i made you a film.

and played you a little harmonica improv.

xo

i'm starting my own company

and i'm telling you and the universe as a kind of announcement. it has a name that dear friends already know and a few items almost ready for sale and the skeleton of some rather good idea bones.

i daydream about it.


when the thought struck me as a piece of sky that fell, i met it with such gusto. this was it! that thing you do all your life for fun anyways and then one moment realize when your head is turned that it's the work you should be doing. i went to goodwill and bought tweed jackets. i sketched shapes and beaks and french berets. i sewed a few animals to start. some had handkerchiefs.



i can't tell you when my wee shop will open, (only that it will), and i couldn't say for sure all the things i'll have to sell but i can tell you that i'm going to love creating stuff and collecting stuff and thinking about all the ways i can package the stuff up with thoughtful intent before sending it out in the world.

(by parcel and priority post!).

low and low, there are treasures.

nice drawers, bunny.

let's see what can i tell you. earth day happened and work was really busy like last year. a retail garden market opened at the office that sells not just plants but the kind of awesome vintage kitsch you wish you could afford to buy on etsy. or the housewares section of anthropologie.

i told the manager i'd volunteer all my lunch hours to help stare at the merchandise. i mean re-stock shelves.


i bought this letterpress tray there for putting cool small things into and because the tag almost says 'universe'.


i made a pink bunny for a pink lady as an easter gift. does anyone actually celebrate easter, the religious version? i definitely celebrate the chocolate version and the get-together-and-eat-turkey version but i'm not religious so sometimes it feels funny to even call what i'm celebrating 'easter'.

how about i'll call it 'time to thank our lucky stars it's spring finally'. that's a good, descriptive and accurate title.



i sang to this polka dotted lapin as i sewed her eyes on. i tried a few uplifting numbers but she preferred the melancholy looping of 'you're nobody till somebody loves you'.



or as i sang it to her, 'you're no-bunny till some-bunny cares'.

and my bumper sticker would read 'dancing is my life'

i might even get a t-shirt with that on it. or at the very least a pair of those dancing appropriate jogging pants with 5-6-7-8 stitched across the ass. when i hear good music all i want to do is move and not in a remotely reserved kind of way but wild, and on fire and transformed. while jeremy's off working hard and i get down to my own most important work of being strange and interested in stuff, i always start things off with a little groovefest. it gets me in the mood to be creative and it wakes me up in this whole body kind of way and when i've had enough i always drink a big glass of barely cool water to wind down.

a room to make the magic happen

i realize that magic happens in all the rooms of our home. to be indiscreet, the bedroom. to be fed, the kitchen. to return to ourselves, the livingroom. but the magic to which i refer in this post is the magic of creation, of imagination, of interpretation of facts and figures and natural law into something personal and artistic. something at first very private, with secret hopes of later being shared.


joanne gave me the table, we rescued the chair from a dumpster and the branches were gifts from a windy storm a few weeks back. jeremy made the cranes with pages of a vintage craft book we got from a library discard pile and i made the sewing machine cover with old plaid shirts and a vision of tulips made of ruched pink pleats.

tins from our wedding hold tools to write and paint and cut fabric with. paintings from my youth look squarely my way as i stare at some distant spot, recognizing or not the influence of objects from different moments in time.

bring on the crafts! i bought a vintage radio which i'll keep tuned to the cbc and i'll listen and learn as i bump along from one creative adventure to the next, sometimes letting them overlap as i sit beneath my indoor trees and dream.

what jeremy made

it's an owl! and a pincushion! and a special kind of character that looks at you with her one (slightly larger) right eye and can tell just exactly what you're thinking.


sometimes i make her a teeny tissue blindfold when i don't wish to share my innermost feelings with my craft supplies.

earth day

it was hard to get this shot. two seconds is a long time to stay perfectly still!

but we got it and now it's saved forever for memory and posterity and to remind us when progress seemed a notion as distant as the rows of lit buildings around us and behind us.

happy earth day! may you tred lightly on her slowly thawing surface with a howling pack of friends.

awwwwoooo.

heart shaped cloud

is the cloud heart shaped or are my pupils changing form? two symmetrical bumps diving smoothly to a point.


i look at things through springtime glasses and i'm in love. i lay on the ground with my coat and my boots and remember the feeling of sunshine and earth.


thinking winter's almost worth it for the spring.

naked and noodled

i get these ideas, usually in the morning, fully formed and packaged like they've been manufactured elsewhere and delivered to me by post. mind post.


like the idea to make a naked noodle doll for joanne for her birthday.


he has a heart and a padded bottom and a square head for thinking round thoughts such as 'what will i do with my life?' and 'will i have pants by next winter?'.

mostly i don't respond. it's best he learns early that the big questions are yours alone to answer.

marilyn

"she was a whirling light to me then, all paradox and enticing mystery, street-tough one moment, then lifted by a lyrical and poetic sensitivity that few retain past early adolescence."

arthur miller

spring

tiny trees are poking through the grass that's brown and papery,

like the raffia bows we tied on homemade loaves.

i can’t get over their hopeful numbers,
i can’t get over that i've missed them until now.

i dream that they’re the gift that winter gave,

a peace offering, a fond farewell.

but probably they’re a welcome gift from spring,

a housewarming, a kind hello.

like that nature show on baby turtles, struggling, sifting out to sea,
through the slogging sand and un-relenting waves – most will die.

those that live will always remember their fallen friends,
taking them along in the re-birth of their dying cells.

warmth from someone you know

mel made me oatmeal this morning. it was waiting on the stove at work,

warm and nutty and flecked with currants, melting tiny purple rivers throughout.

who puts this all together

do you know about pinterest? you should go there and kill an afternoon looking at stuff. you can browse by category or by word search and wade through pages and pages of beautiful pictures, posters and assorted visual awesomeness. you will be awed.



i'm such a collector at heart. i think the fancy word is curator? maybe being a writer makes you an automatic collector of things, like words and ideas and beautiful images of mermaids kissing.


everything we see is subjective. someone who lives in prague sees the picture above and says 'home' or 'down the street' or 'near to where my uncle lives'.

i see it and say 'fairy tale'.

the illusion of being alone

"solitude is only a human presumption. every quiet step is thunder to beetle life underfoot. every choice is a world made new for the chosen".

'prodigal summer' - barbara kingsolver

rat review

i'll begin by halfheartedly apologizing for being the kind of pet owner who thinks their pet is best then get right into telling you that rats are awesome little critters.



we kind of guessed/hoped they would be but you never know what's truth and what's pet propaganda. we've had them long enough now to know what's what and i gotta say if you like smart, clean, social, funny, cute, curious, monkey-kittens, then rats are for you.



they spend pretty much all day sleeping, know how to use a litter box and come when you call them. they never bite, make noise, or complain about jeremy's singing.



most active in the mornings and evenings, we'll open their cage to let them explore while we read or write or listen to the vinyl cafe. they love broccoli and yogurt and mixed leafy greens. they jump, they climb, they nestle in blankets. they nibble on books and stare out windows.


we get a lot of funny, surprised and sometimes negative comments about our choice of pet and it used to upset me in the same way that new ideas are vulnerable to blows before they're fully formed. my adoration of these little twerps is now fully formed.

they've chewed their way into our hearts with their whiskery faces and teensy little hands and i can't wait for summer and their matching bathing trunks.