Hello and good-bye

This exercise has been cathartic.

When my aunt died two years ago, it was a shock. She had told us she was dying, but we didn’t believe her. With the exception of needing gallbladder surgery, she recently had been given a clean bill of health.

Aunt Jean had always been part of our lives. She had never married and lived with her parents until she was about 60. She lived only blocks from where I grew up and was a constant presence. At times, it annoyed my mother that she always was there. There are more pictures in my baby book of her holding me when I was born than there are of my grandparents. My father used to complain that she always called just as we were sitting down for dinner. Maybe just wanted to feel a part of it.

It turns out she was right about dying. She had an aggressive form of cancer and was dead in three months. I called her when she went to the hospital, but the morphine was making her hallucinate, and she was afraid. My ofrenda would calm her fears and make her smile.

In a tissue paper arch over my ofrenda, I taped blue musical notes. Blue was her favorite color, and she loved to sing. On the left, there’s a CD of Bette Midler singing Rosemary Clooney songs. When I stayed with my grandparents when my mother was in the hospital having my sister, Aunt Jean and I would sing “Hey, There,” complete with hand motions. I still do them when I hear the song. There’s also a Four Tops album to which we all would dance on the Pavilion on the shores of Little Traverse Bay on Lake Michigan. The skeleton leaning against the CD is dancing. And there’s a Neil Diamond album, since she liked to sing “Sweet Caroline.”

Below the arch is her picture, program and holy card from her funeral, as well as a picture of her holding me when I was a baby. The candles on that level are to remember my grandparents.

On the ledge below, I’ve included a clock. She collected clocks, and this is one of hers. There’s also a statue of Mary that was hers. She particularly venerated Mary and used to leave a bouquet of flowers under her statue at our church in northern Michigan. Under Mary’s statue is a family picture. The part you can see is of my grandparents, Aunt Jean's long-time boyfriend who died this year, Aunt Jean and my father’s mother.

Although I didn’t include marigolds, on the right is a bouquet of pansies. The bouquet reminds me of one she might have left by Mary’s statue. Also, frost can beat pansies down, but they spring back. They’re resilient. They seem in keeping with the Mexican idea of the cycle of life. I didn’t have coxcomb, but sprinkled red geranium petals on the altar. They’re representative of blood, both the Aztec and Christian sacrificial blood and the blood of life, a duality that’s consistent with the Mexican view of life. Another of Aunt Jean's clocks reminds us that our time on earth is measured, but the hands keep going around, and life does not end, just changes form.

The four votive candles are the traditional Mexican ones representing each compass direction, and incense is in the front. The blue candle is for Aunt Jean and is the only one that’s scented.

At the front is food and drink she would have liked: pork loin, croissant, chocolate and drambuie. I left a chair for her spirit to sit and enjoy the smells to nourish her soul. As I write this, I realize I forgot one other thing she would have loved: a picture of Little Traverse Bay that she would have seen from her room at Sandrift, the home my grandparents build in 1932. There were countless paintings of the bay all around her house. Now, they hang in my house and those of my sisters. It's a view I love, too, and is the one at the top of my blog.

I like the old Aztec cleansing ritual of “Sweeping the Way.” How wonderful, if every year instead of making new year’s resolutions, we swept out our homes, threw our doors open, lined the way with flowers and welcomed the spirits of both our loved ones and lost souls. Every week when I dust the furniture Aunt Jean left me and those paintings of Little Traverse Bay that she loved, I think of her. I never said good-bye. Now I have.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre…

This being a blog about Irish fairy tales, my answer will be circular, starting with the last question, then answering the first and returning where I began.

For the Irish, time and space – as well as music, poetry, fairy tales and life itself – is interconnected and circular, open yet insular. Journeys and lives explore imaginative possibilities and inevitably return to their starting points. Irish today’s are shaped by their yesterdays, the future by the past, tomorrow by today. When the Irish emigrated, Bringing It All Back Home says that some lived in enclaves and weren’t interested in assimilating (63). This was a wide-open, new country, yet they defined their space by their cultural group.

Each of the fairy tales repeated this circular, enclosed pattern of time and space. In “The King of Ireland’s Son,” the story begins with a funeral procession, unraveling to meet an assortment of unusual characters. It rewinds as each character, in turn, helps the son. Loose ends are neatly tied up when we learn that the short, green man who accompanies him on his journey is the corpse in the coffin at the beginning of the story.

Within these fairy tale journeys, fate plays a prominent role in drawing wanderers where they began, back home. Although time and space seems to stretch out endlessly, it’s an illusion, like Truman’s world in the movie “The Truman Show.” Sometimes fate helps; sometimes it hinders the wanderer in achieving his dreams.

Fate plays a particularly important role in “The Birth of Finn MacCumhail.” Finn’s father is told he will be killed in battle, and he is. The king is told his daughter’s son will take his kingdom, and in spite of trying to kill Finn as an infant, Finn wins the king’s daughter and thus, by marriage, takes his kingdom. However, he chooses the “champions” over the daughter, beginning the Fenians, Irish warriors. Since one of the Irish revolutionary movements took this name, fate appeared even after the story ended to be trying to return the kingdom to Finn.

The Irish view time and space as sean nós singers use the trills and melodic doubling back and other ornamentation in interpreting the songs. Although they are free to wander as far as they’d like, ultimately, both the singers and the Irish are drawn back home.

Each fairy tale reveals a slightly different perspective of the Irish culture in this circular journey.

What I found most striking about all the fairy tales was the dichotomy: freedom and fate; inclusiveness and insularity; emigration and home ties. The old is new and the new old. The Irish seems conflicted, which I wonder might come from reconciling the hard times with love of country, the joy of music and dance with life’s cold realities.

In “The King of Ireland’s Son,” the giant gave the son – a “melodious, lying Irishman” – a number of old items that seemed of less value than similar ones he offered. Yet, each actually was far more useful than it appeared. Similarly, each of the travelers – the gunman, earman, foot runner, blowman and man who broke stones against his thigh – were very odd, to say the least. However, each proved to have great worth. That the king’s son accepted each without question, demonstrated to me the inclusiveness of the Irish, open to all.

For me, “Dreams of Gold,” told of the difference between striving to achieve one’s dreams and simply sitting back and dreaming. By taking control of your life, working hard to realize your dreams, all things are possible. For example, the man from Mayo went looking for and found the gold he’d dreamt about (although, of course, it turned out to be in his own backyard). However, if you just dream, and don’t act, as the cobbler did, nothing will happen. Or if you let something stand in your way, like Anthony Hynes did, there’s always something that will hold you back. As the fairy tale says, “There’s dreams and dreams.”

In addition to the role of fate in life, two things stood out for me in “The Birth of Finn MacCumhail.” First, hierarchy was unquestioned. The hag’s sons complained about Finn and Bran interfering with their ancestral rights. Secondly, strength – and life – was drawn from family and the core of one’s being. Finn’s grandmother saved his life, slew his enemies and even practiced tough love, using switches to help him run faster. Yet, he had to look within himself, or rather chew his finger down to the marrow (his Irish soul?) to “receive knowledge of all things.” It was only through self-knowledge, with a little help from his friend (Bran), that Finn knew how to overcome his enemies and meet his challenges.

“Usheen’s Return to Ireland” seemed to me to be a thinly veiled metaphor for emigrating to the West, where life is good, then returning to Ireland, which is under stress without opportunity. Yet, when Usheen returns, love for his native land follows. He can’t leave and dies broken.

Finally, “The Man Who Had No Story” is the ultimate Irish fairy tale. It shows how if you’re Irish, you’re born to be a musician, dancer, storyteller, even a priest or doctor. It includes a swipe at the British for being the source of Ireland’s misery and celebrates Irish sociability. With a little magic, every Irishman is a storyteller. The tale loops and circles back, a story within a story that ends where it began.

And so shall I. The Irish fairy tales told me much more about my ancestors than their view of space and time. They emphasized their imagination by telling tales in which the magical was an accepted part of life. They embodied the imagination, sense of adventure, possibility of dreams, warmth, and especially the hold of fate and tug of homeland on the Irish psyche.

Nothing better epitomizes that interwoven circle of past and present than the Celtic knot. In both, lines loop and cross, opening and closing space while creating beautiful, interconnected patterns that reflect the complexity of Ireland’s people.

Wasting away in Margaritaville

Kani Yamabushi and Kamabara, although both very traditional Kyogen plays, have totally different feelings to them. Kani has very broad humor, while I felt Kamabara had moments of pathos.

Kani Yamabushi is in the Okura school’s fifth group, the oni yamabushi kyogen, which revolves around a priest who supposedly has extraordinary power, but isn’t very good at using them. (Benito Ortolani, “The Japanese Theatre, 154)

The play has the jo, ha, kyu rhythm, starting slowly (jo) with the characters entering from the bridge, walking crab-like (which reminded me of Monty Python's Silly Walks) and singing and speaking slowly. The mountain priest’s song and monologue introduce the story to the audience. The walk, talk and action build to a faster pace (ha). The priest rapidly rubs his beads, and the crab pinches his servant, who punctuates each pinch with a yelp. The beads, crab "dance" and shouts create its own rhythm, a sort of percussive dance. The play ends quickly with the priest and servant chasing the crab (kyu).

The humor comes as the priest is revealed to be cowardly and self-important, a not quite so bumbling Barney Fife. Like Barney, he is ineffectual when a situation calls on him to use his “powers.” The audience laughs at the mountain priest (and Barney), who remains blissfully unaware of his own shortcomings.

Kamabara, on the other hand, reverses the jo, ha, kyu order, and by turning this upside down, it seemed to add a sense of sadness. The play is in the Okura school’s fourth group, nurko onna kyogen, in which the shite, or main character, is an onna, an aggressive woman married to a weak husband. (154) However, this classification was a little confusing to me, since the husband, not the wife, was the main character.

Kamabara begins quickly with the husband running over the bridge and falling onto the stage, complaining about his shrewish wife. The wife, waving a sickle, berates her lazy husband. She chases him across the stage in choreographed movements, while repeating, “I’ll beat you to death, you hateful wretch,” as he repeats, “Stop her! Stop her, please!” The repetition and stylized activity is typically Kyogen.

When Mr. Hemingway arrives on stage and slows the action, the drama slows as well. The husband’s repeated attempts at suicide are humorous, since the audience knows he has no intention of killing himself. His different techniques – and excuses why they don’t work – vary the action just enough to keep the audience interested.

However, for me, the husband’s comments between attempts – an acknowledgment that he’s gotten himself into a predicament, begging Mr. Hemingway – anybody – to come and persuade him to stop – had more pathos than humor. He kept telling himself that although his failed attempts were embarrassing, they were not his fault: He had tried everything. Mr. Hemingway failed him. His stomach was immovable. His arm was frozen. The fact that his wife had said sarcastically that his suicide attempt was gallant, indicated to me that she never thought he would carry it out. And after about the third repetition, “This is my final moment” became a plaintive cry, to my ears.

Finally, the play ends as Kani Yamabushi began, with the husband talking slowly and singing to tell the audience what will happen. To save face, he says he’ll give up his attempt “for today” and go work in the hills.

What made me begin to feel sorry for him was his comment that even if a man were made of straw, a woman had no right to talk to him the way his wife did. And it was comments, such as the one about doing things half-way not being of use to anyone, that are scattered throughout and indicated to me his realization at the end that he doesn’t have much more substance than a straw man.

The husband even was manipulated by Mr. Hemingway, who had promised the man's wife that he would make him go work in the hills. When Mr. Hemingway left, he knew that the husband never would commit suicide without an audience and would go to the hills as his only alternative.

Both plays use repetition, mimicry (monomane), stylized movement and voice, and slapstick. They also make use of the full stage in choreographing movement. Finally, both plays reflect Okura Toraaki’s theory that the heart of a Kyogen play is the “search for truth under the veil of the joke” and that insight reveals human limitations (153). In Kani Yamabushi, the audience clearly sees that limitation, whereas the mountain priest doesn’t. However, since he is an elevated figure, the audience can laugh at him. By contrast, the husband in Kamabara does recognize his failings. Like the singer in "Margaritaville," he realized deep down that maybe it was his own fault. And although the audience laughs, I think they also pause in sympathy, because he is an “everyman,” not as easy to ridicule. But then, maybe I'm reading too much into this.

The only one liner that struck me was in Kani Yamabushi. When the servant talks about an attractive woman, the priest says, “That’s no woman. That’s my aunt.” Today’s version is, “That was no lady. That was my wife.” Some jokes really are classics.

Absentee voters?

I've already talked in my first post about what makes me laugh, and if the presidential election isn't a source of humor, I don't know what is. By now, I suspect everyone has seen the "Saturday Night Live" skits of Sarah and Hilary, as well as the one skewering Joe, Sarah and Gwen. Well, maybe not everyone. I bet these Obama has fans half a world away might have missed it. These ladies from Obama, Japan, have really gotten into the U.S. presidential elections. Wonder if they'll vote absentee.

Scratch the Western skin and Japan bleeds tradition

Kimonos, sushi, an economic juggernaut, graceful arches, bonsai trees, stylized watercolors (particularly of koi), strict hierarchy, Toyota and Honda, Samsung and Sony, 80-hour work weeks, gardens where every item – rocks, plants, empty spaces, path direction - are carefully placed, are highly deliberate. That’s what I think of when I think of Japan and its culture.

What I don’t immediately think of is Emperor Hirohito, Pearl Harbor, the Bataan death march, comfort women, prisoner cruelty (by our standards), Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In short, the Japan that comes to my mind is not the same Japan that might come to the minds of people a generation removed. Nor do I think of anime or manga as people younger than I might.

However, it seems the characteristics that forged the 1930s and '40s Japanese war machine and unbridled expansionist ambition are the same ones that fueled the Tiger economy of the 1990s - blind obedience to authority, nationalistic pride and a strong work ethic. But, then, maybe I’ve been overly influenced by Shogun and Noble House.

When a corporate scandal occurs, the CEO doesn’t receive a slap on the wrist and a golden parachute to bail out the troubled company. He (I don’t remember there being a “she”) is deeply humiliated and resigns in disgrace. Some have committed suicide, if the breach is bad enough. My impression is that the Japanese do what needs to be done, regardless of the personal cost. The good of the community comes before that of the individual.

From my perspective – and this is by no means a scholarly one – Japan and its traditional culture, its overarching community-centric system, has been as different from Western culture as it possibly could be. Hall’s description of the space in Japanese houses where the center remains and the walls and décor move reminds me of a kaleidoscope, its stationary mirrors reflecting bits of colored glass that cascade into artistic tableaus before melting away. It’s like being in the eye of a hurricane, an oasis amidst the chaos, a Japanese garden in the center of a city.

Even now, with Tokyo out Wall Streeting Wall Street, behind that consumerism and drive for success, the heart of traditional Japan continues to beat. Parents are still treated with respect. Feng shui still dictates design. And Japanese gardens still gently discipline nature, expanding perspectives that free the soul. I want to explore those sensibilities, adopting the ones that instill peace.

Torn between two worlds, part of neither

The first time I watched "Hotel Rwanda" a few years ago, there was too much to absorb. As I remember, my overwhelming feeling was one of sadness that people, especially people with a common heritage and culture, could treat each other so inhumanely.

When I watched it again recently, since I didn’t have to concentrate on the plot, I was able to take in different elements that had nipped at the edges of my mind before:

• The Hutu war dances that both intimidated their enemy and whipped up their aggression
• The dehumanizing techniques the Hutus used to make it easier to kill and rape their neighbors
• Paul’s Westernized family from their clothes to their hula-hoops
• The artificial, Belgian-created class distinctions that distinguished the Hutus from the Tutsis
• The friendships/love between Hutus and Tutsis who were not members of either army
• The subservient role that the Africans accepted as the natural order
• The universal acceptance that all things Western were better than anything African

Whereas initially, I was overwhelmed by man’s inhumanity to man, the second time I saw the movie, I became angry at the damage colonialism had done to Rwanda and its people. The divisiveness it sowed in order for the Belgians to control the people left a legacy of chaos and civil war. The same thing has happened in Sudan, Liberia, Uganda and other countries that were created to suit European interests without concern for the people who lived there.

With the exception of the children dancing by the pool and in the refuge camp, and the Hutu rebels dancing and chanting menacingly, I didn't see evidence of African culture. There was no storytelling, no art, no rituals or ceremonies that I noticed, not even instances of the ahshe (imminent energy) that Alan Cook says is part of everything. Even the dress looked quasi-Western. I learned little about Africa or its people, so it didn’t affect my view of them. Even the fighting didn’t real seem to be about territory, but about revenge for previous mistreatment. In fact, the Africans I did get to know, Paul, his family and members of the army, had learned informally, if not formally, how to behave as Europeans. The culture with which they were born had been overridden by a new and “better” one.

Although “becoming” European may have been an evolutionary cultural change to survive while the Europeans were in power, those who embraced Western ways became almost countryless when the Europeans left. They belonged neither to Europe nor Africa as the Hutus reclaimed their country – and their culture.

Gotta dance

I love to dance.

When I think of dancing as a child, four distinct memories come to mind: Doing the foxtrot on top of my grandfather’s shiny black shoes in our living room; dancing with my aunt at my grandparents’ house, while she sang along to her old 78 records (complete with interpretive hand motions); dancing in the dark by myself on our back patio in Michigan to the music of a wild, warm wind that whipped my nightgown and foreshadowed a coming storm; and three generations of my family dancing with my friends (and their parents) on the tiny beach pavilion on Lake Michigan while our record player played the Four Tops Live.

My dad loves to dance, and whenever a band strikes up, he’s out on the dance floor. I follow in his footsteps, so to speak. When I hear a great dance song, I can’t sit still. In my car, I’ll bounce, tap my foot, and pound the steering wheel. If I’m out, and musicians are playing something I want to dance to, it drives me nuts to sit still (I’m too self-conscious to go out on a dance floor by myself unless it’s crowded.). For all his wonderful attributes, the guy I date isn’t a dancer. But that doesn’t keep me from dancing around the house. When I’m cleaning, I’ve begun to put on a CD or turn on the radio. When a good song comes on, I’ll stop and dance a few steps before shimmying my way by the bookcase, dust rag in hand. Rather than being my usual, grumpy cleaning-mood self, dancing literally puts a spring in my step.

When I think of African dancing, if I think of it at all, I don’t think of northern Africa, which I consider more Middle Eastern than African, or South Africa. I think of the rest as a generic Africa, a homogenous blend of countries in constant turmoil. When I imagine African dance, I see rhythmic, usually war-like movement stereotyped in movies.

Until I read some of this unit’s articles, I didn’t realize that coastal African dance incorporated undulating motions reminiscent of the sea. Or that Ghanan dancers held their bodies rigid and used gestures. I didn’t know that the language of African dance had different “dialects” or that dance was such an integral part of life, not a separate art form as it is in the West.

In “African Dance: Bridges to Humanity,” Tracy Snipe said that we need prior knowledge of a culture to understand the language of dance. I think she’s right. Whereas I can watch dancers in American musicals or stage performances and thoroughly enjoy their reflection of our heritage and the stories they tell, if I see Japanese dance, the stylized movements are culturally foreign to me. I neither appreciate nor understand what they are trying to convey. With the readings this week, I feel African dance is a little more familiar. It still may need some interpretation, but I’ll see more than I did. In fact, I envy the unconscious way that dance is such a big part of everyday life. Maybe I’ll have to create my own “coming home from work” dance to start my evenings off right!

Give me space, lots of space (and a cozy place)

Probably the most frustrating thing about these blogs is that the questions can't be answered briefly in a typical blog length, if we really want to provide details and examples that add richness to our answers. On the other hand, I tend to overwrite, so everyone reading my blogs, probably are breathing a sigh of relief that I have parameters.

On to the questions....

When we are children, we quickly learn when something is dangerous. As we reach towards a hot stove, our parents sharply (and loudly) tell us, “Don’t touch!” If we do, we find out in short order that we’d better listen to our parents.

In the same we, we learn cultural behaviors. We learn formally when our parents speak to us sharply to correct our behavior (or give us “the look”), informally when we model their behavior and technically, when they teach us to look people in the eye when we talk to them. When we don’t follow the accepted cultural patterns we are hurt socially, just as we hurt physically when we touch a hot stove.

In “Hidden Dimensions,” Edward Hall particularly focuses on cultural responses to time and space, and how those differences can cause misunderstandings. For example, to Americans, space is something between two objects that is empty or something taken up by a tangible object. To the Japanese, space is every bit as tangible as a physical object. It is considered an “intervening interval” called the ma and is named. This plays out in Japanese gardens and mapping. Whereas we name the streets to help people get to a final destination, the Japanese name the points, which serve as destinations in their own right. Therefore, the street corners, but not the streets have names. The journey, for the Japanese seems to be more important than the destination. This is reflected in the way they design their gardens. Hall said that a rock that might cause you to slow or stop in your path, causes you to look around and see the space from another perspective. He says attitude is reflected in the Japanese predilection to lead people to places where they can discover things for themselves.

The protective bubble we think of as our personal space varies from culture to culture, too. We begin learning in when we’re very young and inadvertently invade someone’s personal space, and they push us or tell us to move away.

One example Hall gave that had never occurred to me is the American custom of talking through a door or hanging around at the threshold. People do it at work all the time. I had not thought about it before, but coming into my office would signal that they plan on taking a good bit of time. Talking to me in the doorway sends the message that what they’re discussing won’t take enough time to make it necessary for them to sit or that it won’t be so involved that they need to be near my desk.

After reading the text, I noticed my reactions more when one of my colleagues came by my office. She initially stopped at the threshold and asked me a question. Then as she began to elaborate, she walked into my office, sat down and scooted her chair close to the edge of my desk and leaned forward. I knew that meant that instead of a couple of minutes, it would take about 20, and she would include her personal thoughts along with the facts.

From that perspective, it makes sense in the example that Hall gave about the man becoming angry when Hall was carrying on a conversation on the threshold of his room, while the man carried on another. The man viewed Hall as having entered his personal space without asking. When my colleague leaned in to talk to me, I didn’t feel that she was invading my space – she still was at the far phase of personal distance – but I felt she was stealing my time!

Perception of time, Hall says, also is highly cultural. I saw that first hand recently when a group of students were here from Spain. Their accompanying teacher said he had talked with them about how American view time. He explained to them how important it was to show up at the agreed-upon time and not 30 or 45 minutes later, which would be “on time” to them. One of the Spanish girls missed the school bus! It had never occurred to her that when she was told the bus left at 3:15, it meant the bus left at 3:15.

In looking at my house, you’d think I was a stickler for time, since you’ll hear three clocks chime the hour. Although I do subscribe to the American pack-all-you-can-into-an-hour philosophy (which I don't necessarily think is a good thing), the clocks actually are there because they are beautiful and I love to hear the different tones the chimes make.

Because my little house is very open, you can see all three clocks – two in the great room about 8 feet apart and one in my bedroom. When I added some space when my first child was born, I tore out the halls and walls of the second bedroom to create the great room, which has oak hardwood floors. The furniture is arranged to divide the room. The yellow striped Victorian couch has its back to the rest of the room, creating a cozy 6x9-foot (or so) sitting area with a cube-shaped chest on an area rug in front it, my little desk with just enough room for my laptop, a short corner cupboard with my printer on top, bookcases, and another desk with shelves. From the couch, you can see the birdfeeder through the sliding glass doors that open to a tree-filled backyard. A second couch facing the fireplace serves as the divider between the living area of the great room (which has a TV in the corner) and the dining "room." Behind the couch is the dining area, which has a long wall on which I’ve hung my European-looking art scenes in heavy gold frames and a portrait of my grandmother over the Bombay chest. The kitchen has two entrances (no doors), one off the dining area and one off the sitting area. My room opens directly off the great room. Next to it are three stairs that go down to my children’s rooms and their bathroom, all of which are just a step away from the stairs. Each of the rooms is small. Mine has an illusion of space because of mirrors that cover the sliding closet doors. Both my children's rooms have double windows facing the trees in the front. Their furniture - in the American way - is against the wall, so there's a feeling of open space. However, my daughter's bed pokes out from one corner of the room at a 45 degree angle. Since she can get in from either side, it makes her room feel bigger to have space around it.

My entire house is only 1,400 square feet, but like the Japanese, the interior has very little fixed space. This gives the feeling of spaciousness and allows me to rearrange for a totally different feeling and look, using the same furniture and art!

It's funny, only two images in the video reminded me of myself and my children. I couldn't really picture any of us in the group shots. They didn't look like my friends or how we spent our time. The pictures looked dated, too vanilla, to me. However, a couple of them did remind me of my childood: the one of the baby looking at the camera and the one of the child on her father's shoulders.

I was the first child (and first grandchild), so I have an entire mini-album (about 10 pictures) just of me at about three months old on my parents' bed. I'm pushing myself up and grinning at the camera, looking started at someone just out of the frame, exhibiting an entire range of emotions. I don't remember that time, but the pictures tell me that at that point in my life, I was adored, and that I felt safe and that all my needs would be met.

I took a series of pictures of my son (also first born) at about the same age. Subsequent children are definitely not the center of their parents' universe, and I think it subconsciously makes a big difference in what each child expects from the world, what's expected from them and what they expect of themselves. That falls pretty well in line with Hall's theory of space, time, order, association and other culturally defining attributes. (I know, at this point I'm not supposed to have read it, but if I hadn't started it, I never will get through this week's readings AND have time to post and read the posts before the end of the week.)

The picture of the child on her father's shoulders also reminded me of me, my second sister and my father. He's tall (6'3") and would carry us on his shoulders. I was terrified. It was so high up. Not only would he carry us around, he'd waterski with us on his shoulders. Imagine how that would be greeted today! Can anyone say child endangerment? After I did it once, I wouldn't do it again (I've always been risk averse). However, my second sister, like my daughter (the second child), loves the adreneline rush of new (and slightly dangerous) experiences. My sister loved riding on my dad's shoulders as he'd cut in and out of the wake. Birth order, I think, matters in how one approaches the world (but we'll probably go into that in the discussion board).

I had to think a little about what makes me laugh. I don't seem to do much of it today, too many responsibilities, not enough time - lots of excuses, none good.

I laugh at the unexpected, a set up in a joke or in life where the outcome is unexpected or incongruous. Steve Martin makes me laugh. The old Bill Cosby albums would make me laugh. His stories were like mirrors in a funhouse that took life and stretched it a bit (although I think it was his expressions and intonations that made if funny - along with recognizing ourselves in his experiences). Don Knotts in the "Andy Griffith Show" made me laugh, but in a way, his humor was like Steve Martin's, an absurd person who took himself seriously. For the same reason, I laughed at a scene in a Burt Reynolds movie (can't remember the name) in which Candace Bergen plays his ex trying to get him back by singing to a cassette. She can't sing, it's a ludicrous situation, and as she thinks she's being seductive, Burt Reynolds turns and just looks at the camera with a "can you believe this?" look.

I laugh when other people get an uncontrolled fit of the giggles. Laughter, like hiccups, is contageous. I wish there was more of it around to catch.

Some translation required

Art, I think, is a universal human need. It's a way for us both to express ourselves and to connect with others. A way to add beauty - and sometimes meaning - to our lives.

I think art is a universal language, but sometimes, I, for one, need a translator. As they say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Just look at fashion. A designer may create an outfit that to some people or at some time in history is considered a work of art. To other people in another era, it just looks silly. Translation needed.

Art and music, too, might speak to me at one stage of my life, but not another. Some art grows on you. The more you see or hear or experience it, the more it is understandable, sort of like a language immersion program.

Once I went to a Dave Brubeck concert, which I had anticipated for weeks. I like jazz (or at least the jazz I'd heard), and I knew Dave Brubeck was considered to be very good. The concert was a huge disappointment. The entire evening was dissodent. To my ear, the music was loud and jarring. I neither liked nor appreciated it. Perhaps if I'd had technical training or a pre-concert prep, I would have appreciated what the musicians were doing. I dont' know that I would have liked it any better, but I could have appreciated the interplay. Translation needed.

The only art that never seems to need a translation, art that speaks to people regardless of culture or life experience, is art that reflects the basic human experience. In the clip in the introduction, we saw and heard sorrow and joy around the world. Birth, love, grief, elation, death are experiences that are universal. Art that in some way taps into that shared global experience speaks to everyone.

One of the most moving pieces of art I've ever seen was in Florence. It was a long time ago, and I don't remember the name of the piece. It was a statue of Mary Magdalene with her hands almost in prayer, but just a fraction of an inch apart. She had such an expression of despair on her face. It was as if for all eternity, she never could quite make things right. Her hands were sculpted, so they never would be joined, so she could never say the perfect prayer. As I stood in front of her, I felt tears filling my eyes. Her pain was palpable.

At some time in our lives, I think we all have a situation that we never can make quite right. Ever. And art that captures a basic human need, a deeply felt emotion needs no translation.