cousin to operation clambake

anonymous vs scientology

The global protests were today. Already someone’s been chosen as a mascot, an Australian girl in a HELLO KITTY t-shirt and a gas-mask, but me, I like this photo from the London protest* better.

Vancouver allegedly had a head-count of about 150, though it was quiet when I dropped by, maybe around 80 people standing on either side of the street. Lots of V for Vendetta masks, though there weren’t very many signs. The Scientologists were holding up a banner saying YOUTH FOR HUMAN RIGHTS. Other cities had much better luck or were better organized. Warren’s Whitechapel has a thread for collecting news, and there’s some really good pictures being collected by someone on Livejournal who’s doing a fairly thorough job of it: Europe and Australia, United States.

*click on that, it looks like it was brilliant fun.

introduce yourself

Watch this, please.

These are three of the more anonymous messages I recieved through Valintinr:

  • i wish you loved me as much as you love him

  • you want to flee into the ocean? curl up there, lungs filling up while you wait to be rescued but you didn’t tell anyone where you were going. shine our light we do, all of us in the sky by the millions, each too-soft song of praise too small to measure alone. a chorus, then, tiny whispers in the deep. our frozen princess, bathed in love, rise when you will and walk. we long to shine on you and pave your path with petals. hear us and claim your throne.

  • The old mask was grown unfamiliar, but already the joins are harder to see. With teeth sharper than memory I have been chewing on the sweet sinews of your heart, keeping fragments safe, saving shrapnel.
    and somewhere, amongst warm socks and soap, lie the eyes that saw and the lips that tasted.

    I have been thinking of you.

  • I admit I post these with a slight hesitation, but I claim my grace from their beautiful and fragile anonymity. In this strange age, secrets are a new kind of social politics. Who to filter, who to write to, what you can say, what you can see – the lines between are easily blurred, writing without a name is a liberation. One step away, but not too far.

    They, very obviously, remind me of the letters I was recieving last spring. Mysterious things, slick with meaning, that I felt I should be able to swallow and, in consuming, unflinchingly grasp the author by the name. I still do not know who wrote them, but part of me hopes that they are the writer of one of the above quotations. There is still a familiarity, a cessation of breath that says to me that we were not strangers.

    There were people who were worried for me, nervous of the idea of a “stalker”, a man who knew not only my name, but where I lived and the blood of my mythology, as if I had been studied, tracked, and dangerously hunted. One person asked me to call the police if they ever turned threatening, but it was a sentiment I could understand but never respect. All of the sudden, a stranger is dangerous? Whatever happened to clever innocence? I was not long-suffering, it was a sharp loss when they ended. My mail-box, empty, felt like an accusation. I still feel the failing was mine for not identifying my admirer, for lacking the depth required to slueth my fascinating writer, my sweet daydream.

    These notes, wrapped softly in the digital realm, are both easier and more difficult. I cannot hold them in my hand and try to analyze the writing script, instead I must rely on the idosyncrasies, the clues and choice of words exclusively.

    The first, direct yet oblique, is a note that I might leave, and very much have in other times, but can’t be from anyone who knows me well. A crucial understanding of my social situation is missing. The second, enchanting though it is, doesn’t even give me that much information. All I know is they’re a long time reader, someone in tune with what I appreciate. It’s the third that’s keeping me up tonight, certain there’s enough information available for me to pluck the author from the crowd. My mind is trying to compile a list of people I have kissed and is finding it a short one. As three a.m. approaches, I’ve whittled it down to only four names.

    I hope, whoever you are, you’re happy. The soap is throwing me off.

    It’s the little things.

    edit: Ryan? there’s more (at the bottom).

  • heaven feels like teeth

    I think part of me is disintegrating. Today came another anonymous letter. Reading it, a surge of sharp sorrow welled in my chest and threatened my eyes. With the last line, I felt on the verge of a revelation, as if this time, instead of the word Love, the letter would be signed.

    Treasured Jhayne,

    Once upon a yesterday, when waves
    whispered secrets that seashells never
    tell, the man in the moon appeared behind
    you in the mirror. “I can tell you a
    story, of the girl who gave away a stone
    heart and died without it,” he said.
    “Sounds like a sad story,” you replied.
    “All stories are sad,” he said. “They all
    end, don’t they?” “What about happily-
    ever-after?” you asked. The man in the moon
    smiled and touched the reflection of your
    hair. “There’s happily, and there’s after,”
    he said, “but I am too much like the
    moon herself to promise
    anything forever.”
    Your reflection
    whispered, “Promise
    me a story then.”

    X

    Love

    Previous letters: one & two, three, four & five & six, seven, eight.

    reminder: today, wednesday, may 25th, birthday all-you-can-eat fondue, $10, the capstone tea & fondue, (1118 Denman), 7:30 onward.

    Who are you, writer? I am divided. Your name would menace my loneliness, but shatter the mystery. Where are your stories going? Every ur-fable steps closer to me, who I am, the way I speak. My words are quoted through these like scattered rain on a lake. That last line, that last line is vividly mine. The shape of those words slots onto my tongue every time I love someone. You mention my hair in such a way that I think you have touched it, that you have spoken with me, that I have held your hand and grasped it tightly. I was beginning to be afraid there would be no more letters, that the terrifying intimacy had ended, but you sent again a letter, one so awful and personal that it scares me and I’m glad. These are magic and magic is not meant to be safe.

    “these could be from your future husband. you could have three kids together”

    Hit the ground, keep on running. Take this braille ink and trace it. Don’t stop doing what you’re doing.

    I still haven’t. Instead I’ve arranged for dinner with Silva. Red, gold, her house is such a treasure. I leaned over and pulled a antique hunting horn out of the rubble of my room. Something to keep, something to throw away. He sat on the bed and looked around in wonder. The word trove. I leaned over and pulled on his curiosity, showed him the horn. Silva’s house is all silver and glittering crystal. Mirrors and shiny things. Cat haven, dinner at the table, fur at the feet. He took the ring from my keychain in the restaurant. It fit, but the price was impossible. Montreal. Could I fit in the luggage? Possibly. Cramped over in darkness, x-rayed and vulnerable to deprivation. The hallways at the hospital, plastic, granulated, we walk them, one pathway. Go left, go right now. Either way the answer is the same. The bed with buttons waits at the end, uninviting, unwelcome, too cold.

    Katie‘s finally selling prints. I’m listed on her site as a “writer, among other things,” though I can’t say I’ve been feeling like it. I was published, but outside of that, I haven’t been doing very much lately. Nothing I come back to. I think it’s because I’m so rarely home. It’s difficult to concentrate at work. I’m interrupted too often to construct a coherent thread of thought.

    I received another anonymous myth-letter arrived in the mail last night. I read it to Francois, and he wasn’t sure how to handle it. “No way,” he said. “There’s a stack of them.” “And you don’t know who wrote them?” “Not a clue. I thought I’d guessed, but I was told I was wrong.”

    we have blue eyes too

    Dearest Jhayne,

    Once upon a tomorrow, before the
    applause fades away, a little boy sits
    in a park, holding a fistful of feathers.
    “I know where your wings are,” says
    a voice from behind him, and he turns
    around to see a little girl standing
    there. “Don’t be stupid,” the little boy
    says. “I don’t have any wings.”
    “I’m sorry I told you that,” says
    the little girl. “But it’s your fault for not
    believing stronger.” The little boy just
    looks at his feathers. “Nobody has wings,”
    he says at last. “People can’t fly!”
    “Don’t listen to the pigeons, they don’t
    know anything,” she responds. For
    his sake, she turns into
    a swan before
    she flies away.

    X

    Love.

    Previous letters: one & two, three, four & five & six, seven.

    It’s comforting. It solidifies my impression of message-based narrative and adds credence to the assumption that I am The Girl.

    Hello letter-author. Thank you. You’re appreciated.

    exploded in flames and left ashes by the water for the ocean to take away


    you made the world
    Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

    “I can’t come back here,” instead of “I can’t back here like this,” is important. A subtle difference, but a vital one. It’s important not to have distraction. Communication claiming different veins. I like neutral ground. Statements of starry nights, I was raised by multiple rapes and madness. Don’t ask this. Fairness, you stand at the edge of the precipice with me.

    I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.

    Walpurgis Night. Happy fucking anniversary. That’s what the subject line said.

    We were fire fit to break my heart. I didn’t realize I was counting until I looked at the clock today and my heart twisted. It’s Beltane, a mark of where the sun is in relation to our skies, the day I looked up, trying to memorize the texture of your voice, and we kissed goodbye. It’s May Day, the day I stood by the shore and shone. This used to be my playground. Another world. There’s a photograph, but not of you. It’s the 229th birthday of the United Kingdom, the day I walked out as if I owned the world. Science fucking fiction. It’s the day the Czech population kisses under the statue of a poet to celebrate National Love Day. It’s the day. A gallery of moments. I hate that post-modern relationships are still the new black.

    Once upon a time, before music knew how to be written down and words didn’t know how to sing, there was a boy so beautiful that the goddess of the sky wanted to lick his tangled eyes.

    It seems my anonymous fairytale letters have stopped. Every day I check my mailbox and find nothing. Their continual absence is chipping at me, like perhaps I was to have guessed the author by now. I’ve read the letters over and over, inflamed by how devious they are, prying at them for clues, but I still don’t know who to pin them to and now it’s too late. They seem to have guttered out. I feel like I’m letting someone delightful down, someone with a more magical imagination than I have, like this was some sort of enchanting test and my curious intelligence went into retrograde.

    ‘she offered her honour, he honoured her offer, and all night long he was on her and off her.’


    Pike Place Market
    Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

    http://twas.brillig.and.the.slithy.toves.did.gyre.and.gimble.in.the.wabe.all.mimsy.were.the.borogoves.and.the.mome.raths.outgrabe.jabberwocky.com/

    Another letter arrived after the long weekend. This one with a different stamp.

    Cherished Jhayne,

    Once upon a yesterday, when hearts still
    hardened and stones still bled, a boy
    grew up listening to the wind. “It sounds
    almost like singing,” he would say, and
    friends and family would laugh at his
    fancy. As a youg man he bought a pair
    of boots and took to travelling, and did
    not say that he was following the voice of
    the wind. To himself he would say, “She is
    almost singing, but cannot find the melody.”
    A traveler one day came across the man as
    he stood among the rocks, arms upraised.
    “I am teaching the wind to sing,” said the
    boy-who-was-now-a-man. The traveler moved
    on but many years later passed by the
    same spot, and paused upon hearing a
    beautiful song. No singer
    stood there, merely
    the wind, who spun
    around a rock
    shaped like a
    man, with his
    arms upraised.

    X

    Love.

    the mystery continues in love


    1541albumcover
    Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

    Lovely Jhayne:

    Once upon a yesterday, after the
    beginning and shortly before the end,
    an old man stood fishing by the
    sea. To each fish he caught, he would
    say, “Grant me a boon, for I have
    trapped you fairly.” Each fish he would
    throw back when it did not reply.
    A little girl came along the shore
    and asked why he sought boons of
    fishes. “One yesterday a snared fish
    offered me a wish if I would release
    him,” the old man said. “I wished my wife
    away, and now I want her back.”
    “You must love her then, to do this so long,”
    said the little girl.
    “Love and devotion
    are not the same
    thing,” said the
    fish as he
    swam away.

    x

    Love

    Another letter, as unsigned as the first two, as anonymous and comforting. This one, however, is quoting me more evidently than the last two. Perhaps it is a clue?