Let an Image be an Image.

All you need is love.

But love is the last thing you need.

Do you want to go out?

yes

maybe

no.

All you need is chocolate.

If you're selfless, you'll give me some.

Okay, love.

I Dream of Painting, and Then I Paint My Dream.

I was at an art museum this afternoon, with Matt.

We've been there a few times, and we never seem to have time to make it through the whole thing. We start at different parts, but always manage to end up next to the chain mail, armor and swords before we leave.

Anyway - that isn't really what I want to write about.

My biggest issue with art museums is that it seems like everyone wants to run through them. I start looking at this really beautiful Monet painting of a footbridge. Oil on canvas. Truly beautiful. I take a step back, just to look at it from another angle, and I realize everyone I entered the room with has disappeared. They have moved on to another exhibit, and I've been looking at Monet's bridge for 5 minutes.

But how can you not? How can you not stand in front of this painting, or Picasso's "Woman in an Armchair" illustrating the absolute devastation of his own deteriorating marriage ...or Salvador Dali's lobster phone ...or that weird piece in the corner that's mostly comprised of geometric shapes - how can you not stand in front of them for minutes, hours even, and let them take you in - or you them?

I mean, you don't pick up a book and flip quickly the pages and claim to have read it.

These paintings, this art - it is proof that these people exist(ed). Hours of their life hanging on a wall just for me. Their intimate thoughts. Their light-bulb moments. Their heartbreaks and triumphs. They are hanging on a wall for me, you - us.

So I just don't understand. I don't understand how people just breeze through, glimpsing here and there. Pausing for a minute to look at the very tiny details of a portrait, or some other more complex piece, not reading the name of the painting. Is it oil? Acrylic? Something else? What does it look like if you stand 5 feet away? 10 feet?

Maybe I feel this way because I paint, too. Maybe that's why I want to stare for hours at the strange piece of abstract art that's title says one thing, but its colors say another. I want to know what the artist saw. I want to see it. Feel it, even. I want to turn to my left or right and make eye contact with the person next to me and come to a silent understanding. Or experience being absolutely baffled together.

And if Bacon's "Study for Portrait VI" scares or concerns me, or if Couture's painting of an Italian street musician makes me cry for no apparent reason - should that be a solitary thing? Was it not meant to be experienced together? And how long do I let myself be consumed by these things? If it were a text...I'd give it 20, 40 minutes - an hour, a day. Maybe a few days.

Do I stay when I am left alone with Monti's Veiled Lady? Or should I turn and run, like everyone else, to the next piece of art - not allowing myself to feel it? Just skimming the back page for the details, and moving forward?

A Baby Bat, Bat, Bat.

When I was a kid, I loved to read.

Who am I kidding? I still love to read.

Anyway, when I was a kid...I loved to read. I loved As Long As I Love You and The Secret Three and Big Sarah's Little Boots and Stella Luna. I loved a lot of books, but I think I can clearly point to Stella Luna as the book that piqued my interest about the world. I remember asking questions about the world (maybe not earth shattering questions, but definitely big questions for a 5 year old): Would a bird really raise a baby bat as it's own? Is it okay to be different? Why do bats love fruit so much?

So I embarked on a journey to answer all my questions, born of literature! Eventually, I found the answers...

I guess now is a good time to tell you that Stella Luna also instilled within me a deep love for bats. Maybe it was because I was so happy that this bat found acceptance or something. Maybe I just really thought all bats were misunderstood (actually, I do feel this way...). I researched bats constantly. Big bats. Small bats. Fruit bats. Vampire bats. The benefits of adding bat guano to your garden. What to do with an injured bat.

I loved looking at bats at the zoo. Or watching them fly over-head at night.

So, you can imagine exactly how thrilled I was when I found one trapped in my hallway the other day. He landed on a little ledge and peeked at me, pretty much telling me he needed me. You don't understand how excited I was! I dropped my trash bags and I said (out loud) "I am in a hallway with a bat. I will save you, bat!"

So I ran upstairs, got a stool and a bowl and a cloth and ran back down to save my precious bat friend. He was such a good sport, like he knew I was going to make things all better. He just let me put him in the bowl (and then he started baring all his teeth and making noises...until he found the orange I left him as a treat). I took him upstairs and for a good 5 minutes all I could do is say "I have a bat. In a bowl. I have a bat in my possession, in a bowl. Right now, I am interacting with a bat."

He and I shared an hours worth of adventures, and then I took him to the wildlife rehab center where they will take care of him until spring, when he can be released again.

But in my hour with my bat I wondered - how had he gotten into my hallway? Was he raised by birds? How did that bat know I wanted to meet him so badly?!

I thought for a while about how my crazy love for this little bat had all been born in one afternoon, curled up with Stella Luna on my lap. I hadn't ever truly thought about the influence books can have on people until my interaction with Hector (my bat). How different might things have been if I'd never read that little book? If I'd never learned to love bats through reading?

It may seem ridiculous but reading Stella Luna as a child literally changed my life! It really makes me wonder how the other texts I encounter are constantly changing the way I interact with the world (is this transaction theory?)

...and it's a beautiful, amazing and terrifying thing.

O Useful Element and Clear!

Water has always intrigued me.

When I was young, I used to stare straight into my glass (or fish tank, or bath water) and marvel at the fact that I was looking at something that was almost invisible. I could see it, feel it, taste it. I was amazed - like I was in the presence of something that, at any moment, could instantly and completely conceal itself from me forever.

I loved water so much that sometimes I would just stand at the water fountain and let it run over my lips. I didn't want to drink it. I just wanted to feel it. I took long showers on purpose. I drank from the hose in the back yard. I got up in the middle of the night to drink water from the bathroom sink because a still glass of room-temperature water just wasn't exciting enough for me. I jumped in fountains. I stood outside when it rained. When condensation formed on the side of a glass, I crouched down and stared at it - in awe of the fact that my near-invisible object of fascination could do things - like run down the side of a glass without any help.

I thought I'd grown out of my fascination with water - you know, after learning about chemical compounds and evaporation and all that stuff. But, today, as I bent down to get a drink of water from a water fountain...I let myself linger just long enough that I was no longer drinking and was just letting the water run over my lips.

As I was walking away, I started thinking about all the poems and songs I knew about water - and how lucky I am to have clean water, and how I hate drinking water but love the sound it makes when it sloshes around in my water bottle, and the way the rain sounds when it hits my window...and the little streaks it leaves. And how the high-pressure mode in the car wash makes me really happy because I like the way the water sounds when it hits my almost invisible windows.

Maybe I never really grew out of my strange fascination for the liquid I love to stare at but hate to drink. Maybe the relationship just got complex enough that I forgot how much I loved the simple things.

Chapstick, Chapped Lips and Things Like Chemistry.

I have been a student for 18 years.

This means 18 years of sharpening pencils, trading erasers, passing notes, lunch hour, markers, tape, glue, construction paper, posters, book reports and papers. For 18 years I have walked school hallways, high fived friends, loaded up my binders with pictures and poetry. In 18 years, I have written a novel's length worth of witty comments in the margins of my books. I have signed my name as

Nikki W

Nikki C

Nikki A

Nikki M

Nikki P

Nikki I

Nikki S

Nikki J

and of course, as Nikki Hansen, all on the left hand side of my notebooks, near the coil that holds the paper together. In 18 years I have collected numerous, hilarious drawings of people that I know or knew. Phone numbers. Snide comments. Lightbulb moments. Impromptu poems. 18 years of who I am, how I've grown lives in writing around the edges of my notes.

Oh yes. Notes. For 18 years I have taken notes. The alphabet, times tables, sentence diagrams, mice and men, geometric shapes, musical theory and happy daggers. For 18 years I have had a notebook as a steady companion, with little pockets to hide secrets and house schoolwork in. For 18 years, I have had a fairly predictable routine: waking up, packing my back pack, going to school, doing homework.

I cannot remember life as anything but a student. Sitting in desks, staring at chalk boards...then white boards...overheads, then projectors. A place to put my lunch and hang my coat. My best friends sitting next to me, keeping me distracted from the schoolwork I love almost as much as I love them.

Naturally, the fact that in May I will formally leave the structure in which my whole life has taken place scares the hell out of me. Or maybe it scares hell into me. I'm not sure which.

Either way, I feel a little ridiculous. Every time I pick up my green four subject notebook, I get a little emotional. I know that it is the last notebook I will own as a student seeking some form of degree. I can see the bright light shining - telling me that, soon, the page will turn and there will be no more curled edges. No more notes to take. No more "I like your pen you" or hearts being drawn, no more swirls or butterflies or "hi's" - no more phone numbers being scrawled across the top of the pages, no more drawings of teachers, cats, bff's holding hands. No more pictures of farmer dan, who has appeared on the pages of my notebook for a steady 10 years. No more snarky remarks written to the person next to me, and no more critiquing the things I like or dislike about the ways my teachers teach.

There will be no more teachers.

I will be the teacher.

I will watch the girls and boys scribble on their notebooks - songs and notes and awful pictures of me and everyone else they know. Poems and signatures of names they hope they never have to change, or someday get to have. I will watch them doodle, and I will let it happen, knowing that they only get to be students for so long and that life is being written on those pages.

Alternative Energy

I have always been made of coal.

I just pressed hard enough

to make my edges shine bright enough

to distract his eyes

and her eyes

from what is underneath

the thin, shiny exterior.

It makes them forget that

underneath

all I am is a material that burns

in uncontrollable, underground fires.

Burning for decades.

Pumped Up Kicks

When I was 14, I asked my parents to buy me 3 pairs of Converse for Christmas - and I told them they'd never have to buy me street shoes again (until college).

I was right.

My chucks took me everywhere. All over the streets of Los Angeles. My chucks took me from class to class to class. They took me to marching band practice and to the baskin robbins down the road. My chucks were there when I had my first ham sandwich with mayonnaise on it. My chucks took me to my first kiss. My chucks took me across the picket line in front of Vons to buy snacks. My chucks took me to the tide pools.

My chucks took me to clubs, arcades and temples in Japan. They took me to sushi-go-round, Yoshinoya, the Odakyu Sagamihara eki. My chucks took me to my first day of high school back in Japan. They took me to my junior and senior prom. They took me to Tokyo Tower. They took me to a number of concerts and soccer games and youth camps. My darling converse took me to my first job, and to my first year of college.

I still have a functioning pair left, and I'm about to graduate with my M(asters of) Ed(ucation).

I bought (actually, Danica bought them) a new pair last summer. I'm sure they will take me everywhere. Where will yours take you?