hospital vespers

porn and gold mirrors (estate sales)

November 30, 2025

i am rarely able to resist the siren song of an estate sale and i have been to so many.

i went to one in a basement suite in a shitty neighborhood where a man with schizophrenia had lived. his brother was selling his things in cardboard beer flats and reusable grocery bags from superstore. i dug through boxes and drawers, with the things inside as fractured and disorganized as the mind of the person who owned them. sexy lady belt buckles butted up against bibles and faded christmas decorations.

there was a lava lamp and a bong, copies of willie nelson on vinyl and old shitty knick knacks as far as the eye could see.

i bought a naked lady belt buckle that i gave to a guy i like who wears jeffrey dahmer glasses and reads books about aliens. i bought an old bible with a list of family birth and death dates and many passages highlighted and a couple old porno tapes on vhs. i had never seen deep throat before and i watched it on my pink disney princess tv with a couple of guys i know. they were drinking beer and i had kombucha. deep throat was weird and i didn’t like it.

i went to another estate sale of this really religious old italian lady and her daughter gave me some old silver catholic medals and a couple plants (which died later because i over watered them).

i went to an estate sale where an older guy was selling his mother’s things out of her shitty trailer in an even shittier trailer park on the bad side of town. i bought a mirror for $5 that i use as my vanity mirror. it was hung crooked on the wood panelled bathroom of this crappy trailer – this antique mirror someone had painted gold. the flowers are chipped on it, but it’s really beautiful.

at the same estate sale, i bought a tiny sterling silver rosary for $1 and a huge sterling chain that was broken for $0.50. i got the chain repaired for $8 at this mom and pop jewelry shop in the dying mall i like to go to. i gave it to this guy i have a crush on who is really into hip hop music and chunky chains. i like it when he wears it because it looks really expensive but it wasn’t.

the guy selling his mothers things gives me some of her crosses because he said he never believed. we had a weird conversation about god and the meaning of life and i sat with him for a while outside on lawn chairs. he gave me some crystals he found in an old coffee tin before i left and a bunch of old skeleton keys too. he was nice and i still think about his religious mother and her gold mirror and wood panelled trailer.

i like estate sales. you get to see inside people’s houses and lives – these super intimate glimpses into who people were – the things they kept. i like to try to understand other people and im not really sure why. i guess i find people fascinating, all of our little ways of being and our intricacies. we are all so universally weird and broken and beautiful and wild. i like that about us.
multitudes

November 29, 2025

some days i feel like a deer ran down by hunters, bleeding out into the snow, and other days i feel like just a girl making my way through this life with my fjällräven kånken and my cameras and my journals.

some days i feel more alive than i ever have and my finger tips buzz with electricity and i feel like im going to explode into a million pieces because i am so in love and i feel so full of life.

how beautiful to exist in this time in such multitudes.
what i found at the thrift store today

November 29, 2025

-a set of “babylonian tarot cards”, unfortunately missing one card, meaning the cards will now be repurposed as art pieces for scanning, collaging, and gaming. the illustration for today’s blog is from the tarot guidebook.

-a vintage mauve snow jacket from the 1990s

-a vintage belt with a cool buckle. the belt part sucks so i cut the buckle off and put it on a better belt and now it looks even cooler, fun win

-a “magick spell” book journal. to be repurposed for the game scott is writing

-a book about growing up mixed race indigenous

-a vintage pink leather skirt, to be cut up for the indigenous beadwork i do

-a bag of beeswax candles

-a vintage ladies shirt featuring kokopelli the flute player from the 1990s (god the 90s really loved vague indigenous themed items, huh?)

-a really nice scented candle from one of those fancy mall brands that costs way too much money when purchased new ($4 at the thrift tho)

-a homemade sterling silver ring with scrollwork detailing

-a screenprinted greeting card from a fancy art studio in vancouver, bc

-a christmas stocking in pink shaped like a mermaid tail

-a large print of a loon feather because it reminds me of this blog post of mine

-an organic cotton dress from an expensive brand in the uk

-a mauve coloured cotton blazer/cardigan (blardigan?) for work (aka, i want to wear some of my cool vintage and antique brooches so here’s my reason)

if you went thrifting today, what did you find?
mail from katie

November 28. 2025

i dreamed about her again last night, my friend katie who died. maybe it’s because i got a little package from her this week. her husband has been busy selling jewelry she made so those who desire to can have a piece of her very special magick forever.

it’s weird to see the package in the mail sitting unopened on the stairs when i get home from work. i have been having a rough time lately, i feel raw and split open and i both do and do not want to open it because i don’t want to confirm it for myself that the package is from her, but it’s not her.

inside is a note about her life and her legacy and it fucking sucks but it’s beautiful and i cry when i open the pieces of her jewelry that are so delicately wrapped – like the breakable things they are. scott asks if im ok and i say i am i guess but he knows it isnt true so he just hugs me and i cry bitter tears into his sweater that smells like paint and hot glue. he asks me about the pieces even though i know he doesnt care about jewelry, but i dont care about warhammer but at least we share these baffling pieces of ourselves with each other.

i ordered numerous bronze raccoon vertebrae and gift two to my closest people – tom and scott. they both knew who she was and what she meant to me and how much i treasured her and her work. three of us now have these matching pieces of both friendship and mourning.

i can’t talk about katie too much without crying because like, how do i just get over it? she was so young and so bright and so full of life and she wanted to come to canada and maybe we could have visited together. i would have taken her to the victorian era ranch i love, to see the shoes and the old sewing kit and the headstones and the church. maybe we would have dressed up or something. when people die i always end up saying i wish there had been more time.

and i miss her and her messages and the little notes in my endless orders from her shop. it’s not fair you know. i couldn’t wear crosses or other religious symbols for months after she died. how do you make peace with the cold reality of any higher being cutting someone down like that? she was so young.

“de var alla unga” just like erk and academics said in that one song. they were all young.

i miss you, katie.

~

tapestry by katie
who said so?

November 27, 2025

i feel that place inside me and it feels like going home. a stuffy room full of faces of judgement. mouths made up with lipstick tinged with bitterness muttering curses in ukrainian.

my grandmother and her sisters stuck together in pews and church dresses, itchy pantyhose and patent leather shoes, listening to someone talk about jesus and the saints. going home to be beaten by a father who also talked about jesus and the saints.

later, my grandmother took me to that room of judgement of lipstick frowns and i also learned about jesus and the saints and i also went home to be beaten, except she was the one doing the beating. this woman and her rosaries and photos of the sickly martyr christ screaming over top of televangelists on tv or old episodes of jerry springer.

i hated the stuffy rooms and the voices of tv preachers and yet, now, it just feels like home to me. i know these rooms and these voices and this place.

alone in my room surrounded by candles and bones and books on the occult, i listen to old religious vhs tapes and it reminds me of being a child. i get sentimental in church parking lots and when i find old crosses at the thrift shop. they make me think about trauma and violence butted up against absolution and i guess that’s just how the world is and probably always has been.

people shoot up drugs now outside the old church and my grandmother and all the other lipstick mouths i remember are all dead and i never wore lipstick myself so i don’t dare darken that doorway anymore because it smells like piss and pierogis.

jesus is lord? who said so?