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– Chalk and mallet

/ jelizabeth / 1 Comment

chalkandmallet

I envy sometimes that intense aimlessless of children, which prompts them, on a sunny and windless day, to overturn a bucket of chalk, find the family mallet, and experiment with the chalk’s friability. Just because one can draw or write with chalk doesn’t mean that one must only draw or write.

A person could, for example, pound it to bits. Especially the blue ones.

smashedchalk

I came across the chalk and mallet tableau while walking with Jimmy in a neighborhood we don’t live in, although it’s still nearby. The children, whoever they are, had left all their playthings strewn on a little front lawn, the steps, the walkway. It seemed as though they would come back to them; the action was suspended, not completed.

Little artists, they were briefly interrupted from testing their material.

(Or so I want to think.)

– Sunken treasure?

/ jelizabeth / 8 Comments

Where was the scrap of paper on which I had written down the date and time for a long overdue haircut? I remembered inserting that scrap between some others I’ve accumulated in my school bag.

I couldn’t find it.  I took my wallet, notebook, pencil case, and glucose monitor kit out of my bag, and I peered into the morass.  I stirred the papers and other items resting on the bottom. The scrap I had in mind did not float up.

I dumped out the bag onto the floor in the hall. Although I didn’t find what I was looking for, I did find all this: the evidence of an autumn that has flown by.

the things she carried, 12.9.2008

the things she carried, 12.9.2008

Yes, I did style the pile a bit to make the contents distinctly visible and composed.

Here’s the list.  Make of it what you will.

  • notes for a handout on presentations for 2.009, a class
  • grocery store receipt, dated 11.19.08, amount due $149.36
  • hair clip (what Emily calls a “chip clip” for hair)
  • wrinkled, yet clean, tissue
  • dollar
  • coins
  • $10 off coupon to DSW, where I’ve gone twice to search for perfect black boots and failed
  • feedback from Grace’s fall parent/teacher conference, dated 11.12.08 (favorite phrase in it: “pours an abundance of energy”)
  • letter to me on Joslin Clinic stationery
  • receipt from ATM at MIT, dated 10.07.08, in amount of $50
  • green Sharpie
  • white-coated paperclip
  • bandaid (I usually carry enough to share.)
  • Neutrogena chapstick (“The best,” say I.)
  • mustard packet from the snack/sandwich bar at school (an extra from the occasional ham & Swiss sandwich I buy there)
  • scraps of paper, cut into approximate 4 x 6″ squares, on which I first storyboarded a conference presentation I made on 11.22.08
  • agenda of last week’s staff meeting for 2.009

Not junk, not junk at all. Really, artifacts.

And now I’m going to start something from this.  Let’s call it the School Bag Meme.  I tag my blogging and college teaching friends Alex, Dr. Poppy, James, Jan, and Rosemary.  What’s in yours, at this very moment? And how or why did it get there?

– Joy of the pain

/ jelizabeth / 1 Comment

Yesterday I took Eli, pal Cody, and Grace to Savers.  Cody claims it’s better than Goodwill, because everything hangs on racks in sizes.  And, indeed, it does.  Eli found a shirt, Cody two of them, and I got a pair of Ann Taylor cords and Old Navy canvas pants, $6.99 each, preworn and prewashed.  Grace bought $6.00 worth of knick-knacks and a pink basketball. We were moderately delighted.

As we went through the cashier’s line, I started paying attention to the music.  No Musak at Savers.  Perhaps in bargain stores the employees, and not headquarters, get to choose the music. Whoever made the playlist that was playing last night, chose good. When I heard “Black Coffee in Bed” by Squeeze, I turned to Eli and said, “This was one of my favorite songs when I was in college.”  He liked it.

And though I love the song, I had never seen the video, until a few minutes ago that is, when I searched for and found this on YouTube.  Watching it and wincing, I thought, Well, it was the ’80s.

Still…. GOOD song. The words matter. (And how many songs do you know that feature both “coffee” and “notebook” in the lyrics?)

– Everybody hurts.

/ jelizabeth / 3 Comments

MIT, where I work, is a conglomerate of endless hallways.  Buildings are attached to buildings; one segues into the next.  Bulletin boards are everywhere, and, as I walk the long halls to my office in the morning and back to the car at night, I glance at a changing collection of flyers and posters pinned up by student groups and campus organizations.  I read some as carefully as I read cereal boxes, in other words, pretty thoroughly.

This one, taped to the interior window of room filled with public computers, has been up all semester.

Who sponsors it, I don’t know. Perhaps its simple, subversive reminder is the humane work of underground activists.

In the bottom right corner, all it says is love your self. savor living.

—-

P.S. Here’s the video of an R.E.M. song that tugs at me, every time.

– Out of nowhere

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Lying on the couch in that early morning daze, Grace just asked me,

Mama, can people marry objects?

I had to stop and think.

I don’t think so.

Grace asked a child’s inevitable follow up question,

Why not?

Of course, not being a legal scholar, I had no answer. Her logic for the impulse that sparked the question, however, is irrefutable:

People should be able to marry something, if they love it.

I thought about describing marriage as a socially-constructed institution that preserves a status quo and testing her notion against that theory, but then thought, She’s only eight, so I’ll wait.