The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes is up on sale.
They also have a promo going on if you use the code ‘PRICESEARCH’ at checkout.
and peace will guide the masses
Month: June 2007
“She takes from life, eating its words and minutes and licking her lips, not wanting to waste any, “
Paintings: The Seduction of Oedipus
It has been a struggle to sleep this week, and when I do, there has been no comfort in it. I dream of California, but not the California I had lived, full of bleak stories I tell now with terrible humour, but of the possibilities I could interpret from every building I walked past, their sunburnt lawns, every house a microcosm, every business an untold discovery, and the palm trees swaying almost shadowless to the sky, perfect emblems of hot modern fantasy lining every street.
I blame my current reading material.
Before I go to sleep at night, I read. Being a basic thing, there are variations, but it always the same pattern. Finishing with the computer, I turn off my lamp, plug in the ornamental lights, and snuggle in underneath them with my book. When I am done, I pull the plug. It is almost ritual, except that it carries no meaning. It is only the reputation of necessary movements, like washing dishes or putting on a shirt one sleeve at a time, that create the illusion of depth. Every day, the same ingredients.
This week I was reading White Oleander, a harsh book yet beautiful, set in Los Angeles. I am told it was turned into a film once, but I never thought to see it. Why are all my favourite books set in L.A.? Reminiscent of buying my fierce summer clothing on the boardwalk in Venice, they are almost always written by women, couched in some foreign manner of prose that still remains english, always reminding me so strongly of my own writing – as if I were to live there again, it would be my turn to write a book, something powerful and achingly frail, like the bones of the body that I miss so much. Visiting the wild beaches was like stepping into fairyland. A fairyland punctuated by stairs and people in cheap foam and plastic flip-flops.
let me show you them
Invocation
“What do we need?
Passion
to put words into context / to formulate a pretext worthy / of our cut-and -paste verbal / aching to be heard.”
In the kitchen, dinner was cooking, ground game meat, frozen corn, a can of soup. The elements smelt like hot metal and smoke. I was procrastinating, using time like hands around my throat. I had put off cooking until the last minute, so I would be a little late on purpose to the Poetry Slam. It didn’t help. When it came my turn to stand up to the mic, I still broke down. My voice fled down my throat and I was unable to catch it until halfway through. When it was done, my feet fell off the stage and I found myself in the arms of a stranger, a small blond woman who sobbed silently into my body as if she were about to shatter. I held her tight and was grateful.
“And some days they split atoms
And some days they kick stones
Today they find our voice”
there is always
I do not love you as if you were salt-rose or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.
I love you as the plant that never blooms,
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers.
Thanks to your love a certain fragrance,
risen darkly from the earth, lives darkly in my body.
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride,
so I love you because I know no other way than this:
where “I” does not exist, nor “you”
So close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
So close that your eyes close and I fall asleep.
-Pablo Neruda
The Boy is coming back for a visit near the end of June.
in these small things, we find meaning
Word for the day: Concrescence
Concrescence is a term used in biology and refers to the growing together of related parts or growth by the increase of the addition of particles. Similarly the term is also employed by the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead to designate the growing together of diverse elements into a newly evolving entity that never fully congeals.
obit: abrupt but not unpredictable
I haven’t heard back from the prospective buyer yet. Which makes me think my business whiz hasn’t sent him the model yet. Which is bad.
http://noonebelongsheremorethanyou.com/
At the bottom of their deepest hearts of hearts, at the level of instinct, people seem to carry a sticky expectation of spontaneous combustion, mothers who pluck cars off of their threatened children, visits from celestial beings, shapechangers, and animals who speak human languages. It’s in the blood, these vagaries of of human history, and while they are alarming, they feel appropriate. (Possibly not the bit with the car, but metaphorically I’m fairly certain I’m still on solid ground.) Death, however, we don’t seem to properly fathom death. It shocks us into denial, into a rejection of facts, on a level that is almost the antithesis of every day miracles. Nobody apparently expects death, even when seen approaching from far away. There just doesn’t seem to be a framework in place, so instead we gather in loose groups, wear culture appropriate colours that feel outdated and fail utterly to write the music we need to capture our fallen friends.
Part of me wishes to hide inside gaudy and glaring jokes about how T. Paul still owes me money or that now we’ll never move in together because I could never introduce my mother to a dead man, but they’re all the same – dishonest escapes shutting away what I will only have to deal with later. Really I already miss him in ways that will never noted in any obituary. Yes, people will benevolently talk about how wrenchingly he’s influenced Vancouver with his events, MC’ing, poetry and black-coffee solicitousness, his shining rhinestone humour, his unexpected grace with children, and the fun trapped in his Tom Waits paintings or even his retro trademark hair, (mentioned in the first piece of my writing ever properly published), but his cologne will go unacknowledged, the way it would scoff at showers, insisting on clinging for days, after even the briefest hug. It used to drive me crazy later, how I would turn and expect to see him, only to discover he was merely a rockabilly ghost fighting to haunt my clothing.
I caught myself wishing today that there was some way to publicily wear what I’m carrying in my heart, that we had an updated version of shaving off eyebrows, just to make this day different. Some way to mark the change in my life. My friend is dead, I want there to be a ripple, an outward effect that is more than his invisible absence. Otherwise it will only be like he has moved away, taken up residence in some other city, and that isn’t fair at all. He was a rarity, a revelation of whack-job positive influence, more Vegas than Vegas, baby. He deserves to be missed.
goodbye t. paul
A friend of ours has recently died – T. Paul St. Marie.
“Everyone,
T. Paul passed away in his home in his home in the last 24 hrs. His good friend Ru found him this morning in his house on his couch. It looked like another anuerism or possibly a stroke. Not much is known at this time.
Arrangements are being made and you will all be informed about any services or gatherings held on his behalf.
It is a loss to the community and to all the people who knew him. Please spread the word to anyone not on this list. I know you will all do so. He knew so many people that it would be impossible for any one individual to contact all of them. Thank you.
– Bill Mc.”
It’s heart-breaking. People have been posting messages to his Facebook Profile like flowers left at the scene of a lethal car accident. I’m not sure I have words yet, as it hasn’t properly become real yet, his passing. He’s always just too angry at the world to die.
Word says his unofficial memorial will be at Cafe Du Soleix this Monday, usurping the usual 8 pm poetry slam. I hope to see many of you there.
please work please pretty please
A Guest post from Jhayne:
I apologize for leaving everyone with a bit of a cliff-hanger earlier this week. My journal has been innaccessible for the last few days and is likely to remain so until Livejournal screws its proverbial head on straight over the latest SixApart fiasco. (For those not in the know, this is what’s been going on.). I am hoping that using a third party to post will break past the endless 404 display that has cropped up every time I attempt an update.
So! news!
Someone’s willing to buy the theatre and lease it to us.
However, and this is a nasty however, we have to give him a proposal stating WHY we would be the best tenants in the known local universe. This is an investment, he requires a return. This proposal has to be delivered as soon as possible, because he leaves on a business trip in about a week. Of course, that’s “about a week” as of Tuesday. Now it’s Thursday night and I have just spent the last couple of days glued to my computer, ignoring so-called normal-human hours, typing my fingers to the bone and aggravating my carpel tunnel beyond rational belief, all so we would have a completely new HotW proposal done as quickly as possible.
You people had better thank me, even if this falls through. Thank me and Lee, the groshing accountant Warren‘s provided us out of the utter blue on no warning whatsoever who’s willing to work through the night for free, and thank Merlyn, who came and made me dinner and cleaned my kitchen, all so I didn’t have to pause what I was doing, and Alastair, who’s been hacking at my horrible rough-rough drafts, and Carlos, who’s been doing the same, but from Washington, and Silva, who’s been helping me write all today, and Michael Green, for continuing to know more about theatre than I have ever wanted to know.
And with that, I have to somehow extricate myself form my computer and find something to eat, because I’m fairly certain it’s in the manual somewhere that one should not go over twelve hours without a meal. This may even require I leave my apartment, but no worries. I’m brave when I’m starving. Signing out.