I remember this one time, when I was somewhere between the ages of three and five. I was standing outside a small convenience store in Vancouver with my mother, she had just bought me a scratch and win ticket for reasons now unknown. Anyhow I was standing on the sidewalk scratching vigorously at the thick piece of paper with a borrowed penny, more thrilled at the layer of paint I was removing from the ticket than by the possibility of winning money. After this brief frenzy of penny scratching, I made sure that the entire surface was cleaned of the removable substance. With my task complete I was gazing at the small area I had cleared, the vague notion of checking if I had won anything in mind, unable to tell though I held It up in the air at my mother and hollered at her. “MOM did I win anything?” She looked at the ticket for only two or three seconds before declaring that I had won two dollars. After this point my memory of the whole scene grows fuzzy and I cannot recall if she took the ticket and gave me two dollars. Which would mean that I had possibly not won anything and she was just humoring my small child self. Or the other option is that we went back into the store we were standing in front of and she exchanged the ticket for two loonies (as twoonies did not yet exist) where upon I probably bought candy with them. As I can’t remember which of those endings is the correct one, maybe theres even some third unknown possibility that I have no idea of.
Anyway thats the story of my first memory 
Dalarius
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This a memory of my childhood. I grew up in Gabon in the jungle, in African beautiful incontaminated forest. This great refugee for animals is in danger now, though Aspinall foundation is creating a gorilla reserve there… My father is Italian/ French, my mother Jewish/Persian and Austrian plus, as other races are mixed in my mom’s blood. She was raised in England from 7 years age and at 21 she was working in the jungle of Gabon.
So I have grown up with tribes and pygmies in the forest. Sometimes people think I’ m a savage ba lu ba’. Silly pumpkins…he he he!!!! …Most of them don’t have even a clue where Gabon is…. and how special it is… Yes, I grown up in a bamboo beautiful tribal home on the river by a montain, close to ocean. This place had many tiny antilopes and “black” elephants: with darker skin little ones of the forest and amazing swimmers.I grown up moslty naked, with no shoes, playing games in other dimension… My friends were mostly pygmies and a giant chimp, and antilopes, elephants… Forest, trees, river, mountain, light life noise and moonlight… abundant flamboyant nature and sunlight… sometimes deep silence and isolation. Going swimming and trekking and spending great time by the ocean is my first big love! I remember eating a lobster cooked in palm leaves given to us by a local fisherman on the beach… The postal office was a tiny aeroplane dropping mail mostly in the a river full of crocs :)…
With time I had a more close encounter with civilisation in the school made in bamboo and wood and stone. We often had to hunt with tribes for food … no supermarket at all :)… weheee… All we had was two jeeps, one radio and a lot of animals and nature, a german wolf and two cats and a cocktail made by people from all over the world dropping by to visit us… We had barbecue every 6/8/9/ of month. They all were speaking different languages.
I’m an artist now, living in London, trying to fulfill my dream to master Tibetan art, a difficult and amazing technic, complex and sacred; and blend it with unique color techniques like Japanese and Indian art… to create out of that learning great new graphics … Write me if you like my painting.
Muriel
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