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Tuesday, 10 November 2009

Marry Me, John.

Photos by Meg Kroeker.

Mine was one of seven bowed heads around a family table, hands by our sides, not joined. I was caught off guard, instantly grounded by words so familiar and simple. A moment taken to pause before a meal, grateful for food on the table before me, the smell wafting up to greet me - soaking in ineffable relief - is not something I do enough. Invariably, this is the response that rises when I do take a second to slow. It feels good. Grounded.

///

She pulled the tab fully intact off the aluminum can of free beer. She held it up in triumph to the small room crowded with bodies, not particularly caring (for once) if anyone paid attention or not. It was a mere confirmation of what she already knew. He loved her! Undoubtedly. Earlier that day, while reading words that confirmed the very same thing, it occurred to her that no matter how much she wondered and doubted and feared, they were inextricably linked. Each altered by the other in a way that meant they wouldn't ever fit with any other person quite right. Perhaps they could be comfortable with another, different, soul and certainly with time, the mismatched edges would rub against each other enough to make them forget that they didn't fit correctly in the beginning. Surely, the aforementioned process happens to any two people who choose to walk the same path, but what it is mistakenly chalked up to myth is perfect alignment of two people people carved from the clay. Corresponding pieces. She thought for just a moment about saving the beer tab as a reminder of her epiphany, but it wasn't the sort of thing one forgot. She placed back down on the table, smiling, and returned to her game.

///

“I thought I was through with this day. All I wanted to do was unplug the phone, pour myself a bourbon, glance through the clippings concerning a particular case, just to check, and switch off the lights except for the old lamp on my desk. Maybe I’ll fall asleep right here, in my office. So there I was, sitting alone in the feeble light and silence, when she came in. Annie. She did not knock before she entered the room but quietly closed the door and turned towards me. I was barely able to see her, but I could imagine her large eyes, her smile. She whispered an ethereal ‘Hello’, her voice mingling with the plumes of smoke. The night had just begun...”(Stolen from La Blogotheque)

Friday, 06 November 2009

Slices.

Monday, 02 November 2009

Easier.

I hear the ring of bell. It is not dinnertime, it is barely morning. The dark crowds us for more of the day than I like to admit to - and yet the gray, pale morning light still illuminates the dust on our black desk. Yellow light inside. A screenprinted poster is in the mail from the U. K. which was beautiful, beautiful, very fitting for our room and cheap AND it faintly reminded me of Bartholomew Cubbins. Bartholomew Cubbins is a dashing hero who defeats ooblecks, silly kings and the like and incidentally, is my favorite of all Dr. Seuss's created characters. I look up at my crack of sky and blue sky has been revealed in only a few minutes inattention. The dark is forgotten.

This past summer, a new friend made my day by posting photos of my beloved morning light. (ABOVE, photos by Andrea Mclaren) It was a terrible day and I remember, tears were spilling out within a second of seeing the photos and the album's title - For Elizabeth Ashton. She wrote, I remembered today that we take pictures of the same sun. Lately, I have been rather horrible to some people in paricular. People I love very much. Horrible not in the way of scheming terrible things via Blair Waldorf, but perhaps in a more damaging way. Disengagement, too much sarcasm, general unfeeling, and unseeing. To be unfeeling, I think, is the very worst. I am not alone in this, and on Halloween night seeing evidence of this very thing - before settling down to a somewhat scary movie projected on the wall of the mature lounge and a huge amount of candy, chips and pop and pillows, I sat in my room, sad. Why aren't we gentler to each other?

With all my rules and constructs about how things should be, how I/we should be, and all the things I/we want to do - why isn't that one of them? We are quite, quite fragile and yet, it goes unrecognized and hidden behind masks of fine or sarcasm - why aren't we gentler? I think this would be good. The poster in the mail (BELOW, by handcooked).

Thursday, 29 October 2009

Currently
Dark Was the Night
By Various Artists
see related
Hey Snow White.

Paintings by Sadie Cha.

A second round of sickness has re-muddled my mind. Words creep through my head instead of flash, blankets hamper my ability to type and there's an ever present pile of kleenexes within arm's length. My temperature is up and down like a kangaroo baby sans ritalin - I shed and pile on layers in between rounds of nausea.

Words from friends are welcome in my (these days) shrunken little world. I have holed up inside brick walls, 8,000 square feet and with over 20 housemates. Yet, my thoughts are so often with people scattered across the country - Meg in her new home, Eoin on tour and all the LV's, my family in their beautiful house on Angus, Joh and Ben in their house cooking - all this cords tying me to different places then the one I inhabit. I'm not going to venture to guess what this does to my sense of home - which, honestly has always been a little strange - bringing me back to a different sort of befuddlement.

A single drop rolls down my wall, the misty rain leaving it free from pattern today. My head however, is a million patterns, criss-crossing and confused, though hopeful, at what comes next. Hey, Snow White - it's gonna be alright, be allright, be allright.
I'm gonna take my cue from that pale lady, as I match her today in pallor, and lay down. Boring, yes. Unbelievably comforting? Oui. Bonne nuit.

Wednesday, 21 October 2009

Currently
The Midnight Organ Fight
By Frightened Rabbit
see related
The Days Go By.

ABOVE: MEGAN HUNT.

All I can see is the wall outside my window. The pattern today is the early stages of a Pollock painting. It's raining - we held off the perpetual rain for quite some time - but there's no denying that the trade-off for mountains, ocean and no snow is months upon months of rain. The thought of eggs made my stomach revolt and so here I sit, instead eating toast with honey, coffee and an apple in my grey Grandpa sweater, gearing up for the another long day of putting fancy words on paper and wading through textbooks.

Yesterday was a shit day. A walk to clear my head turned into leaden limbs barely making it back through the door and into bed with Kramer vs. Kramer, dozing in and out. Meryl Streep is/was a babe. Do the twist in the twisting outfit, the loose tie with the loose limp wrists, lift your dress enough to show me those shins, let your hair stick to your forehead. Another go at homework with a brain unable to string words together led to me curling up on the floor in front of my heater, just like old times, head and shoulders on a huge white pillow. Frightened Rabbit's The Midnight Organ Fight turned up loud. In and out of consciousness, the last dregs of sickness working itself out of my body. Twist yourself around me, I need company, I need human heat.

Are you a masochist? To love a leper on his last leg.

Today, though, I am back in the books, listening to pitter patter of the rain outside and not heart wrenchingly missing people far away. Time passes quickly. Mornings come, and the dreaded 2 and a half weeks of school hell will pass into memory.

Back to the books,
B