Tag: toronto

it makes me want to cry

The hardest part of driving school so far has been the cold echo of homesickness that blows through my chest whenever the instructional videos or slides feature Toronto. Trying to concentrate through the ache feels like trying to swallow the rattle of stones. Young Drivers of Canada is based in Ontario, so the majority of their materials are shot in towns and cities near their main office, very near where I used to live and love.

A new image on the screen, near the X, facing downtown. I have been on that highway, I think, when I was younger, before so much damage. The pink freeway lights were new, newer than in that photograph. I was with my boyfriend, met only the night before. He was sweet and smart, handsome and talented. He might be shorter than I am, now, but then he was two inches taller. His black-red hair was as long as my arm. His eyes were gold, so unlikely. He made me laugh. He gave me some of the best advice of my life. I had never been so happy before. I wish he would still talk to me. How many times have I felt like that since? A copy of his old band poster still sits, rolled and ignored, on my bedroom floor.

Later he stood with me on the roof of our strange apartment building, leaning into the hot, summer wind of a lightning storm as the sky flashed and thunder rolled so hard it made the sheet metal walls shake with fear. I laughed, though he worried and eventually lured me down. It was okay. We were together. We were safe.

The next shot: a residential street, coincidentally near a favourite bakery. The chocolate icing, one inch thick. I’d smear my finger through the top and lick it off, sitting in a nearby park, watching little girls dance in bathing suits next to a shallow community pool, copying some music video, all in time, singing along to the new Spice Girls track. The birth of prostitots, I thought, examining the parents, who clapped along. I wondered if it was a new trend or simply something that had been there all along. The chocolate frosting was so rich that it was almost black, the same colour as rich soil or well tended earth. The sun was bright, and I had my bike. I could go anywhere. And I did.

itinerary-ary-ary

Scientists have discovered the monogamy gene.

“Nature is trying very hard to make us succeed, but nature does not depend on us. We are not the only experiment.” Buckminster Fuller

Yesterday was my sixth month anniversary with David. To celebrate, we went for La Cafeteria for breakfast with Michel, picked up the now-fixed polished aluminum deer head we brought for Christine, (a bit of antler broke off in transit), did our laundry, had pumpkin spiced hot chocolate, went for a delicious pick-your-own-pasta dinner, met with Mélanie and Mike Kitt, then for pie with them and Michel, and decided to move in together.

Nice how I slipped that in, hey? So yes, when David and I return to Vancouver this week, no matter that he just moved, we’re moving him again, this time into my place as Karen leaves for Main St. We’ll be a house of two people, two cats, a rabbit, and a library. I’m strangely looking forward to it, even with the pre-knowledge of Just. How. Heavy. His. Book. Boxes. Are. No one’s ever moved in with me before, not really, not for more than a couple of weeks. I’ve always moved in with them, the proverbial them, the lovers, partners, the boys/men. I think it’s going to be interesting, and less of an adjustment than I might suspect.

Today we’re getting on a train to Toronto with the glorious Christine, who last night came home from work dressed as a sexy ninja, because that is how awesome she is. Once there, we’ll be meeting up with my fellow-monarch-in-bad-timing Shane Koyczan, who just happens to be in Toronto this weekend, and painting the town some sort of appropriate colour, as I glory in being home for a weekend.

For the double-plus, Nuit Blance is running this weekend, so the current plan is to hang out glorying tonight and most of Saturday, then spend as much of Saturday night as humanly possible wandering the all night arts festival with Shane and the funtastic duo that is Zaiden, Will and Mellissa, before breakfasting somewhere delicious and catching an early Sunday morning bus west, back towards Vancouver.

when you’re jonesing, you’re jonesing

Stephen Fry video birthday card to the Free Software Foundation’s GNU project

Tonight I leave for Seattle, which might not be the most clever thing I’ve ever done, considering that next week we leave for back east, (for which I have barely prepared for), but the ticket is bought, the plans are made, and I can’t help but look forward to it. A group of us are going dancing tonight, there’s ANACHROTECHNOFETISHISM tomorrow, then then Nicole rides into town with her imaginary boyfriend in time for Eliza‘s solo show on Saturday which we plan to follow with a night of sci-geek concertry at the Funhouse.

Next week, David and I leave for Montreal, (on the same bus as Karen New, coincidentally enough), and make or break our relationship as we travel together, nonstop for two weeks, six days of which will be spent on in transit, knees together, prairies outside. We’ve had a lot to work out since he took off on me at the folk fest, which hurt him more than it did me, and as he finds it significantly more difficult than I do to communicate, my patience has been eroded away, until I can’t bear to bring anything up anymore. I suspect that being trapped together in a bus will be, at least in part, a last ditch attempt to see what intimacy we can bring back from the ashes of his insecurity. Heavy, annoying, and heart-felt, I know.

Thankfully, there will be little stop overs in Calgary, Regina, Winnipeg, and Ottawa! Yay!

In Calgary, Gavin and Michael might track us down for tea, in Winnipeg, my cousin Francis is going to swing by, and I might be lucky enough to reconnect with Darren in Ottawa. One thing remains, however, does anyone here live in Regina?

the trials and travails of nothing in particular

Anyone want a chandelier? How about a lamp? Please?

The weekend was spent moving David from his cave apartment of the mysterious smells to a pleasantly crooked #9932CC-darkorchid room in an old heritage style house on Arbutus street, right across the street from the Ridge Theater. It was an alright move, as such things go. Nothing irreplaceable was broken, nothing precious was lost. It involved many, many boxes of books, one might say too many, really, a veritable library of books, and little else. Some clothes, some furniture, two rabbits, but mostly boxes and boxes of books. I drew a floor-plan before we moved anything, so the chaos was almost instantly organized. Already it’s a habitable room, minus the stuffy proximity of the rabbits, who are currently living under the desk. I feel I should be proud of what I accomplished, though right now I’m too tired, too worn out, and too absently annoyed at my life. (I’m not sure I would date the man who would bring me back to that room.)

My house remains untidy, though order has been emerging in leaps and bounds. It’s possible to see how nice it will look when everything is done, which is new, as before I would examine the apartment and see only disaster. Boxes of extra kitchen stuff, old clothes, and unwanted books have left, either given away to friends or donated, and what’s left is shrinking almost daily as we recycle, sort, and dispose of what we don’t need, want, or could possibly use. It helps, too, that our landlord has finally given in and provided our building with recycling. Where there were piles of folded cardboard and plastic containers, now we have floor-space. It’s almost novel. I’m only sorry I won’t be able to finish everything before I leave for back east.

I’m packing too much into too little time, with too little money, and not enough resources, yet somehow, I plan to survive. To start with, my next two weekends are going to be spent in Seattle. This weekend, I’m biking down with my mother to visit with Kyle “freaking” Cassidy, (who has just proved himself to be utterly fantabulous YET AGAIN), and his lovely beau Trillian, who are in for a wedding, and next weekend I’m going down with Nicole to shot-gun shoot at hipsters with Eliza, who has an art opening. Then, I’m gone for two weeks as I travel by bus to Montreal and Toronto and pray to whatever is available that I’ll manage to pay for it all and still be able to eat.

Slinka says, “For the eating! Is it art? I don’t care; I CANNOT WAIT! :D”

As a part of this years Nuit Blanche, an all-night arts celebration, there’s going to be a 2 a.m. presentation of a life-size chocolate elk to eat!!

I was so happy in Toronto! Why, oh WHY did I ever move away? I cannot tell anymore. I no longer know.

visions of fire, of his clumsy explanations our first night

I am a canadian
I am a canadian
Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

I received an odd e-mail today, proving that relationships may end but mailing lists never die, from Joseph, the rock angel I was with when I lived in Toronto. Zye, his band I lived with in the crazy converted storage hanger in Scarborough, is having a reunion concert July 20th at Holy Joe’s, a place at Queen and Bathurst above The Reverb that I’m almost certain I’ve never visited. Apparently it’s a double-bill with one of his newer projects, Camel Joe. If the MySpace is to believed, Camel Joe is some sort of rock-metal nostalgia band.

If there’s anyone in the Toronto area willing to go take pictures, I would deeply appreciate it.

I don’t ask that you stay for the music, though I would be thankful for a simple hello on my behalf. A connection back to my most beautiful lover would be priceless. Everything I treasure was born that golden summer. It was like my world was set spinning. Everything was perfect, even properly crying over Brenda’s death for the very first time while I crouched between the seats of his orange van as we delivered magazines in the Gay Village. Linger on, your pale blue eyes. His eyes are gold and they drowned me in fire. We never were alone long enough, not once. Now I wonder, but not very often. His hair in the shower went down to our waists.

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.

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.

the prospect of suffering

Toronto is measured now more by time than distance. I leave at six, get there close to midnight. I still have nowhere to stay.

Traditional News Year’s is coming, as well as another city, and I’ve been considering if it means anything to me. Today as I was cooking my meal for the train, I was trying to tally up my last three hundred and sixty-five days. So far I’ve been instrumental to one divorce and three affairs. Both my lovers this year ran off on me with someone else and let us all find out by accident. I discovered someone else never loved me in return and one that night stands can be frighteningly easy.

All of it adds up to so very little that it hurts me. It used to be that my passions repaid me in kind. I don’t know what happened or how to fix whatever it is that shattered. Where is the bowl I kept my heart in? The one I used to offer in dreams to passing strangers as an alms cup. I want to think that my soul is racing to find me and that all the time in between is time standing still, but I know that it’s crying for no use. Apologies aren’t coming, I’ve been forgotten somehow. I’ve seen this face before in the mirror, it’s unhappy. At least when I’m not in Vancouver, I don’t have to think, “He’s walked this street.” It’s like changing where I live in my head. There’s a hi-hat hit and a deep thump of bass and the place I was forgotten isn’t inside me anymore. It’s in front of me, on this keyboard, and I’m emptying everything painful into the ether for you to see and read and maybe understand. You’re out there, it happens, just like everyone else. Why did you never call me back? Only the musician ever told me how to find him.

I see your picture, all of you, any, and I smile with a sting in my ribcage. I lie down my walls and I let you in again like the best kind of refrain. I love you, yeah yeah, baby, let’s do it again. The part of me that marries people is still carrying you.

Do-wop-she-bop-pretty-damn-bang.

There are some basic elements that pain shares with surprise, but I couldn’t tell you what they were right now. I’m too busy trying to open my unfinished business like a dried flower in my mind that’s going to draw me back to Vancouver. All I can find is a job offer, Creative Director of a Friendster-type website, and maybe that I need to pack my things properly. My dream machine is hiccoughing, refusing to process anything that isn’t movement forward. What I need versus what I get. The end of this story has yet to be written so maybe I can fight my way through the ranks of mediocrity with a pen. Ink my skin the same way some people use school to charm the corporation. Electric glass pages, as many as I can collect, strapped to the back of my night time invitations. Writing like lyrics, writing because it’s what we came here for. I want to feel my hand in the hand of the world, keening with me that things have to change to be better, that what we have isn’t enough to live off. There’s too much starvation and not enough education.

I just might get that tattoo here. Just to carry something with me.