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I have a piece in the new

Prima Materia

now available for online ordering. Or, travel to a Hudson Valley bookstore in the coming weeks and if you're extremely lucky, you just may see a copy there!

Follow the link to see a snippet from a very nice review...

"Every night, soon after you have fallen asleep..."

I came across a remarkable book in the Woodstock Library that I've been reading to R & AJ: The Dream Book, by Olga Litowinsky and Bebe Willoughby, 1978, with beautiful drawings by Donna Diamond.

Nowhere in the front or back matter does it say what age group this book is intended for, but the primary writer, Litowinsky, was an editor of children's books at the Viking Press, and she has written other children's books. The internet reveals she died July 20, 2003, at the age of 67. The Dream Book is written in simple and compelling prose, with plenty of specific dreams used as examples, and covers the theory, research and poetics of dreaming with impressive depth.

It's quite a trip, discussing Freud and Jung with my 6- & 8-year-olds. We keep stopping the book so one of them can share a dream.

"I went outside in winter clothes and it was hot, so I came in and changed to summer clothes. Then I went out and it was raining, so I came in for a rain coat. Then I went out and it was cold again!" R says. "What would Jung say about that?"

"Well, what do you think?" I say. "I notice that in this dream you have to keep changing and adapting. It's a lot like living with other people in a family, where everyone's needs are different."

He chuckles. He loves this stuff. I almost skip a section on wet dreams, because he's incredibly prudish, but I figure it'll stretch him to learn something about his upcoming body, so I plow on and put up with him kicking me every time I say "penis."

AJ had a nightmare the other night about falling off the couch repeatedly, and each time, the couch laughed at her. But only in discussing the dream a third time while reading this book does she divulge that I was on the couch.

You can see the wheels turning in those amazing brains.

Empty Hand, Hidden Face, Full Heart

We all have our idiosyncracies but then some of us have idiosyncracies that are, uh, more idiosyncratic than most.

I am speaking of my son's tendency to enter a social siutation with a jacket zipped up over his face.

That was his posture, plus arms folded over his chest, last night at the Tae Kwon Do/Karate fusion class we were checking out. My daughter ran onto the mat in a dinosaur t-shirt and green sash—her version of martial arts apparel—and got kicking: crescent kick! axe kick! side kick! punch twice! now duck! After twenty minutes she came to me and said "I'm ready to sign up."

The instructor was quite friendly and impressed when I first introduced R, who said, "karate means 'empty hand'." But then the other kids started showing up and I could feel him being overwhelmed by the growing sound level, the energy, the difficulty of meeting new peers. Adults are never a problem.

When we first visited the art class he now loves, he stood outside the whole time. Now and then he came to the door and looked through the window and scowled. His sister signed up right away and after she'd been attending for a while, gosh I need to look up how long, months maybe, he said to me, "I want to try that art class." He never goes there without a project idea and comes home with incredible things: a devil costume, a plaster alien, a foam core castle.

So even though he asked to watch the karate class and then spent most of it looking at a yellow fleece lining, I imagine him taking younger kids through a form, shouting 'break' to stop a sparring match, bowing to this perfectly friendly guy who teaches the class. It's just a possible future. You get used to living with them floating through your mind. Pick one but let it go, it's not your place to tell fortunes when you're a parent. At the very least, he's about to learn some moves from little sister, heh heh.

Who is the Fox? I am the Fox!

Plaster gauze, rummage sale fleece, acrylic paint, hot glue, time.

But lest anyone think I had all the fun:



Black cat costume by Dadu.
Pumpkin head by red eft and son.

Fun. Creativity. Chocolate. Remembering the dead.