Sibling sobriety

She says she got fatter when she was with me. My couch invites to teen TV shows, midnight freezer French fries, and all day chicken finger buffets. She says they took their toll. So the six weeks I stayed on my sisters couch have long past, and she’s back to treadmills and dining like a member of the voting public. Bollocks.

She’s got a new puppy and partner to keep her happy, has her brother out her hair. Still she Skypes me to trade Christmas lists, sends messages reminding of parent’s birthdays. And as she does she asks me what happened to all those photos I made her take in warmer weather.

Pulled from the back of my iPhoto, here they are, pictures of my pretty sister.

Dear Manitoba: in the words of the great teen lyricist Stephen Lee Klein, it's been a summer.

Ballet in the park was beautiful.

Out with the old, in with the Andrea

It took ten minutes to drive the golf cart from her home to mine. Over the train tracks and down a gravel road, pull left onto the highway and right into my driveway. We didn’t have licenses or cars or anywhere to be, just cameras and time to kill in basements.

She dressed up in a furs and feather boas, I in ties and blazers. We poured slurpees into cocktail glasses and marched into town to rent movies. Pulled on ponchos to canoe in rainy rivers, explored junkyards and garbage dumps and boarded up schoolhouses.

We’ve long left Carman to find new cities, countries, and continents to play on. But after six years of bouncing back and forth between opposing spaces, we’re spending a summer in one place, together.

The car keys light the engine, time for one more adventure.

Slurpee Season

Only in Winnipeg will someone ask for change so they can
"buy a slurpee."

Playing in the Sandbox

The New Culture, the book says, paints a picture of a city young and modern. And it is, we are, we guess, whatever. Dress up and stand next to dressing rooms, gulp down drinks and watch the models.

The music at the bar is not so new, more re-mixed, re-lived sounds from not so long ago at clubs in other cities. So the moves come quick, pulled from back the brain, hips shake and arms toss in the same way they once did at Circa.

Double takes bring back bands and shows from forever go, girls look different in party dresses and out of argyle emo sweaters. Suddenly I’m sixteen, nineteen, twenty-two, all at once, together. Shake head and move with the music. Relax into it and dance with the feeling.

The folks and the festival (day two)

In the a.m. the car radio rings true. Sit on a trunk of mosquito spray and sweaters, Pharrell sings to me, woke up in the clothes I had on last night. Damn. I must have passed out.

As it was: a stranger sleeps soundly in a lawn chair round the ashes. Wake to stories of fistfuls of mushrooms and hits of acid. Check the bottle—still half full—admit I laid head down at an embarrassingly early hour.

Meet mother and order poutine breakfast, show her which acts are circled in the program. Long day ahead: Oka, Arrested Development, Greg MacPherson, Andrew Bird, and the Dodos.

Lay the blanket down and let the sun roast.

The folks and the festival (day one)

The DJ spins an electro riff and the crowd erupts feet airborne and hands sky-bound. The beat is pulled back and given sitar and violin to mix with. It’s east and west, club and countryside, rap and reggae and electro warped into world music.

Purple pumps down on the empty field stretched out behind the audience, time to take the children home and start the party. Delhi to Dublin and back again, circus performers spin down strings on the walk towards Cat Empire.

A green wristband grants entry to the campground, but I stick to the plan and with the pack, hike across a pitch-black grassland and provide a distraction during the sneak in. The fence doesn’t stretch long or far enough, provides an easy entrance.

Rendezvous between First Aid and porta-potties; find a fire to sit round. Crack the tab and guzzle the first drink down.