Arm Circles: July 2011

short stack (or table manners for rodents)

birdhouse building

these are more of mel's pictures from fun day. she isn't in them but the trained eye can see her in the way she sets the scene up.

and how she lends her one free hand to make certain the construction is sound.

documents for posterity, i look at these and remember how hard we both tried to put all the pieces in their proper place. and how encouraging we were of each others knots and holes.

the complexity of everything connected.

i am different things to different people.

i think i am all of them.

i think i am none of them.

i am the only thing in the universe with my own arrangement of cells,

i share most of them with you.

the proteins in me come from the beginning,

my breath, condensed in cloud, will be there at the end.

to that one pine tree, in particular

your face is so pretty, all bark and ridges. we liked when our feet were on you and the wind had you swaying and we said, "trees move like elephants" and then we said, "now we know."

little blue dot

they're all in the same plane. they're all going around in the same direction. it's perfect, you know, it's gorgeous, it's almost uncanny.

astronomer geoffrey marcy describing the solar system

the four days went together, with only the night as punctuation. with only the day as time.

let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start

i woke up with that song in my head, you know that one? when you write you begin with abc, when you sing you begin with do re mi? yes, of course you do. you nearly woke up singing it too.

we've been camping and creating and having a bit of a tv/internet blackout period. it was kind of easy to do after four days by a lake.

four days of swimming and sunning and napping in shade. four days with jeremy and a sky full of stars.

somehow netflix loses its lustre. impossible sounding, i know.

picnic knees

'camping' is the sweetest word you say

off we go! into the wild green yonder!

i have weekend braids in my hair even though it's a tuesday and am already test driving bathing suits to see which one is more comfortable to lie around in.

i don't think we've ever been camping in the summer? how is that even possible? i'm pretty sure it's true though i think we always go in spring or autumn time.

but floating in a lake by the side where it's shady, listening to the lip lap noise of the water on the shore, and hearing in the distance the crisp metal sound of jeremy opening a beer?

YES is my answer to that question.

you know where i'll be.

the legend of the snack plate

have you heard that one? about the snack plate that spent its whole life aspiring to one day bear the perfect assemblage of snack foods?

as the legend goes, the snack plate's desire for perfect food pairings blinded it to the truth that it isn't the perfect snack achieved that really matters, but all the snacks eaten along the way.

window garden

entrepreneurial air conditioning method number fourteen

wrap yourself in a sheet, lie in front of the fan, and close your eyes while jeremy mists you from head to toe with the water bottle.

take turns.

repeat.

5, 6, 7, 8!

ballet bootcamp is awesome. it's like ballet, set to michael jackson music, with an energy level of one kajillion. i went last night and left feeling exhilarated.

sure i didn't know some of the moves and yeah i just held my back leg up in arabesque when the rest of the class was leaping upwards in a one armed handstand but i can see the future, and it's me pretending i'm the blonde girl from Center Stage when she takes a dance class downtown to shrug off the shackles of the oppressive (yet prestigious) new york city ballet.

vanesa invited me and we had a nice visit after, walking briskly down the yonge street summer sidewalk and feeling the buzz of working every.single.muscle. in my sore but thankful body.

down the river on a raft

on sunday we watched a biography on mark twain and jeremy said i needed to read huck finn. i said i wished we had the version they showed in the biography, with the line drawings of the boy in his straw hat on his log raft with his bare feet and on monday, one appeared in a cardboard box by the garbage bin at the back of our apartment.

can you believe that?! i said we should hurry up and wish for one million dollars and jeremy said 'how about two' and we laughed and thought about our relationship to the universe and the desires we send out to it, sometimes consciously, sometimes not.