still life

You can almost hear the slight crackling and snapping that happens when you fry eggs, can't you? I love that succulent sound.

 The tea towel I'm using in the bathroom to wipe my hands, after washing them. Get fresh!

 Bathroom still life. View from the john.

Gay Duvet! That's what I say whenever I see this duvet.

I mean, it's just SO rainbow!

It's like in "Under the Tuscan Sun" when the main character goes on a tour of Italy that's called "Gay and Away!".

 

 

 

 

Still life.

Taking time off. Breathing space. Being sick last week and HAVING to slow down showed me that-

-that's what I really want. Time to sit on the couch and forget that time exists. Not look at the clock for hours. Let the day just pass.

But it's so hard to do, to take that time when you're not sick. Why? All this rushing around, why do we do it? What are we so scared of? Scratch that - what am *I* so scared of?


I've also been feeling that the Internet and the world around is just so busy, so full, so loud. It's inspiring but it's also overwhelming. All these beautiful and wonderful images to check out! One leads to another to another... where do you stop? How do you decide when to log off?

Sometimes silence is the best new. The best change. (I find I want new and change so much - and that sometimes turning off the noise and turning off the images and just sitting in silence is the best shift. It feels like salt water on a hot day, or like drinking a mason jar of cool water when you're thirsty.)

Also I'm on Pinterest now. Check out my boards! It's really addictive and a lot of fun.

chopstick basket, part two

 

A friend on Facebook commented and asked about what it looked like, folded up. So, there it is. The chopstick basket folds up, and that's what it looks like when it does. So nifty! I love this basket more and more each day. And don't worry, Grandmaman, I have no intention whatsoever of painting this puppy.

***

Over on Kal Barteski's blog last week, people - mostly women - have been responding to Kal's request for "ugly beautiful truths." Kal started it off by admitting she writes thank-you cards but never mails them, she feels lots of pressure to keep up with the Internet's bloggers and crafters, and that she only washes the sheets once a month. It touched a chord in lots of her readers, and people felt compelled to leave their own ugly + beautiful truths. Some left their real names, some didn't. It's in the vein of "Post Secret", that website where people send in anonymous postcards with secrets. There is something very freeing about reading them, and also about writing your own. A release. 

It's gotten me thinking, certainly. Also this week, I started doing a writing exercise where I write for 10 to 15 minutes, just free writing, whatever comes to mind. Then at the end I rip up the page. Just rip it up so no-one can read it, or put it through the shredder. It's been really interesting - an exercise, literally, in letting go. I'm so used to writing in order to keep information, in order to be able to refer to it later. But with this, you really can't. You write it, then it's gone. No way to hold on to it. Even if you like the images, even if it would make a great poem, rip it up. Try it - it's really freeing.

Earlier this weekend I found myself in another town with a whole morning just to myself. No-one could reach me, I was on my own with a room (with an adjoining bathtub! So exciting for me, at home we only have a shower) and some time. So I took advantage of it. I did my daily writing exercise. As I was ripping it up, I liked the look of the random scraps, with little pieces of writing. Like mosaic shards. I arranged them. I took a picture to show you.

I also had the Globe and Mail, Saturday edition. Feeling a little guilty ("Oh, I'm ignoring world events!") but trying to let that feeling go, I only read the Style section. I came to a piece I really liked, about a designer who works with type and had made a table with her own letterforms etched in to it. I thought about keeping the page, and using it down the road in collage or somehow or other. But I decided instead to engage with it, then let it go. Here's what I did:

I didn't have any scissors. I just had my hands. So I ripped up the quote I wanted to save, and arranged it so I could fit it all in one photograph. Once I'd done that, well, there was nowhere else to go but into the recyclables. Rip up and squish the pretty, perfected plan. And then look - there's beauty there, too.

***

Then I got to writing. This past week was also International Women's Day. Some people question having such a day. "We don't need it anymore," they say. I feel like what happened on Kal's blog (what's still happening - have a look) dovetails with this holiday. Here's the free-writing I did that flowed from it.

The ugly beautiful truths

We are all here. We are imperfect. This is news? Yes, it is. Because: we live in an age of glossy magazines, of TVs that blare at us, we can't see for the glare of perfected images. Sexy and sexiness and giving in and giving it up for rewards - as women especially we are told to part our lips and make a low moaning sound. These roles can be fun but it is not all of it. It is not our every day reality.

The whole, the perfect product, comes after a lot of hard work. This is what the ugly beautiful truths is teaching me.

And I expect the opposite, I expect to just snap my fingers and have it be done. A great poem. A cake baked. A bed made. A relationship crafted and loved. A house dusted and vacuumed and kept that way. A body honed, toned. Babies raised and taught and helped to become good people. A world fair and just, with punishments for shitty deeds. A job where you feel competent and creative and conscious. A connection to the world around me, to the leaves and the trees. Actions made, having thought about them (instead of just posting crap out into the world, typing it out and hitting "post" or "send" without rereading, rethinking, letting time do its distillation of truth).

And reading these comments that women are leaving on Kal's website I see I am not the only one. We are all here, we are all imperfect. This is news? Yes, it's the daily news. It's breaking news, heart-breaking. And then, heart-making. (You've got to break things apart to make new things. Mosaics - sharp bits of ceramic.) We are all poems, we are all stories, we are all houses waiting to be dusted, we are each an equal and hearty part of a relationship in the middle of being crafted, loved. We are blood, we are feet and toes and hair and bellies, weight that stayed after making a baby, weight that came without warning, without reason, weight that won't go, weight that goes too fast, weight that just is without trying. We are hearts, minds, loves, hates, annoyed and convinced and contented and mild and strong and and and - all emotions and adjectives that men have too. We are the reason International Women's Day exists. Jill Scott asks "what would you do if I were gone?" I can't even believe the questions still exist, questioning that feminism has a need, a place.

But then again I can't believe all these amazing women have all these ugly, beautiful truths, and are ashamed of them,

and yet we do. I do.

I pick my nose.
I change my sheets three times a year, at best.
I am jealous of other women, who I should actually be supportive of.
I
I
I

I could keep going, for a long time. But I'm going to put that out there and use this exercise to get stronger. To get better at recognizing my own beauty. My own worth and inherent right to be here, imperfect as I am.

chopstick basket

A couple of weeks ago when I was in PEI, I went shopping. One of the stores I went to was called Moonsnail Soapworks, that had all kinds of neat stuff like soaps, scarves, lamps, cards, artwork. I let myself go a little nuts - almost anything that struck my fancy, I decided "I'll have it." That included this basket, for $20, made out of old recycled chopsticks. (They've been steamed and sanitized.) It made me happy the second I saw it. It folds in half for easy storage and transport, but more than that, it looks so cool!

It reminds me of interlaced fingers, like holding hands with a lover, but also it looks like it's floating. It also has a shape reminiscent of a boat hull. I like the way it plays with the light, the way the stripes run, the way it has texture and pattern and depth, on top of being useful.

It sits, by the way, on the windowsill of my bedroom. These shots were not staged or set in any way - mostly because I didn't have any extra time this week for cleaning and prepping. What you see is what you get. What you get is what I see, each day.

***

I'd been thinking about some ideas that I wanted to write about on here, this week. (Basically, as the week goes along and I'm at work or shovelling the ever-loving driveway or walking somewhere or driving somewhere, I mull stuff I'm thinking about and ask myself, "What will I get to write about or light upon this week?") Something that kept coming up in me is the importance of being earnest - of being yourself, as a writer or as an artist or just as a person. I think we live in a time when, especially for twenty-somethings, being hip and ironic is the best way to guard yourself. Being earnest and expressing emotions and feelings is the opposite of that, but - the flip side of it is that - the artists, writers and people I like most are the ones who can be earnest, who can speak truth. Speak their own truth.

And I've been thinking about how that all plays out with things like personal blogs and Facebook and all those outlets we have for presenting ourselves, for expressing "who we are". I think we all spend a lot of time crafting our image, and trying not to be vulnerable - i.e. trying not to say earnest things and express emotions and feelings.

(I do think that it's possible to be earnest and express one's truth in these media forms - I try to do that here, for one, plus there are other great folks out there doing their best to do the same - but I think it's hard. I think the tendency is always there to guard oneself - for good reason - and it's hard to put personal information "out there" where anyone can read it.)

Then I heard Adele on Q this week - who, by the way, is BLOWING MY MIND with her new album, oh my god what a voice - and caught the following snippet from her interview with Jian:

Jian: Did you have any concern about outing yourself so publically? [Her new record is all about a break-up.]

Adele: I did at the beginning....[after some tabloids printed stuff, I thought] Oh that's it, I'm never writing about myself again! But I have to believe in myself, you know, believe in my songs in order to part with them and let people hear them. Do you know what I mean? Cus the artists that I like, I believe every word they sing. So I gotta make sure that I believe every word I write, otherwise I'm doomed!

And I thought - yes. Adele's work hits me in the gut - it's raw, it's real, it's young AND it's earnest AND it's also unpretentious. If she's feeling these same things and still producing art and words that really work, then I'm on the right track. 

a horse on top of a horse

Well, I did it! I drove to Halifax. (This is not my car. The black on the bottom right, is my car.) We were stopped for construction for the fourth time - no joke - and noticed there was a rainbow in the rearview mirror.

At Antigonish we turned down onto the Eastern Shore route, and went through Sherbrooke. As I was driving, my friend Mel was in charge of taking pictures.

In Sherbrooke we stopped to eat lunch. There in a tiny cafe in a tiny town, was a girl I had gone to High School with. Just an hour before, driving along and talking, Mel and I were talking about High School, about prom and graduation. And then there was Genevieve, who I hadn't seen in about seven years. She lives there now. It was neat to catch up, to sit with someone I used to see every day. The past doesn't stay static, people continue to live and grow.

(There was a little bridge across a little brook - which I called the "Sure, Brook" even though it very likely wasn't. And I liked the colors. They are the colors I wear a lot - bright blues and pinks.)

The drive along the Eastern Shore was beautiful. Lots of little coves and islands. I had to pull over to take a picture, just to remember it. So we wouldn't just pass it by with our talking and music and driving along.

A place we stopped for gas. I liked the sign and the clouds behind.

The view from our hotel room. The busy intersection of Robie, Quinpool, Bell and Cogswell roads/streets. And I made it through! Despite arriving at rush hour - good planning there! - with a good navigator (Mel with the map) it seems anything is possible.

 The ceiling of a Chinese restaurant where we went to eat before the concert.

You weren't supposed to take pictures during the performance, so I shut the flash off and snuck a couple. They're blurry but that's OK. This is Michael Kaeshammer with his band. I didn't get any of Jill Barber. The whole show was - jazzy, on time, snappy, sparkly, beautiful rhythms and music. I must have whispered to Mel twenty times - I love this! or I'm in love!

On the walk back, Mel's new, cute shoes hurt her feet. She took them off and walked in her sock feet. It was cold but clear. This is our hotel, the Atlantica. I love the geometry and the pattern of light of windows in a big building, at night.

The next morning we set out walking. The wall waved to us.

At Cora's on Dresden Row, massive breakfast waited. I got a crepe filled with fruit and chocolate/hazelnut spread. Oh my my. From eleven am, I was full until roughly 4 or 5 pm.

Wandering around the downtown. So much public art, so little time. This is in honor of the direction my life has taken me with my latest employment.

Freak Lunchbox is a candy store on Barrington Street. (Visit their website, if nothing else, for the hip hop music that plays.) We went in. Color, smells of sugar, and so many different kinds of candy. This is a display of jellybeans.

Have I mentioned how much I love graffiti and public art? I just really do. Bringing color and verve and ideas to a public space. Something so great about that. I also love taking people's portraits up against colorful and neat walls. I wasn't going to post this - I'm feeling rather self-conscious these days - but then I thought - what the hell. I could die tomorrow. What does it REALLY matter? And, you all get to see my pink coat in all its glory.

Love, Me Boutique. They have all handmade stuff. This is a display of keys that is not for sale, but just for beauty. I kind of really like it.

Felt bangles bought from Love, Me. I'm wearing them as I type. They're so wintery, so "snuggle up and get cozy." They're lying on a merino wool tank top I bought at MEC for doing yoga in. I was sick of wearing either a too-tight old workout top from years ago, or a baggy tee shirt that either rode up or got too hot, or both. So I treated myself to some workout gear that fits, and looks good.

And we came back to this. To winter. On the drive home, as we got closer and closer to Cape Breton, there was more and more snow on the roadsides. And then once we were home it snowed some more. Today it's snowing again - and I'm resolving to love it. I didn't at first - grumpy me came to the surface and grumped about having to worry about the weather, having to clear off the car, et cetera. And I took it seriously until a few days had gone by and I realized, Nah, that's no fun. Better to grump a little bit, then look at the snow falling and rejoice. Re-find joy.

The often-photographed lighthouse of my hometown. And a big fat icicle that for once gets to be bigger than a lighthouse.

***

I've been reading "Long Quiet Highway" by Natalie Goldberg, she of "Writing Down the Bones," possibly the best book about writing out there. "Long Quiet Highway" is her memoir. It's also really good. In it she talks about Zen Buddhism, and her teachers. One of them said something about not complicating things. "Don't put a horse on top of a horse," he says, "and then try to ride it."

It makes so much sense. And it's something I do all the time, put that horse on top of another horse. Complicate things. Well, I'm resolving to take the horse down. Just have the one.

***

A blog I'm reading these days is Emily Falconbridge. She's a cool Aussie chick with long dreads and a beautiful family of three kids and a husband. Right now they live in New England. She has an Etsy shop with felted materials, and she writes about art, her kids, her adventures, her feelings. Her kids' names are Ivy, Banjo and Yindi. Doesn't that make you want to find out more? Her blog and her family have won over my heart with their sweetness, their simple beauty, their take on life.

enough.

When is enough, enough?

When do you decide, "OK, that's it. I have to change something"?

Last night I got home from work. I'd worked from 8 am to 5 pm at the marina, then from 6 pm to 8 pm at the library. I was tired. Beat out. I didn't feel quite IN my body, if that makes sense. I felt like my brain was both buzzing and revved, and at the same time aching for sleep.

I tried to do some relaxation. I had to make my lunch for the next day. I tried not to snap at my family. Knowing I had to get up the next day at 6 am and do it all over again was stressing me out. WHEN am I going to have time that's just mine, all mine? Do I really have to specifically take time off from work in order to have a break? That's foolish!

It was 10 pm. Suddenly it was 10 pm. The day had rushed by and now I was trying to relax enough to get some sleep. Actually, it was more like I knew I had to FIT IN sleep so I could be rested and wake up the next day and do more work. And the longer I stayed up thinking about it all, the less time I was actually sleeping. And the more tired I would be the next day - and in anticipation, my blood pressure rose a little more, a little more. AI AI AI!!

Out of curiosity I looked back in my dayplanner to find the day I resigned from the library job. August 24th. I counted forward, one - two - three - four - FIVE weeks ago. OK, that's enough.

I'm so done. Tomorrow, I'm letting them know. I don't care if I feel bad, that I'm leaving them in the lurch. I just can't do this anymore. Working two jobs is crazy, and I've definitely helped them out while they look for someone new. Five weeks. FIVE WEEKS. If the remaining staff has to take on extra shifts to cover it - oh my goodness, I can't believe I'm about to say this, but - THAT'S NOT MY PROBLEM.

I ended up getting to sleep. I woke up today, I made the necessary calls. I'm done, I'm done. Tonight is my last night at the library. It's coming two or three weeks earlier than I thought - so that's a bit odd. But, entirely OK.

As I shelve the books, as I chat with patrons using the computers, as I do the procedures I've been trained to do and can now do so quickly - I'm thinking, it's the last time, it's the last time.

Maybe I'll be sad later.

Right now, though, I'm just RELIEVED.

***

I took pictures of a dinner party I attended on Saturday, and that was my intended post for this week, so perhaps I'll get them done sometime this weekend. I think I've mentioned these feasts on here before - these are done by a local chef, there are six courses and it's all (mostly) local foods. And, each month is a different theme. You pay what you can (I usually pay $40, that seems to be the average). You can bring your own wine. You sit around a table with 14-18 other people, some of whom you know. It's a great time.

***

Isn't it odd, this practice of sharing one's personal life on the Internet? How do you decide what to put in, and what to leave out? What's the truth? What draws us to reading personal blogs, to learning all about people we may not ever meet?

I think about this, sometimes.

There are certain blogs that really inspire me, that are like reading a book, only every day or every few days you get a new chapter. Like a "serial" in a newspaper from long ago. These blogs - and the women who write them - have come to mean a lot to me. Their ideas and colors and creativity make me feel like my own day-to-day life means something too, like I can also be this creative and colorful and bold. I suppose that if this blog, and I, do that for at least a handful of people, then there's a reason for it existing.

Sometimes the thought of posting is stressful. ("What will I write about? But what if it's not perfect?") But I'm also still drawn to this form, to this blog. Very much so. This year, in December, will be the eighth year I've been writing this blog. Save for a month or so in 2007 when I was ill, I've posted pretty much every week, sometimes more often.

OK. This is where my steam is running out, for now.

That's ... enough.

le jardin

The lime basil is going to seed and I can't be bothered to cut the flowers off. I didn't like the lime basil very much, I prefer regular flavored basil. Oh, well. The flowers are pretty.

Same goes for cilantro. I mean, I like the taste more than I like lime basil, but they too are going to seed, and I can't be bothered the cut the flowers off. It's just one more bloody thing that needs doing, and my current attitude towards most things right now (besides work) is "Oh, well!" As in - if it's not an emergency, oh well. We'll just have to live with it. (Or without it, as in some cases.)

SOMEONE was busy in the garden this summer! The garden plants themselves, busy growing growing growing, then my Mum, a close second, then the bees that swarmed and warranted this little mini hive stuck smack in the middle of one of the gardens. Then me, a distant fourth. Very distant.

This is a close-up of the inside of my Mum's brainchild, which is the lean-to for the Scarlet Runner beans. She designed and built it all by herself. It works marvellously. You just walk in underneath and pick the beans that are hanging down.

Now THESE I can take some credit for. I planted the seeds, then transferred the plants between pots and then into the ground. I tied them to stakes. Now I can also take the credit for eating most of them. MM HMM. Fresh tomatoes have got to be up there in my Top Five Favorite All-Time Things. Along with pajama pants and the show The Office and love.

Hey sweet pea! These are- well, you guessed it - sweet peas. Pretty little things and quite a scent to match. They come in all these great colors. Just a delight.


***


Sometimes I come to the weekly blog post with nothing more than a series of random thoughts. I've got some ideas for topics that I'd like to write about, but lately it seems I don't have the time. Anyway, I always wonder to myself, "Hmm, how am I going to tie all of this together? How will I make it more than just some self-indulgent ramblings?" (Whether I actually succeed in that, reader, is up to you.)

For example...

(1) I'm not overly loving my new laptop. My old one, one that I had taken good care of for two years, was sleek and black and, when moved to any position, the lid would stay there. Then suddenly Old Laptop wouldn't start and was doing odd things when it did turn on. So I brought it to a friend who has a computer business - the only game in town, actually - and after a bit of messing around with it, he said he couldn't get the old one to work, so he was going to replace it and get me a new one. We'd cut a deal since my old one is no longer on warranty. So for $150 I got this new laptop. It's grey and somewhat clunkier than my old one and this may seem like a silly detail but when I move the lid/screen up or down, there is "play" in it. It jiggles. Also the mouse is kinda sucky. Apparently I can change the sensitivity of it, and I did try, but it didn't really seem to change. Maybe I'll try again? But sometimes even the thought of doing THAT is too much. Ai! Anyway, I'll live. But the new laptop doesn't have Microsoft Office, which my old one had for free, so I have to get used to new programs.

(I fully realize, as I'm complaining about this, that these are NOT dramas. Really, they're not. I know that. But since my computer is a tool that I use to create stuff, well, in that sense it DOES matter. It matters to my creative process. It matters to me.)

(2) My favorite blogs both inspire and depress me - because I want to be able to do the cool stuff they do, and I don't know how and right now at least, don't have the time to LEARN how. Learn things like Photoshop and other graphic design tools.

(Who are my favorite blogs? Well, daily I read Kal Barteski and Elise Blaha, both in the list on the right, and I've also been reading my cousin Maile's blog Daily Relish, and being jealous of her amazing photographic skills. As well as incredibly inspired by them. You get my drift. And lately, because of Maile's link, Tara Whitney is making it into my quick daily stops. She's kind of AWESOME. There will likely be an upcoming post on here, by me, about a subject that Tara has also blogged about and which I've been rolling around in my brain like a thought marble: TRUTH. And telling it, especially on blogs. More soon, hopefully.)

(3) Adventures in subtle and not-so-subtle sexism and racism: Sometimes, some of the clients at the marina make me go "Wha..?!?" As in, "Do we live in the same WORLD?" I just smile and nod - I'm not really sure what else to do without alienating them - but still. One guy, the other day, casually told me a story about the "nippers" - yes, with a P - in Toronto. I think he meant Mexican people. I wasn't about to ask him to clarify. And today a client - very old, admittedly, but still - told another guy who was standing there that I have a really hot arse. He said I was a "bummer's delight". I blushed and scolded him ("I'm standing RIGHT HERE"), then later on told Flossie and laughed til I thought I might cry. "Bummer's delight?" Who SAYS that? Eighty-year-old men, apparently. And now I'm not entirely sure how I feel about it. It's the kind of thing I sort of just put up with. Oh my goodness.

OK, I'm spent. It's time to get back to Work2, anyway. (Library is Work2. Marina is Work1. That gives it all a Kal-Barteski-esque flair and makes me feel less like a slave.)

(I'm counting down the days to when the library is over, knowing full well I'll also be sad about it. But still - I'm so ready to have more TIME OFF. Holy balls. Working all the hours in the day is OVER-RATED.)

Enjoy yourselves and the little things - and leave a comment if that strikes your fancy. I do SO appreciate you.