Day: August 10, 2004

in hair

Scent and it’s mysterious associations. Inflections of the smell caught in clothing. Checking through things to put in the laundry I come across almost too few people. this was sunday with west coast swing Recognizing the people from what they leave behind in my shirt. Where it touched them when I hugged them. It’s worse when it gets caught in my hair. Perfume, incense, what sort of soap do you use? Cigarette smoke has so many associations. People who used to but have now quit, people who I kissed with that taste in their mouths. Bitter and poison, but worth it for the touch of the tongue. Almost a sexiness in the taste of alcohol. It’s related. It’s a language. I feel confused sometimes when I come across friends who share the same preferences in toiletries. “Who do you smell like? Not Grady, Grady was apples. Who was it that I patterned that to?” Hauntingly familiar and with the wrong face. Gets me every time caught in pondering. I flash back to where I was when I knew that unknown person. Where was I standing, how far around me might their arms have gone when I bid them goodbye. I thought Grady, was it at the Studio? Keely?

I’ve got what I think of my soap going again. For once I’m starting to smell again what I thought I did. I can’t catch my own scent, so instead I make do with Nag Champa and Vanilla. I like finding other people in my things, it’s nice to think I might do it to other people in spite of not wearing scent. Knowing who the last person to touch something was. Knowing that I saw this person or that and that we smiled. I think of the day and other days and it makes me happy for a split second. The fact that I also have a small collection of other peoples left behind clothing amuses me when I think of it. Lendings and left behinds. I have a pair of Bryans socks from, like, six or seven years ago. {a blue tent up on the airfield. he spent the night in the tent with mishka and myself. his socks were quickly stuffed into my bag when we noticed them in morning. her parents would have been furious we’d been up all night talking, especially with a boy, no matter it was her brother}

It reminds me of music.

everything but the girl

J is interesting in that I don’t know how to talk to him, but he doesn’t seem to mind. I feel young around him, I can’t click into his brain. It’s not that I feel less intelligent, it’s that I don’t know how he thinks, how he talks, where his sense of humour will take him. He’s older in a way that the auto-mimic slips off of him like it never existed. It’s unsettling, but he seems to put up with me and like my company in spite of what I feel is mindless nattering about nothing of importance. Of course, with how much stress he’s dealing with right now, perhaps someone who can take his mind of the important things is the Why behind it. I kneaded him into a rag while we watched a terrible movie, The Secret Window. He fell asleep, but I can tell you, he didn’t miss a thing. I was welcome to stay the night but didn’t relish the thought of either waking up before the sun when he does or waking up in a strange apartment. *laughter* Either way it would have been my turn to act like a one night stand. Poke at his books in the morning maybe, if I were a charactor I would make myself a coffee and drink it while sitting on his balcony. Instead I walked home. Thought about James a bit. I decided that efforts to stop by late at night continue to meet with nothing and so paused, looked at a dark window, and kept walking. Apparently he never got the little candies nor likely the notes I’ve left. Walking down the hill in the park on 2nd, I thought for a second how nice it would be to be lying there in the dark with him talking. We could stare up at the stars and maybe in among the bad jokes about Elvis and how Pornstars would make good cheese-spread he’d might tell me something I could do to make him feel better or even when he’s coming back.