Hello, you. Hello from a quiet little hotel in Kuantan. Hello from the East Coast – monsoon country this time of year, and just unfamiliar country to me generally.

My car tells us we’ve travelled about 2000 kilometers so far. I wish that number made more sense to me. I’m sure it will in time. Everything seems to be travelling at different speeds – the blog and my life, my body and my head. One of them arrives first (usually my faithful, serviceable body) and has to shout at the rest: will you hurry the fuck up?

Ok, now. Right now. It’s raining, of course. Zedeck’s beside me, working on story no. 81. Sometimes I suspect we went on this roadtrip just so he could write and I could blog from different rooms with different views.

There’s so much I have to tell you. How to measure the journey?

Well, there’s been alot of junkfood. The road has been paved with nuts, Cheezels, cigarettes, chips, prawn crackers (my weakness and poison), bubble tea, all manner of fried and crispy food; sudden blasts of SUGARY SWEET! and then…SALTY! It’s all starting to make me feel run down and… squishy. I’m lugging around more belly than I’m used to. This is ok.

There’s been GOOD food too. Malaysians? We fucking ROCK at food.  It’s like we’ve reserved all our passion, creativity, sensitivity, attention to detail, sexiness, joy and unabashed embracing of the new and strange, and squeezed it into soups and little luscious morsels and deep complex curries and sauces and weird-ass things like rojak and and and…

At a kopitiam in Ipoh: this perfectly silky, french-chef-worthy, creme caramel pudding. I may never forget it. Blessed (or cursed) never to visit Ipoh again without thinking about it.

Just like whenever I go to Penang, I need to go to this beach in Balik Pulau. I know there are a thousand prettier places in the world, but this one’s mine. When I’m on this patch of earth, I’m complete. I mean, ‘complete’ like on a fucking cellular level. It’s like being with an old, old, old friend.

This time, we got there in evening. The sun was going down and the light was on the water. I stared out at the open sea and suddenly I started crying. When Zedeck wandered over and asked what was up, all I could say in a half-embarrassed sniffle-whisper was: ‘It’s just so beautiful’.

I felt like Double-Rainbow Guy, the sad Asian knock-off version.

Zedeck gets this, he gets me. I love him for it.

Also on the list of Things That Made Sharon Cry for Happy-Unexplainable-But-Really-Good reasons: seeing Sigur Ros play at Urbanscapes. I’m not even that huge a fan, but the music got to me.

Doesn’ t matter if you don’t let it in.

It’ll steal inside you like a thief, that thing, the beautiful thing.

It’s 3AM. Good night, now, dearest people.

Love,
Sharon

I’m continuing to collect gates and grilles as we travel.

This gorgeous art deco one was taken near Jonker Walk, Melaka. Whatever happens to the building behind it, I hope they save the gate.

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This one is at Sam Poh Teng temple, also Melaka. We went there to search out the Sam Poh well, which was in one of our old postcards. We found it!

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More gates and grilles on my Pinterest (thesharonchin).

In Ipoh now, about to check out. We’re slowly creeping north. Gotta go, more soon.

Hello dear people, greetings from… not the road.

Zedeck got a bad case of food poisoning, so we are like barnacles, clinging to home (and for someone, the toilet). After eating dry toast for two days, the poor man is much better, and we set off again tomorrow.

Been looking through the photos and footage I’ve taken so far. Most of it comes from me just trying to absorb the texture of the roads and towns – swarming swiftlets everywhere, broken fences, glass shards stuck on tops of walls, curbside weeds, construction sites, water towers, drain pipes, mysterious flyovers leading to nowhere…

Alot of what we’ve built in the recent past is ugly. I don’t know where the ugliness comes from, but I sense it’s a part of us, part of me – careless, thoughtless, fuckless (beauty is arousing, sensual, touchable, attentive, loving), feckless, hard, merciless, and wasteful, wasteful, wasteful.

But I watch the faces too… they’re beautiful. And the way people walk! There are as many kinds of walk as there are people. Hunched over, limping, tottering, running, striding, waddling – getting somewhere, somehow.

I don’t know how all this is going to get put together. I really… I don’t fucking know. It’s scary. I’m just going to have to trust it…

TRUST THE SOUP.

I’m posting this from home. We’ve stopped in Port Dickson for two nights on our way up north – for laundry, for internet, for sanity.

Tomorrow we go on the road again. I’m leaving all my art materials behind – the watercolor kit, brushes, color pencils, pencils, scissors, glue, fuckin’ stapler – and keeping only the video camera, small notebook and ONE pen. I had this romantic idea of making art on the road, you see. Alas! The will is strong but the flesh is aching, sweaty and unable to do much more than shower at the end of the day.

Right ho my dears, onwards with an actual roadtrip update. I’m trying to post these in the order they happened, so there’s some kind of continuity.

Before we left Singapore, we stopped by Haw Par Villa, or the famous Tiger Balm Gardens.

Dudes, Haw Par Villa is some serious CRAZY.

It’s just… ahhh, how do I even… Ok, you know what a diorama is? It’s like someone was ordered to make elaborate life-size dioramas of all the major themes/works/touchstones of Chinese culture, with sly and subtle focus on the ‘moral and ethical values’ of Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism. So you’ve got animals from the Chinese zodiac, Journey to the West, Ten Courts of Hell, all manner of major and minor deities and more, so much more.

It’s fun, and very fucked up. I was brought there as a child, which I’m sure left all sorts of psychological scars. I remember being vaguely terrified but fascinated by the characters, colors and shapes.

This time though, after the initial high, I started to feel strangely oppressed. The artist kid in me still loved the visual LSD of Haw Par Villa, but the adult, the woman, couldn’t stand the morality.

It was like wandering around inside the head of a Chinese patriarch, full of gods, violence, misogyny, ghosts, rituals, rules and elaborate punishments. A colorful place, but a rigid one. Unyielding. I can’t live there.

Where there are lots of tits. (I don’t mind the tits. More tits. Tits forever!)

Tits ahoy!

Where evil temptresses seduce righteous men.

And… I don’t even know what’s going on here. I gather it has something to do with motherhood. Who IS that at her breast? Husband? Father? Father-in-law?

Where the punishment for prostitues in hell is drowning in a pool of filthy blood. Of course, only women are prostitutes.

Where wise, bearded men pronounce judgement on poor mortals:

There’s that judgy judge again. Strokin’ on his wise beard, watchin’ on a sawin’.

On the other hand, where this crab lady also resides. I wouldn’t mind being the crab lady. She is awesome.

Also, these dudes are cool. I would be the crab lady and I would hang out with these dudes. And then we would bust out of Haw Par Villa and set up a pacifist, non-hierarchical autonomous community.

We will take these freaky pandas with us.

Writing this on a clunky old computer in a hotel room in Johor Bahru. The view is of a highway.

We spent the last two nights in Geylang, Singapore’s red-light district. The view was a row of brothels.

Singapore is unbelievably close to Malaysia. Driving across the causeway felt like a biscuit toss over a not very wide bit of water.

On the other hand, the imagined wall is a mile high. They always are.

We saw our friends Nora and Rizal. Nora wants to start a Malay-themed traveling circus. Rizal is in the process of setting up a leftist bookshop. Yes, the force runs strong in these two. We talked for many hours about the unsevered ties between Malaysia and Singapore, boat building in Sulawesi and island hopping in Indonesia.

They live in a beautiful block of old-style apartments. Next door, a huge hospital is being built, which is going to cater to Singapore’s booming medical tourism industry.

Naturally, the old buildings are going to make way for shiny new condos. Some generic wall of concrete and glass is going to replace this pretty gate:

We also saw Mun Kao and Juria. Mun Kao took us to the CHINA Chinatown, where we got into a high state of grease by eating large quantities of mainland Chinese street food.

Juria is a badass. She knows all the secret adventure places in Singapore: abandoned haunted hospitals, unused underground train tracks…

We found the exact Indian temple in the old postcard! It’s in Chinatown. The postcard also shows OCBC (Overseas Chinese Banking Corporation) Bank building on the opposite side, it’s still there today.

Multi-level buildings like this one loom right over you. You can’t see them here, but there were people in those little white cage-like things at the bottom level. They were construction workers, but I can totally see those cage things becoming special booths in the hotel’s open-air bar something or other.

A beautiful thing about Singapore is the trees. There are many of them, and you can tell they’re well taken care of, as they should be. Without them, the place would be desolate.

This man. He’s missing.

The nets don’t catch everything.

Roadtrip departure is happening today, but I still wanted to squeeze in a Fertilizer Friday.

Fertilizer Fridays are interviews with artist friends. It’s about honest, casual conversation, sharing ideas + busting myths about being an artist/making art.

Let me introduce a good friend and awesome artist, Varsha Nair. We met a few years ago in Myanmar, during the 2nd Beyond Pressure performance art festival. Since then, we’ve collaborated on a project and sent each other lots of emails – about art, life and everything between.

Varsha was born in Uganda, studied in India and now lives in Bangkok. She’s travelled wide and made alot of art. So settle in and enjoy her insights on feminism, collaboration and charting your own path…

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Performing When Two Words Fell at National Art Gallery of Malaysia during Buka Jalan Performance Art Festival in 2011. Photo by Raphael Olivier. 

Just like everyone else, artists have good days and bad days. Could you describe what your working day is like, a good one and a bad one?

a) GOOD:

When things happen unexpectedly, totally unplanned and you don’t even know where or which depth of one’s self something emerges from, but you feel the excitement building deep within. Ideas fly around and perhaps one of them gets put down as a small drawing or scribble.

Or, when I experience working collaboratively – like when Karla [Sachse] and I first talked about the Meridian | Urban project, Monday2Monday with Lena [Eriksson], receiving your initial note about developing our recent proposal, Shore Lines and having that set my mind racing – literally thinking and voicing (or writing) on my feet/on the spot, just letting it emerge from the gut. I guess it’s a day when I am totally absorbed by the process without being aware of it.

And, if something has been swirling in your mind for days, months or even years, and one fine day it materializes, comes together. That’s a great day at work, I’d say, because some sleeping seed has become strong enough to germinate.

b) BAD:

When ‘other’, ‘outer’ workings of the art world shake one’s belief in oneself, even slightly, and I let that preoccupy my mind, it can throw you off the path for days. It’s not easy, and it takes time to right one’s balance again. 

A day when one tries to force things, to make work, is a bad one. You always have these forced ‘objects’ hanging around – in your sketchbooks or wherever, and then you come across them later and you think – “ugh”. That’s yet another bad day experienced – a double cringe-whammy!

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A Proper Place, 2007, collaboration with Jerome Ming, Ryllega Gallery, Hanoi

You recently moved into a new studio in Bangkok. Having a studio seems central to being an artist – even people who might not have a clear idea of what I do are always curious about my studio. Tell us about some studios you’ve had.

Years ago, I had this mental picture of a large, high-ceilinged space that was light and airy, nestled amongst lush old trees – a little island of my own. It was a bit romantic, but it recalled the art school where I studied in Baroda; our shared studios were cavernous spaces and the campus has many old trees.

The reality of spaces I’ve had is quite different – from an apartment, a brief stint in a lovely old building at the edge of China town in Bangkok, to my current space which is above a café on a main road near my house. These spaces are very much part of the din and dust of the city. The view outside my studio now is a jumble of electrical and other wires – if I lean out the window far enough, I can touch them. No tree in sight. 

From the time of being a student to now, the idea of a ‘studio’ has also changed. A modest sized room works well enough. It is primarily a space to think. 

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LOOC: Line Out of Control, 2009, performance collaboration with Lena Eriksson

I get this question all the time: ‘what kind of art do you do?’ It makes me really anxious because I don’t have a specific medium. Looking at your work, you’ve done so many different things over the years – performance, sculpture, video, installation. It doesn’t fit into a neat box. Varsha, I’m trying to get over this crazy anxiety about ‘what kind of art I do’! What do you think is causing it? How do you answer that question?

It always throws me when people ask that and I find myself thinking, ‘Yes. What sort of art do I do?’ My reply is usually, ‘oh, a bit of this and a bit of that.’ If I add that I ‘play’ mainly, people look confused. 

Sometimes I have this strong urge to say: ‘Art? I don’t really do that…’, because definitions fix things. People have certain fixed ideas about ‘art’ and ‘artists’. But I often say that I do a lot of drawing, and leave it at that. People can make what they want from that, from their own understanding of drawing. Essentially I think that’s what I do – drawing – whether it’s on paper or explored through performance and installation. It’s open to various interpretations.

Are you a feminist?

As a woman asserting my way of being, claiming my space and ‘freedom’ to think and do what I want, rooting for women to make/get their own way in our male dominated world (and I say ‘world’, not just India/Thailand/Asia) – if that’s what it means to be a feminist, then I am.  image

Drawing from September Quick Fix, a dual show with Jerome Ming at Conference of Birds Gallery, Bangkok in 2009

You and I have had some heated conversations about the power imbalances and lack of accountability in the art world. The issue with greatest impact on me is galleries and collectors consistently delaying payment for works that have been sold. I’ve chosen to focus on that, and I’m now collecting data to help me take the next step. If you had to pick a specific problem you’ve encountered professionally, what would it be? What can be done to improve the situation?

The main problem is lack of (or withholding of) support from some people in the art world, accompanied by a kind of sneaky-ness. I’ve experienced a 2-tiered way of working in large shows, where some artists get all and more (in terms of help and finances) and some get little or nothing. There is no transparency, of course, so one learns about these ‘things’ later and it drives me mad. It’s highly unprofessional and, I think, insulting. It’s like they have set a criteria to judge you by, of what you are worth. 

The other issue I face is this. I have lived in Thailand for a long time now, since 1995, and been part of that scene. I always felt, or indeed was ‘included’ in the past. In the last few years, with some players from ‘outside’, from foreign lands, starting to curate, write and somewhat define things in the Thai art scene, I am suddenly regarded or judged as an outsider. As a result, I am often not considered or left out of things. Ironical, isn’t it? 

With both of the above points, the one way to improve things is to have more transparency – via debate and discussion. Also, people could do more research when they curate or write, and really go into detail rather than skim the surface. Both transparency and engaging in proper research are seriously lacking in the environment I work in. The skimming of surfaces, as it is, simply makes people look and feel ‘sexy’, or ‘with it’.

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An Elixir Realigning, 2011, collaborative performance in Berlin with myself, fellow artist Karla Sachse, curator Deeksha Nath and students Lilian Kim Lukas, Aaron Schwagerl and Simon Troll.

A lot of your work comes from collaborating with other people. When I was in university, I was forced to do a collaboration unit. Students from different creative departments were thrown together and asked to ‘make something’. It was a nightmare, and incredibly unproductive. We’re taught to think collaboration is automatically good, but what are some of the pitfalls? What makes some collaborations useful and others not?

I love working collaboratively. Mainly it’s been with other artists, but I’ve also worked with people from other fields – an architect, botanist, etc. Each one adds different expertise and knowledge into a mixed pool, and it’s not only useful for a specific process but is also exciting to explore. The pitfalls, or I would rather say ‘challenges’, are many. 

Here’s an excerpt from a paper I wrote recently, which focuses on multi-disciplinary collaborative practice. I talk about working with artists and community-based projects:

Engaging in collaborative processes requires commitment, trust, and ability to let go and negotiate with the other(s), whilst keeping an open mind to explore interests, be they shared or completely new ones. 

Furthermore, collaborations between artists fall into somewhat a grey area, and, as I have experienced first hand, the act of collaborating is often not fully comprehended by art professionals including artists, gallerists, writers and, at times, even curators. 

Along with questions of ownership and individual authorship, working collaboratively presents many challenges including willingness to pool skills and ideas, and, most importantly, considering a plurality – the larger picture, rather than individuality.

And, in terms of collaborating with communities by placing one’s own practice firmly within a network of social and working relationships, the artist’s preparedness to let go of control and allow for outcomes to evolve, and to accept that their role as artists may somewhat diminish, is essential to enter into and establish meaningful discourse.

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Free Parking, 2002, collaboration with Savinee Buranasilapin at the 7th floor Art Gallery at Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok. The space was marked all over with architecture plans that turned it into a car park. 

I remember whining to you about how I felt I was not doing enough to further my art career, in terms of networking, getting shown by the right galleries, meeting the right people, etc. ‘The Hot Young Artist ship is sailing by and I’m not on it!’ You told me to keep doing what I was doing. It was good advice. Where do you think this insecurity comes from? Why is it important for an artist (or anyone, really) to ‘keep doing what they are doing’?

Which ship and according to whom is it sailing by?? Why should one be on it? Today’s ‘hot young artist’ is tomorrow’s….. what? Of course, I thought about this and still do at times, and decided I’d rather chart my own path.

The way [the art world] is today, and you and I have discussed this, I do not want to be ‘managed’. I’ve felt the effects of ‘being managed’. In one of my collaborative works, my collaborating colleague ‘belonged’ to a hotshot gallery in Mumbai. These so-called important people in the art world had, and still must have, zilch understanding of collaborations, and they ‘managed’ me pretty badly. I don’t need that, as I have always managed, to use the word again, to show and be part of things by getting to know others, via my own network, which is mainly made up of like-minded people. So, one can always find a way to show one’s work, or even establish our own ways of showing. 

After a very long time I am now facing the next few months ahead without an invitation to show or to be part of a project. I have mixed feelings. On the one hand I wonder if this is bad, should I panic? On the other I look forward to ‘doing’ – tinkering in the studio, maybe inviting an artist or two, or a designer who I spoke with recently, to come do something in the space. The ‘doing’ can also be ‘doing nothing’

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You’ve worked in the arts with people from all over the world, from all walks of life. What is power?

… feeling rooted within one’s self.

What’s next for you?

‘doing’….. ‘nothing’ 🙂 

Thanks, Varsha.

Everyone, please check out more of Varsha’s work on her website.

imageimageDocumentation from 2011 community project NR1 Wadhwana, a 3-way collaboration between art + community + science. Workshops were set up in seven schools in the villages near Wadhwana Lake. Children and teachers took part in activities that observed and recorded the ecology of the lake. For more info on this project, go here!

~

Fine Print: Images are Copyright Varsha Nair 2002 – 2012. All Rights Reserved. Wouldn’t hurt to ask before using. But if you’re taking them anyway, credit correctly!

Yes, me and non-husband Zedeck are packing up and going on a motherfuckin’ roadtrip.

Here is our map:

Here is our itinerary:

I will be collecting visual material for my Epic Project.

Zedeck will attempt to finish his epic book-in-making on the road.

and and AND (oh, you will love this part so much)…

We are going to track down places in a bunch of old postcards that belonged to Zedeck’s parents. Here are a few of them:

SINGAPORE (can you believe it?):

JOHORE CAUSEWAY:

ST. JOHN’S FORT (A’Famosa):

PORT SWETTENHAM (Port Klang):

BIRD’S EYE VIEW OF KUALA LUMPUR TOWN (Yes, this is for real):

A TIN MINE DREDGE, KL (I love how this made it onto a postcard):

PENANG ROAD:

THE NEW DAM IN CAMERON HIGHLANDS:

I’ll try to update as much as I can on the road, either here or on mah Twitter. But I am notoriously bad at recording my travels – I get too caught up in living and being.

The land, the sky, the roads, the people, the rivers, the sea. We leave early tomorrow.

This is happening, it’s happening. I can’t wait but I also wish I could sit here forever and write to you about this feeling.

Should I bring my ukulele?

Love, Sharon

UPDATE: When @rezasalleh says you should bring the ukulele, then well, the ukulele is gonna be brought.

Sorry for the lack of postings this week, dear readers. I’m back in Port Dickson after 10 days in KL. My trips to the city always turn me upside down, inside out. The first thing that greeted me when I got home on a rainy Saturday night was the sound of a cricket in the garden.

I don’t hear the crickets in the city. But I’m sure they are there.

Also in the city are weeds and stray cats. And fruiting trees. I noticed one in Taman Tun and made Zedeck jump up to grab a low hanging fruit.

It started bleeding sticky white sap immediately. I wonder what tree it is? Every neighbourhood should have an avenue of edible fruit trees – mango, mangosteen, rambutan, papaya, banana. Maybe not durian because they can be lethal.

This is going to be a totally random, grab-bag of a blog.

I went to Readings and listened to Zedeck tell stories from his book-in-making.

We argue all the time about the advantages and disadvantages of our respective art forms. What I envy about writers and their books is the total portability of their work. The ease of physical access. You can keep it on your bag or pocket. When people ask you what you’ve done, you can take it out and say: here it is. The whole thing, the labour and the craft and the dream.

On the other hand, writing it is a supremely lonely task. You can’t just have someone read a page in progress, not like you can show someone a sketch or painting study.

How do you make art portable? How do you fit the world in your pocket? I’ve thought about this for a long time. I think it’s why I’m making a video game for my Epic Project.

After Readings, we saw a huge mushroom growing by the roadside. It looked like a naan bread. Possibly deadly? It would be wonderful to have a companion guide to all the weeds and fungus growing in the city. I mean, not just for utilitarian purposes (e.g. to eat), but to actually know the city in a different way. Like seeing a friend (or enemy) in another light.

Me and Zedeck went to the bookshop and bought alot of books. Mine are for Epic Project research – anarchism and color theory. I love this part of art making – the learning. It’s like doing a university course in what obsesses you at the moment, only there are no exams, credits, rules or deadlines. The books become your lecture hall. The work is the laboratory.

I’ve dreamed about doing this all my life. I had a very hard time in school. I always did well enough get to through, but I never excelled. Just didn’t know what I liked or didn’t like. Mostly I was driven by fear of failure. But I wasn’t very good at failure either! Stuck somewhere in the middle. Dry.

I used to think about suicide all the time. Maybe everyone does. People like to call it teenage angst. Dismiss it. Maybe that’s why we keep such thoughts to ourselves. Lots of shame and guilt attached to those thoughts. Sometimes I would run my mind in circles, telling myself I was acting out a drama, that these feelings were all about getting attention, so I should snap of it. You know, be normal.

More and more, I think what we share is this element of knowing pain. No matter how privileged or destitute we are. First World or Third World.

It took me a very long time to find out what I wanted to do. I had help, luck, education, privilege, family. And it boggles the mind how much I still stumbled around, lost and dry.

All the way, the things that helped were books, art and being in love with nature. It was like a well that never went dry. It kept on feeding me, and still does. Being able to add to that well with my own work has been my strength and joy.

When I’m done making things and saying things, I’d like to build a library with a garden that people can use for free. Not a grand place with millions of books, but a modest little open house, with windows and open doors, where weeds can grow. It won’t be out of the way, it’ll be close to people, full of people.

Lately, me and Zedeck have been talking about whether we’ll stay here in Port Dickson. The short answer is: we don’t know.

There are many things still to do, for us. In the city and everywhere. Going to KL every couple of weeks fucks up the rhythm of my life, but I never wanted to be a hermit. No, me and hermitry don’t go. Art itself is basically a great way to be with people…

Hah! I like that. Forget about Art for The People, long live Art to Be With People.

This is a good house. It takes care of us and helps us do our work.

When I was in KL, we celebrated my best friend Poop’s birthday.

Here’s another one of us:

Poop is an engineer. You might say we’re diametrically opposed in all things. It’s a strange and beautiful fucking friendship. We were talking about my recent discovery of anarchism and how she felt she was growing more conservative as she got older. I said I’d rather hang out with a thinking conservative than a fanatic anarchist any day.

I didn’t tell her that a thinking conservative (or a thinking anything, really) IS an anarchist.

Sneaky me.

I also collected some prints of the photographs that were on the 7 year old roll of film I blogged about last week. Zedeck helped me come up with the title: Pickled Stones. Direct translation into Malay would be ‘Batu Jeruk’, which seems to mean live corals in Indonesian. Perfect.

Two of these are going to be in a fund-raising exhibition at House of Matahati next week. The proceeds are going towards MARS (Malaysian Art Archive and Research) – a non-profit research center for Malaysian art. I got a peak at the newly built wall-to-wall book shelves at the Center:

Isn’t it a thing to behold? The only way this room can get any cooler is when the shelves are all filled up.

That was my life for the past week, dear people. Fucking full to the brim. And I didn’t even include the family trouble.

How is yours going? Tell meeeee…

Love, Sharon