Author: foxtongue

“There is no such thing as innapropriate weather, just innappropriate clothing”

The Commercial Drivefest is today, a car-free festival that runs from 1st Ave to Venables, with live music, DJ’s, street vendors, and performers taking over the streets, from approx noon to 6pm.

“Due to popular demand, the peculiar and magnificent Commercial Drive Festival is now evolving into Car-Free Commercial Drive Days — TWO of them! This represents a huge shift in civic consciousness…it will not be long before the ‘hood, the City, the entire planet recognizes the massive potential for global salvation and FREE FUN that Car-Free streets represent. Hallelujah.

Please help us reclaim the street, and start creating the urban paradise we know is possible.”

schedule of events

with no life saver

A compelling alternate history of chinese science-fiction.

Writing as the domestic occult, dead by tired hands, a packet of matches at my feet acting as a story seed. Once when I was young, I took a pack and lit them one by one and dropped them off the side of a bridge into a dark creek below. Somewhere in Canada. Somewhere I can’t remember next to a trailer park. The flame from the matches was suffocating, bright stars that glittered, reflections swallowed. There was a rope under the bridge that boys in long shorts would swing off in the day, splashing and hollering. Blonde then, it must have been a very long time ago. I could only just look over the rails if I stood on the bare tips of my toes. Summer. Maybe it never happened. I can believe it never happened. A cardboard story from a cardboard muse.

Paprika mp3’s.

I bought a father’s gift today for the first time in my life, for Michael‘s dad Stephen. We found him two dreadful silk ties, a sweet green one that looked as if it had been knit and a scarlet one, terribly classic, almost too hard on the eyes, and colour-matching happy-face atom bomb boxer shorts. We were going hard on tradition, biting back irony with just enough class for it to be flattering. Michael is going to write in the card something like, “To our beloved dictator-for-life, may you rule in good health forever. We love you. Signed, your dutiful citizens, M & J.” My adoption is escalating.

An untrained farmer in China has been making home-made robots.

I need to involve myself with a writer again

Looking for a Green Light: “Lighting is a greedy user of energy, and public projects can be particularly heavy consumers. But many lighting designers are in fact trailblazing the use of low-energy technology.”

I sent you a letter with only one word, Hold. A train ticket word for long distances, a place to put your baggage, to put your arms, the embrace awaited, wished for, forgotten. I picture us as if through the lens of a camera, floating in glassy space, anchored by places we have been, where I have touched you, streets that have been warmed by our breath. It is as if an echoed copy of you is still here, imprinted inside the tiny fractures we left on reality with the molecules of our voice, our motion, simply waiting for you to come home. We are clips from some greater film, the title of which is beyond me. (Before the screen, there was the stage.) I think of our constant tired laughter and your sly technical hands, the way they drifted, fidgeting, up and down the hems of my skirts. My imagination wonders about the airport, wonders at my apprehension, (as it creates shaky lists of reasons why I might not like you again), asks why I feel so dreadfully shy.

I have been refusing to count down days; instead we are down to my Cassandra test of silence and all its implications. (Really we are down to fingers now, less the number of a clumsy butcher. I can feel my panicked heart constricting.) When, to combat my almost professional anticipation of misfortune, I sent you flowers, I irrationally felt like I had betrayed an unspoken agreement, yet my smile supernovae bloomed when I discovered the accompanying note had been garbled through a game of florist telephone. It was like discovering a new favorite song, transforming the simple into the sublime, with my eyes wide open.

I am looking forward to seeing you again.

Some electric companies have created tourist interest with their manatee populations. “… conservationists say the potential closure of aging electric plants is an unsolved problem for the survival of the species.“

Vancouver Masquerade 2007

in my name

You and a guest are invited to:

The Masquerade
a local phantasmagoria, the social event of the season

Friday, June 29, 2007 at 7:30pm, at the Jericho Arts Centre.

Please be prepared with a mask & a (formal) costume of any era. Absolutely no street, casual wear or plain work clothes will be admitted! Plain jeans, cargo pants or suits are not permitted unless part of an ensemble – e.g. a suit-jacket as part of a dirigible captain’s costume is perfectly fine.

Some ideas for formal dress include: fantasy or period costume, tuxedo, dress uniform, Victorian gowns, traditional ethnic, fictional character or futuristic. Use your imagination! Creativity is highly encouraged and deeply appreciated. Please note however, that this is a formal ball, not a costume party. If in doubt please don’t hesitate to ask the organizers; they would be happy to help!

Performances will begin at 8:30.

We graciously request $20 in –advance– to cover costs and, optionally, $15 to partake of the open bar.
RSVP required. E-mail geminifest at yahoo.ca to purchase a ticket. First come, first serve.

thank you very much for reminding me

Michael asked today if Henry & June makes a good date movie. I replied it’s too filthy for a first date, and then silently wished very much that I had someone to watch it with. It’s been a long time.

Ten or eleven years old, I had put my little brothers to bed hours ago, reading them a story of two round, identical looking policemen afflicted with green bubbles. I am in the living room – the lights are off except for the flickering TV, a window open to another world, earlier in the century, where writers flirt like fires blazing and Anias Nin is the brightest star I’ve ever seen. She’s lucent, intense, everything I suddenly want to kiss – an entirely new jet set idea. She’s sitting by a bed where two whores curl like perfect notes on sheets as white as a score and my imagination’s on a rocket-trip from rags to riches, inspired by the sly incipient grace of her character and the sweetheart face of Maria de Medeiros. Abruptly, I have a type, another map for the future desires embedded in my fingers. I want to read everything Anias has ever written, I want to fall out of the sky into the arms of a woman who looks just like her.

And, a few years later, I did.

One of these days, I have to watch that movie again.

a penny candy for your thoughts as I’m late to every party, even my own

jhaynesaw

So happy birthday me.

To belatedly celebrate, I would appreciate it if you, my friends and readers, would be kind enough to comment with something a favourite ______. A poem, song, story or url, an image or a quote, something you love, that moves or inspires you, whether yours or someone else’s. It doesn’t matter. You could even tell me an unthinkable joke or an avant-garde secret. Even only a single word – just one word that you love, like ‘panache’ or ‘serendipity’. Anything. Let creativity freely rear its unusual head.

People have been asking about gifts, when really I have almost everything I would like. I may have found a house to host a birthday party at, The Boy will be here on the 21st, Silva brought me a massive black feather-boa, and Ray has sent for a new musical saw to replace mine that went gone. The only things left to do now are to fix my glasses, (I think I’ll be able to pay for that by selling the rest of my books. How peculiar, my empty shelves.), and acquire a camera card capable of vast amounts of information. I am trying to rid myself of things, not collect any more, though my thanks and appreciation to everyone who’s asked. It’s kind of you. It’s nice.