advice for step-children

A few days ago I published a long list of advice for step-parents. I am the product of step-parents, so I have first hand experience. Relationships are hard, and they are always a 2 way street… and so, advice for step-children.

Forgive your step-parent for not being your mom/dad. They didn’t create the situation that caused your parents to part. Even if they were in the picture before your parents parted, a healthy relationship would not be broken up by an outsider. Affairs are the symtom of a problem, not the problem itself.

Treat your step-parent as you would like to be treated. Don’t give them the silent treatment, don’t point out their flaws, and don’t be disrespectful. Respect them because they are your real parents choice.

Try very hard to get along with all step-parent family, including their kids, especially their kids. You are all in the same boat.

Don’t throw fits and act an ass. You’ll just make both of your parents look bad. Try to be mature, and try to be well behaved even when handling something very difficult.

Don’t try to get between your parent and your step-parent. If you drive everyone away, when you leave home your parent will be alone.

If your step-parent is relentless, horrible and mean, tell everyone who will listen. Be honest, but keep in mind, there are 2 sides to every story, so keep your’s the right one.

Finally, realize your parent loves you… don’t make things harder on them. Try to love them for who they are, try to love their imperfections… there is no law saying you have to love your step-parent, but at the very least be civil, nice and kind. Throw the eye rolls out the window because there is more than you and how you feel in the world.

burnt whole

In high-school, I read “Slaughter House Five” by Kurt Vonnegut. After reading his book, I never felt the same. I became obsessed with Dresden during World War 2, more specifically, the fire bombing of Dresden. More people were killed in Dresden than in both nuclear bombings in Japan combined.  The hatred, the raw violence, the sadness… 

As I began to understand what happened (I do say what and not why) I slowly started to read other stories of the war on a personal level. I have read many biographies, and memoirs from World War 2 and I would like share the stronger with whomever is reading this blog.

The first book, is about the Holocaust (the definition of Holocaust literally means “burnt whole”) by Gerda Weissman Klein. I think it should be required reading. We should look inside ourselves and understand if we could’ve done what she achieved, just by living through her ordeal. If you read no other book about the Holocaust, then read this one.

“All But My Life”
To be 15 and held in contempt and raging hatred by your countrymen… Gerda is but a young girl when the war rolls into town, and yet she survives and adapts to even the most brutal treatment. Her story is haunting, full of memories and details that I will never forget, I am thankful she shared them. She writes with a voice devoid of hatred. She reminded me how lucky I am to be alive and well and surrounded by those I love.

ender’s game

Ender’s game is consuming. It begins a bit slow, but once you get interested you are hooked! Battling with fear and trying very hard to understand what is behind the actions of all the adults, is Ender Wiggin genius child-warrior, the great hope of Earth.

The story follows Ender through battle school, where he is being trained to fight an enemy that came close to erradicating the human race. The Buggers, at once feared and hated, but as Ender finds – you can only know your enemy if you love him… I have heard all of the Ender titles, in my opinion, the shadow series is much better than, Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide
and Children of the Mind.

The titles, in order of publication date:
Ender’s Game

Speaker for the Dead

Xenocide

Children of the Mind

Ender’s Shadow

Shadow of the Hegemon

Shadow Puppets

Shadow of the Giant

First Meetings

A War of Gifts

Ender in Exhile

jan saudek

If I had one word to sum up Jan Saudek’s work… human. Often irreverent, filled with images of what we in society find unattractive, I am attaching some of Saudek’s work that can be viewed with a G rating. His work is amazing, perfection, controversial and offensive (to some).

I came across this artist in the 90′s, in London. I can still feel the moment of discovery. His work was film, handcolored, no photoshop, no digital.

The past crashing into the present the imagery attacking modern viewpoints…

His books are a treasure, his vision consistant and true.

Currently he is selling work on his site… I encourage everyone, visit, enjoy, be soothed or shocked. But know you are seeing what it is to be human, celebrating our bodies, warts and all.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies?

Not exactly high brow literature, but really great none the less… who would of thought it?

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Classic Regency Romance – Now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem!

Publisher’s Summary

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.” So begins Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, an expanded edition of the beloved Jane Austen novel featuring all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie mayhem.

As our story opens, a mysterious plague has fallen upon the quiet English village of Meryton – and the dead are returning to life! Feisty heroine Elizabeth Bennet is determined to wipe out the zombie menace, but she’s soon distracted by the arrival of the haughty and arrogant Mr. Darcy. What ensues is a delightful comedy of manners with plenty of civilized sparring between the two young lovers – and even more violent sparring on the blood-soaked battlefield as Elizabeth wages war against hordes of flesh-eating undead. Can she vanquish the spawn of Satan? And overcome the social prejudices of the class-conscious landed gentry?

Complete with romance, heartbreak, swordfights, cannibalism, and thousands of rotting corpses, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies transforms a masterpiece of world literature into something you’d actually want to read.

©2009 Quirk Books

the willow tree revisited

When my father married my mother he told her of his plan to plant a willow tree. My mother, a superstitious, person asked him not to. She said that once the tree got large enough to cover your grave, you’d die.

My father didn’t plant the tree.

Years later my mother did die and my father remarried. His new wife planted a willow tree. When it grew large enough to cover her grave, she died.

Seven or eight months later on a summer evening I came home from my job, the air was clear and the sky lovely, and I heard my father chopping down the willow tree. I asked him why he’d done it. He merely responded “there was a problem in the roots”. He was right, the problem was in the roots, the problem was in my father’s roots.

imogen cunningham

Imogen Cunningham’s work changed the way I see the human form. Ahead of her time, her work is soft, sensual and grace itself.

stranger

In my life, I have twice seen a stranger and known that if only I knew them, if only I’d met them, I could love them. Both times surprised me, I am a logical person. Yet the draw was so intense I remember it to this day.

Once I saw a man on the subway in New York. I was working and in a hurry, the subway was packed. I was staring into space, thinking of nothing in particular when suddenly I looked into a set of sensitive eyes. I didn’t speak, I got off at the next stop. But that feeling has not left.

The other moment was at a flea market in Athens, Greece. I was in an alley negotiating with a vendor and next to me was a man with the bluest eyes and calmest character I think I have ever, or will ever run across.

I am not sure what it is in a human that makes this happen. Is it a glimpse into a parallel universe, a past life connection, a wonder at what might’ve been? I am not sure, the intensity is strong and familiar. Maybe it’s just nature…

Walt Whitman’s poem “Stranger” below can bring me back to those 2 places everytime.

Enjoy -

PASSING stranger! you do not know how longingly I look upon you,
You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking, (it comes to me as of a dream,)
I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you,
All is recall’d as we flit by each other, fluid, affectionate, chaste, matured,
You grew up with me, were a boy with me or a girl with me,
I ate with you and slept with you, your body has become not yours only nor left my body mine only,
You give me the pleasure of your eyes, face, flesh, as we pass, you take of my beard, breast, hands, in return,
I am not to speak to you, I am to think of you when I sit alone or wake at night alone,
I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again,
I am to see to it that I do not lose you.

walker evans

Walker Evans was one of the first photographer’s whose work made me stop and take notice. I will never forget it. My parents belonged to one of those monthly book clubs, and my mom (at some point) ordered his book “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men”.

During my mother’s last summer I stayed home with her. She was very ill, so I was indoors. That is when I discovered my passion for reading, for photography and for this man’s depression era work.

nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

Somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look will easily unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

- ee cummings