a change in plans – Dreampepper

saved from my own ways by beautiful boys

San Francisco 2008

My summer is about to explode. It has already started, a little, (I sneaked into a rave on Friday night, spent Saturday on a cross-Atlantic guitar lesson with Richard, Saturday night with dear friends at a dinner, blowing people’s minds with synchronicity, and Sunday at an epic wedding that involved a boat, a full-sized, bright red, radio controlled dalek wedding cake that shouted EXTERMINATE, (part gluten free, too!), a hexacopter ring-bearer, and friends from six or seven countries), but this past weekend was just the amuse bouche.

My comrade Nathan is taking us to Cirque Du Soliex’s Totem tonight for my upcoming birthday, then we’re leaving on Thursday evening for the Sasquatch Music Festival. The line-up is absolutely fantastic, many of my favourite bands are playing, (Elbow, Mogwai, Die Antwood, The National, Cut Copy, TuNe-YaRds, etc.), and it’s going to be our first road-trip. I almost cannot wait. I feel like a little kid, counting sleeps.

Then, on the way back, Nathan is dropping me off in Seattle and I’m going to California for my birthday, courtesy of my ability to fit into a suitcase AKA a sweetheart’s business trip to the Google mothership! Flexibility pays off. Apparently I’ll be flying from Seattle on the 26th or 27th and staying for approximately two weeks.

I leave Canada in four days, but know zero about my flights or even where or when I’m to meet up with my dear B. It is so strange and yet delightful to know I am to be travelling, but not know when or precisely where to. It’s like a trust exercise with the universe that I am surprisingly completely fine with. Are we meeting in Seattle? In California? Where? No idea. I have zero information, but it’s.. gratifying? It feels proper. Makes it more of an adventure, for sure.

I imagine I’ll be taking the train a lot back and forth between SF and Silicon Valley for the first week and tucking in for work during the days, but other than that, my time is open. B. will only be there for the first week and mostly busy with work, which is a bit sad, he is smart and sassy and wonderful, but I’m still thrilled. Once I wave my kerchief goodbye to him at the airport, I’ll couch-float with friends in the Mission or the Castro or the Tenderloin.

The only plans I have so far: Jed and I are making sultry eyes at Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind on May 30th, (come with us!), and Richard has informed me that must visit him at the Vulcan on the first Thursday in June. And Morissa says I can use her house for a birthday dinner party! (Party date as yet to be determined). Other than that, it’s almost all a giant question mark. Do you know of anything going on in SF between May 26th and June 6th-ish? Let’s adventure!

Then I’m back to Seattle for a week to go to the the Georgetown Carnival and the Power Tool Drag Races and all that fun stuff. Maybe play some flaming tether ball. Mars and I are learning to be friends again, too, which makes Seattle much better to visit. I don’t know if B. will be around, but I hope so. (If he isn’t totally sick of me after sharing a hotel room for a week, that is. “Why are all the towels stained scarlet?”, “Why is my pillow purple?”, “How did the room ceiling end up covered in glow-in-the-dark stars? Are those constellations.. accurate?”)

I plan to return to Vancouver on June 15th, immediately put my passport in for renewal the day I get back!, collect certain papers from my mother, Vicki, that she’s bringing back from Ireland, do all of the laundry in the world, maybe throw a quick Vancouver-based birthday party, then head out to Ontario. The plan is to go to REcon (June 23rd – 29th) in Montreal via Waterloo courtesy of Ian, my besty who wants to drive up from Ontario in my fine company. Improbable, yes. Possible, very. I owe his cat Dewie about a thousand snuggles. And I think he’s starting to get tired of carrying his favourite Internet Girl around in his phone à la Her. And Audra has offered us her charming AirBnB apartment in Toronto for a couple of nights, (she has a cotton candy machine!!!), so we could home base out of Toronto and visit with people and stay up late in the city rather than having to go back to Waterloo. I’m sure we’ll use it, as I’m five or six years overdue for a visit and the good people just keep piling up. I even have an uncle there I’ve never met who seems supracool. Why don’t I live in Toronto? I Do Not Even Know.

We’ll be stopping by in Ottawa on our way to Montreal, too, to stop by the river market and stuff our faces with scrumptious berries and sugary beaver tails and APPLY FOR MY IRISH PASSPORT WITH THE EMBASSY! Happy birthday to me! I’m Irish! I HAVE EU AND EVERYTHING. As of, like, six days ago. My mother, bless her, went to Ireland as part of a Canada Council art project with Paul and took the packet of my needful documents with her, followed the very detailed instructions, and has filed my birth with the Irish government!

REcon is apparently a marvelous time, too. It’s run by Hugo, who I love to hang out with at CanSec. I’ve never spent as much time with him or his friends as I would like, so this is perfect. And apparently the Circus Festival starts in Montreal on July 2nd, so maybe we’ll get away with sticking around for a day or two longer for that. Either way, I plan to get fat and happy on delicious food, hug a lot of people, dance my face off, and ride a lot of city bikes. Christine wants to go to the new Cirque show, Kurios, too. I approve. There will also be chocolate and a stop by Santropol. Oh yes.

And no, I don’t know anything solid about flight dates on this trip yet either. IT IS ALL A FANTASTIC MYSTERY.

And then I’m in Vancouver until ToorCamp. (That might be for less than a week, oi). ToorCamp is another hacker event, but in Washington State on July 9th. Nathan wants me to go with him, so of course I said yes. Hopefully my passport will have come back by then and I’ll be good to go. I don’t know much about it, except that the people I know who’ve gone in the past are all excellent.

I have also been tapped to work as the Art Director for Hacked Festival, another hacker event from August 11th – 14th, but this one in Vancouver. It’s their inaugural year and maybe I’ll be able to help, even though I’m barely going to be around for the next few months. (Apply to be a speaker or an artist naow!) I’ve told them about my travel schedule, but the founder met me at BIL and he seems to want me involved anyway, so I might end up going through with it just because. If that ends up being the case, that will fit in right after ToorCamp. And right before Burning Man.

I have a number of options for Burning Man this year, but I think I might be tossing a bunch of them over to stay with a lawyer friend from Seattle. Not only do I appreciate him a metric ton just in general, I cannot get enough of his art project, an infrared photobooth. People step inside into pitch blackness, the infrared flash goes off, and though all they see is a small red light, the pictures look like they were taken in daylight.

And then, come September, rest. Playing with ferrets. Adventure is fine, (dying is fine)but Death), but I’m going to miss my ferrets. Pepper and Selenium are the best.

TLDR; If all goes well, I’m going to live out of a suitcase this summer.

Let’s Throw A Riot (Because They’re Romantic)

It seems a number of us have all independently decided that This Is The Year We Bring Blogging Back, (More Specifically Livejournal). And I could not approve more.

I’m not sure why other people are trickling back into the fold, but for me my recent trip was a stunning reminder of what we had all built here. Just about everything positive in my life is somehow built on the foundation we created. My happiness is due to you and this place and what we made. It goes way back; I wouldn’t have found this apartment, wouldn’t have known about the concert I went to when I met my flatmate David, wouldn’t have connected so deeply with so many people. I wouldn’t have been able to make it to California if it weren’t for Jedidiah, who I met through Karen, who I met here nearly a decade ago, but only met face to face last year. I wouldn’t have had the chops to write about my godmother‘s house in Santa Fe, I wouldn’t have had such fantastic company in San Francisco, trying new things and feeling loved and inspired, I wouldn’t have felt so at welcome in Seattle or know how to deal with my people there, I wouldn’t have felt so safe running away with a complete stranger to Napa Valley. This was my very first community, the place where I started to begin.

Our network spread across the entire world, an empire upon which the sun could not set. Tel Aviv, Madison, New York, London, Santiago, these are all homes to people that have shaped me, many of whom I have never met, but carry always in my thoughts. (There’s a woman I know through Livejournal that I haven’t heard from in five years, but every year on her birthday I post to her last entry, letting her know that I still love her and probably always will.) And I want that back. I want all of you back.

I want myself back.

Somewhere in the mire of crappy relationships and scraping to get by in one of the most expensive cities in the world, I lost myself. I withered and I burned out. I was isolated and torn down and I let the bastards win. Radio silence took over. So this year is the year I push back, the year I clamber out of the rubble and get back into business. I’m going to write, I’m going to take pictures, and I’m going to badger you to do the same. Be my pen-pal, be my friend. I’m going to demand that you share and want you to demand it from me in return. I want a life worth fighting for again.

-::-

New Year’s Eve, 2013

So who am I, anyways? Given that my audience has grown considerably smaller than the thousand-plus regulars who used to read my journal, but spread to more people that I’ve actually met, it’s probably time for an update. Another member of the Great Coincidental LJ Revival posted a massive introduction and I’m going to shamelessly swipe it because she used to write speeches for Jack Layton and who am I to paraphrase greatness? So here you are, a paragraph by Audra, “I was thinking that I should do a little intro, for all of the new folks. And then I realized that probably a lot of the LJ friends I’ve had for a decade could also benefit from an update about my life now. It’s easy, especially if you are connected by Facebook, to feel like everyone knows what is up with you always. I know that’s not actually how it works, though. More than once I’ll see someone post about a new baby or something, and not have even known they are pregnant. Facebook does a lousy job of helping us keep up with each other, really, since it only ever shows us content from people we have recently interacted with. Kind of defeating the whole keep-in-touch purpose of Facebook?”

So here I am: I’m a creative 31 year old Cascadian woman who writes, takes pictures, and is commonly understood as being “from the internet”, where my name is either Foxtongue or rarely, Dreampepper. I don’t know everybody, but I seem to live two degrees away from everybody, so if I don’t know you, it’s highly likely I already know your friends. (No, it’s not creepy, it’s hilarious. Just accept it, it hurts less when you don’t struggle.) I cohabitate with a vegetarian, contrarian flatmate, David, who is studying to be a primatologist; two black cats, Tanith and Tanaquil; and two ferrets, Selenium and Pepper. (Selenium is cuter, but Pepper makes up for it by being the biggest ferret I have ever seen). We share a two bedroom apartment in the Commercial Drive neighborhood of Vancouver, BC, that I have painted fuchsia, scarlet, orange, white, and gold, and we have filled with books, art, and houseplants. David likes clutter, I do not, but somehow it still works.

I used to have cool jobs, like “special effects pyrotechnician” and “co-founder of an after-hours nightclub”, but right now I’m on a more pedestrian path as the HR and Culture & Process person for a small IT support company based out of White Rock by the US/Canada border, so I spend my a lot of work-related time commuting as well as being paid to sift through applicants and write corporate documents like Standard Operating Procedures or Job Description Templates. Even so, I am lucky that my employers understand that culture creation is needful and doubly-so that I have nearly free rein to write whatever I believe will get the job done. This means I regularly put sentences like “Don’t take it personally, someone will probably have candy for you” in procedure manuals. (Given half an opening, I will also put goofy lines from the original Maxis SIM:Earth manual in, too, but I haven’t had the chance yet. SOON.¹)

I also volunteer as a facilitator at CanSecWest, a security conference here in Vancouver that’s held annually every March. I love it there, I basically move into a hotel with a bunch of my favourite people and help make piles of awesome. There’s very little sleep, too many black t-shirts, but there’s also catering, a lot of love, and I’m always super happy to be part of it. (Even as it sometimes makes me seem paranoid to those outside of the security sector).

Aside from work, I have a couple of small projects, but nothing like I used to. It used to be that I was elbow deep in massive works all the time, but that went away when my interiority died, so now I only have a couple of small things: gamelan practice, a coding class, a language class, and my FB Portrait series, an endeavor to take a proper portrait of every single one of the 1000+ Facebook friends I’ve been lucky enough to collect. I would like to take more on, but there’s only so much creativity on tap right now and I have to be careful not to overwhelm what fuel I’ve managed to rekindle. I’m already three years behind on my photo processing! I’ve never even SEEN any of the pictures I’ve taken at Burning Man. Ever. Right this minute, I still have to deliver three weddings, two birthdays, a maternity shoot, about 30 Facebook portraits, and my Daily Photos from two years ago. (Which is why, if you say, “I want you to come up with my portrait!”, you’re going to get something boring, just like the last ten people who told me the exact same thing. Suck it up.)

Recently I’ve been lucky enough to travel a lot more than I have before: Albuquerque, Los Angeles, Madison, Montreal, Minneapolis, Mountain View, Napa, NYC, Oakland, San Francisco, Santa Fe, Seattle, and Vegas. Beautiful things and moments and people and discoveries at each, but it still doesn’t feel like enough. There’s so much of the world to explore, so many people to meet, so many things to do! In that, at least, I will always be greedy. I only get one chance at this and enough of it has been wasted. My goal is still to leave Vancouver for somewhere bigger, but in the meantime I plan to collect more lunatic adventures like, “that time I had that fling with the astronaut” or “that time I played pink slips for panties in a midnight drag race on the I5 and won” and use those to keep myself alive.

Anyhow, I want you to talk to me. Introduce yourselves, inform me or remind me who’s out there listening. I want this to be a safe place. This used to be our playground and I believe that together we can bring it back to life.

^1. It’s been over 20 years, but I still use this joke. One day my network will bring me in contact with the person who wrote it and I will give them the biggest, best of hugs:

In general, SimEarthlings are as lazy as Earthlings. They never want
to work, and especially hate physical labour. Whenever there are heavy
objects to move, they argue over who has to do it.

“I don’t want to carry it–you carry it!”
“Not me–you carry it.”

And that’s how Eukaryotes evolved.

Of course, the usual solution is to hire a professional to do the work.
That’s what Prokaryotes do for a living.

Authenticity / Nourishment

On November 20th, 1998, the first module of the International Space Station, Zarya, was launched.

On November 21st, 1905, Albert Einstein’s paper, “Does the Inertia of a Body Depend Upon Its Energy Content?”, is published in the journal Annalen der Physik. This paper reveals the relationship between energy and mass, which leads to the mass–energy equivalence formula E = mc².

“I don’t want to write about you,” I said. Adding you to the narrative would make you real in a way I’m not prepared to risk or handle. This is a place that defines me, that nails my history down to the page, that makes things legitimate, that allows my future self to remember. We were wrapped together as completely as two people might be, but I was not so sure I would survive bringing you back with me, I was not sure I would survive binding you to my story. I do not want to lose myself to a fire again.

Yet here I am, three in the morning, and the edges of my heart are dripping words onto a page two hundred kilometers from where I just saw you fall asleep. You wear my name on your tongue. I am your voice on the wire. You are terrified, but you remain. I am terrified, but I fight for you. You wear a ring that belonged to my dead. I wear your care as a protective halo. I am tearing down my walls even as you held on to me so tightly an imprint of your hand lived like a welcome shadow on my skin for days.

We have saddled ourselves with a thin leather of responsibility, but somehow it will be okay. We don’t know where we’re going, but we know we’re discovering it together.

I wrote this for you in a letter, but want to keep it here in my tender on-line cottage, a decade old and counting: “In the meantime, we don’t have to go alone into the dark night of the future. We can loiter together in the parking lot awhile, get extra batteries for our flashlights, talk about music, look at the stars, make out, ask each other questions, both teach and learn. ”

So here it is, you’re real now. Welcome to the story. You’re going to like it here.

topical descriptions of life as we knew it

alt-text: i hear smashing glass in my head, ever time i laugh

I awoke a little panicked, aware of a certain dreadful absence of pinging alarm, not quite damning my day job, but coming close to it. The entire morning thing seemed insurmountable. It had been a long, unexpected evening, the sort I am generally familiar with, but never actually had, so all I wanted to do was sleep in. Drinks in a bar, an invitation up, my cue to pass out chastely on half of a hotel bed, that’s how it goes, how it suits my blood. But he was impossibly sweet and it seemed, after an indeterminate sleepy amount of cuddling, that my desire to cling to the familiar had evaporated somewhere, possibly seared from existence by his fiercely protective intellect, and the only path available was towards a new choice.

We went to the Aquarium after dinner later that night, (foreign dishes in a basement, the beginning of my stories, the tragic litany, the darker side of a thousand and one nights), me to crash the party, him with legitimacy, both with an equally sound purpose. Mine was to sneak in, the better to get me into even more later. We split up right away, once it was assured I had successfully bluffed past security, and that was that, I was on my own, a mercenary butterfly released into the opening party of the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

It’s startlingly easy to make fast friends at the beginning of conferences. There are always a few people who’ve been attending since the dawn of time, but the majority of the crowd are strangers thrown together or people who’ve only known each-other tangentially or on-line, so the ground is primed for the sort of introduction that doesn’t generally fly in public, where you simply walk up like a little kid to a friendly looking face and say, “hi!”.

I almost immediately fell in a lovely women, Shauna, a fellow burner from Berkeley I knew I would like, then together, after taking pictures with the sharks, we found Elizabeth, there for CNN, best characterized by her amazing smile, as permanent as the moon. We chatted about the fish and science and wondered about the whale, elusive and grand, sequestered in an area of the aquarium that the conference hadn’t rented. Occasionally I drifted away, encountering new conversations and faces, making mental notes for later, attaching myself here and there, but made sure to keep swinging back to touch base, so as the night progressed, as I fluttered, I forged a little group with which to found a conspiracy.

Eventually we made a feint at sneaking past security to see the whale, but we’d gained mass, our core blossoming as we went into an unwieldy six or seven, too many to slyly saunter into an area we weren’t supposed to go. Then, sadly, after some magic with the otters and the dolphins, it was time to leave, the staff ushering us past the sleeping octopus and the shimmering glass cube of tiny blue fish that look like living streaks of light to a queue in the the parking lot for the hired buses that were shuttling everyone back downtown. I lost my partner in the crush, perhaps because I lingered too long, loitering in a hope to find him, yet I found surprisingly good company in his wake – Alan, Estrella, and Marc, who I first met inside as part of the attempt on the beluga tank. They wanted to walk, but didn’t know the way, so I put aside my concerns regarding my misplaced self as less important than the possibility of an entire lost group and appointed myself their guide.

The walk home was beautiful, if long. Mostly I fell in step with Marc, who I pressed for details about the Ig Nobels and traded stories of odd employment paths, but got on well with Alan, too, who possesses a Patient Zero level of infectious cheer. By the time everyone peeled off for their separate hotels, we’d discussed several adventures, planned a couple more, and all traded business cards, a habit I was to pick up even more as the conference went on. (The trick is to remember later which card goes to which face).

My fellow turned out to be table camping with the rest of his crew at the hotel bar, which I walked through on a whim, hoping to stumble across where he might be, my lack of cell phone again a strangely crippling artifact of the shockingly recent past. I joined them, of course, and was immediately taken with RJ, a clever young man from Waterloo University who was sitting at my end of the table. I spent the rest of the evening pulling ideas from him, chatting about clean energy and the internet, until the table finally dissolved, leaving me and mine to drift upstairs into the sweet oblivion that promises endless wonder but only ever delivers tomorrow.

living on small tragedy street

Word of the day – Gesamtkunstwerk: the total work of art, or rather, the idea of design for the totality of an object instead of individuation of its parts

How do you tell when you’re overly tired? I have certain mental tics that arrive, stupid songs that play in my head, this shit is bananas, simple, repetetive lyrics I would never otherwise be conscious of knowing, b-a-n-a-n-a-s, and I hold little conversations with myself, dumbed down to the point of ridiculousness, where the words like “yo” and “dude” and terms like “for reals” feature heavily. It seems that on the point of exhaustion, my brain dissolves into a ten year old internet pixie, the sort that spells “you” with only one letter. Not quite lolcat, but something similar, insidious, and slightly worse, as if a children’s television show producer has snuck into my skull and started scribbling on the walls in mile high luminous letters completely devoid of meaning.

I have so reached that point. In fact, I reached it a couple of hours ago, back when it was still yesterday, but instead of curling up in my giant cozy bed like a person who has good ideas then follows through with them, I have been fighting with my printer. My amazing, life changing, totally bonzo photo printer. That I love. When I do not hate it. Like I do right now. Because the damned thing, (though I coddle it as if was alive and cute, squalling like the useless infant it so obviously is), ran out of gray ink and will not go.

If it was only the printer that was giving me a hassle, I would have simply gone to bed upon this discovery with the full intention of getting up tomorrow, purchasing some ink, installing it, then letting it all ride wild, but no. My computer, as well, is refusing to run. I spent four solid hours using it yesterday, and let me tell you, it’s a freaking joy to work on, that screen is like staring into the caring eyes of some technocratic deity, and then it asked, ever so nicely, for a reboot, as there was some update that required such and oh, won’t it be sweet when I restart and everything is shinier? I figured, alright, sure. I need to pop out and pick up a tuxedo anyway. So I saved everything, hit restart, and head out the door. Upon my return, what did I find? A dead black screen.

My body, at this point, actually filled with dark, cold dread.

It seems that it did shut down, but failed to properly restart. Trying again begat identical results. Awful, terrible results. Running all the diagnostics possible brought me to the same dead screen, without even the comfort of a useless blinking cursor. Rolling back the boot failed, the memory test failed, the safe start failed, the whatever that other thing I found that I guess comes with Win7 failed. Everything. Failed.

So that was three hours of my life.

At which point, I finally turned to my laptop, though as photo editing goes, I’m not sure if there’s anything worse to colour correct with than a laptop screen. I figured, ah well, I will do my best, and my best will save me, it will be enough, and this project will lift from the ground and soar, even so. Hooking it up to the printer proved a bit of a chore, as at first it didn’t want to take directions from such a paltry machine after knowing the full glorious might of my desktop computer, but after a bit of a wrangle, I won, and it submit to my tender ministrations, as gentle and pure as a metaphorical lamb. By midnight, I was ready. Course, as soon as the pictures were all settled up, the printer joined in the technology hate party, mocking me with a dull red refill light, even after I was so damned nice to it, head cleaning, running a re-alignment, all of those things you do when you’re starting up such a beautiful machine after a sad month of sorrowful neglect. Which leads me to now, after two a.m., deciding upon the third recitation of the stupid banana song, (who is responsible for that terrible thing, anyway? I refuse to look it up. Or know.), that it is time to abandon my original plan, and instead go tomorrow and pay filthy dollars to some dime store clerk and have them do all my printing for me. Out of spite, you ask? No, out of worn to the bone exhaustion. It’s the wedding rehearsal tomorrow, the wedding the day after that, yet my rent needs be paid, and so I stay up and up and up, though I don’t have time for this. I don’t. Nor do you, probably, so I wish us luck and good night!

Morning! How’s your day been?

An interesting subplot to this trip to Montreal has been the rather immediate crumbling decay of the building we’ve been staying in, where Lung and Melanie have been living. One of the main walls of the building half fell down recently, as it seems mold got underneath the bricks and simply sloughed the outside layer off. Not a trivial thing, this, especially as we’ve been staying in the room most affected. In the corner of our bedroom is a mad crack that runs all the way from the ceiling to the wooden floor, casually snapping the baseboard along the way. Every day it seems to be a tiny bit bigger. Sometimes there are threatening sounds.

Yesterday Melanie had inspectors come by, as the landlord has been too scummy to reduce their rent, and after some mandatory tapping on things, they quite promptly condemned the building, claiming that it’s too dangerous to inhabit, as the ceiling “could come down on your heads any minute”.

This morning they’ve come by banging up some sort of metal scaffolding to attempt to shore it up before it collapses, so Lung and Melanie can at least stay until December 1st. Tony and I have retreated to the livingroom with our electronics, as out of all our options, it seems safest.

Montreal: -very- rough draft plans

Sunday : Breakfast with Lung in Outremont with Jamieson & co, shopping at Simon’s, duck in a can dinner at Au Pied de Cocho w. Mike Kitt & Lung, dessert there w. Vanessa & Dee, tea and cider after w. Mike, Dee, & Vanessa at Laika on St. Laurent.

Monday: Shopping at the Le Chateau Warehouse, (coats acquired!), Michel’s studio, sandwiches at Atomic.

Tuesday : Breakfast at l’Avenue De Plateau, visit with Michel & Julie at the studio, then Silophone, Body-worlds, and Avesta’s Turkish dinner w. Christine, take-home cake.

wednesday: biodome, ~~pecha kucha at SAT [Société des arts technologiques]~~, dinner at Michel & Julie’s, dancing at Koi w. Dee and Mike Kitt.

thursday: Patati Patata & La Croissanterie Figaro w. Dee and Vanessa, new moon twilight opening w. lung and melanie at star city at 10pm.

friday: write Lung’s Canada Council Grant application essay, dinner at dee’s w. vanessa

saturday: brunch at fuchsia w. christine & Dee, Juliette et Choclat on St-Denis, borrow camera flash, find a teapot for Melanie, dinner at La Academie on St. Laurant, ~~Welcome Winter Prom! w. Mark Berube at 5386 St Laurent~~

sunday: Pick up picture frames at Zone on St. Denis, Michel et Julie’s wedding, Resevoir, Le Banquis

monday: Work, terible headache, Best Croissants Ever at Au Kouign-Amann, just west of the Mont-Royal Métro stop near Mont-Royal and Rue Drolet,

tuesday: Jean-Talon Market, Santropol, Santropol w. Christine, and animated movie, Max and Mary.

wednesday: pictures with Michel & Julie, Frank Wimart’s movie, “c’est notre histoire” 7 pm, cinematheque, corner of st. denis & maisson, projection room: fernando, dinner at Confusion w. Mike & friend, dancing at Passeport.

thursday: CEILING FALLS ON BED, Breakfast at Le Cafeteria w. Dee & Vanessa, St. Joseph’s Oratory w. Vanessa, The Musee Des Beaux Arts (Waterhouse til February!), dinner & dessert at Rockeberry w. Dee, Michel, Julie, and Vanessa, hotel check-in, dancing at Passeport, tea.

friday: fly back to vancouver

saturday: bus to seattle w. Tony, That 1 Guy, dinner at 13 coins w. Mike, Cherise, Heatbox Aaron, Rafael.

Yes, I live in Canada. Why do you ask?

Jeepers, I thought last night was unexpectedly exciting, what with successfully hooking Nicole up with Nick for the holidays, finally meeting Dominique‘s new little baby, SURVIVING NICK’S NEW VAN CATCHING FIRE, (no one was hurt. I pulled Nicole out and we put the fire out with snow), and admitting rather bashfully to someone that I wrote about our personal life on the interblags, but today’s news sort of trumps it, so I’ll just get it out of the way and talk about yesterday in the next post…

I’ve just been hired as a cameraperson for Chanukah on Ice.

“Skate to Chanukah music or watch and nosh latkes and doughnuts.
Monday, December 22, 2008, 6:00-7:30 pm.
West End Ice Rink, 1750 Haro Street (Between Denman & Bidwell).
Admission: By donation. Skates are free.”

Which sounds, on the surface, like it’s going to be a Yiddish Icecapades, people dressed as sparkling, spinning dreidel, singing songs and throwing glitter under a rainbow of lights, but apparently it’s something a thousand times more hard-core bizarre. Something I would never have the wit or imagination to think up myself.

It’s a Candle Lighting on an Menorah made of ice, a meter high and shaped like hockey sticks.

Did you get that? Shaped like hockey sticks.

where are my brains

My apprehension is on fire, reaching out to confuse my generally pragmatic self. Tonight I will get home, try to relax with David, have a brief panic, and eventually give in to a clockwork pattern of getting up every five minutes to try and make sure I remembered everything I made a mental note to pack. Then my mother will arrive, slightly late, while I am in the middle of tearing something apart, and drug me into amicability with chocolate. Our things will be put into her van, we may or may not stop somewhere for road food, and then we will go.

Ten blocks will go by before I remember that I have left either my plane ticket or required ID on top of a flat surface somewhere in my room, and another fifteen blocks will go by before I remember that I’ve forgotten something essential to do with either the camera or the laptop. After that, we will be like an arrow, off to Seattle in the dark. At the border we will make jokes about holding on to contraband, while hoping they don’t search the truck and find the Kinder Eggs we’re smuggling for Robin’s party. Around then I will remember that I’ve left Robin’s number at home, right next to where that pesky other thing had been. We will decide it’s probably just in my bag and continue on, but we’ll be wrong.

In Bellingham, it will rain so hard the roads will collapse, and I will miss my plane on Monday, recovering in an American hospital that charges me for the air I breathe.

Nonsense clear in my head, put there solidly by my worried, idiot heart. Nonsense and things that have happened before but are unlikely to ever happen again. I know this trip will completely different then the last time I went to California. It can’t not be. I will not be stranded. I will not be neglected. Nothing will flood. (Related to that, I will not get caught in another mud-slide.) I will not be attacked by yet another damned wild animal while camping. I will not be kidnapped by yet another dangerous religious fanatic. I will not get trapped on the train for seven hours because of a suicide. I will not accidentally walk into Compton on my first day in Los Angeles.

Not only will my trip by fun, it will be fine. This time I have friends there. I am connected. I have a network, a safety net, multiple places to stay. Tonight we will remember everything irreplaceable, get clean across the border, and collapse into our plans/friends in Seattle with joy. On Monday morning, I will be exhausted, but will make my early morning flight. I won’t get off the plane to find myself abandoned by a car crash, Lung and Natasha will meet me there. Vegas will be exotic yet completely familiar from television, terrific and fascinating. When we leave for the Salton Sea, our drive will be all sing-alongs to favourite songs, fruit juice, bad jokes, and photography in the desert. When it is time to go to sleep, we will lie down on the cold ground, miles away from anything, and the stars at night will be so clear as to make me catch my breath.

fricking frack: things I hate to miss more than

It’s that time of year again…

12th Annual Eastside Culture Crawl
November 21, 22, & 23
The 2008 Crawl map.
FRIDAY November 21st 5:00pm – 10:00pm
SATURDAY November 22nd 11:00am – 6:00pm
SUNDAY November 23rd 11:00am – 6:00pm

The Eastside Culture Crawl is a free, annual 3-day arts festival that involves artists opening their doors to let the public tramp through their creative studio-spaces, (and sometimes homes), to exhibit work for sale.

“Painters, jewelers, sculptors, furniture makers, musicians, weavers, potters, writers, printmakers, photographers, glassblowers; from emerging artists to those of international fame… these are just a sampling of the exciting talents featured during this unique chance to meet local artists in their studios.

Purchase something that strikes your fancy, commission something to be uniquely yours, or just browse through the studios and meet the artists, learning about their specific works of art, materials and tools, approaches and techniques. This is a once a year opportunity to meet many diversely talented artists and view their creations in the studios where they work. Be part of this exciting event, which brings people from all over the Lower Mainland, and share in the imaginations that enrich our neighbourhood and lives.”

Last year Dillon and I went to a bit of it, and it was absolutely spectacular. Almost endlessly fascinating, as every room contained an entirely new collection of art. 1000 Parker St., especially, as it has the highest concentration of artists. (Though there seems to be more paintings of crows at 1000 Parker St. than there are actual crows in a fifteen mile radius of the building itself. Go figure.) Thankfully few studios were devoted to watercolour trees or flowers, instead it was a little like coming home, exploring every room as new, colour-spattered, welcoming universe. Last year there were over 300 artists showing. This year there’s going to be more.

It’s one of the few Vancouver events I consider unmissable, which is why it’s killing me a little that I’m not going to be in town while it’s happening. Instead I’m going to be in Seattle, and then hopefully on a plane, making my way South, towards Lung and the Salton Sea, the ecological disaster desert west outside of L.A. Take pictures, everyone. Attend, discover, and explore.