I met the Walrus.

I met the Walrus. This short film is one of the most wonderful things I have watched in the new year.



Oh how lovely, Madge.

Thank God I feel.

Out of all of my years working in the kitchen and the restaurant itself, today I was the worst employee of all of those days and years. For shame. To say I had a case of the Friday's is a mega understatement. Kent, ever the surprise, came up with many innovative and interactive ways of keeping me stationary in front of my work station: first a difficult round of twenty questions, and then a flowery round of "your favorite love scene in a film" (my personal favorite). Oh boy, he is clever. I talked and managed to chop and mince and julienne and sauté all kinds of things all the while rattling off scene after scene from classics sappy films like Titanic, Big Fish, Return to Me, Cutting Edge (shit, who remembers that one?) and so on until we were in over our heads and I somehow chopped about 7 liters too much of rutabaga. Whoops. I guess we will be eating rutabaga-everything starting on Monday. Rutabaga for all!

I thought that was kind of Kent to keep me focused and let me jibber jabber the afternoon away. I rarely get the wanders, but when I do, I might as well have called in sick. My only saving graces were an impromptu visit from Mama Jill Zach (as a preview, we are in the works of weaving together our interests for our first collaboration: Tony Chestnut/Madge Maker make cool art with fabric and ink! Shit yes. Any takers? Details to come...), a long distance call to my favorite hermit in the woods in Southern Manitoba, and not to mention all of the carrots and dip I ate today. I lost count after thirty sticks. I can see in the dark when I print color photographs, it is wild. Thank you root vegetables.

I took off early because I was annoying everyone else and coincidentally met up with the sweet anarchist boy from my old silk screen class as I was leaving the back entrance of the bakery with my bike. He was inside the dumpster rooting around and we chilled for a bit and talked about our present art projects at Martha (Daniel is apprenticing under someone else), all the while he remained in the bin with his arms dangling over it's metal walls as if that was the most normal place in the world to catch up. And it was. I ran in to grab everything I could off the Reduced Rack and piled his canvas bag full and he was psyched. I got home and sat down in my clean kitchen to draw and listen to Bon Iver and just felt so good.

TGIF. Tomorrow will be a day of much laughter, breakfast of champions, watching Yosh record some music while I bake, drawing new drafts up for Jill, exploring in the backyard forest and thrifting at the best shop in all of rural Manitoba. I am psyched. It has been a summer; it has been a whole season since I last saw Yosh. I am leaving for the woods early tomorrow morning, just me and Andrew Bird, my pens and paper, and a small handful of dollar dollar bills in my pocket to spend on lost treasure.

Thank God I feel. Sunday is bound to be interesting as well. Tonight is Andrew, Rabbi and Kitty's UN-going away party at Thida's, my house, with a rock show to follow suit. Should be wild. Anne M, you better be coming. Good riddance internet, I have shit to do. See you at my house in a while kids. I am a professional weekender now. Oh, one more thing, meet Andrew Bird. He can whistle better than you, your dad, your Pappy and sure as shit better than the eight hundred birds in the backyard.

Number one Swan/Pho.

I spy a long lost friend.

Let's date again Swan, it is high time. My best friend is leaving me. Bring your birthday mirror, bring your pretty mug, bring your mantra and I will bring mine. Do you still have my phone number? Pray tell if you are without. Same goes for you Sea Bass. Speaking of pho numbers, I would like to break bread with you two at Pho Number One in the tangible future. Number one noodle in this shitty city, down?

I spy a long lost friend reunion.
Photograph taken by said long lost friend.

Eat your mistakes.

Cayenne pepper deserves more street cred. It is HOT. I stupidly underestimated the glorious power of said spice and doubled the amount called for in my brain (I was making up the recipe for something along the lines of Spicy Peanut) as I went, and threw in a healthy cup. Whoops. It was spicy alright. Lesson learned. Kent said something dead appropriate this morning as he somberly threw two BRAND NEW turkeys into the garbage in front of me (long story, and it was my fault) when he said "in this kitchen, we eat our mistakes". I agreed very humbly and I knew from that moment on I would never forget those words. Eat your mistakes, cook away pain. Brilliant adage in my opinion. So the day was a bit shaky, but somehow I pulled off eight hours with a happy face.

Upon returning home from work, I cleaned my Jessica Alba of which I have been riding seriously and sheepishly for the past week. The pavement is dry and I am always with helmet, but I still feel sheepish because I was instructed that "this is not a winter bicycle" from the man who set me up with her in the first place. Oh well. I cleaned it, top to bottom. There were even Q-Tips involved, so there. Anyway, it feels spectacular to ride again, fast and hard. I got a nod from a fellow fixy rider early one morning last week and my heart sang out because of it. A single nod, so precious in wintertime.

I should get busy, my dear dear Babs Banhart (Rabbi) is ascending upon my doorstep in a mere hour and my home is in utter disarray. We will cook! We will laugh! We will drink! We will recline! We will do all of these things to our hearts content while we can, because my dear best friend is relocating to Argentina and Bolivia for TWO WHOLE MONTHS with Kitty. What will I do without them? Whose bar will I sit at after work, whose couches will I curl up on, whose clothes will I steal? I am lost without the Rabbi. So tonight, we toast to our last days together until we see each other again. In the meantime, I will print and finish my damn art journal for NSCAD. It is swallowing me whole.

Anyone interested in an art party? I need to be held accountable like whoa. Any takers, feel free to comment yay or nay. Also, the lovely Lisa King took this wonderful picture the last time she was over for dinner at my house. I haven't laughed that much in a long time. Lisa, COME OVER soon. These are the types of things that go on at my house on a regular basis: bikes, babes, art, wine. Come on down, I am bound to be lonely all of February.

FM

Cherry on top/Devendra on top.

I just found this on the internet after having seen and then lost it in the cyber sea of things. Well, it is found now. Ask your nearest Rabbi as to what lies under those delightful white dots. The answer? The band Megapuss lies under those glorious dots and boy, can they sing!

iGeneration (pt.2).

As a precursor, if you have not read Pt.1 of this post, I suggest reading the next post after this one first.

I see this mainly; but then again, I have been called a dreamer once or twice before. Keeping in mind that he is someone's husband, it is not him I see, but it. The idea of it. That sounds nice: the idea of it. To me, the room pictured screams, "cook here, laugh here, spill wine here, make love here, hang prints to dry here, make paper mache on the floor here".

Oh dear, here. Sounds nice, yeah?
Oh dear, is right.

FM






On the topic of spiritual kitchens, Tante Daryl's Thai Basil Something dinner turned out not only to be a smashing success taste-wise, but also a dinner of healing. By this time my food was digested (which you know now doesn't take long), my original ailments had long become a thing of the past. I was completely healed in time for dessert. And they were damn good Spelt chocolate chip cookies at that! She made this delectable fennel root asian-inspired slaw type of thing, dressed in fresh lime, crushed ginger juice and a bit of lemon I think, beside a bed of wide rice noodles with ground turkey and thai basil dressed in oyster sauce, and god knows what else.

She cooks from the hip, which I love about her and her meals are usually bang-on, just as her instincts tell her they will be, and sometimes, they aren't. But that is what I love about her, it is still eating a meal (even if it's kind of dry or tasteless) in the best company. I like to think it is her and her alone who taught me how to cook (even all the way back when I refused to eat tofu when I was eight) I would still watch her from the same chair that I do now. Yosh of course taught me the art of cooking curry, ham, cream sauce, bacon, and onions on our weekly Wednesday "Trip and laugh and EAT and tell stories" night.

Anyway, the 'slaw smelled delicious and tasted even better going down. Besides, as I was wolfing this down, she leans in and tells me that fennel root, crushed ginger juice and lime are all the ingredients available in our very own crispers that are proven to clear up heartburn. Fuck this Gaviscon, Tums, T3 drug (pardon my mouth) chemical business. There is FOOD you can make yourself to heal your own pain. I was impressed. Another life lesson: cook away pain. Whoa, that was heavy. To clarify (after re-reading part 1 of this post...), I did not shit my IKEA bed, I merely ate a tonne of dried fruit and nearly shat myself. Overshare? Pish posh.

We all shit.
Deal with it.

iGeneration (pt.1).

I am on a very high emotional shelf as I write. An anecdote would be appropriate. Okay, I feel like like a Mason jar filled with something warm and comforting (maybe peaches from two years ago), teetering on the shelf, just out of reach. I had an altercation with my Grandparents two weeks ago that started with such good intentions on both of our parts, me trying to enlighten them, them trying to save me spiritually. It all went to hell in a handbasket, and I, offended over something blown far out of proportion, wielded my sharpest tool to inflict pain and to be made clear that offense was taken: silence. I went silent for one week until emails crept in and we managed to make nice (quite sincerely so) over cat-and-moose style letter writing. And yet. Still not satisfied and still quite stubborn over the entire situation (the same situation that ended up garnering far more attention than I thought necessary), I was quiet again for week two. They have tried to call and still I am not ready. In retrospect, I am not sure of my anger. Unstable anger is never a good thing. So I will be quiet another week until I have processed everything. I may look like my mother, but I am my father's daughter internally speaking, which is lovely now that I think of it. So. Quiet and processing, it is.

I am calm again, I had a moment after hanging up the phone with Aunty Daryl that I would be sick and so I ran in the direction of the bathroom but stopped short in the hall to burst into tears. I guess this month (although a happy one) has taken a toll on me emotionally. So I cried and smoked a joint. Shira gave me a beautiful glass bubbler last night and holding it in my hands feels like holding treasure. I should have been experimenting with things like this when I was fifteen, I would have made a great fifteen year old pothead. I could have really explored the whole 'Lonely and misunderstood art fag on the prairie' angle. Too bad I had eight hundred friends and was too busy lighting fires and shooting birds with these kids as as innocent as I in an abandoned old folks home. So my point being, I used the beautiful bubbler while experiencing stomach ache and it was not a good combination. High as a kite, heartburn, heavy-bottomed heart, tears, and a little bit of shit. No, make that a lot of shit. Thankfully, there were no dry bathtubs involved. Just a wonderful new Ikea bed. (It was my first cry on it since Christmas, not bad!).

As a side note, I made a creamy Tomato with fresh basil and parsley soup and at one point all of five of us women in the kitchen paused what we were doing to dip grilled cheese into my fresh soup. We dipped, our aprons were filthy, the kitchen was clean, Beyonce was in the background. I think it is important for us to eat together when we work. It always bothered me how one soup cook (now long fired from the bakery) never let people try his soup while still on the stove. Food should evoke opinions, it should be babied, it should be squabbled over in front of the stove, it should be loved, respected, inhaled to the tip and top and bottom of one's being, it should be purred and fawned over, talked about, cooed over. I always coo. I always purr. And I always smell. So anyway, we stood around the bread table with a giant of pot of soup and we dipped and we murmured to ourselves and we laughed. I ate too many damn dried apricots for my own damn good and got violently ill about one hour after swallowing. Damn that Kroeker metabolism straight to hell. I swear the innards of my body are like a food processor. It is almost as if doctors picked up my seven pound, twenty eight ounce newborn frame in the delivery room, took out all my inner organs with my parent's ultra secret consent and swapped them for all the various moving parts of a Robocoup. Food goes through me like wildfire.

Somehow my mind is still on the innocent childhood bit. I have been collecting evidence through multiple experiences this past week that proves how sheltered and closed my mind has been for about twenty years running. I am not saying this is at all a negative thing. In fact, the other night, Alfie and I lay on the floor of this darkroom on our backs smoking Cuban cigarillos into the red light bulb above us and we compared these stark dichotomies. Two childhoods, each in the opposite spectrum of the other, that somehow managed to mould two upstanding, well-rounded and like-minded people. We were raised one hundred percent differently and yet many of our values and truths and ideals are identical. We lay there with all of this new and open information about each other swirling above our heads in that perfect room and all we felt was wonderment. Identical wonderment. I felt very alive that night, very in tune with myself, very twenty two and a half. Who is counting? Ha.

But again, we fell into that conversation so easily and words came easily too when we asked each other what one foresaw for the future. His answer was quite impressive. I always see a family, I see art, I see music collections, I see steaming food and self-sufficient gardens, I see laughing babies and interesting almost-adults. It has only dawned on me this week that the very gift of parenthood is to choose a way of life for the miniature you's and them's. What a lovely concept. I want that. I also see a loving and loyal partner. I see someone with similar interests to my own, someone strong and respected. I see tenderness and playfulness in a warm space. Then I see greens of backyard forest floors so soft that walking barefoot over the bed of pine needles is not only an option, but the only option. I have said it before and I will say it again with even more understanding than the last time: my parents did great.

The last time my mind wandered to this land of parenthood was one year ago. It was early February, I was in Switzerland and very depressed. I was black inside, that is how depressed I was. And I always feel light and colorful, so that was new. I was living in an uninspiring space with no escape for the first time in my life and also in love with a man who manipulated his way into my life and did not adore me (that is put very kindly). So, it has been a year and in retrospect I have learned: live in a home that is inspiring and warm, and be with a man who adores adoring you. That was a pleasant thought, just then.

This is all very disjointed I know, but maybe it will resonate with someone. To be frank, I am tackling with the idea of where to raise a family and whether or not growing up exposed, or growing up sheltered really makes a difference. Look at Alfie and I. We are normal, even though I have zero music/literature knowledge and his English blows. And yet, we are normal. If anyone reads this and scoffs, I understand. I am too young to think about it, but then again, am I? We should be thinking about these things. My only motive right now (considering the big picture as opposed to my one year plan) is to better myself and ready myself through life experience and heart ache and food and openness in order to bring my own iGeneration (or internet generation) into this world. I am tired now thinking of all of this. Enough. I am off to eat Thai Basil something at my Tante's.

Montreal is a stone's throw.

Oh, one more thing. JJ/Loco, I miss you. Picking up these pictures of you and rifling through them in the middle of Safeway almost did me in, JJ. Loco, you should be in these. Soon.

Not soon enough, M

Post script, here is one of Barfredo and I, for good measure (on NYE).

Necessary evil.

Sunday morning I ate something so appropriately titled on a breakfast menu at the Don it was uncanny. 'Crack and hash' turned out to be the best damn food I have put inside my body in a while. I left wishing on another ten plates. Potatoes and eggs, always an upper. Hash topped with crackles and friend onions, two eggs basted medium, hands around coffee mugs, my older brother and my older sister laughing at me from across the table. This is us in our truest forms, three siblings around a breakfast table. Three like voices cooing enthusiastically. I bet we even banged our hands on the table in exclamation without even noticing, because we all do it. Having long left the nest (almost five years ago now) we tend to call each other all at once on Sunday mornings like these and without saying it, we say we miss home and each other and then we go to the Don to eat. My bangs were sticking up funny and Mike was in a funny haha mood and Erin had funny justifications and lists for everything (which is an art, as I have learned from her).

Sunday day, ran errands with my brother. Lazed, ignored the piles of things that need to be folded, tidied and tucked out of sight, out of mind. Eventually I got bored and rode my bike around town until I couldn't feel the inside linings of my lungs anymore. Cold hands? Who cares. It is the lungs that are important. I rode back home, frozen to the core, drew a bath and read the day away under my Grandma's quilt. My hands stopped short when I found an old shirt at the back of my wardrobe while rifling for something soft to clothe myself with. The last shirt. The last article of clothing still containing a smell. Every girl has one of these shirts stolen from a boyfriend's cache, usually the type of lover who hangs his t-shirts on hangers. So I stood there, with hair getting long and dripping rain down my bare shoulders and I let myself hunch over into this familiar smell and inhale. For a long time. Long enough that I became aware of what I was doing and eventually I had enough of that smell and I walked over the the garbage can and threw it in. Good bye last everything. I missed that smell so much but today after standing there long enough I realized it wasn't him I was missing anymore, or his smell, or anything, it was the idea of love. I miss it. The t-shirt, now long in the dumpster will surely be found tomorrow by my trusty neighborhood garbage bag prowler dynamic duo that swing by my dumpster in high hopes of finding something quality and not too, too smelly. They can have it. Sniff him, not gasolina.

Today I had this very strong desire to haul and drag everything I own outside to the same dumpster and just wish it away. I am going away for the summer and the reality of moving my shit and boxing things up and giving everything away is becoming a stark reality. The more I think about it, the less scary it becomes. To be the kind of person attached to things is never something I have wanted to become. I respected James so much when we doled out all of his favorite things, music, clothes etc, to his favorite people because he knew they would love it and appreciate it as much as he did. Whenever I put on any of the twenty or so cd's he gave me, my mind goes to him with so much warmth. This is how I would like to be thought of when I move. To whomever is the lucky recipient of my plants, promise to look at my Jade plant that I received from Loco when she moved to MTL, the plant I have babied so carefully in her name, misted daily, talked to softly; look at it and think of us.

No one changes their mind as much as you do, not even the wind.

I didn't know what to do with that sentence when my mother gifted it to me over the phone. I couldn't tell if there was disappointment or pride laced in between the words. I am young, and chances are I will not understand the meaning behind her observation until I have my own children. Then I will wrap the cord around my finger aimlessly and say the same thing to my daughter Frances (maybe), and understand. I am whittling away at all of the things I do not want, need, desire. Big dreams carved smaller and smaller into more ornate and tangible ones. To be able to give my things up first and then away with trust and love or to tape boxes shut; these are steps towards something. To weep standing upright in the kitchen that I have slow danced in, cooked in, felt hands slide around my waist in, sang in, made art in, had tea in, sobbed on the rug in, opened hundreds of bottles of wine in, laughed in, will be impossible. But I will do it and walk away from it and not look back at the yellow walls because they will no longer be mine. On the day that I have to take apart my beloved bicycle in order for it to fly with me to somewhere new, to stand in as an old friend until I find new ones again will be impossible too, but all of these things are manageable and part of the necessary evil. The necessary evil of change and challenging oneself and growing.

Sunday night I spent alone listening to Strauss and drinking tea, holding court in my bed, reading. Lost in a fictional world, which was much needed. Everyone is leaving for warmer places, which is nice for them. I have been surviving happily up until today when I just wanted to fly away away away and live in a thatched roof hut built into a sand foundation listening to the bugs flare up as the light slips into dark. I want to swing contentedly in a hammock reading Anna Karenina with one hand and drinking Chang beer with the other. But, that will not happen and tomorrow I will forget I ever felt discontent because I will be too busy finishing my latest print at Martha. And that will be nice.

My bangs are still sticking up funny.

Glass half full.

I wailed (hard) in my dreams last night. I woke to a damp pillowcase, a creased face, a sore right ear and a heaving chest. In my dream I was shooting a wedding of two lovers whom I was not/am not familiar with. We were in a butterfly pavilion somewhere and it was distracting and dim. I know I was frustrated but they were so beautiful (and faceless--as per usual) so I kept trying. I was myself, observing everything from my usual waking life perspective (in comparison to the usual film reel style I tend to dream in) and seeing things for what they were. My camera kept malfunctioning and when I would notice these insane moments to capture, I would focus and shoot and the film would jam and moss would fall out the bottom of my camera (polaroid style) and I would weep loudly; the sobs catching in my throat. I don't know what this means. I haven't even been taking many photographs lately as my focus has been more silk-screen based in the past few weeks.

After I woke, I got up, made the bed like I do everyday and made a pot of dark coffee and sat placidly at the kitchen table staring outside while spinning an orange on the red table. I did get up once to tune the radio to a station that plays oldies on the regular and just sat looking out. Not happily, but not unhappily either. Eventually I got up again and brushed my teeth, and called Alfie.

"Hey baby. Yes. I'm hungry too. Okay. Take your time. Yes. Okay. I will meet you there then, yeah? Okay. You bring the crossword. Yes, I will call Andrew. Okay. Seeyinabit. Okay, bye".

We met, our timing perfect as we were both late (as per usual) and I got a parcel in the mail from Oregon holding a simple new coffee table book hand bound made with expensive paper. I poured over that while he did the crossword. I kept thinking in my head that it is funny that we call each other 'Baby' (and never 'Babe', gross) when we greet each other on the telephone and yet I would never and will never call my own lover that. Ever. I smiled and sat back, watching him and thinking about all of these things.

"Meg, what's 'In blank, before birth? Five letters".
"In utero, before birth. U-T-E-R-O, five letters".

Of course I would know that. This is the girl who turns inside out with pleasure over labor and delivery stories, all things newborn and miniature. Pathetic. I am terrible at the crossword, but then I will know a word like that without even doubting myself and hope is restored until the next attempt at the Times. At one point after Andrew pulled up a chair cursing the morning's cold, we got to talking about life perspective. As titled, I have a pretty positive foothold. They seemed to be on the same page. At one point Andrew made a quip about not being funny. I laughed because making a quip is generally witty in itself and not easy to pull off effortlessly as he did then. We will never be an earth shattering, knee slapping bunch, but we do laugh; a lot. We laugh at each other and at things we collectively find hilarious because we are comfortable together. I have been feeling quite inadequate lately in the humor department and hearing the boys confirm how we are actually quite funny together lifted the unseen weight from my shoulders. Thank you. We are funny together and that is what matters. I depend in these men for these kinds of things. I love them dearly. I love you dearly.

--break--

Anne M picked me up after I walked home from Little Tadpole breakfast with my boyfriends plural, and whisked me off to McNally for Saturday afternoon tea. Jenny Lewis sang to us in our matching orange and red Club Mon cashmere and we fell into each other in one breath. In one single, "Hi girl". Instantly at ease, we waltzed into the busy café carting giant hardcover cookbooks and magazines with matte paper and gave our Sears model server a run for his money.

"I want milk"
"Please"
"Please. Thanks".

That was a paraphrased excerpt from Fake Bitch. What a woman. I have met my match (well, one of many. How lucky am I? Lucky).

We recapped both of our Monday to Fridays (her first and then me) and this led to eight hundred different veins of conversation (as per usual). I am sure our laughter and antics were annoying in the opinion's of the tea drinkers around us but we carried on unabated, as always. Then we perused the bookstore, slowly, savoring it, weaving in and out of aisles alone and together, the piles in our arms growing as we egged each other on. I didn't need much convincing (or any at all, for that matter) to justify the purchase of a million dollar cookbook titled appropriately as "The Soup Bible". Ten Hail Mary's of thankfulness and of guilt for such an expenditure. Tante Daryl got me hooked on this cookbook a few weeks ago in the first place. We ate dinner together at her teak dining room table and poured over page after page, picture after picture, recipe after recipe. It is mine now. Yes.

Tonight Rabbi, Barfredo, Drewber, Stranglor, Kitty, Mel, Zach, and I will try our hands at Settlers, which none of us have played before. I am sure there will be some karaoke involved, or at the very least singing in the streets; and there will be wine. There is always wine. Another Zaterdag for the books.

And speaking of books, this is my new baby.

Following Winter suit.

"Oh, hello" she said in her lowest octave, "pleasure to see you again. I have been meaning to ask, is your work space inspiring?"
"No. I go where the people are, so no, it is not", he said, with eyes downcast.

She stood there, picturing an oak drafting table, expensive-hard-to-find prints pinned decisively above eye level with those hard-to-find T-pins, empty glassware and masculine coffee mugs dappling the surfaces of his imagined work space, until his brusque response interrupted the course of her thoughts.

"Oh, no?"
"No, sadly"
"Oh, dear".
"I know".
"Oh, dear".

Dear self, may your work space always be inspiring and warm.

And now: demon conversation piece necklace, gross (but good-gross) bangs, one hundred percent myself, wine stained lips, and after a nine hour day of stirring and smelling spices I am tired, but happy to be so. Happily tired. Now I will write disjointedly. Thus far, this post has been treading fairly joyfully. Today I am joyful and quiet, yesterday I was tired and weepy, tomorrow I will be surly (and no one will say a word about it). I will chop methodically, plodding away, happy to fill four litres of things at a time.

Onions, check. Carrots, check. Celery, check. Tomatoes, check. Lentils, check. Navy beans, check. Lemongrass, check. Cilantro, check. High heat, check.

It is okay to be surly on a Friday day.
And yet.

In summer no one was ever surly on a Friday day.

The only thing winter welcomes is itchy earlobes and quiet nights. Tonight there were social upper arm grabs, two name exchanges, one moment of wishing I was holding baby Maiya and not holding a glass of wine, deep boat neck collars in freshly laundered white, dinner with Rabbi, one banging pair of these-were-half-of-the-rent winter heels, two espresso, one machiato, internal buzzing, one red booth, two liters among three beauties, collars up, four dear ones, one cab driving away, two top buns touching in a sincere embrace, four cigarettes (not to mention zero throw up), one girl running down corydon with a collar up, cursing winter's inconvenience.

To say the least amount possible, being drunk/social/frazzled/high/excited/wild in summer was so much easier than being drunk/social/frazzled/high/excited/wild in winter. There was never any confusion in summer as to where we were going, what we were doing, where we were meeting, when we would see each other. I miss desperately the pace of slow summer mornings spent reading/doing the NY Times crossword on the BI patio, experiencing the wonders of seven different joiners in the span of two hot weathered hours and the pace of slow summer evenings riding with no hands, eight fixys in a row, our collective laughter somewhere above our heads as we rode north eastwards towards downtown, the clinking of our small bike locks reminding us how good it felt to ride bare armed together. Smoking cigarettes and drinking Abby's sangria before eleven. I read so much, biked so much. Jessica Alba was my ticket to the social hour.

Winter forces me to shelf my beautiful lady love and depend on inconvenient cabs, friends and otherwise, and it is downright disheartening. In summer I could leave when I so desired; in clumps of like cyclists or riding home alone with the leftover heat from that afternoon still warm against my skin, it was always pleasant. I miss it. I miss the downtime while pedaling, reflecting, desperately so. Everyone met everyone in the Exchange with rubber bands around our right ankles. We carried our bicycles like purses; men and women alike. Parties happened all the same, not party parties, just the kind of gatherings of like people happy to be on bicycle, happy to be out type of parties. Art shows in abundance, food and white beer happening every night.

Winter is sleepy and I am sleepy.

I miss it, yes.

Rabbi and I shared a liquid dinner in my lovely kitchen at the red table, conversation was seamless, both of us positive and introspective, respectively. Bad homemade sushi, red wine galore, winter music, walking hand in hand through snow drifts and convenience stores and lame lounges. We will miss each other deeply. I will miss you deeply, girl. I am pretty sure that you being gone for the extent you are will feel equivalent to being sans elbow or right hand for the said time period. Come back, yes? Read your list of books and then come back to your alabastard bestie (that would be me).

We sat at the table after our said liquid dinner, eating dessert first and then dinner, our entire candlelit exchange done backwards, in reverse, in slowmotion. Wine service, dessert, mains, starter (the bad oranges from my mama). Then all of a sudden it was the same girl with the blond hair and the black roots that even Miss Kurt Cobain would be green with envy over, her baby brother who I have loved in more than one hundred ways, a ginger-maned friend who I have loved in a hundred other ways, and three kind strangers that are not really strangers/but sort of are around a wobbly table laughing. Making nice despite the weather and unavoidable return of cold. We spoke of chess and the new edition of Risk, world domination, names of countries established by Minoan civilization in the Bronze age, Top Buns, Thailand, books galore, Peruvian massage, trekking to Machu Picchu blindly, being mad at each other and not. So on and so forth.

I am happy to be here, to make and to hole up, to print and to learn that it is important to flood with the body and not with the arms, but I also am unhappy that I am not traveling alone somewhere, smelling spices hanging in the noon hour air on my motor bike, camera slung around my back carelessly, more books packed than clothes, film galore, cooking lessons, photographing naked babies and zero-toothed grannies making naan, clapping drunkenly and squinting desperately, sewing, entertaining, conversing candidly, doing yoga beachside, laughing on a hewn bench drinking out of a sand pail beside some ringletted man, black coffee in the morning, noodle soup at two in the afternoon, seven hundred lemon shakes and seven hundred meals a day, welcomed weight, washing my laundry by hand in a concrete washbasin as a six year old pushes a nine month old in a wheel barrow past my spot. These are all the things I wish I was filling my head with. Mind this red boothed conversation (as lovely as it was), and hand me heat thankyouverymuch.

Take me away, prince.

Winter is a sleepy season and my social life is following suit. I am sleepy.
Medical Docteur.

Zigzagging in Anne Frank shoes.

Today, Sunday morning, seven thirty in the morning, I walked home from the bakery down eight blocks worth of back alleys wearing this: black leotards, an apron around the front, a giant t-shirt that read 'Groomsman', a winter parka, four inch Tsubo's which I promptly traded for my blue tennis shoes that Brendan likes to refer to as my Anne Frank shoes (thanks for the daily Holocaust reminder), bed head, face as pale as a sheet, visions of a home on fire in my head, lips stained rouge from seventeen liters of wine consumed the night before, Kraft Dinner in my hair. The last part might have been my imagination.

Mine and Rabbi's Miyabi date was out of this world. I moaned and cooed over the salmon sashimi with yam tempura maki something something for about two hours, eating painstakingly slow and downing glass after glass of Rabbi's old bosses "Big Red" wine. On the house. Thanks Ed, you are a sushi master. We stumbled out of there, corked our wine and clickety-clacketyed our way home to my apartment, both of us in insane heels, making sure to stop to pick up dessert en route. Delicious sushi, delicious wine, delicious stories swapped as we leaned over our candlelit table in the tiny sushi restaurant, delicious banana torte, delicious talk of boys, delicious vinyl (Divinder, obviously), delicious company. We were on. Not ready to call it a night, we flipped the record, killed our bottle of wine and catwalked to the Deuce only to be greeted by a booth full of beauties: Barfredo, Leigh and Christopher. Delicious. We ate and drank free beer and did the New York Times crossword all together and talked about Typeface and Furtura font and Megapuss (Devendra's new band, what?!?!) and new Animal Collective and god knows what else. We eventually parted ways, full and content, and I walked home and ran into Freya and Marinelli outside of Bar I and they somehow convinced me to come over, eat Kraft Dinner on their kitchen floor and so I did. After all of that I went to the Mansion, climbed three hundred sets of stairs, found a giant t-shirt and some water and slept like a baby among couches packed with sleeping teenage skate rats.

I am twenty two, I zigzag home in leotards at seven thirty in the morning eating a bran muffin with one hand and holding a blue hanger supporting my favorite silk dress stained from messy sips in the other. This is youth. This is living. Most of my evenings are spent curled up with a book, or drawing and drinking tea uneventfully. And yet. Then I will have a Saturday night like I did last night where everyone is your best friend and you come home at eight in the morning smelling like the inside of a beer keg filled with Kraft Dinner to fall hopelessly into one's own bed all wet haired and wild eyed to sleep off the unavoidable plague of partydom, only to wake ten hours later in the dead of Sunday evening with once-wet hair dried into an extreme version of Medusa's. Uneventful follow up. I called up Tante Daryl, half dazed and was told I sounded like a "cheshire cat lapping up cream" and was invited over for beet borscht and TV. It was delicious.

Delicious weekend. Tomorrow I make soup from 8-4 and print with Art School Jeanette from 5-9. Then I will come home, fall into bed with Woody Allen and Hannah and Her Sisters and repeat. When in Rome.

Zaterdag.

There are few things in life that make me more happy than (in no particular order):

a.) picking up my dry cleaning on a fixed gear on a balmy Saturday morning
b.) putting on a freshly pressed tuxedo shirt
c.) working happily in silence beside a Scandinavian man with good glasses named Leif at Martha
d.) eating a raisin bran muffin while on a morning bicycle ride
e.) greasy breakfast at one in the afternoon with best friends in a pub
f.) not waking up to a foreign touch, but waking up smiling
g.) seven cups of coffee with seven different people in only a four hour time span
h.) drawing beside Alfie while he does the crossword at our favorite coffee shoppe
i.) linking arms with the same people at the same spot every single Saturday
j.) going out to dinner with my best lady Rabbi and never second guessing whether or not heels are appropriate.

I had a brilliant day off. Every hour was spent doing something different for the most part, but the morning was my favorite. Coffee in bed, reading aloud, track standing in the living room (with help), carrying my bike on my shoulder and out the door like a purse, riding slowly at first, riding more wildly when my legs remembered what to do, pop-ins, breakfast, a chat with Erin at Pear, laughing loud, discussing the worst names of the 1980's over eggs and bacon (Brittany and Cody were front runners), and waltzing from the Library to the Exchange on Alfie's arm, the both of us pretending we were European even though neither of us said so, being known in two very different neighborhoods as a cyclist in one and a maker in the other.

The week has been interesting. Indian buffet with Anne M and her lover Scott was tops and while I will never have intelligent conversation, I will always laugh. Laugh we did. Couple of the year, seriously. By the way Anne M, your kitchen wall looks brilliant. Martha Stewart would be psyched, I think.

I am late, dolled up, top bunned, lipsticked, thinking of a man who works out, smiling and ready for an evening over sushi with Babs Banhart.

Peace, the Queen.

"I am sweet?"
"Not modest, but yes, you are sweet"
"I am sweet".

More laughter.

Infant post.

Welcome all. Here we are together; so nice of you to come. There is more where this jazz came from, guns blazing. Gird thy loins and follow the instructions presented below. Photo stolen as per usual sans permission from Trouvé, an excellent collaboration among three artists on a mission to find things. Or something. For posts of yesteryears, click HERE and read on.

I too, am on a mission to find things. God only knows what.