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.