Superhero in Pink Boots: My Outlier

Charlie on his  throne at the farm: Margaret River, Australia, 2014

He was the only boy. 

Surrounded by four elementary-age girls, three moms, and two dads, Charlie held his own on our recent trip with great friends to Margaret River, Australia. 

We'd find him early in the morning practicing his swordplay with sticks, jumping into (or off of) piles of hay, chasing sheep, and helping out Uncle Vinnie who runs the place. In pink boots.

And the girls ended up constructing the fort, for the most part (Charlie added some finishing touches). It was the most intricate fort I'd ever seen -- the little engineers designed a fantasy land I wish I'd had as a part of the neighborhood gang in the '70s.

Entering the girls' fort: Margaret River, Australia, 2014

As a teacher, I'm always trying to look beyond gender stereotypes to encourage all my students: from the boy who loves to write poetry to the girl who wants to research war tactics (those are just two recent examples) and just see them as writers and lovers of literature. So when I came across my teaching partner Betsy's Outliers sketchbook, I knew I had to include my kids: my own children, of course, but also add a little thought of how I can transfer what Mayzie and Charlie teach me into the environment I make for my students.

So I want to dedicate this post to two people.

One, the fabulous Betsy Hall, who alongside me on the journey of our recent historical narrative poetry unit, allowed so much freedom of choice that our students could take poetry and see that it's one way we, as writers and thinkers, can zoom in on anything we want, even if it's seen as some teens as typically "feminine." 

If it was three voices exploring the brutal effects of post-traumatic stress disorder from the Vietnam War or a poem's speaker delving deep into what it was like for a child to sit, waiting for someone to find her in the rubble of the World Trade Center's overshadowed buildings, the gender lines were blurred as to who wrote it.

And two, it's for Charlie, who picked out the pink boots in the store. And the Batman shirt.

Amelie

What inspires me? My favorite films, and of course my family.

But I want to leave a bit of mystery, just like the fabulous Amelie Poulain (possibly my favorite character of all time) would.

So treat yourself and watch it. Or come over to my house and watch it with me. 

Then my sketch will make sense.

Then we might cry a little like you do when you watch French films.

Taking photo booth-type photos around Singapore was fun, too. All you need is your phone. No apps, either. Just a white wall and some happy participants.

I also recommend stalking your favorite movie poster fonts online. Seriously addictive.

What inspires me:

In the Distance: Our Day, Their Night

Our nephew Tommy in Baltimore has always been fascinated with the idea of it being day somewhere else in the world when he settles in for the night. "Is it daytime in Singapore?" he'll ask on Skype as I walk to the bright window to show him the sunrise. He's usually in his jammies when he asks, and that settling-in time for the little ones is a nice time for the adults to reconnect, even if it's just online.

When Patrick's theme, "In the Distance," came across my desk, I was really inspired by what he wrote about Oscar -- being all the way "over here" when other things are "over there" is something I've struggled with as I explain things to our third-culture 9- and 6-year-olds.  The most fascinating element of it all to them, though, is this difference in time -- that we are always in a time zone so far removed that it feels like another world altogether.

So I thought of night. And I thought of home. And I thought about how much has changed, what stays the same, and what time gives us and takes away from us. Even the taking-away is a gift, but it takes a lot of meditation to see it that way.

Fells Point, one of my favorite old neighborhoods in Baltimore, Maryland, is one part of home for me that never seems to change too much. Sure, new condos rise each year, and Charm City is always reinventing herself, but Fells is, well, Fells. Any Baltimorean will tell you that.

We'll travel "home" for Christmas for the first time in six years next month. In the distance, we'll feel cold air, we'll sip hot coffee, and we'll walk those streets. On the waterfront, as I'll be careful to not trip over the cobblestone-padded train tracks, I know I will find our spot that we visit each year as we meander through alleyways and see the old row houses sinking more deeply into each other as the years pass on.

But one thing I won't hear is Mom saying on the phone at our old family home, "Don't worry about coming in late, honey. We'll leave the light on." She always said that when I'd get in after she and Dad settled in for the night. And all the Christmas traditions I'd hoped I could show my kids this December aren't there anymore with Dad's passing and Mom's move. Sure, we can invent some new ones, but knowing that those traditions are permanently in the distance is really tough to process.

Art helps.

Art helps because I can imagine it. I can even reinvent the idea of home on the page and imagine she's there in that bottom window switching the light on as she hangs up the phone. We never had a house in Fells Point, but I could draw it as if we did. 

In the distance, sometimes we create myths and legends to soothe a longing for the past. Maybe she'd become a new character who talks to the ships as they come in and go out, whispering promises into the wind that she'll leave the light on to welcome him back from the sea. 

Or maybe I'll just wait until summer in Florida to see the light on next to the shuffleboard court at her new place in Florida -- I know she'll be there.

And as for this Christmas, we'll have these lights in Hampden, the artsy neighborhood we first lived in when we met in Baltimore, which will be a scream for the kids to finally see. Mayzie doesn't remember them (she was 2 when we had our last Christmas in Baltimore), and Charlie was only 3 months old). Miracle on 34th Street, indeed.

"34th Street." Flickr, 2006. Web. 10 Nov 2013. 

Window Perspectives

As I sat reading Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane this afternoon, the day after completing my sketch, this passage made me smile as I remembered the same tree that I drew just yesterday -- the sway, the creak, and the purple sky made me wonder if he wrote it just for me:

I sat on my bed, and stared out of the window.

My bed was pushed up hard against the wall just below the window. I loved to sleep with the window open. Rainy nights were best of all: I would open the window and put my head on my pillow and close my eyes and feel the wind on my face and listen to the trees sway and creak. There would be raindrops blown onto my face, too, if I was lucky, and I would imagine that I was in my boat on the ocean and that it was swaying with the swell of the sea. I did not imagine that I was a pirate, or that I was going anywhere. I was just on my boat.

But now it was not raining, and it was not night. All I could see through the window were trees, and clouds, and the distant purple of the horizon.

How many times had I fallen asleep with that singular view from my bedroom window? Since moving to Singapore six years ago, we have lived in three homes; before that, Michael and I had bought and sold two houses and lived in four; if I think of every home I’ve lived in, certainly my childhood home gave me that singular view the longest.

My perspective from that window was always of a tree that would dance, scraping its nails in, oddly, the most soothing way, against my window. When it was cold outside, the candle for the Christmas season would warm one side of the glass while frost would creep up the other side. Snuggled in my bed, I had a view of the world that nobody else had.

I’d imagine that my view of the world was so far above that I was looking at the earth in the sky instead of the moon. If could gain that perspective on my life, I could remove myself enough to see the challenges from afar.

I often tell my students to climb their metaphorical tree for that perspective; if they can see their problems from that higher view, they can be outside of them and removed enough to see things more clearly, more objectively. Sometimes the shift in perspective is all we need.

With that new perspective, we see things that sometimes can be more magical than the reality we perceive.

Visual Etymology: Serenity

I was working in Leigh's book (theme: serenity) in the midst of colds, sore throats, two PD days, CWW, and life's "stuff." Thanks for the nudge, Leigh.

When I first started to think about serenity, I thought about the what it means to me, times I felt serene -- and started mapping out a plan. A window theme came up -- seeing Mom in the window waiting for me to come home when I was younger;  always seeing the candles in the window (electric, folks, no fire danger) at Christmastime. Ah, serenity.

But I'm always thinking of my classroom (blessing and curse), and the windows were a dead end visually for me. Roadblock.

I started by bridging back to my last sketchbook entry (using oil pastels for the first time with Barbara, which needed way more practice, just like I teach my students). I loved the concentric nature of the drawings in my sketchbook. Why not torture myself with doing something I'm not good at yet? Wait -- is this theme serenity?

But then I really started just thinking about the word. Where does it come from? What are words related to serenity? Scott Riley and our teams in MS RLA are hoping to nail down some cool word study plans around etymology this year, so I wondered if I looked up the Latin, could I create an image to associate with what the roots really mean?

Serenity and serenade are cognates. Who knew? And when we look at that connection, we find that when a man serenades a woman, it's usually associated with night and peacefulness. Happy Anniversary, Michael! What great timing. Still waiting for that song, though.

It's turned into a cool idea for the classroom and would help us all visualize the Latin rather than memorizing boring lists or charts. 

Here's how it turned out, with elements of the word, its cognates, and the meaning of the roots, but it's built all around what the kids would make into an unforgettable image. Why would it work? Because they'd make their own meaning of the...well, meaning.

Serendipity? No relation, unfortunately.

Reverse Ekphrasis: Music Into Art

I loved teaching ekphrasis in high school -- having students look at pieces of art and then write poetry about them (or sometimes studying published examples of the written art). Cool examples include poetry inspired by art such as William Carlos Williams' The Fall of Icarus;  after contemplating Brueghel's painting, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, Williams'  eyes turned to the corner, away from the farmer, where most people look, to the legs splashing into the water. He writes:

unsignificantly
off the coast
there was
a splash quite unnoticed
this was
Icarus drowning

But this sketchbook could do more. I imagined using music as the inspiration for us to create art. Where the painting inspired the writing before, now the writing inspires the painting, or in the case of my first sketch, oil pastels.

One of my favorite memories with Michael is of a small concert in Baltimore I attended just before moving to Singapore. Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova's film Once (a musical movie) was one of my favorites, and the two were on stage in my own hometown. I wanted to freeze that moment in time, seeing them in person and hearing their heartfelt music -- soon enough, we found out the concert had been professionally recorded, and we raced to buy it on iTunes. I often find myself going back to one song they performed that night (and that Glen had performed years earlier with his band, The Frames.

"Star Star" centers me. There's a point in the song where he surprises you. It fills me with the wonder of a child and is my go-to song when I'm having a tough day as a grown-up.

Quite simply, it's my song.

But I was stuck with how I'd make it into art. I wrote the lyrics down. I made lists to generate images, like the verbs he used, the repeated images (sorry, I'm an RLA teacher)...and then I threw my pencil down, thinking, I don't want to do Starry Night like Van Gogh. I'm teaching my students how to avoid cliche, for goodness sake!

So I went into Barbara's art studio, played the song for a few of her students, and told her the story. She guided me to the oil pastels. We talked about paper and color; the rules of thirds and negative space; freedom to screw up.

Freedom to get my fingers dirty as I smudge everything. Freedom to not fill the whole thing in. Freedom to make movement visible and messy. Freedom to press hard on the oil pastel. Yes, I need to be told to let go, on occasion.

Which was the point of the song, oddly enough. Funny how art can bring us back to the images in the music that inspired us in the first place. Barbara "taught me how to shine, shine." Thank you, Barbara. And thank you, Glen.

Treasuring where I live

Anybody who knows me well will know that I'm a tea fiend.  I sip a different cuppa depending on my mood.  At home, when the mood is blissed contentment, when I'm loving life and I'm in the moment, that flavour is a full-bodied orange pekoe (I cart a year's worth of it back from Canada every summer, and visitors bring me my favourite blend rather than items from duty-free).  I've been known to drink three to four pots of it a day.  If my mom, sister, grandmother or either of my mothers-in-law is with me, double that.  So here is a huge cup of that blend, and on the cup,  places & people that make my heart happy. The top two bands are Canada-related treasures from where we live - mostly because we're  at t-minus 24 days until these feet hit Canadian soil & Rebecca's theme immediately flooded me with visions of long summer days at the lake.  If it weren't for that, the bottom two bands, of Singapore places and the names of the kids whose laughter I hear on a daily basis at Mimosa, would be at the top  :)

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