foxtongue – Page 213

aaand, he’s just walked in. I am the luckiest thing on two legs in all of Vancouver.

I did not get to go to Regina Spektor last night, due to a serious of misfortunate moments of Drama ™ where I should have let off trying to respect someones apparent Sudden Dislike For My Company and beat them up-side the head with my presence anyway. Lesson learned. Next time I will be more callous. Yes, I am un-thrilled. Apparently it was a very, very good concert.

However, I was shown off last night and that was wonderful. It balanced out my hot disappointment rather well. We gathered people at the Jupiter Cafe, had a politician buy our drinks, then went to True Confections with Aeon and his wife. We went to bed exhausted, amused, and well. Apparently, when we are tired, we are hilarious. As such, we are clever all the time.

Today I am nervous, as the boy took my measurements when I was distracted and sleepy and seems to be making corset-shaped noises. As he’s ten years out of practise with this city, I’m feeling fairly safe with whatever he’s actually doing. It’s not like he can get very far, she says to herself, doubting.

Predators of the Sprawl
It occurred to me this morning that we have been co-habitating since, essentially, April 1st. I wonder if I will remember that in a year, the most comfortable joke I have ever encountered in my small life. His apartment was an odd compartment, the hotel feels more temporary, somehow increasingly realistic. Our toothbrushes cradle.

Winter is over, the streets are coated in pink flower petals as if the sidewalk was about to be married our shoes, and the clouds are taking on the consistency of still life paintings from places more interesting and decidedly more Italian. Construction continues everywhere, it is still possible to count cranes like a trail of shooting stars, but somehow, I begin to hope in two generations, what is above water in Vancouver will be a fascinating place to live.

(LJ now lets you embed anything, as long as you wrap pointy-bracket lj-embed pointy-bracket around the embed or object tag.)

as I worship the interpretation

received as a letter, authorship witheld:

Once upon a perfect moment, stretched & bent & folded
in half & sewn end-to-end, when the stars were in faultless
accord & the world turned with dignity & solemn grace,
when even cruelty was polite, even cynicism holy, a girl
with flowers in her hair & a song on her lips drilled a
hole through her liily white palm & stared out through it
at all the ugliness that lay beyond.

(intermission)

She turned away, as all things turned, with effortless
elegance, her skirts sweeping through rose petals &
crisp autumn leaves, blood dripping from her fingers
like the final notes of Libera Me, & in her wake the
shocked silence was worn away be birdsong & the
thoughtful murmur of the trees.

(intermission)

She turns again, later, with long-practiced unpracticed
grace, not away but in a wide, slow circle, arm
out-stretched to display the hole, larger in its setting
of pearl white scar, partially obscured by delicate
metacarpals. The gathered crowd stares in fascinated
horror, & when she bows the applause is exuberant.

She does not do an encore. There is no second act.

things I wanted to do to you

I like tickling people older than me. My heart feels a predatory thrill, as if when they buck, flush, and curl up in laughter, they transform into a glowing universe wracked by seizures, but only six years old. It somehow evens the balance to have a glimpse into Them As Children, from before they ever knew about sex or even thought of themselves as people, let alone adults, people living ten or twenty years ahead of me.

Tomorrow, like today, I will be on set.

You know what, Stuart? I like you, you’re not like the other people here, in the trailer park.

Just a quick note, as I continue to smash my brain into my destroyed CV, (anyone masochistic enough to help me? I fail at resume writing like I fail at kicking puppies):

Wow. Have any of you had the dubious pleasure of catching the Fox “News” report on Kurt Vonnegut’s death?

It’s really quite something. Not having a television, I tend to underestimate what it’s like.

every generation creates its own traditions

Well, it’s happened again:

A gunman opened fire in a Virginia Tech dorm and then, two hours later, shot up a classroom building across campus Monday, killing 32 people in the deadliest shooting rampage in U.S. history. The gunman committed suicide, bringing the death toll to 33.

“Students bitterly complained that there were no public-address announcements on campus after the first burst of gunfire. Many said the first word they received from the university was an e-mail more than two hours into the rampage – around the time the gunman struck again.

Investigators offered no motive for the attack. The gunman’s name was not immediately released, and it was not known if he was a student.

The shootings spread panic and confusion on campus. Witnesses reporting students jumping out the windows of a classroom building to escape the gunfire. SWAT team members with helmets, flak jackets and assault rifles swarmed over the campus. Students and faculty members carried out some of the wounded themselves, without waiting for ambulances to arrive. A student used his cell-phone camera to record the sound of shots echoing through the stone classroom building.”

A list of some fatal shootings that took place at U.S. and Canadian schools, colleges or universities in recent years.

charactor study, owmybrain

I have an atrocious head-ache and it’s all my fault. I bought my dinner at Grade A Restaurant, a place on Grandville somehow left over from the early seventies, and without thinking, I ordered something with meat. Only fictional gods know what was in it. The Grade A Restaurant specializes in Chinese-Canadian food, like you only get where the railroad was built, greasy and cheap. It’s all formica topped tables, prints of hay bales, and prices five years lower than I feel are safe. The only consession to this century is an ATM machine in blue plastic that looks like it was designed in 1989. I love it there. It is never empty, but I am always the only woman and possibly the only customer under the age of Old. I don’t mean a number, like 16 or 35 or 50, I mean Old in that shabby craggy face sort of way, where hair only comes in two options, thinning or insane.

like hearts swelling

Betty Hutton, once the favourite doll of Hollywood.

Transparent as sound, we are pieces of the human engine out of old mythology, pet children decanted from bottles of blood. After the boy is blown from this city, I will stand alone by the side of the road, and even if he does not look back before walking through the gate, my legs will continue to hold me up, I will continue to breathe.

That was always the worst lesson, that I will remain alive in my chemicals, wrapped in nerve endings, a collective rumbling of infintismals, (creaks, exhalations, needs), no matter how much my offerings to the gates have been smashed. The modern world is very bad at silence – cities do not hold their breath except in the moment before a bomb falls – but there are occasionally words I feel I should almost kneel to speak.

I’d like to say our first kiss was a special thing, a low slung howl of discovery, but it’s never been like that. That road’s been washed out, (if there was ever order there), replaced by brittle grass made straw in the sun, such-a-shame at-so-young-an-age blame-yet-another-hotel-room-romance damn-those-older-men. I almost don’t care anymore. Instead I count first glances, first realizations, that pause between what I know now and what I knew then. What is more important? The date we met or the amperage of comfortable electricity that ran through my fingers the first time I touched the middle of his back with bare skin?

The proud cities I have built with people, some of them are still standing, giant proud machines of words that circle the globe like air currents of what colour my hair, how long this correspondence, I had a show, they had a child, no, yes, you can’t come visit now. We are stories, novels, little threads in vast pleasing shapes. None of my relationships have been film-noir construction kits. We meet in cynical places badly lit, smoke cigarettes we take from small cases. This is just another connection, another spirit made flesh in the network. All we’re missing is the small confession of where we were the morning of September 11th, year 2001.

This morning he was beautiful, a misplaced dream left over from 1985. Sitting on the bed to put on his boots like having Lost Boys on the record player; leather jacket, long hair, I used to clean my saddest house to that soundtrack album. No one wears slimmer dark blue jeans. In my head, “I like my body when it is with your body” and the memory of his eyes flickering from mine to my hands on my stockings like they do under his lids when he’s dreaming, conversation not missing a beat. This is our generation gap, that I can write this here, display my day, my meaning, my worth. I grew up here, on-line. He didn’t.

I can barely believe how much I still want to go back to L.A.

One of these days, I’m going to have to learn to find a home.

I know this is a little late, but it’s where I wish I was, so here goes anyway:

ROOFTOP CIRCUS
Johnnny Frem & Dave Horswell have finished installing another roof in the James St. neighbourhood, so they’re putting on another rooftop circus, which includes a chimney headstand, (inspired by Steve Galloway’s book, “Ascension”), as well as a parade, some skits including very young talent, magic tricks, kid’s songs, clowning, fire-breathing and fire-spinning.

Where: 4505 James St. @ 29th Ave, The Jang residence, SouthWest corner of 29th Ave and James St. (2 blks West of Main St.)

When: 7:00 – 8:30 pm, Sun. Apr. 15
(Rain Date: move ahead one wk. to Sun. Apr. 22)

With: Johnny Frem, Musicians: Ross Barrett; Brian Siver; Dan Vie, Clowns: Naomi Steinberg; Jacques Lalonde; Dan, Celia and Ruby Vie; Matthew, David and Nancy Jang; Dave Horswell, Magician: Brandy, Fire-breathing & acting: T. Paul Ste Marie, and Fire-spinning: Josh

ADMISSION: FREE!

Doing our laundry, I feel this is a few tiny steps to being barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen

It’s HACK SABBATH today!
Reminding me of Chia Pet McKenzie’s computer: (from moosl via treehugger), Lloyd Alter writes:

We have an Asus notebook, and like their modular design where you can pick your own CPU and hard drive and assemble it yourself; ours had a tragic fall last week but it was easy to swap out busted parts. Asus also tries to differentiate itself from the others by doing silly things, like a leather notebook, or very sensible things, like the new Ecobook. Its case is covered in bamboo, which I suppose is a statement, but the real show is inside. All of the plastic in it is labelled and recyclable; it is lined with cardboard; there are no paints, sprays or even electroplating used on its components. It looks like it is designed to be easily taken apart for self-service and easy upgrading of components, usually the downfall of notebooks.

The release date is still approximately a year in the future, but by then, maybe I’ll be able to afford one. At any rate, it’s just about damn time someone made something like this available to the market. A sustainable case will go miles toward reducing the staggering amount of plastic in landfills.

Remember how I was writing about the mysterious vanishing bees? It turns out it might be because of cell phones.

I feel somehow this is appropriate, except that we can’t yet blame it on Monsanto and I really want to.

(We are the resin)

Piece of Berlin Wall removed in secret government raid.

We moved house today. This consisted of trying to sleep in and failing, folding endless black t-shirts, murderously cramming three months into one suitcase, trying not to break anything, and finally giving up the bathroom for lost. When we were done, the suitcase weighed more than him. Not a difficult proposition to be sure, but amusing. Today was my first glimpse of what he’ll be like at the airport in a week. Only a week. Already, a firmly planted seed of grief.

The new room is up Cambie street at 12th, dead centre of The Snarl like a hotel patient zero. The only Pros: I have a key, the beds are comfortable and across the street, City Hall looks like a toy.

Billboard ban in São Paulo angers advertisers. from jwz

The law is “a rare victory of the public interest over private, of order over disorder, aesthetics over ugliness, of cleanliness over trash,” Roberto Pompeu de Toledo, a columnist and author of a history of São Paulo, wrote in the weekly newsmagazine Veja. “For once in life, all that is accustomed to coming out on top in Brazil has lost.”

But advertising and business groups regard the legislation as injurious to society and an affront to their professions. They say that free expression will be inhibited, jobs will be lost and consumers will have less information on which to base purchasing decisions. They also argue that streets will be less safe at night with the loss of lighting from outdoor advertising.

“This is a radical law that damages the rules of a market economy and respect for the rule of law,” said Marcel Solimeo, chief economist of the Commercial Association of São Paulo, which has 32,000 members. “We live in a consumer society and the essence of capitalism is the availability of information about products.”

“What we are aiming for is a complete change of culture,” said Roberto Tripoli, president of the City Council and one of the main sponsors of the legislation. “Yes, some people are going to have to pay a price. But things were out of hand and the population has made it clear it wants this.”

We were going to have this here, when COPE was in charge. “Billboard free in five years.” It never happened.