Snippets, Drawings

She's been quite the domestic dame lately. She's attempting to do needlepoint. It's been quite an adventure, indeed! Her pieces strut proudly across the fabric, little trophies of her efforts.







What lovely things should she stitch next?

Drawings, like daydreams, rise from blank paper with unexpected lines, miscalculated emotion.

Pretty Red Lips, Driftless

Today she visited a little town with art galleries lining the main street, called Mineral Point. It's Fall Art Tour weekend, where all the artists open their shops and display their very best pieces. For the occasion, she decided to do her lipstick and makeup and wear a checkered dress she bought from the mall in the city.

Her mom gave her earrings with spiders in them; she said that they were too "Halloweeny" to be worn everyday. She thinks they're just right.





A friend picked this book up for her a year ago, and she's decided to read it recently. Funny how the book is about the area in which she lives. What a coincidence! The small villages, rolling hills, and sleepy country roads are so very familiar, yet they seem from a faraway dream...

Vacation House

She wants to find herself a little niche somewhere in between city and the countryside. There she'll construct a house made of paper, woven together by bits of daydreams and snippets of longings. Inside will smell of fallen leaves, and she'll watercolor the walls with songbirds and dandelions. There'll be tea in the cupboards and cakes in the fridge; cats will lounge flatly against the windows and somewhere, salvaged from her grandmother's centenarian dining room, a record player that will only tolerate Pavarotti and Swan Lake will be housed comfortably.

Mornings here are greeted with golden dawns and dark mugs of coffee. Evenings are celebrated with a fireplace and chamomile. There is plenty of time here for those menial things one leaves behind, those domestic little delights that newer generations have chosen to forget. Here, in a house of walls as thin as flesh, there is little separation between obligation and whimsy. One does as one wishes.
Stay here for a bit. Lounge and contemplate. Read and wonder.

But remember.
This is only a vacation house, a little oasis for troubled times. You mustn't come here too often. Beginning with the very tips of your extremities, you're sure to disappear bit by bit as soon as you hop the return train to Reality.

The Door Tree

The door tree stands at the center of the world. Its branches pierce the veil that is the heavens, its roots wind deep into the layers of hell. When the time is right, the windows and doors open. They are mirrors of humanity, reflections of our own souls. At the seat of the tree a demon dwells, pulling strings and opening doors, beckoning to passerby.

Come, look inside.

Please, Please, Please

Just before morning, just before she's fully awake, and also when the spot on the bed next to her is cold and empty, she curls under the covers and lets her mind fly. She thinks of cities. Not towns, not villages, not suburban wastelands--no. Cities.

Skyscrapers that tickle bloated clouds, playing with the blue of the sky. Neighborhoods with menial little parks and singular trees. Sidewalks. Benches. Galleries. It makes her want to bite her cuticles to a pulp. Cities seem so big and scary and crowded and lonely.



She misses Chicago. It's odd how, in her mind, a city can at once be a place of new beginnings and romantic notions, and at the blink of an eye, a dwelling for only heartache and lonely existences. Paradox, paradox. She doesn't dream anymore, but rather frets until her stomach knots.

Hear a Punk Rock Song, and We Sing Along

There are no better nights for punk rock than those precious few at the summer's end. Her heart aches. The music blares. She rubs the toes of her boots together so the pleather squeaks.

Academia looms just around the corner, and soon these little pains will be masked by books and studying and running. It's all so exciting, so frightening, that it runs tingles up her spine to linger across her sternum.

She helped give Sir Charles a mohawk. The results were ever so fantastic!



Hey, Suburbia!

Drawings, but Colored

Did she ever tell you that she drew pictures? Lots and lots of pictures? Pictures to fill sketchbooks and stick on the walls and take up all the musty corners in one's life? She's one of those fantastical girls, you see, who dreams of ferocious beasts and realms of fantasy.

But there's a little problem.

She despises coloring her own work. But it is so good to have a dear friend who colors her work so willingly! Emma took colored pencils to her linework, and here are the beautiful results to show!





Here's an elephant with squid's legs. He's looking a little plain. Who will color him? ♥