The Time in Between.

Aloha. New header, a weird drawing I did last winter for the annual Art City coloring book.

Dear wind, I just reread a bunch of letters I wrote to you in the spring. As anticipated, "challenging Autumn" is blowing in. Even the air has changed around these parts. Unlike Winnipeg, Montreal seems to be turning at the pace of molasses, which is just fine pour moi. Green as grass over here. Just today, while running under a closed woods canopy on Mount Royal, I saw the first splashes of Quebec's signature rouge. Red leaves, red rum and so begins the death of summer.

Just as the Dear Liza letter that came in yesterday's post read, summer is a "time to soak in the sun and travel and drink it all in. Store up for the winter months. I'm stored up. Ready."; I too am ready. And Liza, in honor of your letter and your words, I craned my neck while running this morning and felt the last rivers of the sun's warmth pour down on my closed eyelids through the holes in the canopy above me. I am ready.

For what? God only knows.

I just came in from a mountain run and had my ass handed to me on the stair sprint (and by "handed to me" I just mean I felt dejected after seeing a dude do all seven flights in under a minute!). Whoa, mental. Apres l'incident des escaliers (after the stairs incident in improper French [probably]) I walked further up the gravel path to the lookout point and stretched and then sat on a stone planter in meditative silence for a few minutes until Drex and Danika floated to the surface of thought. Hello out there, I wish we lived closer together!

Nice run though. I think it (running) is coming back, the motion I mean. After all of this time of struggling with it, all I had to do was lift my knees higher and breathe like a normal person. On the way back down I passed the Stairmaster doing his one millionth stair set (give it a rest already and quit making the rest of us look bad) as well as a tiny (very tiny) Chinese man on a unicycle heading UP hill and singing something at the top of his lungs. I whooped and gave him two thumbs up. He didn't notice, but for some reason all of these things made me think of James: tiny Chinese man, unicycle, singing. Then further down the running path, I passed another tiny man walked a very large dog. He waved in the direction of my gaze and haggard panting and said, "Bon matin!" (good morning en Francais) and I realized only then that I haven't been talking to anyone except my main squeeze since arriving in the Land of Talk.

My dad asked me on the phone yesterday if I had met any new people yet and I said "no". Pat, my friend from planting (who lives three blocks away) told me to "quit living under a rock" the other day over dinner at Casa Lau (as in Laurier Avenue, the street upon which my apartment is located). So I am living under a rock, so what? Lisa King rang me up yesterday (and so did Rags!) in the afternoon while I was in the middle of writing her a letter (what a coincidence) and encouraged me to enjoy the time in between. Isn't that a David Bergen novel about a brother and sister in Asia? I think so. Anyway, so I have decided to wait out the job search until I find something worth sticking with (Operation TWO T4's is in effect. Fuck, THREE T4's?!?!) with joy and thanksgiving. Since I haven't found a sewing machine yet to commence the doll factory and the Lady Longbody's line, this is the time to master hand stitching I suppose.

The latest project is a giant 4'x6' wall hanging for above my bed. Nothing has come to fruitition yet, save for a vision in my head that has been brewing like a press pour for some time now. I have a BIG piece of red felt/batting and a shit tonne of raw canvas. I have started cutting out leaves to hand sew onto the red thing and eventually I hope to somehow replicate a drawing I did a few years ago of a tiny (2"x3") crest in order for it to work itself into the larger fabric version of the idea in my head. These visions always start out so grand. Haha. This will be challenging without a large version of the crest to trace for a pattern for the fabric version. After the leaf portion is complete, I somehow need to REDRAW the original crest into an appropriate size for the wall hanging. I don't know about any of you, but as far as I am concerned, redrawing something is hard enough, never mind redrawing something ten times it's original size. Yikes. Photos to come of the construction.

Okay, I am off. Lisa, I just trimmed my own bangs in an attempt for you to come here faster. Sasshole/turd move.

Queen of the Road, Margot. Still dreaming of my someday Great Dane named Lee Ronaldo.