inside the drawer from hell

Posted on by laurie macfayden

unable as i am to throw anything away,
i came across in the junk drawer the other day:

bits of string
expired pizza coupons
chinese takeaway menus
three hundred and sixteen twist ties
seven golf tees
recipes for chicken wings (i’ve been vegetarian
for twelve years)
screws of various lengths
fridge magnets
yellowed dilbert comics clipped from the newspaper
dental floss
the joker from a pack of playing cards
seed packets for wildflowers
a dead chapstick
a guitar pick
nine ketchup packets
dad’s swiss army knife
an eaton’s charge card
five dead batteries
shoelaces
folk fest wristbands from three different summers
several brittle elastics
two broken pencils
nine dried-out felt pens
thirteen business cards
joe’s wedding invitation
lorne’s funeral notice
a radio shack tape recorder
four “special” beer caps
a postcard from new york city
a plastic skull ring
ribbon
a bic lighter
eyepiece caps from a pair of binoculars
visa receipts from 2002
warranty cards for kettle and microwave (both of which
are long gone to kitchen appliance heaven)
film negatives clipped to photo reprint orders
popsicle sticks
a piece of petrified double bubble
a black and white photo of dad playing the harmonica
with jamie on his knee
a red crayon
fourteen ETS bus schedules, twelve of them out of date
a mix tape of songs from 1986
half of a very linty chocolate bar
an oilers key chain
picture hanging wire
three pairs of one-armed sunglasses
nineteen paper clips
candle ends
a kazoo

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

below the line:

and this is just the stuff that i KEPT …

backpacker delights

Posted on by laurie macfayden

Actual recipes taken from the Sequoia Lodge “travellers cook book”:

SPAM MUSUBI
Ingredients: 1 can Spam, soy sauce, brown sugar, white rice

Mix soy sauce and 2 spoons of brown sugar in a bowl. Cut Spam lengthwise into 5 or 6 slabs and dip them in the sauce. Pop ’em into a frying pan for 3-4 minutes a side. Cook a cup of rice, then mold the rice into the same size as da’ Spam slices. Place da Spam on top of the rice and wrap with
(recipe mysteriously ends here)

SWEET & SOUR VEGETABLES:
Chop onion/peppers/brocolli/carrots. Place in frying pan with small amount of oil. Fry for approx 5 minutes. Add a jar of sweet & sour sauce. (ed’s note: BRILLIANT!) Boil some rice to compliment the above stir fry. Serve and enjoy. Better and healthier than noodles!

BEANS ON TOAST:  1 can Wattlies beans; 2 slices cheddar cheese; 2 slices buttered toast; worstershire sauce (optional).
“Cook” beans in a pan til hot. Add cheese in pan (or put in half and sprinkle half on top). Pour beans over buttered toast and add a few drops of worcester sauce. BON APPETIT!
Approx prep time 2 min. Cook time 5 min. Eating time 10 min
(BEANS ARE HOT DUDE!)

CEREAL IN A BOWL:
Ingredients: Boxed cereal of choice (e.g. Muesli); milk.
Find bowl in cupboard. Pour cereal into bowl. Pour milk on cereal. Approx 250 ml.
Eat with spoon. Smashing!

BACK PACKER PASTA
Ingredients: 1 bag cheap pasta; 1 jar cheap sauce.
Cook cheap pasta / add cheap sauce. Eat.

CHEESE SANDWICH
Ingredients: 2 slices bread; 2 spoons mayones; 4 slice tomato; salt; cheese.
Make your self sandwich with the ingredients written up.
This is the best sandwich (although I haven’t found a good chees here in NZ)

(No good cheese in NZ? Man, are you kidding me?)

GLASSE O AQUA
Get glass. Fill with water from cold tap. Down the water instantly.

ZEN WATER
Get glass. Don’t fill with water. Contemplate empty glass.


Sign outside church in Marton, NZ:

“I am mysterious. Live with it.”  
                                                                   — God

songs from the road

Posted on by laurie macfayden

(To the tune of As Tears Go By):

It is the morning after Auckland
I ride the Overlander train
Ten hours of silver fern
Three flat whites and bad lasagne
I sit and watch the sheep go by

(To the tune of the Green Acres theme):

These hostels ain’t no place for me
Communal living’s a catastrophe
I just can’t stand to share my loo
Darling I love you but I need my own space to poo

(duh-duh-duh-duh-duh) The snores!
(duh-duh-duh-duh-duh) The bores!
(duh-duh-duh-duh-duh) Loud noise!
(duh-duh-duh-duh-duh) Rude boys!
The stove’s on the fritz … this sure ain’t the Ritz …
Backpackers, wash your feet!

Three Danish girls have plugged the sink
German men have a tobacco stink
Somebody lost the laundry key
Toilets won’t flush and I really do have to pee

REFRAIN (duh-duh-duh-duh-duh, etc.)

(To the tune of The 12 Days of Christmas):

On our trip through New Zealand, my true love gave to me

12 kegs of Monteith’s
11 pints of Speight’s ale
10 Hawkes Bay red wines
9 All Blacks jerseys
8 diving gannets
7 Hector’s dolphins
6 Anzac biscuits
5 million sheep
4 paua shells
3 sperm whales
2 king shags
and a gumboot filled with pavlova

hostel hostility

Posted on by laurie macfayden

OK, it’s official, i am not a people person. which i had kinda suspected for most of the last half-century but … staying at backpacker hostels has confirmed it.
sharing kitchen and bathroom space with other frugal-minded travellers with varying standards of cleanliness and etiquette and privacy considerations does not bring out the best in moi. like, just now, while i am quietly attempting to compose this blog post, a young bearded fellow has picked up a guitar and started to strum it. right in front of me. in MY space. and i don’t feel like hearing that just now, thank you very much. but, rather than throw my jandal at his inconsiderate head, i will merely sigh and conclude this snippet with something i just copied off the wall in the eating lounge:

The way to happiness is:

Keep your heart free from hate, your mind from worry. Live simply; give much. Fill your life with love.

Do as you would be done by.

(Buddha)

lonny hears lenny

Posted on by laurie macfayden

seamless. sublime. sexy. everything you’d expect from a leonard cohen concert. (everything i expected, anyway.)

heard the master at auckland’s vector arena last night and was, well, blown away. i’ll try not to gush on here too much, but it’s not often poets-cum-songwriters fill arenas and get standing ovations just for stepping onto the stage … and then get called back for seven encore numbers. sounding at times like tom waits, the gravel-voiced canadian icon treated the adoring new zealand crowd to an embrace of  “greatest hits” proportion. dressed to kill in a dapper black suit and fedora, he delivered many of his offerings from a crouch position, almost as if kneeling in prayer, and cradled the microphone in both hands like it was a baby chick or a fragile shell.

there doesn’t seem to be anything fragile about this still rakish-looking wordsmith, however — despite having worn his heart on his sleeve for five decades. the 75-year-old who still oozes sex appeal — damn! — was on the stage for almost three full hours, breaking for just one 20-minute intermission after the first hour and then bounding back for almost two straight hours of classic cohen, songs that celebrate  the light and the dark of the world and of the human condition, the human heart; our brokenness, our longing for love.

a man of few words between songs, he drew a huge, knowing laugh when he said “i studied the religions, the philosphies … but cheerfulness kept breaking through.” 

cohen’s angelic background vocalists, sharon robinson (longtime collaborator on many of his songs) and the webb sisters, hattie and charlie, take his arrangements to a whole nuther stratosphere. and his amazing band is tighter than tight. the whole package was powerful. spiritual. breathtaking. goosebump-inducing.

here is the song list from an unforgettable evening:

1st set:

dance me to the end of love
the future
ain’t no cure for love
bird on a wire
everybody knows
in my secret life
who by fire
chelsea hotel #2
hey, that’s no way to say goodbye
anthem (ring the bells)

2nd set:

tower of song
suzanne
the gypsy wife
the partisan
boogie street
hallelujah
i’m your man
thousand kisses deep
take this waltz

encores

so long mariane
first we take manhattan
famous blue raincoat

if it be your will
democracy is coming (to the USA)

i tried to leave you
wither thou goest


and sometimes when the night is slow
the wretched and the meek
we gather up our hearts and go
a thousand kisses deep

if the bruising

Posted on by laurie macfayden

if the whiskeyupside-hrts
flowed back in the bottle
if the bruising
branded the abuser

if the bite
if the cold
if the rip cord
if the night

if the sleepwalking
if the fist
if the charm
if the knife

if the wishing
if the dance
if the seduction
if the snake hair

if the pleasure
if the shock treatment
if the conjurer
if the memory

if the death card
if the half moon
if the fallen
if the believer

if the screaming
if the nail
if the kind word
if the redemption

if the mercy kill
if the tainted
if the bleeding
if the comfort

if the breathless
if the standing
if the quicken
if the mask

if hand on mouth
if broken bone
if strip mine
if purple rage

if jealousy
if smacking lip
if hatred
if the obscene

if the baby
if the connection
if deliverance
if the hard kiss

if the “go faster”
if the forbidden
if the bad touch
if the hurricane

if the perfection
if the tiger eye
if the simple truth
if the forgiveness

when private people go public

Posted on by laurie macfayden

many of you are aware that i walked away from a 30-year career in journalism last summer in order to concentrate full-time on my own writing and painting. the latest step in this ongoing creative process is the construction — finally — of lauriemacfayden.com — a website devoted to my visual art.

it’s been a weird evolution for me. ask anyone in my family and they’ll tell you i was a painfully shy girl growing up. shy, and intensely private. i used to hide in my room when company — even relatives — came to our door because i didn’t want to have to talk to anybody. school assignments that involved public speaking almost paralyzed me. piano recitals (ugh) would have me sweating buckets weeks in advance.

it took the better part of three decades, but somewhere along the line i seem to have gotten over most of that. i now feel totally comfortable reading at open-mic stages and poetry festivals, and have almost gotten used to seeing my paintings on view in public spaces (although, oddly, hanging my art up on display, in relative anonymity, has proven to be much more gut-wrenchingly stressful than reading to a room full of strangers potentially armed with insults, tomatoes or, worse, indifference).

nashcan-blog1almost a year ago i started this blog, a step i felt would help me become more comfortable with the idea of exposing my writing and arty bits to a wider audience. the catch-22 there is that the wider audience (which all artists/writers desire, right?) leaves the artist more vulnerable. by inviting more people to pay attention to your work, you are opening the door to more criticism of your work. you may believe you can handle it, only to discover that criticism can be unwelcome, unpleasant, unfair, scary, destructive, demoralizing, and all of the above. obviously the more public you go, the thicker your skin needs to be. that’s a given; otherwise your tender artist’s psyche may collapse under the strain … forcing you to retreat back to the comfort of anonymity (not to mention poverty. thank you, stephen harper.)

i wasn’t sure whether i would stay with the blog after the honeymoon euphoria of the first few posts wore off. but i started getting a few regular readers, a few comments … and now i have had more than 5300 views on this little spatherdab entity. i realize that’s not a lot — there are celebrity bloggers out there who get thousands of hits per day. but for me, a little goes a long way. it is very satisfying to receive a comment from someone i don’t know and will probably never meet, from, say, texas or glasgow, telling me they love a poem they found on my blog, or that they really like a certain painting i’ve shown online. but it can also be disconcerting to get e-responses from people claiming to be fans of poetry who have clearly missed the point and really just want to argue with you; or overly enthusiastic strangers wanting to get a little too chummy; or unsavory entrepreneurs whose ulterior motive is to link your page to their international house of spam.

vulnerability factor aside, i think i’m going to enjoy having my very own dotcom page (thank you very much to the fine folks at MG creative).
do check it out if you have time. feedback is always welcome.
as long as you aren’t trying to sell me auto insurance.

red, white and blue all over

Posted on by laurie macfayden

i’m back in e-town after a week in nashville.
i love to travel, so generally any road trip is a good trip … but i’m still trying to sort out my conflicting gut impressions of music city.

some of the high notes:

  • getting to hear john irving (the world according to garp, hotel new hampshire, cider house rules, a prayer for owen meany, etc.) deliver a free lecture to an almost-packed house at the ryman auditorium. irving spoke at length about the state of publishing in america, and the importance of libraries (“there you can still find the classics; most of the books in a bookstore today are crap”).
    he talked about censorship and book-banning in the u.s.a. (“americans love to ban things. there’s no law that says you have to read a book before you can ban it.”) and how that spills over into issues like same-sex marriage and abortion rights: “the instinct to suppress is always there. suppression is very american: if you don’t like something, don’t let ANYONE have it. my own attitude is, if you don’t like abortion, don’t have one. and why should it matter to straight couples if gay couples get married? how insecure can they be? all over the world, i am asked: ‘what is the problem you americans have with gays, with abortion, with sex, with drinking?’ ah, yes, drinking. remember how well prohibition worked.”
    his advice to young aspiring writers: “read every book you can get your hands on, see every play that you can. if you’re fortunate enough to become a (successful) writer, there’ll come a time when you’ll want to write more than you read. and then you won’t read anymore. the time to read everything … is when you’re young. being a widely-read person is the only defence there is from crap, from the junk. you’ve just gotta read as much as you can. read, read, read.”
  • the frist, the rymer gallery, cheekwood museum: there’s a whole lot more to tennessee than country music, jack daniel’s, football and barbecue. there’s a thriving arts scene, for example. but it can be hard to find when the titans are 9-0, and the CMA awards are coming to you live from 5th and broadway, and elvis paraphernalia assaults you from every souvenir shop window.
  • the honky tonks: thumbs up to the concept of rotating bands at live music venues all through the day and long into the night. no cover? even better. nothing but budweiser and pabst on tap? pity.
  • the country music hall of fame/museum: awesome! as you’ve probably guessed, i’m not a huge country fan but it was hard not to be dazzled by this outstanding multi-layered attraction which includes an amazing array of musical instruments, rhinestone jackets, satin shirts, belts, and of course cowboy hats and boots. elvis’s gold piano and cadillac, webb pierce’s “silver dollar” car, and johnny cash’s black shirts are just a few of the gems preserved in Sing Me Back Home, the museum’s permanent exhibit which includes artifacts, photographs, original recordings, archival video, and interactive displays that glorify the history and sounds of country music. . . (did you know there was a song called “dern ya” recorded in feminist response to roger miller’s hit “dang me”?). there are walls and walls of gold & platinum records (anne murray’s on there at least twice), bill monroe’s gibson F5 (“the most famous mandolin in American music history”), and a gift shop that stocks thousands of CD titles, not to mention googoo clusters — a confection item involving chocolate, peanuts and marshmallow that’s apparently been an american tradition since 1912 and is manufactured right there in nashville.
  • the grand ole opry: yes, indeedy, i attended the opry at the ryman. saw vince gill and randy owen and mel tillis (pam’s dad) and diamond rio and marty stuart, and a parade of geezers from the glory days of the ’50s and’ 60s. i had fun … still, couldn’t help but notice that there wasn’t a single person of colour in the entire audience. (the ryman is located two blocks from a boulevard named in honour of rosa l. parks. if you’re missing the connecting thread … google rosa parks.)walkhank1

    … and some sour notes:

  • kevin costner and modern west. kevin, give it up. you are not a singer. you are barely an actor. put an end to this charade right now and let us remember you for bull durham and dances with wolves … not for your feeble attempts at becoming a country crooner.
  • the veterans day parade. in canada, regardless of how you feel about war, november 11 tends to be a day of solemn remembrance, of showing respect for victims of war; a day for honouring those who gave their lives in battle. it’s two minutes of silence at 11 a.m. on the 11th day of the 11th month. for many it’s a day of sadness; of sombre reflection and gratitude.nashclown1
    in the states, if nashville is any indication, november 11 is a day to flex your military muscle by rolling your tanks and jeeps down main street while marching bands play peppy tunes, shriners in garish fake arab costumes (oh, the irony) ride around in ridiculous little miniature cars, and soldiers atop armored tanks spin their turrets at clowns mugging for cheap laughs. (excuse me, i seem to have forgotten… somebody please remind me again what’s funny about war?)
    perhaps most pathetic was the sight of white-haired veterans in their 80s and 90s crowded onto wagons and flatbeds pulled by tractors, smiling and waving feebly at people on the sidewalks. these were clearly soldiers from wars prior to vietnam and desert storm, before iraq and afghanistan. knowing how the current administration treats, er, ignores the broken veterans of its more recent military actions … well, let’s just say it was harder to stomach than the googoo clusters.

when god goes to the ballpark

Posted on by laurie macfayden

in honour of the fall classic…

When God goes to the ballpark,
to whose prayers does She,
in Her infinite wisdom, decide to respond?
Favourably?

When God goes to the ballpark, how does She decide
which team to root for? Does She flip a coin,
or toss a bat and do that old schoolyard
hand-over-fists-up-the-handle trick?

Do you suppose She sits back and surveys the stadium
(surely not a domed abomination; Astroturf is clearly the work of the devil)
and says, “I’m going to throw my everlasting support behind the Yankees today,
because Mike Mussina could really use some help with his ERA, and damn,
those pinstripes look goooooood!”

When the batter who hit the winning home run
thanks God for being there with him at the plate,
thanks God for letting him make hard contact,
thanks God for allowing him to just keep it between
the white lines, to just stay within himself
and put the ball in play; when that batter thanks God
for allowing him to win the game for his team …
who is the losing pitcher praying to?
Is he cursing his God for making him think too much?
For the hangnail that caught on the seam of that split-finger fastball?
For lobbing out that big, fat beach ball, right up the middle of the strike zone,
smack dab on the sweet spot, practically daring their cleanup hitter
to swat it out of the park — instead of striking him out
with a 92-mile-an-hour fastball that should have spun him
into next week? Is that loser crying, “Why hast thou forsaken me
and my famous knuckleball?”

Do you suppose God is a southpaw?

How come you never hear the losing pitcher,
after a particularly demoralizing defeat, say,
“I’d like to blame my God for preventing me from being led into temptation;
for not delivering me from the beer hall last night; for placing me here on the mound today with a splitting headache, too hungover to pitch effectively.
I know it was my God who screwed up that easy toss to first base …
because we coulda-shoulda-woulda beaten those bastards
if only God had been on our side.”
How come you never hear that?

When God goes to the ballpark, why doesn’t She toss down
a bolt of lightning after a particularly bad call?
And why doesn’t She hit the thunder switch
when the manager deliberately spits tobacco juice on the umpire’s shoes?
Or when the shortstop won’t stop scratching his groin?

When God goes to the ballpark, does She order
the watered-down $9 draft beer and those awful nachos,
the ones that taste like soggy Styrofoam and are covered
in that disgusting orange goo? Or does she opt
for something more traditional, like a reliable ballpark frank?
Does God bark at a pimply-faced kid:
“Let me have one of those jumbo dogs with all the trimmings?”

No, even though She has access to all
the earthly condiments under heaven, and then some,
God probably chooses the basic traffic lights — ketchup, mustard and relish:

“Hold the onions, boys, because there’ll be lots of people
wanting my advice later on today, and I don’t want bad breath
when I have to tell all those sinners they’re no longer in the starting lineup …
but in the meantime the serpent’s on third base, Eve’s warming up in the bullpen,
and that’s strike three and you are outtttta there!”