einmal ist keinmal

busy between laundry, packing, farewells and hair cuts.
it's hard work to pick up and leave, something i'm getting too good at, too used to.
i'm an expert at //

// lists of things to do before i go


and i'm not sure that i like it.
maple syrup has been bought.
so have 2 jars of crunchy 100% peanuts peanut butter
a stash of my favourite granola bars for travelling days
and two bottles of wine from my favourite local winery

is there any room for my sewing machine? not in this lifetime of stingy checked luggage rules and overweight fees.


still, among the bustle i'm trying to stay above the waves. trying to tie up loose ends and trying to finish unfinished projects before they're left yet another year(s) to collect dust in my closet

for someone who constantly travels here and there, i sure do get strung out before each major move
guilty: i grind my teeth at night and my jaw is killing me, pre-travel pressure gets me every time.

remember last year? i packed so early.

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february - margaret atwood

Winter. Time to eat fat

and watch hockey. In the pewter mornings, the cat,   

a black fur sausage with yellow

Houdini eyes, jumps up on the bed and tries   

to get onto my head. It’s his

way of telling whether or not I’m dead.

If I’m not, he wants to be scratched; if I am   

He’ll think of something. He settles

on my chest, breathing his breath

of burped-up meat and musty sofas,

purring like a washboard. Some other tomcat,   

not yet a capon, has been spraying our front door,   

declaring war. It’s all about sex and territory,   

which are what will finish us off

in the long run. Some cat owners around here   

should snip a few testicles. If we wise   

hominids were sensible, we’d do that too,   

or eat our young, like sharks.

But it’s love that does us in. Over and over   

again, He shoots, he scores! and famine

crouches in the bedsheets, ambushing the pulsing   

eiderdown, and the windchill factor hits   

thirty below, and pollution pours

out of our chimneys to keep us warm.

February, month of despair,

with a skewered heart in the centre.

I think dire thoughts, and lust for French fries   

with a splash of vinegar.

Cat, enough of your greedy whining

and your small pink bumhole.

Off my face! You’re the life principle,

more or less, so get going

on a little optimism around here.

Get rid of death. Celebrate increase. Make it be spring.

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marco suarez - circle photographs

i'd hang all of these photographs on my wall if i could.

incredible images taken by marco suarez // designer residing in south carolina

you can purchase prints online which means one of these just made it to my wish list (the second one to be exact)

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simple tank

from drawing to modified pattern to the real deal.

my first handmade piece of clothing (even if the darts are crooked) //

[due to the difficulty of photographing in my small room, this is the best you're going to get. and i think there is something wrong with the optical zoom/focus on my petit camera]

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picasso in paris

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hector and the search for happiness - françois lelord

i finished this book for the slow readers book club days ago, unsure of how to start the review process. what interested me most by the end was that hector needed to travel to find happiness, he decided that he couldn't find it in the proverbial here and now. but from experience i also think that travel reveals a lot more about one's self in new surroundings than at home.

there is something here about journey that becomes to inherently connected to the happiness that hector is searching for.

it starts with lesson number two on the flight between paris and china //

lesson two: happiness often comes when least expected.

a lot of his lessons, so simple at first glance, are words to live by. short mantras to keep at one's fingertips to be constantly reminded to live with no expectations for what's coming or what could happen. i appreciated the monk's final words,

true wisdom would be the ability to live without this scenery, to be the same person even at the bottom of a well. but that, it has to be said, is not so easy.

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2010: a year for reading

unable to really find cheap eng. language books in budapest i got a library card at the british council library near kalvin tér. i spend many afternoons there, breathing in old titles, scouring the shelves for new hemingway to read and stocking up on new material to use in my english classes at work.

in any case, here is the list of what i read this year:

in europe - geert mak

oryx and crake - margaret atwood

a portrait of the artist as a young man - james joyce

cat's eye - margaret atwood

death in the afternoon - earnest hemingway

islands in the stream - earnest hemingway

book of longing - leonard cohen

hector and the search for happiness - francois lelord

the tower, the zoo and the tortoise - julia stuart

at atlas of remote islands - judith schalansky

im sure im missing some, especially sine i've been home i know i've devoured more than a few novels but their titles escape me.

[are you a part of the slow reader's book club?]

you should be, it's a great forum and the titles are excellently chosen.

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