certainly her own person—her brand of kindness made many lifelong friends, maintained a devoted marriage—but she was also very strongly, markedly, a mother.  This made her youthful death especially difficult—it was terrible for her to leave her children;  terrible to cause them the pain of losing a mother.

But what could she do?  There are some things that mothers who could lift a car off their child’s legs simply aren’t strong enough to fight.   Still, I feel sure, I have to feel sure, that that strength and sweetness is still there somehow, somewhere close to home.

Comments: 2 Comments

More Giotto – Fear of Mortality, Fear of Fear

Posted July 22, 2010 by ManicDdaily
Categories: Uncategorized, Vicissitudes of Life
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

More Giotto, Scrovegni Chapel, Detail of Lamentation

It’s hard to visit someone who is very ill.  An instinctive fear arises.  You know that the visit will engender pain–pain for the current loss, pain for past losses, pain for future losses.   The thought of pain alone brings fear; the confrontation of mortality holds additional terror.

There’s almost an animalistic fear that arises–a fear of participating in the pain that the ill person is suffering, a fear (almost) of empathy.

Then too, there are the unanimalistic, highly socialized, almost opposite, fears – a fear that you won’t feel pain, or enough pain; that you won’t react properly; that you are not close enough, that you just don’t belong.

I visited a very sick friend this evening and was a little shocked at the level of fear that overtook me on my way.  Part of what steeled me to go on was simply duty –  past promises to be supportive.  But what finally pushed me into the building was the understanding of how trivial my fears were compared to what my friend was going through; the understanding that I could only help her get through her illness and the fear of what seems sure to come next by rising above my own fear of those things.  Of course, my help would be minor in the greater context, but surely I could do that much.

All this was on the way.  When you are actually in the presence of a very sick friend or family member, the fear part of the equation largely subsides, at least the self-centered parts of those  fears.  That’s your friend there, still there, still your friend.  You are fearful then for their pain, not your own; and while it may be difficult to say things to them, their hearing uncertain, you feel as if you can think things; at least you do think things, your mind suddenly like a calming palm.  It doesn’t make sense, but still brings a kind of relief, even in sorrow.

Comments: 1 Comment

Early Morning in Orlando Airport – Oh, the Glory of Modern Air Travel

Posted July 21, 2010 by ManicDdaily
Categories: elephants, Stress, Vicissitudes of Life
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Hang on Tight! (Fasten your Seatbelt?)

Oh, the glory of modern air travel.  I got up at 3:45 this morning (it looked like night) to make an early flight.  I always imagine an early flight to somehow be advantageous; I imagine that it will not be delayed because of problems somewhere else down the line; that I will theoretically be first.  Unfortunately, some airlines seem to do their maintenance in the early morning.  Or schedule crews that get in very late the night before.  (Airline regulations require crews to have a minimal sleep time.  This is not a regulation that I am complaining about –I just wish it applied to passengers.)

So now I am sitting here, hopeful of being bumped to an earlier later flight.

Bumped?  Hoping to jump onto, slip onto, hang onto, an earlier later flight.

No such luck.

Comments: Be the first to comment

One Reason I like Yoga Better Than Benchpressing

Posted July 20, 2010 by ManicDdaily
Categories: Stress, yoga
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Trying Handstand in Middle of Floor

I have a hard time standing up straight.  This is not totally a function of age.  I remember the father of a good friend coming up behind me as a teenager and jabbing a knuckle into the middle of my spine.  I’m not sure if this was a sign of my closeness to this particular family, or his abhorrence of slouching. All I can say is that his own kids had excellent posture.

My current style of yoga, which manages to be both speedy and desultory at once, does not do that much to relieve the natural compression of my spine.    (Part of the problem is that standing up straight takes not just flexibility but strength and attention and speed yoga tends to sidestep these.)  That said, the one yoga posture that I find almost instantly makes me straighter, taller, perkier, is a handstand.  They are just wonderful – for the inside of the solar plexus as well as the out;  they seem to literally take a weight off of your chest; they illuminate the momentary lightness of being.

Unfortunately, I don’t do enough of them.  In my home yoga practice, they rely upon the shutting of a particular door—this requires moving my voluminous yoga mats, taking down the Robert Pattinson calendar which hangs about the place my feet reach, and then too, the Tibetan Thangka which some embarrassed family member has hung over the Robert Pattinson calendar.   This is a laborious operation, which does not fit into my daily speed yoga routine.

I could try some handstands in the middle of the floor or on another wall, but you’d be surprised (i) how intimidating it can be do to a handstand in the middle of the floor—when you are afraid of falling, it’s very hard to kick up; and (ii) how hard it is to find good wall and kicking space in the average New York City apartment.

So right now I’m in Florida.  By the beach.  At my parents’ house.  I tend to take a break from yoga practice at my parents’ – partly because I am pre-occupied and partly because I don’t like doing yoga indoors in airconditioning, or outside on a concrete patio.  The beach is also not great –too sunny, too uneven.

But today, my spine just couldn’t take it anymore.   I cartwheeled in the surf.  Then, despite the lack of wall, I kicked up into numerous sort-of handstands.  (A manic nature and extreme short-sightedness are very useful in these endeavors.  It ‘s kind of a variation on the possible silence of a tree falling in the deserted forest—if you can’t see the people looking at you, is that truly the sound of snickering? )

For a few brief moments, I could feel my solar plexus bloom like a flower on high-speed film, my spine correspondingly straighten.

I’m sure there are gym exercises that give this same feeling of upper back strength.  Push-ups?  Bench-presses?  But I am afraid that all I could bench press would be an empty iron pole, which would be kind of, you know, ignominious, while a handstand—a handstand—has a both inner and outer glory.  With or without a wall.   Or watchers.

Comments: Be the first to comment

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »