springtime and the promise of an open fist....

I've been real crap at blogging lately. I don't know why. I want to blame it on lack of time...but that's not true. I want to say I've been doing other more useful things, but quite frankly, I can't call watching back seasons of America's Next Top Model particularly useful. So while I was reading all the new posts from my lovely blogging friends this afternoon, I had an idea. A new idea for blogging for the summer. At least once a week, I am going to post something that has inspired me or caught my eye or something I am thinking of. It might be a poem or a photo or a song or a bit of a book I'm reading, something I had to eat that day...anything really. And in doing so I hope that the rest of you all who read this will find something interesting or inspiring in it too. I will begin this trend today with this poem:

Scenic Route

For Lucy, who called them "ghost houses"

Someone was always leaving
and never coming back.
The wooden houses wait like old wives
along this road; they are everywhere,
abandoned, leaning, turning gray.

Someone always traded
the lonely beauty
of hemlock and stony lakeshore
for survival, packed up his life
and drove off to the city.
In the yards the apple trees
keep hanging on, but the fruit
grows smaller year by year.

When we come this way again
the trees will have gone wild,
the houses collapsed, not even worth
the human act of breaking in.
Fields will have taken over.

What we will recognize
is the wind, the same fierce wind,
which has no history.

Lisel Mueller


and I took this photo recently that makes me think of this too:

we'll get lost in the warm...

It's beautiful today. Warm and sunny and 15 degrees. All those things you hope for in a spring day. The air smells of thawing soil and there's messy puddles in the ditches. I much more beautiful day than yesterday. Yesterday, I woke up to snow. I got all bundled up to walk to the LRT in the snow and grumbled about the snow all the way down my driveway. When I got to the LRT path though, I realized I could hear birds. Lots and lots and LOTS of birds singing to each other. All different kinds too. I kept looking around in the trees and the field and couldn't see any, but apparently they were loving the spring snow. It made me shut up about my grumbling and enjoy the rest of my walk in what might be the last snowfall until winter again.

Today I was extremely productive. I bought a deep freeze of a perfect size to hold all my meat for a good deal which in turn really helped out the Med student I bought it from who was moving to Ontario. I feel good about buying used things when I know that I'm happy and the person who sold it is happy too. There's so much stuff lying around in this world because everyone wants something new. There's a line in a movie I watched recently that says "things aren't made to be fixed these days". I thought that was really true and really interesting. I think things have a certain lifespan and are indeed, not made to be fixed, but made to die prematurely to give way for consumers to buy NEW things. I'm not trying to tackle revolutionizing this kind of thinking because capitalize runs on these ideas...but instead, I'm trying to make sure that the things we choose to buy and use, live as full a lifespan as possible rather than tossing more half-used items for newer, more fragile things.
Anyway, I bought a freezer. And it is lovely. I have desperately needed one for my food for so long and it feels good to open the garage door and see it there humming away.
I also baked bread today in my crockpot for the first time. It was good, but it got a little dark on the bottom. I tried to scrape off the worst parts and took some to the Fernhouts who have graciously housed my meat in their freezer for the past few months. In between all this I made some chili and did a number of hours of work for the university and transplanted my garden...which is growing out of control so I also measured out the garden boxes I will be making in the next week. I played some darts with Patrick and took a walk on the farm and am planning to do some laundry before the night is through.
But right now I'm listening to good music, sitting on my back porch in a t-shirt and watching the sun make long shadows at 7pm. I'm cautious to say it but....I think spring is finally here.

everything I want that I never knew I needed...

There's something to say about having a job where you feel productive. I spent three summers working at a job that paid me well for...well...not much. The longer I worked there the more I found myself stretching hour chores into day chores into week long chores until I was simply just driving around wasting gas and time until the clock said I could go home. Working at the farm is just the opposite. I work until I'm exhausted and then I work some more and at the end of the day when I go home, I have all this extra energy that comes from pushing through and getting things accomplished during the day. And that carries over to the weekends too. So far this weekend, I've cleaned, vacuumed and washed the inside of my car, put in some good hours for the university work, read most of a book, planted seeds in starter pots for my garden, did my taxes, held a photoshoot with a band, cooked interesting and healthy meals AND am currently doing some laundry.

These are all reasons why I love doing things that make me feel productive and good about what I've accomplished.

ANYWAY, last week we went to Vancouver for a couple of days. It was beautiful and green and full of birds...ducks and pigeons and pretty little yellow ones that hop through back alleys and make Patrick jump and declare it to be a rat. It was a trip full of visiting and relaxing. We came with no agenda other than to spend time with those friends we missed at Christmas. I like visiting Vancouver. I'm not sure it's a place I could live, but I really like visiting it. And I really like the people who currently live there. Sarah was conveniently available the entire time we visited which was nice to be able to sit back and chat over a cup of tea or walk along Wreck Beach and enjoy that friendship that we have never outgrown. She made us fresh bread the first afternoon we were there and it was amazing. There's nothing quite like fresh bread.
One night we all went out to this place in Gas Town called 6 Acres. It was all brick walls and low lighting and enormous beer list and I loved it. As Trixie and Jon and Sarah and Patrick and I all sat around that small table drinking our beers and talking about each other's lives and pasts and futures, I felt like it was one of the most beautiful moments I've had in 2010 thus far. There was something so comfortable about, yet so charged with everything all of us are planning to do and all the things we admit to not knowing yet. I loved it.

well i'm waiting, 'till I don't know when, 'cause I'm sure it's gonna happen then...

I woke up early yesterday morning and drove out to the farm for my first day back working there. It was a quiet drive. Cold. I watched the sun rise behind the refineries. Before most people were on their way to work I was reaching the outskirts of the city. As I hit the gravel road that winds its way down to the river, the most incredible fog came up and made it almost impossible to see the edges of the road. It only lasted a few minutes though and cleared as I crossed over the railroad tracks that made a sweeping left turn back into the fog. It wasn't a particularly hard day of work. We were getting stuff ready for market so there was some potato grading and bagging and some cabbage cleaning and then some packing it into crates into the truck for the morning. It was beautiful. As I walked around the yard doing the various chores that needed to get done, my shoes were alternately slipping on ice and slurping through mud. The sun was bright and warm and by noon I was down to a t-shirt and jeans. In the afternoon we swept out some sheds and then organized multiple pallets of bales of garden mix to get them ready for the plants coming next week. The bales were almost as heavy as I am and it took all I had in me to pull them down off one pallet, carry it across the shop to the next pile and hoist it into position to thaw. We were done half way through the afternoon so I went home early and as I drove through the city, my window was down, my music was up and I felt better than I have in months.
This morning my arms are sore. They have a few cuts and bruises, but I'm wide awake at 7am watching the sun creep across my wall and turn the whole room golden and it feels like it's going to be another good day.

in these bodies we will live, in these bodies we will die...

Recently my friend Danielle called me...from Australia. It made me very happy and has since made my days better because she pointed me to this Australian band I hadn't heard of before. They're called Mumford and Sons, and I love them. Especially The Cave and Little Lion Man. I'm sitting here tonight on a Friday evening sorting through wedding photo sessions for my website and drinking gin and tonic with grapefruit ice cubes. I'm enjoying the empty feeling of my house tonight. Beth is out with friends and Karen is gone to enjoy her reading week elsewhere and I'm at the kitchen table. The only light on in the house is above me and the banjo and piano riffs are tinkling out from my computer and disappearing into the dark around me. Soon the house will be filled with the sounds of visitors and I am so looking forward to that, but tonight, it's just me and some good music and some good gin. And there's something about that, that allows me to expand into this place.
I feel like I've spent so much of the past year always moving, always containing 'myself' into a book bag or a suitcase and that has taken a toll on me that i forget about until I have moments like these. It feels like it has been a long time since I actually "lived" in a place. I'm in the process of feeling out what "home" means to me and how to create and nurture that. As I write this, Mumford and Sons are singing "where you invest your love is where you invest your life". I think I've found some pretty spectacular things to invest in in the past few years. I find it strange that I've only really discovered photography 4 years ago and to look back and to see what has come from that is incredible. In only 4 years. Sometimes I find myself panicking about what I should "do" in life. I always find that I love too many things to really simply immerse myself in only one. And I'm realizing bit by bit that loving and pursuing lots of things at once is okay, is healthy, is part of who I am.
And so I will book more weddings to photograph. I will put on more photography shows. I will read more biographies. I will take more classes in English Lit and Sociology. I will put time and effort into my garden and into growing things. I will write more. I will travel more, and I will love more people whose paths I cross. I will do all of these things because I love them all and its less about making time for them as it is allowing myself to follow all of them. Does that make sense? Maybe.

don't you wanna get out of cape cod, out of cape cod tonight....

So I did some scanning of interesting things in old books today. I find myself doing that a lot lately, but some days are more interesting than others. Today was incredibly interesting. Mostly all because of one book. I'm starting to realize that poor penmanship was the norm in the 1700s & 1800s but in today's documented 1835 publication of the complete works of Byron, I discovered not one, not two but THREE handwritten letters.

The guy who bought the book or owned it at least, is Bufus Prime or Prince (best I can make out) and he's written at least one of the letters...the four pager about Vampires, which I will get to later.

The first handwritten note I found was a poem. A love poem. I don't know whether it was a Bufus Price/Prime original or a Byron or whatnot. I haven't spent much time looking at it really, but it was interesting to pull out of the first couple pages. The best part about it, in my opinion, is the embossed 'P' on the top of the page. It was a nice kind of paper. Thick. Liney. Like Linen.



Further in, I found an incredible four page letter folded neatly and pasted into the pages of the book sent from Venice by Mr Prince/Prime to Paris:


Now, here's my favourite part. Turns out that guy in Paris had been publishing work referring to our dear Mr Prince/Prime as the author of a certain work on vampires and not only that, citing biographical details about Mr Prince/Prime's past travels. Apparently Mr Prince/Prime took great offense to this and makes very clear in his needlessly long 4 page letter that he is not the author of that work or the traveler of those stories. In this letter he is asking Mr lack of fact checker in Paris to publish a 'contradiction' to set the record straight. My favourite line is when, after listing the reasons why he cannot possibly be this man being referred to, he states: "I have besides a personal dislike to vampires, and the little acquaintance I have with them would by no means induce me to divulge their secrets."


Now, the last letter in the book kinda makes it look like maybe he was divulging too many vampire secrets, despite his little acquaintance with them and the vampires didn't like it. Looks like they got to him. That is, of course, if a decrease in grammar and sentence structure and penmanship indicate a vampire attack.

time has a knack of changing me...

I've been away from this blog again for too long. I've had a lot of things to write here and I've been thinking a lot in the past couple weeks, but for some reason or another, it hasn't been transferred onto here. Lets see...I'm sitting in my room, on my futon with the afternoon sun streaming in through the window and splashing across the side of my face, so much so that it's difficult to see the computer screen unless I squint. So, what's new. My show at Sugarbowl is coming to a close. It's been really awesome. The owner of the place has already booked me in for another show next year and I've sold over half the pieces which means I've more than broke even! Plus, I've got to meet a lot of interesting people who are purchasing my work. The person who is buying my favourite piece of them all turned out to be this awesome girl who I had a 2 hour conversation with. Turns out she's part of this excellent band called "100 Mile House". And right now, you need to go look at their website and listen to them (www.100milehouse.co.uk) - Jamie and Sarah, I am speaking specifically to you here...but everyone who reads this should go have a listen. My current favourite songs are: Fight, Jonah and Songs we all know.
In other news, I've lined up some refreshing spring/summer work. There's been a lot of anxiety and trepidation for me in the job market area. I've spent the past three years relying on the knowledge that I would landscape in the summer and make a decent wage. Well, three years of landscaping has taken its toll on me. I'm so desperately sick of dust and dryness and dead grass. So I called up a market garden farm I worked on for a summer 4 years ago. They have a spot for me doing work in the greenhouses in the spring and then transplanting into the fields in the early summer. The money is about half of what I made landscaping, but I can't begin to say what growing things and using my hands to bring things to life from soil and water will do for me. It will be healing. And I'm in need of some after this past year.
I went to the King's IS Conference last week. It was on Homelessness and one of the session speakers was a local Anglican priest who is running a photography course for street youth. He was so absolutely passionate about it and I really enjoyed hearing about the project. I talked with him after and ended up meeting him this week to talk about potentially being involved in the project myself. It sounds pretty cool and he's got some awesome long term plans for it, so I'm going to start becoming involved when the next course runs in March/April.
We got to talking about a lot of things during my chat with him and one of them was about recognizing trends in our art and style. I'm starting to notice that my photography is so based upon S-P-A-C-E. I'm still thinking about what that means. Maybe I'll have more on that next post.

Happy Tuesday!