Skip to main content

it's here, I can feel it

That threshold, that point of tipping over -- every summer I say I won't, and then it happens anyway, whereupon I lose all thread of ambition, and any capacity for work. I try to keep some spare thought around, just in case I get inspired (I won't), but even that is heat-addled and lazy.


July has been too hot, too humid, too unrelenting so far. Every day with your face to the open furnace. When every list starts to include 'hat' and 'sunscreen', you know the program has turned oppressive. I go around following thinned alleys of shade. Is this what it's like, to live in Nevada?


For a pedestrian, there are only three kinds of drivers ...
• bad drivers
• bad drivers on cell phones (the attention-deficit equivalent of farting while reciting poetry)
• bad drivers on their way to the mental hospital, having just been told (by cell phone) that their test results came back 'Angry/Retarded'

Yesterday, while walking Oona home from daycare, an elderly couple (British, diminished) with a little girl in the back seat stopped their car at the corner to ask me directions to the new water park. Directly behind them were a pair of kids (anywhere between 13 to 25, I can't tell anymore) on a motorcycle.
GIRL: Holy fuck just go around them already they don't even use their fucking blinkers they're a million fucking years old.
BOY: Holy fuck just shut the fuck up already.
I apologized to the fearsomely stunned old folks and proceeded to give them the wrong directions.


Really, there are only three avenues of relief for the hottest afternoons
• the liquor store -- always super-cooled in there ... plus they have free samples!
• the library ... the air-conditioning is only mid-range but the soiled seats are extra comfy ... plus they have free books!
• reading lost-cat posters ... this is more a personal one.

Still, the last two days have seen some rain and breeze, the mornings fresh and lively and some people even showing up on time, and all play-acting at work-acting can be safely tucked in by eleven. But after lunch it's useless.

* * * * *

All these cigar-tin stories (there are ten, altogether) done as a custom order for a collector, bless her red heart.
Labels:

Comments

  1. sMacThoughts8:27 am

    All gorgeous tins and your narratives below the photos have me chuckling!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Unknown1:18 pm

    Loving the cigar tin idea whilst envying your warmer weather :)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

glamour, by extension

C is friends with the fashion stylist Rebekah Roy (left in both pics above) ... one of those people who personify calm and smiling success. On her blog she presents glamour in this very sincere, straightforward way ... whether she's taking pictures of people on the street , talking about stain removers , her favourite videos , or attending some glittering party . One minute she's ruminating on hair extensions, and in the next she reveals how she's been featured on the Vogue UK site. A real disarmer and charmer (and this without meeting her yet, although I feel like I know her because we both did our time in Winnipeg). * * * * * Coming home from Russia, we did many bad things. ; mixed media on canvas, 10 x 10 inches. In my own life, the glamour is wholly imagined. * * * * * witches, smoke ; mixed media on canvas, 10 x 10 inches. My second go at this one, and for some reason I'm painting a lot of smoke lately (note to self: tell C that I want to be cremated). *
7 comments
Read more

the indisputable weight of the ocean

People are always telling me that my work is too dark. So I've put up this sunnier story, but even it has a shadow, as its original publisher – a fine Atlantic Canadian literary magazine called the Gaspereau Review – is no longer in business. ---------------- It was a simple enough thing and that thing was simply this: Edmund Kelley was a gentleman. Of course his mom called him her 'little gentleman', as in 'Oh Edmund, you are my perfect little gentleman,' which did seem to hold to a certain logic that these type of things often follow, considering her affection for him and the fact that he was, after all, only ten years old. Still, Edmund himself was not particularly fond of the diminutive aspect of that title. Gentleman was enough; gentleman summed up the whole thing rather nicely, thank you. He was definitely a more refined version of your average child. He lived in a state of perpetual Sunday m
2 comments
Read more

Oona Balloona (doesn't care about new tables)

Well, it's Friday, and since I'm pretty depleted in the chit-chat department, I might as well put up some pictures of Ol' Giggles At Ghosts before Grandma starts sending me hate mail. Man, what a goofball. At this rate it's going to be, like, eighteen years before she has gainful employment and moves out of the house. I mean, come on . * * * * * C is especially crazy and frantic today. About two months ago she decided that she no longer liked our dining room table (take that, dining room table! no more BFF for you!). Since then she's switched the dining room and kitchen table (and all the rest of the furniture in the house -- about thirty times, but that's another story) as a provisional solution while she scoured area stores for an upgrade. And she thought she had found one, on Wednesday, at JYSK ( Whatever , I said). But when she ordered it, JYSK called back to say that they were really low on stock, and that the stock they did have was damaged, and
44 comments
Read more