Month: October 2004

I’ve no net connection save at my mothers until James moves in.

This is really, really painful. I never understood how people could be so attached to a place or thing until I’ve had to go without internet for any length of time. This is my Home. My Family is here. You, my friends, lovers, my INFORMATION. Everything that matters to me is locked inside the glowing box. Every single last morsel of my sanity is caught up in this digital drug. I shake for it like I shake for you. Blind in the world, I can’t be blind here. Save me from this! Keep me in the most precious company. Drown me in this sea of media. Temporary links to weird news, building my face out of facts. I can feel myself relaxing as I type. Muscles unknotting as I hit my obsession.

Late to bed, I woke early today as people came to help Gavin move. Too tired to drag myself from my bed of chaotic blankets and clothing to help, I lie half awake flooded with vague guilt. I fell fitfully back into sleep until a most welcome call from Javina dragged me fully into wakefulness. Perfectly in time to call the Pyro offices and arrange my week. Luckily I was off the phone with her before I discovered my link to the world had been taken away. It would have been a shame to tsunami-stress die on a friend. The ripple-effect would be a killer. It’s like waking truely naked. I can’t take it. Where’s my covering world?

Now I’m at my mothers. She’s behind me, clatteringly cooking in the kitchen with my brothers noisily upstairs arguing about video games and the best way to pretend to kill someone. I would like to think I have a good influence on them. In fact, I know I do, but the prima-donna youngest? I likely wouldn’t mind if he just went away until he’s barely a context. Let him vanish. He’s the most unpleasant thing about visiting. I want my memories to vanish him until it’s absurd to consider him. Maybe it’s just tonight.

Earlier I set out in the soon-to-be-gale-force winds on my bicycle, ferret slung over my shoulder. A less than wise move, but one what worked out without anyone dying. My passport pictures for my pyro license have been taken, and Skatia’s been set up with some of the same food that zoos feed lions until the petshop can get some ferret food in. Stuff so made of flesh that the scent of it makes my mouth water. The furry creature eats better than I do most days, I swear. I tried visiting with Alli and Nate, but in my perpetual distraction, I left their address at home when I left. My heart led me to wander back and forth across three blocks of 14th street, hoping one of them had suddenly clicked clairvoyant. No luck, as my calling names into the air only brought me unwelcome attention from the neighbors whose doors I’d randomly knocked on.

Back in the box, but no less home than I was out in the freezing rain, I packed my things into a large bag and finished my phonecalls. My apartment has never actually been messier than it is right now. Four of us moving all at once. I wish Alistair were here, he could be taught to be quietly brilliant at such things. We talked earlier, he’s been calling every day from San Clemente. One hour out of L.A. and he seems determined that I visit. Desperation is asking me to live off my photography. Talking to me must be the twist of the most gentle of knives. I call him back later if he sends me the number.

Tonight after I’m done on-line, I expect to spend the rest of my evening in the livingroom attempting to cut out my pattern on the box strewn floor. Everything for my costume minus the lights is with me. Ray has those finished apparently, but as he’s in Calgary for his Aunt’s funeral, I don’t get to play with them until Wednesday. I hope he gets time to visit with my painter Gavin, but I don’t think he will. It would be nice to have the chapbook. Hold his creativity in my hands, like having his blood warm me at night. I would cry.

Just for the record: the various members of this passions play, they write the same. It’s disconcerning.

get down get down : play that funky music whiteboy

I am finally getting my pyro tech tickets. I will be legal when I blow things up. Paid to set fires. Apprenticeship begins this week. In my insanity of motion, I already have a gig. Saturday I’m working the Parade of Lost Souls. First one’s free. Another two shows and I can legally buy the Pretties What Go Boom. Send in my upgrade petition and bang – bang – my baby shot me dead. Tuesday I take the indoor course and Wednesday the outdoor. Two full days of training I suspect I should be well prepared to handle. Not only is this a poetic accomplishment that likely compliments my world quite nicely, being able to list Pyrotechnician on my resume will hopefully raise all the right eyebrows. If it doesn’t, well, soon I’ll be able to buy level two explosives.

a total eclipse of the heart : once upon a time there was light in my life : but now there’s only love in the dark

I’ve never made a tutu before. I know nothing of their construction whatsoever. I have no needle. I have no thread. I am not prepared to sew anything. I do however have a shining heap of painfully pointy safety pins and six metres of black netting. (Now twelve as I, in my arrogance, dared the scissors.) In spite of the obvious drawbacks to this situation, I seem to be doing alright. I hit on the idea of making an inside-out kilt. Odd, but it seems to be working. The fluffy is happening. Note: I have never made a kilt either. What I know of kilt manufacture is entirely gleaned from a ten minute conversation with Ross Nukem as he was making us food in my kitchen at four in the morning. A ten minute conversation filtered through the euphoric exhaustion of a heavy night of dancing at SinCity.

I was alive and I waited for this : right here, right now : watching the world wake up from history

In another world, I have passion burning. There are grand and glorious eruptions of creative lucidity. Lying men don’t ask for my number. Brave darkness, troublesome lovers. Watch me take this and plunge it in, branding the heart with echoes of my voice. My hair’s only honey when I hate you.

Wax this moon budding into beauty. Preserve and control, bitch. Take this devil time and pray. Find someone to care about the rains devouring because I like it. I want it wrapped around my legs, a pet to play with. Sleek glistening lines, you know I never lied to you. There are no two ways about it. Only one path to this salvation. It cuts you because my blood burning is made of pain.

She rules the mountain, she throws you off the cliff. Watch where you land, boy. Break your bones on the shattered lives. Logic patterns circular. She’s addictive. She’ll eat your love. Spit you out, take your bets, toss the money down. How many fates will you lay on the table?

A woman unsheltered says anything, this woman unsheltered is divine. Face sculptures out of freedom. Acutest angle, this merry-go-round. Sweetest dreaming. You can wait until I say so.

You’ve got one of those seven faces of the pale skinned world. Every time I leave the house I see you. The shape of your skull catches at me from the passing crowd, the outline of your face. You’re so made of where you’re from it makes me ache. Pedestrian pub-crawl hair over perfect even teeth. Everything in between photographs badly because you think about it. I saw what you did with the camera. You move like a bird. Jagged, almost quick, everything you pick up a seed. I want a history like you have. I want a land, a people, a family culture. I want to walk on stones, feel the dead rise up beneath me in a rising tide of What Has Been. I can speak your voice now. You’re not getting it back until you beg me for it. This place is too new, too lacking in blood.

I’m known for desiring architecture.

Falling inside like water from a great height. Crane my neck back hoping to catch a glimpse of what I’m given, but I’m drowning in it. My eyes are closing. Slow lapping waves in this pool at the bottom. The base of this, this wash of caught tears. Strychnine stimulant for the central nervous system. Just add your hands.

Bleeding me like an older century doctor. Taking my pulse with a soft sweet tongue. It’s singing again, my bones living crystal. You shimmer and break me. This tone raining from your letters. It’s glamour you cast. Lasting for days, blossoming into heat to warm my fingers. I want to touch you to show you. I want to touch you to make you Mine.

Where are you taking me?

There was a Harry Potter theme party at Alex & Neriads last night that Ethan and I attended. There were some people there that I knew already, albiet not really. One man, Devon, had caught my atttention a long time ago by sketching me once. I had regretfully lost his e-mail address in the Grand Losing My Religion(contactbook) Disaster of early Aught-whatever. Now it seems we are all in contact again, thanks be to the internet.

I’ve been meaning to post this, though forgettting. It was brought up last night.

Rat Brain in a Dish Flies Plane Simulator

A University of Florida scientist has created a living “brain” of cultured rat cells that now controls an F-22 fighter jet flight simulator.
…
For the recent project, Thomas DeMarse, a University of Florida professor of biomedical engineering, placed an electrode grid at the bottom of a glass dish and then covered the grid with rat neurons. The cells initially resembled individual grains of sand in liquid, but they soon extended microscopic lines toward each other, gradually forming a neural network — a brain — that DeMarse says is a “living computational device.”

The brain then communicates with the flight simulator through a desktop computer.

Hunter S Thompson : Fear & Loathing 2004.

in The Rolling Stone on the Bush/Kerry election.

………..Some people say that George Bush should be run down and sacrificed to the Rat gods. But not me. No. I say it would be a lot easier to just vote the bastard out of office on November 2nd.

*****

BULLETIN
KERRY WINS GONZO ENDORSMENT; DR. THOMPSON JOINS DEMOCRAT IN CALLING BUSH “THE SYPHILLIS PRESIDENT”
“Four more years of George Bush will be like four more years of syphilis,” the famed author said yesterday at a hastily called press conference near his home in Woody Creek, Colorado. “Only a fool or a sucker would vote for a dangerous loser like Bush,” Dr. Thompson warned. “He hates everything we stand for, and he knows we will vote against him in November.”

Thompson, long known for the eerie accuracy of his political instincts, went on to denounce Ralph Nader as “a worthless Judas Goat with no moral compass.”

“I endorsed John Kerry a long time ago,” he said, “and I will do everything in my power, short of roaming the streets with a meat hammer, to help him be the next President of the United States.”

*****

Which is true. I said all those things, and I will say them again. Of course I will vote for John Kerry. I have known him for thirty years as a good man with a brave heart — which is more than even the president’s friends will tell you about George W. Bush, who is also an old acquaintance from the white-knuckle days of yesteryear. He is hated all over the world, including large parts of Texas, and he is taking us all down with him.

Bush is a natural-born loser with a filthy-rich daddy who pimped his son out to rich oil-mongers. He hates music, football and sex, in no particular order, and he is no fun at all………….

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I love the kids in chat. This is the sort of things the better ones post.

dark humour

My relations with the world are bordering on peculiar. Nameless seduction the same day I send off my lucky number six. Today I got a call from down south. A welcome voice from the soulless city with no sky. This one’s addicted darling, sticky on my skin like heroin honey. Your eyes when they open are full of stars. He wants me to move for him. Come down to the land of plastic people. Palm trees always strike me as slightly sad. Over used in the 80’s to represent glamour, they’re reaching thinly for the stars exactly like the dieting hopefuls swarming in high heels around the symbolic trunks. Somehow I maintain a precarious balance. If it was for longer than half a year, I might do it.

I woke up to discover a ferret wrapped around my belly. I closed my eyes against the world and focused on denying the tickle of warm fur. It didn’t really work. Little scratchy claws, moving with our breathing. It was too much. I gently picked him up and shifted him to the pillow, losing my dreaming in the process. Now I’m working and feel like I’m hours behind on my sleep. Exhaustion in the marrow of my bones. I want to crawl into my empty bed and fall into darkness. This must be what regret feels like. A heaviness in the centre of all the limbs, pulling you down into the pit of your belly.

It’s snowing in Calgary right now. Flakes the size of teacups. The hill next to the studio’s been closed and there’s talk of taking crazy carpets and sliding down the street. I wish I were there. Fairytale cold and wet. I could borrow mittens off Dean and get my boy in the head with a snowball. Giggling to glitter.

Snow here would be nice too. Looking out the window to a pale fluttering world. Frost on my window like I haven’t seen since I was a kid. Ferns etching themselves on the glass in crystal cold. I miss the cocaine dusting of snow blowing across the street ahead. I miss the light.

Our cities are so isolated from eachother in winter. In Vancouver we barely think of it, but in our own way, we’re just as snowed in trapped as the rest of the country. Our settlements spread out, practically one city to a province. Huge spreads of empty snowdeep land, dangerous to cross. The mountains will be almost impassable in maybe a month and the prairies only death for the small car. Like entropy overtaking Canada, everything slowing until it barely moves at all.

Up on the highway it’s almost blizzard weather. Semi-trucks are jackknifing across the Coquihalla. Here, there is the faintest beginnings of our wind.

Theater Under the Gun was fabulous. Five shows, which only got better as the night went on. I couldn’t breathe for laughter. Theater companies from all over the Lower Mainland are given inspiration packages, each with a sound clip, an image, a quote, and a prop. They’re given fourty-eight hours to create a show, rehearsal, costumes, and all. This is the first time in a few years that I haven’t been personally involved with any of the shows, so I can vouch that usually there is very little sleep involved in the creative process and an awful lot of drinking. The plays created are practically always brilliant comedy. Originality smacking you with the knee-slapping wit of Tanya Harding.

It opened slow with a Native American Group who threw together a rather uninspired look at corporate cubicle work. Next was a bitterly cruel clown with two terrible children. “You want to know why you’re adopted?” “We’re, um, special?” “No! Nobody wanted you!” This is where the show starting picking up, (though no-one, not no-one can beat the failed cirque du soliex clown from a few years ago. That show was made of greatness). The third group had the first political send-up that I think has ever showed up at Theater Under the Gun. BushWhacked: regarding the toppling of the Land of Moron by our hero, The Crudest Woman in Whalley. The Land of Moron has spread across the planet. “Dear citizens, we have finally subdued the cruel dangerous country of Switzerland! No longer will the chocolate eaters threaten our freedom.” Her and her redneck husband smoke pot and swear their way to a secret lab to kill the alien/bush hybrid baby that is the world’s greatest danger. It was just what it sounds like, though littered with more crude profanity. Dialogue to make you cringe.

During intermission I made the acquaintance of the little girl sitting next to me. She was done up pretty in a bright pink dress with her feet swinging under her seat. I remember being in the Cultch at her age. Music and films, but very little theatre. My mum wouldn’t have taken me to something like this, my mum brought me to experimental jazz. The girls mother was very kind and all three of us made fast friends. David Bloom was there, but we don’t know what to say to eachother really. I’m like the Theater Widow, with an empty seat at my side. I had better luck with Chris MacGreger and Trevor Found. It was good to see them and catch up a little. I’d almost forgotten that it was their show.

The stage was littered with props while we sat waiting. Tinfoil covered chairs, bowls with whisks and chocolate, and three haridryers on long christmas light strings. We spun stories of what could be coming up next. A boy came up to me then, asking if we knew eachother. Turned out he had been at The One Man Lord Of the Rings months ago. Poor lad had been caught talking to Robin. I was surprised at how few people were in attendance. Not even the floor was filled. There were gaps in the front two rows. It would be a pity and a shame if this were to die. It’s Theater Under The Gun’s seventh year.

The show that came up after intermission fully lived up to it’s weird collection of props. Three sisters dealing with their daddy coming home from prison. Wacky girls, messed up and beautiful, making poisoned pudding to welcome him back. It was stylish work and the use of props was extremely well done. The silver chairs made it a salon where the three lived and worked. They loved their daddy, they put peroxide in the pudding. They put barbital, and bleach, then ate it up themselves. Sweet and dark and bouncy, the perfect essence of the event. I was attacked by flying hair clips and the woman one seat over caught a lab coat in the face.

The last show was stark in contrast but no less funny. The line they had was “I understand what you’re saying but the dancing still confuses me”. Their image was Death climbing a mountain to a meditating man in a loincloth with long hair. They did exactly that, but with lights up to reveal a skinny man with an over the top wig of golden curls reaching almost to his waist. In each hand he has a tiny doll baby. Death groaningly arrives and they begin to argue. In the end, it’s decided that the ascetic will take his place. To illustrate what exactly it is that death does, disco lights suddenly flick on and a description defying dance routine begins to a heavy beat. If there were nightclubs where people would dance like that, I would live there. Toss in a few gags afterward and the traditional ending and it was perfect. The audience was slow on applause for the laughter.

I thought about hanging about a little, but really couldn’t see the point. I slipped backstage to congratulate people on a show well done and then walked out. I had Raven to go to and nothing keeping me at the Cultch but some people who would feel slightly obligated to be my friend. On my way out I fell into step with the boy who talked to me at intermission. Spur of the moment I invite the him and his friend over for tea and they agree. I can only dearly hope I didn’t come across as someone too odd. My house is full of boxes and my room is littered with AV gear, a ferret wandering over everything. They’re both around age 16 but well on their way into theater. Maybe if I was lucky, I talked them out of it.

Raven was fun, if not terribly interesting. A pub night for leather women, everyone seeming to know people but me. Completely what I deserve for showing up to an event for a scene I’m not part of. Once again, I was counting off spanking for people and sitting ni a corner, not really talking with anyone. I got home late, tired enough for the brain to start clicking off. I was glad of the people I did meet, friends and family and one or two new.