mutable like pushing the body through dance


Yann Arthus-Bertrand – p146_f
Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

I’m listening to River of Orchids, arguably the most perfect piece of music XTC ever crafted. It’s on repeat. I’m singing too quietly for my house to hear, but my eyes are closed as I’m typing this and I’m swaying like the most classic of butterfly catching hippie girl. Pluck, and the strings echo the sound of a drop of water exquisitely caught. Unison, tears, a little thread of hair, two fingers, pluck. It’s something complex simmered down into it’s simplest components. A long haired orchestra, a chorus of flowers. Alchemy, singing into gold. Want to walk into London on my hands one day. The harmony is untouchable, flawless, layered in every direction like the air on windless day in a sunny field full of glory. This is my hindsight soundtrack to everything good in the world. It’s both childish and meaningful, lushly encompassing a world of celebration. Visual paeans flit past my mind when I put this on too long. Winding scenes of incongruous joy.

It’s bloody addictive.

I put it on because it’s beautiful, because I’m a little bit nervous. Someone interesting is coming over for dinner and a movie. Something cyclical and charming is required, something that reminds me of stand up memories. The mural we had in the basement always disappointed me, it was always a little too dull yellow for my tastes and they never asked me to take part in any way I felt I could respect. I took pictures anyway, when we left, of that wall that I painted topless, smearing white paint with a demoniacal grin. The home-made bars on the windows were covered in gray electrical tape.

I shan’t admit


091705-021
Originally uploaded by aeillill.

My suppositions were correct, the power supply had popped, and now we’ve got my machine plugged into Andrew‘s. We’re crowded on his bed, clearing big chunks of tasty media off my hard-drive onto various sized discs. When James left me his machine, he left it filled to the brink with wonderful films and brilliant programs. There is almost nothing it isn’t capable of, if I had the skills to take advantage of it or or if it had a damned power supply. Ah well. Tomorrow such problems will be fixed. I have breakfast in the morning with Matthew, which will lead into our mutual appointment with Sarah and drop me off at the lunch reservations I made for my mother‘s birthday.

He tells me he loves me when I say goodbye on the phone. There has never been a voice so sad as mine in my heart when I cradle the reciever back in its plastic bed. I don’t say it back, what need? I am branching, my arms boughs, my fingers as twigs. Someone has offered to teach me to float glass like air in my palms, like dreams. I want to. These lips are remembering his eyes and hair. I feel my Saturday as a wondrous thing. The Party Not Starring Peter Sellers was exquisite. The bit with Chris, at least, he is magic incarnate, and Crystal does things with two sets of tassels that defy the imagination. I won a dance contest while in a corset, though I will never attempt such a thing again. I felt like dying for fifteen minutes after. The rest of it was fairly basic, but enjoyable nonetheless. I reacquainted myself with lost theatre people, Terry, Jacques, darling Chris, and I finally met Bill’s wife ma’am. I touched her stomach where his child is brewing. I saw how he looked at her, I’d forgotten. I can feel his face in my expressions again. When he swung down from his perch, I had to squash my urges to go and hug him, instead I left my smile intact and tried to not crowd him. When I was downstairs in the hall, a staff member asked what I came for. I joked, “To see the show, of course, and to discomfit my ex.”

We laughed, but I’m so sorry to say that it’s what happened. I miss his muppet gestures. In my recent cleaning of my room, I found a picture of him from one of our earlier anniversaries. There’s flowers in his hair and ‘I love you‘ written in chocolate on his chest. The rest of it, I dare not say in public, but needless to say, it was rather touching. I’d put up blue lights on the wall over the bed in the shape of a giant heart. It stayed up for months, though every time we had sex, we would tear part of it down.

I found Vancouver’s secret burlesque bar, Saturday. It’s a room fifteen feet wide, and as long as the block is wide. The second floor is a golden balcony overlooking the dancefloor, and instead of a disco ball, there’s a silver merry-go-round horse studded with mirrors. I fell instantly in love. Terry and Ryan and I arrived just as the very last of the burlesque ended, (two minutes of shadows having sex), and soon set up camp upstairs. Terry is especially brilliant, as he is one of those most precious people who continues to be astutely brilliant when proceeding to be drunk. We leaned over the balustrade and shouted communist political slogans at appropriate moments in between dancing ironically and splashing the people below with ice-water and gin and tonic. Within half an hours, I collected an entire stag party, (with phone-numbers), and commandeered a few of them into affixing a fan to a table for me to have a private dance-floor on the balcony. I felt, finally, like I was having the sort of evening that silver_notebook regularly inspires my jealousy with.