strangers – 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.

TODAY’S REQUIRED WATCHING: the shock when their lips meet

FIRST KISS from Tatia Pilieva.

Filmmaker Tatia Pilieva asked twenty people to kiss for the first time. It sounds simple, but the effect is incredible. I am overwhelmed by how sweet it seems.

The cast includes models Natalia Bonifacci, Ingrid Schram, and Langley Fox; musicians Z Berg of The Like, Damian Kulash of OK Go, Justin Kennedy of Army Navy, singer Nicole Simone, and singer-actress Soko (of the indie music that accompanies the short); and actors Karim Saleh, Matthew Carey, Jill Larson, Corby Griesenbeck, Elisabetta Tedla, Luke Cook, and Marianna Palka.

Music: SOKO – We Might Be Dead By Tomorrow

my life as a douglas adams character

My Improbability Field’s been cranked up this week. Saturday I went to Shane’s show at the Vogue, (beautiful as always, moving as always), and left with him after. We went to meet some of his friends, then, once the pub was closed and everyone finally dispersed, we crossed the street to Wraps Plus, a late night drunk-food donair sort of shop to get something to eat in the hotel room. While there, Shane received a text from a girl he knows, “Hey, we’re coming to you!” She arrived very soon after, highly excited, “Look! Look outside!”

A man was standing outside with his head on fire.

Flames at least a foot tall, licking the sky, shooting upward from his hat.

Turns out Ole, who it just happened to be, (as he also just happens to be her roommate), had swiped an oil candle from a bar up the street as they’d walked past it, dumped the oil onto his hat, and then set it on fire to impress us. Then, once he knew he had our attention, in a move that would have worked in a perfect universe, he swept the bowler hat from his head to wave out the flames. Instead the flames transferred to his hair. I have to admit, we were, in fact, impressed.

The next morning, on my way back home, our weird neighborhood foot fetishist got me again. Months and months ago, I met him on the bus. I was sitting with one leg crossed over the other, making a table for the book I was reading. He sat next to me and pressed his hand against the bottom of my shoe. I apologized and moved my foot to the ground. Natural, right? But then he dropped to the floor of the bus, lifted up my foot and put his hand underneath it, and asked me to step on him, while continuing to press down on my shoe with his other hand. I refused, tore my foot from his grasp, told him he was being inappropriate, and then he got off the bus. End of story. Weird, weird story.

Until Sunday morning, when I overshot my bus-stop by a few blocks and found myself walking down the hill home, checking my e-mail on my phone like the little net-addict I am. A stranger caught up to me, then fell into step, then very suddenly pulled off his jacket off and spread it out on the ground in front of my feet! Given my years of reading and walking, I auto-corrected my path and stepped off the sidewalk without even looking up. Assuming he had just pulled some sort of bizarre Walter Raleigh sort of move, I eyed the entire motion with suspicion. What terrible thing did he just unnecessarily cover with his jacket?

But no, it was far sillier and almost a little more sinister. As I moved to keep walking, he said, “Wait! Please walk on it, get it dirty.” I almost hesitated for a split second, a nearly uncountable sliver of time, but he continued with, “For art!” So I did. I stepped all over that jacket, very deliberately, from one end to the other. It wasn’t until about six feet later that I realized what had happened. Sure, I couldn’t help but laugh at myself the whole way home for being so easily profiled, but seriously, I really have to start recognizing that guy.

Once home, I started contacting people, scouting for someone to go to the Vancouver Fan Expo with. Chris was game, so we met at the Conference Center and ventured in, running into only half as many of the approximately billion people I expected to. (Yanick was there, in from Montreal as a guest, which was great. It was his birthday on Saturday, so I gave him the best possible present, a tiny sassy miniature of the Bulleteer, the pin-up superhero character he used me as a rough body model for, that Don Debrandt gave me for my birthday many years ago. She’s from a fighting game and comes with a stats card that states, and I kid you not, that she has sixty-nine health points. Fuck the patriarchy, kids.) Eventually exhausted with the endless parade of bizarre anime costumes, and with no further opportunities to stalk John Delancy, we decided to find somewhere to eat. We didn’t have any clue what direction to take, but then! Across the street, a man in a suit, earphones in, wildly dancing the Christopher Walkens piece from Weapon of Choice. So of course we followed him, which led us on the path to Save-On-Meats, where we camped until half past nine, talking about politics, gender relations, authors, and pretty much a little bit of everything. Best possible destination.

From there we went to the theater, spur of the moment, to see Cabin In The Woods, the new Joss Whedon film neither one of us particularly knew anything about. Oddly, it was only showing in a very particular theater, one with an acronym neither one of us had heard of. Curious, I asked an usher what it meant, only to have another theater patron stop a moment to listen to the answer. (Which, for those that must know, boiled down to, “we charge you an absurd price for leather seats and call it a premium experience.”) I replied with something that wasn’t quite funny, but the stranger, being a nice sort of stranger, grinned at my joke enough that a dialogue started. Soon all three of us found ourselves standing in the upstairs lobby, deep in conversation, thrilled to have met, until we were almost late for our films. Contact info was exchanged and a possible plan made to meet up after our movies and swap reviews.

The film itself was spectacular. I want to gush about how completely fantastic Cabin In The Woods is, but I don’t want to ruin anything. Which is more grace than were given, as the projector shut off at the very end of the film, literally just minutes before the credits rolled. Not the sound, only the screen, leaving us listening to the incredible denouement that the movie had been working towards since the opening scene. Improbability engage!

The staff eventually fixed the issue, rewinding the film back, and then forward, and then back again, with the house lights on, then off, then on again, and gave us free ticket coupons for a future film, but it was almost no use. As soon as the projector flicked off, everyone’s phones were out, everyone was texting, and the ending was ruined. Amazing, though, as the movie failure tweaked our exit time just enough to run into the fun stranger again. Noah from Oakland, it turns out, up on holidays for the week, only knows one local and she’s way out in Langley, so he’s completely open to random adventures. Which meant, of course, Hamburger Mary’s at one in the morning until they kicked us out, and then hanging out all yesterday until two a.m.

This evening we’re going to Chambar for dinner, with a stop in at Guilt & Co. after for The Decadent Eccentric, a belly-dance, contact juggling, sideshow spectacular with Luciterra and one of my favourite acquaintances, Chris Murdoch. Tomorrow we’re renting a bicycle for two and riding the seawall and dropping in on Salt Tasting Room. The day after that, who knows? Finally my underemployment has changed into funemployment.

my introduction to new york city

A man approached us, sign in hand, Peace Through Face-sitting, explaining, when I asked, that the peace was for him. He was also carrying a thick book of photos documenting previous “successes”. We declined, but this young woman, about five minutes later, did not. Perhaps he will find this and print it out and add it to his folder.

finished playing, I opened my eyes and wanted to cry

Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

Not having wool hair is irritating. I got so used to having a permanent cascade of comfortable warmth attached to my head that now my movements are weightless, the mannerisms of someone who has two feet of hair to brush out of the way, my shoulders feel naked, and my face feels unframed, as if I were a dissolved painting. Someone’s stolen me, is trying to clean the canvas to put something more interesting there. Phaugh.

This was another day of strangers talking. This time I collected an invitation to a St. Patrick’s Party at the Gabriola Mansion, hurriedly written on the back of an 8 X 10 vintage photograph of the now mostly abandoned lunatic asylum. It’s rather awesome, actually. I’m quite impressed. The picture is of the building where, back in the day, when they needed stones for a BBQ patio, they dug up the gravestones and used them to pave a yard, not caring which way up they faced.

In the upper right hand corner of the back, in between the scrawled invitation information, it says ASYLUMS with a blue stamp underneath:

PHOTOGRAPH No. ..1261….
NEW WESTMINSTER PUBLIC LIBRARY
Negative.

In the middle, in very precise hand written printing, it says in pencil:

Date: c. 1906
Source. VPL
Photograph: P. Timms

Info: B.C. Provincial Asylum.

and at the bottom there’s another stamp:

PLEASE CREDIT
VANCOUVER PUBLIC LIBRARY
NEGATIVE No. ___6419___

I think I’d better try to go to his party.