cloaked and staggered

i'm afraid i have a cold that won't let go....  my mind has been spinning with ideas for the future.  i've been reorganizing myself, something that had little organization to begin with.  but i feel excited to unfold all this head work, all this paper work over the next few months.  despite this terrible stuffy-headed set-back!

i do have a funny story.  a rambling story.  but funny.  to me.  firstly i know there is a word for francophiles and anglophiles but is there a word for a person who loves all things swedish?  so.  i was listening to little dragon (from gothenburg) in my volvo station wagon (also of gothenburg) daydreaming of my may trip to stockholm and gothenburg.  this song came on and my imagination wandered.  the opening sequence just sounds so much like something from an 80s movie.  i started to imagine that this is the music that's playing while molly ringwald sews her prom dress, while a boy and a girl learn the choreography that's going to win the dance championship, while the coreys are sharpening their stakes and double knotting their shoelaces.  i loved getting lost in a nostalgic daydream triggered by something new.  an hour later at work the song came on but i didn't immediately recognize it.  i started asking everyone around me what movie is this song from?  i got so frustrated i couldn't place it, that i ran back to the office to see what it is.  and i chuckled of course to see it was the very same album i was just listening to in the car.  new album by little dragon thus highly recommended.

 

i know i write mostly about the present.  and some about the past.  but i think a lot about the future.  about someday being a mother, the only job i've ever really wanted.  curious about what that love will feel like, what i'll want to teach, and what i'll need to learn.  and now that my near future is to be a spouse i listen to this song on repeat and allow my heart to fill with hopefulness.  

"my girls" animal collective

"there isn't much that i feel i need, 

a solid soul and the blood i bleed.

with a little girl, and by my spouse

i only want a proper house." 

favorites from up top:

"o ye jigs and juleps" viriginia cary hudson

"how to grow up in one piece" robert paul smith

"the endless pavement" jacqueline jackson

"animal house" catherine ledner

"fairies" brian froud

within the little bit of time of bright blue skies yesterday i found a little patch of sunshine to set a proper stage for my little unicorn puppet.  i wish i knew what those flowers are.  i want flowers that bloom in the fall to be planted in every yard and sidewalk.  

today's goals include press time and sweater hunting....  back to the joys of finding misplaced things: i found a $4o credit to lucky exchange in the back of a dresser drawer!

seeking advice possibly.  guidance.  the just right warm thing to drink right now.  or maybe the just right cold thing.  chocolate?  or cheese?  cheese and then chocolate?  i've been really rather absent lately.  a bit out of sorts i'm afraid.  should i add ginko to st. john's wort?  sneak the crossword more at work?  drink? more? coffee??

one good thing i've done:  i've ordered samples of card stock to test for new polaroid photo albums.  did i tell you i spilled coffee over all of my supplies?  (please refer to "out of sorts" above.)  let's not dwell on that.  i already accomplished several hours of dwelling the day that it happened.  let's look forward to the warm feeling of paper coming in the mail.  and imagine hours spent cranking the press.

another good thing i've done:  cleaned out my mother's garage.  i uncovered my passport, still good for another year, a unicorn puppet i had as a child, and my absolute best thrift store find ever: a teal silk dress with flower cutouts and pockets.  

to do list:

more is more

an education

polenta gratin

i know that we feel some simpatico.  so i know that when i recommend this movie and you watch it you'll understand just what caught my breath.

to begin, i first saw james whales' "frankenstein" in a fifth grade class.  we had to get special permission from our parents to see it.  the lights went out and i felt scared.  but ultimately i fell in love with the monster. to this day i remember the scene of him and the young girl sitting beside the pond, his innocent desire for friendship.  his innocence bringing about his demise.  i sat in that dark class room and cried for frankenstein.

so imagine that strange sense of recognition, an old memory pulling at the backs of my eyes, the back of my heart to see two young faces, sisters, staring up at that very same scene in a darkened room.  i will not tell the story.  you will see the story.  but i will tell you that i felt like a young child again.  like a sister.  and that my adult self could endlessly stare at and long for the etched water glass sitting on the writing table.  the vignette on the girls' night stand of the candlestick, the image of an angel, and a toy.  the jumpers paired with turtlenecks.  the scale of two girls standing before a passing train.  and of course of course the hum, the honeycomb, the swarm of bees.

a little something accomplished.  i wish i could aptly describe the extreme comfort of repetitive movement.  i can imagine my arm melding into the crank of the press as this girl's body melds into her household.  or at the very least the motion taking on something of choreography.  the precision and effort of it becoming graceful and natural looking through its repetition.  curling my whole body around the wheel like curling up around a pillow.

silhouette printed with my gocco at home.  doily printed with a vandercook at atlanta printmaker's studio. 

if i could dance to anything right now, it would be this. 

i've been swallowing st. john's wort three times a day with coffee, water, tea, and homemade kombucha like three daily very small prayers.  

i've tasted my first pumpkin flavored thing of the season.  three nights ago i met my mother and sister at the porter for beer class.  i'm now craving the self proclaimed "mother of all pumpkin ales," the weyerbacher imperial pumpkin ale.  8% alcohol by volume.  flavored with cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamon, and clove.  fall fermented and distilled and cold and strong.

today is so grey, so still and quiet, the kind of day best looked at through a window.  a just right day to introduce you to someone who never leaves the house.  i'm not sure how much to tell you.  fever ray says the work should speak for itself.  but sometimes i wonder if it's not artwork so much as story telling for me.  i can tell you the cultural context for her.  the stories and images that have lodged themselves so firmly in my mind over the years to echo back out through my imagination, hands, and eyes.  do you remember the woman in the labyrinth in the junk yard?  her spine crooked and piled high with miscellaneous objects that comforted her?  she followed sarah into her bedroom handing her pictures and toys, lancelot.  do you remember reading "the yellow wallpaper" in school?  that one room?  and the endless crawl around it?  

the woman is printed with my gocco.  the chandeliers are letter pressed.  the impression in the paper more ghost-like than a scanner can pick up.  there are two more portraits in silhouette that i'm working on of her.  i'm giving myself a three week deadline to complete them.  you read it here.  

it's still in the eighties.  my freckles continue to darken and my shoulders pink as i walk back and forth to work, to coffee, to walk the dog.  but still i want a knit cowl neck so big it covers my face up to my nose.  i want to carry a heavy steaming mug cupped in both hands everywhere i go.  i want to buy 4 pairs of black tights, one pair of mustard yellow, one pair of turquoise, two pairs of white, and an extra two pairs of white to tie dye at home.  i want boots on my  feet.  i want to see the names of pumpkin flavored things written on chalk boards.  i want hoods attached to every dress, shirt, and blouse i wear.  i want the happy sad that feels so bipolar in the summer to feel right and comfortable like it does in the fall.  

slowly slowly putting the pieces together.  some time we will talk about the terrible oppressiveness and unmanageability of time.  i've heard rumor that aries particularly struggle with it.  i know an aries that started an organization called HAT, humans against time.  i've also heard from a sagittarius the perspective that aries are unlucky.  i'm not sure which i would prefer.  the simplicity of overall unluckiness or the constant snipping at my heels that is the second hand of the clock.  here is an example of all these stacks of paper manipulated and folded and pressed and clipped together.  you're wondering where you will get film to put into this silly little collection of papers folded, clipped, pressed, and manipulated together?

luckily, polapremium is currently running their "share the love" promotion again.  take turns in signing up.  sign up your friends.  smile to yourself and take a picture or ten.  what a wonderful gift for this present moment as we await the doings of the impossible project.  you might say that it's a little bit serendipitous.  maybe my struggle with time is not as horrible as i thought.