Animal stack

 

They were all waiting to see if Yertle would show up. 

The suspense was killing them.

We have a bin full of plastic animals that my son used to play with but instead of having them roar at each other and flying them around the house making monkey noises like most kids, he used to try to stack them like blocks. Except they don't exactly stack. He'd have to balance each one on top of the other very carefully.  He figured out that he always had to start with the lion and then the hippo and then it was enough support to hold the cow, a kangaroo and sometimes the lamb on top. It was pretty incredible to watch.

These animals were inspired by our recent trip to the Jerusalem Zoo. It threatened to be a rainy and disgusting day so no one was there. Just us. Really. Maybe one other family. In the whole friggin zoo. The guy at the front let us in for half price explaining that half the animals would be inside because of the rain. In fact, it didn't rain. It was a gorgeous day. Most of the animals were out. And some of them were even stacked. OK, only the mosaic sculpture ones in the children's petting area. But pretty impressive nonetheless.

Pay it forward

In these last few weeks I have been especially enamored by the view over here - miles of terraced olive groves with their short stone retaining walls and the picturesque hillside villages they surround. But views here are often colored by the conflict. I try not to think about it too much.

Next week is Tu B'Shvat, a minor Jewish holiday to celebrate the trees and we've been gearing up by eating a lot of dried fruit and reading the Lorax. This new painting, called Fruitful, was inspired by a little passage from the Talmud (that has made its way into the Jewish summer camp storytelling canon. I don't actually read the Talmud regularly. Or ever, come to think of it). Has me thinking about the kind of legacy I want to leave for my own kids. Heavy stuff.

Once, while the sage, Honi, was walking along a road, he saw an old man planting a carob tree. Honi asked him: “How many years will it take for this tree to give forth its fruit?” The man answered that it would require 70 years. Honi asked: “Are you so healthy a man that you expect to live that length of time and eat its fruit?” The man answered: “I found a fruitful world because my ancestors planted it for me. So, too, will I plant for my children.” (Babylonian Talmud, Ta’anit 23a)

Available here.

Big in Japan

Photo and art credits: Bella Sinclair

Today's guest is the one and only Bella Sinclair, a favorite illustrator of mine and a generally delightful person, beloved by many. She's an Illustration Friday enthusiast and her work is pure magic. I'm especially enamored by Bella's rendition of Hayao Miyazaki's large monster bunny, Totoro. I knew that Bella had spent some time living with her family in Japan and since her own blog is focused mostly on her illustrations, I crossed my fingers she'd agree to be in the Strangers in a Strange Land series so that I could learn more about her. And about smart toilets. Who knew?

1. How did you come to land in Japan?
My husband's company transferred him to develop new business in Asia.  Manhattan was wearing him down, and I could tell he was itching to fly across oceans.  So when an opportunity came up in Tokyo, we took it.  I was reluctant at first.  Okay, I'll admit it.  I cried a little.  We had a house I loved in the suburbs that we had just finished renovating.  Most of my friends were there, and I felt rooted.  But I eventually got over my initial shock and fear and absolutely loved it in the end.

2. Do you speak Japanese or did you take any language courses before you arrived?
I took a year of Japanese in college, but that had been eons ago.  Once I got to Japan, I started taking lessons again.  Unfortunately, the area where we lived was full of expats, so it was easy to get by without using much Japanese at all.

3. If you are not a native speaker, do you have any funny stories about language errors?
Actually, I learned not to speak Japanese to people because they would assume I was fluent and speak back to me at a million words a minute.  So I didn't have any language errors that I can remember, but I do have an amusing story.  My Japanese teacher and I would often make small talk during our lessons, and one time she was describing dishes that she likes to cook.  She kept saying, "sea chicken." 
Huh?  "Sea chicken?"  I was completely  baffled. Yes, sea chicken."  And then I realized that she was talking about tuna!  Chicken of the Sea! 

4. Tell me about one of your lowest moments?
Our time in Tokyo was a fantastic adventure, perhaps being some of the best years of our lives.  The only low point was when my husband suddenly passed away.  It would be a difficult time for anyone, but having to deal with the hospital and police and funeral parlor in a foreign language made me feel even more isolated.  Luckily, I had a friend who was fluent in Japanese who helped me through it all.

5. What was the best part about living in Japan?
The Japanese are a wonderfully refined, polite, and honest people.  And they take pride in keeping things clean and orderly.  People smiled and nodded hello.  I felt very safe and hyper civilized.

6. Did you ever feel totally at home?
Oh, yes!  We had our routines and frequent haunts.  And between work and the international school, there was no shortage of English speakers.

7. What did you miss most about the United States?
Definitely mobility!  We didn't have a car in Tokyo, nor would I have trusted myself on the roads.  So every time one of my kids had a playdate at a friend's house, I'd have to carefully map out the subway route to get there and back.  And sometimes, their friends lived in places unreachable by subway, which meant we had to jump in a cab.  A playdate could easily cost me $40.  It almost made me wish my kids had no friends.

8. What are some of the things you didn't know how you lived without before you moved to Japan? (i.e. foods, customs, culture...)
Did I tell you about the smart toilet that stays perpetually warm, automatically opens and closes and auto flushes?  Aaaaah, pure heaven!  And Japanese pastries, oh my goodness!  They make bread that is so incredibly light and fluffy. 

9. How did the kids adjust to the move?
Kids are mighty resilient.  My girls were in the fourth grade and kindergarten when we first got to Tokyo.  Being that we went to an all-girl international school where lots of kids come and go after a year or so, they did not feel singled out or unusual.  They made the transition quite easily.  There were a lot of British and Aussie teachers at the school, and my little one actually started to pick up a British accent.

10. Was there any chance of "blending in" or did you always feel like "the American"? Did it matter?
Blending in was easy where we lived.  We were in an area affectionately (or not) known as gaizin ghetto.  The neighborhood was crawling with foreigners and you could practically hop from one embassy rooftop to another without touching ground.  We lived next to the French Embassy, and down the street was the German Embassy, and a little further away was Finland and Qatar and China and so on.  So many different people, so many different languages.  As long as we stayed where the embassies were, we blended in just fine.

11. Can you reflect on any cultural differences that were challenging to navigate or led to a funny situation or misunderstandings?
My Japanese teacher would come to my apartment on Tuesday mornings.  I remember one time, my husband was still there because he had decided to go to work late that morning. My husband and I were very informal about comings and goings.  "Bye."  "Bye."  "Hi, I'm back."  "Hey."  But I guess in Japanese culture, the man is king of his domain.  My Japanese teacher was very apologetic and embarrassed to be there, feeling that she had invaded his territory.  And she physically made me get up to give him a proper, ceremonial send off.  What did she want me to do, fluff up his jacket and lay out his shoes?  I had no idea.  So my husband and I just stood there, staring awkwardly at each other for a moment.  Then he said, "Bye."  And I said, "Okay, bye."

12. Did life there have any impact on your illustration style?
Definitely.  You cannot live in Japan and not absorb all the kawaii or cuteness.

13. What lessons can you draw from the whole experience?
You know what?  I've learned that I'm a lot tougher and more resilient than I thought.  Life can change in a blink, and everything you know can be gone tomorrow.  But new adventures await, and I will go on.

***************
Thank you Bella! Your mad skills and sense of humor shine in every illustration. Get a taste of the kawaii that I'm talking about over at Bella Sinclair's Doodlespot. Tell Totoro I sent you.

Suburban Monster at Midnight

Suburban Monster at Midnight

She was no detective, but she had a sneaking suspicion that there was something not quite right about this particular tree.

Clumsy

Suburban Monster at Twilight

She was usually so clumsy she feared she would knock over the ladder and totally blow her cover.

Peace emerges

"Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal."

- Martin Luther King Jr.

The tree in this piece forms the letter shin with its branches, which in Hebrew is the first letter of the word SHALOM and can also symbolize the name of god. It emerges from the chaotic wilderness on earth and lifts toward a peaceful sky. A sky full of promise.

Confined

That's what we thought when we bought our house six years ago. Just get in this crazy San Francisco Bay Area market. It will go up. You'll triple your money. Who cares if you're leveraged up the wazoo. You'll just mortgage your wazoo. So we bought our little birdhouse and it was great. And we could afford it since we paid NO INTEREST. And we were just the two of us so it felt kind of spacious even though I was the size of a whale pregnant with my son. In fact, we loved our little house. We still love it. But now that we're four and not two, it's a little tight. And even though there's a giant park across the street, it's not like we can just send our two small kids over there to play by themselves. It's not the seventies after all. Plus, we need a second bathroom. It's time. My kid's are starting to ask questions when "Aunt Flow" comes to visit. What's that mommy? A diaper? I can't deal.

Not to mention needing a proper studio. I need space! I don't want to put away my art supplies all the time. I don't want to only use one kind of art supply because there's no room for any more. Feeling kind of stifled artistically. CONFINED.

Flying

Today's Illustration Friday is "flying". And that's what I am after learning yesterday that four of my pieces sold at a Judaica shop in the East Bay. This was one of them.

Germs

Why are kids so attracted to germs? Or is it the other way around? I'm not sure but I'll tell you this much - the gnarlier the better when it comes to my daughter. If she sees a puddle of stagnant water, it beckons her. Come. Touch me. Lick your fingers. Food that's stuck to the floor in the dining room? A gift. Whatever lurks behind the toilet near the plunger? A cornucopia of treasures.

So this week's Illustration Friday challenge (GERMS!), I offer a little toilet humor. To see some real germ illustrations go here.

Pattern

I just discovered a really cool website that posts an illustration challenge every Friday and is applicably called Illustration Friday. This week's topic was PATTERN and this is my first submission. The night before I had just started working on this piece - the Seven Species Hamsa - highlighting the seven species of the bible and native to Israel: wheat, barley, olives, grapes, dates, pomegranates and figs. And though the tiling/mosaic areas don't follow a specific pattern in that neither the colors nor the shapes repeat in a predicatble manner (though wouldn't it be cool if I told you that the design did follow some crazy mathematical algorithm that I made up?), for me the piece as a whole brings into focus the harvest cycle that is repeated every year. And it's during this time of year, the fall harvest, that we eat these amazing fruits and reflect on the past year and put out to the universe our hopes for the year to come. I'm still formulating those. But that's part of my own pattern - procrastination...