childhood

Exhaustion… Taken Over… Brain…

There are those wonderful times when you’re truly too tired to think. Your brain is full of this low, not unpleasant, fuzzy sound. For some reason, as I think of this sound now – it’s creeping up on me even as I write – I imagine that it is the snores of the little mouse that runs all day on it’s little wheel to keep our brains going. Or perhaps it is a hamster. No, mice are cuter than hamsters.

The feeling of being this exhausted, both mentally and physically, is wonderful in my opinion. This feeling holds memories for me, all of them precious: the long drive home from Disneyland that year when there was so much traffic on the way home that I fell asleep and slept through the three hour ride and was carried into my grandparents’ house awake, but pretending to still be asleep because it was so much more comfortable; the memory of every horrid migraine I’ve had and the way I’ve fallen into an exhausted, relieved sleep at the end of the long period of sleeplessness due to the pain; the memories of falling into an exhausted sleep after a particularly enjoyable, but quite long, school trip.

As I’ve confessed, my brain is approaching levels of chronic fuzzyness at the moment, and so I shall have to postpone the writing exercises that I was planning on beginning tonight. Procrastination – it is indeed a devilish instinct, is it not?

Little Stories

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about children’s books. When you’re a child, the books you remember most are the ones that you’ve either read with your parents over and over again, or else they’re the ones that tell about everyday events, things you can relate to. For instance, I remember this book I read again and again as a girl, a book with three whole chapters! I felt so proud of myself, reading a book with chapters – it was a book about a little girl going to school; how her lessons are harder and how she plays hopscotch with her friend and how she makes friends with a boy who’s always picking on her.

I’ve been wondering though, how you go about writing a children’s book. They’re often so simple on the surface, so rudimentary and easy to read and sometimes even so mundane – and yet, the good ones are enchanting. You never forget the books you’ve read as a child. But how does a writer go about writing a children’s book that could be published? How do you write a children’s book that’s good enough to be something you charge for and isn’t just a story that you tell your own kids?

It can’t be as easy as it would seem, writing a children’s book.

Peanuts

Growing up in Israel, I had to endure children who only knew who Snoopy was. Nobody here knows of Linus’s blanket, Lucy’s mean spirit or Violet’s vanity. No one here knows anything more about this wonderful comic-world than Snoopy’s dance steps. They don’t know of the ice that nearly crushed his house [he was lured out with a pizza] and they don’t know that he has a Van Gogh in his doghouse and they surely don’t know that he fell in love with a girl beagle with long ears but that her father didn’t let them marry because he’s an “obedience-school dropout.”

Why do I know these things? In a generation where Peanuts was still in the Sunday comics for a few years but no more than that? Well, I know because I still have all my mom’s, dad’s and aunt’s Peanut books. They all cost ninety-nine cents back then, it says so right on the cover. I’m super careful with all these books because I love them, I adore them, I know half the comics in them by heart. At least half. I know of the dandelions on Charlie Brown’s pitcher’s mound, I know of Linus’s crush for his teacher – which was weird because at first he just found her odd and kept telling about the changes she wanted in her salary. I know about the Great Pumpkin and how Linus ruined his chances at being school president because he told everyone how on Halloween night the Great Pumpkin rises out of the pumpkin patch.

Can you tell that I have a bit of an obsessive love for the Peanutes gang?

Frisbee

Some misunderstandings I understand.
Some mistakes make perfect sense
And I sense that they’re innocent and harmless,
Though how can I get you to harness
Your emotions when you’re high strung,
When you’re stung by the bee
The bee that doesn’t like me.

Can you dance with me, Madam,
Can you hold my hand, dear?
I miss you so much and I fear…
I fear that you’re lost, or that I lost my way
In the murky ocean, can’t get back to the bay.

In my hand there’s an image
Of happier times, yes there were some.
Some wonderful wonderful days,
When we gazed onto the vast horizon
With chocolate cupcakes and candles and a breeze.
How did I lose my frisbee back then?
How did the tubes come into our lives?
Oh why can’t we just live in hives?

Can you dance with me, Madam,
Can you hold my hand, dear?
Embrace me all night and all day and all year
And all of my life, never leave my side
Even when I say “go away”
Please stay on as my guide.

Written in August, 2008. Haven’t looked at it since. Seems more like lyrics than like a poem, so please tolerate the lack of obvious rhythm, because there is one, it just only works in my head.

Comfort Books

There is a particular type of book – I suppose it must be very individual for each person, but generally this type of book is either a favorite novel, well thumbed and read many times, a book from childhood with a silly story but beautiful writing, or sometimes even just a Peanuts comic-book from the sixties. These books are comfort, at least to me.
When I’m feeling horrible, or just down and sad for no reason, all I need is to pick up a book like this, tuck myself into bed, and read for a couple hours.
The yellow pages seem the most beautiful thing in the world and the crinkle as I turn them is like music to my ears. The smell – ah, the smell! I sometimes literally pause in my reading and bury my nose in the spine, sniffing up the memories of childhood, when I first read the book, or the countless bus-rides and walks to school when I read it, or even just the memory of being exactly where I’m sniffing, curled up in my bed, just a few months or years beforehand.
Some people have comfort foods – ice-cream, chocolate, warm milk. I have comfort books.

Original Barbie

Did you know that once upon a time, Barbie was a red-head? She was, indeed. She had red hair, shortish, only down to her neck. She had dark eyes, not blue. She was super-duper thin of course, but that’s just how it is, I suppose.

Skipper, Barbie’s sister or friend or something, was the blond one. She was shorter, and she had the long blond hair and blue eyes. Sometime over the years, Barbie became her sister apparently, and only her chest seemed to keep growing – ah yes, Skipper was completely flat-chested.

Also, all the original Barbie clothes were properly adorable. They weren’t flashy, they weren’t made of plastic material and they didn’t have velcro. No, the original clothing was all real cloth, with miniature zippers and buttons and real pleats in the skirts, and a real shine to the cocktail dresses. All the shoes fit properly and were actually sturdy. Those clothes were so beautiful.

The reason I know all this is because I’m sentimental, overly so, and I actually have the same Barbie-box that my mom had when she was a girl. It’s tucked away deep under my desk, but once in a while I delve into it out of curiosity and actually envy Miss Redhead for her clothing.