I’m a velvet encased palace today. Bottle green pants, a black tank top, a pale pink tongue. The world is full of girls like me, I just haven’t met any yet. It’s such a shame. Kiss me sky, please kiss me. Tell me that I can learn not to be haunted by that devil smile, that ragtime pair of whispering lips. Desire has been lying to me, telling me that I’m beautiful and I don’t need that right now. This week is set aside for young reactions. The ember burning boy knows I’m the sea and stars, and the memory of that dizzying reaction shall be enough for me. My cup of human kindness was quietly laid to waste with my lover touching someone else’s skin, so now I need to find the will to make another. I’m getting better. It feels superficial, but I don’t know enough yet. I’m still learning. Maybe it will turn out to be easy to rebuild. I can feel focus accruing on me, meshing with my skin. It feels top-heavy, hollow, but I suspect that’s just who I’m going to be right now. A pop song princess, simple, lyrical and confident if shallow from the inside out.
Month: September 2005
how many downloads of IKEA porn would happen if I posted our video?
Ryan is ill. Last night I stared at the ceiling a moment and thought, “Well damn, there’s no hair to hold out of the way, what else is there to do?” I’ve been living with a different kind of boy all my life, this mild cat fur is out of my purview. Strange that there’s even sickness in my house. I’m rarely ill, and I haven’t had a cold since I was shorter than a coffee table. I brought him a towel, a housecoat, and a glass of water, and he came back to bed rather quickly, the dry heaves accomplishing nothing. I entirely blame Dragon*Con.
Now I’m going with Ray, Sophie, and Ryan to brave The Brothers Grimm, having giggled appreciately a little at Warren‘s Engine troubles to off-set looking at New Orleans, (some brief examples: US disaster chief delayed for hours, Navy Pilots Who Rescued Victims Are Reprimanded, Instead of Rescue Work, Fire crews to hand out fliers for FEMA, New Orleans Mayor orders ‘forecful evacuation’ as contaminated waters threaten an environmental disaster, (again, here, with audio and slideshow), FEMA Blocks Photos of New Orleans Dead, and a collection of other stories on FEMA).
edit: here’s the video.
with the photography of Darren Holmes (a tisane is a medicinal tea)
At first I understood balance, measurement of days. I could cook on a boat like I could at home. Mesne thaumaturgy. It wasn’t like going up a mountain, where the pressure of the air changes and suddenly every recipe begins looking like a chemistry exam. Instead, I changed. By the second week, I could no longer find the chicken for the eggs, the forest for the metaphors. My cupboards were too cluttered with leftover accents given to me by kindly local actors. The first disaster came when I tried to whip myself into shape, forgetting how literal my paper-clips essay instructions into similie. A day passed before I could drag myself from bed to prepare a tisane. Another day before I could believe simple movement didn’t require the same dedication as circus contortion. The next week was better. I was jumping at shadows, stepping on edges and peeling back their skins to get to the soft pulp within. They squirm on the tongue, so sure of isolation that they don’t understand you’re eating them with that dash of pink salt, that pinch of ginger and pepper and honey and folk songs.
Polyphemos visited yesterday. His solitary eye licked my face. I flinched and fell in love, my vision obscured by his lawless spit. Dinner was ruined as the stars fell into it, torn from their hollow orbits by the sudden gravity of my invincible passion. Embarrassing, this walk through my fusion seared kitchen to our cracked china bowls. I stood between the stove and the comfortable bleach blonde table, apologizing. This happens every time. Soon, my more ornate cutlery will delicately wince when he comes, troubled by his painfully predictable effect on my mustered years, his shaggy fistfuls of tired wilting flowers.
which as is east?
Putting the crunch of a piece of metal against my skull, I wake up. The people are gone, there have been no voices or music for hours. I breathe, thinking I don’t like silence. My clothes are tangled in the bed, and I put my glasses on to see. The sky is a dull blue, obscured from a cutting edge by a pretence of clouds. I work this evening, and for some reason I want to say I’m sorry. A general apology to the world for existing, like if I were to talk, my voice would quaver with a thick underlying bass note.
New Orleans is finally getting rescued, what’s left of it. Estimates say the city will have to be abandoned for at least nine months. (Of course, bloody Halliburton gets the rebuild contract, bastards.) People are still shooting, people are still dying and standing knee high in corpses, (they refused to let people leave the Dome), and there’s barely anywhere to put the survivors, but a start has been made, hopeful clans of organized humans are coming to light, fundraisers are getting properly underway, and the Red Cross is finally being let in, no thanks to the White House. (The presidential being what stood in the way of almost all rescue operations that were stalling.)
My mother rang yesterday, left a message. When I gave her a call back, my brother Cale picked up. “I got my lip pierced.” He’s all of fifteen, really the age for this sort of thing, I figure. I told him that just that day I’d been discussing how unattractive they are, and from there we degenerated into an arguement about who spits and who swallows. “I’ll bet you deep throat”, he said, and I replied, “Course I do, brat, I’m a good girlfriend. Not like you.” “I do too! Oh, wait. Fuck. You caught me. You suck, Jhayne.” “Yes dear, put mum on the phone” His girlfriend was listening on his end and kept dissolving into laughing fits. “You’re sick Cale.” “But my sister says she doesn’t swallow! It’s a crime!”
My best quote, “Oh come on mum, it sounds bad that I’m working in a sex shop, I’m best friends with my cheating ex, and I’m taking up with someone with a cokewhore sister, but it’s not. I’m the most stable I’ve been in a long time.”
I may not attend Korean Movie Night this evening. It depends. Are you planning on going?
blessed, the way, it is
You are what I haven’t written about yet. Stability and comfort, two unexpected islands ringed by eye-liner, shored by language and anchored with glyphs in the middle of the night. That you’ve never seen me naked means something for once, like it did when I was younger, before I began to try and discard romance because everyone around me had grown out of it years before I was born. You are what I haven’t questioned, because it won’t matter, because what you are thinking is enough for me. I watch you and it’s like I can see a mist around you, an aura of intelligence that I can walk into and feel safe. It should be uncomfortable, but instead I feel like I could fit like a smaller matryoshka. Nest inside, curled like fingers over the keys of an ivory piano, and sing with you, creating chords with the words you haven’t learned to say yet and yours that I never thought to know. You are slender fingers poised artfully and laughter longer than your hair. You are interesting in a new way and I’m hoping you come home to me. I like your smile. By the end I’ll owe you so much time, I’ll owe you so much effort and attention and missing you more that I worry a little at the deficit I might be wracking up this month in my time of tasting peculiar dust. You don’t see how strange this might be from my eyes. This city’s been a bloody cage, bars of people and relegation, since I walked out into the desert, saw visions, and never found my way back. My house has been cursed this last while and my luck brought out from under me to be thrown on a pyre of miniature disaster – who are you to stand by my side? You’re the closest thing to freedom that I’ve held by me in quite some time. That you’re mild, it’s fresh spring water. Something clear, something to carry in my cells after standing dry so long. I’m hoping somehow that it doesn’t matter that I’m hanging by threads, that the ink used to write on my heart was just bitterly burned, a frostbite scorch needing too long to heal, and threatening to scar in complicated knots. I won’t claim you’re the only person on my mind, but you’re patient. Like stones in fairy-tales I said, and it’s true. It will be enough.
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin speaks openly and candidly about the current situation in New Orleans. Transcript here.
From unquietmind, “One of my jobs in monitoring the Associated Press photo wire. I see hundreds of images that will never be published, but I think these photos are worth sharing with you. Even though some of these images are sad and harrowing, I take comfort in them. They remind me that people are inherently compassionate and caring. I hope you draw strength from them, too. All images by The Associated Press in New Orleans, Biloxi and the rural Gulf Coast.“
going to kill you
Last week I was continually busy to the point where today feels strange because I have no plans. It’s like the week starts with Mondays now, for Korean Movie Night, and then everything unfolds from there. Last Tuesday was Beth‘s lovely concert, where I met Edward and Ethan‘s sister, Tiki, then Wednesday was the Brickyard with Chris, Dominique, Alicia, Ryan, Tristan and Aaron, then Thursday was open mic poetry at Cafe Du Soliex with Amber, Friday was Lung‘s photography opening, (where I also met wonderful people), and picking up Scott from the airport for Saturday’s Zombiewalk, which was insanely delightful. Sunday was dropping him back at the airport and Steve’s birthday BBQ, where I’m not sure I met anyone, (not enough to get names, at any rate), though I was the last to leave and that rolled right back over into being Monday again.
This week is shockingly empty so far in comparison. I’m going to post a schedule in grand Andrew tradition and go from there, slotting in people and events as they’re planned.
weekly keep track
When you speak, even silence listens.
Shane stayed over last night, the way his head rested on my body made me aware of my collarbones. We have a strange friendship, he and I. When we are together in a room, we pair off, we pool our attentions. I am continually The One Who Got Away While Standing in The Same Room and he is That Man Who Speaks Like a God Creating but Likes Me Anyway. Dawn painted light onto my ceiling and I watched it, the sun sparking off the gold sequins attached to the cloth that hangs over my bed bright enough for my blind eyes to see, and considered why I didn’t blush when I finally read to him his poem. He’s just back from the Edinburgh book festival, where he was on a panel with John Saul, Salman Rushdie and Margaret Atwood, (his book’s been released already in the UK), and here I am, a girl in a bar with funny hair and a lopsided smile, for a moment attempting to be literary, reading to him, the man who won the world slam three years running, about how I don’t love him as much as he loves me. If it were two years ago, I would have laughed at my inestimable gall, but now, somehow, it’s alright. In my own way, I’m on par.
A little bit that’s scary.
Broken Flowers was artfully ingenious, by the way, before I forget to say ecetera. Jim Jarmusch catching intelligently how lonely our memories are, and ending it with such implied emotion that it went past being clever and landed squarely in the masterful category. Bill Murray plays a similar role to the one he did with Lost In Translation, but twists it slightly, resulting in a more black and white character, one more inclined to allowing for dry assumptions. I really liked it, the humour was provocative and cheerfully nasty, as it tends to be with Jim Jarmusch, but I don’t know if it’s going to catch on the way Coffee & Cigarettes did. One can hope, certainly.
Today the majority are over at Playland, shouting on rides and watching animals snuffle about in pens. I’m caught still clinging to the internet petticoats, wandering the flooding catacomb of New Orleans and am wondering if I’ll make it out at all. Ray should be calling, confirming if we’re going to go rollercoaster or not. I hope he does it soon, as Reine called recently and I’m feeling bad that I haven’t been able to ring her back yet.
sinking, not swimming
When midnight came on Sunday, we sang New Orleans is Sinking and brought out the laptop in an attempt to find live footage of the storm. We were up late, we were celebrating, it was the appropriate thing to do. I wanted to be there, at the cusp of it, at that pivotal moment of history. There was a picture of a man flying like a sugarglider, later, using a sheet he’d tucked into his shoes and was holding up above his head. Now I find the greatest depiction of the survivalist crises. Non-Lethal Weaponry is being sent into New Orleans to be used for crowd control of the sort that activists used to write about with horror in the back of MONDO magazine. MADS, more specifically, Magnetic Acoustic Devices, the friendly name given to large sonic pain cannons. (information on ‘non-lethal’ devices).
interdictor is possibly the last person in New Orleans to have internet access.
This journal has become the Survival of New Orleans blog. In less perilous times it was simply a blog for me to talk smack and chat with friends. Now this journal exists to share firsthand experience of the disaster and its aftermath with anyone interested.
* You can reach me on ICQ at 21710340 if you’re so inclined.
* The live cam feed is being rebroadcast by the heroic freedom fighters at mises.org,: http://old.mises.org:88/NO2
* American Red Cross – DirectNIC – vonmises.org – New Orleans LA post-Katrina Intel dissemination wiki
* If you want to link to my blog, please use this URL: http://mgno.com/
* IRC channel has been opened: IRC is on irc.freenode.net in #interdictor – #interdictor-scanner for transcript of NG radio and #interdictor-digest for discussion; JavaApplet
* Photos can be found here: http://sigmund.biz/kat/index.html Media has permission to use the photos with credit to DirectNIC.com
* If you are in the media and you want to contact me or any in Team SOTI here at Outpost Crystal, please get with Ezra Hodge — he can be reached at ICQ: 91-664-906, or ehodge@intercosmos.com
lindseymoongirl is in the area and has this to say,
“What matters is that 5 days after the Hurricane actually made landfall – people are still dying. People are dying from dehydration and heat stroke. People in hospitals are dying because power has gone out and generators are floundering without available gas. Nursing home patients, hospice patients, the elderly, the young – all are dying.
In New Orleans, gangs have taken control. People are being shot, women are being raped. Relief trucks with medical supplies for area hospitals are being hijacked – their drivers are being murdered. These medical supplies never make it to the hospitals. Helicopters make attempts to relocate people trapped in the Superdome, but have to be cautious – their choppers are being shot at. Snipers are setting up along rooftops, shooting people as they are evacuated. Lawlessness has taken over. Hope is truly running out for residents who remain in New Orleans. Without water, power, and food, more people are dying every day. The National Guard is having to storm the city. And now, parts of the city are on fire.
In South Mississippi, there is a nursing home by the name of Dixie White House. There are 60 residents in that nursing home, along with the staff that stayed to brave the storm. There is no power, no water, food is RUNNING OUT. The halls smell of filth. The staff is exhausted. A resident dies – their stench of their decomposing body is now mingling with the stench of vomit, urine, and shit.
In my town of Hattiesburg, water has finally been restored. Chaos still remains – a brother shoots his sister in the head to obtain a bag of ice. They are still without power. Caleb and I had to evacuate earlier this week. We don’t know when we will be able to go home or return to work. The roads are closed, our street is littered with oak and pine trees. There is no gas to fill people’s cars so they can get out of the city.
Here in Jackson, gas is running out. There are lines 3 hours long for the stations that are actually open.
—
We need your help. I’ve been working with the Red Cross and I have seen first hand that help is needed now. Don’t wait until tomorrow. President Bush will not send us aid, but you can do it on your own! Several sites will take your money and put it in the right hands. You can go to your local store and pick up a case of bottled water and bring it to a drop point. That water will get to those men, women, and children who are so thirsty. The time is now. Never mind yesterday. Never mind tomorrow. People are dying today. Children are dying today.
Amazon Hurricane Relief
Just one of many sites accepting money for the the people affected by this, the largest natural disaster in U.S. history.”