Hello Goodbye

The other morning I dreamt that I had to carry a box that I could not pick up. With my legs I pushed it near a fence. I leaned against the fence for support and I wiggled my toes under its cardboard belly. Once it rested on my feet I was able to get my fingers under it and lift it to my knees. In my strained and sagging arms I travelled only a few steps before I dropped it. Nothing broke though. Nothing was breakable. The objects in the box were themselves all light.

Songs float with a heavy buoyancy. I enjoy solitude but nothing is personal. I always remember my first encounters with music as shared experiences. Then later, when I face it alone, it carries with it those people, their stories, and ours.

Today my house was flooded with the friends who occupied it only in songs for the past week. And I was so satisfied with their return that I stopped listening to the "Suzanne Robinson Remix" and writing stories about sticky little fingers and I turned to older friends in older songs, which led me to older images in older albums and older pages from older books. But I couldn't touch anything and there was nothing to hold. The pictures and pages lacked texture and scent. I read what I put in an old zine (now online) and I wondered (and still sit wondering) why I act as though what I know is not worth acting.

So I took one step (ironically while lying down) and I removed myself from one internet world. Facebook asked me why I was leaving it and it "required" a response. It gives you options to chose and for each fault you can find it tells you how it will change. It pleads with you to stay. If you choose "Other" it requests you provide an explanation. Perhaps this is fair. When leaving a relationship it's expected you provide your partner with your motivations. Well, facebook, I don't think this is mutual or healthy. You take much more than you give. You aren't for real and I'm not myself around you.

But I am blogging. Yeah, blogging. And so I am being hypocritical. It's all about how you use the medium though, right (or wrong)? Can you tell I'm working on a paper about art interventions on television? Uh, in any case, I'm here for now and for a while yet. I know this isn't a tide pool I can dip my ankles in, but at least it's a space for me to sink my words.

And a final few words on nostalgia, because that is what brought me through these thoughts. It is one of the greatest weights I carry.

Reading Week Assignments:

1. Make an encouraging banner. See Robyn's blog for inspiration.

2. Print hardcopies of e-mails and compile them in books.

3. Watch a movie that will make you cry.

4. Mail a letter to the top 20 people in your life and to 1 stranger and to 1 new friend. Letters should be topical in nature, rather than general friendly upkeep. Important suggestions: "How to write a love letter", "What you would know about me if we spent an afternoon together", "What it's like to live in the room next to Sarah Ayton", "10 things I don't know" & "Edible plants along the west coast of North America"

5. Play madlibs over the phone with Suzanne.

6. Make the chocolate-cherry-oreo cake that SarahCaitlin made and garnish it with icing sugar just like she did.

7. Think of the perfect story to write. Maybe write it, maybe don't.

8. Build a really big fort.

9. Drink a bottle of wine inside a really big fort.

10. Make an annotated mix c.d.

From the Rivers to the Ocean

When it's Saturday, and you've just returned home from the market, and your feet are damp, and your eyes are dry and tired, and your to-do list is longer than the hours in the day, and your stomach feels as though you've been doing crunches, but you haven't, because you don't, and when run on-sentences comfort you, when sense doesn't make sense, and when someone somewhere (in the next room) is saying holy shit about something, and your feet are getting colder, and you stop to wonder why your forehead hurts and you realize you're furrowing your brow, and you realize that everything is sort-of slanted, but instead of straightening it you just smile and wonder how things came to be that way, and you have to go to the bathroom but the sink is so dirty that looking at it will make you feel guilty and mad, and now you hear wow from the next room, and you wonder what made that wow, it was a wow of concerned surprise, not happy, and you think to yourself wow, wow, and then you think if you turn wow upside down it's mom and some sort of hallmark card must have done something cute with that sometime, but then instead of wow she's saying holy shit again, and then you think that some awful artist sometime probably made some sort of religious scatology piece and titled it holy shit because that could be art and funny, and you know there's nothing funny about the absence of art created by you, but you still think making nothing is better than making holy shit, and you think that it's funny when people say that clothes with holes in them are to be worn on Sunday, because it's such an old-fashioned joke, and you like old-fashioned jokes, and old-fashioned people, and old-fashions, and if you think all of these things, in this sort of sequence, with a half smile on your face, then that's what it might be like to be me, at least for 10 minutes. And complications are simple when you look at them when you're tired. And then you nap.

Because I didn't send a card.

I always fancied myself a cowgirl; actually I fancied myself a particular cowgirl, Cowgirl Marie from Texas. I wore a vest to match this self. It was fringed and it looked like leather. I would come to Ontario to visit sometimes. Every time I came to visit the Kane family in Ancaster, Lynn would be away visiting the ranch in Texas. It was a terrible coincidence that we never met.

I met another cowgirl though, an older and wiser one. She reminded me of Sissy Hankshaw on account of her prominent digits and her pretty face. She kept a bunch of pigs, but hated pigsties. She raised a couple of asses, and loved them all the same.

Even cowgirls get the blues. She takes care of me every time I do.

And by you I mean you.

Everyday ends.
Some end better than others. Yesterday's finish was today's topic of conversation. Yesterday took all day to happen, and I forget what happened.

Today, nearly over, is ending better than others, with a phone call. With a smile that I hope was heard, well wishes sincerely meant and old wishes still sincere. If wishes were horses, and dead horses will never work, then dead wishes won't work either. Phones can't send hugs, and I wish they could. So what's an alive wish? I will wish for a cup of tea, a warm bed, and oatmeal in the morning. That will work.

Everyday (Dave) End(s): "I get too much sleep, and by too much I mean not enough, and by sleep I mean you."