Scrivenings

Scrivener December 25th, 2007

Merry Christmas to all my friends and readers who celebrate Christmas and seasons greetings to everyone!

The girls and I have just finished opening presents. I got them each their very own tool box and then a bunch of tools to go in them, since they’ve both been asking to spend time building stuff with me. Eldest has plans for building some sort of shelving unit in her room, which hopefully I can get her to articulate just a bit more clearly and then we’ll work on that soon. Youngest helped me put together the new Ikea bedside tables last month, which meant that a 30 minute job took about four hours, but it was lots of fun and quite a good educational opportunity–following step-by-step directions, fine motor skills, lots and lots of counting, matching real objects with line drawings, the physics of a drawer pull, spatial reasoning, and so on–and since then she’s been asking for more projects like that, “but bigger.” There has been talk of building a tree house/fort-thing of some sort in the backyard come spring, too, so that should be a great way for us to spend time together productively engaged and learning new skills, for all of us. So I got them tools as a way of kicking off that time together as much as anything, rather than just getting them more stuff that they won’t care about any more in three weeks.

I also got Eldest a cheap digital camera. She sees me taking so many pictures that she’s been begging for her own camera for a couple of years now and I’ve been saying for a while that when I can get a decent camera for under $100, I’d do it, so when I saw I could get her a 7.1 megapixel Nikon Coolpix for $99, I got it. I’m hoping that we can spend have some photowalk outings together and spend some time learning to be better photographers together.

And of course, I got them books and a few little toys, mostly puzzles and craft things from the dollar bins at Michaels. Other than the camera, the present they are most immediately excited about is the one DVD they got: the 20th anniversary edition of The Princess Bride. Their lists to Santa were filled with princess and Barbie items (though they did add tools to the list entirely on their own), so even though I didn’t get them any of those I can still say I got them something princess.

And now my gift to you all: I’ve put together a mix. Even though none of it is holiday music, consider it my holiday gift to y’all. Because I don’t have the software necessary to zip the files, you’ll have to download each mp3 separately.

I’m Sending Out My Mind to You and You and You Mix:
Lull, Andrew Bird - 5.2 MB
Solace for the Lonely, RobinElla - 3.4 MB
Hand On Your Heart, Jose Gonzalez - 3.6 MB
Peng!, Iron & Wine -3.4 MB
I Am What I Am, Adrian Belew - 4 MB
Nail in the Sky, Howe Gelb - 2.8 MB
Wasp Nest, The National - 3.2 MB
The Lone Wolf, Kathleen Edward - 4.7 MB
I Am A Cinematographer, Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy - 2.8 MB
10 Miles To Go On A 9 Mile Road, Jim White - 4.5 MB
Don’t Worry Honey, Everything’s Gonna Be Alright, Anders Parker - 4.1 MB
There Are Too Many Birds, Arthur & Yu - 5.1 MB
The Apple Tree, Peter and The Wolf - 2.1 MB
Cool Kids Keep, The American Analog Set - 3.6 MB
Radiation Vibe, Hem - 3.6 MB
Miss Sarajevo, Passengers - 5.3 MB

I’m not certain whether the cover art that I put together will automatically be encoded with the songs, but if it’s not, you can grab the jpeg here.

It’s not exactly one of Beth’s omnibus Friday mix tapes, I limited myself to only as much time as I would have if I was physically burning this onto a CD to send to each and every one of you. Hopefully some of this is new to many of you. I did not specifically choose these songs to be any sort of statement about my current state of mind or anything, so resist the urge to read this list as autobiographical, even though as I was listening to it the last time through before uploading it, I realized that the urge would probably be there for many of you. This is just a halfway mellow music mix, which I put together as much as anything because I have wanted to put “I Am What I Am” into a mix for ages and keep not quite managing to do so.

Oh, and by the way, yes, that is Luciano Pavarotti singing on the last track of the mix. With U2, who put out this album of fake soundtrack music under the name Passengers a while back. Most of the album is only alright, but I do love “Miss Sarajevo” (and “Elvis Ate America” is pretty good too).

Happy holidays!!!

Tags: Christmas, mix, mp3, music, presents, tools

• Family life , Uncategorized , musicalife
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Scrivener December 21st, 2007

Tonight I took the kids to the winter solstice service at our Unitarian Universalist congregation and I cannot tell you how powerful the evening was for me. I had explained to the kids earlier today that this would be the longest night of the year, so that starting tomorrow the days would get longer and longer until the summer time and asked if they would like to go to church for the ceremony. They said yes, but Youngest stipulated that if it was the longest night of the year, she would have to be able to bring a flashlight along, so I agreed to that and got them each a flashlight. When we got to the church parking lot, they made a production out of lighting my way to the church and then ran around in the lightly wooded space in front of the church with their lights before it was time to start. First there was a cleansing smudge outside–the kids complained that the smoke smelled terrible, but they stood there with me and then turned with me in a circle, preparing ourselves to be open and to listen. Then we went inside and chatted with a few people before entering the chapel. Youngest was wearing her red cape, which got lots of comments.

Then we went into the chapel and the sat in a circle. The kids were intensely interested and also just a little bit worried about it all–they stayed very close to me for the whole ritual. We cast the circle and then called each direction, and Youngest kept her arms wrapped around my thigh the whole time. When a pair of the members of the church began the responsive reading, it was so just powerful:

Q: What is the element that rules this night? A. Tonight the darkness reaches the limit of its power over light.
Q: After this night of power, what is the element that will wane? A. From this night forward, the darkness will wane and the light will grow.

When they read the lines “What shall we do now? We shall let go of those things which do not affirm life and love and send them with the old sun to the womb of the Earth to be born again as positive energies for us in the New Year,” I felt tears welling up.

After a bit of singing, and another chant, we were given a piece of bark and told to hold it, or rub it, and to put within it whatever we have finished with in this cycle or whatever we wish to be transformed and then we got to place it in the fire pit so that those things could be burned and transformed. Then we were given a bay leaf, which we could break up and smell to welcome the warmth and spice of the new year. Eldest was really confused about what to do with the bark, and when I tried to tell her to think of something that she is ready to give up, she decided her answer was “baby toys” and tossed the bark in the fire. Then she kept trying to get me to hurry up and throw my bark in the fire, but I told her I wanted to just sit with it a moment. I sat there rubbing this damp, mossy chunk of bark and thought about a long list of things that have come to an end since the summer solstice, and of a long list of things that I am ready to let go of, and then I tossed my bark into the fire.

When the ceremony was over, at least half a dozen people came over to me and hugged me and asked about how I’m doing–I’ve only told a couple of people at the church about the ending of my marriage, but then I guess a number of people have just figured out some version of what is going on because our entire family just went missing for a couple of months and now I have shown back up on a semi-regular basis with the kids but without Ex. The music director, was one of those who I had told a little while ago, when she talked to me after a service about how rough I looked. She was just so incredibly nice tonight and said she had thought of me before the ritual and was hoping I would come to take part in welcoming the coming of the light. Everyone there was just so kind. It was overwhelming. And another perfect indication of how different this church is from the kinds of churches I attended when I was a child.

Then people started playing the drums, and the kids grabbed rattles, tamborines, or whatever from a basket and played along. Eldest stayed near the music director and tried to play along to the beat while Youngest came into the circle with me to dance. I tossed her up into the air, with her cape flapping around her, and she was in heaven. Then we had a few cookies and some baklava and came home. A friend had sent a small box of presents, which she had told me were solstice presents but that we could open on Christmas morning if I preferred, so I asked the kids what they wanted to do and Eldest very soundly reasoned that if she thought of them as solstice presents, then we should open them on the solstice. So I lit the fireplace and got out a bunch of candles while the kids turned out all the lights but the ones on the Christmas tree. We lit the candles and I asked the kids what they are thankful for. Youngest said she was thankful for her family and then said “I am thankful for myself. I’m thankful for who I am,” which I am in awe of, that she could so happily articulate such self-acceptance is itself something that I am profoundly thankful for. Eldest said she was thankful for her family and her friends and for everything in the whole world because she loves everything. Then we opened the presents and oohed and ahed over them for a moment. Then the three of us sat cuddling together and just watched the fire for a bit before going upstairs, where I read the book Youngest had just unwrapped to her and then read the book Eldest had picked out for the night.

Q: On what does our faith rest in this cold winter season when the earth’s bounty seems frozen?
A. We survive, we endure, and we prosper because we depend on each other. We are to share in the careful stores from all our harvests, which gives us physical, emotional, and spiritual sustenance. We keep the fires burning and affirm our support and love for one another.

The darkest part of the year is ending, the light is returning.

Tags: , ritual, Unitarian Universalist, winter solstice

• Family life
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Scrivener November 8th, 2007

This is my first experiment with posting video here on the new blog. I hope it works. This is what I do with the kids when they are not in school. The last of many, many such races that day:

Tags: bouncy place, silliness, video

• Family life , Uncategorized
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