you're my playground love

some days when my head is spinning with worries, and i forget how it feels to breathe, i look to the music and other's eyes to bring me back to a state of calm. i am a sucker for imagery matched up with song, anyone who reads this space is most likely well aware of this. there is something so interconnected in my mind, and heart, that weaves together a photograph or a painting with the lyrical refrains and melodies.

i miss the barefoot simplicity of my younger years.

but some afternoons i grab the babies and we run off to play in the park. the slides are my favorite, and i still climb up into them and let my body slip. i struggle with control issues that dictate many of my life choices, but in that moment of sliding i allow myself to free fall. i remember the appeal of parks and playgrounds, we all had some magnet pull to them, no matter how we were dressed, or where we had been.

how many times did we climb to the top in dresses, not caring at all?

playground love ~ air (from the film the virgin suicides)
& the video

my mother would braid daisies in my hair, but only that one summer when she had allowed me to grow my hair long. he used to weave together a crown of daisies for me, i remember. i always figured i'd wear them in place of a veil when i married, though i've married twice with no flowers anywhere. suppose it isn't the same, they were never weddings, not the way a girl dreams them to be. perhaps it was all just meant to stay that way, memories and the wishes of young love.

i have not given up on dreaming, though.

polaroids remind me of my childhood, of aunt annette and her shoebox collection. she kept it under her bed, pushed to the back and flush with the wall. some were blurry, others were taken at uncomfortable angles. but there were a few that told stories in their particular play at shadows and light. i never found out who took them, whether it was her, or if these were stolen/found images. i know my family history is fraught with petty thievery.

i like to believe she took them, and hid the camera somewhere i never discovered. her secret mystery.