n: vb: the spice of imagination
Flying Inside Your Own Body
Your lungs fill & spread themselves,
wings of pink blood, and your bones
empty themselves and become hollow.
When you breathe in you’ll lift like a balloon
and your heart is light too & huge,
beating with pure joy, pure helium.
The sun’s white winds blow through you,
there’s nothing above you,
you see the earth now as an oval jewel,
radiant & seablue with love.
It’s only in dreams you can do this.
Waking, your heart is a shaken fist,
a fine dust clogs the air you breathe in;
the sun’s a hot copper weight pressing straight
down on the think pink rind of your skull.
It’s always the moment just before gunshot.
You try & try to rise but you cannot.
Margaret Atwood
She’s hoping to get some attention, so I’d appreciate if you dropped in and said hello. Especially if you know, at all, what sort of gear she should be looking into. I expect this sort of concept to look crackling simple on the out-set, but to be unmercifully riddled with ugly technical difficulties that won’t be apparent until much farther in. If anyone knows of a similar project, and I’m sure there must be some, (I have yet to be the dutiful daughter and properly sweep the archives of we-make-money-not-art*), that would be great too. The more information she has going in, the safer she’ll be, and though I love my mother dearly, I’m not in any position to be sweeping in, attempting a rescue should she get stranded somewhere in the middle of the prairies.
*which, btw, has a syndicated LJ feed here.
Back to the 365, my friend Jesska‘s got an ambitious take on the project, she’s posting a daily triptych. Because she is crazy. Crazy like a superhero, but with polaroids in place of wearing her underwear on the outside of her pants.
Full of hippies, burners, and a scattering of hip-hop designers, bicycle people, and uncomfortably with-it computer nerds smoking prodigious amounts of weed, the party felt very east side, very easy. I went in just long enough to assess the situation, then slipped home to take my daily picture and drop off my things, (there’s no reason to be hauling around personal items within spitting distance from my own front door), but I’ve already been here over an hour, trapped by the inertia of sucking about on the internet. I hope River’s still there. I’m going to post this and go back out.
edit: the next day, the woman who lives there somehow found this post through my livejournal to facebook RSS feed. the internet wins.
Driving West along either street, you will come across too many one way streets. Your head will turn, searching for the butterscotch of centre lines, hoping to find some rhyme to the maze. Instead, the streets will seem to coruscate, shine, and blind you, balefully offering oblivious wrong turns. Undaunted, you will keep driving. The asphalt will become brick, cobbles, cut stone. Red and granite and gray. You will look to the moon to guide you, a sideways glance, as she sits in the passenger seat beside you, as tall as winter, nestled in black fur, laughing, offering perfect directions. You do not doubt her. Her gray eyes are sharper, can survive the tangled city traffic, though in the daylight she is almost blind. Her egg-shell maps are drawn directly on her empty hands, woven from experience and time. In a year, you might find out why, but for now, you do not need to care. You are glad for her company. She likes your scarlet heart, even stained fog thin as it is from travel. She likes your polished voice, how it brings colour to her airless skin. When she shyly kisses you, as loud as paper, she is exactly what you need. From her place in the sky, shaking the tops of trees, sweet as candy, her smile looks like your teeth.
Seattle was the escape I needed. Not only does it have a refreshing amount of honest-to-mercy architectural and social diversity, it seems everyone I know there is brilliant, fun, and good-looking.*
It’s almost spooky.
*(in this particular instance, I am referring to the delightful novelist Cherie Priest, her wonderful husband Aric Jym, their marvelous friend Alex, and our favourite kitchen genius Ellen, who I met here, but who somehow ended up living in the same building as the first two.)
Also, not only did I get to go home with the hot guy, it was only when I was back in Vancouver that I realized I’d stolen his shirt:
Which begins, if dubiously, my first attempt at the 365 project.
So! Hey 2008! What’s shaking?
