Here’s my haiku for today, on the topic of Birds:

It’s Haiku Friday again. For the past twenty years or so, it has been my practice to write one haiku every day. Every Friday I share a haiku here, about whatever topic I happen to choose. I invite you to write a haiku on this topic too, and share it with me and the readers of this blog. Just write it in the Comments below. The only rules are: 1) your haiku must be about the named topic; 2) you must follow the 5-7-5 syllable format; 3) no obscenities or hate (I will delete those). That’s it.

At the end of each month I’ll gather up the haikus in the “Haiku Comments” that meet the criteria and pick one at random in a drawing, and send the winner of the drawing one of my e-books: your choice of Haiku for the Seasons I, or Haiku for the Seasons II.

Technorati Tags: haiku, writing, syllable, birds, eagles, owls, peacocks, myths
Add to: | Technorati | Digg | del.icio.us | Yahoo | BlinkList | Spurl | reddit | Furl |

My high school art teacher, Mr. Imus, was an irascible sort who never sugar-coated his praise or his criticism.  He didn’t like me. This was unusual because all my teachers had always liked me. I was a straight-A student and always turned my homework in on time. This was not because I was a brown nose. It was because I found homework – all schoolwork – very easy.

Art was easy for me too. I had a good sense of color and design, I could capture likenesses – I just didn’t understand why Mr. Imus didn’t like me. With the other students, he would laugh and joke around, or he would discuss art with them and treat their opinions with respect. With me, he said little and what he said seemed to be encased in ice. My projects always came back graded “B” with no comments.

At the beginning of the year, he gave us a year-long assignment. We were to create something – anything – a painting, sculpture, drawing, or whatever we wanted, using any kind of media we chose.  This something was to express what was unique and original about us. “Why were you born?” said Mr. Imus. “Your project should answer that question.”

I don’t think Mr. Imus truly expected a bunch of sixteen-year-olds to produce works of great originality or beauty, or come remotely close to answering his grandiose question. But that was no reason not to ask it.

Because I was a quick study and easily mastered school subjects, I had developed a bad habit: procrastination.  So I didn’t start work on the year-long project until just a couple of weeks before it was due. I didn’t even think about it. How hard could it be?

When I did begin the project, I still wasn’t thinking about it much. One day when I was doing algebra homework at a friend’s house, gossiping and giggling as we “worked”, I kept us both further amused by doodling along the sides of my paper. My doodles were quick sketches of my friend’s new kitten.  The kitten was a striped creature full of mischief and grace, and my doodles must have caught some of her goofy spirit, for it leaped off the page. The kitten gamboled, she sneered, she preened, she looked wise, and most of all she looked very funny. My friend went into transports of delight over the doodles, and I was proud of (and secretly surprised by), how good they were. Good enough for even Mr. Imus to be impressed by them.

I decided that my kitten doodles would be my year’s project. But since I couldn’t submit them on the margins of an algebra paper, I had to come up with another media. The obvious choice was pen-and-ink drawing, but I felt that wasn’t original enough. Recently I had become interested in the art of tapestry, although so far all I’d done was look and admire – I’d never tried any kind of needlework. But how hard could it be? 

I got my mother to take me to the fabric store to buy yarn and needlepoint canvas. I didn’t pay any attention to the different kinds of canvas; I just bought what I thought looked right. I paid the same lack of attention to the different kinds of yarn and needles available; I got the yarn in colors that “called” to me, and a needle was a needle, right?  I didn’t buy a frame to hold the canvas, or any instructions on how to block it. I didn’t see why that should be necessary.

When I got my tools home I cut the canvas up into six different squares, for my six different kitten poses. The edges of the canvas were a little rough and uneven and starting to fray already, but I’d fix that later, I thought. I transferred my sketches to the nubbly canvas – it was harder than I expected, but the kitten still looked goofy and mysteriously graceful. Then I started to stitch.  I didn’t read anything about different kinds of needlepoint stitches, I just began pushing my needle in one hole and out another. I mean, how hard could it be?

Hard. Really hard. I must have stitched those six kittens at least twenty times each, trying to turn that intractable yarn into sneers and whiskers, grace and mischief.  Every spare minute I had I spent working on those kittens, as the due date came closer and closer.

Well, I learned tapestry making the hard way, but I did learn. When they were done, the night before they were due, the needlepoint kittens were even better than the original doodles, and I knew I had created something truly magical. The only problem was that I had no time left to “fix” the frayed and ragged edges, and since the canvas had not been stretched at the beginning, some of my kittens had begun to droop in the middle. And the only way to fix that would be to start all over. 

They’d have to do as they were, but I was not that worried – I knew how good those kittens were. I knew because my artist’s eye told me so.

When it was my turn in class to display my project, I tacked the kitten canvases up on the wall with thumbtacks.  I could hear some of the students saying complimentary things (“those are so cool!”).  Mr. Imus, however, said nothing. He just looked at the kittens for a long time.

Finally, he turned to me to deliver his verdict. “You fulfilled this assignment perfectly,” he began. “Your piece does express what is unique about you.  And it makes me furious.”

“These could have been the best art I’ve seen from a high-school student,” he continued. “Those kittens are original and beautiful and make us want to laugh with joy. They make us want to keep looking at them – until we see the sloppy technique and lazy presentation that you have chosen for them.  Here’s what I see now when I look at them – I see an artist who does not respect her art or her talent. I see someone who does not have the courage to live up to her gifts. I no longer want to laugh at your kittens; now I want to cry.”

And with that, he walked out of the room, slamming the door behind him, leaving us all – especially me – stunned.

This memory from a long time ago still makes me cringe when it pops up, as it still does sometimes, whenever I have an attack of the lazies. Maybe Mr. Imus was too harsh with me; after all, I was only sixteen.  But I don’t think so.  By dismantling my arrogance and forcing me to face the truth, Mr. Imus nipped tendencies in the bud that could have crippled me all my life.  I am eternally grateful that he didn’t like me. He respected my art even when I didn’t, and that was enough.

Technorati Tags: high school, teacher, homework, art, straight A's, respect, procrastination, lazy
Add to: | Technorati | Digg | del.icio.us | Yahoo | BlinkList | Spurl | reddit | Furl |

I wrote a whole book about my dog (www.dogparkdiary.net).  It’s about my current dog, a beagle named Goody. But I’ve had many dogs, and don’t they deserve a book too?  Maybe, but I just haven’t had time to write them all yet.  So instead I’ll write about one of them – my first dog – here in my blog.

My first dog was a dachshund named Zipper. My parents gave him to me the Christmas I was 5. Zipper was the inspiration for my first published work – a poem I wrote at 6, published in Jack and Jill Magazine. (My mother sent it in – I wasn’t into fame back then.)  The poem went like this:

Zipper and I had many adventures together during the eight years he was alive. I was a loner kid, always looking for hiding places where I could be alone to dream.  But I wasn’t really alone, because Zipper came along. One of our favorite places was inside the thick wild blackberry patch that grew across the street from our house. We made a trail through the thicket, underneath the canes, and hollowed out a circular space where we could curl up together. Protected by the tangle of overhead thorns, with the light filtering through the briar, I would tell Zipper thrilling stories. What a fine listener he was!  

He died when I was 13, killed on the road one dark rainy night.  Even today it hurts my heart to remember the grief of that night. Some day I will write about it.  But not today. 

Technorati Tags: first dog, stories, inspiration, poem, published, favorite places
Add to: | Technorati | Digg | del.icio.us | Yahoo | BlinkList | Spurl | reddit | Furl |

I like telling my own stories, and I equally like hearing other people’s stories. Sometimes on Twitter (http://twitter.com/storykim) or my Facebook status (http://profile.to/kimpearson) I  ask a question, inviting people to share their experiences. I love what I get back!

One of my tweets said “I bought my first car from my grandmother for $200. Even though an old-lady car, it was liberation. What was your first car?”

People remember their first car, they really do. One woman wrote about an orange Gremlin that seemed to have a death wish; another wrote of her lime-green Maverick which she called an Easter Egg on Wheels; another of her Fiat Spider which made all the boys jealous but she never let them drive it; another of her 1966 Karman Ghia convertible that was so spectacular it literally stopped traffic; another of her 1963 Corvair Monza which proved that Ralph Nader was right – it had a habit of flipping over; and my favorite story of an M&M green 1975 Rabbit named Thumper, but which the boys called “Humper” behind her back.

I got to wax eloquent over my first car too, which was a 1957 Buick Roadmaster, 2-toned blue and white with push-button windows and velour upholstery – very high-tech for its time. Huge fins, felt like driving a tank. Even though it was 12 years old when I bought it from my grandmother, it only had 26,000 miles on it. It had a bad habit of overheating, but I think that's because I always forgot to put water in the radiator. I also never thought to change the oil, but what can I say, I was a teenager. I sold it in order to pay for airline tickets to visit my first true love, who went to college in New York (I was in Seattle), for his homecoming weekend. Girls in love have little sense of proportion. And to my everlasting regret, I have no pictures of the Roadmaster. I do have pictures of the boyfriend, who although he turned out to be less than he promised, had a real cute bod. He too overheated regularly.

I’d love to hear more stories – will you share?

Technorati Tags: stories, twitter, facebook, first car, share
Add to: | Technorati | Digg | del.icio.us | Yahoo | BlinkList | Spurl | reddit | Furl |

I was once an Australian aborigine.

            I was lying on a couch with my arm outstretched to my side, being asked yes and no questions by a past-life regression therapist.

            I was found by white missionaries, clinging to the breast of my dead mother, a victim of one of the worst droughts Australia had ever known, caused, no doubt, by the white man’s incessant clearing to make room for farms and roads and cities. 

            I was trying to keep my arm steady, but I could only do so when the answer was yes.

            I was the last of my small tribe, the only one who didn’t die in the drought, the only one who could start the tribe again, even though I had been too young to learn any of our stories. 

            I was asked “Europe?” and my arm plummeted to my side, but when asked “Australia?” it held steady and firm — even though I didn’t want it to be Australia, I was pulling for France or China, don’t ask me why.

            I was raised by the white missionaries to be a good native servant, but in the darkness of the nights other “native servants” whispered my true destiny in my ears.

            I was asked if I was a female and my arm went down, nope I’m a boy.

            I was told by other aborigines that I must marry as soon as I became a man and sow my seed into as many young women as possible, so my tribe could live again.  But I was dead of “fever” in 1912, at the age of 15, too young to marry, too young even to fornicate, and anyway the missionaries had warned me about fornication and how it would rot my body and my soul.

            I was stunned, and yes somewhat frightened, when I researched Aborigine history on the internet and found that there was indeed a huge drought in Australia in the late 1890s, and many aborigine tribes were wiped out, a fact I had not known before, since I knew nothing about Australian history.

            I was the last of my tribe, and when I died, we were gone.

Technorati Tags: Australian aborigine, tribe, white man, missionaries, drought, writing, story
Add to: | Technorati | Digg | del.icio.us | Yahoo | BlinkList | Spurl | reddit | Furl |

Peas and carrots! To this day, the thought of peas and carrots served together makes my gorge rise and my blood pressure soar. Peas and carrots were an early battleground in the long war between my mother’s taste and my own.

To my mother, raised poor during the Depression, being able to buy already canned vegetables was a mark of luxury. She could open a can, pour the contents into a pan and just heat it on the stove. What a miracle! No picking, washing, shelling, peeling, chopping, boiling, bottling or capping. No sweating in a hot kitchen on a summer afternoon. Just poof and abracadabra, your children are served a nourishing vegetable in a mere five minutes.

In 1959 no one cared about any sodium or preservatives packed into those cans. No one cared, either, how awful they tasted.  At least my mother didn’t seem to care, because no matter how much my brother and I complained, canned vegetables appeared on the dinner table every night. Canned green beans that tasted like soft tin, canned creamed corn that tasted like gritty mush, canned beets that stained your teeth, canned spinach with a dark metallic taste and the texture of slug slime, and my least favorite of all, the dreaded canned peas and carrots medley.

The mushy, pillowy peas were bad enough, but the carrots – no words can describe their awful texture and worse taste. Even their shape was nauseating – tiny uniform cubes that could never have come from a real carrot.

I hid peas and carrots underneath my mashed potatoes; I swept them surreptitiously into my napkin; I fed them to the dog (which never worked because as soon as they hit his mouth he spit them out on the floor – he was no dummy); I transferred them to my brother’s plate and threatened him with evil looks that promised torture if he complained; and finally, when she just would not stop serving those cubes and pillows of hell, I graduated to outright rebellion. I simply refused to eat them, no matter what. I made a principle out of canned peas and carrots, a principle I defended with 10 year old fervor.

I even wrote a story about a girl who died rather than betray her right to her own individual taste. It was an affecting story, heavy on funeral details. The poor child lay nestled in a small pink coffin, surrounded by pink rosebuds. Beside the coffin sat her mother, weeping over her dead child, so sorry now that she had ruined her daughter’s short life by making her eat canned peas and carrots.

Technorati Tags: peas, carrots, individual taste, story, writing
Add to: | Technorati | Digg | del.icio.us | Yahoo | BlinkList | Spurl | reddit | Furl |

Imbolc is an old European festival celebrated February 2nd. In Catholic tradition this date is known as Candlemas, and is sacred to Saint Brigid. In popular culture it has come down to us as Groundhog’s Day.

This holiday marks the first stirring of the seeds, deep within the womb of earth. Nature is beginning to wake up. The days are visibly longer. There is a sense of freshness in the air, and a feeling of possibility. Imbolc is the traditional time to set new intentions and begin new projects for the coming year.

Here’s an activity to do at Imbolc, to help you seed your intentions. In my family we call it Intentional Beans.

You will need a small pot, some dirt, a packet of seeds (I recommend Scarlet Runner Beans, as they are easy to grow), marker pens or paint, glue, some beads or feathers or ribbons, and a little slip of paper. Decorate your pot however you want, using paint, beads, feathers, ribbons, or whatever you want. Simple or elaborate, make it beautifully yours. On a little slip of paper write your intention — such as good health, or get an exciting job, or move to a new house, or find the love of my life — or any of a zillion others. Roll the little paper into a ball about the size of a seed. In the pot put your dirt, your intention “seed” and some seeds. Put the pot where it will get natural light, and water it.

Watch your intentions grow. When warm enough, plant your beans outside. Every time you look at your plant, you will be reminded of what you intend to make manifest in your life.

Technorati Tags: festival, tradition, Groundhog's Day, spring, seeds, intentions
Add to: | Technorati | Digg | del.icio.us | Yahoo | BlinkList | Spurl | reddit | Furl |

Recently I had a strange experience. I’ve been pondering it ever since. I woke abruptly around 4:30 am, because I thought I heard someone call my name. I sat up in bed, disoriented. No one around except my dog Goody – and Goody too was sitting up with her ears perked and obviously listening to something. Then I “heard” – not exactly heard with my ears, but sort of in my mind – my grandmother’s voice. She said, “When I was your age …” and then nothing more. It was very plain and it was definitely her voice. At this point Goody growled. I started rationalizing this as a particularly vivid dream and pooh-poohing my discomfort, but still I turned on the light, because it was kinda spooky, you know? And then I “heard” her voice again, only this time it really did seem like it came from across the room, not in my mind at all. Like I really heard it with my ears. She said again, “When I was your age …” This is when Goody jumped off the bed and ran out of the room. That’s the end of the actual experience. Grandma’s voice sounded quite happy – she often sounded kind of chirpy. I got the impression that she was trying to reassure me about something. So I’ve been thinking about my grandmother, who I was never close to, and actually didn’t really like all that much. Why did I have this experience? What was Grandma trying to tell me, or what was I trying to tell myself through my memory of my grandmother? Then I thought – I am slow sometimes – that maybe I should explore exactly what she said, “When I was your age.” So I asked myself, what was Grandma doing when she was 59? She was born in November 1903, so when she was 59 it was 1962-63. What happened then? Then it hit me – my grandfather died in June of 1963, when Grandma was 59 ½ — exactly the age I am now. He died after years of incapacity due to a series of strokes. His last year was spent in a nursing home. I’m sure it was a hard time for my grandmother, taking care of him, and I’m equally sure that his death was a relief to her, as well as a grief. So why would she sound happy when she said “when I was your age” and what was the point of telling me this? Then I had another aha – his death set my grandmother free. She married him when she was only 16, and they worked damn hard all their married life. When he died she was still energetic, and still very beautiful. She had his life insurance and a bunch of money through a lucky investment. When she was 60, about 6 months after his death, she embarked on a series of world tours, cruises, etc, traveling with one of her many friends. Later she got married not once, but twice, and both marriages were pretty happy and lasted nearly 20 years each! She lived all over the world, she had friends from Australia to England to Bermuda. She seemed to always be having a glorious time. So this is what I think: I think my grandmother was telling me that my whole life is in front of me. I think she was telling me that I’m being silly to think I’m old at nearly 60 – just think what she did in the last 40 years of her life. Furthermore, I think she was really there, in my bedroom that morning. If that makes me a whack-job, so be it.

Technorati Tags: story, grandmother, life, memory, ghost
Add to: | Technorati | Digg | del.icio.us | Yahoo | BlinkList | Spurl | reddit | Furl |

Holiday food traditions – aren’t they great? For as many Christmases as I can remember, we have had roast beef and Yorkshire Pudding for Christmas dinner. For those of you without British forebears, Yorkshire Pudding is a plain savory-batter pudding made of cream, flour, and eggs, baked in the same pan you cook the roast beef in, so it partakes of the flavor of the drippings. You cut it in squares and pour rich gravy over it. It’s not so good for the waistline or the cholesterol, but the taste buds love it.

Yorkshire Pudding comes from – where else – Yorkshire, England.  We can trace our particular recipe back seven generations now, over 150 years.  For the past couple of years, my daughters have cooked the pudding.  They learned how from my mother (I’m not a domestic sort of person, so the cooking part skipped me, although I’m good at eating it.) My mother learned from her mother, my grandmother, who was born in England but raised in America, and she told us how she learned how to make the pud from her mother, my great-grandmother, born in 1865 in Lincolnshire, who learned to make Yorkshire Pudding from her mother – who was born around 1840 and came from Yorkshire (finally!)  And although no one knows where my great-great-grandmother got the recipe from, I think it’s a good bet she got it from her mother. 

Yes, that’s only six generations, and I said seven – but I now have two grandchildren who ate Yorkshire Pudding for Christmas dinner this year, and in about fifteen years or so, they too will be taught the recipe, and it’s my hope that they too will serve their children this dish on Christmas. So, seven generations and counting, tied together through pudding.

Yorkshire Pudding is a common everyday dish in England, nothing special (British cooking rarely is.)  It’s bland and thick and was invented because it was cheap and filling.  It’s not something I’d want to eat every day, or even more than once a year.  But on that one day, nothing tastes as good as Yorkshire Pudding to me.  Because we are eating history.

Technorati Tags: traditions, Yorkshire Pudding, England, history
Add to: | Technorati | Digg | del.icio.us | Yahoo | BlinkList | Spurl | reddit | Furl |

Here is the smell of trees, dusty and sweet as dirt, and the smell of an August sun beating through the branches, a hot smell like strawberries too soft to eat. The trees cluster thick along the twisty length of the Skykomish River, high in the Cascade Mountains. Our father fishes for rainbow trout, wearing hip boots and scientifically casting his line, and mother hunts for her can opener while she sits behind him on a blanket. The wild Skykomish dances likes Russians over the rocks. My brother and I plunge into the icy swirling waters and wade upstream in the shallows, lurching from rock to rock. We grab the slippery rocks for balance and shriek with laughter because this risky strategy does not often work and we are soon drenched and shivering. When our stinging legs turn numb, we ride fallen tree branches hanging low over the river. They are limber and bouncy and make fine horses, and the neighs of my brother’s conjured horse can be heard as far away as the Drop Inn Tavern in a nearby logging town.

Technorati Tags: trees, dirt, August sun, Skykomish River, Cascade Mountains
Add to: | Technorati | Digg | del.icio.us | Yahoo | BlinkList | Spurl | reddit | Furl |