nothing to keep me here

I am tired today, exhausted almost to the point of sickness. Absolutely everything hurts, my body a canvas of bruises faded to a spectacular spray of purple and green and yellowy red, my heart a tight and unhappy fist. Depression has closed over me again, a horrid glue I can’t wash off without resources I do not have. I am hungry for more than this, for sunshine, for a place where I don’t know anyone, where I have something to do.

So I am lurking on-line, examining work-visa options, all of them rushing away from me faster than I can run, opportunities closing each day I creep closer to thirty. I feel absolutely trapped, too poor to make requirements, too undereducated, too sad.

If I don’t find a way to escape before my next birthday, I’m walking out.

I’ve never been to NYC

Given that my recent job interviews have all fizzled, my relationship has horrifically dissolved, and my birthday is fast approaching, I have decided it’s finally perfect timing to use up my plane ticket to visit Van Sise in New York city*.

I fly out of SeaTac to NYC on May 20th and return June 2nd.

I am going to miss Rafael’s Folklife and a few other things, (my original birthday plan was to set up a Whole Beast Feast, hit up the 40th Annual Folklife for a day, then hitch-hike with some strangers to the 10th Annual Sasquatch Festival for the rest of the long weekend), but given my present circumstances as a connoisseur of sad situations, it just seems like a better idea to be gone. Every night my dreams ache, my body wrenches with unhappiness, yet in the morning, I can’t seem to find reasons to be awake. I lie there motionless, wrapped up in nothingness, unable to conjure any appetite for life, any thread of grace, any desire at all for my bland, banal hopes or disembodied future. If I had a job or were in school, I’m sure it would be different, I would feel that my life was moving forward instead of slipping away, but as it currently is, a lonely narrative of inevitable failure after inevitable failure, all I want is to be away from here, all I want is escape.

*Originally we were going to wander around the southern states, visiting Atlanta and New Orleans, rounding off the trip, if we were lucky and it was delayed, with the last Space Shuttle Launch. Instead his work got in the way and the already-purchased plane ticket was cashed in for credit and put aside for a visit with him later.

Al Mader was a fantastic Edgar Allen Poe last year

Annual Dead Poet’s Slam tonight!

Come dressed as your favorite dead poet, author or literary figure.
(Or even come dressed as a favorite dead character from a poem or story.)
Reading in charactor is encouraged as it gets you a better chance at prizes!

“For what seems like the 343rd year the Vancouver Poetry Slam will be raising the dead and perhaps raising hell at the annual Dead Poets Slam. Your host will be the ghoulish Svelte Ms. Spelt. Bring a couple of poems and dress up in your pumpkin high heels to try and win the scary prizes. Cover is $5, doors at 8, show at 9. We’ll be going until the witching hour.”

(I’m going as a warmly dressed Sappho)

This will also be your last chance to purchase advance tickets to the Solomon Sparrow show (Mike McGee, Anis Mojgani, Buddy Wakefield, Dan Leaman and Derrick Brown) happening tomorrow night at the Cottage Bistro. $15 in advance. 7pm or 10pm. I don’t know which one Duncan and I are going to, but I’ll try to remember to ask.