Oh the Disney weighs heavily, yes? Yes. Let us step back and refresh ourselves again. There will be many days marching ahead…

title : waiting for lily
medium : oil pastel on paper, wood support
dimensions : 5″ x 7″ (ish)

title : mixed wood
medium : oil pastel on paper, wood support
dimensions : 5″ x 7 ” (ish)

title : lake Calabogie
medium : oil pastel on paper, wood support
dimensions : 5″ x 7 ” (ish)

title : drift
medium : oil pastel on paper, wood support
dimensions : 5″ x 7 ” (ish)

title : cedars
medium : oil pastel on paper, wood support
dimensions : 5″ x 7 ” (ish)

These were all made during a cottage visit with my family in July of 2001. They’re not what I’d call spectacular but they are sincere. cedars is quite good. As a matter of fact they represent a period of a few months between bars of the Disney Suite when I had turned the Sticky Rat et. al to the wall and tried to put it all out of mind.

Not long after returning to my apartment in Toronto I was invited to show with three other Canadian women at the University of Wisconsin. But what? The rat, of course. Who else to send to cheese-country? Three days into my underdrawing for what would become my rendering of Our Way of Life planes crashed mercilessly into buildings.

There wasn’t much resting after that, not for a long time.

I will end this post with another poem from my one and only compilation, Miss Ellaneous – Image, image, image.

September 13, 2001/Oscar Night spring 2002

It’s like a movie.
Everyone said so.

I saw you on television,
cell phones
nailed to your heads,
your attention — evenly divided.

Waiting outside a Boston hotel,
all you see are cameras.
You vibrate.
The need to be
in the pictures, your pulse;
you imagine yourself
watching you later.

“Tape it! Are you taping it…?”

“Of course!”

You smiled. You laugh.

You’re waiting for
movie stars.
Your Oswald.
Your Boston strangler.

Whomever whispers
in your ear — sees you.
I saw you search the screen.
Never more real in your life.
You waved. You preen.

I note — my tenses shifting.
These mirrors are made of sand.
In concrete hives, in darkened cells,
blue screen drip feeds,
synchronous.

Look.
But you cast no shadow.
It is for nothing.
We are the extras.

They reopened Disney World today.
Business as usual.
Guaranteed.