On Cuneiform and Throwing Your Clothes Off

George Smith, British archaeologist, was so excited when he translated the Assyrian tablet bearing part of the Tale of Gilgamesh that he tore off his clothes and ran screaming through the British Museum.

I am almost as excited about some writing that has appeared at our house.  Good thing the British Museum is at a safe distance.

Getting the kids to read and write are major homeschooling milestones.  Whether it happens all by itself or it takes a lot of work I think we all sigh with relief and joy when it's over.


Greta likes to do things in a rush.  Last year after her 4th birthday she began to draw with a vengeance.  This year, after she turned five, she turned to writing...and writing...and writing.

Her writing, cryptic, without spaces, apparently untranslatable, bears no mean resemblance to the Assyrian clay tablets.

So I was alarmed when she thrust the first page at me and said "Read it!"  She is prone to paroxysms of self-criticism when I can't figure out her drawings, so I was on eggshells.

I tried the mother's saving tactic:  "Why don't you read it to me?"  But she was so on to that and began to launch into "I didn't do it right!  You can't read it!"

So when my eye fell on this my heart sang.

I can go see Lea!  Good good good.

Thank goodness my friend Judith was at my shoulder.
While I was flailing she read:

her it is the docdr ofics o i will fel betr!
Here it is the doctor's office.  Oh, I will feel better!

After a while I caught on to recurring themes and patterns.
thry hens lav to sit on a bratch
Three hens love to sit on a branch.

EGS
Eggs

What amazes me is the trouble I can have figuring out perfectly phonetic words!  Like EGS.  I really struggled with that one.

The next two speak for themselves:

Grumpy

This one reminds me of...was it an Onion article?...about a humanitarian effort to ship vowels to Vrgorac and Vrbovek and other Croatian cities.

BRD
bird

But this was the one that brought me the most joy. It was a letter she sent to her dad.

Dad
I♥ MOM
I♥ Clem
I♥Ev
I♥Gran
I♥Grapo (Grandpa)
I♥At Kely(Aunt Kelly)
I♥Akl Jon (Uncle Jon)
I♥Eleit (Elliot)
I LAV Amelea (Amelia)
I LAV Grasy (Gracie)
I♥LAV Everyone

Greta wore herself out with all her love and asked Gran to write Everyone.  This one gave me the most joy not only because of all the love, but because she is already using her writing to express her feelings.

That makes a homeschooling mom and writer (almost) happy enough to tear her clothes off and run around screaming with joy.

The Light

Twelve years ago I was applying to medical school.  I was three months pregnant with Evelyn.  At my interview the Stanford director of admissions said it would take something radical for him to accept me, a 28 year old Russian literature PhD program drop out (he didn't know I was pregnant).

"Some guy would be pumping out blood in the ER and you'd be trying to figure out what happened instead of acting.  You," he said, "are an observer and an analyst.  You're not a doer."

Twelve years later I am still stung by this and pained by the way I handled it.  My brain froze.  I was unable to remember anything I had done.  I became the person he said I was, not the person who jumped out of an An-2 airplane over Leningrad without any training.  Three times.  Hey, I'm a doer.  A stupid doer, maybe.  But a doer.

I tried to reason with the guy, analyze his opinion.   Probably I should have climbed up on his desk, or taken him by the collar and said, "I've worked too hard for this to have some jerk turn me away because I think too much and don't act on impulse enough."

But I didn't.  And I didn't get accepted.  And really, wasn't he pretty much right?  The reason I like blogging...photography and writing...is that I like to observe and analyze.

The last few months my posts have gone from every four or five days to every ten.  Too much to do.  And a lack of thoughts.  No desire to observe.  I stopped toting my camera.

The Sunday before we set off for our camping trip I saw the light.  We were at the car grabbing jackets and water for a short hike.  And I saw the light--through the trees.  Perfect light.  The camera was at home.  But wait...there was the little point 'n' shoot water camera.  I grabbed it.

As we came into a clearing deeper in the woods I snapped the photo above.

Clementine turned to me and said, all breathy with excitement, "Look at the light hanging through the trees...it seems like you could just part it like a lace curtain."

And isn't it true, don't I have to admit, that one of the reasons I wanted to go to medical school was for material?  To be a doctor turned writer like Bulgakov, like Chekhov, heck, even like Crichton.

We went on another hike this weekend and I took my camera and all my lenses.  There was a lot to observe.  The girls looked under our favorite rocks.

I kept thinking of the book Girls Who Looked Under Rocks: The Lives of Six Pioneering Naturalists.  It's a nice book if you haven't come across it.

With the macro we observed:
Dozens of mushrooms,

two scorpions,

two slender salamanders,

and a jerusalem cricket.

Turn over a rock in California and you may see these unusual insects or their telltale holes.

While Mike and the girls scrambled among the cave rocks

I switched to a telephoto lens and went after birds.

Don't the bushes look lovely against the sky?  All bare and innocent.  They're poison oak.  Can you believe birds eat poison oak berries?

I switched to the plain ol' lens the camera came with for a landscape.

I have a little bit of sorrow for that life that didn't happen, but among my regrets is not that my life now lacks material.  It's just a question of focus, angle, light.  Everything is material in the right light.

The City of Berkeley's Best Kept Secret is a Three-Hour Drive Away

Berkeley Tuolumne Camp is a parents' paradise in a breathtaking setting.
Each cabin boasts a big deck, so take your pick: A bed under the stars...

...or inside the cozy cabin.

Don't worry about lugging: Strapping young guys known as Mait Dogs lug all your luggage from the car to the cabin.

Entertaining the kids? Taken care of. Here's Ev taking in the treasure trove of possibilities before signing up for macrame, pottery, archery, talent show, hiking, et cetera.

If nothing appeals there's always just playing and having the run of the 14-acre wooded oasis.

For preschoolers there's Kiddie Kamp. Three sessions per day of crafts and stories and a children/staff ratio to die for.

Greta never wanted to leave.

Bells announce the three fantastically delicious meals each day. Ok, I'm lying. The meals were not fantastically delicious. And I'm going to stop trying to use all of the 10 Tiredest and Cheesiest Phrases in Travel Writing even if this is a sun-dappled must-see vacation destination. (That's eight out of ten!)

Really, this place was so awesome I'm as gooey as the cheddar on our tacos about it.

The food was fine camp food and the kids bolted in at the bell so hungry they bolted everything and bolted out to play again. It took them four days to realize that dessert was served every night. They'd never stuck around long enough to get it.

Coffee was available all day. I was actually biting my nails about this before I got there. What if I'm up at 6:30? Will I have to wait for breakfast at 8am for coffee?? I needn't have worried. At Berkeley's jewel in the Sierras (that's 9!) they get the coffee thing.

And there's even cereal and pbjs for kids who don't like the meals. And a store where you can open a tab and the kids can saunter up and order one popsicle or box of nerds each day.

This oasis near Yosemite boasts luxury resort touches (sorry!), but also a bona fide camping experience complete with obligatory big bugs in the bathroom.

Ev and Clem immediately identified this exotic lady as a parasitic wasp. (I had to resort to calling a wasp exotic, but I got all 10. I guess I was lying that I was going to stop. But now I'm done.)

Anyway, that long "stinger" is a zinc-tipped ovipositor for laying eggs in the larvae of tree beetles. She was 5 inches long from tip of antennae to end of ovipositor. (For more info watch Life in the Undergrowth.)

There was a Talent Show and Bingo Night.
Here are Ev and friend Sasha stage fighting.

There was swimming at the swimming hole and jumping off Beaverhead Rock.

All of which gave me plenty of time to work at my desk in the woods. And I did not work on cheesy travel writing. See my manuscript on the desk? And there was coffee aplenty to fuel the work. And no internet connection to distract me from my work. The only activity that really tempted me was ping pong but I couldn't find anyone to play with. So I got a lot of writing done.

It was like the Writers Retreat I have often dreamed of, except that when I was done writing I got to play with the kids and hike to waterfalls. And help them save a baby bat.

This near paradise lacked: Mike, cappuccinos, a good bed. I'll bring a better bed next time. And maybe my espresso machine. And Mike if he promises not to talk me into playing ping pong instead of writing.

Tentacles!

A friend and I took our 6 kids on a ferry trip and an octopus wrapped its tentacles around the children's heads. Entirely true. Read on.

And it was not the only monster to snare us.
We started off at Jack London Square. The ferry to San Francisco takes you right past the Port of Oakland where huge cranes drag cocooned cargo off ships like praying mantises snatching caterpillars.

Our destination was the Maritime National Historic Park. Yes. I am still stuck on the history thing. Trying to turn over all the stones right here.

Greta tried out her muscle against Rosie's.

First stop, a submarine, the U.S.S. Pampanito.

You can actually spend a night on this sub...but I'll pass. P.U. it still smells like 75 guys are living there for 80 days at a time without seeing the light of day...or a shower. Even though there was a shower. The Underwood typewriter was the only thing that really called to me.

Next stop Hyde Street Pier which has several historic ships. Even the bathroom has maritime facts like: sailors' time honored dislike of inside toilets and preference for answering the call of nature by hanging off the bowsprit remains a major cause of drowning at sea.

The Balclutha is packed with the cargo it used to carry and other engaging exhibits. I was a sucker for the old canned fruit labels and the story of California's second gold rush (exporting wheat).

This is when a monster ensnared me. Everyone was tired, my friend suggested we go home. But I couldn't stop--we had to do it all.

We fortified ourselves with the obligatory bowls of clam chowder in sourdough bread bowls and swam through the crowds to the Aquarium of the Bay.

I love the Aquarium of the Bay. It used to be a Tourist Trap called Shark Attack! You can still see a chewed up surfboard in the first room. But it was bought by a non-profit and hey, admission is half off if you have a membership with a reciprocal zoo or aquarium.

My favorite thing is the top right photo below. They've put a window in a skate egg so you can see the developing skates inside. The little skates have yolk sacs attached to their bellies. Greta loved the pink anemone decorated crab at top left.

Everything was going swimmingly...well, the kids were obviously tired and trying to stop the moving walkway by gripping the railings and pressing their feet against it...but still, things were going pretty well when...an octopus engulfed our children.

The octopus tank has a tunnel beneath it with a glass bubble. As the kids were looking the octopus came out of hiding and wrapped itself around the bubble. Greta was a little alarmed, then thrilled. Clementine saw the octopus's beak. A lady next to me oohed and aahed and said it was a once in a lifetime experience. Well, it was pretty great.

After that we had to go see the sea lions. Yes, even after the octopus released the kids I was still ensnared by a drive to do it all. Well, not really. I would have taken pirates up on the offer of a ride. But we had some time to kill before the ferry left anyway.

The ferry ride home was at least 10 times long as the one there, ok, maybe just 10 minutes longer. It had an extra stop. But it felt like forever.

To keep the kids from running all around the ship (because they'd already been reprimanded 3 times) we played 20 questions on things we had seen that day.
Greta did the skate in the egg sac, Ephraim, the torpedoes on the submarine, Evelyn, the bay, Yasha, a big paddle wheel, Clem the chowder.

Yep. We had seen a lot. Too much for one day.
Note to self: Know when to call it quits.
It'll still be there.

Slippery Slope

Mike gave me his bonus--a Google phone with a data plan--for Christmas.

Which means--for better or worse--I can now blog from anywhere.

Including a chair lift at Lake Tahoe.

Happy New Year!

And Here You Are a Writer, Infinitely Original and Endowed with a Sensibility that is Charming though Beyond the Understanding of the Vulgar.

We made Dadaist poems again yesterday. This is a longtime favorite. Sometimes the chance arrangement of words brings insight. Sometimes it brings thought-provoking combinations or funny juxtapositions.

Think dangerous again

or

Hunting at small claws


The Dada artist Marcel DuChamp said,"a stained glass window that has fallen out and lies more or less together on the ground is of far greater interest than the thing conventionally composed in situ."

I'd like to take this opinion about my house. Shouldn't the clothes, books and toys be more interesting scattered everywhere, than tucked away where they belong?

As an aspiring novelist I ought to have this opinion about the house, the car, the yard. There is simply more information in a wet sandbox with tracks than in a featureless expanse of sand. After all, no one but Edward Gorey wants to set a story in a Featureless Expanse.

The more order, the less there is to describe.

The more order in a life, the less story there is to tell. We're not interested in the guy who gets up every morning at 7am, reads the paper and has buttered toast and coffee for breakfast, arrives at work at 9am sharp, punches out at 5pm and so on, day in and day out, except insofar as his life is a ticking time bomb. If at the end of Chapter 1 his life isn't in smithereens were unlikely to read on. After all, we know what is coming next.

It would take infinitely long for me to describe my kitchen to you right now. Would I start with the salmon on the counter, or the bucket in the sink, or the egg yolk dried onto the plate? Shouldn't this be good and creative? Even though it might be good for me to think so (I might get more writing done), hating the mess is what writing is really about.

It is about taking life and imposing order.

About creating a character whose life has a narrative arc. About distilling the meaningful bits and tying them up with a pretty pink bow of circularity or unexpected irony.

I write this blog because it brings order out of chaos. My house may look like an earthquake hit, my days may be repetitive, my car may be a breeding ground for fruit flies, but here I can make it all have order and meaning. Not too much order. I'm not going to type a string of s's

ssssssssssssssssssssssss

and have perfect order and predictability and almost no information.

But not too much information, either. Information without order is just what the universe, in all its second-law-of-thermodynamics wonder, gives us plenty of.

I guess I'm part of the vulgar masses: I'll take the stained glass window in situ.

I know a lot of people who knit. I am not a knitter. When I am the only person in the homeschool mom circle at park day who is not knitting people sometimes ask if I knit. And I say things like, "I don't knit. I weave tales." Or, "I do texts, not textiles." Which, the last time I said it, came off as pretty obnoxious. As if I thought texts were more important than textiles. Which is not true.

I just like word play.

And the whole writing/weaving/living thing. The three fates, life is a thread, the thread makes the fabric of our lives, the narrative thread. Writing and knitting are all interwoven and if you don't believe, let me spin you a yarn.

But I have never wanted to knit. And I think I know why. A string is already perfectly ordered. Whether it is stretched out straight or wrapped around a spool, or even in a ball, it is pretty easy to describe. But then you take that thread and go making it complicated!

This is not to say that the complications aren't beautiful.

But the sweater, or even the lowly sock, is still much more twisty and unpredictable, chaotic even, than a simple thread. I mean look at those patterns. Even the description of how to make a sweater can give you a headache, let alone the real-life thing.

If you object to my description of a sweater as chaos check out this New Yorker article on the guy who filled his whole apartment with a homemade computer he built to digitally assemble photos of a tapestry. The tapestry was a living, breathing, twisting, shrinking, expanding thing that did not yield itself willingly to flat photography.

I profoundly admire the work and mastery that goes into making these sweaters and laces and socks, but to be honest, the thing I like best about sitting in a circle of knitters is when they make a mistake and have to take it all out. I just love to see that complexity dissolving effortlessly into a single string.

A knitter knitting an afghan starts with a perfectly ordered string and makes it just complicated and unpredictable enough. A writer writing a novel starts with the chaos and disorder of life and tries to string it all into something that hangs together.

Same goal, from opposite ends.

Both are great to curl up with on a winter afternoon.

Some people write and knit, which could probably lead to all sorts of insights.

But it is not for me. I mean, after all, somebody went through all the trouble of shaving that stuff off an animal and combing and carding it into fibers that go the same direction and washing it and dying it and spinning it.

I just can't face undoing that hard-won order on purpose.

It would be like smashing a stained glass window.

It turns out that, despite what the vice principal of my high school said, after that unfortunate event we won't go into here, I am no iconoclast.

I can't even bring myself to cut up magazines. To make our Dada poems we photocopied the text and then cut it up.

How To Make a Dadaist Poem
Method of Tristan Tzara

To make a Dadaist poem:

• Take a newspaper.
• Take a pair of scissors.
• Choose an article as long as you are planning to make your poem.
• Cut out the article.
• Then cut out each of the words that make up this article and put them in a bag.
• Shake it gently.
• Then take out the scraps one after the other in the order in which they left the bag.
• Copy conscientiously.
• The poem will be like you.
• And here you are a writer, infinitely original and endowed with a sensibility that is charming though beyond the understanding of the vulgar.

-Tristan Tzara

Here's your chance to be endowed with a sensibility beyond the understanding of the vulgar. Click on the title to go to an online Dada poetry generator, no paper, scissors or tape required. Just virtually cut and paste something you like into the window and click Go!

I did a few lines from my post.

simple you

But you

let

any thread me

as...as...

any chaos

thread moaning, as chaotic even still than any

characterization of

sweater is

about If

the

chaotic point then thread



Hmm. Better than the original.
Maybe I should take up knitting.

100

I am squeezing out my Nanowrimo words 100 at a time. Detail by tiny detail.

I did manage to eke out 1400 words this way while driving to and from a hike in Sunol Regional Wilderness.

We hiked the Indian Joe Creek trail to the Cave Rocks.

Evelyn and I have to have our hobbies so we don't feel idle while on a hike.

She ran ahead to work on boring holes in rocks with her pocket knife and I lagged behind to take photos.

Greta was trying to be in front for a while. She kept saying, "I'm the leader!" and trying to block her sisters with her stick. Eventually Ev, Clem and finally, even Mike got past her. Instead of crying she said, "I am the leader of the way back! And that means mom."

My macro lens forces me to look at little things with as much interest as big things.

I was on a hunt for pale green points and new mushrooms. I also particularly like seeds growing out of cow pies--that whole circle of life thing.

And tracks. And bones. I hit pay dirt with a very clear dog paw print in a cow pie with pale green points sticking up out of it.

Clem found a sheep knucklebone. She had learned earlier in the week how to use one to hold the top of stick in place when you are spinning the stick with a bow to start a fire.

Look how well it fits the hand and there is that indentation in the middle for the stick.

I brought along my notebook in case I was inspired to write 100 words on the trail.

I was. But not 100 words of my novel. I remembered the 100 Species Challenge. I thought we might be close to knowing 100 plant species that grow nearby already. Evelyn read Edible and Useful Plants of the West cover to cover and the kids have taken a lot of nature classes.

The other day in the car on the way to a class they were trying to name every plant as it passed. Eucalyptus, coyote brush, eucalyptus, madrone, coyote brush, redwood, coyote brush, oak.

So I took out a notebook and we began to write down the names of plants we could identify.

I love plant names, ever since I sang parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme as a kid. You don't even have to know what they are to enjoy the sound of their names.

Here is our list: Poison oak, blackberry, bay, sycamore, oak, mistletoe, huckleberry, coyote brush, stinging nettle, hemlock, miner's lettuce, manzanita, madrone, thistle, redwood, soaproot, duckweed, wood fern, sword fern, buckeye, sage, willow, cordgrass, hazel, snowberry, chinquapin, monkeyflower, gingko, pine, sourgrass, mexican bush sage, maple, magnolia, jacaranda, rosemary, wild cucumber, gumball, horsetail, bamboo, palm, cottonwood, aspen, birch, cattail, tule, oleander, holly, eucalyptus, california pepper, walnut, juniper, poppy, forget-me-not, mule ear, lambs ear, ivy, nasturtium, bougainvillea, camilia, yarrow, dandelions.

We didn't hit 100, and I didn't get enough 100 words done to hit my goal for the day. But I did hit a milestone. I cut and pasted my new material into the rough draft. I'm violating both the letter and the spirit of Nanowrimo this year by continuing the book I started last year.

Last year I was a winner.

I hit 50,000. There was a harrowing hour after I uploaded my text and discovered that the Nanowrimo website counted 49,650 and I had to pound out 350 more before the deadline, but I did it.

I've been working on the draft over the last year, except when I wasn't. And even though I've been falling short and not getting in enough 100 word chunks every day, yesterday I hit a milestone: one thousand 100s. In other words, 100,000 words.

So does the acorn grow into the oak.

An oak sorely in need of shaping and pruning. Next month I'll bring out the editing shears.