Nouvelle Voiture

Oooh, ooh!!!! Hulk forgot.

New wagon to roll to the airport for trip to Baby.

Yay big blue box-mobile!!!!!

Terra Differentia

Hulk is tired today. Trrrrd. This past weekend was a big race weekend and there was a great deal of the pedaling of the bicycles. In general, actually, since TheBigScarySchoolhouse let out, Hulk has been on his bike for hours and hours, watching his legs grow, his torso shrink and his tan lines become ever more ridiculous.

Yesterday Hulk and his teammate Kosher Matt From Boston won a race together (KMFB 1st, Hulk 2nd) with perfect teamwork. It was Hulk's funnest day on his bike in awhile. See picture for fun evidence. The masked man in front is Hulk, winning the field sprint for second place ahead of his charging breakaway companions.



Today, Baby went on one of her grand adventures, up hill and down dale on her very yellow bicycle. Then she parked, and hiked, and dodged bears and Elk, chatted up a genuinely wiley coyote, gave the slip to a gaggle of Japanese tourists and all in all covered about 100k on her bike and a dozen or so on foot. Hulk marvels.... when he is on his bike all day he calls it training and performs all manner of silly ritualistic bits if neurotic athlete self-care. Baby, on the other hand, doesn't seem aware that there is anything unusual about being in a more or less constant state of aerobic activity and therefore just gets on with here day, sans fanfare. Kind of like the way she approaches her gift as a writer.

Hulk and Piggie had earthbound adventures of a different sort today. They began weeding and preparing the community garden plot that Baby signed us up for. Dirt and rakes and plans of Future Family Fun (TM). A happy Piggie and a sleepy Hulk.

And a bit of a rambling post, but that's the way when one hasn't kept up in awhile.

-n&c-

8 Days A Week

Baby is writing tonight simply to express her appreciation for Hulk. The countdown is on; in a long week (8 more days), she'll be waiting by the Arrivals gate in Alberta. ("Alberta, let your hair hang low"...Poor Baby is bald, so someone has to).

Hulk has been very supportive of Baby's summer camp experience, which has looked like listening to her work woes, coaching her through awkward social situations, and being her No. 1 Fan.

Thanks, Hulk. Baby loves you.

{Eww! Gross!} {Gak!}

Yeah, well. She does.

& comes to Banff

& missed Baby. Missed Baby so hard and so much that he bid adieu to Sophisto Cat, and rode the rails all the way to the Rockies.

There are advantages to being an invisible (imaginary) cat, like not having to be kennelled. Sitting in first class. Cuddling up with whoever you want. Not paying for meals.

There are disadvantages, too. Baby gets that being invisible (imaginary) makes it hard to make new friends, but & did thanks to his fantastic purr and warm demeanor.

I'll turn over the keyboard to him, and let him write his story:

lajdjdf jsdjfd dslkjaf;;ffjfjkdlf;afeiw0g73480jgvkm jfda'skkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk

&! Well, so much for that.

It's good he's here. The mountain air is cold, and it's nice having a friend around.

Illness, aspiration and completion

Things Hulk can write "done" on this week:

School (sort of) - The could-have -been semester from hell ended peacefully. It now only remains to be seen how well Hulk is loved by the BigScarySchoolhouse and whether or not he will be invited to play the game of Master's Degree after graduating in December.

Nasty Sinus Cold - All gone.

Bear Mountain Road Race - Hulk got lost, Hulk was late, Hulk was sick. They gave Hulk's race number away to someone else at registration, so Hulk spent 4 hours in the feed zone handing bottles to his teammate, Mr. Serious. This was all for the best as it turned out that Hulk was deathly ill and had no business racing 100 miles (160k for you folks up north-Ed.) anyhow.

Baby's Reading - Baby revised and revised, and said unkind things about herself, and made little Origami dragons out of her poems. She made the dragons fight each other and the ones that prevailed were the ones she read at BigMountainFantasyPoetCamp(TM) on Thursday night. Hulk is so proud of Baby, she really has no idea.

(Almost) The Wagon - Today Hulk goes car shopping. More to come.

-n&c-

Hulk ails

Clogged Sinuses, stuffy ears, funny voice, poufy eyes. Hulk ails.
Probably Hulk is allergic to Baby's absence.

-n&c-

Mothers

On Friday at the gym, one of the Psycho sequels was playing on the T.V. I happened to catch the moment where the heroine hallucinates: Norman Bates enters her bathroom dressed as his long dead mother[picture the gray wig and floppy dress], and in her stupor, she 'reads' him as Mary, the Mother of God.

Here's the thing. We believe in bad mothering, like Lady Macbeths and wicked stepmoms. We even believe they're worse than dark dowagers, and heartless spinsters like Ms. Hanigan because compassion for your children is a matter of biology, if nothing else. Portrayals of really bad mothers, though, are still pretty rare.

Just as rare as the good ones, who we don't believe in as easily. We resent or mistrust the Mrs. Cleavers in our neighborhoods. We think Katie Nowlan in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is lovely, but one-dimensional.

If primetime is any indication, what we're most comfortable with is the well-meaning woman who marries a man who needs (s)mothering. She bears his children, and manages to (barely and at the cost of R&R, education, beauty, and/or solitude) keep things afloat. Home Improvement. The Flintstones. The Cosby Show. Roseanne. The Simpsons. The list is long...

Today, being Mother's Day, I think it's worth figuring out what exactly I'm honoring. Here's my question to you: why do you celebrate Mother's Day?

I'm lucky to have one of the elusive great mothers; today, I spent a great deal of my afternoon appreciating that she's given me the gift of letting me find my way and my place in the world, even when she probably saw some shortcuts, lost sleep over the mistakes I made and, knowing that love and success are scarcities, taught me volumes about what both these things mean.

I celebrate her, but I also celebrate what 'motherhood' broadly suggests: nurturing, teaching, caring, aiding, giving, listening, healing, loving, insisting, supporting, guiding, and mentoring. I know fathers who 'wear the aprons', and I celebrate them, too. I know childless women who are positive role models for girls, and I celebrate them. I celebrate women in general today because it doesn't hurt.

Happy Mother's Day, all.

Telephone

If love could be measured by telephone bills and jellybean stacks, Hulk&Baby would win the relationship Olympics.

Laurel crowns and National anthems. Yes, dear, the Canadian national anthem.

Things we have learned this week:

1) Shortcuts work.

Deconstruction pursues intimacy, even as it shoos it away, scowling from its turrets and towers of reason. The direct expression of need, of care, of simple love and immediacy will take us where we want to go much more quickly.

2) Clever criticism clouds credibility.

Tip: When offering suggestion/coaching/critique, if your words rhyme or are particularly poetic, imagistic or quotable in and of themselves, this means that you are not invested in the art/idea/human to whom you are addressing the speechification. Honest, generative feedback doesn't sting, it loves and makes the listener feel understood and invested in. Maybe bashful, maybe misguided, maybe raw, but seen.

3) Sending Baby mold in the mail maybe not such a good idea.

Mold began life as tree-flowers with the baby branch tip wrapped in damp paper towel in a li'l baggie. Hulk built a mold farm and mailed it to his Baby, but in his mind they are still pretty yellow flowers from the kitchen table. The ones Baby sneaky-picked from the tree across the street the day before she went away.

4) Squirrels are creatures of immense faith and they are harbingers of possibility.

Remember this, more about it later. Ravens not to be trusted quite so much.

-n&c-

Baby Steps

Baby went for a walk yesterday with a raven she met in the mountains. If you've never been very close to one, you might not know how large they are. Or how bright.

Or that they have a sense of humor.

Raven thought it would be funny to walk like Baby (who has a distinctive gait). So he did.

They walked and squawked and talked for a good ten minutes before Raven made use of his wings.

Baby had faith in Raven, enough faith to think they were on friendly terms. She could have been wrong.

As it turns out, ravens lead unassuming folks, like Baby, to hungry folks, like grizzlies, so they can pick at their bones once all is said and done.

But Baby's still intact. And she has some good bear stories she'll share with you down the line.

An Actual Letter From Hulk To Baby (Delivered by Happen The Owl earlier this evening)

Like your blogging today.

I want a picture of you in a headscarf. I don't know why but it sounds awfully pretty.

Interesting sometimes how garments find us in times of transition, times away from our loves. I have a new hat I have been wearing. It's just a tan ball cap, the sort I never used to think I could ever wear but seem to wear all the time now. It came free with my new bike helmet. You have never seen it, and I don't know your scarf.

Little mysteries to unfold from each other, little incidental delights. These are what I look forward to: Wondering where you sat to get a sunburned cheek or when a new pair of sunglasses slipped onto your pretty head. Sharing life, sharing minutia; these details are missed even as they go unnoticed. (missed as they're missed...)

I look forward to sharing our days again; to participating in our respective minutia; to the things we take for granted because you have to, really: It's only a hat after all.

xo

-Hulk

The Blues

I'm in blue jeans, wearing Hulk's blue shirt, and a headwrap that I bought from the Giant Tiger (Note: Paisley is the new pinstripe).

Nothing much is blue in the mountains today. I'm surrounded by green and grey, mostly. Even the river is taking a break from the blues.

I'm not feeling very broken up, but there is an absence of blues in the people here so I find myself needing to slip into the rainbow between green and indigo today.

Tomorrow, maybe I'll get a case of the yellows. And what will that look like? Beamy, I hope. Where are photophores when you need them?

Hulk, give my love to &. I'm sending him an invisible Columbian squirrel to chase around. The squirrel seems to have been abandoned by his mother, probably because she can't see him.

Too Much

Gratitude can overwhelm
as anything else;

nothing happier than Ice cream
but sticky to be covered in it from head to toe.
And hard to wash out of hair.

Sipping love, hopes and dreams through a straw,
rather than upending the bucket over our heads;
this is a reasonable idea:

Leaves enough (always more so always enough and then some) in the bucket
to save, to refill, to dive into, headlong.
Toes pointed, eyes closed, wind squeezing cheek to jawbone,
swallowed, immersed, in love.

In ice cream soup, on purpose.

-n&c-

____________________________________________________________________

Up top o' the mountain is where we fly the rocket from, sometimes.

Histoire récente dans les images

The night before she left, Baby brought Hulk flowers. They were for the nest she was building:


When Baby got on the BigSilverSlowBus, Hulk was sad (dig the sneaky Hulk disguise):
After Baby had been gone for a few days, Hulk found a hair in the sink in the shape of an &. Those of you who read regularly will understand that in our world this is a lot like Elvis in the refrigerator mold or a Blessed Virgin shaped pancake. Hulk now believes that all is right with the world (look closely, it's there):


-n&c-