The first time I noticed the sky I was running around a sandy playground holding a red bucket. I was sure I’d find a treasure somewhere so I wanted to be ready. A faint humming noise filled the air, and as everyone looked up I saw a plane (a small bird in my mind) for the first time; in unison we dropped everything and started waving, “Byeee!”. I think I did that everytime I saw one until I was about 6.
The moon has always hung from its velvet waves, but it was only this summer that I thought the sky was truly beautiful; I was standing outside with Tom waiting for shooting stars to plummet to their deaths in less than seconds. And it was beautiful to be there in the cold, in the middle of the countryside with no other light than the one shining from the stars and moon, and with Tom. I don’t think I’ll ever forget it.
Tell us when you first noticed the sky. Tell us when you first thought that the sky was beautiful.
Last Friday, right before I became deathly ill (and I say that literally), I went to a few exhibitions with my cousin. Observing art is one of my favorite things in the world, not only for the art itself but because I love to see people looking at art — the silence that consumes everyone into individual bubbles, where thoughts spiral through their faces to produce a reaction. Well that is exactly what happened with us; we had been talking non-stop during lunch and on our way, and the second we went through the exhibition hall entrance, that same silence took over us until we left.
One of the exhibitions was called “Maternity”, which was a collection of photographs from all over the world of a mother and her child. But it wasn’t just the amazing photographs of those moments captured that caused my spiraling thoughts to produce a reaction; one of the walls was dedicated entirely to visitor cards in which people wrote down what maternity and motherhood meant to them. They were so diverse not only in content but in length, the way some people can sum up just about anything in a sentence and others keep adding details.
My favorite two:
(From Portuguese)
Mom, I am very happy here in Madrid these days and everything I see reminds me of you! I wish my eyes would bring everything I see to you. I love you, Alessandra.
(From Spanish)
Mom, you were, are and will always be what I most loved, love and will love in my life. C.E
Ironically, as I fell sick that afternoon and spent the next two days lying around in bed, it was my mother who took care of absolutely every detail. And it usually is, as it happens, my mother who watches out for me, who is blunt and honest with me, who listens to me, who constantly gives without expecting in return. It is inexplicable, but she really does know me better than most; I cannot fool her for a second. She is not without faults, of course, but I have learned to accept those and what is left is someone I admire for her courage and drive, and for her sense of humor. Some of my most intense laughing fits come from laughing with her.
A mother is a person who seeing there are only four pieces of pie for five people, promptly announces she never did care for pie. — Tenneva Jordan
So it isn’t Mother’s Day, but then again you don’t really need one specific day to celebrate your mother, do you?
December = extended family dinners, random decorations (which may or may not be too colorful, depending on your aesthetics), cinnamon wine and bad singing. It also is heavily related to gift-giving, though many have forgotten where the tradition comes from. Either way, I am usually partial to the DIY route (which I usually take) BUT, part of my greedy little consumerist self can’t help but lust after store-bought goodies.
A few such things:
NARS duo eyeshadow “Brume” & “Brousse”
NARS lip lacquer
NARS Tokaido Express nailpolish
Benefit BADgal plum mascara & black eyeliner pencil
I was a mere spring and half a summer away from
becoming flesh the day you laid out bread and milk
and sealed off your kitchen to inhale your final solution.
I didn’t even realize until my coffee chat with Bridget
the other day that you lived and died a full hundred
years later than I waywardly assumed you had.
Surely poets didn’t suicide themselves in 1963?
1863 – 1763 – I could see. But 1963?
Yet you did.
And I wonder was your life
like a grasshopper’s on a
windshield at sixty mph,
like an uprooted sapling’s who
can’t speak the foreign tongue
of discontinued seasons?
Hanging on for dear life
from the rafters of childhood,
from the meat hooks of love,
from the blackness of red tulips,
who knows what night you knew?
Ah, gone lady, had we been girls
of beach summers and winter woods
together, I would’ve shown you how to
laugh and wear your hat like starshine,
how to skip the flattest round stones
and joke about moons over tea,
every day a small miracle hanging
like children in park swings,
like bras in happy trees.
The weather is getting slightly colder now, enough to make me want to stay inside and curl up with a book with the curtains open to let the white light pour into my room. A little rain would be nice too, I love the sound against my window. But let’s go back to books. Were it not for the immense amount of assignments I need to take care of, I would be devouring all kinds of books; writing down beautiful phrases and looking up big words to incorporate into my vocabulary. For those of you who with little time this weekend to dedicate to reading, here is some book eye candy to get a little bit of that warm ‘I-have-an-entire-afternoon-of-reading-to-myself’ feeling.
