Les Mains Bien Occupées

Apparently every room is a Reading Room at the British Library

All over Battersea, some hope and some despair

And some take pictures of strikingly coloured plants.

Saturday was all about puffins so Sunday I drew this. The end.

Sunday jamming with the dudes

Emily Speed’s ‘Carapaces’ at the Leeds Art Gallery for the Northern Art Prize Exhibition.

Every Wednesday from 12:30pm onwards two people roll this box structure through the room. I could be paranoid but I think that they were following me.

Wally Weepul, keeping me on the straight and narrow.

For a time my mother’s aunt (my Ba Nam) worked at a weepul factory in Oklahoma City. I wish I was able to elaborate more on this story. At the time, this fact was no more unusual than mom using nuoc mam in the spaghetti sauce or Auntie Xuan violently sniffing faces to show her love. Later I will learn this is called, ‘schema’.

Growing up I was never short of weepuls. Open a kitchen drawer: find a weepul. Look up to the top shelf: spot a weepul. Hit the snooze button: thump a weepul. An imaginative stranger might think that they were the clownlike cousin of the Tribbles, endearing themselves with their little fuzzy faces only to take over the house via excessive breeding. The reality was far less sinister; every Christmas during my childhood a bag of them would appear in the care package from Ba Nam. Like a trick-or-treater appraising their haul, I would inspect each one and divide them on the merits of their character: a pile for me, a pile to share among the house, a pile to give away to friends.

It wasn’t until I was 13 and enrolled in a new school that I find out that they were called ‘weepuls’ – it had never occurred to me that they had their own name. I don’t remember what I called them before I learned of their name; ‘Pom-pom things’? At this school were tasked to sell wrapping paper for charity and as a reward were given weepuls. You can imagine the prize did not hold the same cachet for me as for my peers. Weepuls were abundant in my world and, besides, mine were unique.

You see, the pencils and weepuls shared the commonalities of being from grandparents and being defective - that’s why I’d have bags of them in the first place. I never cared that they were imperfect. Their eccentricities made them delightful. Like a husky, their eyes wouldn’t match – except they were supposed to be bears. Like an American, their grins would be toothy – but they were supposed to be hens. They were absurd and they were mine.

Oh poor weepul how life has been cruel,
With your paper gone, can’t stick to a stool.
How will you hear us with a foot for an ear?
With a nose for an eye, can’t shed a tear.


Can you reach very high with an arm for a hat?
Do you spend your time waving or patting your back?
Do you feel lonely, being one of a kind?
You’ll always have me, your friend, Jmai.

We’ve just had three applications to our club!

The two on the left are obvious Club material, but the little one on the right is still being reviewed. I mean, what time is it and she’s still wearing her pjs?! And is that a BRIBE in her hand? We’re going to need to get that girl a new shirt and some decency!


(photo belongs to CESD - thanks!)

First there were the Bobsters. Then there were the Tahoes.

Everyone who’s just come back from Merikey talks about the excesses of the food, both in terms of size and ingredients. By the time I reached the third week in my holiday it was catching up to me - I had debilitating stomach pains the whole NYE2013 Tahoe retreat. Mostly I’d nap (on the bear) and then take breaks from napping to eat, cook during my round, coordinate outfits, fall into the snow and throw down some cards.

This photo was from our first night up there.

Does ruin your stripey shirt for you? OR does it produce psychoanalytic notions of ambivalence which you’ve just realized make you want to join our club? We’ve been talking about it and think we could do with some more members.

You: have a striped long sleeved shirt, identify as female, are cute as a button and sharp as a tack, have a Vietnamese connection (not a deal breaker but yes, Blondie was practically raised by Viets!)

We: will help you explore and overcome your ambivalence. We are the above things plus Skype on the weekends, craft together, support each others’ trials and tribulations, swap paperbacks; etc. In short, we’re a good bunch.

I mean, if we were to allow new members, we would change our club-name because you didn’t go to Tahoe, OBVSLY. But don’t worry, that is part of the fun! And I’m probably not supposed to admit this, but I think you’re a shoo-in.

Kanga from Madagascar (aq. 1979)
I Remember the first part of the translation:
“No harm will come to the wearer of this cloth…”

The next part is kind of fuzzy. I think it was,
“unless Jim is driving the Google Bus”.

From Social Fabric: African Textiles Today at the British Library.

p.s. I hope my Google friends know I am not making fun of them for riding the Google Bus (yes, you know who you are!). I don’t have anything more against Google than the next blog - after all it was at Google that I learned that there IS such thing as a free lunch. Just loved that Google bus article in the LRB and now it’s got me and R-DMC totally preoccupied with dreaming up what life is like on there.

My favourite cup fell on the floor
Tipped from the shelf, used no more.
I’d drink from it my morning tea
Its grooved surface felt pleasing.

I meant to move it from its place
But my sleepy haze prevented grace.
And now it lies there split in view
One cup remains; no tea for two.