because the words going around are already highly ficticious

the fighting irish
the fighting irish
Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

Lately it’s come to my attention that there are more lurkers here than I can account for. As well, as of earlier this month, there were more than 300 LJ users who have me on their friends lists. That’s thirty decareaders. I think it’s about damned time for you to explain yourselves. Yes, this means you:

1. Who are you and why?
2. (bonus) Recommend some music that you think I would enjoy.

IMG_0009 IMG_0010 IMG_0012 IMG_0013

Shock! Scandal! Two Irish brothers were caught fighting at the Burnaby 8-Rinks Sunday night, firmly damaging reputations and causing at least thirteen dollars worth of rumours. Mike McDonald and Daimhin O’Dwyer, witnesses confirmed, began to brawl upon the realization that they had both been sleeping with the same girl. The fight was abandoned briefly as a brave young woman, Sophie Isbister, stepped in and declared a truce. However, the fighting began again only a few minutes later, culminating only when one boy dragged the other over the side wall of the rink head first. Staff completely ignored the entire matter.

  • 16-year-old studies journalism, then runs away to Iraq alone,
    IMG_0014

    Rick and Sophie are asleep in my bed like Jack Spratt and his feverish wife snoring like a pair of adorable kittens. I love them both with the same careless affection, but I’ve been staying up too late lately to go to bed just yet. I’ll join them eventually. First the planet has to rotate a bit. I admit, though, the bed looks terribly welcoming. There’s an inviting heap of extra blankets, because Sophie is mildly ill, with a space on the edge set aside for me to slot into. Already I can feel the body heat radiating off them that’s fogging my windows. A new sensation, but as I’m an old-fashioned girl, warming my room with bodies strikes me as appropriate for winter.

    Not that January is cold here, far from it. Vancouver, recently, has been embalmed in a strangely humid spat of warm rainy weather. The constant cloudy skies have been trapping the earth’s energy and not releasing it until night is well fallen. It’s almost irritating as I remember the clear, crisp, and certain winter of Montreal. No waffling seasons there, but clearly delineated passing of time. I love dearly how the trees there have no leaves.

  • Ignoring UK ban, bloggers publish leaked torture memos.

    Reports from the hospital confirm bruised egos, but no one in critical condition. The current prognosis is hopeful. It is expected the rift opened between the two contestants will repair itself in the next few days, as they are currently to be found fiercely debating the politics of drinking Guiness for dinner and haggling over the price of the shepard’s pie to be found in the cafeteria. News about the girl is not as good, nurses tell, her belly having shaken with laughter magnitude of 5.9. She may require the resulting stitches be extracted from her body, but this has yet to be confirmed at the time of publishing.

    IMG_0015 IMG_0016 IMG_0017 IMG_0018 IMG_0019 IMG_0020 IMG_0021

    I have been continually reminding myself that I have to gather Robin up after school tomorrow/today and explain to him where Academie Duello has moved. He’s been slack lately, claiming location ignorance as a reason not to go to his classes. I’ve never been, but I know where it is. It’s now housed in an odd part of downtown, busy yet not particularly thought about, kitty-corner to SFU campus and on top of Waves coffeeshop, the only 24 place with free wireless. I’ve been going over routes in my mind, trying to think of how to show him how to find it from as many directions as I can muster. What buses pass by, what skytrain stations are closest, what streets should he avoid? I have to factor in that Duello is close to Crackton now and Robin is not known for his keen instincts. The junkies wander far enough west that he’s going to encounter them. I’m wondering if I should be teaching him how to notice them too, as well as the landmarks and which way is north. He’s my only source of income at the moment, if he’s grounded due to sheer empty-headedness, I suddenly won’t be able to afford to pay my way. That would be bad. A lesson in How To Tell If The Homeless Are Dangerous is fomenting as I type this, can you tell? Envision something like a cynical Far Side cartoon featuring a city awash in drug culture and you have the basic seed of the idea. Let’s hope that he never has any practical application to apply it to.

    IMG_0022 IMG_0023 IMG_0024 &nbsp &nbsp IMG_0025 IMG_0027 IMG_0042 &nbsp &nbsp IMG_0043 IMG_0044

  • charmed, I’m sure


    how old-fashioned
    Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

    Every day has been something new that stretches late. Dawn has been the time I put my head to the pillow for sleep, quarter past the sun has begun to come up. I’m buried in this thing then that thing. It’s good and I wonder where my phone-call is. There’s a boy in the shower and I wonder if I’m going to do anything about him. Cult of personality and we had sandwiches for breakfast at four in the afternoon because we’d been up watching Emma Thompson swan ravishingly through Much Ado About Nothing.

  • EU launches first phase of satellite navigation project.

    I breathe and the story continues. Backward, last night was Patti‘s birthday, the night before that was Tilly’s. Sitting on a ball at the Treehouse, eating green icing from a giant glass measuring cup and harmlessly flirting with old friends. Wednesday was Kareoke at the Veterans Hall, spending time with Ray alone for once and Tuesday I’m not even sure I remember, except I know I walked home from Christopher‘s place, a bedraggled leftover from Monday night Korean Movies.

    The days go back like that until the flatline day I got off the plane. It’s an obvious try to pick up the telephone and connect the wires between me and the rest of the world. It’s been so long that I feel like I’ve forgotten the number and I know that’s terribly wrong for me. Horror movie music inching under my door like a flat killer realization, that’s what that is. Walking into a basement with only a flickering flashlight, the spark-plug smashing the car window moment of let’s Split Up.

  • Retrievr is a Flickr hack that searches a database of images based on drawings instead of tags.

    The window didn’t give me light today. The city’s closed against it, our ceiling of cloud is endless. Ice-skating will be the brightest place in the past twenty-four hours. The inside of my eyes are thinking of a bed underneath a star of lights. Ask me over or come yourself. You knew where I was living before anyone yet you’ve never visited. The number’s been the same, electric tattoo easy. Consider this an invitation.

  • the spell check does not auto-correct

    Sunday night, after the excitement that is Morris Dancing, there’s going to be a small group going ice-skating at the Burnaby 8-Rinks. The plan is to meet on the Metrotown Station platform between 8 – 8:15 pm. If you miss us, take the 144 to Sprott Street. (If you’re driving, there’s a Sprott Street Exit from the highway.) I don’t know the price of things, but I suspect ten dollars would be enough to cover both skate rentals and ice-time.

    I’m carrying myself lightly. My feet are lifting slightly off the ground, though the toes are still dragging. Again, I am lifting my head and holy. Welcome to the sacred. Service begins at waking.

    Patti’s hot-tub party was relaxing, a pleasant group of people in the house I spent my Christmas in. Nick had a smaller turn-out than expected on Thursday. At least five sparkling people who had asked if I was going to go were no-shows. Silly people, they missed out on cake.

    Sociability is breathing into me. On my return, I have taken up the ropes of friendship and madness and have begun tying myself back into having some sort of family. It’s difficult, relearning all the different knots, the phone-numbers, the remembering names, the confidant stride and swing of contentment. I’ve held in these hands the strength to carry on, but it’s like the callouses are gone. Everything wears anew, roughing up aspects of myself that were all but forgotten.

    Oh yes, and TooTaLute will be playing at the Work Less Party’s showing of “Alarm Clocks Kill Dreams” on Tuesday at 8 at the Pacific Cinemateque on Howe. (Which, by the way, is showing Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance January 5-9. Excitement!)

    there is no title for this land



    Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

    Dr. Thorpe: My car has a line of spraypainted stencils of ankhs with X’s through them.

    It is quiet enough in Andrew‘s apartment right now I fancy that I could almost hear the frequency my freckles vibrate against the rest of my pale skin underneath the constant flooding calm hum of his white enameled kitchen appliances. I would have to stop typing, however, to try my ear to such a pressure test, and I’m rather enjoying the illusion my fingers are giving me at seventy words a minute, that soft sound of rain that appears once I’m typing fast enough. I think I want to be lying in a room with a lover sometime to this kind of sound, this sort of quiet storm of water against a pane of glass. I remember days that almost approached what I’m beginning to want to look for, the sun slanting in through water distorted too much to see through to the trees.

    There’s always trees here, Vancouver is rife with them. It’s our natural beauty, our tourist trap. Snap. Pose for the picture. Tap, that clicking sound as collected water drips from the branches after a wash. Both metal sides of it crashing then crushing your ankle, leaving you unable to walk without a limp. It’s an asymmetrical sound and familiar all the world over. Here it’s background, a thousand thousand moments every day in the summer, the winter, we don’t have real seasons. If you live here, you mention rain. Every day it’s the same. Gray with sunshine. Gray with mountains and ocean and that one single lighthouse that shines with a dull frequency, too slow to pretend it has a secret language, too regular to be kind.

    Why do you live where you are?

    I live here because it’s what I can afford to do. Only once did I have the fiscal momentum to leave and instead I was a fool, stayed for a man. Never again, I swore. Since then, I’ve never had the means to leave, though there might be nothing at all I want more. Instead, I have collected a veritable army of good and clever people, the sort that a person might always want to talk to, as fascinating as a town can allow them to be and so often more. I like to introduce them to each other, spread out the balance of dissimilar personalities, like if maybe I connect enough of them before I leave the network will stay alive without my interference. It’s hard to meet new people, I’ve been at this so long. Instead I dream of strangers and throw my hands in deeper. If I ever disappear, maybe some of them will come with me. Conquer the mountains, the constant rain, the endless small town drudgeries, and escape and be free.

    There are worse ways of living, worse places to be, but when I came back from Montreal, all the wooden houses looked like shacks and all the heritage buildings seemed to me small frontier ideas of grandeur. Everything grated freshly because I’d been immersed again in a city big enough and new enough to keep me happy. No matter how ignoble some moments or how tiring walking through snow could become, it felt so perfect not to be breathing salt, not to be watched when I wandered or recognized every time I left the house. Old story. Small town, little girl. That cigarette adult craving for the big lights and endless entertainment of simply being where it’s possible to get lost. I missed my people, some of them. I wanted them to be waiting for me in coffeeshops or at the Metro, ready to go to a movie or skating on the river, but it wasn’t enough. There are always people, I tell myself. They are only prolific.

    It’s proved true. No matter where I go, it’s always possible to find someone likable. There are too many people in the world for it to work any other way. You’re never going to find that perfect smile unless you go outside, that perfect delightful smile unless you walk and finally say something to a stranger. It doesn’t even have to be clever. Everything can start with one simple shift, one hello or complaint about the current administration. Sometimes I know it’s difficult. The constant complaint of being shy, it rattles in my brain and I do my best to demolish it. Stomp it like an unwelcome insect and let my will find a way to insert that extra glance or wave of hand instead. That tiny thing that informs the world that I’m open to conversation and not as meek as previous impression may have led you to believe. Insist my chosen victim to ignore my book of fairy-tales, mentally erase my out-dated hat full of feathers, instead pay attention to my instigation, my eyes drilling into yours. Instead help me try to bring down the world, let it fall around us as we talk about nothing and finally find ourselves trading phone numbers or e-mail addresses.

    I have a camera again, which helps ease. Ray was sneaky, enlisted Aiden, Nicole, Jenn, Nicholas, and Ryan to chip in and replace my dead lump of circuitry that had betrayed me viciously and inexplicably while I was away. I have to find some way to thank them properly. Suggestions welcome, though it’s highly doubtful I’ll take any naked pictures.

    time to play doctor

    For those also interested in silly antique cultural events, our Vancouver Morris Dancers will be taking on weird old Plough Sunday celebrations at Grandville Island on January 8th around 12:30. These are the fellows who dress up similarly to Alex in a Clockwork Orange but with bells tied to their ankles and either bang sticks together while they skip about or wave hankies in the air like surrender flags. (For some reason, Liam, will be dressed awkwardly as a woman instead. Do not ask me why, I do not know). They’re meeting up at the Backstage Lounge, (the bar behind the Arts Club Theatre), and performing in the little stage area just west of The Net Loft, (the marketplace directly across the road from the main Island Market). Being an english thing, the dancing will be sandwiched between bouts of drinking beer, with people bringing instruments and singing after.

  • A teen girl deeply violated military security on four occasions through sheer chutzpah.


    My blog is worth $7,339.02.
    How much is your blog worth?

    In more international news, the ever-fascinating crisper has announced a “second verse, same as the first”, a reminder of our most favourite of holidays:

    In honor of the birthday of author Lewis Carroll, three weeks from today– Friday, January 27th, 2006— will be the Second Annual LiveJournal Rabbit Hole Day.

    “For one day, instead of all the usual normal stuff you would write about in the course of a day, wake up somewhere else, wake up in another time, wake up as someone different and write about a day that isn’t like any other. Fall down the rabbit hole for 24 hours and see what you find. Those who did it last year were, I think, quite pleased that they did!

    ——
    For consideration: mark on calendar, tell a friend, etc. etc.”

    I took part in this event last year and it was deeply satisfying to log in and find creative chaos, no matter how far in any direction I surfed through my friends. I implore everyone to plan for this, (tag it with RABBIT HOLE DAY), and pass it on as best you can. We’ve got three weeks to collect as many writers as we can, the goal’s to infect as much of our lists as possible, and I’m certain we can do this. We have a fantastic network, really. It’s as good a time as any to prove it. Ready, set, go.

  • back with an event

    Nick Petrie has rented Club 23 west Cordova for his birthday party tonight.
    Doors open at 9. Cover’s five bucks.
    The company’s going to be delicious and the music two-fold. Mike is going to wow us all with his skills as DJ Spaz, and DJ Heidrogen has come all the way from Kamloops. Be there or be bloody square, yo.

    birthday - shirley temple 1938

    Kissing by the bridge, that’s something for my list of thing’s I’ve always wanted to do.

    So with many thanks to the glorious Stephen, Graham and I are back with internet.

    birthday - 1934

    exit, pursued by a bear.

    I saved a life and slapped my cheating ex, what did you do?


    New Year 2006
    Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

    &nbsp I fell asleep once in front of tending a fire, an over sized teddy-bear as my pillow. When I awoke, it was startling. My hair thrown back, my feet half under me, the long slender piece of wood I’d used to prod the burning logs poised like a weapon over my baby/bear, I became a flame bronzed sculpture of the classic pose a woman makes protecting her child. Perfectly confident in myself and my action, I awoke the devil’s daughter because the sleeping bear Must Be Kept Safe. I was ready to spring, defend.

    &nbsp I’m a little worn out from feeling like that all the time. I would appreciate respite, a chance even to merely rest aside someone else who is responsible for guarding others, like the two of us together would not have to be quite as alert to ward off danger and so have a chance to relax.

    This is for you, Warren.

    I have been silent here not from lack of content, (quite the opposite), but because my ex-roommate, James, in a fit of infinite wisdom, decided to take my modem with him when he moved out and hasn’t answered his door yet when I go across the hall to ask for it back. Tomorrow I plan on leaving a note. Thank you for the concerned letters. I am not as absent as the internet currently claims I am.

    &nbsp &nbsp My New Year celebrations began as whispers in water. Distant from the occasion, I was swimming through SinCity, (click for pictures), nothing astray from the usual. Dancing, moving, the occasional warm hello. Matthew passed me while I was talking with Sarah and I ran my fingers through his hair when his back was turned, as I used to do. He held me close for a moment, said he was sorry, then walked away.

    &nbsp &nbsp Counting down from five seconds to midnight happened on the dance-floor. The music calmed, we stopped thrashing about and reached out for each other, holding hands with whomever was next to us. There was an announcement of free champagne at the pool table. “Five,” we shouted, “Four.”. We started jumping with every number. “Three. Two.” and at “One”, I put my hands up and threw a prayer. May it all be right again some day. I miss you.
    &nbsp &nbsp Precious Lasilana and I were meant to skedaddle off to the Annex House-party on the heels of midnight, but it didn’t quite work out that way. First there was a brief medical emergency, a friend of ours, incautious with a high-tension social situation, had an anxiety attack and had to be sent to the hospital. Then we lost each other in the morass of black fishnets and too tight corsets. Finally Nick found me, told me that she was outside waiting. First, I thought, say my goodbyes. A hug for Christopher, a faux swoon for Meghan, and a moment being lifted off my feet by Ross, and I thought I was gone, but no. I turn and there he is, that annoying bane.

    I’m going now.
    Ah, I hope you had fun. Good night.
    There is a motion for a hug.
    First you’re going to kiss me for New Years.
    I don’t think I could handle that.
    It didn’t ask you if you could.
    I don’t have a choice in the matter, eh?
    He smiles.
    No, I don’t believe you do. Find us a dark corner.

    &nbsp &nbsp On the back porch, in a tiny pool of space that the smokers have left by the rail, we stand together, quietly examining another with words. “How have you been?” “Stressed, you?” “Maybe worse, hard to tell.” “Yeah.” We hug and something snaps and melts, it’s small, but I can feel it in his spine. Our faces are both buried in hair, in shoulders, our arms are warm. We pull back to see again and abruptly, Richard yanks open the door from inside, “Matthew, Jhayne, sorry, it’s an emergency, you have to come now!”

    &nbsp &nbsp I begin to laugh, because how consummately flawless is his timing. If we were a film, this would be the moment where the music changes. Our heroes interrupted. I kissed him anyway, and then we ran impossibly quickly, hand in hand through the thick spiky crowd of heavily made-up women in towering heels and men in leather kilts and g-strings, all the way from the very back to out front the building.

    &nbsp &nbsp On the ground, propped up by the wall, is an unconscious girl in a green fairy costume surrounded by too many people who don’t know what to do. Immediately, Matthew and I pull off her panicking friends. Lasilana is already there, she had caught them trying to pour water down the girls throat in a poorly thought out attempt at reviving her and now as we arrived, she began holding people back, trying to calm them down, giving us room to work. I took her clammy body from the cold wall, lean her sitting sprawled against my own and tilted her head back against my arm, trying to open a clear passage for air. We get her name, Jennifer, from one of the smeary tear-faced friends and I begin saying her name, pinching her lightly, checking the tracking of her eyes. Her breathing was laboured as I checked her weakening pulse. Matthew gets on the phone with the paramedics.

    &nbsp &nbsp One one-thousand. Two one-thousand. Three one-thousand, feels a little like the counting inside from earlier, but she doesn’t get to four. I switch quickly from her wrist to her neck. Still no pulse. Four is simply not on the agenda unless I do something. Matthew is busy on the phone, almost standing on the street, and I can’t see Lasilana. I assume she’s behind one of the cement pillars calming crowd people, so I go it alone.

    &nbsp &nbsp The heel of one hand in the middle of the chest, between her breasts, the other on top of it. I press down hard, pulling toward me sharply, press down again, again, remembering what to do without any consciousness. She coughs, fiercely gasps, and her eye-lids flutter. Something comes up that was blocking the air in her chest and her heart thuds almost audibly. I count eighteen a minute. The world spins again.

    She is alive.

    &nbsp &nbsp I sit with her body against me, one hand holding her jaw forward, trying to prompt a response from her until the medics arrive. I don’t even know if anyone saw what I did. We interrogate the fiance, find out that she’d only had one drink, but also a pill and a sip of something that might have been GHB, but nobody knows for certain. We can’t find the guy who gave her the drugs to confirm anything, but at that point, it didn’t really matter. His description is fairly generic for a fetish club, he probably left after midnight. If we’re lucky, he was from out of town. In the end, we sent the fiance into the ambulance with her and explained the effects of shock to her friends. Lasilana lit up a cigarette and Matthew and I fell into each other.

    &nbsp &nbsp Again, I begin laughing. “Are you laughing at me?” “No, love.” I take his hand and we begin dancing to the faint music coming through the wall of the club. We’re calm and in control. I am, in fact, for a while. My forehead rests against his chin, then I start crying, just a little, through the smile. It’s a painful fairy-tale moment. Together we saved a life, together we’re singing softly to the music, I never meant to hurt you, together we’re dancing almost as flawlessly as we worked as a team.

    &nbsp &nbsp “Too precious to discard, too painful to keep.” It’s nice, no matter I don’t know how much it’s meant, no matter that I said it first, months ago, the sentiment is appreciated. It sums up so much of my painful year. It casts the right kind of glow to what happens next. He steps back, holds me a step away from him. “I think it’s time.” We’re gleaming, mischievous now. “Are you sure?” “Can’t think of a better time than now,” he says, and I can’t help but agree. There’s tears in my eyes still a little, but my heart must have shone like the moon on fire that moment. I begin to take off my rings and Lasilana approaches, “Would you like me to take those?” She proffers her hand, “Yes, please. Thank you.” I’m so glad.

    “Are you sure? I’m not sure I can do this.”
    “Never more sure of anything. I owe you more than this.
    &nbsp Really you should be giving me a swift kick between the legs.”
    “But then there would never be any children and that would be a shame.
    &nbsp You might want to close your eyes.”
    “No thanks darling, I want to see this one coming.”

    &nbsp &nbsp My hand felt like frostbite. As the snap of impact echoed off the building he put a dazed hand to his face and blinked his eyes. My fingers were imprinted white across his left cheek as if they’d been painted on with chalk. “Now I know why men roll with punches.” Lasilana approached and gave me back my rings, asked if he’d disappointed me in bed. We laughed and said Yes, but that was old news. “Not even with both hands and a flashlight” he said. I felt like we’d just starred in a series of events that had the strange accuracy of a post-typewriter conspiracy.

    “I’ll call you.”
    “That would be good.”

    Then Lasilana and I, we walked out into the night like two vessels setting forth to sea.
    For the first time in a long time, I felt beautiful.