Alina's Adventures

Rock on, Bunica.

I don't believe spirits rest in peace, mom.

I believe you keep on dancing and giggling and getting lost when the sun hits your eyes.

I believe words will make sense again.

I believe there may be something worth saying.

I don't believe I will ever be able to say it all. Even if you had lived for 30 more years, I would never be able to say it all. Even if I knew you were about to die and I had the chance to tell you everything that mattered, I would say the same thing I said to you the day before you lied: "I love you."

And you would respond the same way you responded to my text: "I love you more."

What else, mama? Ce mai?

Yellow heirloom beans.

The Eldest's organic garden was his final project for the "official school year". As unschoolers, the unofficial year continues through the summer and we digest our experiences, camps, field trips, vacations, and activities as we would digest and discuss an epic tome by Charles Dickens. In a sense, they are equivalent.

Back to the garden, growing veggies organically is a challenge because it requires you to take the right route (as opposed to the easy route) to solve challenges and issues which arise. The wonderful part is that it allows us to study ecology in action- to learn from experience how every input affects the world around us, how every pesticide destroys more than we intended to destroy. The parallels to modern war are endless. The lessons in persistence and also endless- as are the opportunities to learn from more seasoned gardeners and older, wiser neighbors.

The Eldest used Botanical Interests' Bean Bush Pencil Pod Yellow Heirloom Seeds purchased at Manna Grocery in Tuscaloosa. He planted the bush yellow beans early this spring and by late April or early May, they started to flower. Stunning, delicate white hooded flowers.

Delicious Phaseolus vulgaris

Early this week, he harvested a basket of yellow beans (leaving a few bushes untouched because he is "saving seeds" for next year). 

Prophet carefully splits open a yellow bean to see the "peas". She was relieved that the colors lined up.

Gnome declares them delicious.

Tossed in salt, olive oil, parsley, and thyme and then broiled at 400 until soft. The Eldest- who likes to say he doesn't eat vegetables- polished off half the bowl of his own-grown beans. 

And then today, after brunch with Bunica and Ratpaw, we harvested another handful. I'm thinking about adding them to a summer stew with squash, dill, carrots, and a dollop of sour cream.

Playing with leftover concrete and clay.

We needed to use concrete in order to stabilize the Funky Little Free Library in the soil. After Hubs and the Eldest mixed a batch, there was enough leftover for a little play.

I poured concrete into old shoebox lids and various objects to which we then added plastic eggs (why not make a concrete change container or catch-all). Then added a few stones and a twig Prophet collected and painted earlier this spring. Plus a pinecone. 

This catch-all was poured into a plastic take-out box from Mr. Chen's. If you don't grease the container before pouring in the concrete you will have to use a blade to cut the container from the dried concrete. Grease first. Beeswax or petroleum jelly works great.

A piece of wood whittled by the Eldest made a nice hanging rack in this catch-all container.

A space for worry-dolls, a tealight holder, and an old brass chalice- who knows why things come together in a way that involves other things to make them whole?

Meanwhile, the kids made their own garden stones from various and sundry precious junk found around the house, including shells, marbles, rocks, and, yes, seed cones.

When Mary stopped by later, I was so concrete-crazy that we whipped out the clay. Always a good sport when it comes to crazy, Mary helped pour into ice trays and then we punched holes in the lemons with extra garbage bag closers (which we first greased with beeswax) and left the tacks and the concrete in the tray to harden. Of course there were some experiments as well.....

Venus de Milo XII

In addition to the lemon clay necklace charms which Gnome, Prophet, and Jenna painted, there were some hand-made necklace charms as well. 

And a little clay heart poured into leftover Valentine candy holders which now needs to be painted with acrylic and sealed with a lacquer or gloss. I'm waiting for the right words to come. 

If you are in Amsterdam...

Don't miss the exposition of "Accent From The Wound" by Remus Pușcariu and Alice Gancevici (my cousin). Remus and Alice also happen to be Gnome's godparents and I wish she could see their exhibition in person. I console myself with the thought that others will be there to witness and report on how Alice and Remus are expanding on the avant-guarde movements in Romanian theatre and arts.

Alice Gancevici (RO) and Remus Pușcariu (RO) form a collaborative duo. With a background in visual arts and theatre directing, their interest lies mainly in the critical, yet poetic reading of historical artifacts and their contemporary counterparts. They were participants in the MFA program at the Sandberg Institute and are involved in co-running Bucharest AiR, an artists’ residency in Bucharest.

Festival of Choices
Graduation Show of the Sandberg Institute
June 17-21 2015
Opening June 17, 6-9 pm

tegenboschvanvreden is very happy to announce the upcoming presentation of Alice Gancevici and Remus Pușcariu. Their exhibition Accent From The Wound is part of the Festival of Choices, the Graduation Show Master of Fine Arts of the Sandberg Institute, that takes place at different venues in Amsterdam.

Gancevici and Pușcariu focus on theatre, as a carrier of a very particular, rooted set of conventions. Theatre draws much of its cruxes (like any form of fiction) from what two centuries ago was to be named a willing suspension of disbelief — that process by which we ignore any resemblance to reality and allow ourselves to suspend our judgment of the implausibility of what is perceived. Between us and theatre there is something like a treaty by means of which we agree that what is exposed on stage, far from being dangerous, becomes domesticated, thus serving as an instrument of our power to act. As we agree to it, we gain the power to act by way of willful surrender.

The exhibition joins together several works, all dealing in different manners with issues orbiting the notion of control —of self and others— as experienced through the means of theatre and theatrical tropes applied in everyday conduct and decision-making. Present in the show are a deconstruction of obedience training in canines; a document of a re-enactment, pertaining to historically suppressed policies of oppressive regimes and minority population management; electro-activated muscles; and a staging of two actors in a repetitive attempt to escape the theatre by embodying the characters of an alpha and omega dog. 

The selection brings forth an abstraction of a broader research into power structures, structures for distribution of control/command or lack thereof, catastrophes (natural or so-called man-made), domestication, usage, conditioning, oppression and obedient matter. It’s purpose— to reflect on the supposedly goal-oriented nature.

Pessoa and Castaneda on socializations.

Gnome and Grandma Vicki at Lake Tuscaloosa.

CARLOS CASTANEDA: "The trick of socialization is to convince us that the descriptions we agree upon define the limits of the real world. What we call reality is only one way of seeing the world, a way that is supported by social consensus."

Prophet and the Eldest pose for piano recital photos.

FERNANDO PESSOA:"Civilization consists in giving an inappropriate name to something and then dreaming what results from that. And in fact the false name and the true dream do create a new reality. The object really does become other, because we have made it so. 

We manufacture realities. We use the raw materials we always used but the form lent it by art effectively prevents it from remaining the same."

A table made out of pinewood is a pine-tree but it is also a table." 

We sit down at the table not at the pine-tree…"

Meditations on the country of marriage...

[from my tarot reading at kentuck]

You are the known way leading always to the unknown,
and you are the known place to which the unknown is always
leading me back. More blessed in you than I know,
I possess nothing worthy to give you, nothing
not belittled by my saying that I possess it.

(Wendell Berry, "The Country of Marriage")

In the country of marriage, the only bureaucrats are persons who cannot bear to share an institution with others who threaten their formulas.

In the country of marriage, citizens wear rings as passports and those who wear rings act like Americans in the customs line.

Americans expect to receive special privileges by nature of their citizenship.

Sometimes I am ashamed to be a citizen of this country of marriage that defines itself by what it keeps out.

The country of marriage is always in motion. 

The movements that sustain it are the ones which begin with the cover drawn over two heads. The doors we close against other motions.

A wave is the way a hand moves against time. A wave is the way we wash our goodbye.

But what else is the wave in my eyes? What is a wave except maybe running away fast hoping water is strong enough to stop you?

In the country of marriage, there may be tourists. We may call these tourists "children."

We may believe these tourists owe certain duties to the soil ravaged by their enthusiasm. 

But a tourist is a tourist. A tourist is one whose feet seek the feel of foreign lands.  

What is a siren except beckoning and warning in the same breath?

What is a breath except the way air moves through one body and then another?

We are native nowhere. 

We are the fairy tale that gives rise to a foreign language. 

Our love is a lexicon against the world that says we must be this. We must be that.

As if marriage is a country we enter to please the world we are trying to escape.

We are inside the house of looking out for what comes in.

We are inside the country knowing others may wander through without tasting. The words are magic but the weather is common. The weather is nothing we can hold.