bittersweet week

THE BROTHERS QUAY DO STANISLAW LEM’s MASKA!!

My plans have been falling through left, right, and center the last few days, near unbelievably so, but there’s been just enough nice to make up for it. I had two shoots this past weekend, one with Mishka and Jim, who wanted engagement photos, headshots, and wedding invitations, and another with Shane for promotional photos for his new website, and I might be spending this upcoming weekend in Seattle, following my dear friends The Mutaytor as they kick off their Pacific Northwest tour. (I was given an iPod touch for the engagement photos, too, which means I NOW HAVE INTERNET IN MY POCKET. So. Exciting!). Good times!

Today I’m processing my photos from the weekend, picking through and polishing, getting into the sort of flow I can get lost in for hours, and writing poetry back and forth with New York. I’ve already finished my first run through the engagement photos and soon I’ll be finished with Shane’s pictures, and then it will be time to start making Valentine’s dinner for my sweetheart, who I look forward to seeing. Things there have been an odd, bohemian mix of blissful and bizarrely unreliable, dotted with both raw adoration and vast misunderstandings, so the prospect of an actual “date” night, though unusual, is somewhat reassuring.

biannual introduction innoculation

365:2011.02.03 - fresh face

IT’S TIME FOR THE BIANNUAL SHOUT-OUT!

Please tell me your names, introduce yourself, post a picture! Everyone’s invited – friends, strangers, the lurking anonymous – especially those who are otherwise silent. Like a good house party, it’s always fascinating to see who turns up.

Tell me who you are, why you’re here, how you found me, what inspires you. Even if I know you, introduce yourself to others and tell me what you’ve done lately. I want to see your faces, I want to read what you’d like everyone else to know. Tell us your stimulations, titillations; show us your pretty hidden treasures. Explain a piece of your world with something beautiful, make something new, or dig up the grave of an old favourite. Anecdotes and self-promotion are welcome, as are photos, job descriptions, awesome links, and whatever else.

Journals have been dying lately, I’d like to see who’s chosen to stick around.

-::-

I want to know who’s on the other end of my screen, what fun and fantastic people are out there, waiting to be met. You are artists and scientists, nihilists and dreamers, comic book illustrators, archeologists, hackers, retail managers, photographers, teachers, librarians, hair dressers, and submarine captains. You are novelists, derby girls, musicians, and accountants. Optimists, pragmatists, magicians and politicians, fencers, film addicts, home owners and homeless. You are lighting designers, poets, animators, and lawyers. You are glorious, fabulous, interesting creatures, rich in colour, thick with story – and I want to hear from you all.

For those new, my name’s Jhayne. I’m an unemployed writer and sometimes photographer currently trapped in Vancouver, Canada. I live on the internet, but share an apartment with two cats, one roommate, and a bunny on the porch. I’m also an amateur taxidermist/cryptozoologist, occasionally play french horn and the saw, and edit other people’s novels. I once started a global initiative to save a local turn-of-last-century theater and turn it into a new multimedia venue called Heart of the World. It fell down, went boom, and buried me in crippling debt, but oh well. Other people have recently managed to save it, at least, so I guess that’s something.

Welcome to my journal, a mixture of wonder, pointlessness, isolation, and community where I talk about life, love, art, technology, and try not to hate the world.

Now it’s your turn. Spill.

five dollar books for you to eat

Hey Folks, I’ve still got a load of five dollar books for sale. See something you like, drop me a line and it’s yours!

•The Family Tree, by Sheri S. Tepper.
•The Fresco, by Sheri S. Tepper
•Raising the Stones, by Sheri S. Tepper

•Where is Joe Merchant?, by Jimmy Buffet
•Tales from Margaritaville: Fictional Facts and Factual Fictions, by Jimmy Buffet

•A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, by Mark Twain
•A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce
•Agnes And The Hitman, by Jennifer Cruise and Bob Mayer (hardback)
•An Area of Darkness, V. S. Naipaul, (hardback, import)
•Any Human Heart, by William Boyd
•Don Quixote, In Memorian to Identidy, by Kathy Acker
•Future Primitive, by Zerzan
•Hannibal, by Thoma Harris
Moar reading! Classics, sillies, and lots of words!

a long, long list that I continually add to

The Primer
by Christina Davis

She said, I love you.

He said, Nothing.

(As if there were just one
of each word and the one
who used it, used it up).

In the history of language
the first obscenity was silence.

  • An ASL interpretation of Crazy, by Gnarls Barkly
  • An ASL interpretation of F*ck You, by Cee Lo.

    My lover’s been whisked away this weekend, tossed without warning onto a late-night flight. I was going to head down to Chinatown today for the New Year’s parade but, in the light of this very sudden change of plans, I decided to stay in and finally print out my finished tax paperwork instead. Maybe attack some of my often neglected German lessons or my backlog of programming tutorials, too. Do laundry. Productivity in solidarity! Jah. Der junge ist in einem flugzeug. Das mädchen wartet mit liebe in ihrem herzen.

    Also on the to-do list: hang the aluminum deer head, sift through the last three two mess boxes, get printer ink, print tax forms, make a packet of them and mail them off, polish the silver tea-cups, update the minimalfox blog, sort the mending, do some mending, bathe the cats, clean out the hall closet, list more things for sale, finish David’s laundry, fold the towels, research nifty stops for April’s roadtrip, find a SATA case enclosure, apply for another First Aid certificate, patch the wall, fix the coat rack, get signed up for Quest, take the returnables to the recycling center, measure art for framing, find suitable picture frames, write a poem and a love letter, track down An Idiot Abroad, deliver books to Jenn, rediscover my recipe for cake-inna-cup, bleach the shower curtain, harass Young Drivers of Canada, arrange for more driving lessons, rewrite my CV, update A Thread of Grace, identify what’s in the mystery cord drawer, go swimming, soak in a hot tub, fiddle with foxtongue.com, replace duvet, help clean mum’s house, empty and sand the bureau, check my contacts prescription, acquire contacts, replace the VHS, find out the shipping costs for the IKEA flooring, take the medium format film to The Lab to be processed, attempt ice-skating, sort the linens, attack under the bathroom sink, take vitamins, rearrange what’s on the living-room walls, properly group my data, find the paperclips, back up the laptop, shed a light into the shadows of my heart, lime powder my boots, re-glue the soles, find a home for the electric pussy-willow, paint the baroque frame in my bedroom, replace my bike chain, get a spindle of blank DVDs, tidy the pigeon-holes, file and folder paperwork by year, update Craigslist postings, catch up on photo processing, attend a poetry slam, reply to neglected letters, change the sheets, bake cookies, listen to more Vampire Weekend, put all my change into a penny jar, replace a hook on a bra, try to track down silver-notebook, have a snuggly date night, collect my mail from Seattle, take more pictures of my friends, untangle my computer cable spaghetti, make some media mix-tapes, schedule a Sunday Tea…

  • don’t put this letter in the pocket near your heart

    “Some people reflect light, some deflect it, you by some miracle, seem to collect it.” —House of Leaves

    Though set lovingly adrift in a cotton sea of comfortable bedsheets, in the best of all possible company, I didn’t sleep enough last night. To my disgrace, I took Arron along with me, waking him as I tried to creep out of bed, the better to pace outside, dressed in rain, and walk out my stress, the painful squeeze in my chest. We spoke in the dark until the attic of morning, that interstitial breath of night which claims “too early” as well as “too late”. (Stars not quite beginning to fade.) Today I’m left feeling as if I’ve worn out something essential, like the catch to the spring that lives inside my ribs, as well as incredibly grateful.

    Southern States Road Trip

    Hey everyone, I need to know if you live in or in between Orlando and New Orleans, so I can come visit!

    I’m flying out of Seattle on April 13th to Orlando, where I’ll be meeting up with a TOP SEKRIT FREINDZOR, and from there we’re spending almost two weeks in the Southern States, driving from Orlando to New Orleans and back, with stops in Charleston, Savannah, and Montgomery, with everything else being flexible. (I fly back April 26th.) Considering we’ve never met, and I’ve never been any of these places, I expect this is going to be a very interesting trip.