Focus Pocus

There is this hippie writing technique I picked up somewhere along my psuedo-artistic journey.  It's simple really, before you start your soon-to-be-inspired prose, you light a candle, a "focus candle," and it reminds you to stay on task.  You can pray or incant or breathe or stretch before during or after the lighting of the candle and ...

I am never focused enough to remember to light the stupid focus candle.

I lit it today:

I lit it and then I got the camera and  I took a picture of it and then I downloaded the image and then I inserted the picture above.  Wasn't I supposed to be focused on something?

Here's the kicker, I am supposed to stay focused because I only have a little time today and I can only devote so much of my time and brain to this page of nothingness.  It's energy outlaid with none returning.  (That damn candle is giving me flashbacks to the seventies, man.)

Knowing I only would really have time for one longer, more, uh, developed - better written - uhm, gooder, post this week I got to thinking about what I would put my mind to today; what one thing touched me or moved me or tickled me or soared my soul this week.  This came to mind:

Yep pretty cool, “Nick Peebles Boy Detetive (detective) #28.”  I’ll let you assume that’s his badge number although, I know it is not.    His very hip sunglasses are stashed up in there and, well, I am afraid to look any deeper, it might be booby-trapped.  (If they don't start working on spelling soon ...)

I remembered this image with a chuckle:

It’s a pair of Zack’s underpants dangling out of his drawer.  It’s the first time that’s officially happened and it actually made me laugh outloud.  It conjured up messes and bad habits and smells and so much more yet to come.  And yes, that is a lava lamp – a lot safer than an open flame on a wooden desk very near a stack of old school papers.  (What is that smell?)

This was a top contender as well:

Nick and Zack spent one whole cold rainy evening and the next morning working on this, together, as in a team, a sweet, adorable, heartbreakingly tender, team.  They consulted and collaborated with such ease and goodwill that, well, it sort of surprised me, in a happy sort of way.  It was so inspired that it is still taped up to the wall in the dining-room, for a while now, actually.  Maybe I can take it down now that I have it archived, if you will.

I like trying to remember things here that I feel they might recall later, when they encounter this, what? - memoir, digital scrapbook, blog, although that infers readership.  Drawings and stories and images that might spark memories for them, and me, and perhaps you.

Truth be told, when I got to thinking about what I wanted to do here today, the very first thing I thought of was this:

Nick brought this home from school as a simple pencil on paper sketch.  When he got home, he whipped it out and began adding the color.  It was intensely important to him, I could tell.  I asked him what it was and he told me, “Oh it’s just a coupla pearls in the shells.”  In an azure sea under a turquoise sky, shimmering, happy and hopeful.  Just a coupla pearls...

DAMMIT!

I just reached out to get a pencil to  jot down a thought and ...

... I singed my arm on the stupid “focus candle!”

Once he added the color he relaxed and looked at it.  I still don’t get it.  I don’t know why it was so important to him.  I’m not sure he does either.  It may have been about completion or biology or balance or aesthetics or hope.  Perhaps it was about focus.

I gotta go get the fire extinguisher something.

Sorry I sort of lost focus there after I threw the "focus candle" across the basement.

From Marci's  "... things you don't expect to hear from the backseat.."

"We're a couple of greasy ducks, the happy kind."


I know I like my ducks greasy and happy ...


Just don't get 'em too close to the f***ing focus candle.