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