Christmas Colors

"Give crayons." 

-- Dr. Sun Wolf

Crayons 12-5-14

"My childhood smells like a box of Crayola crayons."

-- Terry Guillemets

"Artists are just children who

refuse to put down their crayons."

-- Al Hirschfeld

Every year for Christmas I restock my little niece Sophia's art supplies.

Sophia is a true artist, and her voluminous output is pretty damned impressive.

She draws and paints and colors a lot.

Sophia's artistic fervor reminds me of myself, and I hope she never loses her delight, her need or her persistence in putting color to paper. (You can read about my personal love affair with art supplies here.)

Crayons 12-5-14

The world is a lot more colorful because of who Sophia is, and because of what she creates, and I want to be one of the people who encourages her to keep doing and creating and making her art.

So yesterday, as always, I went a little nuts at the art store and bought her a fresh supply of crayons, markers, colored pencils, paper and paint.

Sophia has come to expect this particular kind of gift from me. And I am OK with being a little predictable. I want her to know she can count on me. Sophia knows I'll get her art stuff just like her brother Marco knows I'll give him pickles and olives.

It's my thing.

And I happen to think it's a good thing.

Fresh New Art Supplies

"Life is about using the whole box of crayons."

-- RuPaul

A well-used lemon yellow crayon 3-27-14

"A box of new crayons! 

Now they're all pointy, lined up in order, bright and perfect.

Soon they'll be a bunch of ground down, rounded, indistinguishable stumps,

missing their wrappers and smudged with other colors.

Sometimes life seems unbearably tragic."

-- Bill Watterson

What is it about fresh, virgin art supplies that makes me so giddy?

I think it is the vastness of the untapped potential and possibility that lies within them -- in each box of new crayons and pencils, in each tube of paint, in each pristine tablet of paper, in every straight edged brick of fresh, untouched clay.

New art supplies still hold the unsullied hope and promise of perfection, of wild and ambitious visions that haven't been dashed by mistakes or blunders or disappointment. They could still become anything I can dream of.

Leo and I went to the art supply store yesterday to re-stock. He needed a couple of tubes of oil paint, and I needed some acrylics. We also bought brushes and I picked up a fresh linoleum block and some Super Sculpey. I got a huge roll of black paper to use as a photo backdrop, and I also grabbed a box of little markers with points like brushes. I always try to find something new to experiment with and they looked interesting.

I don't have any particular plans for my new stuff. But they'll get their chance. Inspiration will strike. It usually does.

My love affair with new art supplies goes way, way back.

My dad was a high school guidance counselor, and when I was little he was also the Santa Claus at the annual high school employees Christmas party. (I was clueless. The suit and beard totally fooled me.)  The teachers and office staff all filled his bag with pre-wrapped gifts for their own kids, and then my dad distributed them as if he'd brought the stuff all the way from the North Pole.

Every year I got a box of new crayons. Not just a regular box, but this HUGE flat of 124 (and not the fat, little kid ones, but the slim, pointy big kid kind) all laid out in a single layer, each crayon resting snugly in it's own little space in the specially-molded plastic tray. 

I have three sisters, and the rest of the year we had to share our crayons, which were all dumped into a jumbled grubby mess in common ratty shoe box. As far as I was concerned, having my very own pristine box of 124 crayons was the true Christmas miracle. 

I was always just a little afraid to start using my new crayons. I didn't want to break the spell. There were colors in there I'd never even seen.

I distinctly remember finding the silver crayon for the first time, with its sparkly metallic flecks embedded right into the wax. I took it to the kitchen to show my mother, cradling it gently in my cupped palms like an injured baby bird.

Me: (breathless) "What is this?"  (I still too young to read the words on the wrapper).

Her: (bored) Silver. (Her unspoken "duh!" rang loudly in the subtext.)

I carried Silver back to the family room floor where I was coloring, and began.

The only word I knew how to spell at the time, besides my own name, was "love," which I wrote in sky blue on a piece of blank paper. Then I colored all around the letters with my new silver crayon. I soon discovered that the harder I pressed, the more metallic glitter it released. So I colored feverishly until "love" was surrounded by a solid sea of silver shimmer -- until my beautiful crayon was a ground down stump in my hot, sweaty little hand.

Resting back in the tray, Silver looked oddly shortened and rounded next to her slim and pointy friends. 

I loved her all the more for that.

Which ... Ding! Ding! Ding!

Brings us to the first ever "One Good Thing Coloring Page!"

I made this special picture of fresh new crayons just for you, so you can print it out and color it in however you like. You can use crayons, paint, lipstick -- whatever. You can even color it digitally on your computer if you want. You can make them any color you want to.

There are no rules, because rules suck. 

Have fun!

New crayons 3-27-14

Playing Make-Believe

"They spent the first three years of school getting you to pretend stuff

and then the rest of it marking you down if you did the same thing."

-- Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake

Butterfly on flowers (spray paint on paper with pipe cleaner stems) 3-7-14

"Leaving the world of reality behind 

and disappearing into a world of make-believe and imaginations, 

is a solace you get from nothing else."

-- Sanhita Baruah, Uff Ye Emotions

One of the things I'm most grateful for in life is that at the ripe old age of 46, I still have custody of my robust, little kid imagination.

Paper, paint and pipe cleaners may be the standard art supplies of preschools everywhere, but that shouldn't make them off limits to big kids.

So yesterday I built a little world with them and, using my camera as an imaginary portal, took a brief vacation there.

And even though the big round thermometer on the fence says it's 25 degrees outside, and even though  the ground is still covered with snow and all the growing things are held captive by frost, inside my imagination it's sunny and warm, and the flowers are blooming and the butterflies are flitting.

I took this picture during my visit, just in case you don't believe me.

Ding! Ding! Ding!

Which brings us the One Good Thing "Plea On Behalf of Imaginative Children Everywhere":

Please don't ever, ever, tell a child that they should stop pretending, or day-dreaming, or making-believe, or living in a fantasy world. Sure, children's imaginary lives are sometimes inconvenient for grownups to deal with. They can even be a little bit scary. But instead of fighting them, next time try spending the same amount of energy indulging them, or just leaving them the fuck alone. And for chrissakes please, pleeease, pleeeeeeease don't ever tell a child to be more like the other kids. Same old, same old children grow up to be same old, same old adults. And Lord knows the world has enough unimaginative, boring grown-up drones trudging around staring at their phones all damn day. Being a responsible grownup does not mean you can't still have an active, colorful imagination. It just makes being a responsible grownup so much more interesting and way more entertaining.

I once heard that children don't necessarily remember what you say to them, but they never forget how you make them feel. And if you make a child feel stupid, or flawed, or deficient, or pressured, or unacceptable, or unloved simply because you don't understand or won't understand their imaginary tendencies, then shame, shame on you.

Go ahead, spend your life like Sisyphus with your head down, eternally pushing a boulder up a hill. That's your boring choice.

As for me, when I exit this life, I'd rather go out like Icarus -- in a blinding flash, harnessed to a pair of homemade wings that I built out of art supplies, believing I might really touch the Sun.