holding on

today: writing letters. wet hair. freezing cold. making new playlists but really just listening to the same five songs on repeat. prepping for a fashion spectacle (you should come!). figuring out how to wear more of my vintage nightgowns as day-wear. 

x

on the run to the centre of the middle

time gets wasted in misery

And sometimes it gets wasted in front of a screen. Typing < Talking.

A frigid Saturday night spent mostly working and staring out my window, coming to grips with the new seasonal landscape that looks like the satin in a coffin. Slick. Pure. Grim.

I was born destined to fall in between living in reality and living a life of partial non-existence. Our lives are a crazy gamble. Every time I say yes, every time I say no, every time I say nothing at all,  I'm unwittingly risking it all. 

You gotta go all in

Even if it breaks your heart,

I was once told.

My mother works at a bank, 

she told me to always double down.

What's a girl to do?

I try to live above the regular laws of the land, not because I think I'm better, but because I dream harder.

 And my dreams are like your religion, the only difference is that my God isn't an Indian giver. I don't give life then take it away. I don't walk through life with the intention to collect but with the intention to give life. To keep going. To breath life back into the fallen, the passed out and the breathless.

You look up into the dark sky and pray with phantom breath that slices the air like a papercut from the good book. You see forever. You see forgiveness and serenity. 

And I look at you. 

beatnik

I don't need to be extorted, exalted, or supported..
complicated, contemplative, tolerated, or liberated..
but I do need to be penetrated, elevated, and appreciated.

Sigh. I love the sound of Annette Peacock. 

20|20

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National Gallery of Canada current contemporary exhibition (can't remember the name of it)

light in the tunnel

*

celebrating my lovely friends' weekend nuptials

*

bank street

x

dizzy spells

(jacob pants, james perse coat, aldo boots,borrowed scarf)

I am a question asker.  I might be THE question asker.

Call me curious, inquisitive or just plain annoying but when I'm introduced to strangers, when I want someone to be vulnerable or when I am looking for the truth, I ask A LOT of questions. 

Much of my time is spent thinking about how things work and why. How people work and why. How something started and where it might end. 

As Damian Hirst said and as something I completely relate to when I am in that moment of intense interest, "I just wanted to find out where the boundaries are. I’ve found out there aren’t any. I wanted to be stopped but no one will stop me".

I spent the better half of my life listening to the people around me tell lies.That is not what made me start asking questions and writing, but it is what made me into the kind of writer that I am. The kind of person that I am. The kind of person that asks too  questions.

Like: why

Like: are you lonely

Like: have you ever wanted to know the truth about something so much that you made it up?

 I suppose if you don't ask, you'll never know.

x

all good in the hood

(vintage gingham trench, vintage headscarf, zara pants, spring boots)

There was a man by the name of Harold C. Funk that lived in my neighborhood and every Sunday Mr. Funk would distribute and litter the streets with letters. 

These letters weren't,"Hi, how are you? I'm having a yard sale' or 'Lost Cat' letters, these particular letters would be addressed Dear Head of Nation, and then proceed to go into dizzying tirades about topics ranging from cannibalism, acid rain, Second Cup, the RCMP and so on.  

The only parallel the letters had was the same raving tone and unpunctuated rhetoric about the detrimental state of our world. 

As bizarre as the letters were, maybe Mr. Funk unintentionally made a good point with his mass-community declaration. 

Maybe he was trying to say that sometimes you just need the people that LIVE near you to know more about you that just your name; or as the man who wears leather pants all year round or as the girl with teacups in her window. 

You need these people to know what you are thinking, what you are working on while you are in your home.... that is next to their home. 

Maybe you need them to know that where you live is affecting your life, and if you are affected by where you live, well then the people that live around you must be feeling something too.

As my dear friend Jesse put it so simply a few years back when he was doing a *photographic study of the habits of nearby residents, "these are our neighbors and they live next to us every day." No truer words spoken.

Over the past year, the letters have stopped and Harold C. Funk has retired from his typewriter, but I've wondered where our neighborhood's dearly missed propaganda peddler is up to now. Who knows? But a man with convictions so strong wouldn't just pack up and go...maybe there will be a return of Harold C. Funk one day....until then I leave you with one of the best "Dear Neighbors" letters, other than Mr. Funk's, that I have ever come across. Enjoy!

Word.

uh huh. alright.

 

 

(all photo sources unknown)