Week three tasks, part one
Okay, now I'm all hopped up on peanut butter-and-jelly saltines and tea with milk and sugar, because that's what my artist child liked or whatever and I've indulged as instructed. Actually, it's a nice sensation. I let myself eat whatever I want, but to intentionally eat and drink something to please the little girl I used to be feels good. I can tell she appreciates it. Though she's not crazy about the soymilk.
I went to work on the tasks in a notebook, but that felt like more work and less fun, so here I am at the computer again. I'll go with it.
Task 1:
Until I was 9 or 10, I shared a room with my sister with two twin beds, and floral wallpaper on a white background that I used to stare at a lot. I contemplated the repetitive pattern, the ribbons,the stray blossoms not caught in the repeating bouquets, the greens, the colors. Did these blooms all exist in nature? I was not convinced. But to this day I adore floral patterns on a white background. After an unfortunate furnace-cleaning incident involving hot water pouring from the radiators into every room while my family was out for the evening, the wallpaper came down. At my request the room was painted light purple with dark purple trim. My dad ran out of the lighter color, though, so one whole wall was painted Donny Osmond purple. It was hideous, but I told myself I liked it.
Interestingly, while I don't have a room of my own now per se, the bedroom with the most closet space is known as my dressing room. I also work out and do yoga in there. And on the walls is the most depressing baby shit tan floral wallpaper with horrid darker brown vertical stripes. It must come down. My favorite thing in there is the rug, a five foot round deep mossy green wool beauty with a dark gold Art Nouveau fillagree design. Must take care of those walls! The wallpaper brings shame to the rug's family.
Task 2:
Five traits I like in myself as a child. (Ew, I have to compliment myself. Especially my child self. Very hard.) Well, I was very inquisitive. I wanted to know the name of every color and every kind of bird. (One.) When I got to sing at school or in special choruses for kids who could carry a tune, I sang my little heart out. I am a real American patriot, though more like Lenny Bruce than a Fox News personality, and I know it's partly because I was eleven years old at the time of the bicentennial and I took to heart all the songs I got to learn for the gala celebrations. I'm choked up again. (Please God don't let it die.) (That's two.) Hmm. I loved loved loved to eat, and would pretty much devour anything they put in front of me. In the old days when the lunch ladies could coerce kids to eat their vegetables by not letting them go out to recess until their plates were clean, I would happily eat the cabbage or spinach of any kid on my row. (That's three.) I was really kind to kids who needed help and were embarrased about something. I thought I was an adult, but this still counts because my desire to help was genuine even if I didn't always see other kids as peers. And I loved and noticed every sensual pleasure - pj's and clean sheets after a bath, the sound of the AM radio singing thin static-y songs from the kitchen counter or the dashboard, the wind on my face as I swung as high as I could, the lonely smell of woodsmoke from outside on a drizzly day.
Task 3:
Five childhood accomplishments. Cripes now I'm wishing I was working in the notebook instead. 1) I learned to sew despite the fact that my mother was the teacher and she regularly shamed me in front of the whole class. 2) I won the awards for excellence in music and English as I "graduated" junior high (8th grade). 3) I finally did a back dive at swimming lessons after standing on the edge of the pool for what seemed like days considering it. Must have been around nine then. 4) I won an award for my fairy princess costume in the Halloween parade when I was five. I was wearing a pink tulle dress of my mother's from the fifties (with lots of pins in back so it would stay on) and some cardboard wings I begged her to help me make. I insisted on the color - a light moss/seafoam green - and when they were attached to the dress, I figured out that I could flap them a little if I squeezed my shoulder blades together. This I did with furtive but focused purpose as I walked by the judges' stand. I didn't want to appear too eager. (Wish I still knew how to pull that off.) I don't remember what I won. 5) Once when I was standing in the lunch line, a boy I disliked (because I thought he was a jerk) turned around - I don't know what I did to provoke him, maybe nothing at all - but he turned around, looked me right in the eye, wrinkled his face into an expression of sheer repugnance, and said, "You are so queer!" - which at the time meant weird and annoying. Without missing a beat, I started dancing a little in place and singing, "That's the way, uh-huh, uh-huh, I like it, uh-huh, uh-huh!" It was a proud moment and a seminal one. I knew, I mean I really knew, that I did not give a flying fuck what this kid thought of me. I was eleven.
Favorite childhood foods: Chocolate pudding, boiled cabbage with butter, cafeteria hamburgers, Thin Mints Girl Scout Cookies, raspberry sherbet in the form of something called "Circus Surprise" from the ding-dong cart, and (a bonus item, since I mentioned saltines and tea) watermelon sherbet from Friendly's.
That's enough for now. Maybe I will go play for awhile.
I went to work on the tasks in a notebook, but that felt like more work and less fun, so here I am at the computer again. I'll go with it.
Task 1:
Until I was 9 or 10, I shared a room with my sister with two twin beds, and floral wallpaper on a white background that I used to stare at a lot. I contemplated the repetitive pattern, the ribbons,the stray blossoms not caught in the repeating bouquets, the greens, the colors. Did these blooms all exist in nature? I was not convinced. But to this day I adore floral patterns on a white background. After an unfortunate furnace-cleaning incident involving hot water pouring from the radiators into every room while my family was out for the evening, the wallpaper came down. At my request the room was painted light purple with dark purple trim. My dad ran out of the lighter color, though, so one whole wall was painted Donny Osmond purple. It was hideous, but I told myself I liked it.
Interestingly, while I don't have a room of my own now per se, the bedroom with the most closet space is known as my dressing room. I also work out and do yoga in there. And on the walls is the most depressing baby shit tan floral wallpaper with horrid darker brown vertical stripes. It must come down. My favorite thing in there is the rug, a five foot round deep mossy green wool beauty with a dark gold Art Nouveau fillagree design. Must take care of those walls! The wallpaper brings shame to the rug's family.
Task 2:
Five traits I like in myself as a child. (Ew, I have to compliment myself. Especially my child self. Very hard.) Well, I was very inquisitive. I wanted to know the name of every color and every kind of bird. (One.) When I got to sing at school or in special choruses for kids who could carry a tune, I sang my little heart out. I am a real American patriot, though more like Lenny Bruce than a Fox News personality, and I know it's partly because I was eleven years old at the time of the bicentennial and I took to heart all the songs I got to learn for the gala celebrations. I'm choked up again. (Please God don't let it die.) (That's two.) Hmm. I loved loved loved to eat, and would pretty much devour anything they put in front of me. In the old days when the lunch ladies could coerce kids to eat their vegetables by not letting them go out to recess until their plates were clean, I would happily eat the cabbage or spinach of any kid on my row. (That's three.) I was really kind to kids who needed help and were embarrased about something. I thought I was an adult, but this still counts because my desire to help was genuine even if I didn't always see other kids as peers. And I loved and noticed every sensual pleasure - pj's and clean sheets after a bath, the sound of the AM radio singing thin static-y songs from the kitchen counter or the dashboard, the wind on my face as I swung as high as I could, the lonely smell of woodsmoke from outside on a drizzly day.
Task 3:
Five childhood accomplishments. Cripes now I'm wishing I was working in the notebook instead. 1) I learned to sew despite the fact that my mother was the teacher and she regularly shamed me in front of the whole class. 2) I won the awards for excellence in music and English as I "graduated" junior high (8th grade). 3) I finally did a back dive at swimming lessons after standing on the edge of the pool for what seemed like days considering it. Must have been around nine then. 4) I won an award for my fairy princess costume in the Halloween parade when I was five. I was wearing a pink tulle dress of my mother's from the fifties (with lots of pins in back so it would stay on) and some cardboard wings I begged her to help me make. I insisted on the color - a light moss/seafoam green - and when they were attached to the dress, I figured out that I could flap them a little if I squeezed my shoulder blades together. This I did with furtive but focused purpose as I walked by the judges' stand. I didn't want to appear too eager. (Wish I still knew how to pull that off.) I don't remember what I won. 5) Once when I was standing in the lunch line, a boy I disliked (because I thought he was a jerk) turned around - I don't know what I did to provoke him, maybe nothing at all - but he turned around, looked me right in the eye, wrinkled his face into an expression of sheer repugnance, and said, "You are so queer!" - which at the time meant weird and annoying. Without missing a beat, I started dancing a little in place and singing, "That's the way, uh-huh, uh-huh, I like it, uh-huh, uh-huh!" It was a proud moment and a seminal one. I knew, I mean I really knew, that I did not give a flying fuck what this kid thought of me. I was eleven.
Favorite childhood foods: Chocolate pudding, boiled cabbage with butter, cafeteria hamburgers, Thin Mints Girl Scout Cookies, raspberry sherbet in the form of something called "Circus Surprise" from the ding-dong cart, and (a bonus item, since I mentioned saltines and tea) watermelon sherbet from Friendly's.
That's enough for now. Maybe I will go play for awhile.
posted by eliza | 8:56 AM
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