What Lies Beyond
The Fleeting Moments . . .
Joan Ann Lansberry
December 23, 1998
|
|
we dream, we dream
while we may, while we may . . ."
|
December 25, 1998
Merry Christmas, Dear Readers!
|
|
One of the mysteries of turkey cooking, is that the 'done' time is unpredictable. This bird was well cooked sooner than Laura thought it would be. Knowing that they are the most moist and flavorful right out of the oven, Laura called everyone to come. So at 10:30am, the three of us, Glen and Mother and Laura's son James sat down to eat.
We hadn't seen Winterhaven in Tucson for several years, so Laura thought a visit might be festive. Winterhaven is a neighborhood that has had a fifty year tradition of going all out with Christmas decorations. Glen and Mother also were eager to go. However Julia wasn't feeling well. Perhaps she had the bug Laura's Mother and I had the day before. So she stayed home. We gave her warm hugs and kisses, and headed off in our two car caravan southward.
We parked our cars and started out on foot. We'd covered quite a bit of area, and it would have been a long walk back. We were close to the areas where horse-driven trolleys, hayrides and carriages were available. So we reserved our places for a trolley. As we sat waiting on the bales of hay, we felt the evening air turn piercing. It continued to get colder, once we'd boarded the trolley. I was glad to have a middle seat. I pulled the drawstring tighter on the hood of my coat. Laura whispered she had a plan in mind. Then she spoke loud enough for the driver (who was directly ahead of us) to hear. She was feeling 'sick to her stomach'. I feared she was getting the bug that was going around. Soon, she begged to be let off the trolley. The horses were reined back, and Laura got off the open vehicle. She said she'd pick us up in her car at the trolley station. Once I no longer had her at my side, I felt quite frozen. The driver, hearing our complaints, reminded us that in Colorado, his home state, they had 10 below (-14C). My Mother, too, had spoken of such temperatures when I talked with her earlier Christmas morning. Knowledge of their worse weather didn't make me feel warm, however. Right after the trolley pulled into the parkway, Laura came up in her lovely toasty warm car. She hadn't fallen sick, she had planned the ruse so we wouldn't have to walk two miles back to our cars!
But I still felt like a large block of frozen ice when we arrived home. It was wise Julia stayed home, for she tolerates cold poorly even when well. But, still, it was a fun outing. Glen was shutter-happy, and took ninety pictures. I racked up a rather respectable twenty-seven, myself. I've cropped and sized the best of my efforts as a memento.
December 27, 1998
(I had a spare moment last evening, and sat down to see if the Muse had anything for me. I sat quietly at my sewing table with the lamp in the background. With my eyes shut, to better gaze inward, the lamp still made its presence known. Yet, I found a peacefulness inside my mind.)
|
Listening, light loud,
It is quiet within,
|
We paid our eight dollars a piece, and they gave us purple paper wristbands as proof of having tickets. Off we went to play. And it WAS play. Somehow, through their clever interactive exhibits, we felt magically transformed to when we were kids. I was ten again. I remember ten. I'd received a microscope for Christmas. I'd put all sorts of wierd things on the little glass strips for viewing, strands of hair, dust bunnies, scraps of fabric, even smushed bug bits and boogers (ugh, nose detritus). We were all ten again, set loose in a giant playhouse.
Laura and I sat on either side of a screen. It was made of alternating clear window strips and mirrors. Aligning our faces just so, we saw in alternating stripes, our facial features mixed. It was funny! In another area, Julia and I sat at connected computers, each with a webcam. Every few seconds, the cams would capture our images and displayed them both on the two screens. Giggling, I'd stick my tongue out at Julia, who was quite ladylike and didn't return the favor.
A large round ring hovering over a contraption of pipes had hand shapes on it, on opposite sides, inviting us to press down on it. Laura and I did, and made fog rings spurt upwards. A bridge with squishy rubber bulbs arranged evenly over it was fun. I walked over it twice, enjoying the odd sensations it produced. A timed maze tested our abilities. Laura demonstrated her ability to trace from 'in' to 'out' in nine seconds. Julia was a little faster at a display about computers, demonstrating the binary system. How knowledgeable both of them are to know which combination of on and off switches make the letters of the alphabet. The exhibit had already coded secret messages for us children to play with, but Laura and Julia didn't need them. Working together, they made a red light display print out the words "JOAN, I LOVE YOU," which made me smile happily. It's a marvel, too, when I consider that all that is coming across this screen to you derives from those combinations of on and off switches.
This room also had a few computers connected to the internet with preset bookmarks (no way to type in your own URL), for the as yet uninitiated to sample what it's like. I, of course, would have left a bookmark or two of my own, if I could. That wasn't possible, but there was a walled exhibit about self-portraits, with three different mirrors and chalk boards at varying height levels, so I left a quick sketch of my features there.
In another area, Laura and I watched a video about communicating with chimpanizees. The 'pygmy' breed has proved most able. One chimp named Kanzi has over 250 words in his lexicon. They are no longer using sign language with primates, for the primate hand blurs certain words that are distinct when signed by the human hand. The full symbol lexicon is there for you to see. This study has had other implications, as well. They are using it with the severely retarded, who cannot learn to communicate with oral or signed language. One twenty one year retarded girl used to have fits of frustration because she had no way to express herself. She was sitting there calmly, happily pointing to the symbols which opened the door between her inner world and that of the larger.
Many other exhibits were about medical discoveries. One display showed all the various replacement parts for the body. Steel hip joints, steel knee joints, tiny silicone finger joints, 'glass' eyes and cornea transplant parts fascinated. My gramma had one of those hip joints put in her, and it was cool to see what it looked like. Also, should my joints ever disintegrate away to nothing, it was reassuring that science is working on solving such problems.
A display in a darkened walled off area had a mannequin of a man laying flat, while a film display shown on him to show what heart bypass surgery looked like. This one was a little too graphic, as I thought of how Laura's chest had been split open and things rearranged in exactly the same way. I quickly moved on.
Laser beams were an instrument in many displays. One let us make cool designs on a wall across the way. We experimented with prisms. Using double prisms, I got another display to show three intersecting circles, with overlapping colors. It must work the same as the computer's RGB monitors, for green and red combined made yellow, green and blue made cyan, blue and red produced magenta, and all of them combined resulted in a white center.
Laura battled our strengths in a wheel chair race. She beat me easily after she'd beaten Julia. My upper arms got so sore. There were so many things, we did not see them all. It was so wonderful, this gift of 'being ten' again.
One simple display involved a large device that was let down into a vat of soapy water and pulled up, with a thin screen of iridescent soap bubbles. So much of life is ephemeral soap bubbles, little fleeting moments of beauty. I want to capture each one and preserve it forever.
This tiny piece of iridescence is a shell fragment that sits on my sewing room window sill.
