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Sunday, April 4th, 2004
My "stepping out of the story" last week when Sylvia and I were watching the video about dolphins seems to have had an effect, though whether it is on me or on her I am not sure. Several times today and yesterday, I noticed her asking me about my understanding of what was happening inside the game that we were playing -- I think this is something new. I think that previously when we played make believe (which as you may imagine from reading this blog, occupies a good portion of the time we spend together), we counted on each other to know what was going on in the imaginary world — though this did not necessarily extend to our "staying in character" or anything like that, the mix of narrative and acting-out would not include querying each other about the plot. So the possibilities as I see them are: I am right about this, and my question to her on Friday opened a new door of perception for her, allowing her to begin developing ironic detachment in this regard; I am wrong about this, and the make-believe has always included this component, I just have not been noticing it, and my writing about last Friday's interaction clued me to start looking; or I am sort-of right about this, Sylvia hasn't been approaching our play from a consciously authorial perspective until recently, and her developing this perspective happened to coincide roughly with my asking her the question. I think any combination of those answers is also possible.
posted evening of April 4th, 2004: Respond
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Saturday, April third, 2004
This morning we had a long, long run of Three-Little-Pigs based play, longer than I would previously have thought possible. It all started when we were watching T.V. this morning -- J.J. the Jet Plane and his friends were acting out an airplane version of the story. Later on when we went downstairs, Sylvia picked up a toy wolf (part of a wolf-and-little-pigs set which has long since been lost) and immediately got into the story. So many things we did! I can't remember what the first game was but it flowed pretty smoothly into ice cream shop, with the wolf as ice cream salesman and the imaginary pigs as customers -- we tried a round of "video store" and decided to check out "Big Bad Wolves: Why They go in Pigs' Houses" -- then we played over uncountable iterations, a game where one of us would be a little pig and build an abstract house out of blocks, and the other would be the wolf, come up to the door and after some dialog, blow down the house -- this amounted to pushing it over. Coming up with ways to create a house out of 22 small cubical blocks is good for a long time. Eventually the Sylvia-wolf came to the house and said, "Now I'm a nice wolf. Can I come in?" And the little pigs (me) thought that would be fine, so we had a tea party together and baked chocolate chip cookies... This script also repeated with minor variations a substantial number of times.
posted afternoon of April third, 2004: Respond
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We were visiting the Bay Area and dropped in unannounced on my Uncle John and Aunt Jane -- it turned out to be a kind of bad time for a visit as stuff was pretty hectic there -- Jane's daughter Heather (who was only 5 or so in the dream world) was screaming because she did not want to go to bed, and John was on his way out the door going to a conference of some kind. I felt kind of embarrassed that our main reason for coming was to get John's opinion on the plausibility of a plot device we had seen in a science fiction movie (I can't remember what, something to do with rockets) and was trying to make small talk, which was not really working. Sylvia also started wailing. John made a date with us for the following Friday afternoon, and we headed back to where we were staying.
posted morning of April third, 2004: Respond
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Friday, April second, 2004
Themes from a couple of recent posts came together tonight -- in our ongoing quest to make Friday evenings a happy family time, we went down to Chinatown this evening to have dinner (at Sweet & Tart) and listen to Graham Russell Hodges, the author of a book about Anna May Wong, speaking on the subject, at the Museum of Chinese in the Americas. Like last Friday, this evening was a bit of a mix; but heavily weighted, I think, toward the positive side. Before dinner, we went to the playground at the bottom of Mulberry Street, where despite the cold weather and the incipient drizzle, Sylvia got in a good half hour of play. There was only one other kid in the playground, a girl of about 4 years. She noticed us playing ice cream shop and, after passing by a couple of times looking interested, she came over and asked for some chocolate. Sylvia happily complied, and after not too long they were playing together avidly. I couldn't really get the details of their imaginary world -- I was reluctant to intrude too closely on it -- but there was a zoo or pet shop where they went to look at animals, and a lot of marching back and forth between that and another locale. But it was getting colder, and we were starting to feel hungry, so we dragged Sylvia protesting away from that and on over to Sweet & Tart, on Mott Street. Sweet & Tart, if you do not know about it, is one of my favorite places in New York City to eat Chinese food. There is a branch in Flushing and one on Mott. Their food is a bit eclectic -- the predominant style is Shanghainese but there are also a lot of Taiwanese stuff, and there is an extensive juice bar, which I haven't seen at any other Chinese restaurant. IIRC there is also some sushi at the Flushing branch. The vibe there is just really fun -- check it out if you have not been there. (Note: The Flushing branch of Sweet & Tart is where the photo at the top of this page was taken, when we were celebrating Sylvia's second birthday.) After an excellent dinner, we headed over to the Museum. We were a bit surprised to see a large group of people leaving as we entered the building, and further surprised when we got upstairs, to see the museum's caretaker putting a "closed" sign on the door and locking it. Turns out Ellen had written down the time the event ended thinking it was the the time it started; so no reading. Oh well. We drove on home.
posted evening of April second, 2004: Respond
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Tuesday, March 30th, 2004
I ran into Maurice while walking down Eighth or Ninth Avenue in midtown -- I was taken aback as he is one of the last people I would expect to run into on the streets of New York; he has been sojourning in Perth for a few years now. I asked "Are you Maurice McGinley?" and he replied with a congenial grin, "I'm Patrick Conley!" (No idea.) He wasn't saying much as I walked east with him -- on Seventh Avenue was an abandoned construction site, where he was now living. I watched as with each step he took into his grotto, his veneer of a functioning member of society came away; when he reached the bottom his clothing was in tatters and leprous scabs around his waste were oozing pus. I was gripped by dread as I tried to resolve myself to follow him but before I could act, I woke up.
posted afternoon of March 30th, 2004: Respond
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Monday, March 29th, 2004
One of Sylvia's standard games is "ice cream shop". Here is how it works: she finds a place to stand behind which will function as the counter, and asks "What do you want for ice cream?" You say what (my preference is usually pistachio), she turns away and spends a minute pantomiming the preparation of a dish of ice cream, then turns back and says "Here you go!" -- your part then is to make appreciative sounds and say "Thank you", sometimes there is an exchange of "money" as well. Variations -- sometimes the roles are reversed, there may be a "menu", the preparation step may be longer or may be split into a couple of steps. Maybe you'll ask for a more complicated dish, or for a beverage as well. This afternoon we were taking turns being the customer, and also had some turns of "sandwich shop" and "dinner shop". Then I started getting bored with the whole food thing so I suggested, let's try "book shop" this time. And it turned out to be a great suggestion! She was playing the proprietor of the shop, and she asked me "What do you want for a book?" I said "I'd like a... dinosaur book -- what kind of dinosaur books do you have?" So she started pointing at the shelves in her shop and naming the titles -- she came up with a title/subtitle formula of "X's: why they Y" where X is the dinosaur and Y is an action it performs. A few I remember are "Dinosaurs: Why They are Big"; "T. Rex: Why They Eat Things"; "Stegosaurus: Why They Have Spiky Tails"... I asked for the book about stegosauri, and when I asked how much it costs she said "No, this is a library." So I thought, this seems like a pretty successful game, let's try and keep it going. So I said "Ok, I'm taking it home now..." and pantomimed driving home with the book, and Sylvia was into that, and when we got out of the car, I asked if she would read the book to me. And she did! I don't remember the text of it but there were a couple of loosely organized paragraphs about stegosaurus fighting with other dinosaurs -- and the illusion of there being a book was maintained -- she was looking at the book instead of at me as she narrated, and cooed "turn the page" when she got to the end of a page. As the book came to an end she ran back to her shop and said "Now let's do [video] tape store! What do you want for a tape?" "Hmm... do you have any tapes about animals?" Again, she pointed to the shelves and named the titles... two I remember are "Doggies: Why They Woof" and "Dolphins: Why They Swim", which is the one I asked for; and we drove home, and after some negotiation as to the location of the T.V. and where we were going to sit, we sat down to watch it. She loaded up the tape and pressed start. I was not sure where to go from here (watching video is less interactive than reading a story) -- but I asked her, "can you tell me what is going on in the movie?" -- This was stepping outside the world of the game a bit more explicitly than I think I really had during the book game; I was admitting that my only line into the game world is through her narrative. She took it in stride -- she said "I will press stop so I can tell you about the movie" -- and she told me that the titles were playing over a song, which she proceeded to sing (with dancing of course): Dolphins, dolphins, why do they swim?
Dolphins, dolphins, why do they swim?
They swim and swim.
Like otters, and sea horses, and fishes.
... It went on for a little while; and my quoting is needless to say from memory and inexact. I reckon we were ready to push start again and watch another segment, but at this point it was time to go and visit her friend Alyssandra.
posted evening of March 29th, 2004: Respond
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Friday, March 26th, 2004
It's hard working out what to do at the end of the week, to make the transition to weekend smooth and pleasant. This evening we went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art -- Ellen and Sylvia went up there in the afternoon and spent some time in the playground near there, and I walked up to meet them after work. This was sort of an experiment, to see if we could do something as a family Friday evening outside of the house. It went pretty well, I think; we didn't really spend that much time at the museum because by the time I got there, Sylvia was hungry, so we had an early dinner (early and bad! I need to figure out where one can eat well on the upper east side before we go there again), and then went back to the museum, and we only got about a half hour's worth of looking around before Sylvia was tired out and ready to go. But all the moving around felt good -- like I was giving energy to the world in a way that I don't most of the time on a Friday night at home. One thing I would be really glad to do as the weather warms up, is meet them in Sheep Meadow or thereabouts and enjoy the park. Sylvia is riding her scooter real well now, Ellen said she rode it nearly a half mile from where they parked the car to the playground. I watched her riding it a little bit later in the evening but not so much since as stated, she was getting tired.
posted evening of March 26th, 2004: Respond
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Apologies to anyone comming here from Ralph Luker's Invisibe Adjunct farewell roundup. -- My farewell to Ms. IA was an ephemeral thing, which passed away the day after it was posted and will not be seen anymore. I do still miss her though.
posted afternoon of March 26th, 2004: Respond
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Thursday, March 25th, 2004
What fun! this evening Sylvia and I planted some forsythias, she with her trowel and I with my spade. When I came home I asked if she would like to help me do it and she quickly said, "No." Then a few more "no"s while I was putting on jeans and work shoes and walking downstairs, followed by a sudden "I want to help!" as I opened the door. So we went outside (very warm today, I think in the 60's) and dug up some holes, and filled them with plants and soil. This weekend I will be acquiring my next big power tool; it is a 6" jointer, which I am buying from Matt Prusik (a former president of CJWA). The weekend is busy -- on Saturday morning we are going to the nursery to get bushes and trees, and in the afternoon getting a start on cleaning the garage; on Sunday morning I will drive down to South Amboy where Matt lives and back, and in the afternoon I'll be trying to set it up. The jointer may not be usable immediately as I think the power supply to the garage might be too small and need rewiring.
posted evening of March 25th, 2004: Respond
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Anyone know of a verb to describe the way of speaking where someone can't contain his hilarity and the words come out mixed with laughter? I am thinking one could use a laughing verb -- like "'that taught her a lesson,' he sniggered" or something of the sort -- I am wondering if there is a verb to do it that does not also mean "to laugh".
posted afternoon of March 25th, 2004: Respond
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