Month: February 2007

yes, that is a disco in an elevator. Don’t you want one too?

The dead-rain weather hasn’t been allowing me to continue my pictures. I decided I wanted six when I was done, but so far I’ve only got four of the pretty little things. I have no lights, you see, so I rely on sunlight and my living-room wall. If these clouds keep up, I’m going to have to borrow gear from VFS to finish the set.

And, apropros of nothing, as more and more of these clips pile up, it’s been solidifying in my mind that the Wacky Right of America are overdue the label postmodern. The republicans seem to have stopped thinking of themselves as a universal entity and more a righteous legion under fire, The Other, a group that, in claiming victimhood, so deny any responsibility they may have for everyone else. I’m sure this could be applied a little deeper, but that’s about as far as I feel like going with it. I’d still like to have a nice evening.

last night my lover’s brother stripped for me. it broke my internet. never let that happen again

It’s possible to encode an entire image’s worth of data into a single photon, slow the image down for storage, and then retrieve the image intact.

While cleaning out a jewellery box today, I came across a flat jade heart from my childhood. It’s Asiatic, about an inch wide, and doesn’t fit with anything else here. I’ve never worn it, though it has a hole for a slim chain. It’s from Grade three.

It was lying dusty in the gravel of the school field at recess and I felt clever for having found it, such a small thing in that wide place. I held it in my pocket all morning, an odd treasure, I didn’t even like it, and wondered where it came from. I don’t remember the girl who accused me of stealing it, only that she had black hair.

When she claimed it was from her father, I immediately decided she had to have it back. Fathers were large chaotic things to me then, disastrous and violent, to be wary of, not to be ignored. People at school didn’t know what my home life was like, they only saw a very small, awkward girl who read too much and never knew what was cool, (you try talking about Boney M or the Talking Heads to New Kids on the Block worshippers). She didn’t understand my sudden distress. She took it for denial and began to hurl insults at me, accusing me of stealing it from envy. Her words were like bile. I’d never been falsely charged with fault before. She reversed my decision immediately, which is why I still have it, though I don’t care for it and never have.
Into the Free Box little thing. Into the Free Box and away.

A pulse of light can be stopped, transported, and restarted again using a cloud of super-cold atoms.

I felt I needed a chatty, rather useless post

4

Quantum Computer may debut next week.

My room looks like it was hit by a bomb from the wrong side of the gypsy tracks. Dominique came over, brought me valentine chocolates1, and finished off the bottle of wine that Michael2 left while I was packing. Evil, it was all evil, and delightful, and delicious. We didn’t pillow-fight in our underwear, but she flashed her panties, which were so rock-star that she broke my webcam.

Things discovered whilst packing: I have significantly more knives than I remember, but considerably fewer movies.
Whosoever has my films, this is the time to return them.

I’m beginning to think I can pack my entire collection of belongings into less than eight boxes. I’m going to try and slim it down to six, so if there’s ever been a non-essential oddment in my room that’s caught your fancy, this might when you want to say so. Guests are having small gifts pressed upon them, random possessions coming to light that I no longer have a use for – music, books, movies, bins of sidewalk chalk, small ceramic squirrels3… The list continues. I’ve started a free-box that I’m going to put in my hallway for people to paw through. It may even eventually move to the lobby.

Merry Lupercalia!

1 my first in two years, but they’re lindt, so worth the wait
2 worst picture ever, he’s rather more attractive
3 my relatives back east were under the misapprehension that I was stuck at age 6 until I went back to live there in 2000. all gifts that arrived previous to that either had pink, kittens, or both in prodigious quantity. now I simply don’t get any.
4 here’s her x-mas video.

re-sizing a ring, the pretty follies that themselves commit

The pretty follies that themselves commit

All o f m y words are imper fect, stripped o f grace a nd my ton gue in yo ur mouth, pale sk in bruised u nder make up, lo oking over m y shoulder when y o u say y ou want m e, scare d of inven ted promise s, fiction s aid o n ly to have me fee l better, p liable, running l ike mer cury, hot, lo cked i n the corr ect ional facility of you r arms a nd legs, t he cage o f our in stabil ity, t his madness, t h e frail colle ct call d ial tone o f sex, fu mbling with a bas ic fea r of what ou r life i s like fro m the out side o f this we ak membrane I c all a heart.

(meant to post this yesterday)

Sanctuary! Tonight! Dress in black!

Come help my brother Robin celebrate being old enough for “going to clubs and picking up chicks”!

He turned 19 on January 29th, so I’m taking him to where I think he has a chance at fufilling his birthday wish – goth night. Not only will his dancing fit in, it will be too loud for him to successfully talk about D&D! Exclamation mark!

subtle, no?

A repeating motif: noisy children, long hair, beaded leather jackets, and haida stitched mesh-back hats. It’s the Talking Stick festival, a celebration of First Nations.

After intermission, I slipped into the booth to watch a Columbian aerialist. Dressed in almost a medical corset and classic english brown pants, she looked like she’d been stolen from the change-room and glued to the wall. Instead of silks, she used bungee cord in loops that hung from the ceiling. She twisted, blindfolded, seemingly in agony, from various knots and swung widely over the audience, gracefully kicking. Strange effects, more a melding of modern dance with childhood danger than anything circus, that grew on me as I watched, until, by the end, a worn aching spark awoke in my chest. It must take skill to look so unhappy while doing something so insanely fun.

Michael arrived as I left the Centre after my shift was done and walked with me down to the Vancouver Convention Centre, where there was rumour of pyro strike work. From outside, the building looked deserted. The apparent emptiness of the space was welcome after the Granville street riot of club-fashionable women in glittery heels and the men trying to get them drunk, but I knew it for an illusion. I caught a man walking out dressed in blacks and dragging a case on wheels, an obvious tech, and asked about the strike as if I were confirming details. From him I got a name to use on the next person and directions to the after party. At the party, I discovered the name of the ballroom, and then struck out to find it. This is how I am a lot. So far, I’ve yet to be caught. The trick, I find, is to act like you’re already in the loop, but have misplaced your keys.

The named ballroom was empty, a staging area, but from there I smuggled us into the back kitchens. Past stacked trays of obscenely delicious looking left-overs and busy dish-washers, I stalked us straight into the right room, an immense hall with an impressive stage rigged up, one side of a square lined with mock iceburgs and filled with endless white tables covered in pale flowers and fake ice centerpieces, busy with housekeeping and techs tearing it all down.

More than anything else, it looked expensive. Large and expensive. And fun. A playground.

it’s Patrick


Walmor Corrêa’s Cryptozoological Anatomy.

I recieved a copy of my birth certificate in the mail. It’s the same glaucoma blue as the sky. I had forgotten my father’s middle name. Today on my way to work at the Dance Centre, I’m dropping it off at the police station, no army at my back. It’s the last piece to change my name officially. More documents will come in the mail, then my registration will be complete. My passport will have the correct spelling, the one my bank has accepted for the past twelve years. It’s a strange thing, crumbling my birth-name. I feel like I’m erasing a part of my parents history. This is somehow harder than signing papers for Heart of the World.

the scent of your pretty black hair


Jhayne, by Andrew Dimitt
Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

haiku for ___:
he reminded me
of the twitchy tip of a
purring cat’s tail

Paula came over yesterday and helped me begin sorting my things. Now everything’s a precarious mess, there’s paper piled on every surface, slippery memories tangled underfoot, stacked CD’s of old music, and violently coloured stuffed cats curled up to calligraphy kits next to antique instruments and gold framed mirrors. To orate the list would make for a glorious message on an answering machine, much in the style of a baroque-gypsy version of the semi-infamous monologue from Trainspotting:

The truth is that I’m a bad person. But, that’s gonna change – I’m going to change. This is the last of that sort of thing. Now I’m cleaning up and I’m moving on, going straight and choosing life. I’m looking forward to it already. I’m gonna be just like you. The job, the family, the fucking big television. The washing machine, the car, the compact disc and electric tin opener, good health, low cholesterol, dental insurance, mortgage, starter home, leisure wear, luggage, three piece suite, DIY, game shows, junk food, children, walks in the park, nine to five, good at golf, washing the car, choice of sweaters, family Christmas, indexed pension, tax exemption clearing gutters, getting by, looking ahead, the day you die.

Now that Wayne and I have picked up boxes, things have been going quicker. It’s beginning to make sense outside of my head. Already the detritus of my life is beginning to classify. Speculations correspond with a basic duality: Things I Appreciate / Things I Will Never Miss.

books for sale

leaving without a conventional expression used at parting

Poetic Justice found in the trailer section of the imdb page for Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life.


Landscape on skin, by Huang Yan, from the East Link Gallery, Shanghai.

Robson street, Vancouver’s brand-name straight-line shopping district. Peace as body lotion instead of solution, sold for fifty bucks a bottle behind white walls and vast plate windows, images torn from magazines that cost more than a meal. Thick with logo stamped angels, tight strappy sandals and tight strappy jeans, wide retail smiles and cocaine-bright children surgically attached to thin cell phones and even smaller hand-bag dogs, this is not my neighbourhood. Barefoot, I can feel the concrete but don’t feel connected. “Can’t buy me love, everybody tells me so.” Looking for nothing in particular, I stop for breakfast.

My dyed hair is a flag, marking my place in line. I look for my reflection in the black marble facade in front of me and find nothing but the eyes of red haired chef making crepes. On reflex I wink at him, but my thoughts are elsewhere, threading from the apparent cure for cancer just found in Alberta to the neuro-chemical reactions that trigger love; dopamine, serotonin, vasopressin. Triggered by the sad knowledge that I’ve likely burned out all the neurotransmitters that are part of the brain’s built-in reward system, I order my memorized taste of a perfect oxytocin kiss – strawberries, lemon juice, and sugar.

It works. Instant flash of a cold stone floor, the second hand taste of wine, cigarettes, a forged key to my weakness, waking with tousled black hair and my favourite voices. Music sent back and forth to finally meet in an airport, meet in a stairway, on the street, the lights strung up above the bed from before Persepolis abandoned me back. Why do they always have dark hair? I never noticed until just now. Curls. Temples going to silver, little places for me to kiss.

By the time I reach the bus-stop, I’m already talking to strangers and figuring out who to contact to prepare my house as efficiently as possible. My roommate, Sasha and I are on the same page. Out as soon as we can without leaving the other in the lurch. He’s going to be moving in with Mel, I’m still uncertain where I’ll end up. I need a staging ground for our last shot at the theatre before I finally give up, fold house, and leave town. Mihi cura futuri.

Akira Kurosawa‘s Rashomon has fallen into public domain and is now available on Internet Archive and Google video.