Ephemera, snapshots, stamps of all kinds, snippets of poetry, forgotten claim checks, former “safe house” addresses, secret compartments and whatnot all conspire to create a passport – with decoder book not included (consider Lamb’s edition of Shakespeare, without the poetry)
Everything is significant, coincidence is futile
Expired Yugoslavian Passport turned secret diary of poetry & ephemera, shared with a friend never met (like most of you) in Gifu. He’s from BC and met my brother in another life, somehow. Heck of a writer.
Anyhow, we fill up pages as desired and mail back and forth like a secret for everyone to see.
Opening a big santa sack of recent items by post including aerogrammes/ aerograms, passports, international driver’s licenses, documents, hotel letterhead, records (namechecking recent interview on Rice Field Records), postcards, etc from Nepal, Monaco, East German DDR, probably i dunno… Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, United Nations, others i don’t quite understand.
Also mail from Ukraine which allows mention of intrepid postal workers delivering despite war and displacement, + blabbity blah about guest coming to visit, feeling discombobulated after #MECFS “crash mode” – that’s it except the parts i forgot. Argh prob a ramble about the “passport forgery project” {recalling i riffed about taking “intimate documents” and adding life to them}
{this should and will be a separate bonus post but in the meanwhile…}
Continue reading Sort-ganizing Ephemera by Post (with Royal Dudes & the Muffs)Remixing expired passports from Romania and Albania into “dossiers of mystery and tactical intrigue” complete with endorsements, visas, assignments, sightings, safe houses, maps, aliases, poetry, ephemera, snippets, stamps – both ink and postal – musings, memos, codes, secrets.
Completely usual behavior – carry on with your diligent efforts.
Checkpoints include: Sri Lanka, Nepal, Diego Garcia, Vatican, Athens, Kyoto… etc + green beavers and diligent dogs
Continue reading Forging Passports, so to speak (“life during wartime”)Why yes, I am very official, thank you for asking.
Entered the TinTin phase of Ichiro’s life:
Well blistering barnacles, no internationally minded youth misses out on that goodness that is Tin Tin, I have a complete collection including the “rather awkward” ones written in that *cough cough* colonial European mindset.
We’re enjoying Tintin in Tibet right now (and I’m up playing the friendship angle and downplaying the plane crash angle considering our upcoming travel at his fascination with airplanes).
Yesterday, after seitai, we stopped at a secondhand shop to purchase a couple more dining room chairs, shelf and whatnot… The secondhand stores here are really fantastic and we furnished our house in our eclectic style thanks to these treasure troves, but the point is: There was a model ship, triple masted, vaguely like The Unicorn, on a shelf and while we were purchasing the other larger items I said “and I will take that as well!” (pretending I’m paying in US dollars so I’m getting a great deal – macro economic currency humour is great right?)
Brought it home and a little guy right away realized that it was “just like Tintin” and the Unicorn. He examined it very carefully, which was a relief because he’s at that stage were smashing things is a lot more fun :)
Speaking of: here at my “creative life archive” (fancy name for a blog) scheduled on the 31st is a photo of me doing my best to dress up as tin Tintin in the crappy suburbs in probably 1978, my glasses kind of ruining the whole thing and spent the night trying to explain to people who I was… people would say “Rintintin the dog?” I would roll my eyes and sadness/discussed and stumble away with my crappy candy wishing i could go live in some exotic land.
Also at this aforementioned “don’t call it a blog“ is field notes from a Hergé museum exhibit in Quebec city with loads of his original sketches but even better for me, ephemera, his supplies, kit bag, inspiration items all that kind of stuff. Have you seen it? I mean I expect everyone has seen every post that I put out there so I mean, you must have :-) geez, there is even a [TinTin Fun category]
Photographic Evidence
Picked up 2 family studio portraits (1 of the three of us and 1 of wife as a young girl with mother, father and younger brother) we had matted, edged (filleted?), framed and holy smokes, so great! Fancy times & so worth it. Going to make a gallery on a wood panel wall soon.
One is the three of us is from the “time traveler“ series a couple years ago / matted with burgundy, gold edge and carved up wood frame and looks quite Taisho era: mysterious and majestic.
The wife & in-laws photo has kind of a mirror image pose with “lost in Showa” beige vibes + kimono splash. Both F-i-L and I have rather “serious/neutral” expressions, both photos have baby feet and Mothers with Fujii-family trademark short-cut hair.
Will hang up soon and will look so great. Next up: photo shoot with Grandparents and us all together… so we go on #AxeHandles
Hospital Switcheroo
Not of particular interest to anyone but, for the record: Finished hopefully-last visit to the “big city hospital” it’s shiny and efficient however from now, the diligent if a-bit-worn Okayama University Hospital with their MECFS program is my primary point of contact and care.
Reminder of this article about MECFS in The Atlantic (i’ve printed it and taken to Doctors) by Ed Yong is really worth reading to understand a bit about the weird medical conundrums which me and many many deal with. Oh and a great recap by someone called Heather about “10 things i wish people knew about ME“.
Grateful Dead Dave’s Picks
Trying *not* to buy too many records of late due to impending trip (more later) but the new “Dave’s Picks” Grateful Dead is from the Eugene 1990 shows, ergo:
Also Neal Casal “Illuminations for the Dead” which was made special for the set break music at the Grateful Dead 50th anniversary shows – instrumental, ethereal, atmospheric – but sadly Neal packed it in shortly thereafter :(
And Dan Mangan’s new offering “Being Somewhere” is en route, just missing “Postcards and Daydreams” to complete my vinyl archive including the 10 year reissues for “Nice Nice Very Nice” and “Oh Fortune”
Also listening to Television (as discussed in recent “Rock and Beat Generation” video – piqued by great article in The Ringer by Elizabeth Nelson, ergo:
Aside: Need to re-up my cardigan stash with 2+ decent wool all-around-ers.
Current are a little bit too shabby (even for my “weary/eccentric community college prof” style) & cotton ones are quickly becoming inadequate for season.
Now, how do I do this without leaving the house?
Note: I like “aged/classic“ communication methods but what I don’t miss: long distance phone bills (remember being stiffed so many times cause i was the sucker with a Sprint card). And my seitai Dr just gifted me a classic black rotary phone! Will sit like a noble buffalo in the studio so i can call you whenever i can’t.
(pending) Book project
Pals have namechecked for #NaNoWriMo( which is awesome National Novel Writing Month campaign) but I’m not attaching my star to it because I’m physically incapable of sitting at a chair and banging out 50,000 words // my head has the stories no doubt but the body won’t cooperate so instead I’m using the month to assemble poems like Lego bricks and hide out in the barn…
It’s really also a “mental reset“ from this year of endless paperwork, I mean so much paperwork and so many hospital visits.
The good news is: the recent medication/IV routine and seasonal weather changes here have given me a little bit of a spark / Summer was brutal, typhoon season crushed what was left of my head, but now it’s chilly, crisp and sunny. So aside from a neighbour (probably 3 km away) trimming their grass requiring me to close the window, I’ve managed to patch together a couple “good days” in a row. Just writing this though I feel like I’m jinxing it. But, I’ll eat my oatmeal and head to work at a standing bench desk with records playing and probably record somekind of meta-documentation (unsurprisingly) and see how we roll on.
So, recap: Planning on spending November in the barn assembling a book of poetry, with snippets of letters, maybe some musings, prose riffs… I’m not sure yet but… Importantly, I want the book to “look and feel beautiful”.
I’m not sure what I will do for publication whether that’s self/on demand, shop it out to a boutique publisher but it’s really important to me that it’s typeset to look timeless and dammit, gorgeous and be printed on paper stock with a nice hand.
I think I will add in some black-and-white Lomo images just for atmosphere in section breaks but stay away from color so it doesn’t become an unwieldy expense for people to collect/purchase.
Mostly I just don’t want it to look like that sort of “I made this book in Word and sent it as a PDF“ typography style if you know what I mean. Margins, gutters, typefaces are all very important but I don’t really have the true skills.
Anyhow, i’m making the book for Stanley (before he heads off to sea)
Further evidence of “working on some thing” about Jack Kerouac exhibit in Kobe, Japan 2021 – hardly shocking I know, but hey, here are many “On the Road” etc related items. Plus the typewriter to show I’m serious(ly) slow.
{What I’m trying to say is}, I keep trying to make/finish my “Kerouac and Kobe” video but keep on make more complicated, I made an *incredibly awesome* static-montage stop-motion animation intro, and recorded a vaguely-loquacious and informational outro but… it’s the middle part – you know, the part that actually matters with interview with Prof Matt Theado – I’m stuck at because requires sitting in front of the computer screen and my goodness, my eyes are kind of shot these days.
Keep on thinking I’ll finish it up but I haven’t so this is me killing time and trying to stoke the stoke to sit at the big screen (yes, I have a monitor that is made for “sensitive eyes” but still…)
Anyway, maybe you can play iSpy (with your little eye)?
Cascadia passport, coming along. I’ve stamped up a bunch of the inside pages with beavers, dogs, notary stamps and other unauthorized items.
Besides the “official Cascadia Consulate post box” I have a flag and I’m authorized to stamp passports… So make sure you are carrying yours when you visit as my kura barn studio is the “official Cascadia consulate” for Setouchi bioregion.
Note: I should install some kind of flag pole with a string and pulley to raise it like I have my own “moonrise kingdom” campsite.
Make sure to bring yours when you come visit (eventually, you can’t right now).
Get in on the fun and revolutionary goodness at: https://cascadiabioregion.org/ it’s kind of quite fantastic what some renegades have put together. Inclusive, nuanced, & aware.
(fuzzy photos of) notebooks of poetry, notes, musings etc – set to transcribe, eventually…
this batch includes a Yukon-made silk screened book – a gift from Bollwitts – plus an assortment of remixed The Royal Tenenbaums books, a handmade Japanese washi book and re-purposed passport.
sometimes i feel like because i am not one of those “writer every day” writers, i don’t get *enough done*, then i tidy up desk adn realized i have a stack of notebooks filled with scribbles, lists, notes, observations, full grown poems, lyrics, letters and so on, waiting for a transcription into another more shareable form. so i stack em up to do so and realize i still havent done the typity-type-type with a stack of others, yet somehow its all ok – art makes the future and all that and all that.
I’ve started modifying old passports with ink, stamps, ink stamps, fake maps & assumed espionage… this means late night eBay buying Albanian passports. Just so many weird good items to remix i cant/wont/dont stop.
The paper is so tactile / interesting & with all the visa stamps, (stapled) photos (sometimes Mom & kids in one photo), stamps, visas, details of all kinds + occasional ephemeral papers slipped in.& almost-intimate details make such a starting point for stories. {note: takes a bit of daring to desecrate at first, however lovingly}.
I ones i purchase are $10 or so. Yugoslavs are cheap. CCCP/USSR and DDR can get more expensive. Lots of Romania, Bulgaria and old Kingdom of Greece stuff. Odd (in a way) how this sort of ephemera is abundant from some countries, scarce from others.
The US ones (above) are great, via Israel… perhaps/seems Israeli citizen(s) had applied for US citizenship, gone to US and other countries and eventually returned. these ones have a loads of country stamps so interesting to speculate on story. Again, feels rather intimate and mysterious.
Several i’ve picked up seem to be “the last one before emigrating”. Now i’ll continue the story with my odds and ends and alterations and possibly put up for sale/trade to continue their journey. {i should probably do that etsy shop…}
Oh and while i’m passporting, had an extra “headband” photo so finally decorated up my The Matinee “Dancing on Your Grave” passport. Will be scribbling in poetry and usual inky stamps on the pages within.
Note to self: finish tuning up Cascadia passport from & share here
PS since i’m typing… more random passport-inspired items in archive (i have almost all of my mine from various countries) plus other related:
After my dad Lorne H Olson passed and we sorted through his papers, I took custody of a few various pieces of paper ephemera to document and curate as is my custom.
I’ve share a few bits and pieces from his life and next up (since today in anniversary of opening) is his passport for Expo 86, the worlds fair that was a *big deal* in Vancouver.
As it goes, I have kind of mixed feelings and memories about this as my parents had recently separated, I ended up in Utah with Mom but got a Volkswagen bus and returned for a summer of hijinks with my pals.
I recall two of my younger brothers had season passes and more visits for sure (perhaps they’ll chime in), and also recall that with my older brother, we had been at inaugural concerts the fancy new domed BC Place (Bowie, Gabriel, Tubes + Guess Who at a BC Lions game) – I had adventures skateboarding around the new stadium, rode the Skytrain (ALRT) from New West (before Surrey extension, rambled around geodesic dome Science world… {From when I was about 12-3 in Whalley, I started skipping school and heading downtown to spend my paper route money on records at Odyssey Imports, Collector’s RPM and other record shops on Seymour and Granvilles St. what not… But I digress…}
