Tag: aubrey

arguing the worth of starshine doesn’t get me hired


picture by livejournal user seafoodmwg (more in her journal)

Someone plays two chords on a guitar as they pass my window then stop, their hands become busy elsewhere or maybe they are still. I don’t know, I can’t see them from here, my place on the floor, between my computer and the foot of my bed. It feels like a visit from my ex-husband, as if I could go to the window and see him there. Red pants, shirtless, a guitar on his back and his long brown hair getting in his eyes. My vision gives me the way he looked when we went to Vancouver Island and visited Robbie, the summer before Robbie purposefully walked under an ambulance on Boxing Day. My vision reminds me of when I had faith. The sun was perfect, blaring down, a rock concert of light, heavy-handed and meaningful. The neatly kept streets were full of tourists who tried to put coins in my coffee cup. We slipped into the change room of a store with a dress we couldn’t afford, just for a breath of air conditioning, just so he could take it off of me.

I suppose this means it’s summer. Spring has slowly crept away, a child uninterested in conversation going outside to climb the glorious trees waiting there. It makes me miss Toronto, this atmospheric humidity reminiscent of an afternoon I slowly poured a glass jug of icy water over my head outside the Black Bull on Queen street as if I were in an eroticized shampoo commercial, the way the water coldly pushed my clothing onto my skin like a textured tattoo, the way my hair dried into curls not five minutes later. I felt like the first pages of a book newly opened, a story about to be told by a fresh new author. Now I feel unwritten, like I had a story but it got lost along the way. Like words left unspoken that were meant to fall from some lips I missed meeting. I feel displaced, conditioned to not have a home. A modern gypsy denied the dignity of reason.

The masquerade has a Flickr Pool: Masquerade Ball.

Michel posted a new page of Jesus Monkey Pants in Space.

For my job interview with Telus, I had to go to an imposing building that looked like a secret government industrial facility. I was escorted through an impressively locked security door with shatter-proof wired glass and upstairs into a small, windowless, bile-green room that could have passed for a holding cell in a women’s prison, then interrogated by two older women who rarely frowned. They read the buzz-word questions directly from papers on the table, leaving me with the impression that the entire thing could almost be left to teenagers. Once, near the beginning, the power cut, leaving us in a confusing pitch blackness. “They’re working on the generator today.” After half an hour, they left me alone long enough with an examination sheet that by the time they returned, I had corrected the punctuation of the questions. Possibly an unwise thing to do under the circumstances, but I grow depressive in silences with nothing to do. A closer examination of the metal cabinets wouldn’t have been wise, though I considered it, and there are only so many times I can read the sides of cardboard computer boxes without beginning to feel claustrophobic. I think they liked my stories of working in theater, but were uncertain what to do with me. Either way, I get a phone-call by Friday. They can’t say yes or no until after a criminal record check.

too tired for anything but 99c pizza

I really appreciate Tilly. Once a shaved-head lesbian who wrote bad poetry, she’s such a heavily blossoming human being now that it gives me hope for my body, for the wreckage of emotional scenery that surrounds it. I love when she explains her past, if she had a job somewhere as a programmer, she would be the power-point perfect love interest for a Douglas Coupland character. She groans along with us at the more delightfully embarrassing habits she used to have, and it plucks out my hiding grin and shakes it in front of my face like a dusty rag.

jacques' b-day

Outside black clouds are chasing sunlight across Davie Street in waves. Shadow, sun, shadow, darkness, chilly, light. I want it to snow. I want flowers to bloom so hard they pop in small explosions. I want my feeling of betrayal to launch into the air and be hit by a large blue truck. The snow would be crunchy as I walked out slowly into the street, and the yelling of the panicked driver, oh my god, I’m so sorry, it just ran under my tires, I didn’t see it, would be quiet compared to the styrofoam compression of ice-crystals under my feet and the scorched flower petals falling from the trees thick enough to blind.

Today will continue Mandarin Movie Tuesdays with The Promise, Chen Kaige’s newest and phenomenally beautiful film.

Perhaps irrationally, I feel this psychedelic cartoon of “Love is All,” performed by Ronnie James Dio of Black Sabbath, explains my ex-husband, Bill, somewhat more comprehensively than I’ve been able to myself. It precisely encapsulates a chunk of the media mind-set that he grew up with on Vancouver Island in the 70’s, one that I’ve always had troubles mentally capturing outside of films like Wizards. It’s like those taupe and dark brown houses that cover swathes of suburbia, little tear-downs always with the same hardware store cupboards and red brick fireplaces, nestled in trees that look like they need pruning, that are like fading photographs of twenty minutes before I was born, when he was a teenager fresh from conquering high-school and discovering Vancouver as the fresh place to be.

I found a picture of him while I was tidying this week. It’s a photograph I insisted on taking from the stage before we mounted a play, possibly The Heretic, in Waterfront Theater. It’s him with a bunch of people who used to be our friends, Johnathan Ryder, his wife Nancy, (still pregnant with the baby), John Murphy, and Tom Jones, sitting in first row. If anyone has a scanner I could use, I would like to make a copy to send to him. I think he would like it.

Download Music: New DeathBoy Track: Anuism (feat. Mog Xykogen)

sway me now, when andrew said he saw the car, I thought something else


artist unknown
Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

My mind began kindly to me then slipped into exhaustion. By the time I was in bed, all my thoughts were old. I should have called up Brian and had him fetch me over. It occurred to me, he would have banished my bad percussion nightmares. What’s good for me, I’m barely doing it these days. I hold out my hands to all the people who can’t quite help, and expect the rest of me to simply deal with it, forgetting that my reserves have almost entirely been used up. I think of running through a neighborhood, I think no, that place isn’t mine anymore. I don’t have a place anymore. My second home’s been closed to me.

I ran into Bill on my way to Dominique‘s Ghost Train evening. He still doesn’t know what to do with me. Jacques says after the baby is born, he’ll be able to deal with me as a human being again. I only know I could feel his bones through his coat like he was stuffed with sticks held together with fluid grace and days that stretch too long. Scraping himself thinner. Dominique and I talked about him later. She pinned him down with one word as if he were a particularly large butterfly. Elemental, she said, and I replied, he is a forest. I’m glad she knew him, she understands. In three years, no one else had a chance.

I’m dressed as a witch today, all flowing black and glitter. Work allows me costumes this week, so I’m taking advantage of it by dressing like myself instead of a vague corporate whore approximation. Customers have been asking where to buy my out-fits, which would amuse me if they were perhaps a little more polite about it. It’s full time hours this week, because of Hallowe’en. Long shifts of not having a chance to take away sandwiches from across the street. I want to fall down at the end of it, take my shoes off and walk barefoot in some rain. I want to find myself a warm and willing partner to sip hot chocolate with and look out over our little bit of sea.

Mirrormask is playing here this weekend at TinselTown. I hear of a group trip today at two o’clock, which is when I start my shift. The only weekend showing I can manage is the nine:thirty. Is anyone interested? I’m considering dropping in on it before the Saturday Clubhouse Party. I’d get there unpardonably late, if I could but care.

Before I finally fell asleep, I lie in the dark alone for awhile while Ryan and Eva were in the livingroom, trying to pretend that I had my bed to myself, (excepting the ferret I had lodged in my belly). But for the five days he was at DragonCon, Ryan‘s been with me every day for almost three months. The feeling was alien, as if stretching out was a transgression against the basic nature of the world.

mutable like pushing the body through dance


Yann Arthus-Bertrand – p146_f
Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

I’m listening to River of Orchids, arguably the most perfect piece of music XTC ever crafted. It’s on repeat. I’m singing too quietly for my house to hear, but my eyes are closed as I’m typing this and I’m swaying like the most classic of butterfly catching hippie girl. Pluck, and the strings echo the sound of a drop of water exquisitely caught. Unison, tears, a little thread of hair, two fingers, pluck. It’s something complex simmered down into it’s simplest components. A long haired orchestra, a chorus of flowers. Alchemy, singing into gold. Want to walk into London on my hands one day. The harmony is untouchable, flawless, layered in every direction like the air on windless day in a sunny field full of glory. This is my hindsight soundtrack to everything good in the world. It’s both childish and meaningful, lushly encompassing a world of celebration. Visual paeans flit past my mind when I put this on too long. Winding scenes of incongruous joy.

It’s bloody addictive.

I put it on because it’s beautiful, because I’m a little bit nervous. Someone interesting is coming over for dinner and a movie. Something cyclical and charming is required, something that reminds me of stand up memories. The mural we had in the basement always disappointed me, it was always a little too dull yellow for my tastes and they never asked me to take part in any way I felt I could respect. I took pictures anyway, when we left, of that wall that I painted topless, smearing white paint with a demoniacal grin. The home-made bars on the windows were covered in gray electrical tape.

I shan’t admit


091705-021
Originally uploaded by aeillill.

My suppositions were correct, the power supply had popped, and now we’ve got my machine plugged into Andrew‘s. We’re crowded on his bed, clearing big chunks of tasty media off my hard-drive onto various sized discs. When James left me his machine, he left it filled to the brink with wonderful films and brilliant programs. There is almost nothing it isn’t capable of, if I had the skills to take advantage of it or or if it had a damned power supply. Ah well. Tomorrow such problems will be fixed. I have breakfast in the morning with Matthew, which will lead into our mutual appointment with Sarah and drop me off at the lunch reservations I made for my mother‘s birthday.

He tells me he loves me when I say goodbye on the phone. There has never been a voice so sad as mine in my heart when I cradle the reciever back in its plastic bed. I don’t say it back, what need? I am branching, my arms boughs, my fingers as twigs. Someone has offered to teach me to float glass like air in my palms, like dreams. I want to. These lips are remembering his eyes and hair. I feel my Saturday as a wondrous thing. The Party Not Starring Peter Sellers was exquisite. The bit with Chris, at least, he is magic incarnate, and Crystal does things with two sets of tassels that defy the imagination. I won a dance contest while in a corset, though I will never attempt such a thing again. I felt like dying for fifteen minutes after. The rest of it was fairly basic, but enjoyable nonetheless. I reacquainted myself with lost theatre people, Terry, Jacques, darling Chris, and I finally met Bill’s wife ma’am. I touched her stomach where his child is brewing. I saw how he looked at her, I’d forgotten. I can feel his face in my expressions again. When he swung down from his perch, I had to squash my urges to go and hug him, instead I left my smile intact and tried to not crowd him. When I was downstairs in the hall, a staff member asked what I came for. I joked, “To see the show, of course, and to discomfit my ex.”

We laughed, but I’m so sorry to say that it’s what happened. I miss his muppet gestures. In my recent cleaning of my room, I found a picture of him from one of our earlier anniversaries. There’s flowers in his hair and ‘I love you‘ written in chocolate on his chest. The rest of it, I dare not say in public, but needless to say, it was rather touching. I’d put up blue lights on the wall over the bed in the shape of a giant heart. It stayed up for months, though every time we had sex, we would tear part of it down.

I found Vancouver’s secret burlesque bar, Saturday. It’s a room fifteen feet wide, and as long as the block is wide. The second floor is a golden balcony overlooking the dancefloor, and instead of a disco ball, there’s a silver merry-go-round horse studded with mirrors. I fell instantly in love. Terry and Ryan and I arrived just as the very last of the burlesque ended, (two minutes of shadows having sex), and soon set up camp upstairs. Terry is especially brilliant, as he is one of those most precious people who continues to be astutely brilliant when proceeding to be drunk. We leaned over the balustrade and shouted communist political slogans at appropriate moments in between dancing ironically and splashing the people below with ice-water and gin and tonic. Within half an hours, I collected an entire stag party, (with phone-numbers), and commandeered a few of them into affixing a fan to a table for me to have a private dance-floor on the balcony. I felt, finally, like I was having the sort of evening that silver_notebook regularly inspires my jealousy with.

Painful Dreaming

I woke up crying today to cold and fog. When I look out the window, it seems like my eyes have been fixed by some miracle. Everything is blurry so it looks clear to me. Faded. Gray.

I had been waiting. I was by the water, with it to my left. There were hills in front of me, and buildings on the hill. Old stairs led up along the bright green grass from where I sat. Large and Ivy covered, the main building looked like it belonged to parliment. Bill was sailing, and I had been waiting for a long time, warm, in the wind. I had begun to imagine hearing his laughter, as I looked around for the boat coming in.

Cheerfully, I gave up, and decided to go on to other things for the day, meet back with him later. I started up the stairs, away from the water. When even with the building, I walked on the grass, towards stairs that would bring me to the top of the next tier. The grass was vivid – green. Bright sticky summer colours. The stairs were old, cracked cement with lions at the foot. I put a swing in my bag as I walked. Cheerfully, like a child. Comforting familiarity drifted from every step of the way.

At the top of the stairs were people, mostly sitting in rows, with a path through the middle, beginning at the stairs. There were many and they were just sitting, enjoying the view of the water, and the wind. The sun was shining on these rows of happy people, and as I passed one, I saw it was Bill. He perhaps caught me out of the corner of his eye. His long hair and his red clothing caught at my heart with a snag. How long had he been back and not come to get me? He had obviously forgotten, as he was in easy conversation with someone, and not troubled at all though he knew I had been waiting for him. In a fit of pique, I decided to continue walking, to pay no mind and ignore him. Just about then, my swinging bag got away from me. In my surge of emotion, I had been swinging the bag harder, and it flew from my hand – a pale parabolic arc through the air. It hit next to a man who looked quite surprised, but otherwise unconcerned. Embarrassedly running to it, I picked it up and turned.

Pain, hurt. The woman he had been talking to was a dancer. She was up, moving with him. He was smiling, enthralled. As she moved, he came up behind her and held her, his eyes closed and thier heads came together. He loved her. I died.

All Hallows Costumes

Well – I finally know what I’m going to be for All Hallows this year. I’ve been frantically hating myself for my stunning lack of creativity. I’m too adapted to sitting in a basement without human contact to actually THINK anymore. It’s scary.

Anyhoo – my happy thought, together will m’love, is this.

I will be Love, and he will be Lust.

I’m really enjoying the ideas that swirl around this pairing. Lust/Love; Sex/Death; Want/Need.

Something scarlet, and perhaps in raw silk. I’ve already created part of his costume. He’s going to be done up sexy. *happygirl* I’ve started on his costume already. Shimmery, translucent shirt, in red and black. I’ve still to get fabric to make his pants. I’m still uncertain what My dress is to look like. Something sweet, yet regal? I’ve asked a brilliant genius artist friend to hhelp, as I cannot draw well to save a life. (I wonder if I can still paint…)

I’m to have a slim volume of sweet poetry tied to my wrist, he is to have red fuzzy handcuffs.

It’s going to be FUN.

m’love is overstressed

This is what I feel victim of:

“It had been stressful. The most difficult and trying thing I had ever done. We had pulled it off, gotten the damn thing in the can. I learned new things about the nature of stress. Arbitrary try-again-next-time school stress versus real grown-up you-can’t-unfuck this stress. Hundreds-of-thousands-of-dollars of ruin-your-credit-rating this-had-better-work stress. School stress, for me, was like a sunburn. It made you crazy, but a few beers, a couple of days reading and screwing around on the computer, and you were right as rain. But grown-up stress was the real fucking thing, persistent and militarized for the maximum infliction of pain and suffering. It took up residence in your lymph tissue, in the delicate webbing of the lumbar curve, odorless and colorless, waiting to be metabolized in an unrelated moment, releasing a cascade of misdirected rage.”

(from http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=Three%20McDonald%27s%3A%20The%20myth%20of%20regeneration%20through%20violence )