redress

Selects by the lovely Arden for my article in issue 13 of Worn, taken way back in June. 

I've been wanting to share these forever, but forced myself to wait until the issue was released.

(hint hint, go get yourself a copy.) 

tumbling

image by hugh lippe via hobo magazine

It was in September of her twenty-forth year that January set out on an acquisition. The gains of her journey were immaterial, nothing like the pockets of gold protagonists before her had sought after. The precedence by which she judged everything else hung like a heavy smoke for minutes, only to camouflage itself into our lungs and feet. She coughed this up in the shower, and tickled it with her toes at the end of his bed. She marked her life with routine. She charted the sporadic within the mundane, creating great loops and tunnels through which her daily thoughts weaved. In her twenty-third year, around late November,  January woke in the early hours of a Monday to the sound of his woe. This continued into late December, where by the sun’s early dimming she would already lie in anticipation, waiting to describe again the route to her doorstep to his drunken fingers. Some Mondays his phantom cries echoed through her dreams. On one such night, she answered his call, and dreamt of herself falling back to sleep. While she slept, he arrived, and removed her door from it’s hinges. He walked through the dimly lit living room and kitchen (illuminated by the light she left on for him every seventh day in the front room), and with a quick thump to his head on her door frame, entered her bedroom. When she awoke in her dream, he told January that he had taken the hinges off her door, and she saw it leaning against the cinderblock wall. When she awoke in the morning, his vanished figure told her he had never been there, and the door she left unlocked had blown open. The December breeze had frosted the soles of her feet. 

Lightning People

Lightning People: NYC Lore on Nowness.com.

I can't wait to read this.

transience

After seeing photographs from this magazine online, I couldn't stop myself from running out and buying it the very next day. Everything about Hobo is so incredibly lovely. Its imagery, words, font and layout are the reason I have been carrying it by my side since purchasing it. Here are some of my favourite pages (though it was difficult narrowing it down to a few).

today I forced myself to start writing again. this is what happened.

image via Alexandra Sophie

January September named herself after the months of her grandparents birth. She found it curious how the month in which someone was born could posses such weight in the dozens of months that cycled through a year, even through a lifetime. July had always been the most important month for her, the meat of the paper calendar that she tore from its cellophane wrapping when each new year began. To January, July was the most promising, the most romantic and the most harrowing of all the months, but it was the consistent tumultuousness of these thirty-one days that eventually forced her to change her name. You see, within her home town everyone took the name of the month they were born in. She was raised as July, from that very first July to the final one that marked her death; though in her twenty forth July she adopted January September as an alias. Nevertheless, she lived eighty-six Julys, each one sweeping through her as quickly as the scent of new lilacs swept through the squares of a fly screen. Each sixth month, when the lilacs bloomed, the screen would take the form of her most prominent profile as she inhaled all she could of the ephemeral shrub. “How lovely it would be, to be called upon as June,” she would sigh in jealousy each year when the same branches began to burst with violet buds. And of course in a few weeks when these blooms went afield, she would lament over the terrible curse of the very same name, which retracted its gifts before your memory of the seasons reminded you to snatch up every last bit of lilac and capture them in the crown glass jars that sit in waiting for eleven months and one week of the year.

air

                           

Each year, around this time I begin to crave the Virgin Suicides. I've read the novel numerous times, and will always adore it, but there is also something about the dreamy, airy quality of the film that seems to invite itself  into my life come spring. Perhaps it's the notebooks filled with scribbles, coded record phone calls, suntanning on front lawns,  homemade floor length florals, windblown hair and platform sandals that draw me in. Though I love the romantic aesthetic of the novel and film, it's a world I can only take in small doses, once a year when I feel the urge to shed my winter wools and layers.

    

     

       

       

       

       

       



carvings

I made a book, based on a short story I wrote a few months ago. I'm quite charmed by it, and made a little flip book video, which you can see at the bottom of this post. x.x.x



I do not let the little thieves under my tightly buttoned sleeves

He built our walls on a small patch of grass that was sometimes flooded in the spring. Four beams rested on the earth, no cement rooting them. When we wanted, we became nomadic. Gathering fallen arms of trees, we had the option of prying them between dirt and wood and suspending our walls in air. Wrapping our fingers up and around the oak frame, our home in our palms, we would walk east, or sometimes west. The nicest wood he placed closest to the earth, and I never quite figured out why.

The walls housed a six inch pocket between the outer and inner layer. The insulation that we never got around to was instead grown over with weeds and bean sprouts. In the summer, you could see these sprouts leaping between the cracks in the roof. I sometimes climbed a ladder to harvest them. Once I imagined that as my nimble hand wrapped around the squirmy sprout, it shot up into the sky, propelling me beside the stars. The thunder of his falling tree dropped me flat to the roof before I could grab a handful of stardust.

In the next weeks he carved out our bed from the wound of the tree. I hung peonies from the south-west wall upside down, and once they dried, I collected their pedals in glass jars on which we had painted portraits of timid foxes. Each day we worked in silence, him keeping focus, as I tried to keep to myself. We spoke between the friction of sandpaper, through the scraping of a fine grain on timbre. Our walls became paper thin. Once nightfall came, we used real words, like “I’m sorry” and “let me go”. They couldn’t come close to the touch of sandpaper against my right hip.

The second summer, and into winter, I learned of his caring nature. He never left an animal or me for dead. His laboured hands nursed us to health, or tried to. When a wild hare or an injured deer finally lay their backs to the soil, he gathered their fur for our bed. And so we rest atop his burden of failure,

and my vision of his hopes.

I'm not going to write you to stay

This is just a collage I made for my lovely secret santa, Marysa at Worn. I found this old jewellery box at the salvation army and pasted the collage to the inside lid. Later Marsya and I discussed having a collage party and or exhibition. Is collaging anyone elses like, favorite hobby? If so, I would love to see your lovely work!
In more news I officially got approved for a Directed Research course at my university! I will be studying representations of femininity in nature in Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping.

Sorry for nerding all over this post x.x.x

Linens

She brought her knees towards her chest and her body became a lightning bolt. He placed the thin sheet that had crumpled at her feet over her body, being careful not to close the circuit. At this point, he would have liked to be in possession of a broomstick, mop handle or something of the like. He would fasten a piece of timber between her thighs, and align it with the little ceramic knob marking the center of the bowl of light attached to his ceiling. Rippled linens would cascade like a circus tent around her body. If she opened her eyes at that moment she would have been disappointed. From the inside should wouldn’t have seen the eight tiny men that pulled to the east and west with all their gust to keep the structure erect. This is how she thought of tents as a child. Nevertheless, it was good that in his imagined moment she didn’t wake. She would have laughed at the image of the eight little men. The cut of her laughter would have only infuriated him more. He couldn’t conceive of such visions on his own.

*this lovely image was borrowed from the wonderful Kim's post The Days of Blanket Houses

Silence and Noise

Locate I

love you some-

where in

teeth and

eyes, bite

it but

take care not

to hurt, you

want so

much so

little. Words

say everything.

I

love you

again,

then what

is emptiness

for. To

fill, fill.

I heard words

and words full

of holes

aching. Speech

is a mouth.

This poem titled 'The Language' by Robert Creeley has taken over my life this week. His reading of it is uncomfortable at first, but I absolutely love it and suggest all you wonderfuls give it a listen here. On another note, I have drawn the lucky winner of my first giveaway! Thank you all for your lovely entries, but the winner is......Kiss Me Quick! Make sure you send me your mailing address to casie.brown@ryerson.ca so I can mail you you're new darling bag and scarf!

*photograph borrowed from Lauryn Holmquist, check out her photostream!

then he turned the bluebells

I spent this past weekend at my Grandparent's cottage, as did the rest of my family and quite a few others. While it was cheery to be surrounded by so many people that I spent my childhood summers with, it didn't leave much time for any exploring. I managed to sneak away for a quick adventure in the trails behind the cottage.  I was hoping to find a part of the forest that I remember seeing as child, but don't think I went far enough on the trail. It may also just be that this part of the forest is not in fact a childhood memory, but the setting of a story I once read titled Bruno's Revenge by Lewis Carroll.

she is my storming heroine

The twenty blades cut cause a fault in her foundation. The remaining eleven buckle under the pressure. She believes he saw this moment, her captured body in his bed. Even from fourteen, when he jumped below the succeeding mountains of granite into a five foot pool of water which threatened his existence. He would not dare to carve his name in stone that surrounded such demise. He left this place with these tales of death burrowed in his ears, and he would often recount them to her. She would sit, fingernails picking at slivers on the picnic table, as he told her his childhood stories. And she would give to him a limited selection of her own death stories in return, to let him know it was most common. But when she spoke, his eyes followed the peter pan shadow that detached itself from her body and moved east along the house’s panelled siding. He often found this occurrence to just be a small bird, that had been hidden behind her, flying south. Dozens of these moments passed between them. Where words spoken were muddled by distracting shadows floating by. While he became curious towards images of strange men walking across his headboard, she found herself spinning truths from threads left on the kitchen counter. The threads mimicked the knotted rope which held her hands, and they both found themselves under captivity.

*This was just a continuation of a piece that I have been working on in the past year. You can read the beginning here if you so choose...this section of it seems quite morose compared to the smile filled mood I was in writing it. happy sunday!

A War Against February

I finished reading Shane Jones' Light Boxes a few weeks ago, and have been harboring these delicious photographs for some time. The novel is so magical and endearing. My heart was broken and repaired several times over, and I felt as if I were one of the members of the town, joining in the battle against February. Balloonists, kites drawn on arms to remember flight, underground tunnels, and villains living day to day life above the clouds are what make up this delightful short novel. I don't think I'll see another hot air balloon without imagining Thaddeus' plight.

how long has it been since you have stared in awe at flight?

you lost a man you loved him so, his beard down to the ground

I've been saving these little joys for a rainy day, such as this one. Nobody at theWheel  features random little thoughts typewritten on used scraps of paper. They range from the romantic to the absurd, and these are just a few of my favorites for all you lovelies.

 

I'm not certain that things like these are aiding to pull me out of the meloncoly mood I have been in lately. Some of them do make me smile though, or at least feel like braving the rainy day. On the bright side, I'm not alone in my sluggish ways, my vet referred to my bunny as being lethargic too as of late. I also had an offsetting dream that desperately needs to be shaken off.

*raindrops of inspiration: soko, bubble bath, lily's eyes

heart of a river

For the past few months I have been really into river imagery. I think most of the blame for this obsession can be placed on the Modern American Experience course I took this past semester, where Mark Twain and William Faulkner lit my nights with images of rafts and coffins barrelling down rivers of the American South. Equally at fault may be this lovely song that can frequently be heard outside my window on those extended nights that find me feverish and tired but unable to sleep. You can imagine the warming in my heart when I came across the video below. I'm not a big fan of the song in particular, but more of the narrative in the opening sequence. The story told evoked so many images in my days following viewing it, and I just love the raw folklore aspect of Justin Rutledge's telling of it (even if it may not be true). I would love to know what you all think about the story as well as the song mentioned above.
Does anyone else share in this fascination with rivers?

Kites

A lovely afternoon writing in the park, ending with me walking by a group of five or six little girls in floral dresses flying pastel kites. perfection. This is a piece I have been working on for quite some months, tweaking here and there, taking long breaks between writing. It is still incomplete, but walking away from the park to get a popsicle treat, I think I discovered the ending. That however has prooved to be a curse in itself, as I now try to stop myself from rushing through the rest of the story to write the ending. I'm very nervous about people reading my writing, but hopefully your criticisms will help improve the story. It seems fairly long for one post, but here it goes.

“tell me about yourself” he said, and she spoke of words once written on her skin. Tell me about yourself, and she remembered waking in a night soaked room beside him. Waking to this foreign lamp, to the right of her, which she had imagined to be circled by slivers of grass. She saw five lamps of varied heights, and some from the depression, and some from a Grecian goddess Artemis, and one that she remembered from her Grandmother’s bedroom, a vague outline of the room pounding in her thoughts. When she saw the lamp, she really saw the five outside, arranged and glowing on a slope of hill, her ankles illuminated as she weaved between. Seven minutes past twelve he had noticed her sleeping. Reaching over the body, he balanced his weight on his palm, not wanting to touch it. His hand sliced into the cool open air of her vision, monstrous beside the small glowing orbs of her imagination. One by one his fingers sent each lamp plummeting downwards, the only proof that they were once there being the trail of white cord which coated their electricity. The momentum of the fall in one final jerk, ripped each metal prong from the sockets that suspended themselves between rows of oak and the stars. The light he created in the room, beside her, illuminated her spine, which had often mysteriously bruised as a child. He was reminded of his motivation.

A white raised curve of his finger print left identical marks between each vertebrae. He had five fingers on each hand, and he aligned each with the knobs of her skeleton. She, already writing this moment in the past, found the same spine merging with vertical lines of bark that riveted from their roots and burst into the sky sprouting life. It had always been a delicate trick, placing her spotted back against the embrace of a tree. The tree would not mould to cushion her left shoulder blade, which seemed at this moment to protrude more than its twin. The battle between flesh and nature continued, with temporary truces; until the hushing sounds of life and leaves reminded her of an aching tear in muscle beneath her alabaster neck. She forfeits each time and leans forward. Trees don’t often surrender.
His fingers, still the same five on each hand, combed between the jagged wooden chips which had replaced her skin. He would never see her surrender. He didn’t see her eyes become teary from an insect caught between her two white pages. The speck of apple blood that wedged itself in the blank loop of the last ‘e’ in the word ‘there’. Moments such as these couldn’t exist in him, and so he took the same blood of a thousand springtails and traced it down her back. Over the scaly surface he felt from his nylon fingertips, the imprint of a red serpent gorging itself on every vertebral column. As it consumed the roots of her movement, she lay breathless in his bed.

In the next act he attempted his final reclaiming. Before this he took his hands back from her, for she had thought them her own. And so often had she used them as thus. Once, on a summer night that ruined them, windows closed to the screaming of wind which inevitably pressed itself against the pane, he saw her use his hands. They inched forward like wicker towards the hands of his brother. Not paternal, these four thumbs could belong to anyone. Could it be that because it was through his door that it infuriated him so? That the faint sound of friction between her index finger and his knuckle was sounding across his living room? Now, in the adjacent room, she lay and he sat. And in her quiet slumber she suspended her body across plains of grass. When she finally slept, every third night, beside him, this is where she would go. Body raised above a field. The small white pedalled flowers that she didn’t know the name of tickling her thighs. They reached their graduated arms to the largest of the glowing orbs of her dreams. The weight of her nocturnal being distributed over thirty one stems, nine hundred and twenty two pedals. While she rests he searches for the longest blade of grass. In one swift motion, he plucks the green stalk from its dopple ganger root that hides in the dirt. And so he repeats this process, collecting blades of comparable lengths. He forms them into a tapestry stronger than any tow rope on any oceanic liner. He crosses her wrists at the base of the serpent and ties. The grass rope is knotted around the most slender and delicate part of her arm.

Sun Hands Sun Dress

Tried on this lovely sundress at Urban Outfitters this afternoon. Though I loved it, I really couldn't justify buying it right now (especially after my last UO splurg below). Am also thinking that maybe I need to move away from dresses, and continue to build my shorts/pant collection which is pretty non-existant at the moment, save for one pair of high waisted denim short shorts, and a more practical pleated khaki number that I pretty much wear on every day off.

Maybe as I continue into Lolita, more (non-sundress) style inspiration will surface.