the drink

cheeky lovers her j.d.

Barry Lopez

"He hesitated for a moment at the edge of the stage. He wished he were back in Nebraska with his students, to warn them: it is too dangerous for everyone to have the same story. The same things do not happen to everyone.

..."Everthing is held together with stories" he thought."That is all that is holding us together, stories and compassion".

From Winter Count. By Barry Lopez.

cheeky bagged

these are my two best friend xoch and ingrid and their dog cheeky - saved from a los angeles back alley. a tiny, somewhat confused dog who, from time-to-time gets dragged to events in a bag.

the blue frog

here's some late summer pictures from the blue frog - a property mat's family bought which is exceptionally beautiful... in the back woods of the ottawa valley... the cabin has a new porch, fresh with cedar logs. it's a magical place. known for the blue frogs of the region.

and, also, sometimes, known for its ghosts.

princess tina

this is beci orpin - she designs the most lovely things - jewellry and clothes and bags. i bought some silver sad teeth earrings by her. they look like the teeth on this tote bag.

her website is here.

old diary

i have tonnes of old diaries that look like this. these are a few pages i scanned. my writing is really tiny. i would cram every inch of the book with something. i was a compulsive recorder. everything i read, saw, dreamt or felt, had to, in some way, get recorded. flowers, poems, drawings... it's all in there. sometimes (most times) if i look at them i get that creepy "old me" feeling. a lot of the writing i don't like at all, ofcourse. the dreams are interesting. i used to record every dream i had right when i woke up. this particular part is from april 1992. i was in europe for a few months with school, so there are many overly romantic, embellished poems about european cities. ecck. example: "Budapest held all the power and sadness of a summer night, a night inwhich one feels lost in their own backyard and the sweet humidity reminds of old lusts...... wander the labyrinth in cruel enigma.... blah blah blah.... smile in the ectasy of experience, ....the pure pleasure of having been loved, for here, outside the maze all that's left is miss and sorrow, a deep longing like that of a boy for his heroic father." yes it's cringe-worthy. and Incoherent. why can't teens make sense? There are also quotes I'd come upon. "Some day all art will be light" Henry Matisse.

Now I write very little and when I do I try to be concise. Fewer the words the better, more efficient. Brevity is the sister of talent... someone said that. I can't find it in my screwy diaries because they are a MESS.

more squirrel fun

Rat Art

..so with more research I have found that junkyard taxidermy is alive and well.

go to Custom Creature Taxidermy to see it all.

for sarah!

lost and found

I find lots of things at work. this is part of a child's project about the ojibwa. Spelling is, apparently, no longer taught in schools. I like the drawings though.

motels

I like motels. i like taking motel pictures. i like walking around the room and finding evidence of the things that happened there before.... the smashed in doors and the blood stains that weren't removeable. i like old tiled bathrooms and sixties bathroom fixtures, bleached towels and crisp sheets.

sometimes i like fancy expensive new hotels too, with their "service" and their soaps, but sometimes an old crummy motel is just fine by me.

cat power

Cat Power live was excellent. she surely has all the talent you'd expect from her recordings and more. Her voice was even more interesting live and the fact that it was just her on stage was very brave.

i was a bit surprised it was hard to find some pals to go with me ... but luckily Andrea and Sean pulled through. They like depressing music too. And it was fun to see my old friend Moris there. Yeah for moris.

Much drama as someone broke into her room backstage while she was preforming and she had to call security. That took too long and then the idiot started to ruff up her friend. awkward.

Drama continued when, an hour or so later, a woman fainted. Chan herself, went down into the crowd to help out the woman and there was about a 20 minute delay.

she's so caring.

She made mention of her new clean and sober ways as she drank Earl Grey tea. As she sang "Lived in Bars" she managed to wag her finger at the audience - as if scolding us. And she changed the lyrics in one song - where she used to sing "I hate myself and I want to die" she now sings "I don't hate myself and I don't want to die." Go positivity!

She refused adamantly to play "Werewolf" which people kept asking for. She said it had to be a song she likes.

Kay Ryan

Poetry, however, "is the most complicated thing. It's the most beautiful sport. I am always a student of poetry, and in it I find a rest that I don't find anywhere else, whether writing my own or reading the masters. And by rest I mean not quiescence or stop, but release. What poetry does is put more oxygen into the atmosphere. Poetry makes it easier to breathe."

Ryan attributes her penchant for brief poems to "a short attention span. Actually, the way I write is to melt all the materials in my brain at once, like those cyclotrons in which they get atomic matter really hot and get it to do weird things. I have so many things that I like to do at once, that I can't do very long poems. It's hard to sustain. And I seem to be able to say what I want to. I'm very satisfied with short poems."

Kay Ryan. Poet.

sculptures

Here's some sculptures by our friend Nicola Prinsen who we stayed with on Salt Spring island. Her work is amazing. This is the beaver that Jim Carrey bought. It is called Fetch. She did a series of ravens and crows.

destiny

"This was the true lesson of Romeo and Juliet: The course of destiny was hard and swift. That stranger you met on Sunday could be the corpse of your true love draped artfully over your own cadaver on Thursday. You just never knew. "

From "The Bronte Project" By Jennifer Vandever.

auntie barbie

my aunt barbara is one of my favourite people in the world. she is funny and sweet and wonderfully eccentric. she collects a great many antique curiousities. she tells stories like no one else i know. this is when we went to see her in vancouver. she has a new bird. his name is baby chown.

when i was little my mother and aunt barbie would take us on road trips and we'd stay in cheap motels and stop at every thrift store and buy silly elaborate frilly 50's nightgowns. we would then lie around our motel rooms in our extravagant undergarments and talk like movie stars, and tell stories about our dramatic and utterly luxurious lives.

ruby the dog and tidal pool joys

much fun was had exploring tidal pools around salt spring island - where we stayed for a week with our friends. they are both artists and have a huge barn/loft/studio there where they work with a view of the ocean. here (top photo) you can see their dog ruby surveying the view.

i love the sea!

back from b.c.

best was lots of time spent with the sea. top photo is a view from our room.

i could happily look at the ocean everyday.

cottage and hair cut

we had another trip to the cottage. yeah! and we both got hair cuts. i got bangs and Mat got his head shaved.

Happy Birthday Barb!

These were taken at Barb's birthday. Happy Birthday! She's in Paris now enjoying the culture and couture.

Best Secrets Blog Ever

Ok I LOVE this Blog. Post Secret. Go see it. Use it. It is so funny and great.

Soon we are off to B.C. yeah for vacations!

more forest fungus, old shoe, and cottage pics

oh and this is Mat at the mohawk stage of his head shaving.

lichen world

this is the wonderful world of lichen doing their thing on the old dock at the cottage.

and forest bliss....

secrets around each bend.

moss blankets twigs and logs with loving care,

mushrooms nibbled by dears,

sunlight seeps in showing greens aglowing.

regent park goodbye

i took this picture in regent park. they are destroying the old housing enclave and eventually bringing something better. right now it looks like chechnya.

garden

everyday i walk the same way to work. i have tried different routes but the one i use now works the best. it utilizes the side streets most effectively and that is essential, because walking along in a cloud of exhaust, on never-ending concrete with a view of ashpault, to a symphony of honks, is just too sad. now, i take a route diagonially across from home to work, past various houses and their pets and their home owners. there are the houses i like best and the little ones you wonder about everyday - apart from the ones you just want, like the giant cathedral that's been converted into a home. complete with covered courtyard.

second favourite to that one, is a tiny, one floor, semi-attached that has the most beautiful garden. the homeowner has planted every kind of wild flower and peonies, bleeding hearts, daisies and a giant rose bush. in the middle of all that glorious blooming beauty stands a small stone sculpture of a stone woman holding the scales of good and evil, the woman stands with her head down.

each day this garden makes me smile as i pass it and makes me feel better about things. i was thinking the other day if i ever see her i will thank her. i pictured her spritely and smiley, jovial and communicative." it's good that people beautify" i thought." there should be more beautification". everywhere. always.

three weeks later i final saw her. it was late and i was walking home from an outing, not from work. i walked by her house, the dark of the street was lit only by occasional streetlights, still her little garden glowed and the smell was bounding and magnificent as i got closer. one light was on inside the house and it bled out through a tiny window, blue light, frightening at first, perhaps because of the contrast with the myriad of oranges, reds and pinks from the garden.

i stopped and looked in, but only for a second. her grey hair rest on a pillow, wiry and knotted up like a bird's nest, she was spread on a couch, feet up in slippers. her shape highlighted by the light of the t.v. coming from somewhere just outside of my range of vision. blue flickering light. i had a wash of melancholy roll through me and looked away. i trotted off, feeling i had invaded her privacy far too much.

something in the angle of her head, the way she was lying, the unkind blue light of the t.v., the look of her slippers, made me unbearably sad for her.

her loneliness there, laid bare.

the feeling, the awareness, that she had her garden but little else.

The Whitney

The Whitney is having a 75 year retrospective. Go see this excellent slide show and read the article too.

the mystery of pain

The Mystery of Pain

By Emily Dickinson


Pain has an element of blank;

It cannot recollect

When it began, or if there were

A day when it was not.


It has no future but itself,

Its infinite realms contain

Its past, enlightened to perceive

New periods of pain.

victim

a man with smashed up face, in a wheel chair, just came into the library today to get a library card. he handed me his license. on it, his face appeared just fine. eyes in the right place, nose round and there. mouth full of lips, and a smile. a long prosaic beard. he looked plump and pleased and swedish. but the face before me looked nothing like the picture. it had clearly been ripped apart, and then crudely sewn back together. his body too, one leg missing, one arm severed above the elbow. he made some comment about "not having a card since he was a teenager" and a "real partier" drank a lot until it almost "cost him his life". i wondered about people who need to tell you too much, to tell you their story after having just met you.... we have a saying when that happens at work: "too much information". i guess because it happens a lot.

although most people would probably wonder how he lost his face... so maybe he's just helping us out by answering the questions before they are awkwardly attempted.

Old Weird America

This is a piece from a zine by Rose White. It is excellent. I was always fascinated by Detroit. We'd drive through it on our way, to and from Ann Arbor, and a few times we went to bizarre underground parties there. What a city! With it's giant ruined abandoned mansions and creepy crack houses... it has quite a feel.

You can get her zine here.


Dead Dog on Avenue

by Rose White

Last night was spent dealing with a dead dog. At dusk, a happy dog with its tongue hanging out emerged from a sidestreet and began trotting blissfully down Michigan Avenue. I knew what would happen next, and couldn’t not watch: a car, making no real attempt to avoid the dg, hit it and drove off.

They drive off when they hit humans, too: I remember picking Randy up at the hospital with his blood-soaked clothes in a plastic bag, and picking Drew up at the hospital with his hair caked to one side with blood, a row of fresh staples in his head.

So the dog: I had to fix it. I put my finger on its neck where I thought its pulse should be, and, finding that inconclusive, carefully touched a boot tip to its furry stomach.

Then I noticed that its neck was twisted around in a strange way, and a perfectly shaped pool of blood was forming on the concrete behind its head. No, definitely dead.

A lady drove up and got out.

“Did you do this?”

No!

“Got a shovel?”

”No.”

“Well, I got some boxes.”

We use them as tools to push the dog out of the road, but the dog is heavy and limp, so now it’s harder than we thought; we leverage ourselves by kneeling down to push, oblivious to the cars now swerving around us, and then, of course, blood starts smearing everywhere and gets on me; I realize that I can’t get blood on jeans that aren’t mine; this requires even more delicacy.

Finally, the dog is out of the road, asleep next to the curb, and she arranges its paws so that they aren’t so grotesquely pointed in the wrong directions.

“You know,” she says, “I just wanted to, you know, get it out of the.. you know, I couldn’t.. got a cigarette?”

”No.”

“I just wanted to.. you know what I mean?”

”Thanks.”

excerpted from Old Weird America #1

beirut

I am really enjoying this Beirut album.

Thanks to Marty for playing it on the boat at the cottage!

The song "Postcards from Italy" is perfect.

For more go here to stereogum.

http://www.stereogum.com/archives/002537.html

for the next week it's just this....

sunny walk in the park

these are photos from a fun sunny walk, xedar showed paul how to play wildlife explorer in the trees, (a game she learned from real life explorer aunty ingrid), xochitl wears sunglasses, photo of me taken by xedar who is only 3 years old - but already a fine photographer.

the last photo is of my mom's dog winston, the bulldog. that's his bum.

my mom and my brother

neo rauch - great painter