Laura Ingalls gone Wilder

Witch legs sticking out from underneath a house. I am dressing according to mood of late. Yesterday was Laura Ingalls gone wild with witch legs. Today is Ken Budyk/witch legs/weird hat and the new CPR railway goggles that I just picked up. After a Valentine breakfast of Crack and Hash with Scotch and Rags at the Don this morn, we cruised down to Thrify Thirsties (I don't know what that means either) for some Sunday morning flea market action. All of this happened before noon. These are the things I bought for under 15 dollars:

- one pair of train goggles from the twenties (awesome)
- one tin cigarette case for the bush
- one handkerchief for Iaan
- one weird silkscreened print on wood (also awesome)

I love flea markets. I also love breakfasts with the Couple of the Year. What people I have in my life. Last night (whilst channeling the shit out of Prairie homemaker L. Ingalls Wilder), long after nestling onto Rab's nest like bed with brother Andrew and sister Rebecca (not one but TWO Budyk's under the same roof during Portfolio mayhem?!?! Who would have thunk it), we took one hectic bus ride from one end of the city to the other only to nestle into my own living room. We sat, played the latest and greatest, got jazzed for a night on the town. One quick walk to the Lo Pub, three abreast on the walk, landed me in the lap of a first date playing out at a table laden with beers. I was instantly squirrelly and Rebecca instantly reassuring. Thanks gemsy, you are a VERY good friend. She plied me with liquor and I danced on striped legs to mediocre music wishing I was in the shop at Martha Street, printing and singing along to Land of Talk. And yet. I stayed. I stayed and tried not to ruin the first date playing out in front of me. I left after a period of standing as tall as I could, no shame, wearing weird shit because I feel weird lately.

This portfolio is coming to a close. I see the light. Piles of work are finished being plucked from open drawers spilling over with old work, old prints, old news. Photos were picked up with loving care and tomorrow I begin one last drawing in Tante Daryl's drawing room to slip into the pile. Last piece. Tuesday I will measure, cut and fold the actual folios (two--one for the Department of Photography and one for the Department of Studio Art) and draw up the last of the designs for the exteriors. Wednesday, finish printing, rest these dear tendons, and begin to write. Thursday will be last minute paperwork, a flurry of post and probably some tears. I have been crying a hell of a lot lately.

Yesterday I started crying while serving a table. Oh dear. They gave me a ten dollar tip. Oh yes. It is okay mum, I am so CLOSEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.

I am off to continue freaking out the Squares of Winnipeg with my goggles and witch legs. Today I have been whistled at and called a "fag". It is only 1:30 in the afternoon. Valentines Day is a hateful holiday for some. Oh dear Winnipeg, I miss you and your name calling ways already.

Os Coxae.

To be quick as light, dark as night, drunk with spite, things are happening again.

And again.
And again.
And again.

I picked up my dry cleaning today and ended up leaning on Shannon's counter at Perths for 25 minutes, discussing retirement (or lack thereof) and of working minimum wage jobs (because you have to) when one is 55. Interesting ground coverage this afternoon. I learned plenty today.

There is someone whose favorite bone in the human body is the Os Coxae, or better known at the pelvic bone. There is someone whose tiny diamond catches light from halfway across the room. (I do not have time for these details these days, trust me). Interesting. There is someone who is too kind looking for his own good, stripes attached to the longest legs in the world, those very legs bowing like birches when he walks across the stained rug. I have watched. I would watch everyday if I could. I do not have time for anything.

JF is taking me to the symphony. Thus my clean shirt. Right now the New Music Festival is going on at Winnipeg's Centennial Concert Hall (letters capitalize) and women are wearing ball gowns and the men are bowing more than usual. Jillian informed me that tonight the show will revolve around an avant-guarde throat singer. Ooh la la. Crisp shirts and tight pants and heels. No printing, no portfolio, no ink stains. Tonight is a night on the town.

In other news:
- Pears apples are my new favorite fruit.
- I dry clean my favorite articles of clothing (on rotation) once a week. With or without money in my bank account.
- I need more sleep.
- I have a frightening amount of photographs taken of children's room on my desktop right now.

Something old, something new.

Hola. These are some of the pieces I have been working on in the last few weeks as I build the last of my collection. I have been printing everyday as the race for completion comes to a close. My wrists hurt, my shoulders ache but as a whole I have never felt more sure or more alive.

I am alive. And this week, I am going in. Into the depths of solitude with keys to my chest, I will print alone in the building that has become my home, my sanctuary, my hiding place, into the smallest hours of night. It is ON. The first two silkscreen prints I just finished right now. The top image is of a woman named Pearl who lives in my head sometimes. What a sasshole. This is a Valentine print. On sale now! Holler if you want one for your leading lover.

Low lying.

It is an ungodly hour and Tara just walked past my spot by the window. She on the outside of the atrium and me on the inside. It is dark, save for the newly installed Albert Diner glowing orb of a sign suspended from the highest part of the glass atrium. It is nice in here. Warm. There are plants that I have rescued and tended. There are also plenty of drunk people in dark coats walking in and out of the Royal Albert Arms for a (terrible) show. I just served them yam fries and personal pizzas. I also made a million gallons of corn chowder with fresh cilantro, cumin, coriander and yam soup. All of these things happened long after midnight and long after my body was wishing for the comfort of my bed.

Lo slipped me a note under the hot service bar today at work while I was cooking up a storm and trying not to fall over from the heat. The note written in her pretty penmanship on a diner chit read, "Are you okay? You look sad. I love you" and I nearly cried. She is going to be a great mother someday. I was sad, but not terribly. Sad only because time is tick tocking faster than I can even imagine and even though it is only the first week of February, it feels very nearly over. With this in mind, I am softly mouthing Jillian's mantra over and over: one day at a time. One day at a time. One day at a time.

In the interim I will keep running. Yesterday JF and I ran four miles on the river, winding around the people and the suspended huts (GO SEE THE ORB hanging from the train bridge at the Forks!!) and it was completely necessary to my sanity. Everyday running is completely necessary. Even for a moment.

Okay. A selfish note now. For those keen, the portfolio has become my child. A phantom limb. Missing fingers lost in a terrible machinery accident that still insist upon curling around a delicate tea cup even though they are not attached to the hand anymore. A beast of burden. A kite. A vehicle. An escape. And a half demon. A courtship. I love it and I hate it only because there are not minutes in my daily bread to commit to it as much as I would like. I am married to these concepts in my head because I think they will be beautiful folded into my handmade folio. With all of these things in mind, I leave one kitchen and go hi ho to the next one at the studio that reeks of paint thinner before I have even touched the handle and hunker down with samples and mock ups and drawings sprayed in front of me like some sort of forever-growing amoeba.

Today after showing the portfolio mock up to Andrew and Drex, they helped me trim the fat with kind words. Thank you boys, you are saving me. I am fine, I will be fine. I am fine, I will be fine. Right now, all I am wishing on is a coffee date with Rabbi, a dinner at Rags' table, and one solid week at Martha Street.

I will be fine. It will be fine.

The sign shines on like a low lying moon in Winnipeg--The Albert Diner--and it is a reminder that I am nodding off while people chainsmoke outside the glass walls. Goodnight moon. Goodnight pals. Goodnight brain, you are being turned off now.

Megan as my sister.

Good things are happening today. Woke up beside my sister, both of us haggard and sore from a weird bed in our parent's basement. Our mum singsonged us up and out of said bed and there was coffee on, women in paint clothes, sisters in mismatched stripes. Grandpa drove us home, what a gem. Thank you for the ride Syd, you rule. I got home in the morning and cleaned up the last of the evidence of Saturday night. Sequins and stomach acid and left over bread ends on the bedside table and crumpled clothes reeking of tequila. It was Jillian's birthday and things got a little excessive on my part.

SELF. CONTROL. LEARN. IT. SOON. MADGE.

My mum hooked me up with new 400's (planting boots) because my old ones exploded in the last week of Spray. Thanks girl, you rule. Like father like daughter? Sometimes. Anyway, I have been clomping around town in these babies, breaking them in slow but sure. I walked to the coffeeshop to bro down with Nick Serduletz (good man) and opened my email to find a jewel of a letter from Misty, my boss at MCIC (Manitoba Council for International Cooperation), the company through which I teach silkscreen to turds in rural Manitoba towns. Apparently, some of said turds from my last workshop in Gimli (a complete and utter shitshow where I ended up blowing a New Moon vampire movie reference terribly [they looked at me like I was one hundred years old] AND persuading a bunch of twelve year olds that university can WAIT and they should all do themselves a favor and go to Europe and learn to cook before they apply to any post secondary... oh God, I can't believe MCIC still hands me teaching contracts) had a handful of things to say after all the inks were put away and their fresh shirts were hung to dry:

(Silkscreening) Fun, because of lots of colour.
(Silkscreening) It was so fun, I thought it was so interesting and SO much fun!
(Silkscreening) I think it was interesting.
(Silkscreening) It was awesome, I want to do it again.
(Silkscreening) It was very fun for me to make a design for a t-shirt because I`ve never done that before.
(Silkscreening) Cool to do a design on a top, but we should be able to do at least 2 tops.
(Silkscreening) My workshop was fun because of Megan. She`s cool.
(Silkscreening) It was really fun and I am going to use my skills to make t-shirts to raise money for Haiti.
(Silkscreening) It was fun. I like my t-shirt very much.
(Silkscreening) I would like to have Megan as my sister.

Oh, so tender. Twelve year olds have very interesting thought processes. I am someone's sister and sometimes I blow it at that too. Got to run, on Mondays I volunteer at Art City. See photo below (cred goes to the lovely Beth Ashton, thank you for this photo). I may teach from time to time, but I am a student at heart. The portfolio has yet to take on a shape, but paper is being ordereeeeeeeeeeed tonight. I love expensive cardstock.

Peace pals.

Sly love.

Someday I would like to fall in love again. These photos are all beautiful and make me feel unapologetically hopeful that in the next few years I might be so lucky to find someone to laugh into or to drape a tender arm across or to stand awkwardly beside or to drink entwined pints alongside or to crouch around a fire with while someone takes our photograph on the sly. Maybe, maybe not. However and whenever aside, in the interim I would like to take more photographs of people who love each other .

Balloon-hearted Weezy.

There is a woman beside the till at the Fyxx sniffing all the individual tea bags. It is agony to watch as she sniffs, hard, and then slips them right back into their respective tea stacks in the tiny shelf. I am sitting all the way across the room, watching as I type, frozen in my seat. Sniff. Put back. Sniff. Put back. There are twelve kinds of tea. Four rows of three. And yesterday I sat across from this amazing woman who breezed in just after rush hour in the coffee shop and sat at the community table with us, still all bundled from a bus trip in the cold and she readily admitted to not being capable of multiplication. At all. It was very charming and I felt just fine about my own meager mathematics abilities. Will and Mitch are behind the counter. One is wearing heavy boots and the other is wearing cross trainers. Two pairs of footwear I wore today actually.

I have started running again. Learning my neighborhood, quickly. It is awesome. Sometimes I meet my friend halfway down the river or halfway down Waterfront. We never know. I never know at least. She is very quick, and I am getting back in the saddle. I haven't committed to daily running in quite some time and sometimes it feels like my stomach lining is slipping out of an unseen tube. Oh well, push through, keep running. I forgot how good it felt to run. To wear goggles and to run for the sake of adventure. It is nice.

Today after missing J completely at our supposed meeting spot by the bridge, I turned and ran all the way back down Waterfront only to meet her at my front door when I wound back home. We partook a lung, laughed on the floor and stretched our limbs tucked inside our over priced leggings. I have the millionaire leggings and she has the millionaire running watch. Anyway, we lay and caught up and then I walked to Martha Street to coat some screens for Art City and do some more work on a new print that I am working on. Sadly, the door leading to the upstairs studio was locked up but Inga was kind enough to let me in on her monoprint class.

I forgot how much fun monoprint was! I hung out with the latest crew of printers, all the women in their fifties with grandbabies and a keen interest in what the hell my reason was for bombarding their printing party with my pre-art-school crazy. They loved it, the entire adventure of application, the risk, the work, the time, the city, and I loved them for their enthusiasm. Valerie and Effie and Violet (who really likes Birds of Paradise flowers) are routing for me. Thanks ladies. My favorite woman was Valerie who gave me some sound art school advice: focus one's portfolio more on the person than the palette. Then she quickly added: and sometimes vice versa. Awesome. Can do. She also told me about her fresh grandson named Matthew Kingsley (after Wes Anderson's Kingsley Zissou character in Life Aquatic). My jaw fell when this plumpy little woman started rattling off amazing Anderson references while we mixed ink for the class. Good day.

So I sat and dry etched onto my plastic stock that Inga dug up for me and us women rolled out inks like dough at the high work tables and sent our etchings through the press over and over until we were totally satisfied with layers and colors and embossment. I was totally satisfied with the women. Great class. I made a new friend, Jane. She looked about 32, married and happy at her evening winter art class. Cool lady. I even made a fairly okay looking monoprint based off a drawing I did of my Surly a few months ago. Into the portfolio it goes. Two down for print media. Monoprint. Check. Silkscreen. Check.

Last night while drawing at the light table, Drex explained patiently that while the school may request 20 pieces per say, one does not have to include as many. "Choose well, Madge", he said. Okay, pal. I'll try. I have good people around me who are holding me accountable without even realizing it, just from simple encouragement and an honest opinion and the odd inside tip.

Today I realized that I can run everyday with my pal Les, who has lived in Montreal for years. Up the mountain and down in matching ridiculous outfits. If she will have me that is. Awesome. While things may not be falling into place just yet, things are at least falling. Motion, pals.

Things are in motion over here.

Oh and on another note entirely, my Great Auntie Louise is still slipping in and out of this life. I can hardly believe that my phone calls to my mother of late include the phrase, "Has she died yet?", the yet implying wishful thinking or hopefulness. I would never want anyone to pass, but this woman has long been seeing the angels. She is ready to try eternal rest on for size. She has one foot inside Heaven's gate and one foot tied to the hospital bed. Her mind is floating like a balloon trying to decide which route to take. Her legs are long and none of us know how long she will take to decide. We are all thinking of her as her body is beginning it's journey to the light. Go for it Auntie Weeze, you lived well. I love you.