“and by contraption, I mean my computer, not my cock” (uminthecoil andrew)


Burrow
Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

Bless the day that I walked away with a smile on my lips and tears that were glad to be. I ran for the bus wanting to call out his name as the cry that would stop all time. My eyes shone, said the man who sat next to me. How do you do that? I’m young, I replied, and went back to my book.

There’s a mirror in front of where I sit to type on my computer and if I look up into it, I can see the white of my hair framing my face like the colour of ashes rubbed into the roots of my hair. Some days it’s good to remember what I’m like from the outside.

Also, pirates.

Often, almost always, I’m living hand to mouth. I try to get used to being a little bit too hungry but instead I’m always hoping that my tongue will have the strength to claw me out of where I am to somewhere greater than myself. It can be so frustrating. I find, though, that there is a side-effect of running under the line for so long. Gradually, my requirements fall. It’s almost that aphorism: the less I have, the more precious what is left becomes. As if bird crumbs have grown into mountains, complements arias, and even if they don’t love you down to their bones, what they offer is more than enough simply because they’re smiling to see you.

  • Scratchless CD blanks keep data from touching your desk.

    I’m not scared anymore. That’s terrible and yet I thank you. You were set up for those shots across the bow. All hope was swallowed in the cold of another morning, darkness and rain making for a miserable one foot in front of the other, and I had to let you know that it was okay. That no matter, I am too tired to need very much, too broken down to dust to invest my care too much. You’ve been that face that swims across my dreams close to morning for over a year. That I can kiss you now, that I have a chance, love, this makes for no illusions. This only keeps me warm.

  • Bike helmet covers shaped like brains, frogs, mohawks, etc.

    Burrow is here, finally we get to connect. She’s come up from Bellingham a few times and every instance, schedules have conflicted. It’s a shame, as I most undoubtedly don’t have enough professional clowns in my life. If the bicycle circus takes off, she’ll be up once a week a least. She says she’ll teach me to clown properly. Bwah-hah. (okay, no. She said heh heh heh, then HA HA HA. She’s reading this as I type it). I’m starting to think about wearing make-up.

    TONIGHT, (Tuesday), at 9:30, there’s will be a group of us at Tinseltown go seeing what they’ve done to Aeon Flux.

    edit: some of us are going for food at the wild ginger before the film. (Think 7:30). it’s the william gibson restaurant tucked away in the tinseltown food-court that has the magical slow-motion exploding tea.

  • Any time it snows, parts of my brain shunt into being six years old. This can be rather embarrassing, like when you’re about to turn on someone and be upset for them unclipping your bra when you told them not to but your eyes have caught sight of magical fluffy little frozen clumps of white falling from the sky, so instead your lips blossom into a smile and the smallest little happy voice spills forth with, “Ooooooh…” and you forget to dish out what’s coming to them until it’s way too late and rather pointless anyway.

    Blixa Bargeld, lead singer of the German industrial band Einstürzende Neubauten, does commercials for Hornbach, a home improvement superstore. Here they are: Mosquito killer, Paving stones, a Power Drill, and Paint.

    Brian collected me from work Saturday like an exhausted figurine. After dinner, I crumpled in the car on the way to a birthday party, a tired pile of black fishnets, velvet, and feathers, the air escaping my deflation taking the shape of an hour’s worth of clarifying how sick I am of me and mine meaning more to me than I do to them. He’s very good for me to talk with, he’s too soothing to get bitter at. Always he drowns me in affection. After the first unsteady hour, where my independence wants to lash out and kill him, I begin to relax. The next little while, all my carefully locked away pains want to leak out, but that too goes away. They grow tired of fighting with me and go back to hide again where I’ve put them to stay. It’s a trick I’ve learned to have. Hurray for trained repression. One day I should count how many people there are who are allowed to embrace me, allowed to find out what I’m really saying inside my head. I suspect the figure could be counted on one hand.

    TUESDAY, (not tonight, my mistake, verysorry hope this catches you in time, etc), at 9:30, there’s will be a group of us at Tinseltown go seeing what they’ve done to Aeon Flux. You should take part, yes yes. Strengthen our community through entanglement of social possibility

    Thank you to the lovely people who came over last night after Graham and I cleaned up. Andrew, Nick, Ian and Ethan – your dishes are a sweet testament to your arrival. I’m sorry I fell asleep during disc three of Aeon Flux. It’s been so long seeing some of them that I’m not even sure which episodes I missed. I don’t even know what time I fell asleep, the only time I looked at the clock was at six:thirty when I noticed it was light out and the ferret needed into the hall.

    This is for Ray:


    “Doomed love! Pharmacology! Futility! Insane machines!
    Unholy creatures! Dismemberment! Infection! Body modification!”

    The Not-So-Secret History of ‘Aeon Flux’

    Today is my last day at work.

    the closest I’ve ever come to begging

    I stepped outside with no direction except away from the fear. Years long, it lay unjustified until tonight. Solid, it destroys, shreds. My feet stopped at the edge of the street and I watched my hands gather snow into a little ball. This runs deep. I’m beginning to feel my lack of sleep like a knife. Every hour I laid awake in the past week is now a weight tied to a vice that’s seizing my throat closed. I didn’t look away when my body stood and began to walk. I was too busy locking my joys away in logical conclusions that describe why I should always know better. Who am I to ascribe worth to my self? This is the argument. This is the cause and self-hatred. Hope should never be let into my house. It has keys and is cruel. The piece of snow my body heat turned into ice became a metaphor and I threw it violently down, away, and didn’t look when it shattered.

    >slowly

    I did not ask to be let in to their room, but I was welcomed. My coat was told to come off, my scarf and shoes as well. The hat was to live on the back of the couch, come stay. It’s cold outside and we’ve made things with chocolate. My sad suspicions told me this was a bad idea, this was a moral test I would fail, but I stayed because the welcome was genuine and it is not their fault that I am wary and wounded. I sit pointed away, a puzzle composed of elbows and knees that fold into themselves and touch nothing else, and I am hesitant to speak, to intrude upon these people who were not planning for me, who do not know me except as an accessory, but I am handed a cat and expected to be at ease. Expectations and cats are fabulous pieces of social control. Peer pressure, peer pressure, watch some of our television and learn to be a little more real to our eyes.

    I should have left when my trust kicked in. Comfort isn’t allowed right now. I should know this more thoroughly than anyone. It hasn’t been at all this year. Instead my lessons require stronger aversion therapy, because look – I’ve made the same mistake twice. When he came in, I put down my dignity, the very little I’m left to scrape together, and invented gods to pray to, so that it might rate some significance to another human being. I never should have come without being called. It was a very cold walk home, long because I couldn’t see through my salt stinging pretence of integrity. There are no angels, only people with wings. A woman stopped me half way when she said, “Hey honey, don’t look like that. If they see you’re broken, they won’t want you.” My feet gave out and she kept walking. Tomorrow I’ll find out if I bruised my knees, all I know now is that I can barely feel my fingers.

    There is no distinction in writing this down, but it allows me to communicate with the ether. The vast formless place that language came from. I have been realizing this is my spirit guide, this is my starving on top of the mountains. I try to make here worthwhile with information dissemination, as if every link were an apology to the possibly hypothetical reader. Of course everything here is public. No matter how useless or sacrificial I am to my needs, no matter how exasperated I am at myself for pretending to worth, if it weren’t, this would be the equivalent to screaming into an empty box, closing it, then expecting to hear echoes the next time it’s opened.

    I was taken care of in every way that never matters to me. That’s why I forget, you see, because needs and desires are different ripples on the dance floor and my body can twist without me. Bread is nothing, but oh, holding my breathe for me. (‘?o baby i wouldn’t like Death if Death were good:for when(instead of stopping to think)you begin to feel of it’). The heart, that’s what insists on guiding me, that’s what needs to be fed when it complains. There was a warmth in my hips when he sat with me. I remembered how suddenly his hands had defined the curves of my memories, but I knew by the tilt of his laughter that I wasn’t going to be let in where I’ve needed to be. Out(in)side is still starving, there is more than an empty two days. There’s a few years backed up, complaining, waiting for me to address them in some grand speech. Last week I whispered to them. “Remember that name you’ve always kept secret? It’s talking to me.” Last week I forgot who I am, and persisted as who I used to be. See, last year I knew how to smile.

  • Ted Dewan designed a series of “DIY traffic-calming happenings,” including living room furniture sets in the middle of the road.
  • Atheist group offers free porn in exchange for Bibles.
  • Steadman, a band that released their whole catalog as MP3s when Elektra folded, is seeking donations.
  • what I have to say after all


    janis won’t die
    Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

    I leave for Montreal in a week and I’m still quietly lost as to what I should be packing. Warm things. Well, yes, I have about three of those. I have a scarf, a half-stolen plaid shirt that’s missing some crucial buttons, and a fleecy skirt. Now what? I’m not even organized enough to get myself fed in the mornings before work. Ah misery me, I’m feeling rather alone.

    Does anyone want a bus pass for two weeks? I certainly won’t be using it from December 10th to 24th. These little bits of foil and paper are untransferable, I’d hate to see the service provided go to waste.

    Also, someone get this “Will design thermonuclear devices for food” (in Russian) T-shirt, for Graham, k?
    And The Great Equation for Nicholas. Thanks. You’re awesome.

    I should be walking, airing out the musty smell of second-hand cigarettes my coat collects in the back room at work, but I am nervous of what I will find once I get past my first destination. I have a secondary plan, there is apparently a corset stitcher happening tonight at Andrew’s new apartment, but the primary is that for a reason. The scathing thing most close to the thin skin of my heart is the first thing I want to address. There is no turn back time, no peering ahead. I had a half argument about this earlier this week with a partially ex-lover. What’s real is what needs to be dealt with, and what’s now is all that we have to take chances with. What should be done should be done, regardless of imagined consequence. This is what I told him, irritation growing. I was falling in front of someone, hitting the ground hard with verbal feet that were suddenly fists curled in anticipation of the general unfairness of the world. Me, I surprised myself. I’m not used to admitting heat into myself. I usually keep everything I want very under control and very away from me. He said that I was intimidating. I would be surprised except that I’m beginning to get used to it.

    What happens when you begin to reject neglect in the face of everything you want?

    there are more photos to work into later conversation

    Andrew

    Truth or Dare. The things I’ve written are not spells and remedies. I want you to give me the illusion that I am caged by your arms. I am willing to find a poison toad, if you require it, and pry the gem from inside the skull to feed you in payment for this simple service.

    Yesterday was my first graciously busy day in what might be a long time. Ray and Sophie came out for breakfast, a group of us helped Andrew move, (the boy in the picture), Nicole and I bought Ray new glasses frames, and after I went for dinner and studio photography with Nick. Right now it feels unreal, as if yesterday was some term of time too far away to see minutely. Admittedly, I am suffering that strange lightness of balance that only a scaldingly hot shower after a long day of no food can give a body, so perhaps tomorrow I will have a more lucid understanding of nonspatial continuum, but it’s now that I have a moment to sit and type blankly into the computer screen, so it’s now that you’re going to read, not an enchanted later.

  • Neuroscientists at Washington University can use a brain scan to predict if a subject will succeed or fail at a simple videogame.

    Someone tagged me with the 5 Things About Myself meme that’s been cluttering up my friendspage with admissions like I had a crush on my neighbor, but never told her. Now she’s married to my ex-boyfriend and doesn’t look the same, so I don’t fantasize about her anymore. Well, okay, no. I made that one up, but I’ll assume it’s simple to understand how banal repeated running of this meme can read without going through the hassle of finding an actual entry with it in.

    Here’s the only thing I could think of:

    You sent away to the postal gods when you were little. Did you get everything you asked for? In classes we practiced our writing in overly looped lines of Dear I Want Please Thank You This Thing How Are The Reindeer? The only holiday more foreign was Fathers Day. Every year the teacher would reprimand me for telling them that I didn’t have anyone to make a card for. Some years I would be brought into the principals office. “This girl is being very unco-operative. She says she doesn’t have a father.”

    And instead of answering that meme with four more uninteresting tid-bits, instead I will theft this one:

    If you read this, if your eyes are passing over this right now, (even if we don’t speak often) please post a comment with a COMPLETELY MADE UP AND FICTIONAL memory of you and me. It can be anything you want – good or bad – BUT IT HAS TO BE FAKE.

  • It’s easier to fly when my head is held up.

    Yesterday was World AIDS Day. ruralrob is an admirable man. Do what you can. Support World AIDS Day


    My replacement at work, she slapped my peripheral vision as soon as I walked in. She seems more the kind of person to work in my shop than I could ever be. I can’t help but approve of her rock-a-billy zebra lunchbox and betty page haircut. They matched her leopard skirt so well. My manager, she just shook her head. Another new girl is no help to her. She’s only just through teaching me how to run the strangely mis-managed shop around and in spite of how badly and quirkily organized the owner has it set up. It’s only been November she’s been able to leave me for hours at a time to handle everything. I almost feel sorry for the new girl. I don’t know if she has the diplomatic memory to deal with the crying chaos she’s just been inserted into. Every day reaches a new impasse with stress, introduces another piece of the suspicious labor law puzzle. I’m counting on my job to be gone when I come back from Montreal, otherwise I may find myself trapped there by a lazy sympathy for my co-workers and that might count as a new dictionary definition of the word dreadful.

    So it seems the biological source/reservoir for the dreaded Ebola Virus are some tiny, cute, and apparently tasty fruitbats. The apparently tasty is why we keep having outbreaks. How fun is that? As fun as a pack of russian killer squirrels? Or a group of children who fight with machetes to re-enact a battle from Lord of the Rings? The jury may still be out, arguing with David Byrne over copyrights.