I AM A BLOODHOUND

Nail art by Abby.

I'm working on a move to Wordpress, amalgamating all my various blogs. I'm also working on my five year plan. When the switchover happens, I'll let you know, those of you still out there.

xo

In Montreal spring is like an autopsy. Everyone wants to see the inside of the frozen mammoth. Girls rip off their sleeves and the flesh is sweet and white, like wood under green bark. From the streets a sexual manifesto rises like an inflating tire, "The winter has not killed us again!" Spring comes into Quebec from Japan, and like a prewar Crackerjack prize it breaks the first day because we play too hard with it. Spring comes into Montreal like an American movie of Riviera Romance, and everyone has to sleep with a foreigner, and suddenly the house lights flare and it's summer, but we don't mind because spring is really a little flashy for our taste, a little effeminate, like the furs of Hollywood lavatories.

- Leonard Cohen, Beautiful Losers



I still miss Montreal my old home.

White Wind, Emeralds, Destiny, Roses

between that life and this one, friend?

what can i say to you? dearreaders dearreaders. life goes on. someday i'll have words for it.

Hi friends!

I've submitted this photograph to be a part of a show this summer at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. The exhibit is "crowd-curated", meaning that the public will be evaluating the submissions.
That means you! If you go to this site, you can register and rate the photo submissions anonymously. There are a lot of entries, but you can login and pick up where you left off. It's a fun thing to do when you've got some spare time.

And when you get to Mel's face, I hope you'll give it a high score!

Maria de Medeiros, by Nan Goldin, wearing Valentino in Paris.

Can I live in this photograph?

written a little less than two years ago.


1. Shifts

Frightening, innocuous, unsettling, inevitable. The strangest shifts are the quick and subtle. When dynamics move and the routine is not, when month to month brings a different cast or smell or rhythm. These are the shades of change, and only once in awhile come the seismic shifts. The position of removal when seeing a shift in progress brings us too close to something we don’t want to know, or can’t know too directly. The impermanence of all things. But I will always love you if I’ve loved you once. Some things last. When we are feeling the time-sway, we cringe. I’m just trying to put one foot down at a time. Watch the things that would cloud my vision and block my ears. I want to be open and strong.

5

If one day it happens
you find yourself with someone you love
in a café at one end
of the Pont Mirabeau, at the zinc bar
where white wine stands in upward opening glasses,

and if you commit then, as we did, the error
of thinking,
one day all this will only be memory,

learn,
as you stand
at this end of the bridge which arcs,
from love, you think, into enduring love,
learn to reach deeper
into the sorrows
to come – to touch
the almost imaginary bones
under the face, to hear under the laughter
the wind crying across the black stones. Kiss
the mouth
which tells you, here,
here is the world. This mouth. This laughter. These temple bones.

The still undanced cadence of vanishing.

-from Little Sleep’s-Head Sprouting Hair In The Moonlight by Galway Kinnell

I remember when I was a very little girl, our house caught on fire.
I'll never forget the look on my father's face as he gathered me up
in his arms and raced through the burning building out to the pavement.
I stood there shivering in my pajamas and watched the whole world go up in flames.
And when it was all over I said to myself, "Is that all there is to a fire"

Is that all there is, is that all there is
If that's all there is my friends, then let's keep dancing
Let's break out the booze and have a ball
If that's all there is

And when I was 12 years old, my father took me to a circus, the greatest show on earth.
There were clowns and elephants and dancing bears.
And a beautiful lady in pink tights flew high above our heads.
And so I sat there watching the marvelous spectacle.
I had the feeling that something was missing.
I don't know what, but when it was over,
I said to myself, "is that all there is to a circus?

Is that all there is, is that all there is
If that's all there is my friends, then let's keep dancing
Let's break out the booze and have a ball
If that's all there is

Then I fell in love, head over heels in love, with the most wonderful girl in the world.
We would take long walks by the river or just sit for hours gazing into each other's eyes.
We were so very much in love.
Then one day she went away and I thought I'd die, but I didn't,
and when I didn't I said to myself, "is that all there is to love?"

Is that all there is, is that all there is
If that's all there is my friends, then let's keep dancing

I know what you must be saying to yourselves,
if that's the way she feels about it why doesn't she just end it all?
Oh, no, not me. I'm in no hurry for that final disappointment,
for I know just as well as I'm standing here talking to you,
when that final moment comes and I'm breathing my lst breath, I'll be saying to myself

Is that all there is, is that all there is
If that's all there is my friends, then let's keep dancing
Let's break out the booze and have a ball
If that's all there is