high kicks

I've got the fever.

something borrowed

I rarely check my friend Dan's blog because his grammar, spelling and punctuation give me aneurysms but I checked it recently and found this delightful little story. Now at least I know where Dan gets his frugality from...and his desire to avoid a glitzy wedding...but the story is worth a read.

Nik, who is getting married this summer, will have a modern day story worth telling to his grandkids...500 Filipino guests make any story and interesting one. I'd love for Andrew to post about the amazing story of his maternal grandparents' engagement/wedding as well. I like stories like these because they remind me of what is at the heart of marriage; a tenacity and unity that usually comes out when all the pretty extras fall away.

These stories should clash nicely with the crowned prince and princess of Woodbridge's wedding that I will be attending on Saturday. On Canada Day. So the fireworks are in their honour.

______________________________

so it was my grandma's 56th wedding anniversary, but my grandpa is away in quebec, so my mom, dad and i took her out for dinner. she told us about her wedding day...its nuts...it was out on a farm in manitoba...the guests slept in the house and the barn.....my grandma stayed up most of the night making bolognie sandwiches bc that was the wedding meal...they had some salad too i think...the next day my grandma does the hair of all her bridesmaids, but then they leave her so no one can do her hair....the whole wedding cost $50....my grandpa had planned the honey moon, so my grandma didnt know...the plan was that they would drive to 6 different relatives of my grandma's that she hadnt seen in along time and some who she had never met....my grandma was not happy...the last house they stayed at decided that bc they were newly weds they would want their own place fo5 sleeping and not stay in the house with the family, so they put them in this tiny little wooden shack with a mattress that was full of mice poo, and an outhouse that was not up to par, even for those days....after spending two days there they were on their way to their new home...but the car they borrowed got stuck in the mud so they spent the last night of their honey moon sleeping in a car with about a jabillion mosquitos(they are big in manitoba)...they had to walk almost 5 miles to get a guy to pull them out of the mud...my grandma had $6 to her name while my grandpa had $0.....and thats how they started their life.....and yet they are still married...

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pandora

calling all brawn...
or, actually, all able-bodied persons...
or just those looking for beer & pizza and a fun time...

wednesday, june 28th
6:00 to 9:00(ish) p.m.
215 howard park avenue

• i will be freeing my storage box from over a year and a half of imprisonment
• “many hands make light work” - john heywood (1497-1580)
• respond via email, or call (416.891.8422), or just show yo’self
• feel free to pass this message along to anyone who might want to join us

early morning musings

I love how Indian Grove, the street I look up from my apartment window, looks like Lothlorien forest at 5:00 a.m.

Courtesy of Kate, and apropos of nothing, this quote deserves to be shared:
"You can't get a cup of tea big enough or a book long enough to suit me."
- C.S. Lewis

In recent news, my friend Nik has become a first-time uncle.

fighting hamsters

courtesy of Mr. Gaz and in memory of Hansi and Dulsi (may they rest in peace)

new moon

I want memories that germinate


I want
the caterpillar to stop eating the thick
leaf of the evening


I want to spread the shed years on us
as a mulch

longing:

a term for radical unwinding of the heart


in the dim unwritten folklore of the heart

sing to me softly


river has been running our forgotten dreams in one long
uncut movie

the only rule was not to know the rules
made elsewhere


ears tuned
to the heavy rumour of your future


now
you snag on my thought like a red kite
in a leafless tree

lapsing

blush by blush into my consciousness


echoes from that dreadful place, the blank page
that pool full of wonderful risk


we are not a simple people and we fear
the same simplicities we crave


this is a casting outward which
unwinds inside the chest

you must wait for wind


as though your poor heart hadn't enough to put up with, now it's exploded, like popcorn battering the lid with fluffy white fists


when you
say "you" with that inflection something stirs
inside the word, echo
infected with laugh

if it is
possible to translate poetry, then,
what isn't?


when the heart
turning the word "forever"
into plainsong
learns to purr


the agitated
hearts and hearticles of what
we cannot say there is at present

the interwoven deerpaths of desire


the small redundant phrases with which one voice
solaces another


is it the listening that loosens,
letting its knots go, or the voice,
sayng those great unsaying to itself until
ovation on the inside equals ovation out?

a time for this,
a time for that, a time to let them both escape into
whateverness, a time to cast
away stones, to stop
building and remembering and building artful
monuments upon the memories.
to leave.
to step off into darker darkness,
that no moon we call new.

Poetry excerpts from Don McKay ("Camber: Selected Poems")
Photography courtesy of TACF Youth Network Band & Co.

young rockers

When rock stars were young.