The Real McCoy.

I am thinking about Drex today, after scoping his Daily Failure art blog. After going through my recently developed trip photographs, I settled on the one below as my favorite of the batch. Or at least high ranking in the skimmings from the cream of the crop. Drex, if I owned a fax machine accompanied with a landline and knew you owned the same, you would wake up to this photo tomorrow. You already knew that.

It is Sunday and the day before my wisdom teeth are set to be removed. "I wanna wreck my stockings in some jukebox dive" was the last line that registered and stuck in my brain like a bee to the hive, a broken record, a loop of eternity as I wrote this sentence. Maybe it was ten minutes ago, who knows. Bread dough is being made to my right and my eyes are dancing between the screen and the collection of art supplies gathering dust on the window sill to my left. Both are presenting some sort of pressure just by looking back-and-forth between the two; not nagging, just a persistent consciousness.

I will record more later, right now just looking around and listening is enough. Here is that picture. A teaser and preview to the rest that will be posted when I am not under any other pressure to perform. One can only juggle a few things in the multitask dance at once. Sit tight for there is more to come; this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Best regards, Franny.

Three abreast.

Today I pulled a fabric grocery bag out from under my sink and began to methodically fill it with the guests of honor to mine and Bram's Central American themed dinner party: avocado, lime, organic salsa, Gem mason jars, taco seasoning, a brick of tofu, two bananas and a mango. After arriving, we stood in his modest kitchen and swayed unapologetically to Karen Dalton crooning from a speaker on top of the fridge. 1971 must have been a good year. He whipped up a maize/flour tortilla dough and I showed him all of the tricks of the tortilla-making trade that I happened to have picked up on a trip to Guatemala a few years back. The first two were evidence of our ignorant upbringing by being too thick, but once we got a hang of the rhythm of the aggressive and simultaneous patting, stretching, and twisting, they came out of the cast iron as authentic as can be. Our dinner turned out to be a roaring success and the indigestion that followed suit from the whole foods and raw hot pepper spread merely echoed this notion of triumph unnecessarily so. Still, it was a solid meal.

We finished dinner, licked the lingering lime from our fingers, washed the dishes, drank two mango, banana, strawberry, soy, ginger smoothies in quick succession and opted for a few hours of drawing at the kitchen table. Talk of the country, botany, cooperative gardens, biking, swimming in grain trucks as kids, camping at the Quarry, cooking, familial living, solo living, veganism, meat eatery, music, literature, friendship and love came and went between our downcast eyes, mouths, faces. Drawing and talking, drawing and silence, drawing and talking, drawing and silence, drawing and talking, drawing and silence, drawing and talking, drawing and silence; all the while, drawing. It felt nice to get back into it, in a sans pretentious environment.

I was busy working on a format drawing of two separate pieces for a personal stationary collection. A typewriter and four bicycles in a row. Tracing, eyeballing, drawing. Bram was working on a two-leafed emblem and a scroll for my one typewriter drawing. I have yet to master a scroll.

This is the second night I have stayed awake past ten in the evening. It is now one in the morning. Anyway, James came over from the Mansion and entertained us while we sat at the table making art. An evening bicycle ride quickly ensued and together we ambled down the streets of the neighborhood with our back lights blinking out a silent signal of red, white, red; three abreast on the wet streets. It is nice to be home.

Madge.

These photos were taken at the break of Winter last year. Pictured: Scramwell, Drewber, Meg.

Baby machine (someday).

Alas, I am home.

I woke up with the birds this morning and cleaned my entire house from top to bottom, barefoot. It felt nice to walk around naked again. Erin called me in the early hours and we arranged to meet for a greasy spoon breakfast. I wanted something cooked home-style and so we settled on Stella's without much debate. We met our brilliant English teacher from high-school sitting with her husband and three month old baby. She and they were babing out to say the least. There is something to be said for holding a three month old baby. I couldn't help but let a quiet "I want one" slip out while in the presence of this magical child, Milan. She is going to break hearts with her jet black hair someday. You think spending a month nannying two kids under eight would be birth control enough. I guess not.

My cousin Kristy had a new baby bird named Norah Marie this week. She too will break hearts someday. I have yet to see her, but you can just tell--even from day old pictures. It is nice to be home even though I seem to be suffering from a severe case of baby fever. I guess this is just my weird withdrawal without Tristan and Madi. I miss them.

Pictures will be up soon. The photos posted are of random babies, just because I felt they deserved some spotlight. Share the wealth, you know.

I am not pregnant, Grandma. I just really, really like babies.

Best, Mother.

Fantasy or Bust.

I was lying in bed, trying to welcome sleep after a long Saturday but was suddenly struck with the importance of list making in the dead of night. A far cry from tired, I had no choice but to sit up, wade through the darkness swallowing my room, turn on the overhead light, grab the nearest pen and legal pad and make a God damned list. I was a bit surprised at the weak headers that flowed from my pen in light of such an urgent wake up call but I wrote on, unabated by my own lack of creativity. "Goals for Summer '08" was the first to present itself; then came "People I Need to Spend More Time With". "Musical Groups to See Before Meeting my Maker" and "Useless But Potentially Useful Hobbies" came next, followed by the sweeping topic of "Green". Last but not least was the Mariah Carey inspired inscription "Fantasy" (purposefully not pluralized). A myriad of broad topics indeed. The Headers have slowly been narrowed down one by one and every few minutes I find myself caught in one of those 'Ah Ha' light bulb moments and another point is dutifully added to the growing roster.

This morning, I woke up and read my dear friend Leigh's latest feature on my computer. Without permission, here is a horrible attempted recount: Leigh, a man cut from the very cloth of Humility is one of the city's finest DJ's on the circuit and an employee of a hip Organic grocer, has been dissatisfied with people forcing themselves into lamentable employment, inescapable mortgages, pushed behind unwanted desk real estate, squeezed into business suits (albeit blue or white collar make no difference at the end of the day) and making/taking/breaking wedding vows under said pressure of dissatisfaction. Without so many words, Leigh has washed his hands of school just for the sake of being in school and I applaud him in his efforts and plan to follow suit until I too experience some clarity. As a man of few words, I took in his piece with dourness. To sum up, again I applaud Leigh and his immovable stance that it is okay to float sometimes; no matter what one's age, marital status, place of employment (or lack thereof), alma mater (or lack thereof), or equity lining one's mattress, bank account or pocket.

Taking a quick look down at my legal pad, the "Fantasy" column is the longest. Not only is it healthy to dream (and to dream big, at that), it is imperative. Dreaming, hoping, wishing, and reverie within the mind are what move us along in our daily routine; these typically frivolous thoughts that are usually pushed aside as "distractions from the cause" are also the greatest catalysts of change. On that note, I am going to continue dreaming of becoming a photographer, sculptor, photojournalist, gardener, Beirut visiting, art teacher, pastry chef, fabric designer, Andrew Bird fan, homeowner, young wife, old wife, spinster, carpenter, home renovating, mother, Balinese living, composter/recycler extraordinaire, paper maker, party planner, hostess with the mostess, bun dough goddess, owner of multiple road bicycles, pearl earring wearing, wilderness scout, horseback riding, Bikram yogi, acreage wandering, devotee of Critical Mass, editor of i-D, karate master, aunt, pot-smoking Geriatrics patient, soccer star, Interior designer, Teak furniture loving, slide projection, green thumbed, record collecting, Vogue subscribing, marathoning, fur clad Grandmother extraordinaire.

Reality can eat it.

With some hard work, persistence, and a lot of laughter, I will accomplish this list and hopefully lead a full life. Three cheers to Leigh for bringing this post to a head. Hip, hip, hooray (thrice over). Go ahead, make a list in the middle of the night; it feels nice.

Fantasy or Bust,
Meg.

I gave chase in a plane.

"In a night 200,000 years can pass, time moving only in our minds. The steady marking of the seasons, the land well-loved and always changing, continues outside, while inside the light years revolve us under different skies. [...] My own heart, like this wild place, has never been visited, and I do not know whether it could sustain life. In an effort to find out I am searching for a dancer who may or may not exist, though I was never conscious of beginning this journey. Only in the course of it I have realized its true aim. When I left England I thought I was running away. Running away from uncertainty and confusion but most of all running away from myself. I thought I might become someone else in time, grafted on to something better and stronger. And then I saw that the running away was a running towards. An effort to catch up with my fleet-footed self, living another life in a different way. I gave chase in a ship, but others make the journey without moving at all. Whenever someone's eyes glaze over, you have lost them. They are as far from you as if their body were carried at the speed of light beyond the compass of the world. [...] The journey is not linear, it is always back and forth, denying the calendar, the wrinkles and lines of the body. The self is not contained in any moment or any place, but it is only in the intersection of moment and place that the self might, for a moment, be seen vanishing through a door, which disappears at once".

Sometimes, only sometimes, it is easier to quote someone else's brilliant train of thought than to conjure up one's own. Chances are I have made well over 5000 scrupulous attempts in my lifetime to come up with a simple paragraph to narrate my exact frame of mind, but all too often, the initial idea slips through the floorboards of my brain before my pen has time to translate. Thank you Jeanette Winterson for saving me from any more failed attempts today (the above excerpt was taken without permission from J. Winterson's 'Sexing the Cherry'). I will probably try again tomorrow. With that said, someone told me recently that it is okay to write a piece starting from the end and working towards the start in order to overcome fear of failure. Back to Ms. Winterson-- this is just one excerpt out of many underlined in the book that has become weathered with rain, children and travel. As previously mentioned in another post, the choosing of literature for this journey was the most difficult part of leaving. Now that I am here, I have been quite satisfied with the selection.

Devendra Banhart has been accompanying me on my daily outings and errands. As one of his appropriately titled album name suggests, I have been "Rejoicing in the Hands" of this man. Brilliant. Yesterday, Devendra and I took a train to the Haup Banhof, or Main Station in Zurich to explore and fill a few rolls of film. I wandered aimlessly, stopping along canals to sip an espresso here and an espresso there, read my coveted PV (Paris Vogue) on the pier, and take pictures of the birds on and above Lake Zurich. It was a pleasant day and at one point I was sitting at an Illy bar writing on a yellow legal pad when I noticed two couples beside me on a double date. I continued to watch them all the while thinking of all the first dates that take place in similar environments to the haunt where I sat, (i.e. Fresh and Cafe 22) and laughed. I noticed that the one couple, old hats in their relationship were so enraptured with each other, they were ignoring the couple who were obviously on their first date. I sat sipping and watching, enlightened by the fact that nervousness translates, regardless of the language barrier. My laughing stopped short when I realized that if their unrest was obvious to me, then my own unease was recognizable to them. That sobered me instantly and made me miss the familiarity of my own neighborhood haunt, Bar Italia. I am sick of being invisible here, time to come home.

To be frank, I fled Winnipeg bidding a few demons adieu and sincerely looked forward to becoming a ghost in Switzerland. As always, my ship of a brain dropped anchor on the heart of my well hidden unhappiness about four hours after settling in to my new surroundings leaving me four weeks to sort out the wreckage. Land ho, my mind is finally clear and I am ready to set my sails for home.

"The house is empty now, but it was there, dangling over dinner, illuminated by conversation and rich in the juices of a wild duck, that I noticed a woman whose face was a sea voyage I had not the courage to attempt" (J. Winterson, ibid).

If I can pray for anything, it is that I come home with the face of a sea voyage, weathered and satisfied with my decision to return to the mother land at long last. I am coming, I am coming.

Adieu, Switzerland. Hello, demons of my own doing. I am coming home.
Frances.

Humble pie.

As it turns out, Jana Hunter is a woman. I am laughing as I type; I eat my words. Included in the post are shots of babe Devendra Banhart (among others) photographed by Lauren Dukoff, whose work I am currently enraptured with. This is the direction I would like to take my own work. Someday, maybe, with hope, if only.

Franny.

Bedroomer.

The last straw has been pulled and to ensure that I do not blur the lines of moral conduct any further, I am taking refuge in my room. Page France croons and drowns out the background screams that refuse to be silenced. Just like an angst-ridden teenager, my music is cranked to its loudest capacity and all I can do is laugh because Page France is as far-reached from threatening as one can possibly stretch. Laugh and sink back against the wall and breathe: in and out, in and out.

I almost burst into tears today in the local grocer in Bassersdorf thanks to a wildly inappropriate tantrum thrown by my pseudo five-year-old adoptee. A woman who was standing behind us in line at the checkout as his screams subsided and flared like the ebb and flow of waves, came up beside me as we bagged our own groceries with downcast eyes and surprised me with an English greeting. I was so shocked at hearing the ever familiar and laidback “Hello there” in such a Swiss German-heavy town that I was speechless. She rubbed her stomach as she continued sorting her vegetables by size and color and explained that she had a baby on the way and was watching us because she was “drawn to family life like a bee to the hive”. When she suddenly grabbed my hand and said, “You handled that well, you will be a good mother someday”, my dam of well-hidden anxiety threatened to pour forth onto the Migros floor where we stood and wash us both away. These are the moments I believe in fallen angels walking among us.

Instead of weeping, I head bobbed and shook her hand with Kroeker severity and we got into a lovely conversation about being employed as an Au Pair in Europe. She had been a nanny in Switzerland as well and was originally from Sweden. I left with the kids feeling a bit better about the way the situation was handled thanks the affirmation of an innocent bystander, but I couldn’t seem to shake the feeling that I am doomed as a parent. I used to be such an all-star babysitter. Queen of our own mock BSC, I could play and invent and improvise at the drop of a hat without batting an eyelash at some of the kid’s requests. Unfortunately, with the bloom of my youth fading at a breakneck pace, the reality of bills, loan payments, broken hearts, and being an adult in this age of entitlement have taken their toll on my imagination. The presidential position of the Babysitters Club has long been handed down to budding no named Christian twelve year olds, much more flexible and patient that this mother hen.

On this somber note of reflection, I realized only today that I have made the silent shift from child to adult simply in the way I look back on my childhood years. Role reversal, sort of. Nostalgia is a thing of the past. Lately I have been thinking about the way my parents parented my brother and sister and I. We were pretty damn lucky to have the stability we did as a token nuclear family; we were always dressed, fed, bathed, middle parted, begrudgingly piano lessoned, Sunday schooled, snot free, family gathered and entertained at a consistency worth a gold medal prize (without so much of a nod of acknowledgment or a word of thanks). Thanks mum and dad, you did well. On the other hand, they too were also lucky. We were good kids for the most part (with the exception of our incessant attempts to kill each other while they were away). Mike “babysitting” usually meant Hamburger Helper (moreover, my version of homicide) and being locked outside of the house for hours on end with no shoes in winter. Luckily for my parents, and inevitably for us, we had an ocean of entertainment just outside of our doorway. While growing up in the country has its limitations; it also has its privileges that come with the small town mentality. There was the river, a friend on its own accord, a dam leading to an entirely separate universe, playmates galore on every side of our acreage and beyond, sets of Grandparents five minutes away, Uncles and Aunts two minutes away with a pool and a snack cupboard that could break a man's knees in worship, charge accounts at every business in town, and the comfort in knowing ones kids wouldn’t be snatched from the local grocery store if left to our own devices for the afternoon armed with candy money (pilfered or not).

I spent many hours as a kid alone, memorizing the terrain and flow of the river until I would hear my name being shrieked across six acres of snaking water, bush and fields under the sinking sun. In all my years I never recall feeling confined in any way, shape or form. That is a rarity in this life. Whatever the season, we would rally the troops of the neighborhood and play until we were far too old to be playing. That this was a lifestyle and not luck is truly uncanny in the clarity of hindsight.

To be frank, today was the first day I felt any shreds of homesickness. Three weeks is hardly enough time to take notice in anything, but after returning from a short stint in gaie Paris with my dear friend Luke Marvin over Fashion Week, I have been feeling a hell of a lot. I am not sure I want to get into it on this. Who reads this any how? For whom do I write and why on the internet? I am terrified for my own children. Will diaries even exist when they are in the throes of young love, buck toothed and puberty stricken? I myself tend to scoff at paper and pen when my white keyboard lies in wait for my wild and efficient typing.

I am of sound mind now, the babies are in bed. Band 'The Shivers' woos and tea steeps. In ten days I will be home feeling sorry I ever wanted to leave. BUT seeing as I am still here, alone, it is okay to temporarily wallow in this fleeting despondency. As I told Rabbi only hours before, at the moment the idea of ten or so people sitting around my coffee table smoking cigarettes and wearing French footwear, playing lazy Scrabble, and laughing with necks craned above the din of background carefully selected vinyl sustains me.

Vinyl I miss (just to be a dick to those without): I don't care.

Jana Hunter
Sufjan Stevens
Devendra Banhart
Bonnie 'Prince' Billy
Band of Horses
Bob Dylan
The Shins
Iron and Wine
The Beatles
Billie Holiday

I am coming home soon and this will just be yet another entry for the scoff-worthy books. Oh, Growth! Blessed be.

Discontent, MK.