Brand New Start

This summer I lost my glasses and got new ones and couldn't help but think it meant something more than just $400 and a pain in my butt. A new way to see and be seen, you know? Clearer vision. A new outlook. I took any sort of cliched meaning from it that I could because I needed to and why not?

Anyway, another fresh face: www.thegreattidepool.com

It's currently under construction but we are/Ben is working on it. Fonts will be smaller and better and everything will look nice. And I'm going to try and write more fiction maybe but maybe not.

Make it a motto

This week we have positive or important messages. Things such as: Good things come. Go get 'em, tiger. Don't worry too hard. It's not as bad as it seems. You're probably great. People like you. Brush twice a day. 

Keeping Portland Weird

These goons. On this same day (yesterday) Stephen asks Suzanne to marry her. She says afterward, "I'm going to marry you, but I tell you that all the time." He says, "I called your bluff."

The world's largest third wheel.

"I'm engaged. I think I've opened up a whole new pandora's box of jokes."
-S. Wicks, 2011.

Ode to Rap (By Matthew Bernstein-8th Grade)

Rap music you are magnificent
A golden light from the firmament
With beat of perfect measurement
And words so eloquent
Not like a jingle in an advertisement
But a love-letter sent
Using voice as solo instrument
The best accompaniment
Like a burger and a condiment
I relish each ingredient
Rap you are my nourishment

It is no accident
Rap is often irreverent
Expressing life's discontent
Rolling waves so turbulent
Like from a volano's vent
It washes over me my enlightenment
And with child-like wonderment
Unravel each red-wrapped argument
? tied in knots of puzzlement
? decipher what is meant

And all my money will be spent
On rap with names like T.I., Jay-Z and 50-Cent
Without rap life loses its merriment
Rap music is my one true enjoyment

On the wall of a record store. Portland, Oregon.

At the Capers Community Market

At the table next to me two mothers are chatting over lunch about the lack of private schools in this neighbourhood. The one is “frankly shocked” about it. Wherever she had grown up, apparently, there were far more private schools; she says, “it just wasn’t a problem there”. Meanwhile her daughter has begun crying at the pigeon near to their table full of food; she is not, however, shedding any tears. Another daughter, who, according to her mother is “eating too many blueberries,” spits on the pigeon. This goes unnoticed.

A third daughter, clearly belonging to the mother nearest me, gathers away her family’s garbage. Her toe and fingernails match her blue eyes perfectly.

When the youngest girl’s crying grows no longer ignorable, the mothers faintly acknowledge her worry by telling stories about birds. One mother mentions a swarmed picnic once. The crying girl offers her own story about the time at the beach house when she dropped some groceries and a bird got them. The girl appears clearly traumatized. The pigeon wanders around the table.

As the pigeon approaches the middle child, she takes a large swig of chocolate milk so that she can make one ultimate spit onto the pigeon’s back. Organic milk and salvia go flying. This time though, the mother does notice. The girl gets in trouble. Lunch is over.

Pt. 4 (Things Brother Will Says)

"I did a speech on rocks that mom wrote once, and it was really interesting. I learned a lot from that speech." -W. Kane, 2011

Keep Swinging

Let's imagine a playground and you're there but you don't want to be. You're too old for a playground or something and so it feels bad being there. Or you fell off a teeter-totter when you were a kid and had to get stitches and you've hated playgrounds ever since. You can even make up your own reason for not liking playgrounds. The main idea is that in this imaginary situation you hate playgrounds. Screw that swing-set. Goddamn those monkey bars. The playground is shitty and it all sucks. But you're there, for whatever reason. Maybe because you're waiting. Maybe because it feels like you have to be. I don't know why you're at the playground if you don't want to be, but the point is that you are. If someone were to text you and ask you where you were at and what you were doing you might reply "I'm at the playground". I don't know who you are but you might be the type of person who would include a "fml" or maybe a "get me out of here". But either way you'd express that you weren't happy with where you are. But the idea is that you're stuck. This is imaginary so even though it seems highly unlikely that you'd get stuck at a playground I'm just going to let it be. We're pretending. My point is obvious and it's this: Play on the goddamn monkey bars anyway and stop cursing the swing set.

Pt. 3

"My mind blows my mind."
-W.Kane, 2011

Pt. 2

"There's only two ways it could go: really bad or, fuck, I don't even know ... worse."
-W.Kane, 2011

Things Will Says Pt. 1

"You gotta know your character. Know it. Him, her, whatever it is. It could be an inanimate object like a spoon. Like a spoon on a mission." 
-W. Kane, 2011

What happens in Stanley Park

(This silly formatting was an accident)

Just stand out there and stick your glove out in the air

"This is embarrassing."
"No, this is summer."

The Vancouver Canadians win the game against the Salem-Keizer Volcanoes 5-2. Beers cost $8. Floats $1. We go swimming in the ocean afterward and dry off by a satisfying bonfire.

Why porches are more open than unlocked front doors.

Two parents look on at their brilliant toddler. Not brilliant in the intellectual sense of the word, but brilliant to them, as most children are. His hair, much fuller and darker than either of his parents', rouses suspicion in the neighbours. His complexion too. The mother is not fair, but not dark either, and her hair is a floppy, weak, light brown. The father, in his youth, had hair the colour of hotel towels and sunlight. Pure white blonde. Now, the father's hair is thinning, a fact he has not yet and maybe will never come to terms with. He opposes his son's first hair cut. His son has beautiful brown black hair with a lustrous sheen, a fineness uncommon among his drooling peers.  The mother takes her son out on the porch anyway, with scissors in one hand, and her newly non-infant in the other arm. How grown up he'll look, she thinks. She cuts without hesitation, as her husband looks on with skepticism.

The sounds that go with this moment are this: There is just one snip, but it is a slow, deliberate snip, as though the scissors are going through the kind of rope that ties boats to docks. Not a hacking though, still a snip. A heavy snip. Then you hear a sort of exhalation, mixed with a "tsk", followed by laughter, the kind that really is uproarious. Real uproarious laughter. While the toddler remains silent, this laughter grows and goes on until it eventually dies down to make room for these words: "Well, maybe I can fix it." And this reply: "I think that might make it worse." And finally, "Can it get any worse? Might as well try."

Via Lynner Winner Chicken Dinner

Thinking of new names for my brother: Benner Wenner Fred Penner, Benner Wenner Big Tenor, Benner Wenner Money Spender, or...

Jasper

Rule of thumb: The cat always chooses the lap of the woman whose nose feels like it has needles in it, whose eyes are itchy and watering, who has sneezed 10 going on 11 times already today. The cat never chooses the woman who paid the cat's medical bills, who gave the cat a home, who wants nothing more than for the cat to choose her lap, at least just once. The cat can smell her desperation, and chooses the smell of fear instead.

Making plans for the future.

Plan: A picture of these two kooks daily, to be illustrated and bound together for their viewing dis/pleasure.

Another plan I have: Reading in the park today.

Also: Getting dressed.

barely creative writing called "What’s Ours is Yours" about what the word ours doesn't mean and how not to share

This cake is the fruit of our combined labour. It is layered, chocolate, and fucking delicious smelling. It is the product of our combined hours in the kitchen. Your ingredients, my hot oven. And so this cake will be our cake. We lick the beaters, the spatulas, the spoons. We butter the cake pan with our fingers and we wait. This cake is probably just as delicious as that cake but this cake is better because that cake is theirs and this one is ours. This is our cake. Look at how our cake rises. It is three stories high and there are coins wrapped in tinfoil hidden in the icing. This is our chocolate money cake and it is a masterpiece. Our masterpiece. We’re going to split it down the middle if we can bear to bruise its icing. We’re damn proud of our cake. We take pictures of our cake. We're looking forward to eating our cake. I'm about to cut the cake.

 But you take the cake. 

To June 15th,

In 1988 you saw the birth of a Ms. Sarah Ayton, who happens to now be one of the most lovely everythings. She has grown tall and talented. She is beautiful and she is wise. She is, like her birth date, always seemingly one step ahead of me, and this I do not mind one bit. A better person I could not hope to follow. 

In 2010 I had the most fun on you. I appreciated that you were sunny and warm and that everyone on you seemed to be in the best of spirits and all full of happiness. You were really very great and I appreciated it.

Just writing to says thanks and please keep up the good days.

Yours,

Lynn

Tough Crust

I ate close to half of the pie I made to make making the pie worth all that trouble. In this case, the making of the pie--the buying of the plate, the forgetting of the rolling pin, the carrying of the groceries, the waving of the tea towel wildly at the fire alarm, the dozens of phone calls home, the taking the pie out of the oven and putting it back in the oven over and over--maybe spent more calories than my eating it. Like the musk ox digging through the snow. Sometimes it just isn't worth all the effort. But sometimes it is.