This is not a blog about fashion.

However, sometimes someone like MKate looks far too sublime to resist drawing shameless attention to. Here's to being effortlessly cool. Thanks, girl, you put us all to shame.




Prowling photos by the glow of my computer screen is, coincidentally, how I am chipping away at the night. The reality is that I should be working on my piece for the magazine. Instead I am eating Vietnamese with my roommate, drinking lemon tea, researching the steamy past of Fleetwood Mac, and reading a book in bits and pieces.

In addition to hobo-chic at its best, I came across a few other shiver-worthy bites:

(on hearts)
"We don't know anything. We don't know how to cure a cold or what dogs are thinking. We do terrible things, we make wars, we kill people out of greed. So who are we to say how to love."--Miranda July, excerpt from "No One Belongs Here More Than You: Stories By Miranda July"

and (courtesy of my current muse of the hour, Truman Capote):

(on writing)

"My life--as an artist, at least--can be charted as precisely as a fever: the highs and lows, the very definite cycles.
I started writing when I was eight--out of the blue, uninspired by any example. I'd never known anyone who wrote; indeed, I knew few people who read. But the fact was, the only four things that interested me were: reading books, going to the movies, tap dancing and drawing pictures. Then one day I started writing, not knowing that I had chained myself for life to a noble but merciless master. When God hands you a gift, he also hands you a whip; and the whip is intended solely for self-flagellation.
But of course I didn't know that. I wrote adventure stories, murder mysteries, comedy skits, tales that had been told me by former slaves and Civil War veterans. It was a lot of fun--at first. It stopped being fun when I discovered the difference between good writing and bad, and then made an even more alarming discovery: the the difference between good writing and true art; it is subtle, but savage. And after that, the whip came down!
As certain young people practice the piano or the violin four and five hours a day, so I played with my papers and pens. Yet I never discussed my writing with anyone; if someone asked what I was up to all those hours, I told them I was doing my school homework. My literary tasks kept me fully occupied; my apprenticeship at the altar of technique, craft; the devilish intricacies of paragraphing, punctuation, dialogue placement. Not to mention the grand overall design, the great demanding arc of middle-beginning-end. One had to learn so much, and from so many sources: not only from books, but from music, from painting, and just plain everyday observation.
In fact, the most interesting writing I did during those days was the plain everyday observations that I recorded in my journal. Descriptions of a neighbour. Long verbatim accounts of overheard conversations. Local gossip. A kind of reporting, a style of "seeing" and "hearing" that would later seriously influence me, though I was unaware of it then,..."--Truman Capote, excerpt from preface of "Music For Chameleons"

Gone,
RB.

Magic hours.

The water in the bathtub sighs heat, reeling me into itself. Limbs ache in a way that I am unacquainted with--subtle; searing. I slink my eyelids shut (ice cubes rest, invisible against lashes) and visualize tawny skin and the smell of a thousand waterfalls. If you asked me to teach you this language, I would say no. You aren't ready for it. Neither am I, for that matter. The house washed stone-gray in that field, somewhere in the far reaches of Argentina, grazes my thoughts. I remember its taste; the way the gnarled floor felt beneath my naked feet, and the wet haze that hung like an unseen gauze in the air, twisting down my throat. I am hungry again for that. This water is the same temperature as my sweat-glazed skin, and it tastes like nothing.

Hours ago, I sat folded into a red red booth across from Meg. Angular black glasses framed her face, and our hands played against wine glasses. I read aloud to her from Truman Capote's book called "Music for Chameleons", and all the while she sketched fitfully; beautifully in her brown journal. We decided together that bravery and taking a few skinny chances makes sense for now. Don't you think?

Then I walked to Paris and back. It was quite nice. I took three delicate bites of an almond croissant, listened for a while to a French couple having an argument in the street, took a metro to Montmarte, had a drag of a cigarette, and then walked home. I considered staying indefinitely, but decided against it. For what reason, I can't now quite remember. Back home in my apartment with the dimmest lighting, the dishes lay undone and my cat cried for her dinner. And so, I took my feet back to the collection of rooms and walls that are my own, at least for this evening. I fumbled with the fireplace, heated some soup and turned the pages of a book, softly and slowly. It was not a bad night.

Couldn't/wouldn't.

The words "don't falter" trail off somebody's lips, somewhere, as rain cuts the pavement. I try walking slowly; slower, and then some. Water streaks down wet, white cheekbones--the skinniest rivulets. It cools and also distracts. I focus on the jutting lack of warmth. It is like a salve, taking my mind off the pain that spreads behind my eyes, and the lilacs that fail to blossom, still. It kind of pisses me off, actually--the flowers, that is. They were supposed to have been here weeks ago. Lilacs always take me back to our red brick house in St. Boniface, back to the wild spray of bushes between us and our next-door neighbour's lanky home (we thought she was a witch; in reality she was just a lovely old flight attendant), back to childhood and back to that seamless happiness. Sometimes I pine for those days--almost mourning that fact they they are locked in the confines of all that was, rather than what is. Being on your own is better and also scarier than you envision it when you are a kid, yes? For me, it is. I was listening to this interview with Leonard Cohen the other day, and he made some comment along the lines of "if people go through life thinking that love is going to be easy, then they will be infinitely disappointed, but if they go through life expecting that love will be the most difficult thing, then they will be pleasantly surprised." (Although I am sure that I butchered his words), I like that. It has just the right twist of insight--not at all pretentious, and basically just honest.

Another memory lights--catches, flares and then seeps away and into the dark street. The night is impossibly late and all my body is asking for is air that refreshes. I toss an old sweater over my shoulders, the last splashes of a bottle of wine into a coffee mug (white, chipped, it says "Lover" in weird script across it), blow the cat a kiss goodbye and slip out of my apartment and into the stillness. The moon is a white layer or skin draping down, and the wind tangles itself in my lungs, sharp. I follow the string of streets towards the park, treading lightly and loosely. Up ahead, a couple is extracting their young, sleeping family from a car. They ease three children, heavy with sleep, out one by one, speaking softly to them all throughout. A boy, a girl, and then another girl (all black-haired, all tiny) emerge from the vehicle, bedraggled with tiredness. For a snap moment, the woman's eyes lock with my own, and we exchange a smile, barely there. And yet. I remember soaking in those sorts of nights as a little girl--those rare occasions where we were allowed to stay out past midnight, and I would wake up to the feeling of my dad's steady arms carrying me inside. The low voices of my parents would layer around my brother and I like liquidly warmth, and I would always pretend to still be asleep. So as not to shatter the experience; that pristine interval of seeming magic and security.

Leaving the visual of that family behind me, I continued on my way feeling almost weightless. It was a simple reminder, but a significant one. I sat curled on a park bench, mind wandering and whittling in interesting fashion until my limbs grew stiff and breath steamed white from the cold. I wove my way home dripping gratitude. If only they knew, if only you knew, if only I knew. That night, I felt the blood hot in my veins and the hammer of my chest and the dipping temperature against my skin. Thank God, because those are the times that make me hopeful (and even expectant) that all of this disjointedness actually means something. In the meantime, and in those oceans of in-between space, I will write (even if it scares me sometimes, often) and I will listen and try to find meaning and rest well and choose my words with consciousness and loosen my attitude and drink tea at all hours and read in the sunlight and just fucking know what is good for me. I am beginning to realize how much stems from basing yourself in simplicity and trying to move through everything from that place.


(light me like incense in the night/light me like a candle burning bright)

Bitter end material, for these two have been an inspiration this week (and always):
:




Tired eyes,
Rb.

Lilacs&white.

I had today handed to me in unexpected fashion. After dragging myself from sheets and hectically drinking some coffee, I arrived at my (literally) backyard workplace only find myself stepping back into my apartment moments later. Evidently (and understandably), our city is wrapped in hibernation today. Translation: no lunchers for me to serenade with offers of Pinot Grigio before noon. Thanks, Winter in May--you are kicking my financial ass.

Last night Melissa and Zach hosted a "we're leaving for the bush so come hang out with us" fireside gathering. It was rich with faces familiar and not; an interesting blend. As the night filtered by with a lazy ease, it began to snow. Morale hardly took a beating though; everyone just laughed in disbelief and layered on an extra scarf/sweater/blanket/body against them. Warmth radiated from that whirl of people in the night...from the spitting fire and cigarettes aglow and the branches of conversation that twisted together--lovely. As I kicked my boots to the side, home again in wispy morning light, the lingering bits of snow shed off of me and caused me to think listlessly of another time; a hotter time (because heat is summer and summer, for me, has been like this):

That summer was a charged one. It dripped heat and also complication. The open sky was our backdrop, and the air had never tasted quite that fresh licking down my throat. Stillness settled loosely in around me, and it felt like the way things should be. I swayed, without realizing it, into all things natural; neutral--tossed my naked feet on the dashboard, smoked Blacks for breakfast, and played in ditches. The details I care to remember are all a bit like that. Falling asleep against the river, surrounded by dead leaves and a sun that slung itself down like an offering. Driving down the highway through pools of darkness, contentment on our lips. The barest legs, and the stupidest straw hat dipping low over my forehead. Taking the dog for walks that stretched on for hours, somehow losing her again and over. Wandering through the ashy summer wheat. Morning disappearances to the the lake. Drinking beer in grain trucks. Pouring over a garden for the first flush of colour on pale strawberries. The smell of fire during the dying light of day. Watching the skinny moon. And so on and so forth.

There is more, but I am running dangerously late for a wedding social (gag) so I am pulling this to a pause for now.
Here's to a dreamy Saturday on all counts.
Rlb.

A Thousand Kisses Deep:

I've been grappling for the words to trap my night in the presence of Leonard Cohen in black and white form, but I've concluded that I cannot. At least not yet. I need to keep tasting the experience, again and over, until I can do any sort of justice to it in writing. I was raised on this man. And he as good as had me on my knees all night; much respect, much speechlessness and so much inspiration. I am letting my lips fall together at this point, because (really, who the hell are we kidding) he just says it so much better. Close your eyes and listen to this.

The age of self:

Last night, Meg and I splayed ourselves amidst brown boxes that yawned open (poised for her imminent departure to the bush) and owned the fuck out of a trillion-dollar bottle of wine. Thanks Uncle James; you placed a very posh night straight into our fingers. I do not know the exact value of this liquid brilliance that we slid down our throats....all I know is that it came in a long, skinny box with a blood-red ribbon looped around it. Cool. Our fake boyfriends, Devendra Banhart and Jana Hunter licked our ears on repeat all night long, again and over more times than I became capable of counting. Candlelight flecked the nearly-naked walls of Meg's living room, and blackened chocolate lay broken into bits on the low table between us. A strange blend of sadness and the loosest contentedness settled in around me as I sat there, folded into the blanketed couch, ribs grazing against. It will be weird to see that space go; for some reason that I cannot quite decipher, I have the fiercest attachment to those walls. Or rather, all that has transpired within them...food and drink and records and laughter and friends and photoshoots and meltdowns and secret-spilling and...I could go on. Here, instead, is a glimpse of what expensive alcohol will do to people whose budgets typically accomadate $10 bottles of wine:









On a completely unrelated note, I have been intrigued lately by this artist named Robert Wyatt. He is a wildly interesting musician who I also find a great deal of inspiration in as a writer. I think that he twists words together in a really unique way. Like this...

Sea Song (Wyatt):


You look different every time you come
From the foam-crested brine
Your skin shining softly in the moonlight
Partly fish, partly porpoise, partly baby sperm whale
Am I yours? Are you mine to play with?
Joking apart - when you're drunk you're terrific when you're drunk
I like you mostly late at night you're quite alright
But I can't understand the different you in the morning
When it's time to play at being human for a while please smile!
You'll be different in the spring, I know
You're a seasonal beast like the starfish that drift in with the tide
So until your your blood runs to meet the next full moon
You're madness fits in nicely with my own
Your lunacy fits neatly with my own, my very own
We're not alone






He was a young babe and now he is an old man. Either way, in my opinion he oozes coolness.

Onwards with my Sunday,
RB.

Caliente.

I wake earlier than I should--cat weeping at the edge of my door. My fingers, grapefruit-stained in the dirty light filtering through my window, peel through pages; page after page after another, and so on. Reading the ghost of your own words (especially recent, that is the best and also the hardest) is a strange way to spend a morning. And yet. There are a few stretches, lanky scrawl that dips in at the margins and seems to have little regard for the structure of lines and any any sort of structure, that inject memory like fluid warmth. (Here are a few bites.)
:
--(8th Feb, bus station) Buenos Aires bus station. Afternoon. Feet are dirty and smoke (cigarette) trails into my face from nearby. The speakers shriek announcements in harrowing Spanish, slicing through the hot air. Our white skin draws continual glances; stares even. We are getting used to it. The children are beautiful here; dark dark butter-soft skin and eyes, black that goes on for miles. There are dressed, for the most part, simply and haggardly. Babies abound. It is really almost unbelievable, the amount of new life that is scattered, it seems, everywhere. The mothers are young and tired, but also act almost as if toting fresh children in their arms is not really anything all that significant. I notice, again and again, women walking the streets with a baby (new newNEW) slung casually in one arm. It's like more people than not have babes attached to their bodies from some limb or another, and there is a very casual air surrounding this. I feel like in the setting that I am used to, parents are constantly absorbed fussing and preening and obsessing over their small ones, in a way that seems somehow overwhelming in comparison. I kind of like that children here look perpetually dirt-fringed and disheveled. NOT to minimize at any level the poverty that likely lies behind that visual, but my observation is that I like the fact that these kids don't seem reluctant or at all afraid to get dirty. I have seen countless little bodies already, sprawled out in the middle of a sidewalk, playing hard. I cannot get enough of that. And it seems that in this culture (Buenos Aires at least), everyone is chill with the fact that there may be children rolling underneath your feet as you walk the downtown streets.

--(9th Feb., rooftop terrace) I am reading "The Time Traveler's Wife" in the slowest bites so that it will last. It is so drop-dead good that it almost makes me sort of sick. Here is a taste: "I place my hands over her ears and tip her head back, and kiss her, and try to put my heart into hers, for safekeeping, in case I lose it again."

--(10th Feb., dingy bed) Back at the heart of everything, I drain you off the crevices of my body. You are liquid energy; watery hope. Right now, I still feel the underlayer of trepidation...and so I filter you (reluctantly) off of myself. Where you once may have responded grimly, you seem visibly unaffected by this. I like to think that it is because you know I am near. We are both aware of it; starkly aware. The strange and ironic thing about consequences, though, is our inability to predict them. Like, if I keep him at one hundred arm's lengths and then with time realize that I want him nearer to me than any others...will it have slipped out of my reach? Will he slip away; will you? This is the fear that causes me to fret in my sleep...did I fuck it up too far? I can only stand to believe that the answer to this ugly question is no, adamently no. Even though the past with others has often been unkind...comparisons are ugly; I choose something different.

--(14th Feb, waterside) Just this: "There is the hidden presence of others in us, even those we have known briefly. We contain them for the rest of our lives, at every border that we cross."--Ondaatje, M., "Divisidero". Damnation, soso good.

--(17th Feb., cafe.) I feel an evenness in myself right now. These last weeks have lifted a clinging layer of weight off my chest and shoulders and mind, and that organ that feels so sharply. Perspective is a soothing, cooling thing.

--(18th Feb., night bus) The light thrown from the bus station was pale; grunge-streaked. I peeled wooden limbs from beneath my body and unraveled, stretching so as to feel again. Forehead pressed against the cool window, I noticed his naked back, slick with sweat in the moonlight. He was young, so young, barely more than twelve or even eleven. Amidst the muted tones of whitewashed building and rusted fencing and pavement, the wet sheen of his skin stood out like hot breath against winter air. Running lightly; loosely; with a strange sort of beauty, he reached a long and slender arm down, reeling the stray basketball into his left hand. Hardly faltering, he twisted direction and began to leg his way back to his gang of friends--also shirtless; also sweat-laced. They moved with the restlessness of swarming insects around the nearby field, not pretending to conceal their impatience. I watched as he melted back into their midst, suddenly indecipherable in the thick of twining, darkened bodies. All I was aware of as I averted my eyes was how alive I felt.


--(23rd Feb, bus station) Just a little while back, as I was slouching here forcing myself to eat three lukewarm empanadas, I saw a couple about my age saying goodbye before the girl stepped onto a bus. They pressed their forms together and kissed one another's faces all over, like they meant it--neck, cheekbones, forehead, verging on lips, and finally lips. I wonder how long she is leaving him for...are they in love...is it a smooth or a resentful parting, or rather just the predictable bittersweet. I wonder. They looked like nice people, there was a certain sort of ease in their movements; a happy coolness.

--(24th Feb., in the grass) All words from hereon in stolen from "The History of Love", penned by Nicole Krauss (who fast became my idol ten pages after opening this book).

"Her kiss was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering."
"Her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering."
"They collected the world in small handfuls."
"The oldest emotion in the world may be that of being moved; but to describe it--just to name it--must have been like trying to catch something invisible."
"Having begun to feel, people's desire to feel grew. They wanted to feel more, feel deeper, despite how much it sometimes hurt. People became addicted to feeling. They struggled to uncover new emotions. It's possible that this is how art was born. New kinds of joy were forged, along with new kinds of sadness..."

--(26th Feb., Bolivian soil) It is hotter; balmier here--that, and also almost frigid. It seems that the air and the sky change often, every few hours or so. Even though we have only left Argentina just behind, already there are significant shifts. This feels barer; simpler and more stripped down. Also more colourful. We are whittling hours away planted outside the train station awaiting our ride to this quaint-looking town called Tupiza. We are draped across a stretch of cracked sidewalk with this Israeli boy who seems to have latched himself onto us. A bit annoying but nevertheless, it is further company. The sky to our East is so ominous right now. The smoky tones are building by the minute, it seems, and it (the sky) has a fierce look about it. I feel as if I want to photograph and/or write about every other person that walks past me on the street--there is so much beauty here. The elderly women especially draw me..their sweeping head wraps and intricately-lined leathery skin. This is the South America that I had envisioned...the one I have been pining for introduction to. I am thankful to be here in the now. Despite how destroyed my body has felt all day, and how frustrating all these legs of transportation have been, there is nowhere else I would rather be.

--(26th Feb., train) Balance. I am interested in balance.

--(6th March, out of doors) Hot hot hot HEAT. I am splayed out, bare-legged and naked-armed on hot stone. It is beginning to hit that time of evening cool, but nevertheless the cement is still throwing insatiable amounts of heat. It feels smooth and lovely. The height of the sun-drenched day is brilliant, but also a bit intolerable. So this fall of evening is always welcomed with a lightened breath.

--(7th March, hammock) My current read is called "What is the What" written by one Dave Eggers. It is heavy as hell, but breath-stopping at the same time. Here you go: "It's odd to say this, but I loved Tabitha most from afar. That is, my love grew for her each time I could watch her from a distance. Perhaps that sounds wrong. I did love her when we were together in my room or on the couch, our legs entwined and her hands in mine, but when I could see her from across a street, or walking toward me, or stepping onto a broken escalator, those are the moments I most remember."

--(9th March, rooftop terrace) It is late Sunday night and I am nursing a (surprisingly delicious) McDonald's coffee. Kate and I are back in Buenos Aires and I am happy, so happy to be here. The last string of days has been seemingly fraught with travel and movement, so a steady stretch of time banked in one place is completely what I have been craving. This is good, yes. My body feels trashed from last night's bus ride, and tonight's installment of vino blanco. Even now as I write, my eyes are falling shut and my fingers are weary; I realize full well that it is time to call it a night. Hello, Rebecca Louise--your body is crying out for some serious sleep. I am off to oblige.

--(14th March, balcony) Saturday morning--heat drips like liquid through the air. It is like a softly knitted web, this heat. It is light and infused with heaviness all at once; it is sensual, almost. You breathe in and it saturates your lungs and down to your limbs like twisting energy...it is extraordinary. It want to hang onto this; the sensation of how it feels. In a week or two, once I am immersed like a shivering creature in Winnipeg wind and ice, I want to draw easily on this memory. I am fairly certain I will be cursing myself for my lack of realization and worship or the warmth and light that is almost a given here. I know that I will dream of it behind lidded eyes, and crave and yearn for it like a woman hungry. It has been a blessing already, though, in so many ways. My body has never felt lighter or smoother...my skin has a sheen to it and my head remains clear. It is refreshing; addicting, almost.


(There are eight hundred thousand more where that came from. I am unemployed, so you will likely find me siphoning them onto here in my endless spare time.)

Amen,
RB.