Variety! Autonomy! Stimulation! Oh, my!
You are currently browsing articles tagged birthday.
I haven’t done an Illustration Friday post in a Loooonnnggg time! I’m starting the ball rolling again with an illustration I did a few years ago for my very own birthday.
I didn’t have any way to get something I’d made in the real world to the computer, so I made this using a photo of myself, then drew over it with the Windows paint program and then altered it with Picasa. All this using a mouse. I’m excited to see what I can do now that I can take a picture of my art and scan it in.
Tags: birthday, drawrings/art, Illustration Friday, sugary
It’s my friend Adam’s birthday today (well, technically just past as it’s now past midnight.) I always forget and think his birthday is in March. He was due before me. Our mom’s were in a childbirth class together and the story goes that his overdue mom came to visit my mom and Adam met me through her belly and decided he wanted to come out too.
So, from conception he was older, but from birth I was. We were born in California and then both our families moved to Utah when we were toddlers. Our families visited each other every now and then, and I have many memories of Star Wars based play. He got all the cool toys. We even had the same baby dolls.
Adam died when we were 29. Wow. When I was planning this post in my head I was planning to say that I was over the grief of it now, which I think I mostly am, but writing that still makes me cry.
It’s funny. I didn’t remember it was his birthday until my mom mentioned it, but I did remember him last night and I think it was after midnight. I was reading about Mimi Smartypant’s mini smartypants who was playing Star Wars based play with her boy pal.
Oh, Adam. Oh Adam’s parents. I was pretty much sick with grief when he died. I did have a nice dream in the weeks after that comforted me and the last moment of it is an image I see when I think of him. Here’s how I remember it now:
I’m in a big building that looks something like a conference building. One side of the building is glass. People are walking around. It’s like a prison because we can’t get out. Someone may have announced that we can’t get out. It’s not a horrible place to be. It’s just that we have to stay there.
I’m following a man. He’s walking in front of me, somewhat purposefully. He walks along the walkway in the building by the glass wall and then suddenly, he opens a door and just walks out! I’m astonished. I can’t follow him anymore, and I’m sad he’s leaving us, but I’m glad for him that he made it outside. I watch him go, through the glass. He keeps walking, never turning back, over the broad expanse of the earth, towards the sunset.
“April hath put a spirit of youth in everything.”
- William Shakespeare
This day is quite an illustrious day in history. You might not have realized this.
Duke Ellington and Maya Angelou were born on April 4th.
“April 4” is one of the only dates mentioned specifically in a U2 song. Tis true.
AND I was born on April 4th. Yep, it’s me birthday!*
*If you want to want to give me a present, leave me a comment telling me about something small that someone does for you that makes you feel loved.
April 4th birthdays and years
1896: Tristan Tzara, French poet
1899: Duke Ellington, American band leader
1914: Marguerite Duras, French writer
1915: Muddy Waters, Chicago blues singer
1928: Maya Angelou, American poet
April is also:
Guitar month, Humor month, AND Kite flying month. April truly rocks.
“The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
You know how it is with an April day.
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You’re one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
a cloud come over the sunlit arch,
And wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you’re two months back in the middle of March.”
- Robert Frost
“Spring is the Period
Express from God.
Among the other seasons
Himself abide,
But during March and April
None stir abroad
Without a cordial interview
With God.”
- Emily Dickinson, Spring is the Period, #844
More Spring poems here. (Takes awhile to download.)
Tags: April, birthday, love, lyrics, music, photographs, poem, you tube
Recent Comments