Month: January 2005

Gord called today! Exclamation mark! He’s been discharged from the hospital and going quietly out of his mind. Seems he’s recovering fine from brain surgery, but he’s housebound for a week. I’m going to jazzercize over to Uprising Bakery and bring him something delicious with sugar on top. I’ve no idea what we’ll talk about, we haven’t seen eachother in over a year, we have no grasp of the other’s life, but somehow we’ll manage. We keep tabs on the others whereabouts, after all. I’ve lost track of his brother John, but I tend to run into him enough to spite that. When he was listed as a missing person, when the city was on alert for him, he walked up to me at Wreck Beach in the middle of the night and started talking to me before he knew who I was. His parents are another story entirely. I see Bob occasionally on the Drive and our conversations, though friendly, always peter out from the dire poison that is having utterly nothing at all in common. There’s a generation gap, a technology gap. My life is completely unaccessible. His mother, Francis, still talks with me though. Sometimes we’ll spend an hour on the phone together, chatting away about nothing in particular. It’s like being female gives me an in.

I’m pleased with how social I’ve been since returning. Last night I was up sharing music, swapping songs over the globe with Jessie, and Dee, and Joseph, until when I went to bed, I could finish a chapter of a book with the lamp turned off. My empty trip South seems almost unreal. Yesterday was a guest over, a movie, dessert, and Brians concert. (The movie, by the way, Alone in the Dark, is a good runner up to Teh Flim. It’s stunning like a big rock). Tonight is Robin‘s birthday dinner with family, Mum didn’t give me enough warning to plan involving anyone else, (though if you’re interested, it’s 6pm at Tafs on Granville & Robson, friends welcome), (I’m starting to think I live at Tafs, I left my book there last night and didn’t even blink because I knew I would be coming back too soon for them to lose it), then Silva is winning an award at the official opening of The Leather Loft. I’m going to have to remember to wear sparkly things under my clothing tonight so I can strip down when I get there. Tomorrow blonde Bill is due over after work, and Sunday is Ian‘s birthday Lazertag. I’m considering throwing together something more social for him on Monday evening. Sophie was saying she might bake him a cake.

It started when she asked him to dance. Traditional dress ruched across her thighs, she was divine. He’d been watching her all night, high heels turning on the parquet floor like they were princess slippers made of glass that he could snatch up and claim her with. Her lips were painted red, rose red, sex scent red, crimson like her dress. He imagined the blush of her cheek under his finger and looked down again to her feet before saying yes.

When he took her proffered hand, it was like accepting a challenge. Her glance slapped him across the eyes with both feet perfectly planted. He guided her to the dancefloor, hips shifting to the music. The band was playing old blues tunes with a sad salsa twist. He was going to win this war. They stepped in time, in then out, a little turn to the left and here was a dip. She twisted like a flower following sunlight, she moved like beaded water rippling over rocks. She leaned in close and he caught his breath. In her eyes was flame, a promise of sweat in darkness.

The music shifted to something less demanding, more intriguing, more sensual. Her body pressed against his, his world narrowing to the sensation burning his skin. Hands met and twined, breath slowing deeper. A lower key on the piano and she slid across him with quiet desire, a flourish of finespun subtle touch. She regarded him under lowered lashes and he wondered what it was that was so illusive while lost in the slow shift of weight from foot to foot, her heavy limbed grace like she danced underwater. There was a mystery to her, like she glowed with some insinuating glamour.

The music was drawing to a close. They never said a word, but fell into a final set of steps and stopped, panting, frozen together on the last note in a complex arch of grace. The next song carried on but flowed around them. He felt alone with her, felt as if they stood in profound silence. There was nothing in the world but her breath.

He left a tip at the door when he collected their coats.

January 27, 2005 is LiveJournal Rabbit-Hole Day “Let’s have a day where nobody’s life makes sense anymore, where any random LJ you click on will bring you some strange new tale. Let’s all fall down the Rabbit Hole for 24 hours and see what’s there. It will be beautiful.” More information

My daily train in SoCal crashed. I have to admit that part of me wants to have been on that train. What a grand adventure it could have been.

Yesterday’s show was bloody wonderful. C.R. gets on stage and I fill with pride because he’s come so far, he’s got a chance again to make things happen. It’s like a little gift from somebodies heaven. A beatbox angel, judging the world to not be quite well enough for his daughter. Thrilling glow spreading from the mike to the room, smiles erupting erasing everyone’s shame to cry. I’ve been around so long I remember when it was almost too hard for him. A forever uphill battle to get the show on the road, because it ain’t poetry, it’s rock and roll. It was like touching something special, a peal of soul thunder blues, glorious. I can’t explain the movement of it, the flow and move your body feel of it. On my daughters fifth birthday, I gave her a doll house and a pocket knife. Harmonica, false drum machine effects spitting from his tongue. I finally understand what it means to have your heart swell. I carried her around one day, when she was almost too small to walk. Last night C.R. shined with a star quality, he made some people die.

It was a little like watching Shane. It’s unreal how silence falls when he’s speaking. His skill with words is meaningful matchless. It’s like he’s cruel to have us sit and listen. It’s animation and spirit incarnate. I remember stories of magic, fantasies spun from the finest silks, when he mouths them to life. It’s pain and desire spun into one to make us laugh and it hurts. There’s a certain something in the way he says things. I wish I had the words, but I have nothing like his. In this forever I will be a girl in his shadow. They ring with fire and passion and he means what he says. He’s got a book coming out soon and I trust it will be a bible. It’s like sparks flash off his hands as he gestures in a little bit of wanting fury. Sometimes I think I’m his little dream and sometimes he agrees with me. For years he’s softly haunted me. Last night he quietly dedicated something to me in a way that no one else could see then met my eyes before launching into his poem about his mother. Write, hand, write. I will forever be sorry that she died while I was away. We cried together in the hallway after. It’s an odd friendship, but I should have been here. The power in his speaking, it takes you over, winding in your ears and holding on with hooks in darkness made of light. I have never heard anyone more transporting. I don’t think it’s possible. I wish I could show you more than just a little piece of video of him winning some finals or a piece for the CBC. I wish I could take your hand and drag you to him, to see this gift, this symphony. I’m scared one day my name will appear, but I don’t think it’s in the unwritten rules. Somewhere out there he’ll say it, but I’ll be far away. On the wind I’ll hear a faint In Excelsia and gauge it rightly in admiration. Poems as music, as the finest tradition. The devils tongue encased in a brilliant frame.

I’ve put put to work today. The usual tuesday moderator has had to take her father to the hospital. I had five minutes warning. I’m now attached to the computer straight through to seven. (Feel free to blather with me on MSN). Seven hours of messing about on-line with brief respites in sinfully happy visits. Working weekdays always seems so easy, there’s hardly anyone on during the day. I have to wait until after their american skools let out for things to get hectic. Three o’clock sweeping across the countries in guilt stricken time-zone increments. I have some visits to look forward to, however, and tonight is Shane’s show. An Imperative You Be There sort of fing.

TUESDAY JANUARY 25TH
CAFE DEUX SOLIELS (2096 COMMERCIAL DR)
DOORS @ 8 SHOW @ 9 $5-7

Another moment in time that should be interesting is crispers Thursday: Down The Rabbit Hole. I’ve not the slightest clue what I will write about, which, I admit, is the same as any other time I sit down in front of the keys. I think it would be nice to post to tell him that we’ve taken part. I can’t imagine how many posts he would get if we all did. Several hundred is a general guess, his in-box flooding over-flowing with snippets of creative substance dealing half with the macabre. The deep blue walls buckling under the weight of a thousand amused attmpting writers. He already received over three hundred comments to his suggestion alone.

As a matter of curiosity, who hasn’t seen The Gods Must Be Crazy??

Scan my interest list. List one that seems odd to you.

I’ll explain it.

Then you post this in your journal so other people can ask you about your interests. Or else you don’t.

My flist is an exceedingly nice place. Within a page:

Illustration Writing News Photography Amusement Anatomy Anthropology Physics

One thousand hits in twenty days. I never knew I had so many visits or so many friends dropping by. If I put up an entry what allowed anonymous posting with no IP logging, do you think I could perhaps have some people give me a hello?

She looked at him over the rims of her glasses and smiled. The rain began to fall, pattering like a sycophantic melody begging for umbrellas. Blood rushed from his head, “I’ll sell my soul.” She smiled, amused, “That’s not necessary. I’ll think of something far more precious.” She turned her gray eyes to the sky, “Isn’t the water glorious?” and took his arm, her enameled nails flashing in the streetlamp light. He thought of her hand on the leather of his coat and shivered. It was unexpected to stand here with her. When he considered meeting her, she was an amalgam ghost of his ex-girlfriends. He pictured someone else writing his letters, someone older, not this sleek woman. Instead she, with a wicked edge, was something like a dream. Her skirts flaring, scattering water, she talked quietly as they walked. “What you want to know”, she asked, “is it what you need to know?” He steered her past a puddle before answering, “I’m not sure. I want to know everything. How you got into the business, I guess.”

Today has been pleasantly social, though not particularly kind on my voice. Jenn called at four this morning, though my throat gave out after only twenty minutes, and Bliss visited in the afternoon with a friend. Sophie arrived next, followed by Robin. She left, leaving me with Robin. We have Monday’s out together. We’ve decided to go see House of the Flying Daggers up at the VanEast for 9:30. He’s promised he’ll get up tomorrow for school and it is the week of his seventeenth. He should be capable of such a thing by now, right? I have a nagging feeling somehow that I’ll run into someone at the Safeway afterward, in spite of how ridiculous such an urge tends to be. I’m currently blaming my mounting level of pseudo-guilt stemming from my continually putting off any grocery shopping.