Give me only a tree house, 
a lap full of books, 
and time enough.
July 3, 2011

"The world is abundant with thousands of lush words," she whispered. "Write to me."
May 20, 2011

Some days, the only reasonable explanation for how we behaved is that someone put a spell on us. 
June 19, 2011

Some days fit together like a stained glass window, glorious colors of light, nestling together.
March 31, 2011

We need crayons and paper tucked into important places in our lives—like on our desks, near our favorite chair, next to our beds.
July 4, 2011

Warning: All dreams should carry warning labels. All of ‘em. When the darn things go and come true, the results are not always what we figured they’d be. We get seduced by our own fantasy, having created a pretty good role for ourselves in the movie version, but kinda neglecting to write much for the supporting cast. Or, we go and design incredible parts for that supporting cast, complete with costumes and music, but never get around to passing those scripts out to the other players.

In the shadows of Chicago, deep in the dusty inner city (right in the cracks between tap dancing on top of the-Golden-Gate's-startin'-to-open-and-you-haven't-even-knocked-yet and doing a slow shuffle through ain't-no-escape-so-no-sense-looking-for-the-door) there once lived an old man. He lived in a complex so big most folks never met half the other inmates. The landlord cared nothin' for the building, so such trappings of the home that the place had were through the sporadic efforts of a few tenants, still clinging to some vision of what a home ought to be like.
     He was a grandfather. This grandfather had five fine grandsons whom he loved more than the best-time-you-ever-had-come-back-to-visit-you-again. They ranged in age from a toddling three to a scrappy twelve, and they, in turn, adored their grandfather. Their kingdom was the hallways, the alleys, the streets. They conquered cement and steel and wire fences. What raw earth there was in their world grew crops of broken bottles, rusty cans, and an occasional bent nail. 
     But the grandfather had Dreams. And in his dreams, he saw his well-loved grandsons playing in a different world. In his vivid multi-colored dreams, those kids chased each other through trees, ducked through flower beds, and sat on fields. His dreams were splashed with green. Fried green tomato green and cabbage green and jello green. Dandelion greens green. Because the one thing his dreams always had in them was a vast meet-the-horizon lawn.
     He'd never had a lawn. Didn't, in fact, know anyone who had. But he knew about lawns. Started cutting pictures out of magazines and catalogues. Sears had the best ones. Right in the tools-you-can't-live-without section, next to the lawn-mowers-you-can-ride or even plug in like a toaster for power.
     One day he got himself an idea that wouldn't let go of him. This idea tip-toed through his head, did a little soft shoe, and then, satisfied, grabbed its well-worn suitcase and just unpacked—right in his heart.
     Those grandkids of his were not going to grow up without ever having a lawn. He would grow them one.
     Now life had made this grandfather a bit of a realist. He knew he couldn't give them the apple green fields of his dreams. But he'd give them something. And that something would be a piece of his dream. Even a piece of a dream had value. Could be loved. And folded up and traveled rather well, truth be told.
     He started looking at that small dirt plot out by the dumpster near his apartment window. It wasn't much, though it seemed to have produced a particularly grand crop of liquor bottles and soda cans these days. Then, he took out his pile of lawn pictures. And he began.
     Never told anyone what he was doing. Didn't need to. He cleared stones and bottles and cans. They came back; he cleared 'em away again. He was endlessly patient. Until finally, they just didn't come back any more. Using knives and hangers and spoons—anything he could use to break that packed dry soil—he dug. And turned. And prodded that small patch of earth into some kind of life.
     Wouldn't let anyone help him, either. "Nope," he'd say and look folks right in the eye. "This is my job. I got to do it."
     One day a half-filled sack of peat moss showed up on his doorstep. The grandfather wasn't a bit surprised. Figured his piece of dream was taking care of itself in some ways. Then he gently folded that peat moss into the soil, mixing it in over and over and over again.
     He'd been saving, too. Gave up a few things and so had a few nickels left over. Started himself a jelly jar and set it in the window. A person could see the jar if they stood by the dirt plot and looked in. Or you could see it if you sat in his living room and looked out. And sometimes that jar, too, filled with a quarter now and then that someone else figured they wouldn't be needing any more. To his way of thinking, the universe was rearranging itself so this small piece of his dream could happen.
     And then one day, he was ready to buy the seeds. What he had been doing was taking the bus uptown, cross town, around town—wherever there were lawns he could admire. Then he'd talk to the gardeners who cared for those lawns. And when he figured he knew the best seeds (the seeds that would be the exact shade of green from his dreams), he bought himself a box of them. And a bottle of chemicals—food for the dream-lawn. He had always been a sort of researcher of life, and so he had researched lawns inside and out, backways and foreways and everywhichway he could.
     Just like he'd seen the gardeners do, he put up a sort of fence around that plot, using old twine and pieces of brooms, so the seeds wouldn't get trampled on until they had become a lawn. Carried water out in a glass jar everyday. One day, when he thought it had been raining too hard and he was afraid the dream-lawn couldn't absorb all that water, he took his shower curtain outside and covered the whole thing (I told you, it wasn't a very large plot).
     It became a lawn, all right. And it was some kind of green. And thick. If you spread your hand out flat and kind of tried to mash it down, that grass just sprung right back up, full of energy. And if you put your face right down in it, you could smell the fields of his big dream, without half-trying. Now and then, a startled bird would settle down on it, trying to figure out where that green stuff had sprung up from.
     Now, you want to talk Neighborhood Watch programs? This hood had a watch that kept everyone off that plot. And no one ever had to say one word about why. Or consequences.
     One day, the old man knew it was finished. That lawn was as green and as springy as it was ever going to be. It was settled in and it was spread. It was saucy and sassy. It was the blues, taking your soul to a better place. The lawn was ready for his grandchildren.
     Have you ever been in a sacred moment?
     You'd have thought there'd be crowds around when that old man took down the string fence around his dream-lawn. But even though folks were a little short of cash, they had an abundance of respect, and that was rock hard currency. And they could be generous with it. Folks pretty much stayed inside (even though a lot of faces were pressed against a lot of greasy windows to be part of it all).
     There sat that lawn.
          Pristine.
               Untouched.
     Never-been-walked-on green green green.
               Come-and-get-me green.
          This-is-a-piece-of-that-big-lawn-we-should-all-have green.
     Now his grandkids loved that old man. A lot. And when they saw that little piece of lawn, why they tried to think what they were supposed to do about it.
     They looked at one another. They looked at their grandfather, grinning at them.
     Not one of those kids had ever been on a lawn (and it doesn't do any good for you to point out they could have found a park somewhere, 'cause that's a bus fare way across town and they just never did, anyhow). They lived in a cement world and went to a cement school. Their world was sidewalks and driveways and parking lots and pavements.
     But they knew a bit about dreams. And they figured that a part of that lawn-dream of their grandfather's had them wrestling on a big lawn. They looked at one another. Their eyes met in a moment of let-it-out-of-its-cage joy. And they jumped into the one role they did know.
     A whirl of solid energy, they hit that green grass. All five of them. Jumping and chasing and stomping and rolling. They put their whole hearts into it. Those boys, with all the love they could muster, were going to show their grandfather how much they appreciated his lawn. His dream for them.
     When they were done appreciating, not much was left.
     Less than an hour later, it was all dirt again—the green green grass mashed and torn and the life just plain stomped out of it.
     The old man turned and walked slowly back to his apartment. He closed the curtain. Threw away his pictures. Sat and rocked himself some. Never said another word about it.

© SunWolf, published in Santa Clara Review 89(1), 159-162, fall/winter 2001-2002.

Red is the first color to disappear from a child's crayon box and the last color emitted by a dying star. It is the color of fire, blood, roses for lovers, and the ruby slippers that returned Dorothy to the warmth of home.
~Recio (1996) Red


"Red goes with everything." Her voice was Teacher that day, matter-of-fact. Pointing out one of life's More Practical Maxims. I knew it wasn't true, of course. My nine years of life had proven pretty clearly that red didn't go with much of anything.
     Red was too much, as colors go. Overwhelming. A SCREAMING sort of shade. Good as a small accent (maybe). It was the 1950s and my small hands ran randomly along amazing racks of clothing at the most elegant store I had ever visited (Sears & Roebuck). So, I heard my mother's maxim that day, but skipped over all the red stuff anyway. I knew no one would ever actually pick red clothes. Intentionally. To buy.
     Except my mother. It was her favorite color. She has always been the only person I ever knew whose favorite color was red. She meant it. I was into pink at age nine, soon to transition to the blues, all before I was seduced by purple. (Eventually, I gave up those purple-lavender-lilacs, too—though they served me well for much of my attorney courtroom-life.)
     Favorite colors became one of my best opening conversational gambits as a child, as I systematically gathered interpersonal preference data (long before I had mastered those graduate methodology courses that we know to be cruel conditions-precedent to a Ph.D.). "What's your favorite color?" gave me, I thought, an instant personality probe. A sort of similarity scale: Was someone comfortingly like I was or dangerously different? Friend-potential or worthy of being ignored? I'd just find out a person's favorite color—and I'd know.
     After a few years, someone answered my Color Question by first telling me what their favorite color had been before. A bolt of insight! You could change your favorite color? I had thought favorite colors were like best friends—you weren't supposed to give up on them. My first break-up in life, as a result, was when I instantly abandoned pink (and wisely never looked back on that relationship).
     Now, however, I had two wonderful field research questions. Interpersonal uncertainty-reducers. "What's your favorite color?" was followed by the True Zapper, "What did your favorite color used to be?" That second question was a Time Traveler, offering a glimpse into a person's past. Telling me who a person used to be.
     {If anyone knows a color question that will serve as a future probe, contact me. Stunned looks caused me to abandon my childhood attempts, which generally ran along these lines: "What's your next favorite color going to be?" I learned that favorite colors are like romances. While you're in the middle of doing them, you do not seriously entertain the possibility of the next one.}
     There's two things, then about my mother and colors I can tell you: (1) red was her favorite, and, (2) she never gave up on it. Ever. Everyone I know has changed favorite colors, at some time. My mother was 80 years old when she died and red was still her favorite color. Actually, there's a third thing I can tell you about my mother and color: she could wear red. Thick black hair and emerald green eyes. In fact, red never looked so wonderful on anyone as it always looked on my mother.
     Surprisingly, though, our family environment was not colored by crimson. Our home was never consumed by the scarlets. Red did not splash across our walls, upholster our coaches, or weave itself into our rugs.
     {Until my father took us all to live in Iran and he discovered the delights of Persian carpets and the art of bargaining with rug merchants. My mother silently smiled when the first red carpet landed in her living room. She had been expecting it.}
     Is there any doubt but that my red-loyal mother would fall in love and happily-ever-after with a man named fRED? Or that her first child would be born in July, with its rich ruby birthstone (symbol of love and courage)? Birthstone notwithstanding, I never did wear red. Until it slipped, uninvited, into my home—soon after my mother was taken to the hospital, near the end of her life. Somehow, the moment my mother's life became surrounded with the whites, mine became permeated with the scarlets. As I said, she was a powerful woman, spirit-connected to a powerful color. Red shoes showed up on my doorstep, a red velvet jacket draped itself on my rocking chair, a cloud-like red cashmere sweater showed up in my drawer. Scarlet towels, crimson t-shirts, silken ruby lingerie. I was only an innocent (though intrigued) bystander.
     I'm a teaching-scholar. So, I did some red-research:

• Red appears at the top of every rainbow, because it has the longest wavelength and the slowest vibration in the visible light spectrum. In order to see the color red, you eye's lens makes a special adjustment (giving red objects an unrealistic zoom-in effect).
• Red has authority: It is the most frequently used color in national flags, it is the color of both royalty and revolution, the color of stop signs, fire-engines, cardinals, bishops, and warning labels. Red traffic lights and red brake lights announce danger.
• After black and white, red is the first color babies recognize. Red attracts the attention of pre-verbal toddlers more than any other color. Brain-injured persons suffering from temporary color-blindness start to perceive red before they are able to discern any other colors.
• Red dwarf stars are by far the most common type of star in outer space and may be a hundred times smaller than the sun. Because of their small size, these stars burn their fuel slowly, which allows them to live a very long time. Some red dwarf stars will live trillions of years before the run out of fuel.
• Red is the cold heat. Think of a fire. The coolest part of the fire at the top of the flame glows red, the hotter part in the middle glows yellow, and the  hottest part near the fuel glows blue. Full of contradictions, red, in the electromagnetic spectrum, corders "infrared," which produces heat. So, the color red is, indeed, HOT.
• The red color in the sky at sunset (and sunrise) is due to the Rayleigh scattering effect. During sunrise and sunset, the distance that the light has to travel from the sun to an observer is at its greatest. This means a large amount of blue and violet light has been scattered, so the light that is received by an observer is mostly of a longer wavelength (and, therefore, appears red).
• Red revs us up. It increases our appetites, adrenaline production, muscle strength, and blood pressure. Mere perception of red color enhances the human metabolism by 13%. Red encourages us to live in the moment.
• Red dances through folklore. When you dream in crimson, you will hear happy news from a friend. If you see red hair on a child, it means you will win a lottery. In China, a bride wears this deep scarlet hue at her wedding. A red ribbon should be placed on a child who has been sick, to keep the illness from returning. Protective powers of the color red against evil influence have been a common belief. Objects, animals, and trees were covered in red paint, while warriors painted their axes and spear-catapults red to endow the weapons with magic powers. In Nigeria, an object made of red feathers (called a "teso"), when placed on the floor of a home, is believed to make it impossible for any man to have sexual intercourse with an adolescent girl until the spell is removed.
• In India, red is the color of the first chakra of the seven energy centers that control the body and spiritual nature of man.
• The hair of the Virgin Mary and the robes of Angels were depicted red in medieval paintings. And, finally:
• The Wizard of Oz Effect: Red shoes can take you on marvelous unexpected journeys. You cannot get to Impossible Places wearing any other color of shoes. Consequently, everyone should own at least one pair of really red shoes. [Studies show the intensity of redness will affect the extent of magic experienced by the wearer on the journey. The cautious, opting, perhaps, for pale maroon pumps, are never going to end up in Oz. Or be able to return home, with a click of the heels, in quite the same way.

               A tip of the hat to you, if your favorite color is, in fact, red.
                              A wink to all those who  haven't been seduced by red {yet}.


"Sans le rouge, rien ne va plus."
Advertising slogan with a strong visual subtext, appearing under a picture in which Little Red Riding Hood's scarlet cloak has been bleached white. [The wolf walks away, disinterested.]

© SunWolf, published in Santa Clara Review 90(2), 54-57, spring/summer 2003.