Tag: andrew

With Andrew gone, it’s time to pick up the slack he’s left behind.

“Meaning”
by Czeslaw Milosz

—When I die, I will see the lining of the world.
The other side, beyond bird, mountain, sunset.
The true meaning, ready to be decoded.
What never added up will add up,
What was incomprehensible will be comprehended.

—And if there is no lining to the world?
If a thrush on a branch is not a sign,
But just a thrush on the branch? If night and day
Make no sense following each other?
And on this earth there is nothing except this earth?

—Even if that is so, there will remain
A word wakened by lips that perish,
A tireless messenger who runs and runs
Through interstellar fields, through the revolving galaxies,
And calls out, protests, screams.

-::-

Andrew was barely in his forties, an acting father of three, a husband, a lover, and, as he would say, “all of the things”! Essential to at least three of my neighborhood’s core communities, he was a precious friend I never imagined doing without. He fell suddenly, an aneurysm or a stroke, the sort of death that unfurls its red flag without warning. I could list facts: his love of pirate clothing, his irrepressible fever for wordplay, his drawings, his games, the entire shelf of books on Rome that served as the incubator for a project that will never blossom from its imaginary blueprint seed. None of it will properly convey who he was, what sort of life he created to inhabit and to share, so the narrative that I have decided upon is to declare him the laughing buddha, the zen creature without public ego who didn’t give in to the idea that we should care what strangers think of us. Monks in saffron robes suffer on mountain tops while he found illumination in the way dice moved over a table, the way foam wrapped sticks bounced off other foam wrapped sticks, and a thousand other nerdy occupations I have never really understood but didn’t need to in order to appreciate him and his glee. We bonded over shiny things, science, dancing, and the regular delights of mangled days. All of that, years of it, but I cannot convey the map of his nation’s borders. He was smart and he was good and we miss him. Everything else is set dressing.

It doesn’t seem so long ago since I last ran into him on Commercial Drive, floppy hat, massive cloak, somewhere probably a drum. The man wore tutus and face-paint as commonly as other people wear socks. He was easy to spot. Was, not is. I write that word and lose my courage. It doesn’t seem long because it wasn’t, yet it will never happen again.

I offered to take his picture before he was cremated, something for the family, something for us, an image to represent the man we all loved. I didn’t even think about it, it was as natural as offering my hand to someone sitting on the ground, and his widow said yes and thank you and we agreed. This left me standing by his coffin at the crematorium two hours before the service, my friend Jay acting as a driver and a voice activated light stand, kit in hand and a bag full of expensive lenses I had never used before.

Though it was surreal, I was fine until I bumped the coffin, reflexively apologizing to his cold face, and when I touched him, brushing hair to cover some of the bruising that the make-up didn’t cover. Excepting those moments, I had a skill set to wield, he could have been made of spring flowers, a still life empty of residual heat. He has too obviously absent, an unmanned puppet, only a former body of work, still bones, still skin. An object encased in love and lighting problems to solve.

Fast forward, I stood with his family, perhaps the only one present who wasn’t tied to him through marriage or blood, the last of the last, in the final moments before he was taken away and sublimated into shimmering air molecules and carbon. Tillie couldn’t be there, but AJ read out a note from her, a prayer for the living who stood in a circle around Andrew’s abandoned body. I watched everyone, I watched and I ached and part of me died, and I made my own strident promises: May we remember this and resolve not to let it go. May we forever refuse to stand still.

The music of Zoë Keating, tossed on incredible, magical waves of wonder and fascination.

Andrew called me up yesterday during Twin Peaks Tuesday at eleven:thirty at night to ask, “You know how sometimes when you’re unemployed and broke, awesome things happen to you? This is one of those things.” Suddenly ignoring the show, I sat a little straighter. “Do you still have a passport?” He had scored two tickets over twitter to see Zoë Keating at one of Chase Jarvis‘ boutique, nearly private, invitation-only livestream studio sessions in Seattle. Of course I said yes. I said yes before I even knew what was going on, before I properly heard “Seattle” or “concert”.

Which is why my alarm went off at five:fifteen this morning, even though I only went to bed around two a.m., the better to be ready when Andrew dropped by to pick me up at six, and I spent the day in Seattle, exhausted and emotional. Her music is sublime, a densely woven carpet of bitten off bird’s wings, rich with melody, clarity, and grace, and to have her play in such an intimate setting was an amazing experience. The interview, too, was beautiful, a sweetly compelling glimpse into a sparkling, beautiful wit. She speaks with an admirable sincerity, and often, while she was talking, I had to repress an urge to cheer.

So, as a glitchy-future souvenir of my unexpected, fantastic day down south, I welcome you to share that precious hour as I present to you the video of the entire event:


We’re in the front row, stage left.

Kristen was at breakfast, a lovely surprise.


Friday night the star-fall was beautiful. Some were so violently bright, it was like we should have been able to hear them shred through the atmosphere. On our backs in a row under the too-cliche starry night, we irreverently cracked jokes about proverbial movie endings, but still gasped every time the sky impossibly ripped open with light.

The language of morning, music, two silk black cats, a matching short kimono, claws hooked into the chain of a pocket watch like an eccentric playful ribbon. Knocking down the mess. Sorting papers, shifting things into drawers, off the floor. Work at three o’clock.

Mechanical heart removed after organ heals itself.

Free of the future, he lives on the same block as my boyfriend who killed himself the night we were going to be together. I can see his bedroom window from the back porch. It’s unsettling. I’m almost breaking down, every word I’m holding on, trying to gain some equilibrium. My friend is telling stories that flow like an archaeological river. He’s been doing it for hours. Acid trips in London, working with Peter O’Toole, where he was when the Berlin Wall fell down. They go well with the house, his implacable gestures. I try to memorize as much as I can, anchor myself, keep the car running. Catching myself in a simple mirror over his shoulder, the naked frame is a prison, I feel like a photograph hung on the wall.

Walking towards breakfast late in the afternoon, one block down, someone has gracefully drawn absolutely perfect hot-rod flames into the dust coating a black vintage pick-up truck. It looks like something my buried love would have done. In my mind, I rock back on my heels into his body and, with a silent smile, I gesture to my friend, stuck on his cell phone, who sees it and smiles back. Suddenly, everything will be alright.

I really want there to be hot water faster

exhibit 5: blue over me

“Honest, your honor, I thought she was 16.”

Look! There’s weather today!

Antony wanted proof, locked as he is in his dark little office, too sick to go out for a cigarette, so I broke the lock on the trapdoor to the roof, took photographs and sent him a pictorial essay: on the treatise that the sky can be a blue colour in the city of Vancouver. It was deliciously warm up there, perfect for my bare feet.

Of course, since I was up there, a gray haze has been taking back the sky. I say we petition and have it thrown out.

Nicole and I are continuing Alastair‘s bathroom today. When we’re done it will be a pale ghost of butter yellow with a cheerful blue sky on the ceiling. It’s all Very! Spring! I’ll try to remember to take pictures. His shower curtain alone is worth the price of admission.

Yesterday Andrew met a man who’d never seen the ocean before. “Tourists took pictures of him, swimming fully clothed, just off the seawall.”

(Apparently it’s a holiday. Happy Guy-Onna-Stick Day).

I could still fall in love with you

Does anyone know of a professional alteration shop that won’t break the bank?

I have a line on a fairly simple gown that I would like to be a bit more complex. Mostly the skirt ruched up with tulle put underneath as the green one is on this page, or with something on top, as the red one is, yes, flowery bits and all, if that’s easier. It’s about time I admitted myself a flowery bit of girlishness rather than have certain aspects of femininity drift blankly past me like a painted-eye shopping mall crowd after a fire.

  • the feeling of some love.

    Last Sunday I went to Seattle, and after a pleasant ride down with Brian’s friend, Jane, long silver hair, the pretty violet mannerisms of a relaxed bird, I found myself in the grand company of Eliza, who walks like she really means it and takes two hours to decide what to wear. It felt somehow like I was speaking with an echo of something I used to believe in. Three days of barely sleeping, being thrown into a car with a familiar stranger, a city I’m not familiar with. I felt like a game of jeweled cards was playing inside my head where I didn’t know the rules. I appreciated her friends, they were relaxing, a black clothes contingent to take my hand and keep me standing through my weary run. more pictures soon.

  • the feeling of my workplace.

    People have been repeatedly sending Robert Newman’s History of Oil to me the last few days. I am remiss in not posting it immediately, I’m sorry. (I forget more people read here). It’s a shining and clever monologue that discusses the critical political issues of war and energy use in an exceedingly accessible manner. He gracefully binds imperative information in laughter and ties it all up with a fun sense of charming levity, which may sounds silly, but it really needs to be seen to be properly understood. Watch it as soon as possible!

    Quote of the Day: Andrew: “I think it says bad things about me when I try and go to the site http://super.cali.fragi.listic.expi.ali.do.cio.us/ and get disappointed that no one has made it yet.”

    • “I’ve been a long time coming, and I’ll be a long time gone” ani difranco

    I forgot to being Imogyne‘s birthday present with me to work today, despite that I remembered it yesterday. I’m hoping she’ll like it.

    I win at Derek’s brain.

    Yesterday Terri visited and brought black chocolate gelati. Andrew called and bought me concert tickets that I will later have to pay for. TV On the Radio, Secret Machines, Frog Eyes with a member of Wolf Parade. (video). On the phone was my mother, we tried so hard to keep talking. At the hospital, I left hungry letters to myself on Devon‘s laptop while he tried to sleep. Darling man, if I’m lucky, he won’t find it until I’m gone.

    It was exactly this time last year that I decided to go to Toronto.

    2005-04-27 00:23
    Once upon a time, there

    were fairytales
    princes and
    strange iron shoes
    what meant honour
    Once upon a time, there
    were childhoods
    we believed
    in gold and
    thought being good
    was winning

    Tell me a story, they said
    explain to us why we crave
    towers
    why we crave pastel dresses and
    happy endings

    Tell me what matters
    when everything is beautiful

    looking as if an angel had been threatened with a baseball bat


    taking a break on metropolis
    Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

    I sat on top of a news-box downtown for half an hour with a book in my lap, trying to tune out the religious zealots handing out sheets of paper with the word Jesus at the top. Too exhausted to run for the bus, I was twenty minutes late. No one was there. No one came. I did not expect them to. Dinner had obviously been decided without me. No way to contact my friends, I decided to gather my chores in hand before I went back to the hospital. Official visiting hours are over, I thought, and I am having difficulty imagining myself mouth that I am Devon’s wife.

    The drugstore felt hollow, as if somehow I had fallen into a facsimile. I stood in the hair care aisle and let my eyes scan the products without me, looking for the word Organic. In my head, I would try to concentrate on the mundane task I was undertaking, but instead I would glimpse Devon in surgery, a garden of stars unconscious on a table, the illusion of a slight flash of the metal knife as it sliced into his skin. Eventually I chose two bottles of shampoo and turned to find soap. The cheap soaps are sometimes the best. Less scent means less chemicals. Small thoughts that have nothing to do with what went wrong or his face on the bed.

    Earlier, I had to re-set my day’s plans. Alicia was to come by for eleven and I had set my day by that. Things came up however, as they often do, and it was two o’clock before she could swing by for her errand, so things red-shifted over a bit. I had dinner with Andrew instead of Alastair, and instead of going to a fencing demo, when I got off the bus across from Duello, I followed random impulse and turned left into Gastown. There’s a shop there I rather like, crammed with odd antiques and paper masks. In the basement there’s a chinese chest full of hundreds of small drawers that can steal an hour if your life if you let it. This time, however, I knew exactly what I came for. At the foot of the stairs is a small display of golden music boxes, the sort you crank by hand to hear the music. They’re louder when you place them on wood. I sorted through them as efficiently as possible to find the one that played the Beatles song, She Loves You.

    Going back to Duello, I fell into step behind a man I didn’t recognize. I heard him unlock the school doors above me and cursed a wee bit, knowing that meant that I’d missed everyone. I poked my head in anyway, curious to see if I was wrong. “Who’re you looking for?” “I thought to catch Devon.” “He’s in the hospital today.”

    At that, I turned and ran, another impulse. Down the stairs, across the street, down the hill, straight to Waterfront train station, where Randy happened to be standing inside the hall. Seeing him, standing perfectly as if framed for me to find him, I recognized my impulses as the impelling force of cinematic timing and I laughed. I stopped running and walked up to him. He covered the mouth of his cell phone for a moment, “Hey Jhayne, I’ve got news for you.” “Yes, but what hospital?” We stood chatting for close to ten minutes, glad to be in company, “I just talked to him, he’s obviously not dying,” then took the train together. As soon as the doors opened on Granville station, I began running again.

    There was a group of boys on the escalators, seven deep on either stair, pretending they were surfing. Such was my blithesom running that I decided they were an obstacle I wouldn’t wait for, rather I made thier day by jumping up onto the slippery thin metal divide between them and dangerously running up that instead. They cheered, but for safety’s sake, I didn’t look back down. Another two blocks and I was on the bus, feeling as if my legs were going to mutiny if I forced them one more step.

    is it true? I don’t know of any other really great talents he has like that.

    Michael and I are huddled like literate junkie street kids around the stolen wireless outside Andrew‘s apartment. Andrew, however, is apparently on Denman street. Eating sushi. The death food.

    Michael is being a rebel without a cause, as I say he shouldn’t. It’s too silly with his black leather jacket. Especially with that hair of his. What is he thinking? When he was writing his entry, I was reading Murakami. Sputnik Sweetheart. A woman walked past us, looking confused, but not minding us. She stepped over my second rate pastries and smiled. She had thick ankles.

    Now Michael’s singing endearments to the wall. I don’t know if he’s making up the song, but I doubt it. He says it’s from the internet.

    there’s a membrane drawn over my week


    axismundi
    Originally uploaded by camil tulcan.

    A sound like god, what happens when a man covered in microphones walks into a room full of speakers.

    I have been measuring things more in my eyes than my hands this week, which leads to interesting bits of missing time that I worry for, as if they’re my children and I’ve abandoned them for that crucial minute too long in the shopping mall where now the only way to get them back is in newspaper articles I clip out and tape to my fridge.

    Last weekend, Burrow was in town. I know that for certain. The order of her arrival is written down, there were pictures taken. She stayed over Friday night with Sam, the evening of Meat Eatery. Sam and I had walked to BJ’s after dinner, watched atrocious movies with Bob and his girl-darling from Parksville, then returned to curl up with Burrow asleep in my bed. We were quiet, but woke her unintentionally.

    Saturday we crawled out of bed in time for the Fool’s Parade. Sam went home to shackle himself to his desk and Burrow and I rolled like tired thunder downtown and met with Duncan, Jenn, Georg, and her pink-dyed ferret, Silky. The parade was rainy and under-attended, so after coming close to winning the Fool of the Year award with ferret breasts, we abandoned the street for Taf’s. When work didn’t have my paycheque ready, we turned around and walked to the Bay to visit with Eva at her clinical cosmetics booth. It was fascinating, in a quiet colourful way, but not enough to keep Burrow and I from going home to rest before Duncan pulled us out to the graceful Fool’s Cabaret on Main st. Reine‘s mother was there, and Siobhan, a friend of friend’s we went to dinner with after.

    Monday is missing, a played out afterburn. I took some self-portraits, but I don’t know if I slept there at home or not. There was one, two ideas. A number, undifferentiated. Something.

    Tuesday is more concrete, not only written down, but recorded. Video, audio, photographs. Imogyne and I at Hawksley Workman with darling Sophie. The Cultch in all it’s warmly worn desiccating glory, intimate, red curtained. I remembered all the shows I’d played there. Running through the back when I was a child, that one time making love inside the roof. Downstairs hot-boxing the worn office, how there was once a pane of glass violently shattered in the middle of an orchestral piece, how the beads of my necklace clattered as I bounced and clapped. The music was good too, his acoustic version of striptease sincerely captivating.

    After, Devon came over and we stayed up until the last bus, listening to our bootlegs and drinking weary tea. Imogyne eventually went home, and Devon and I talked until far too late, making me late for work Wednesday. The day I went to Andrew‘s after work and Georg and I re-dyed my hair into the colour of sticky quill ink while watching Ghost in the Shell. She came back to my place after, and we let the ferret run free through my apartment as we talked about partners and lives lost, the soulmates of just then and not today and maybe yesterday we knew something and maybe tomorrow we’ll have some hope. She wrote poetry and I woke up in the morning holding her hand.

    Thursday I had a date with Sam, a real live date, not one of those on-line long-distance approximations my life seems to enjoy lauding me with. Cleaned up versions of us met at Tinseltown for the Brick preview and had dinner at Wild Ginger before walking out to False Creek to hang out on a water fountain and eat caramel ice-cream. We sat under the moon passing the tub back and forth like a cheap cigarette and talked about some of the same things that Georg did. We’re all divorced, the lot of us. It’s like a curse or a disease catching in all the social circles. It seems like every split has had very little to do with love and everything to do with a basic need to keep evolving, to keep trying to touch forever.

    Friday Michael stole me out from under dinner with Andrew, Navi, Ryan, and Eva, and accompanied Robin and I to Thank You For Smoking instead. It was gleeful, with some damned nice moments, (there was a montage of Bad People that slaughtered us like baby seals), and led well into creeping alone up the stairs into Duello for the end of Fight Practice, a small red flower as my sword. I sat on the couch with Lee, letting him show me knife tricks, as people cleaned up and we sat for coffee until it was too late to think of going anywhere else but home. Friday nights, however, traditionally lead into mornings without work, so we survived.

    We survived well, in fact, not doing a damned thing until somewhere after two in the afternoon, until the body-call to breakfast was too deafening to ignore.

    contact, we have contact

    Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex

    Tomorrow there shall be another gathering at Andrew’s house to watch the Ghost In The Shell TV series, called “Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex”. We have watched the first 14 episodes and will be continuing from there.

    Feel free to bring snacks.

    Where Call me or Andrew if you don’t know.
    When Show up for 8 pm, we’ll wait a little bit for latecomers before starting. We’ll go til we get tired.
    Who If you know either me or Andrew, you’re invited. Simple as that.

    Tonight, darling Imogyne has surprised me with a ticket to the Hawksley Workman concert tonight at the Cultch. I’m devlishly pleased, though I’m leery on the details of who that actually is. I think I have a mash-up cover of Striptease on my home computer that wasn’t too bad.

  • New TV on the Radio video for Dreams.
  • Lucky, a short film by Nash Edgerten.
  • an essential Drinking Driving Awareness commercial.