illustration by Wolfgang Joop

It's slow going, this writing business, but I woke up this morning excited at the prospect of sitting down at my keyboard. It's been a long time since I felt that way without a specific agenda or project. Today it's all about rejigging the blog structure. I've decided to use the first line of every post as a title. I think it will be a good exercise in First Lines - which are almost as important as titles anyway. 

When we were sitting in the interview on Friday, I was talking about how visuals and structure are huge motivators for me. My editor laughed and rolled her eyes. "You should see her apartment," she said. "Everything is just so." And she's right. Though I'm quite the opposite of one of those minimalist clean-surface people, and though on first look my apartment looks like a friendly chaos, it's all very carefully put together. There is not a square foot that doesn't have some little diverting object. I arrange my world so that my eye can always find something lovely.

As we talked to the reporter I told him about my new glasses, which were sitting on the table in front of me. "They just make me happy," I explained. Even though I didn't have to wear them in that moment, I didn't want to put them away. The lines were so perfect and the tortoiseshell so rich - having something like that to look at made me feel happier. 

He laughed and said something about "design freaks."

Yesterday I sent the writer a quick note to say thanks for the interview (and the tab he'd picked up). I told him I'd just started reading Alain de Botton's A Week at the Airport (excellent so far). He responded with a quote from Patricia Highsmith's The Price of Salt: 

"Or perhaps it was nothing but happiness, Therese thought, a complete happiness that must be rare enough, so rare that very few people ever knew it. But if it was merely happiness, then it had gone beyond the ordinary bounds and become something else, become a kind of excessive pressure, so that the weight of a coffee cup in her hand, the speed of a cat crossing the garden below, the silent crash of two clouds seemed almost more than she could bear. And just as she had not understood a month ago the phenomenon of sudden happiness, she did not understand her state now, which seemed an aftermath. It was more often painful than pleasant, and consequently she was afraid she had some grave and unique flaw." 

Sometimes people surprise the hell out of me.

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illustration by Belinda Chen

I spent the better (or longer) part of yesterday at a birthday party for a one year old. The miniature human in question is soon to be my niece and she's awfully adorable. That said, I am firmly against throwing parties for anyone under the age of three. It's a whole lot of fuss and expense for someone who couldn't care less. You may as well have a party for the dog. (And yes, I am aware some do.)

On Saturday I met my boyfriend at a shop in the neighbourhood that deals in educational and unique children's toys. It was interesting, filled with cool-looking puppets and one-eyed robot recorders to relay messages (awesome), but it was horrible, too. Breeding in the new millennium really brings out the douchebag in people. Having kids used to be normal - almost banal - everyone did it and that was that. Then the feminists introduced the idea that children were a choice and not an obligation. Up to that point I'm still on board. But somewhere in the last ten years things took an ugly turn.

The pendulum swung way back and now, suddenly, parenthood has taken the tint of a sainted mission - the spawn of these parent proselytes untouchable angels. Every day I see young, capable women walking around with holier-than-though expressions wheeling giant strollers in the way of every pedestrian on the street; it would be too ugly to ask them to take up less space. Their toddlers stand on the streetcar seats with filthy shoes; in the video store they pay no attention as tiny unruly gods peel random tags off the merchandise. They hand me the covers of DVDs plucked off the shelves by little hands so I can put them away. There is never a word of rebuke because, after all, the precious little poppets are expressing themselves. They don't try to do it themselves because they are Weary Parents and have Better Things to Worry About.

As my boyfriend stood at the cash to pay for the carefully-quaint wooden puzzle we'd picked out, two creatures (who were definitely old enough to know better) pushed in front of and around him, looking at items and displays. Though their mother was close by, she never made any attempt to reel them in or explain the concept of Waiting Your Turn. (When I was a kid, the author growled, shaking her cane, that kind of bullshit would have had me waiting in the car.) 

Dear parents - I understand you love your kids but, let's never forget, they aren't my kids. You opted to turn your life upside down for these charming little monsters, not I, and the inconvenience in any given situation should reflect that choice. You are a parent - act like one. And in those moments when you look at your marauding offspring and feel especially reproductively gifted, try to remember this: if you don't keep them in check, your entire contribution to this process isn't much more complicated than that of a feral cat. 

The party was nice enough. I got to talk to the boyfriend's grandmother a little. She's got Alzheimer's and a wicked sense of humour. She told me she'd been in boarding school from age 6 to 18. She's a tough old lady.

The baby was lovely, too. I may have felt the second maternal pang of my life. (The first was in my early 20s and immediately staunched with the acquisition of a dog - for whom I did not throw parties.)

Then again, it might have been the chili.

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illustration by Amelie Hegardt

I woke up at 6 to get ready for the interns. They are working on a new project to include more video in the blog. It's a sort of tour through the apartments and closets of people working on and at the magazine. I volunteered to be the first subject. It's not my favourite thing - scrutiny makes me nervous - but I want to (and should) set a good example. Plus, I really like this round of interns. They seem inordinately thoughtful and sincere. It brings out my scant scraps of maternal instinct. Of course, that meant getting up at the crack of dawn and dusting-vacuuming-straightening. (I am my mother's daughter.) There was, along with the legitimate cleaning, a lot of squirreling things into out-of-the-way spaces. While I'm thoroughly enjoying my uncluttered surfaces, the next week is going to be a hellish exercise in recovering the things I tidied into oblivion. 

In any case, by the time they arrived, I'd been up and slaving away for hours (the place did look very nice). It never occurred to me while I was folding sweaters and shaking out rugs that I ought to think about things I might say. And while I have been known to rise to a conversational occasion when necessary, it didn't happen this time. Ah, well. The whole segment won't be more than four minutes; how bad could it be? 

It was certainly different from the interview yesterday. I don't want to jinx anything, but I think it went well. Aside from the couple of moments where I went off my head a little (there are a handful of topics* I tend to get overexcited about), I think I said some smartish things and held up my end nicely. (My editor and I were both subjects and, in the past, she's done most of the talking.) The writer seemed interested and engaged and I would like to think it was more than professional courtesy. The story comes out next Saturday. We'll see, we'll see.

In other news, the heat seems to be on. It's no where near the level it ought to be, but that may be Ivan's game. If you starve the hostages for a few days, a crust of bread starts to look like a gift.

Great. And now I have Stockholm syndrome. 
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*We got to talking about how the Canada Council in its infinite wisdom deemed FASHION IS NOT ART. (Shhh, don't tell Paris.) It was on this basis we were told not to bother applying for an arts grant. Every time I think of it I become positively livid. At some point in my rant last night, I think I might have yelled into the tape recorder. Other examples of things that bother me are people who think only Europeans should ride bikes ("We're just not set up for it here"), people who use the phrase "leftist media," and English speakers who say "BudaPESHT" when they would never, EVER consider saying "Paree" or "Deutschland." Please.

illustration by René Gruau

Today's the day we interview with that newspaper - ooh la la. It actually feels like a pretty big deal (though we'll have to see how it goes). It's the only major paper in the city we've never been in, and it's a national, so it could be good for sales. 

I have to say, it's been an interesting five years. We've gone from complete unknowns to, what? Better-knowns, I guess. I remember going out with that first issue, proverbial hat in hand, practically begging retailers to carry us. Now we've got retailers and subscribers all over the place; Australia, Spain, Japan. We're no where near famous, but we don't have to beg for shelf space, either. That's a relief.

I still don't have anything to wear. I should stop waiting for that to change.

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ps: Have opted for harem jeans, necktie, and combat boots... I know you care.

pps: Went really well, I think. Even though I looked like Chrissie Hynde at a Harry Potter convention. Har.

illustration by Lina Ekstrand

C has been looking for a place and he was pretty sure he found one. He was so excited. But when I looked at the pictures he'd taken I realized the place was far too small - easily smaller than this by 100 sq feet. And no counter space and no room for an extra dresser or a desk. It was a sweet little place, but for $400 more a month I couldn't bring myself to agree. And I am the bitch again. 

I have to get out of this place - I want to get out of here - but I'm so afraid of waking up somewhere and thinking, What the hell have I done? It's the trap of living in an apartment for 9 years; I'm working off standards a decade out of date. 

In other news (not really) I keep seeing these ads for the Windows 7 Cloud photo editor. The commercial shows the exasperated mom, frustrated at her family's inability to sit for a photo with uniform smiles and poses. She gets very excited at her ability to use the new photo editor to make a sort of photographic hybrid. She swaps out the "best" heads from other photos, amalgamating the acceptable expressions to create a single perfect image. 

OF AN EVENT THAT NEVER HAPPENED.

You know, it's a bit bad enough that we're all looking at the world from the other end of a lens - a phone, a digital camera, a webcam. I adore photography, but the fact is, a lot of us spend so much time trying to get the perfect picture of an event, we don't really experience it first hand anymore. We rely on the photo to remind us - even to show us - what it is that happened. How often have I looked back over my image files and thought, Wow, I barely remember this? And how often have I stood somewhere and consciously decided not to take out my camera because I didn't want to miss what was happening in my search for better light or angles?

I remember sitting with my dad a few weeks ago, going through an old album I found on a forgotten shelf. It was filled with pictures of his childhood and the years between leaving home and meeting my mom. Dad's an old man now, on the edge of 80. I can barely remember half my 20s, so it's no shock his recollections are foggy. I turned the pages and he pieced together his youth using the pictures as clues. "This must be at the dairy," he'd say, pointing at the group of young Turks holding beer bottles. "We all lived there while were were apprenticing." Another picture was his first apartment with a friend; I watched him struggle to retrieve the details.

Because eventually, pictures become our memories. We rely on them to remind us of things we've forgotten. They are, after all, evidence.

Until you start manufacturing pictures of things that didn't happen - because, you know, it's prettier. And then you wake up at 80 and never remember how cute it was that Stevie and Tommy couldn't sit still for a picture that one year.

This is some creepy shit, people. You may as well put on It's a Wonderful Life and call it home movies.

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illustration by Alec Strang, UK

I probably don't even have time to do this anyway. I guess I just figure if I pick an illustration and just post it, I might coax myself back here during the day.

I do love these illustrations, though. I decided when I started this blog that since I have my tumblr account for photography, I would only post illustration here. Despite my work and frequent contact with fashion illustration (and illustrators) I know very little about it. In the first three days I must have collected 30 images. The range of styles is amazing, but they almost all have one thing in common - the subjects are exaggeratedly thin. I don't know why that should surprise me (and I guess it doesn't) but a part of me thought illustration would encourage more people to experiment outside of the mainstream. Maybe that's too much to ask. 

And I especially love the Alec Strang images. They are girls in the shape of a Tim Burton dream, dark and charming with their hyper-extended shins, fawn's ankles and tiny feet. They're beautiful, Gothic insects hiding poisonous stingers.

I'm getting heavy. Too much stress and (ahem) self medicating leads to late night food, consumed with dishonest and desperate insouciance. Fuck it - I do what I want. In the morning I wake up unhappy. My disappointment is less about the weight than my almost complete inability to get myself in hand. The one thing I've always had to fall back on was my willingness to prove an unprovable point. I worry that I've become complacent or, worse yet, hopeless. If I can reel this in, I know I haven't given up.

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illustration by Jean-Claude Picard

My new little blog is proving to be a slow starter - not in footprints but in content. I seem to have at least one or two ideas a day, things I want to write about or work through, but the moment I commit to my keyboard - whoosh! Gone.

Today is no different. I'm pretty sure my brother is caught on the wrong end of an identity theft (if one could imagine there's a right end), tonight I'll be attending a panel discussion on getting a book published, and at the end of the week I'll be interviewed by a national newspaper. Also, my landlord is nuts, my boyfriend is shopping for an engagement ring and my cat is teetering on the edge of morbidly obese.

Material isn't the problem - I'm just so painfully out of practice.

Ah well, a few sentences a day is a start. And it was nice to have a place to get yesterday off my chest. There's something about blogging, that idea of writing things out and pushing them into the ether. It's weirdly satisfying. I forgot about that.

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Losing his license was the last straw; whatever independence or amusement he had is, if not gone, definitely fading fast. He can't move around enough to enjoy his house or the property he spent his life taking care of, and he won't leave. I don't know what to do.

For the first time since she died, I was angry at mom for leaving us (as though it was somehow a choice). If she were here she would give dad a swift kick and tell him to stop feeling sorry for himself. The rest of us can't seem to stand up to him the way she did. This weekend I saw some of her things in the closet and all I could think was, "Fuck you! Where are you?" I don't remember being that angry with her in years. That's the thing about mothers, I guess. They're so good at fixing things they get blamed for everything that's broken.

But all I know is that I am terrified to lose the man who is my dad and would whistle through his teeth and call me Schnooky and whose hands, though they were never that steady (and are less so now), are still three times the size of my own.

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illustration by Edward Gorey

I had meant to be up earlier. I woke up to the cat lying next to me, still as a sphinx, his handsome face tilted toward the grey morning light. The only indication he even knew I was there was a barely perceptible purring. 

I'm losing patience with people. Customers at the shop waiver between helplessness and straight-out disdain, asking me questions they could easily find the answers to but would rather not bother. "Do you have Scott Pilgrim?" Well, I don't know. Did you look five feet to your left under the gigantic glowing neon NEW RELEASE sign?

People at the office continue to use me as a half-wit errand dog, affronted when I attempt an independent thought or suggest their bloated public sector systems might be inefficient. I listen to them mock each other for their entitled behaviour and, in the next breath, erupt in an effusion of complaint if they are asked to do anything for themselves.

And, once again, my apartment is freezing because the landlord doesn't want to pay for heat and the building manager will not entertain the idea that she could remedy this on her own because it is, technically, not her responsibility. I am surrounded by otherwise pleasant people who are incapable of seeing beyond their own convenience. 

It's wearing me thin.

I am tired of doing other people's thinking for them. I am tired of being condescended to by middle-age ladies (good god, but the time is running short for me to use that as an epithet) whose IQs fall 20 points below my own. People, how do you function? Why does every action you undertake need to be a contractual obligation? 

I used to find it sad, but I'm losing my empathy. I'm having visions of revenge and rebellion. A growing voice inside me is saying it would be easy to walk away from everything - just go. Go. Because why should I be responsible when no one else can be bothered?

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illustration by Autumn Whitehurst

It's taking too long. I'm actually having panic attacks. I got all fixated on finding round frames - a sort of Edith Head-meets-Henry-Miller look. But now I'm wondering if they're right for me, or if I was just caught up in the hunt. I do that a lot. With these, though, if it was a mistake it was a pretty big one. Those things aren't cheap.

I'm like an anxious four year old. I was an anxious four year old. When do I grow out of this?

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