Toast in a box

Bad moods happen when you expect them the least, and everyone around you who is in a good mood annoys you. Today I built a mailbox so that the mailman won't have to ring the doorbell for packages that don't fit in the mail slot. I sawed the wood with a handsaw, and I screwed all the pieces together. There is nothing quite as satisfying as making manufactured objects by yourself. Price has no value here -I could have bought a mailbox. But I would have had to go out to hell's creation to get it. There is something that fascinates me about boxes, the enclosed space, what it hides - emptiness, jewelry, treasures, letters? The most surprising box I ever saw was at the MAC in Montreal, in a sculptural installation by Quebec artist Michel Goulet: hundreds of odd objects were perched up on metal sticks and place in a large circle around a room. one of these objects was a little black wooden box with a crooked hook. I wondered: can I have a look inside? is the contents sacred? Does it belong to the artist only? My curiosity overcame my hesitations and I opened the box. Inside, I found a burnt toast.

trains and ships

There are no pictures I can post anymore because the camera is already malfunctioning. There is not one thing that annoys me the most as things that break, except maybe losing stuff, like one of my favorite earrings and having to look at the orphaned piece of jewelry. I usually transcend my frustration by just wearing the earring by itself and matching it with another lonely of its family. We went for a long walk in the south end last. We sat on a log at tin can beach, watching a cargo ship sluggishly making its way into the harbour, and wondering how natural gas is collected and transformed into a liquid format. I could hear the voices of the men chatting in the station on the water,, their voices carried by the echo of the hight tide. We also spent some time on the roof of parked trains, and Chris made funny pictures - trains are still just as fascinating to me, the tracks, all mechanics and rust, the beatsly moving creatures, carryings goods and stuff to faraway places. Good old-fashioned longing, like in the day that Halifax would have been a sought-after, mysterious destination. We wandered the streets of the low south-end until 11pm - thee are some SCARY places out there, like the one building on Saint James Street that has new vinyl windows that are all boarded up on the ground floor, and you can hear people talking throught the open windows on the second floor and then you see the security camera pointed at the front door, and you decide to walk away cautiously, nonchalamment. After we visited the house on Orange street Don was talking and there were eggshells shattered on the ground, and I imagined it had fallen from the sky and the baby bird was left to wander the streets of Saint John, separated from its mother and siblings.

Oranges

I dreamt once I was pregnant with an orange, growing in my womb, bright, full of flesh and juice

Crying Windows

I woke up in slots of consciouness, and heard something that sounded like rain outside, pounding the ground and the windows, making music out of walls or floors. The water leaks along the glass, blurring my vision, just as if I were crying, my eyes watery, overflowing. Only now I can see the distance between the leak and myself, as if I were in a giant eye filled with tears. When I speak Spanish mix the words for crying and raining. I say "Esta llorando" instead of "Esta lluviendo". I've always found that mistake very beautiful, that veil which lifts and closes on a foreign language, as if I were constantly in a theatre. One of Nancy Huston's characters in her novel L'empreinte de l'ange, explains that speaking a foreign language is similar to acting, as if the world were a stage and the words, a learned text. But, when two people come together and both speak that foreign language together (in her book, a Croatian man and a German woman speak French to each other), that theatre becomes truth and makes them ever so closer. I also love to watch the red wine cry on the edges of the glass, when you stir it to exhale its aromas. The windows are crying and I can observe them with melancholy, not sadness.

Kneeding Cat

I worked my first shift at happinez tonight. There is something awkward and reassuring about working with your partner. I was nervous at first, and then I just swooned around the tables, that tray floating on my fingers, the falcon eye you need to catch every little movement and wave. It is not unlike leading a double life. All day I sit at my desk, translating technical files and sorting through emails. The cats run around, down the hall, after each other. As soon as she sees me at my desk, Kuan, jumps up on the table and bunts the corners of my computer. She is a very beautiful cat with a witty personnality. Manu is my Siamese cat who was found on the island of Manitoulan, in Ontario, by my ex-roommate Tyler. He crossed Canada on his bicycle, and he camped there. In the middle of the night he heard a screeching cat meow, and there she was, a skinny kitty with frostbit ears. He took her back to Toronto, and when I moved in her and I connected, and I took her to Saint John. Oddly we get attached to animals. I look at Manu and I feel so much love. This afternoon she felt chatty, and kept circling me until she jumped on my lap and looked at me work and type away. I think she enjoys observing the movement of my fingers on the keyboard. She just sat there and purred, het little black front paws resting on my forearm, or kneeding my thighs to make her bed. There are things immeasurable.

All that free space

We rearranged the living space at home. I wanted my office where the sun is, in the front room. We have our plants in the window, and no curtain so that all the light gets to them. It's a beautiful room, square in proportion, with vibrant red walls and very white mouldings. There is a fireplace in the center of one of the side walls, ornate with a top-mounted mirror. It even has a mantlepiece where I had laid out all the cards we received in the mail at Christmas. Our landlord Bill says it is functional, but we never tried it. One day Chris's mom gave us a TV that doesn't really work, and I just put it there so it would be out of the way, which is sort of nice because now it looks like we are burning it. I enjoy that kind of absurd irony.

Chris also moved his studio in here. He looked at the room after he had placed his stuff and commented that there was so much freew space in the middle of the room. I wondered: Why should we fill it? We have nothing to put there, and I like that both our working stations are just whammed there. We discussed it for a while.
And then later, after a shower we were all all damp, we made love in all that free space on the ground, in front of the buring TV and just where the sun rests after it passed the plants.