Lo.

I took one look at this yesterday and said "Loco Ono Beeston in another lifetime" to myself. Girl, I miss you and this didn't help.

Turds.

Dear Jillian, I am going to miss running with you very much. I will think of you every day; I promise. Running Room club jackets forever.

Love, Megan

Red string diaries.

Ten days. With this knowledge and the ever-present tick tock of speeding time, my lover and I sleep closer and closer together. Soft mornings, we savor each one as D Day creeps closer. This morning I half woke entwined in those black lines pressed into his skin, that familiar singing bear friend staring back at my own blurred eyes and my own black lines (Helen Helen Helen) inked in my own script pressed somewhere into his rib region. Trunk to trunk, cheek to cheek, ankle to ankle.

The season is changing beautifully outside my bedroom/living room/music room window (one great big window where the cat spends every waking moment) and while the idea of leaving causes ships to lodge in the channels of my throat, I am looking forward to watching yet another season come fruition before my very eyes. I was lucky enough to watch the turn of summer and then autumn when I went back to Spray.

I look forward to stepping on sphagnum in the swamp, that pinky mauve intricate sponge releasing puffs and plumes of warm air and a sweetness that is more of a feeling than a smell underfoot. Soft 'mmm mmm's released at the same exact moment from my own mouth. I am looking forward to the sleepy morning bus rides into the Block. That scary, sprawling, dark land seen through dirty windows in the back. Every morning I will ask myself, 'How can this happen? How can I do this today?'. These very demands will remain unanswered and forgotten the moment I am dumped off at my piece, my bags pitched from the back door of the bus by some dirty turd, my familiar orange flagging tape wagging invitingly. This is how. Pack saddle bags with care, smell the trees, look at the sky, look at the land, memorize the tree line by pretending there is a red string attached both to my back and the place I first stepped in. I never get lost in the land this way. Bird taught me that trick during spray. Follow your feet and the pretend string and don't forget to watch out for eagles and elk. Body pumping motion like a well-handled well handle, I will fall back into the motion even though the meat on my thighs tells me otherwise. I will be fine in a week and a half. I will be a machine in three. Hills and hills of nothingness, begging to be crawled over and explored with a prodding shovel and boots at the pace of a low cougar.

I am looking forward to writing letters in the quiet of my own tent at the end of the day after my feet have been massaged back into form. Quiet thoughts, clear mind, calm hands and a steady heart thinking of my man drawing at the light table in the studio that has become my family and another version of home. I carry Martha Street studio with me wherever I go. I will want to be there too, then, thinking of him there. But another day will close with birdsong and high winds carrying smoking fires along with it and my missing will subside for just long enough to fall into dead sleep. Another day will open with the zip zip zip of a tent flap at four in the mornig, rushed movement, no grace, haggard face and body, constantly thinking of Mitch and my mother and my family and my bride sister and my best friends in that initial confusion of waking up on the ground in the dark and in the cold. Where will you all be and what will you all be doing while I am packing up my gear for another day? You will be in your warm beds (my warm bed without me) while I make four PB and J's and two bags of carrot sticks and one of grapefruit. I look forward to the roadside sighs in between sips of black cowboy coffee, visits from my foreman Papa Birdman on the quad with Motorhead blaring from some secret place on his Hi Vis body. I will not see it, but I will hear it and think of Mitch again and again.

I will cry and piss myself on the sixth day of straight rain. "I AM ALREADY WET". Who cares.

I do, aplenty. With so much missing, and to think I am still here at this familiar desk I love so much in my home that I have made with a man whom I also love so much. We will be fine. I am getting ready. My shovel is being sharpened as I type. There is a red string in my mind that attaches me to you.

I will be just fine.

Cultural Weekend.

I have hot hands and hot feet. First over-heated digits and palms of the season. Spring is swaggering in like a dog in the sun. Here you come, here you come. Tongues are wagging. Everyone is panting in this unfamiliar heat. Heat! There is heat and humidity in the air in Winnipeg! Cycling has been so exciting lately; everyone has taken to the streets. There is clapping every where I turn. People are rejoicing with their hands on the sidewalk, in their cars, in their short shorts and beside me and mine in the First Balcony.

What clapping last night! A monster of a room filled with exactly what it was designed for. Clapping. Last night Mitch and Jillian took me to see Carmen for my birthday. I had never been to the opera before. Carmen, what skirts you have. What extension on your leg. I couldn't stop staring at her, she was beautiful. The operatic French being belted out over the hundreds of heads below my spot only buoyed my spirits for the inevitable move to Montreal. What conversation. I was taken with the main characters, their voices surprisingly complimentary (obviously, I was surprised with my own delight in harmony), I was enraptured with the set design and the classic colors. I added set design to my list. Everyone was fancy in their own way. What ways! The woman wearing the coral satin prom dress and the mini backpack stole the show. Exiting the portals for intermissionl felt like leaping upstream with hundreds of slippery-backed Winnipeg salmon in a river of finery.

Side note: get off your cellphone when you are riding your bicycle on Donald you turd. Some guy just cycled past my spot by the window at the coffee shop in my new neighborhood. I am bare foot, hot after riding home from having coffee with Rebecca. There are so many teens out! I sometimes forget what it was like to be a teen in the springtime and then I walk through Osborne Village and remember.

It has been a cultural weekend. What a birthday! An impromptu dinner at Lo's, a fancy dinner with my beauty, a party with my friends, breakfast in the morning light, warm air on bare shoulders, the opera with my beauties, midnight grocery shopping with JF, waking up singing, breakfast for two with dark, dark coffee, cleaning in the afternoon light, listening to all the records I will miss up in the north, expensive water with Rebecca, Vietnamese with my family.

Tie a ribbon around your _ _ _ _ (neck, knee, hair) for me and sing whatever strikes you. 24 has been very nice so far and someone just slipped old Shins on in here. An old friend filling my ears. "Making tea in my underwear", makes me think of Yosh. Speaking of old friends, for my birthday I was reacquainted with a Nikon F3 camera body (thanks mum and dad; perfect gift), something I had been looking for for a while since the death of my last one last Spring. And here we are, together again. Her welcomed weight is familiar in my hands and I can't stop taking photos.

I leave in twelve days. Twelve days of Christmas. I cleaned my house in my work boots today and thought of Rags, and Liza, and Lisa, and Birdman, and Loco and JJ. Soon girls, soon.

Everyone, be well.
Megan

Hands are tied.

Don't be fooled by the trench coat or the coffee stained cup to the right of my wrist. Don't be swayed by the hair that is growing at the pace of molasses (these bangs are a constant test to my scope of self control) or the manicure (a once in a million affair; the act of receiving such). I am having trouble with adulthood these days, weeks, months. I can't seem to finish a damn thing or take artistic leaps whatsoever these days. My kitchen table has become a storage surface home to hundreds of scraps of projects. Every day I look at those sad, sagging birth announcements splayed out like paper guts and my heart sinks. I am reminded yet again of all of the things I cannot bring myself to do, and of all of the things I cannot bring myself to finish. Scraps of myself are everywhere. To Do lists are long forgotten, my files are in heaps. There is no organization these days because I have been living in a very specific state of mind for weeks now. A state of mind where organization is superfluous. No need she said and waved off the growing mountain with a hand. I'll do it later, later, later, later.

There might not be a later.

I burnt myself out printing my portfolio and now I am upset by my own lack of interest in printing simply for the pleasure of printing. My indifference in the studio (these days at least; I am hoping this passes lightening quick) is hard to swallow, hard to just let it be, let it sit there on my chest, this rut, just for the sake of living. All of these troubles are multiplied in layers in my head and are taking over and distracting the hell out of me altogether. Thus the cycle of frustration. I am so frustrated. I cannot get anything done because I don't want to get anything done and yet I am dying to be in it again, making, working, practicing for art school.

My hands are tied. I weep as I write.

How long will I be twelve? I suppose the scariest thing of all is that I am very nearly double that age in reality. Four days shy of 24. I don't know what to do. Time is slipping again. What will it take, Megan? What will it take? How many times can you ask yourself that in a single day? Hundreds. I don't want the bush to be an escape from things that haunt. I suppose the knowledge I am seeking lies within myself. As for working through this, that is also up to me. Frustration is a haunting thing.

The slippery slope of change is very close and I continue to fear the things I do not understand.

And yet the pockets of ease and the windows of hopefulness and days of joy worth more than any measurement in the world, come easily. I am happy in so many avenues that this inability to cross some unforeseen threshold within myself is driving me wild. Life is not perfect. And while standing up to one's ears in an internal slump is the pits, I have so much to say thank you for. To whomever and however, thank you for the health and happiness.

Rags, life is quick and you continue to teach by example. Your quiet strength and will are within you for moments just like this, when the man (and woman) who gave it to you in the first place, needs it most. Just keep being, you are doing exactly what is needed. I love you and I am carrying you and yours with me.

My hands are up in arms. A really, really good pair of arms. Despite all of my wailing, there is a good man who listens and looks up from his respective screen to laugh with me when we see a segue cruising down Broadway. Weird. Or maybe he is laughing at my bedraggled eyes. Such joy and such sadness, back to back in mere moments. How can this be?

Such is life.

With hands at rest for now,

Megan

Bones Brigade.

After an incredible slump and a little bit of self learning and readjustment, a touch of frustration and some pouting at the table, a few angry-with-myself dishes and much awe for one person and one insane tofu scramble with curry fried potatoes to come home to in the morning, I am back in the saddle.

A new collaboration project. Experimentation with film. Good family pictures in the middle of the afternoon during the first rainfall of Spring. Babies in shoes. Tiny children playing with a boy-dressed-as-a-wolf marionette. Dinners in the darkest hours. Waking up, reaching out for the prettiest elephant I have ever seen. A welcomed cat on the bed.

Here is a taste of new work involving myself, J Alba, her boyfriend and my own. We have plenty of work to do. So far so good.