Day 325 (40 days to go!)

Daschund accessory.

Due to the imminent arrival of visitors for brunch, the morning was spent, after waking up really late and leaping out of bed like frantic frogs, rushing about all over the house with brooms, cloths, and desperately trying to find hiding places for all the books and paper detritus which regularly litters one end of the dining room table. 

And then they arrived, and there was much eating, talking, catching up, laughing and drinking around the table and later around the lovely radiating wood-stove, since it was VERY cold outside, and then it was suddenly dark and everyone watched a movie and then it was supper time and so I made our usual Sunday night fare, a gazillion pancakes (South African)/crepes (French and American) for all the people in the house, and the table was full again. 

So there was no running, only a short sprint up to the beehives and back with Molly early in the day.

And we all sang to my sister who turned 68 today!  Such big gaps we have in our family that when she turns 70, in two years' time, she will then be in her seventies, my brother in his sixties, and I will still be in my fifties.

My sister is thirteen years older than I am, so by the time I became a fully conscious person, at 4 or 5, she was already just about grown up, and left home to study nursing at the age of 18.  I got her room when she moved out, that previously mysterious room of giggling teenaged girls, always sweet-smelling and filled with her pictures and delicate things.

She was removed from my very young life, as my brother was not.  My brother was a living, breathing, large-as-life figure for me.  We had a lot of physical contact, he tickled me, held me on his lap, protected me from things, picked me up and dusted me off when I fell down.  He was always there, playing tricks, conducting explosive experiments, doing nasty things like recording my asthma attack on his massive Akai tape-recorder, learning poems with me, reading me stories when I was sick, getting into trouble with me.  

Whereas my sister was this tall and beautiful grownup who swooped in every now and then, with or without the latest devoted and adoring boyfriend, to bring me presents, to fight with my mother, to revel in shocking us with gruesome nursing stories at the Sunday dinner table.  I would gaze at her exquisite perfection, wondering when I would get those lovely bumps on the chest, when I would get to look like her.  (It never happened.  Except for the bumps on the chest.)

One day I was standing at the bus-stop outside the Junior School, wheezing my heart out, in the midst of a terrible asthma attack.  (My mother had told me that I would never die from asthma, so I didn't ever really panic, just stood or sat stoically suffering.  Of course, one can die from asthma, and people frequently do.)  I wasn't allowed to carry the inhaler, because it was very dangerous if you overdosed, which many asthmatics had done, due to that terrible desire for relief.  So I would frequently be stuck somewhere waiting to get home to the inhaler's antidote.

I was about seven years old, and my sister, my beautiful glamourous sister, came by on her Vespa scooter, in her official nurse's uniform, going home to her flat which happened to be near our school.  She took in my affliction at a glance, swept me up on the back of her scooter like a white knight in shining armour sweeps the victimized maiden on to his trusty steed, and galloped off at top speed to a pharmacy, where she bullied the pharmacist to open an inhaler and allow me two puffs straight away.  She has to use all her wiles, as the medicine was only available with a doctor's prescription, and he didn't know either of us from a bar of soap.  He gave in, as many had before and would thereafter, and then, for me, this little girl with the useless lungs, there was suddenly instant reprieve, and then gratitude, and pride.

It was only when we were both adults with children of our own that we really got to know one another, that we developed that female affinity.

When my mother was in hospital a couple of months before she died, in terrible pain from a broken hip, the replacement of which had then become dislocated, lying in traction and basically losing her mind, we were all, my poor father, my brother, and I, helpless before all this suffering of our beloved wife and mother.  Not my sister, who I again watched in admiration as she rode into battle, all her furious flags flying, ordering the nursing staff to do this and then that and to look sharp and do it NOW!  And they followed her instructions, even as they regarded her with baleful eyes.

And as advocates for my mother, she and I persuaded my brother and my father, with the help of my parents' doctor, that my mother wanted to die.  That she couldn't be put through another operation, another attempt at rehabilitation, more and more pain.  And that we should respect that wish, and make her last days as comfortable as possible.  My sister was very calm and collected as we explained the situation to them, whereas I was frequently just a puddle of tears.  She is admirably cool in the face of chaos or tragedy, and this was no exception.  And later, in one of my mother's few periods of lucidity, she explained the entire situation to her as well, and we received our mother's blessing. 

So I know that she is a strong woman, still lovely in her older age, and I wish for her a wonderful year of more trips to beautiful places, of thoughtful discovery, of love amongst her extended family, and a continued bond of blood and womanhood that she shares with me.  She is my moonbeam and I am her sunshine.

And as it is just too too late to draw, I will draw an image of her tomorrow, but instead, for today, here is a photograph of my gorgeous sister, when she was young.

Day 324

The red surfboard.

We staggered out of bed at some unearthly hour for a Saturday morning, to attend a Rotary Breakfast at the boys' school, in honour of a number of students in leadership positions, amongst them both our sons!  Although who knows where the certificates are, because the proud father, who was in charge of them, left them on a table somewhere, didn't he?

And there is an article about their artistic talents in the school newspaper, and another in the school's online website.  Which does rather warm the cockles of one's heart.  My twins, who are so unalike in every way, even down to their blood type, the one  being A+, the other O+.  My darling boys.

The breakfast was not my usual fare.  I am unaccustomed to eating American pancakes, little ugly sausages and coffee.  So later in the morning, when Molly and I were doing our stretching exercises before our run, I felt awful, headachy and weak,  as though I would never be able to manage, until I pulled myself together and set off on a lovely 5.10 km run (at 7.15 minutes per km) which became smoother and smoother as the kms went by. 

I was running happily along, with my triple-layer mind going nineteen to the dozen, counting breaths and singing at a different tempo, and thinking thoughts.  Shimmying through the pin-oak leaves on Heartbreak Hill, thinking that Rustle of Spring, my grandpa Pop's favourite piece of music, should actually be called Rustle of Autumn,  hypothesizing that maybe I have become part of the meadow and this is why those teenagers the other day couldn't see me, I was invisible Meadow-maiden, a new type of superhero!  And of course, that is why the deer didn't notice me until I was right on top of them, just about!

When suddenly, trip, plop, and I am lying on my face at refrigerator corner!  A small stick has caused me to fall, one of those nasty ones, that tricks one of your legs, then hits the other one to an unexpected sprawling position. And as I check all the appendages for breaks, and slowly find none, I ease myself up on my two pins once more, thinking that the meadow has actually just tripped me, that I am nothing but a silly old sentimental twit, with grass stains on her knees and scraped palms.

Stayed up to watch Toy Story 3 with Nick and Tim, very sweet film, made me cry, how ridiculous is that?

Tonight an old photograph of me and my dad in a boat.

Day 323

Leaf dancers.

We went to the Battle of the Bands tonight, to see Nick performing in the band Battery Foote.  They were the last band on stage, out of about ten or twelve, and we sat through an interminable amount of noise in order to see them, only to find that they were cut short because of the time! 

photo provided by Tim Bouwer

As a mother of one of the band members I am of course biased, but they did seem to be the best band by far.  Their musicians are truly brilliant, innovative inventors, and of course the singer is wonderful! 

So many of the bands were loud and obnoxious.  It seems that there are many youngsters who are super-confident but with no knowledge of their own lack of ability, or maybe I am getting too old, or maybe everyone is tone-deaf!

It is still a particularly testosterone-driven activity, a rock band.  There was one girl in a band of 5 boys.  She was the singer and was absolutely awful, painful to the ears.  The other girl was part of a band of three, with two boys, called 24Strings, which is a lovely name too.  They took turns to sing, were humble and very good.  She is quite phenomenal, in fact, and could easily have a career in music, writing and performing her own songs with a unique purity of voice and spirit. 

Music.

Day 322

Little snake sunning itself in the autumn afternoon.

Oh cough-cough-coughing in the night, but the daytime mostly free, so off we go on a run, a fast 3 km, at 6.15 minutes per km!  Come back with aching legs, heaving lungs, beat-beat-beating heart!

Not enough time each day for all the things I want to do!  Reading, painting, drawing, running, watching the birds, listening to the radio, having conversations, eating, drinking tea, writing, looking, walking on the beach, going to the library, gazing at the stars, talking to my daughters, watching movies, all those good things. 

Instead I have to sweep, wash clothes, vacuum (about once a month), take the trash and recycling, that has built up for about 3 to 4 weeks, to the dump, spend time looking for an important item that is lost, cook a meal every night, try to rid the kitchen table of its epidermal layer of books, papers, images, magazines, pencil crayons, post waiting to be opened. 

I wish for Evvie, the wondrous woman, the miracle worker, who cleaned our house for fourteen years, helping to raise all four children, teaching them isiXhosa, reminding them of their manners, using psychology to make them put things away (by hiding their favourite toys and telling the kid the toy was lost because he/she hadn't put them away!).  Evelyn Madlavu, one of the classiest women I have met. 

Self-portrait at the window.

Day 321

Landscape with clouds.

My mother always said that everything looked more beautiful under a sky with clouds, no matter what kind.  She taught me all the real words for them when I was very small, whenever we drove anywhere in the car, like on the way to nursery school at Mrs Trembath's house on Ringwood Drive, "What kind of clouds are those?".  And I would answer correctly and then we would sing at the tops of our voices, "Scotland the Brave" or "Old MacDonald had a farm" or some such. 

I missed her today.

Well, I went for a run and I didn't drop dead, which I was happy about.  Molly and I ran 4.23 km in just over 7 minutes per km, which wasn't bad.  Had a huge coughing fit halfway along, then felt better.

Sometimes you get this amazing feeling, running, when, for a few moments, you are utterly unencumbered, by your body, your thoughts, you could almost float away....

Then you turn uphill and as suddenly your body is ponderous, your breathing laboured, and you are well and truly encumbered once more.

Self-portrait.  This is how I felt most of today.

Day 320

Wave with dog.

Old Man on the Beach.

Sweet tall 11-year-old English Mastiff cross on the beach yesterday.  At the moment I prefer animals.

Stopped at a traffic light tonight on the way home from school, one of those interminable rush-hour lights, I glanced in on an Indian family that I enjoy watching whenever I am stuck at that traffic light.  They are always doing something interesting, and it is that wonderful extended family of grandparents, aunts and uncles, mother and father and two children, a girl and a boy, about six and eight years old.

Tonight the little boy was sitting on the top of the couch hanging on to two curtains and swinging this way and that as he sat watching a huge tv screen.  The mother came outside to fetch something from the garage, and as she re-entered the house I watched intently to see her reaction to the curtain abuse.  Sure enough, although I couldn't see her, he slowly released one curtain and then the other, and as I drove off he was climbing sorrowfully down from the top of the couch.

Drew this at a meeting this afternoon, a common doodle of mine, circles and loops.  There was an official who used to conduct meetings when I worked for the Dept of Education and Training, which was the department which ran "Bantu Education", which was different from the other departments of education in South Africa, in that it set out to allow less knowledge, to use inferior books in a useless curriculum, to neglect its teachers so that they were never developed as they needed to be.  One of the "grand plans" of history, a part of the constant subjugation of one group by another, which seems to always be happening somewhere or other in the world.  The official came up after the meeting, looked down at my page full of doodles and told me disdainfully to carry on drawing my "little feminine scribbles", as though feminine was a terribly dirty word.

Day 319

Three legs up.

The legs and lungs vacation continues.  We knew someone in Grahamstown a long time ago who had a cold, went for a run, and dropped dead.  I would prefer that not to happen to me, so on Wednesday only, I think I will attempt a little run again.

So Molly ran and I walked on the beach today, me contemplating how incredibly beautiful it was, and how lucky I am in nearly every way, and Molly probably fixating purely on the yellow god-ball.

Walking along, safe and sound, I remembered a phone conversation Tim had with a very dear South African friend yesterday, who told us about his eldest daughter, an amazing kid who has always had an enormous social conscience.  She worked as a volunteer in Palestine, before winning a scholarship to go to Oxford to do her Master's degree, which she has recently completed, her major area of research being Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in Somalia. 

And I wonder what luck it was that I was born into the family I had.

That I was loved and educated and encouraged to find my own "road less travelled".

That at an appropriate age I learned the pleasures of sex happily, with birth control readily available and relatively easy.

That I have loved literature and art and been able to live my life according to principles I have chosen.

That I have had four wanted babies, two of them popping out the natural way, the other two being born by C-section, which saved my life, and theirs.

That I am not a slave to my husband, sexual or otherwise.

That I have earned my own way my entire life, only in the last ten years in America earning less than my husband, and that partially because I only work part-time. 

I read Alice Walker's Possessing the Secret of Joy in 1992, when it came out, and was shocked and horrified by the reality of FGM, a practice I had vaguely heard about only a few years before.  I am utterly outraged by this "cultural tradition", which continues today more than ever!  The number of women suffering and dying is expanding, even though, as early as 1952,  a UN Commission on Human Rights condemned the practice!  Although there is a blackout on information about sexual practices in Islamic countries, there is a lot of evidence to suggest that this is very common in Islamic countries, and in Egypt 90% of women are affected!  FGM takes place predominantly in North Africa and the Middle East.

It is indicative of a complete disdain for women, that a tradition exists, one which women themselves carry out, whereby various levels of mutilation are carried out, some simply cutting off the clitoris, so that little or no sexual pleasure is felt, others going so far as to cut off the labia and basically sew the vulva closed, which then has to be cut open for intercourse and childbearing.  Yes, that is what happens!  Good grief, that we live in this world of such utter absurdity.

How do such things even begin?  I am amazed (in my 20th and 21st century Western feminist mind) that women would let these things be done to their daughters, and participate voluntarily in such abuse.  It is similarly incomprehensible that Chinese women had their feet bound for so many centuries, and much of the reasons are the same, so that women remain subjective and conformist and exist only to render sexual pleasure to the men in the society and to work and raise the children of said barbaric men.

And people are outraged about full-body scanners at airports, there are whole articles in the paper devoted to this new outrage!  And other small-minded selfish and nasty people put up signs on the beach (which thankfully are ignored in winter) saying NO DOGS ALLOWED AT ANY TIME. Police Take Notice.  And still others get all upset that homosexuals can get married in several states now, including ours, because "it is making a mockery of the whole institution of marriage".  Since when did two men or two women getting married affect a heterosexual marriage in any way?

And the MFA has opened a new multi-million dollar wing, a beautiful addition, filled with the Art of the Americas, showcasing centuries of American art, from pre-history until today, and I feel vaguely guilty that I get to do amazing and privileged things every day, that I will be able to explore this new space, stand before beautiful images and sculptures, that beauty and pleasure exist in such a real way for me, while another little girl is brutally mutilated, on the other side of the world, to begin her life of psychological and physical servitude and torture.

Go figure.


 

Day 318

Wave, bench, woman, dog.

Yesterday the boys went off to look at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, took the commuter rail down there, to spend the night with friends who are attending the school, to be collected today from South Station at about 2pm.

So Tim and I went to Swampscott, which is on the way, kind of, because Tim wanted to take long-exposure images of the sea for an assignment.  The sky was stormy and the sea very wild and beautiful today, fascinating several walkers who stood and watched its power as did we. 

However, the boys' train was delayed, so, having two hours longer than we had thought, we went into a restaurant for a late lunch, and the very pretty waitress spoke only to me the entire time, not wanting to be rude and stare at Tim's face.  Looking at the red marks caused by the medication, one could take them for those unfortunate birthmarks that are called "port wine stains" in some quarters.  Tim took this picture of me thinking about all this.

Yesterday I had to drive the boys' car home from the station where Nick had parked it before going to his Saturday morning course in Boston.  I have no idea how to adjust the sound system, especially while I am driving, so had to listen to a cd they had burned.  I like quite a lot of their music, so first came Kid Cudy, who is not too bad, then another 3 songs which were pretty good, I'm not sure by whom, and then a bad rap song began, and I, a captive listener, heard every word.  And I know I am showing my age, but I think I would loathe this "music" no matter what age I was, with every second word a swearword, and disrespectful language towards women, and just a kind of awful misogynistic message in general.  Why do these young black men want to portray themselves in this way?  And why is this "music" so popular, even with my own children, who have been raised to respect women as equals?

So I'm driving along, through a small town, with the window down due to the beautiful sunny air of yesterday, when I come up behind a car with a huge brown bear-faced dog hanging out of the window, tongue happily flapping in the breeze, staring at everything going by, including me.  And at a traffic light stop, I pull up beside another dog enjoying the weather, this time a tiny little chihuahua-type dog, all decked out in a coat, being held by a hand belonging to an unseen person, holding on to a kind of handle on the top of its knitted coat, otherwise it would be leaping right out of the window, such is its eager stance, its sniffing of the wondrous odour-filled air. 

I didn't run today as I seem to have succumbed to Tim's cold, and my legs were a little stiff, so I gave them a holiday.

Day 317

I just love these pods, they strike me as the most perfect shapes, and the winged gossamer seeds, like air personified.

The leaves were all rimed with frost this morning on our run, which was 5.6 km, although I have no idea what time I made, as I was wearing no watch and have very kindly donated my phone to Matthew for three weeks, because his phone has died, and he can get another one in the first week of December which is when we are due for an upgrade. 

He told me that not having a phone made him feel as though his daemon had been cut off.  (Anyone who has read Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials will understand, as each character in those books has a wonderful daemon in the form of a companion animal, like a jaguar, or a moth, or a ferret, which is the manifestation of the person's soul.)  Which is a little scary, that these little pieces of technology which connect us to one another are SO important to teenagers. 

The only time I thought I might miss it was if I broke down on the highway, but then someone would certainly stop soon enough to help, so I would be fine.  A few years ago I had a flat tire on the highway, and pulled over to change it.  Before I even had the boot open to get out the jack etc., two men had stopped their cars to offer help.  When I told them thank you, I was fine and accomplished in changing tires, having been Jack Radford's daughter, they nevertheless absolutely refused to let me do it, and actually helped one another, although they were perfect strangers, to change my tire in record time, rather like the mechanics in the pit stops during car races. 

So my poor Tim has become a monster.  He has so much sun damage (actinic keratosis) from growing up in Kimberley in South Africa with a very fair skin, that the dermatologist suggested a cream be used for at least two weeks which targets all the spots, turns them into lesions which then take a few weeks to scale off and leave the skin better than before, and cured.  The other method that can be used is to burn off each spot individually, over time, with liquid nitrogen.  This is the method I would have chosen for myself.  What he chose is basically topical chemotherapy.

Tomorrow is the two week mark, and for about ten days his skin has been raging and red, and he feels as though someone has sandpapered his face.  The first couple of days that it looked so awful I actually felt so guilty, like such a bad person, because even though I was trying really hard, I didn't like him very much, or have much sympathy.  But then my wise young daughter Jess pointed out to me that part of what you love about a person is related to their looks in no small way, no matter how much you might deny it, and also, that if you have lived with this person for 26 years it is naturally difficult to come to terms with him suddenly looking like a leper.  My horrid feelings ended with me confessing them to Tim, after which I felt much better about myself and about him, although he probably didn't for a while, poor man. 

He has been sequestered, working alone from home all week, his family his only social contacts, which doesn't help matters very much, as we are such social creatures, needing work and other kinds of interactions to feel ourselves fully human.  But he must be a very strong character, to look at himself in the mirror like that and still be more-or-less alright.  I would just go to pieces, I think.

I can't wait for the time to go past, all the lesions to scale off and heal, when he will be my own familiar husband again, Rodin's John-the-Baptist, the beautiful boy I first saw in the Nombulelo Staffroom in 1984.

Three leaves I picked up today on my run.

Day 316

Dancer, by an eighth grade girl.

School again today, some of these teaching days are SO exhausting, wonderful, but physically and mentally draining.

You rush about, making sure everyone is doing something, keeping kids on track, ensuring that they are not wasting water when they wash the lino-blocks, sitting two crazy rushing-around-the-room boys down and talking severely to them, as my dad used to call it.

Checking that the quietest girls also get attention.  Utilizing the skills of someone who has finished all his prints, giving him the job of helping everyone print their image on a long roll of paper, so we can put up a frieze of 8th grade block-print portraits at the top of the wall in the art room, or elsewhere in the school.

Dealing with the needs of two different groups, the upper school students who have come in for their extra hour, and the seventh-grade class, half of which is crazy in the period before home time, the other half all dreamy with the end of the day, the end of the week.

Trying to make the right amount of papier-maché successfully, and making a vain attempt not to breathe the fluffy white air stirred up by my kneading of the stuff, which does not feel as though it is very good for lungs.

Taking into account every word of every child, helping someone believe that their sculpture is perfect, stopping nasty conversation before it gets going, in french or in english, grading drawing books, remembering to give out homework assignments, trying to find "just about 30 or so images" for the Middle school director to beautify the bulletin boards for tomorrow, the Open Day, when prospective students come with their parents to check out the school.

Noticing a sad-looking kid and telling her she is doing a good job, and how is she feeling today, she looks a bit down.  And giving her a little hug, because you know her family's situation. 

Having deep conversations about the deaths of mothers, marine biology, gangsta language, how someone is doing who left the school a few years ago, what are the plans for the weekend, plans for a field trip, Nicolas Sarkozy.

Then the end of the teaching day, cleaning up before the janitorial staff come through to mop and sweep, locking the door of the store-room, putting the key away in the secret hiding-place known only to the lower-school art teacher and myself, then discovering something else that has to be put away, and repeating all my previous actions, then finally out the door, down the stairs to the cold little car, and the long, long drive home in the dark, lit by thousands of car-lights, streetlights, and then at last our little road, with no lights, all the stars visible, the familiar tall-tree-lined road, and our little hill, with the warm lights of the house, and inside, the people that I love, my husband, my sons, and the black dog that will come bounding, but no little Lily-cat to greet me anymore.

A portrait of Matthew and Tim.  It looks better in real life, the drawing, I mean.  Tim is not really Asian and Matthew does not really have half a biscuit stuck on the side of his head.

Day 315

Running from the sea.

Sun, sun, sun!  We ran 5.02 km in its warmth, even the bees were out!  As I was on my third or fourth circuit around the meadow, having just come out of Refrigerator Corner, a man ran suddenly across the path about 100 meters in front of me, with a cell-phone to his ear. He didn't notice me, but my heart skipped a beat, as they say, and adrenalin rushed through my bloodstream, sent from the adrenal medulla, to help me in my body's decision for flight or fight.

In the next few seconds my fright eased as a young woman followed closely in his footsteps, and I saw then that they were just teenagers, hurrying somewhere.  I jogged on, ready to greet them when they noticed me, but they crossed the entire field and then exited via a deer-path on the other side, without once glancing in my direction! 

I ran 7.10 minutes per km, so was quite pleased with my legs, lungs and body in general. 

In the afternoon I went with my friends to a beautiful place of granite rocks and wild seas. 

Raging waters.











One running from the sea.

Self-portrait with friend's shadow.

Day 314

The Burning City. or Boston Skyline at Sunset taken through the window of a moving car.

My black dog and I ran 5.63 km (7.16 mins per km) through the still damp Wednesday morning.  We are all in great need of sunshine and blue sky!  Maybe tomorrow.  Running with my eyes mostly on the ground, because of the thick leaf cover now, which might hide stones, roots, and other things over which I can trip, I noticed that I could tell exactly which trees I was running under, according to the type of leaf.  My favourite old pin-oak, with its companion large-leafed vine, which I have not been able to identify, and which I hope is not a destructive parasite.  Then past a copse of birch trees.  Then sumac, ash, and many different types of maple.  Also beech, although I may be wrong about this one.  Molly is always disappointed when we turn for home, even though she has run all this way and chased the ball about 20 times!  And she is ten years old, she's supposed to start slowing down now, but doesn't seem to have any idea of that.

When I took her outside a little while ago, into the dark night of the forest, she stood and sniffed the wind, standing with her nose pointing in one direction for ages.  So I stood and tried to smell something too.  I smelt woodsmoke and rain, and that was about it, such poor noses we have compared to dogs.

I went to one of my favourite places today, the Museum of Fine Art, with my friend Mary.  I saw two of the exhibitions that I had been to alone a few weeks earlier.  While I love being by myself and thoroughly enjoyed the solitary imbibing of images, it was a much more pleasurable experience being together today.   You can spend hours going over the minutiae of an image with your friend, making connections to our different histories, finding common ground, laughing, turning pictures into conversations.

There is a large Richard Avedon exhibit, and it is interesting to trace the course of his fashion photography since 1945.  The older images are more elegant, very beautiful pictures of actresses and models in interesting street scenes of Paris, for example. Some of them actually have large breasts and bottoms.   Those from the 60's have a different kind of vibrancy, the models are suddenly much flatter and thinner, and there is a much more sexual quality to them, with several showing breasts and a couple of nudes.  Many of those from the 90's show a kind of descent into decadence with several images displaying a distinct quality of violence.

Avedon worked for years for Vogue and Harper's Bazaar, magazines which I have always disdained amongst those which contribute to women's poor opinions of themselves.  The models are always too thin, too beautiful, too young, too airbrushed, too perfect altogether.  And the sisters of those magazines, like Cosmopolitan etc., are always urging one how to have better sex, how to give a better blow-job, twenty ways to please him in bed, 10 ways to look better, younger, thinner, sexier, etc. Good grief, use your imaginations!

But I did love the images, pored over the beautiful women, we all love beauty, after all, and Richard Avedon was a brilliant photographer of women.  He also had a social conscience and photographed ordinary people like oil-field workers, drifters, and the everyday people of the American mid-west.

My best friend Trish and I used to spend hours drawing fashion designs for a while when we were about 12 or 13, I remember we devised an easy and quite elegant way of drawing hands for these beauties, called chameleon hands, I think Trish invented them.  (She didn't really like chameleons, whereas I LOVED them.  Well, she loved them but she couldn't bring herself to touch them.  I, conversely, adored the little creatures so much (and still do) and could have happily lived all day with chameleons crawling all over me!)  So here is a drawing like the ones we used to make.

Day 313

Sunset on the marsh.

A damp dark day today, spent mostly at school, in my warm and colourful artroom.

My upper school students are supposed to come for three hours a week, one hour on Tuesday afternoon and two on Friday afternoon.  Both times they finish at 5.30, which is not the best, but the people responsible for the timetable can always only fit the art in after regular school hours.  This is due to the small size of the upper school, so the art students from the different classes are all put together in the afternoons, with a grand total of seven kids.

So some of them devised a plan whereby they would come when they had a free period, which was 2.30 on a Tuesday, while I have another 7th grade class, and they can sit at a spare table and do their work quietly, then they stay for the next hour, which is supposed to be my free hour, and then they only have to come for one hour on Fridays, so it would mean that they can then go home at 4.30 each day.

And in the beginning, I agreed with a plan that two 11th graders arranged with the lower school art teacher to come in during their free period on a Thursday, and then they would just touch base with me on Friday at lunchtime to show me what they had done, then they would be able to go home at the regular home-time of 3.30 on a Friday.  (I am only at school on Tuesdays and Fridays).

But what actually happens, is that they have all become such good friends, such a cohesive group, that three of them duly arrive at 2.30 on a Tuesday, and then at 3.30 three more enter excitedly, and then the last one at 4.30, and they all make art and have really interesting conversations in French and English, and we all take turns to play music from the computer, until 5.30, when I tell them to pack up and go home.!  And the same thing happens on Friday, some arrive at 2.30, the rest at 3.30 and they all leave at 5.30! Wonderful!

Too much to do tonight, so an old photographic portrait, taken in the summer, the day before my 50th birthday, with my beloved older daughter, on the ferry to my adopted city, when my mother and father were both still alive.

Day 312

Patterns: pine needles, rainwater and four little yellow leaves, in the wheelbarrow.

Rain Rain Rain!  Wind Wind Hurricane!  We woke to branches breaking and crazy wind roaring through the trees, whistling through the screens which are still up on the windows, in the vain hope that we will still have some warm enough days to open them up and let the breeze blow through!

Later Molly and I ran through the much calmer landscape, jumping over the detritus of the storm, and generally plodding over the sodden leaf-litter.  A run that took us a few times around the bottom circuit, then a leap over the fallen ash tree, and into the meadow.  I felt tired, and Molly just panted along behind me, but we must have been quite quiet, because suddenly, halfway up Heartbreak Hill, two white-tailed deer suddenly broke from their cover in the field right next to us, bounding away in a not too concerned way, showing us their dun-brown winter coats, and their snowy tails. 

Molly utterly ignores them, as well as squirrels and most other forms of animal life.  The yellow ball is her god and everything else is not even worthy of notice.  She runs behind me for 3 or 5 or 6 km, holding the ball in her mouth, content, just jogging along, knowing that eventually I will stop, whenever, when I will throw the ball several times for her before we make our weary way home.

Although I thought I was jogging really slowly, I must have caught up some time with the last few circuits, because I ran 3.6 km, at a rate of 7.40 minutes per km.  I had been sure it would be more than 8 minutes each. 

I worked some more on the painting today, and the face is now beginning to look much better, and I remember why I love painting so much, it is so lovely to paint over an undercoat, the basic gist of your painting, and refine it, leaving some of the underneath showing, which adds to the overall effect. 

Day 311

Clouds with tree.

A disgruntled day. 

Daylight saving decreed that we turn back the clocks one hour last night, and I find the whole day is a mess, everything feels wrong, and then it is dark at about 4!  Ridiculous.

And, I am SO tired of hot flashes, hot flushes, whatever they are called!  I am gatvol of them, in fact!  It think it is an insult to women that we have to go through all the things we do, all the really hard things, all through our reproductive lives, only to be rewarded at the end hot flushes! 

Having uncomfortable internal examinations from a young age, usually by male doctors, having to be the one mainly responsible for birth control, some methods having bad side effects, but having to put up with them.  Then all the poking and prodding you go through when you are pregnant, and the ungainly nature of the condition itself, at the end of which is the agonising labour, to bring the beloved child into the world.  And then we do this several times in our lives, and our bodies suffer for it, each time a little less able to recover, our skin a little more elastic. 

And then, the cherry on the top, we get to somewhere into our half-century, and have to endure the loss of our fecundity, and the additional torture of raging hot flushes for a good few years!  Hooray!  How bloody marvellous to be a woman! 

Generally I can look at life with a pinch of humour, but today the unfairness of hot flushes struck me like a battering ram.  No sooner have you put on your jersey because you are feeling a bit chilly, than you suddenly want to rip it off, as well as every other piece of clothing you are wearing!  They honestly should use menopausal women to power the grid!  I'm sure our house could be powered solely on my energy if I could somehow tap into my hot flushes each night!

And also today, I couldn't see my own son, for the last time, as it is his Senior year, at the Talent Show concert at their school, where he was singing in the a cappella group and later in their band, Batteryfoote, because we didn't get tickets in time.  I tried to sneak in at halftime but an officious woman was there who would not hear any of my reasonable proposals, and sent me away.  Nick said that there were a whole lot of empty seats, so that is also ridiculous, and so irritating.

And Tim is sick with flu, and so sat in front of the woodstove all day watching movies and football.  I never watch tv, because there is the biggest load of rubbish on, and the fact that programmes are divided into 3 minute segments with about 5 minutes of adverts after every 3 minutes!  Watching adverts (and most programmes) on tv makes me seriously worry about the state of our general intelligence and the future of the human race.  

I did run, one positive element to the day, after sleeping in after a late night, 5.6 km, at a rate of 7.38 minutes per km.  If I had to run the New York marathon, and could keep up that pace for the entire 43km, it would take me 5 and a half hours.  I cannot even imagine running for that long!   Haile Gebrselassie, the Ethiopian runner who retired today after dropping out in the 16th mile, holds the world record for the fastest marathon in Berlin in 2008, 2 hours, 3 minutes and 59 seconds, which is a pace of 4.43 minutes per mile, which is just unbelievable, when you think how long it took before someone ran the 4 minute mile, Roger Bannister in 1954, a year before I was born.

So this is a kind of hot flush image.  And hopefully tomorrow will be a better day.  Although sleet and snowflakes are predicted!

Day 310 (55 days to go, 55 years old, born in 1955)

Causeway clouds.

Today I ran on and on through the cold air, through the wonderful bright meadow and the darker forest road, one of those easy running days.  Well, it is never effortless, of course, but sometimes I feel like I'm kind of floating along, even uphill, even though I am still going much slower than any other runner, most probably!  It is a feeling of invincibility, knowing that your body is capable, is enjoying itself, a knowledge of how your own strong body moves through the world.  So I did one extra circuit and ran 6.05 km in 45 minutes, which is 7.26 minutes per km.

Tim, watching all the birds at my window-feeder, back and forth, waiting on the holly-tree, flitting up, then out again to alight on a branch and eat the seed, some using their little clever feet and beaks to shell the seed, while another flits up to the feeder, then leaping into the air again, quick flights back and forth, says, "Anne, it's like a really busy airport!.  You see, there, some of them go into a holding pattern, others land (on the holly tree) and then wait their turn for takeoff.  And you could just sit here and watch them for hours  It's like Heathrow!" 

Hymns are good for rhythmic running, as I have mentioned before, some of them so beautiful, they are poetry.  Today I had the hymn Oh Worship the King, in my head as I was running, and thinking about the words, I decided to rewrite it to something I might worship, like, for example, The Whale.

So these are the actual words:
Oh worship the king
All glorious above
Oh gratefully sing
His power and his love
Our shield and defender
The ancient of days
Pavilioned in splendour
And girded with praise.

Oh tell of his might
Oh sing of his grace
Whose robe is the light
Whose canopy space
His chariots of wrath
The deep thunderclouds form
And dark is his path
On the wings of the storm.

And here are the words I slightly changed, still to the same tune, it was just fun thinking up something else while I was running around the meadow.

Oh worship the whale
All glorious below
Oh gratefully hail
Its power as it goes
That diver and bender
The ancient of days
Pavilioned in splendor
At its beauty we gaze.

Oh tell of its might
Oh sing of its grace
Its robe the foam white
The ocean its space
Its body gigantic
Such waves it can form
And deep is its path
On the wings of the storm.

So that was my creative achievement for today!

Day 309

Evening meadow with clouds.











Turning leaf with milkweed seedpod.

Grasses holding up a cloud.

Sky with tree of lace.
















A day of parent-teacher conferences, few but interesting.  One mother is a friend of mine, and was sympathising with me about this time next year, when the boys will be away at college.  She said, "Oh, but you have so many things to do, and besides, you and me will go to India together!"  Which would be wonderful.  We share a love of elephants.

Molly and I walked in the evening meadow, whose acquaintance I have not had the pleasure of for a while.  Crisp air, pretty clouds, darkness slowly descending.   Night comes so early now, and even earlier on Sunday, after we set our clocks back for daylight saving, the real start of winter.  Already it has become so difficult for us to drag ourselves from bed on these dark, cold mornings.

A photographic self-portrait tonight.

Day 308

Oak leaf the size of my foot!

I ran for 21 minutes in the pouring rain, a distance of 3 km, and I really think that I have messed up my pedometer, because it didn't feel as though I was going very fast at all, and the calculation reveals that I am supposed to have run at 6.58 minutes per km.  I know this is just under 7, but still, it seems wrong.  The first uphill was SO hard, I was panting and wheezing by the top and sorely tempted to stop, but didn't, just kept going, trying to keep the pace, and ease my breathing.

Coming to a flat after a steep uphill is almost like going over the top of the hill on a bicycle, and suddenly being able to coast downhill.  Almost, because you can't really coast, but there is a slackening of pressure, the gradient has become your friend once more, and your body knows that its breathing will begin to quiet.

We have such incredible, amazing, intricate brains, and yet we are still, after thousands and thousands of years, largely just animals, most interested in sex and power.  It is astonishing that people will give up entire lives of love and companionship for that brief union with another person, that thrill, that excitement.  And in school, boys scramble to best one another, in the workplace, men jostle for the alpha-male spot.  Yes, women do it as well, but not as much, they are more likely to work together on things.  And this is due to fascinating differences in male and female brains. 

The research on brains is galloping along in leaps and bounds, and is, as Matthew told me the other day, "one of the last frontiers".   I think he is going to be one of the brain's explorers.  He was explaining to me how difficult it is to go from the study of the simple (relatively) work of neurons, to the concept of where the mind resides, how it all works.  He was showing me how the little electrical pulse is generated and the dendrites communicate with another cell, illustrating the explanation by drawing it on the carpet with his finger, which was the nearest place to hand, and Molly, sitting at my feet, bent down to where his hand was drawing, following very carefully with her eyes and then her nose.  Matt and I collapsed laughing, or, as Matthew told us when he was very small, which was obviously how his brain (being male and thus less developed in terms of language) had heard and perceived it, "We crapped up laughing!"

Which brings us to an interesting point about dog brains.  Dogs are all descended from domesticated wolves a process which began about 16 000 years ago.  Dogs who have been bred to work with people, like labradors, retrievers, sheepdogs, know about pointing, they follow visual cues, and will always follow the direction of a human pointed finger, whereas other breeds like hounds who follow the scent and one another, and are more independent, will not.  So Molly probably thought he was pointing at something interesting, perhaps something to eat!

I am doing a painting, using acrylics, which I haven't used for almost a year.  It is so hard, painting again, since I am used to pastels now, my medium of choice, as you can just go over and over with different colours, mix charcoal etc, and the blending just happens, or you can just rub it out and begin again.  But paint, you have to be so careful, I ended up awkwardly balancing about 7 paintbrushes in my hands, all coated with different colours.  I also kept mixing the colours that I didn't want to mix, on the canvas, and really, it is difficult to get subtlety.  So here is the beginning, the first day, no doubt it will change a lot when I get to paint again, perhaps on Sunday.  This is just the head, as it is a picture of me in the bath, and Matthew, hearing I was doing it, said, "You're not going to put THAT on Facebook, are you?"

Day 307

Future leaf-mould.

5.4 km at 7.24 minutes per km.  Only about 1 km was easy-going, strange.

Today was that sad kind of overcast day, the first of the cold to come, ice on the bird-bath, a memory of past winters, the bitter chill which rushes through doors left open for only a moment.

The feeling of being old, the knowledge of being in the autumn of life, just like the meadow, no longer fecund, bare-boned like the barren branches, the last blush of pretty leaves, and after that the slow decline.     

Neither daughter is coming home for Christmas, their favourite holiday.  Thoughtful presents, good food, lazy day, the family have never had an unhappy Christmas.  So, tears are shed in the kitchen, tears of longing for those two. 

Later, the boys come home from school, the tall handsome boys, and as they walk in the door cheerfulness returns like the sun.  They laugh and joke and give hugs and tickle the old mother.  It is No-shave November at their school, and they tell how they were joking with boys who have 5 o'clock shadow by 12 o'clock, whereas their beards take weeks to grow into any semblance of a beard!

What will happen when they have gone away to college?  It feels as though she will just stay sad, stuck in a ditch, wallowing all day in the heavyhearted cloudy world. 

A portrait as Friday Kahlo, two versions, one rubbed out for the other.  There is a set face that she draws whenever she has to draw a face, it is always the same face, and here it is in two variations. 

Day 306

Sunrise in the leaves.

She runs before school.  First it is hard, then easy.  She glances at the scenery going past her and feels as though she is going quite fast.  The black dog runs behind her the whole way, except for Babbling Brook Hill.  Their breath puffs visibly out on to the frigid air.  The branches are nearly bare, all the trees have taken off their finery and stand nearly naked in the cold.  She hopes it is chilly enough for the ticks to have gone into suspended animation.

She runs 5.14 km, at a pace of 7.23 minutes per km.  She thinks she should maybe increase the distance she runs each day, as 5 km seems to be her comfort zone now, whereas 3 or 3.5km was her comfort distance before.  Or increase the speed.

School is lovely.  The 8th grade are carving block prints of faces, and she thinks they will look so beautiful when they are printed.  It is a class which has always worked hard, a class which takes art so seriously, and enjoys the challenge of new media, new ideas, a dream class.  She thinks the second half of her year which will be with the 9th grade instead, will probably be much more fraught, although she wants to do a movable mural with them on the theme of biodiversity, which should work well as there are some excellent artists within the group, it might just be a matter of great motivation for them.

In the evening she watches the results of the election out of the corner of her eye, with the sound off, occasionally putting it on until the speaker bores her to death.  She is happy that Patrick will get another few years as governor of Massachusetts, because she thinks he is a good guy as far as politicians go. 

However, in general, she finds the whole system utterly crazy, with $3 billion having been spent on campaigns during this mid-term election!  Why don't they pour that money into the economy and help it along instead?

Like the young men who play sport and earn gigantic sums of money doing it.  What warrants such salaries? And why don't young sportswomen have the same drawing power?   Wayne Rooney, another famous sportsman who can't "keep his pecker in his pants", of Manchester United in England, has just been given a contract which will pay him 200 000 pounds a week!  While she thinks it is wonderful that possessing a ball-kicking skill can bring a poverty-stricken boy good fortune, this is just ridiculous.  Why would anyone need such an amount of money every week?  And to hire prostitutes when your wife is pregnant is just gross and sordid.  Truly the way the world works is extremely strange.

Demonstrating the proportions of a human face, she drew a girl in one of her classes today.