Weclome, Faimly!

I was bad at math and continue to be. One way my father, who was good at math, taught me about how positive and negative numbers work was with the following story that many of you have likely heard.

Father: A friend of your friend is…

Me: My friend.

Father: Ok, and friend of your enemy?

Me: [long pause] My enemy?

Father: Yes, and enemy of your friend?

Me: My enemy!

Father: Correct! And enemy of your enemy?

Me: [extremely long pause] My friend?

Father: Yesssss.

Plus, minus, minus, plus, plus, plus, minus, minus. This logic helped me with some math, figuring out who I could trust, and later it was adapted to other situations, a little plus and minus are always needed.

By astrological default, I am a lion, which is to say I care for and belong to a pride. Most of my life’s work is found within the protection and nurturing of those in the group with me. The group grows and diminishes at its will, that is outside of my control.

I suppose I learned from my father who to let into the group and from my mother how to support them once they arrive.

Support for feet is the most important, it can make or break you. Today, my shoes defeated me. I wore new shoes on a walk, prim and proper shoes, which slowly led to my demise. The more I walked, the more they tore into my heels. I did not face the horror until we arrived at the destination, where I quickly folded down the backs and returned home to throw on some slides.

Later when my mother saw what condition my heels were in, she was in shock at how long I had endured the pain until I noticed a problem. My grandmother, however, commended me for my strength and endurance, a sign that I came from her wolf stock.

Some people drop change or candies out of their purses, my mother drops bacitracin out of hers, and I used to laugh if I found one of the little samples on my floor after she visited. Tonight after our visit, I was thankful when bacitracin poured from her hands into mine. Put this on later, she reminded me. As I sat washing my bloody heels, feeling the open skin burn from the water and then applying the ointment, I remembered the countless moments when her healing saved me.

Fevers, faintings, infections, viruses, pneumonia, flus, colds, general malaise, and more, I learned how to care for myself and others from her. At those roaring 20s parties, when someone got sick, her advice often came in handy. During those achy 30s and now 40s, I continue to heed “tape this on your back,” “drink this if you feel a migraine coming,” and “eat this, not that if your stomach is destroying you.”

She’s a natural born healer. With faimly you get what you get. All of this to say, if you don’t like my mama, I don’t like you!

 

 

 

Other People’s Stories

Photo by Sergiu Nista on Unsplash

“As you hear a story unfold, your brain waves actually start to synchronize with those of the storyteller,” says Uri Hasson, professor of psychology and neuroscience at Princeton University in an article on NPR.

I wasn’t sure about making a post dedicated to other people’s stories until I read this article today. While Hasson’s research is more about a story being told and heard, not read and comprehended, I’m going to take a chance and share.

The first is an excerpt from a book I love and recommend. It is written by Misha Glouberman with Sheila Heti, The Chairs Are Where the People Go. I learned about the book during my love affair with everything Sheila Heti, which expanded into a love for Glouberman as well.

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65. Who Are Your Friends?

Teaching my classes, I started to notice during the breaks that there was so much warmth between these people who often had very little in common. They had engaged in a fairly passionate and intimate kind of play with each other, and the connections between them happened so quickly, and they developed such a collective fondness for each other. But this fondness lacked the traits we normally associate with adult friendship. They didn’t know that much about each other. They didn’t know what was going on in each other’s lives. But they felt a strong and genuine closeness. They were happy to see each other. And I started to think, Oh—friends are the people you play with. That seemed like a pretty good definition of friendship to me, and I was satisfied with it.

Then, about five years ago, a friend of mine moved here from Kelowna, British Columbia. She said, You know, in Toronto, friendships are all based around talking. What you do with your friends is you go out for coffee or drinks, or you go to their apartment and you talk about stuff. In Kelowna, what you do with your friends is you go swimming. It seemed really beautiful to me that in Kelowna your friends might just be these people who liked floating around in the water with you—that the people floating near you are your friends.

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The second is a story that was told to me by a friend. Perhaps the reason I remember it is because my brain waves synchronized with his as he told it to me, per Hasson’s research or maybe because it’s simply a good story.

My friend is color blind, something he learned at about the age of seven. He is the kind of color blind that confuses red and green. I know color blindness occurs mainly in men and that’s about all I know.  Since it’s simply the way you see the world, it must be strange to learn that you see it in a way that is different to most other people.

So the story goes, my friend went picking wild strawberries with his family in the countryside. If you have never picked wild strawberries, then you should know that they are tiny and bright red. They are the most delicious strawberry that exists, and after you try them, you will likely be disappointed by anything but. Anyhow, my friend picked a bunch of strawberries and brought them back to where the rest of his family was picking. His parents looked down in his basket and said, “Oh, what have you done, why did you pick all the green berries?” And that’s how he and his parents learned that he was color blind. I think it still causes him confusion, although rarely, in recognizing red or green traffic lights, but since he likes to drive fast, perhaps it’s not a problem after all.

I found the story quite funny and imagined that he was likely disappointed as a child that he did all this work and now he couldn’t eat any of the berries. I don’t have the patience or rather, the will power to pick wild strawberries, I eat them as I pick so I end up with very few. I remembered this story the other day, and it made me want to watch again Bergman’s film Wild Strawberries. The film I don’t remember in detail like I do this story, so I look forward to rewatching it and hearing yet another story unfold.

Transcription exercise: I reckon it’s correct

artist: Reckonwrong, track title: “14 days,” label: Whities 018

This is a first for me: transcribing for leisure and preordering a record, which has yet to arrive. The digital version arrived today, and it’s listening to the “14 days” track from Reckonwrong that I felt to transcribe the song, which I heard for the first time a few weeks back on the Charlie Bones morning show. Thanks to the artist for making the music, and I hope my translation is mostly accurate.

Tomma Abts exhibit at Art Institute of Chicago

What I wouldn’t give for 14 more days, 14 days of happiness.
What I wouldn’t give for 14 more days and 14 more nights of passion.

Seven days of friendship and seven days of love,
in the right hands it doesn’t take much.

I’ll see the light in 14 different shades and that will be enough.

What I wouldn’t give for 14 more days, 14 days of happiness and joy.
What I wouldn’t give for 14 more days and 14 more nights of passion.

Do you have the stamina for 14 more days and who knows, of love.

Your words come back to ya so be careful what you say,
sometimes the truth comes after the facts.

What I wouldn’t give for 14 more days, 14 days of happiness
What I wouldn’t do for 14 days with you, 14 more nights of passion.
{reverberation and repetition}
Aaaaaaaaahhhh passion.

{This text does not exist without the music and the voice.}

Practice

World War I Memorial, Kansas City, Missouri

Today, artists have a practice, they practice, that’s what they do.

They practice painting, drawing, sewing, building, and cutting.

They call it a practice. My practice includes X,Y,Z.

The reason we practice is to become more proficient in a skill.

I like to practice the languages I speak with people who speak that language as their native tongue, it helps me learn. The other day I learned a new word in Serbian, bahat. It means careless or offhand. About a month ago, I learned a new word in French, huppé, which means posh. In English, I haven’t learnt a new word, although I have learned about punctuation in image captions, and I appreciate that.

But it is also good not to practice, to access instinct instead.

To allow yourself to talk aloud to no one and everyone while waiting for the train on a summer evening; to close your eyes and bop along to the beat on a crowded afternoon train; to hop fences; not make beds; not tidy up the house; to not.

For a while whenever I’d ask some cat how they were, they would respond with “I’m so busy,” and proceed to list the numerous musical and artistic projects they were involved in. Even if I was currently “busy” my  favorite response to these folks was always, “I’m not doing much,” which inevitably ended the conversation. And I still revel in and appreciate doing nothing.

Cowboys in the kitchen

 

Dreams of today are not those of yesterday.

What I said yesterday I do not agree with today.

I am not the same as yesterday, nor will I be the same today.

This is a lovely part of the human condition; self-acceptance accompanied by equal amounts of denial.

Why not?

Homage to This Place

That I play on repeat
because they talked it good
and Amy regenerated them in my memory
with her simple signals.

Home is where Buzzy makes trouble
and Sissy keeps tabs
on my heart,
by sitting on it.

We’re just animals
with a home,
who take chances
at not being afraid.

I Saw the Sign

Ivo Andrić has a book I haven’t read yet called Signs by the Roadside. A good friend praises it and I trust her taste as she travels a lot and only takes a few belongings with her, this book being one of those.

Walking to work on Monday, I saw this sign on what was presumably a milk truck. It was odd to see it on a parked truck on Wabash Ave. I found it nostalgic and wondered what it was like to get milk from a milkman, especially one who really wanted to be your milkman. I of course chuckled as there are so many jokes about milkmen and all that they bring and a particular song it reminded me of.

Three days later, it’s Thursday and I’m catching up on my social media.  A private message from an acquaintance is oddly enough a video related to milk. I don’t drink milk, unless it’s in the form of yogurt, cheese, or kefir, so it must be a sign along Andrić’s roadside.

Yes, this video sent by the acquaintance was also a sign, a sign calling me to God’s dairy farm, reminding me that people who need milk sometimes pray for it, and their milkman comes with milk and all the money in his wallet to give, after he turned on seventh street of course. All these signs that were assigned meaning, from the number seven to milk and money.

Well honey, my milkman sign is here in Aphex Twin’s song. Give it a chance, won’t ya? It’s also a sign.

Konče & Džindže

Don’t have ’em,
don’t want ’em.

Having is gone, 
being is.

Cinnamon needs a lil more time to think of a rhyme.
Her new name takes getting used to as our bodies take growing into.

Focus focus, hocus pocus,
y’all forgive me always, ain’t no jokus.

Exercise, extra size,
breathe through the eyes.

Big paws and small flaws,
gots, needs, and haves.

Doo dooo doooo,
Toš and Šos were boš.

Then they got down,
now they’re moši moshi.

Sisters

Hello? 313 here.

Hello? 312 on the wire.

What’s shakin’ 312?

Daddy-o this joint is off the hook!

Indeed it is.

 

 

In other words:

The joint I’m talking about was the Underground Resistance performance at the Metro this past Sunday. Part of an all building event that featured Queen! DJ’s Derrick Carter, Michael Serafini, and Garret David downstairs at Smartbar with Detroiters, Timeline, John Collins, Mark Flash, and Wajeed upstairs at the Metro.

 

I almost lazed out on the whole thing if it wasn’t for my Detroiter sister who reminded me with her post, “I am jealous of Chicago.” Cold shower, refreshment and off I went.

 

As a Chicagoan I have gone and can go to hear Queen! any given Sunday, so I was most excited to hear Underground Resistance, whose live band Timeline performed. Timeline is Mike Banks, Jon Dixon, Mark Flash, and De’Sean Jones. As one dancer said of the performance, “this was something special.”

 

Something special indeed, not every day that you go to hear music from a techno collective, which includes piano, saxophone, and flute, in addition to legend Mike Banks.

About their performance: Piano may be the boss, but flute knows the route and saxophone brings it home.

 

The music alone did not make the special, but the atmosphere; the friendly dancers from Milwaukee, the colorful prancers and swancers from around the way. I was reminded of family, of cities as family; Detroit and Chicago as sisters. And of other family values: honor, respect, dignity, and integrity.

Respect to John Collins, not only for his brilliant set that brought us back, but for his thoughtful tour to our group when we visited Detroit’s secret techno museum last summer, and for the few words we shared at Sunday’s event.

And that’s all folks!

insperpiration

Annie Besant’s Thought Forms at Stony Island Arts Bank, Chicago

Always retain inspiration, seek it out, and keep it.

Yesterday happened a coincidence, where the same couple I see sitting in the train on the way downtown, I see them on my way back up, eight hours later.

Uncanny, this marvelous in the banal shall we say.

I purposely sat in the same seat so that I could repeat the afternoon’s journey and wondered if they also noticed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Anna Sui dresses, Detroit Historical Society

 

This evening, inspiration was regained through all the senses I do declare.

Firstly, from Yohji Yamamoto and Wim Wenders in Notebooks on Cities and Clothes,

where I learned from Yamamoto that asymmetry is human and from Wenders that forlorn is a word I forgot.

 

Après

 

From one music of Japan to another, where I had a moment of telepathy and understanding with fellow humans; clarity and solidarity.

I have not researched the artist as I am too lazy this evening, but his name was shing02 and he is based out of Tokyo and San Francisco maybe.

After the Bustin’ short that CK showed a few weeks back there was some of this cat’s music that popped up and it was a welcome refreshment.

 

I would be aki nezna in addition to ana nezna.

two pen names are better than one, i’m backing up these days.

Aki is both a Finnish and Japanese man’s name, but for me it’s a nickname and now another nom de plume.