Art to Choke the Constant Reader's Heart*

Last night I stayed up late to finish reading Duma Key, and the end was better than I had hoped. If you're familiar with the work of Stephen King, you know he frequently and affectionately addresses the person holding the material as "Constant Reader", an act which I find excruciatingly endearing. My research on the man himself indicates that he's a great believer in giving it all away, which elevates him from 'respectable human being' to 'downright huggable' in my book.

Duma Key centers around a favorite topic of mine -- art. Sketching, drawing, painting... the kind of things you do a lot when you're a stay-at-home parent, whether or not you're an artiste. We generally do not permit the use of colored pencils as Olivia finds them to be particularly tasty, but occasionally one of the kids will turn up with one in hand. This morning Nico plucked a red pencil from somewhere (fellow Constant Readers, it was RED, ha-ha) and asked for a big piece of paper. We sat together at the table and I watched him make a self portrait.

"Look, Mommy, I'm drawing Nico. Here are Nico's eyes, and this is Nico's nose... and here is Nico's smile. Nico has arms and legs... and here is Nico's head, and look at his nice haaair. Look, Mommy, that's Nico."


Once again, there goes my chest. Caving inward.

Late note on the picture: when Nico draws faces, there are usually three eyes. First two vertical (open), then one horizontal (closed) to the left. When you look at this face as though the eyes are closed and the boy has long lashes, it's really a very accurate depiction of our Snuffy.

* Partial title theft from Henry Rollins Art to Choke Hearts, because you have to use that one when the opportunity presents itself.

Romantic comedy

Frank: Hey honey bunny, thanks for coming to Peru. Really, thanks. I know it wasn't exactly easy for you here, but I want you to know how much I appreciate it.

Me: No problem, Love. I know it meant a lot to you. I'm happy we did it.

Frank: I can't believe how tough you were. It sucks getting out of bed in the morning when it's only 50 degrees inside the house, and you have to wear a scarf all day and always have on a hoodie. You're a trooper.

Me: You know it!

Frank: Whoever said my wife doesn't have any balls, they don't know a fucking thing. You definitely have some balls, no doubt.

Me: Honey, if your wife had balls for real, I'm not sure that's the kind of thing you'd want to go around advertising.

Frank: Fuck it. You've got cojones!

Gracias, Mamá

While I was in Peru, my mother-in-law would often cook lunch for us in her kitchen. Then she would hop a taxi to our apartment and we'd sit around our dining table for a few hours, just talking and enjoying the delicious meal she'd prepared. Rosa would arrive with her canasta (Spanish for 'basket') and a bottle of Inca Kola, and though I wouldn't openly admit to it at the time, I was just as interested in the canasta as I was in the cloth-wrapped pots of food cradled within. It was pure awesomeness. Throw-back colors, hand-crafted, extremely sturdy, and put to obvious good use. I longed for one of my own.

A few months went by, and I decided I couldn't leave Lima without canastas. But the hunt for this particular variety proved more challenging than you can imagine. I scoured every small market in my district to no avail. I also searched larger markets - the kind that are the size of a football field and two or three stories tall, where you can buy a whole bloody chicken or the head of a hog and then march upstairs for a wristwatch and a three-piece suit. All that variety and still no luck. Sure, there were other, lesser canastas, but not like the one on which I'd set my heart.

On the day we were flying out from LIM, my mother-in-law said she would meet us at Ciudad de Dios (one of the markets in her district) to give canasta hunting one final go. We searched for an hour and found nothing, so we decided to bail and get some lunch. Shuffling down the crowded sidewalk, I saw Rosa talk to a passing stranger. Then she turned around and said we were going back inside. Why? It turns out this random lady had the right kind of canasta tucked under her arm, and had tipped Rosa off to a vendor on the lower level who had what we were looking for. We pushed our way back through the marketplace and there, hiding on a shelf 15 feet off the ground in the way-back of the downstairs of Ciudad de Dios, we came upon a secret stash of old school canastas. I bought every last one the woman had (five, yay!), and walked out of that place happier than anyone has ever been.



And this... this is the basket that sparked the obsession. A little gift from my mother-in-law, and it means more to me than anything else I've ever smuggled home from a foreign land. It's Rosa's canasta... the canasta... and now it's my canasta. I don't have a lot of prized possessions, but I can honestly say that if anything ever happened to this item, you'd find me in tears. Yesterday it did a dandy job as my beach bag, and it's far cooler than any of my previous farmers market stuff-holders. To me, this isn't just a basket. It's a memory, and I love it.

Sorry I'm late, Mr. Lipton...

Months ago, when my own writing tapered off, my sister put up James Lipton's famous Inside the Actors Studio list of questions for all the blogettes to answer. Liz is on vacation right now. To give her something to read while Drew is driving, here are my answers. Hold on to your muffins...

What is your favorite word? Love (funny side note: Liz's answer was 'Vacation')
What is your least favorite word? Blind
What turns you on? Courage
What turns you off? Snobbery
What sound or noise do you love? My kids having their own conversation
What sound or noise do you hate? Chewing, especially gum or crunchy things
What is your favorite curse word? Shitballs
What profession other than your own would you like to attempt? Race car driver
What profession would you not like to do? Politician
If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates? Oh good, you made it. So my directions were okay, then?

Alrighty, I believe that officially catches me up. Have a great weekend, y'all.

My son, the reader. My daughter, the ripper.

Now that I'm constantly walking around with a book in front of my face, Nico is growing more and more curious about what's stealing all his attention. You know I'm reading Duma Key (still), and I also plucked The Purpose Driven Life from one of my mother's bookshelves (unexpectedly God-based, but interesting nonetheless). What you probably do not know is that my sister gave my mom a fun little bit o' reading material the other day... a copy of Relentless by Dean Koontz. I quickly picked it up to see what it's all about, and have been ignoring poor Stephen King ever since.

So. My son. He loves books. Not yet able to read for himself, he is constantly choosing books for us to curl up with, and that's just fine by me. Olivia, on the other hand, could not care less about reading and prefers to - whoops! hi Mommy! - accidentally fall into my lap and - oh, no! rip! - brazenly dismember her brother's beloved stories page by page right before his very eyes. Oh, we brawl, people. We brawl.

But back to Nico. Yesterday evening he said he wanted to sleep in my room while I read him a story. I tucked him under my covers and after we finished laughing about how Ernie annoys Bert, he pointed to Relentless which was sitting on my night table. I opened it and said, "Well... no pictures, and it's scary." He didn't care. I leaned back against my pillows and he put his head on my shoulder. I read aloud (omitting anything remotely scary) from my grown-up book and he was fast asleep five minutes later. I lay there for another half an hour, half reading to myself, half wondering how I wound up with such a remarkable little boy at my side.

Readin'. Runnin'. Beerin'.

That's what I've been doing for the past two or so months. I really needed a break from the writing. Please forgive. I have been lending my writing time to other excellent hobbies (see post title) and, while this poor page has suffered horribly, I am happy to report that I have got three books going at once and am thoroughly enjoying a pretty much constant runner's high.

Additionally, I am happily basking in the NJ heat. Not sunning, necessarily, but warming myself to the bone. It's fantastic.