for a girl named A


Automatic Sadness
Originally uploaded by
seejackrun.

When you turn your face, I see the most beautiful girl underneath invisible scars. There are lines there, drawn in an ink that’s never been put to paper, tracing everything you’ve ever seen, everything you care to remember and some things you don’t. When you turn your head and smile, the maps crinkle in the corner of your eyes like secrets that kings lost before history was written down on anything but flesh and I smile back, because yes, that’s exactly how that song used to go, back when we were smaller and less aware of fear. You have the name of the only girl who was ever nice to me in grade seven. I don’t think it matters, but I thought you would like to know.

When you hold your hand to the light, I see a dancer there, poised with rhythm and waiting for the exact moment to drop her handkerchief, eyes smiling at the irony of it all. The bones are soaked with vitality and glow through only where they should, rather than before, when they did not, when they were apparent. Knuckles white, knuckles kissed, it’s all the same after. You’re loved and should know it. The form and frame are balanced, a painting waiting to be found under an old student whitewash.

I posted and seventeen people arrived, let’s see what some warning may bring


Celebration of Light – Canada
Originally uploaded by beccabug.

The lovely medousa has offered her place as a downtown meet-up for the Saturday night fireworks. Anyone interested should meet on the NorthWest corner of Barclay & Thurlow by the fire hydrant. The time to do so, however, is up in the air, as I don’t know what anyone’s plans are. Is there going to be another conclave on the beach? More skinny dipping? I’ve not a clue, so tell me. Where and when have people been discussing?

edit: Meeting at 7:30 – 8 with beginning to walk at 8:15. Good?
edit: just in case you missed it, party at Reina‘s tonight.

this is the first time in a long time I’ve been left alone with a screen


DSC06059
Originally uploaded by gjohng.

I woke up this morning like a murder victim, posed and cunningly placed to display the blooms of blood to the best advantage. I woke tired and I woke too early. Five:thirty the clock said, and how I wished it had lied. In the mirror I looked like a fashion disaster, some high couteur model with an ill chosen penchant for ice-cream, my make-up shimmering and flecked with sleep.

I haven’t been home lately, not at all. My room is so messy that the right kind of doctor could look in and see a disaster ground zero for the terminally depressed. Saturday was Illuminaires, something I still want to talk about but haven’t had the chance, as Sunday was the day my computer caught fire. Monday was Korean Movie Night, an evening where the last people always leave at one o’clock, and Tuesday was an evening in with Nocole and my mother. We talked about relationships, three weary women of differing generations and differing points of view. We found something in common though. All three of us are alone.

Wednesday was the first night of the Symphony of Fire, the Celebration of Light it’s called now. Navi and I were running late, having been in the forest out in Langley, our naked flesh being eaten alive by the whining wildlife. Also, we were attacked by an owl. That sort of thing tends to slow down city folk and traffic was bad, so when we arrived the show had already begun. Through the crowd we forded, finding the path and as we ran, we could look out over the thousands of dark heads and see the barge rocking with sound concussions underneath giant blossoms of flame. It was beautiful, as it always is, and our friends were where they said they would be, which is a new thing and practically a miracle. After the music crescendo, I stood in the water and stared at the ocean, watching the city reflected on the waves. My arms wrapped around me, I don’t know what I felt. I feel it now, but it’s a hollow thing. My thoughts were on the horizon, on how black the water was, how I couldn’t see my feet or the sun. I looked out and farther out, thinking, “there is light there, over that line, and how I need to see it.”