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y five year old son with trembling lip and downcast eyes tells me that he s the one not girl who put pennies into the computer i wanted to tell you the truth mama that is very very bad for the computer i say but thank you for telling me thank you for being so brave he shakes and sobs as i hug him breathe i tell him just breathe his chest rises and falls rises and falls and then it seems a terrible weight unmoors from him seconds later he is zooming around the house with his sister we are dragons he shouts we fly and shoot fire i am 14 or 15 lying in tall grass next to a boy who is both my friend and also the son of my stepfather s friend the son of a presbyterian minister it is summer in alaska in the months before he will move away i am certain that we will always know each other lying on our backs in the grass in this way we are invisible to all but the clouds that move across the sky above us i used to do this when i was a little kid he says i d try to find the shape of animals in the clouds a tiger an elephant a winged beast i know he wants to kiss me but he is too kind to take what has not been given so we hold hands and watch the sky i tell him i wish i were a cloud i wish i were free years later i will write him a letter and tell him a secret and he will not believe me and then for some time after he will write to me again and again but i will never never never reply i should not have told he should have believed i still don t know which is true i still don t know twenty four years old and in my first few months of a new life in japan i have been sitting for three hours with a stone in my hand at the edge of lake ezu in kumamoto i am working out metaphors a single unmoving cloud overhead i think regret is a stone turning slowly in the hand a stone is a story turning slowly in the mind a story is a stone turning slowly in the heart when at last i throw my burden into water the cloud shatters and then reforms as i walk home afterward it occurs to me that it is not people who haunt us only moments of encounter i am 30 and walking a one lane road between rice paddies nearing harvest when the breeze shifts tall grass and i know that i am not alone the grass shifts again and i see them full on a half dozen women s heads lashed to poles the farmers i understand this a few seconds later have fashioned scarecrows from scraps of cloth and mannequins probably throwaways from a nearby salon stylish black hair flutters in the breeze for a long time i cannot move none of us blink when i get home i find that my husband in his fourth month of cloister at a monastery in the mountains has written me a letter he is a new monk or unsui clouds and water he writes i must be supple enough to flow and form and reform and disappear he tells me the story of koi who don t know they are wise and powerful dragons i want to kiss him i am lonely i wonder if we will ever be brave enough to have children i wonder if i would be a bad mother it is a year ago not long after moving to this new country and i am driving my son home from school when he shouts look mama dragons what the clouds are shaped like dragons and the dragons are eating the clouds just a minute sweetie i tell him there s a lot of traffic i need to pay attention right now i need to pick up your sister now the dragons are eating the dragons mama look look why don t you look because i want to get it right and know that i can t i tell him sweetie calm down listen i ll stop right here i ll park the car and you can show me but hurry mama look i slow down pull over shut off the engine cars zoom past us one after another above everything clouds move across blue sky okay where are they show me i can t they re gone now they re all gone they are all gone i look at my son s tear streaked face in the rear view mirror i look at the dashboard clock and then the slowing line of cars filling up the road next to us hemming us in i look back up at the sky i think what do i do now what do i do what do i do my son sniffs takes in a breath let s just breathe mama let s just breathe share this share on facebook opens in new window facebook email a link to a friend opens in new window email share on x opens in new window x more print opens in new window print share on reddit opens in new window reddit share on tumblr opens in new window tumblr share on pinterest opens in new window pinterest share on linkedin opens in new window linkedin like loading posted in uncategorized feb 06 the persistence of landscape posted by tracy franz 2 ever since moving to nova scotia from japan i have noticed in myself a habit of seeing the features of alaska the place where i grew up so there is the pervasive rock and water of this new place but there is also a stretch of imagined snow tipped mountains tracing along an expanse of blue sky i think it is the similarities that trick my brain into seeing what is not there sprawling forests of birch and pine seagulls circling above dark and turbulent seas how can this not be alaska so many elements are the same in japan i never saw the geography of my homeland but i sometimes thought i understood when i did not or i understood in a way that was different from how others understood perhaps this was the cultural equivalent of my imaginary mountains all that i had known before was the backdrop or overlay to my perception of everything that came after so yes i suspect those mountains point to something subtle that i cannot yet grasp this is the obvious explanation of my current visual fallacy a kind of culture shock but it is also a reminder that both perception and time are slippery all is in flux for instance if i follow the arrow of time backwards to the origin of the remembered mountains i see that my memories now include some sense of my husband of my children and also of our arrival to this new country my understanding of the past is set against all that came after so those memories are altered but they feel no less true than when i experienced them in real time or when i remembered them at different times in the years that followed in this way i am an embodiment of context time and space and encounter an entire landscape held in one small human form everything even memory is altered by memory this paradox is truth but it is not the only truth because sometimes i look into vast blue sky and that is all i see share this share on facebook opens in new window facebook email a link to a friend opens in new window email share on x opens in new window x more print opens in new window print share on reddit opens in new window reddit share on tumblr opens in new window tumblr share on pinterest opens in new window pinterest share on linkedin opens in new window linkedin like loading posted in uncategorized jan 06 notes from a year ago after putting boy to bed posted by koun 3 who s up tonight um wolverine from the beginning ok papa ok wolverine was born a long long time ago he s older than grandpa s grandpa where s grandpa s grandpa now he died why because everyone dies i don t want to die will you die yes eventually why it s natural but it s ok we enjoy people while they re alive but why do people die i don t know how do people die in lots of ways sometimes just old age but sometimes a disease or an accident lots of ways papa yes i m scared of monsters you don t need to be there are no monsters not in the whole wide world they re just a story but where the powerpuff girls live there s monsters powerpuff girls are just a story too i m scared of the hulk though the hulk is just a story but he comes to canada right that s also just a story a story i made up for you are we just a story i don t think so but we tell lots of stories papa yes we re both the same superhero really yeah we both have many arms soft arms to help people and hard arms to fight bad guys listen what someone s crying where somewhere stretch your soft arms like this really wide like this now it s ok will the person crying feel the soft arms no it just feels like a blanket share this share on facebook opens in new window facebook email a link to a friend opens in new window email share on x opens in new window x more print opens in new window print share on reddit opens in new window reddit share on tumblr opens in new window tumblr share on pinterest opens in new window pinterest share on linkedin opens in new window linkedin like loading posted in uncategorized nov 22 of trees and memory posted by tracy franz 1 this morning was the first day of bone chilling nova scotia cold and i walked through darkness to the bus stop on my way to teach an english class i was remembering maybe because of the way the wind gusted and shook the leaves in the trees a phone call some years ago in spring about the death of a friend and then across the street i saw the source of the sound that got me thinking a stand of birch lit by a streetlamp and suddenly it became twelve months ago and i was moving through afternoon light in the opposite direction toward home with my two year old daughter at my side carry me mama she said and i obliged even though she d grown heavy and tall no longer my baby she whispered mama those trees are making me cold sweetie i said that s not possible leaning back she pointed emphatically to white birch those trees are making me cold we ll be home soon i said as i put her down but something about her strange child s logic made the trees into a thing i carried and could not put down the idea that something experienced in one sense could be the catalyst for another sensation entirely this morning when i looked up at those trees one last time before turning the final bend to the bus stop i noticed a rhythmic creak that became the sound of crickets in the house of my japanese teacher twelve years ago in yamanashi the insects called out again and again as we conjugated verbs and drank from sweating cups of iced buckwheat tea when i commented on it that pleasant trilling like a little reed flute my teacher led me to a wooden cage beneath the stairs where the crickets were kept the sound gives us a cool feeling in the hot summer months it takes us to another season synesthesia i remember saying it almost seems like that she nodded a good word wasurenai i will not forget share this share on facebook opens in new window facebook email a link to a friend opens in new window email share on x opens in new window x more print opens in new window print share on reddit opens in new window reddit share on tumblr opens in new window tumblr share on pinterest opens in new window pinterest share on linkedin opens in new window linkedin like loading posted in uncategorized oct 28 an architecture of empathy posted by tracy franz 2 for as long as i can remember i ve dreamt of impossible houses simple stark exteriors that belie the infinite labyrinthine structures contained within a closet that is really a chambered corridor spiraling ever inward nautilus like before expanding out into a bedchamber the size of a cathedral an endless hallway of identical doors leading to identical dens save for slight variations in the arrangement of furniture a swimming pool wending its way through the dark stacks of a subterranean library often there are landmarks of recognition a character a dwelling a room an object from my past sometimes it is entirely unexplored territory either way i spend my nights mapping an interior landscape that reveals and reveals and reveals i don t know why i have these dreams but i do know that they mess with my equilibrium well after i awaken that altered perspective staying with me for hours or days after some months ago the four of us made our way around the grounds of an old nova scotia farm and a familiar feeling came over me a kind of recognition it was i realized the first time i had felt truly compelled by the architecture of this new country and so i started taking pictures hand hewn crossbeams the sturdy hinges of a barn door stairs disappearing into shadow it seemed there was a revelation in every angle as we moved into and out of buildings my daughter repeatedly patted my hip a touchstone of sorts before running a few paces forward and then back again koun and boy walked far ahead on some other mission mama where s the piggy the pigs we d been told were to be found in a hay filled corner of the barn before us as we entered into darkness girl took my hand and then leapt up into my arms when we found what we d been searching for a great sow at rest a row of content piglets suckling alongside her a woman probably there with her grandchild stepped back and offered her spot at the railing do you want to get closer girl clutched my arms tightly but nodded the woman next to us smiled as she turned to leave what a sweetheart you re lucky you know girls are so much easier than boys girl and i and the pigs rested for a moment in the shadows mama yes the piggies want to go outside stepping back out into sunlight girl squirmed free of my arms and i took one last photo the skeletal ribs of a hay wagon and the spare houses beyond it that had been my aim but the sun s glare refracted against the screen in such a way that i framed the subject blindly and so when i reviewed the image later i saw that i had missed my mark but caught what i could not then see my daughter just on the verge of stepping out of the photograph exuding a carefree simplicity as she strutted along her path i thought a girl is a house an idea a doorway a mystery a universe unfolding share this share on facebook opens in new window facebook email a link to a friend opens in new window email share on x opens in new window x more print opens in new window print share on reddit opens in new window reddit share on tumblr opens in new window tumblr share on pinterest opens in new window pinterest share on linkedin opens in new window linkedin like loading posted in uncategorized sep 30 inside boy s mind posted by koun 0 a couple weeks ago as i was putting him to bed i told boy for the first time about my travel plans this weekend to los angeles boy has never been to l a he drinks this in and says papa i have a secret what i ask leaning in los angeles yes is inside my brain he taps his head with his finger to make the point i try to clarify wait a minute so when i go to l a i m actually going inside your brain he nods seriously yes how will i get there he pulls back his blanket and points to his big toe in the dark you ll start here in your airplane he slowly traces the path i ll take up his leg jumping from his hip to his hand then up his arm across his neck and over his face to the top of his head that s far that s the farthest place you can go is that the farthest place in the world japan is farther but it s too far it s outside my brain i tell him that my brother will be meeting me there so will uncle b be in your brain too he looks at me like i m stupid yes he ll be in los angeles and los angeles is inside my brain again the tap so i get it l...
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