Month: February 2005

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Automatic ads are getting weirder. Not quite as perishing as when you pop “Human Liver” into Google, but close. I’d prefer used, myself, but that’s just a personal preference. Science gets tricky when you’re working with the new.

There’s been a lot of mention on-line of The Gates, an arts installation temporarily up in New York. I’ve been enjoying more what people have been doing with it, like the semi-illegal pictures cropping up of The Cloud Gate in Chicago’s Millennium Park. I find it an irritation that Vancouver hasn’t any ambitious pieces of public art. We don’t even have any architecture. (This may be more a new world thing, but I have my doubts. We do not require history to create.) All of Canada seems rather lacking in interesting public art, the best we have are corporate sponsored pieces of bronze scattered randomly about. There were some nice Moose in Toronto for the year 2000, but as that spread to other cities, the original creativity seems to have petered off, sheared away by the tourist boards and the repetitious choice in artists. “I give you bitter pills with sugar coating. The pills are harmless; the poison is in the sugar.“

to my mind, it’s shadows

He’d broken his ankle. I could feel the bone grinding when I set it. I was asleep, yet this was real. Sensation traveling through flesh to sink into my hands with striking clarity. It had the grit of sand on concrete, the heavy sound of pain muffled by meat. Under the skin was turning green and blue, shot through with spidered red.

I’ve been cleaning haphazardly during lulls in work for the get together tonight. Poets flooding the apartment, mostly people I only know by name and face. I stayed up until too late last night sorting through pictures of the show for them. I’m wondering now what sort of strange impression I must be giving. Yesterday I was late meeting people before the show because I helped an old lady carry her groceries home. How.. old fashioned of me. Maybe yesterday I was an antique, charitable and smiling. Today I’m only chilly, wrapped in a blanket, forcing myself to type with stiffening fingers. I keep expecting letters, spilled from the trembling minds of my loves. My hope is holding me up today, it’s driving the blood through my body, but not enough to keep me from cold. There hasn’t been sung one singular note.

I talked to Mishka today. She called long distance from Invermere. She’ll be back in Victoria well before the days I’ll be there, the 23rd, 24th, and 25th. We talked about relationships, it’s really the most common ground, her track record of assholes. “This one’s not as bad as the others” she says, and I cringe. “It’s not the way to judge people, a partner,” I say. “Their worth should be apparent without such comparison.” Do you love him? Would you know if you did? She’s too far away for me to help very much anymore. It’s been six months, I expect to answer the phone to her crying some time in the springtime. It will be sweet to see her, to let her release her litany of worries in my general direction. Is there anyone in Victoria who would like to go for coffee or to a play?

true land, we took god out of our song

 link
Address by Prime Minister Paul Martin on Bill C-38 (The Civil Marriage Act). February 16, 2005

…The Charter was enshrined to ensure that the rights of minorities are not subjected, are never subjected, to the will of the majority. The rights of Canadians who belong to a minority group must always be protected by virtue of their status as citizens, regardless of their numbers. These rights must never be left vulnerable to the impulses of the majority.

We embrace freedom and equality in theory, Mr. Speaker. We must also embrace them in fact.

…Some have counseled the government to extend to gays and lesbians the right to “civil union.” This would give same-sex couples many of the rights of a wedded couple, but their relationships would not legally be considered marriage. In other words, they would be equal, but not quite as equal as the rest of Canadians… We must always remember that “separate but equal” is not equal.

…To those who value the Charter yet oppose the protection of rights for same-sex couples, I ask you: If a prime minister and a national government are willing to take away the rights of one group, what is to say they will stop at that? If the Charter is not there today to protect the rights of one minority, then how can we as a nation of minorities ever hope, ever believe, ever trust that it will be there to protect us tomorrow?

…The people of Canada have worked hard to build a country that opens its doors to include all, regardless of their differences; a country that respects all, regardless of their differences; a country that demands equality for all, regardless of their differences.

If we do not step forward, then we step back. If we do not protect a right, then we deny it. Mr. Speaker, together as a nation, together as Canadians: Let us step forward.

 

link found by , bless her with chocolate sauce

easiest way


nicole
Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

Once again, in some unexpected way, I’m spreading over the internet. This is a needle in a haystack kind of place, finding tiny magnets. At least it’s not always directly about sex, (I may be an anthropormorphic fox, but I’m an archaeologist in that set), though it does seem to be about my image. My mother asked me again yesterday why I don’t have a paypal button and finally I replied with, “What would I use it for? These are my friends, when I say I’m their whore, that’s not what I mean.“

Killing My Brain : Al Mader

Tonight I went to the spoken word piece of theater up at the Havana. (The wrap party is to be at my place tomorrow, I volunteered tonight when I found they had no venue.) It’s quite a nice piece of work, full of clever moments and delightful poetry. There’s enough impromptu and audience participation to create something refreshingly new every night. The cast is such an interesting mix of different performance styles that it’s enticing on it’s own. Rowan plays accordion and haiku, Fernando is the Duke of Deadpan, and R.C. is raunchy in the sweetest creepiest way. Matthew, of course, does Superboy. They’re set off nicely by Al Mader singing with his minimalist base about how he’s a lousy lover and the poet Martin Von Steinburg explaining how the city is bringing him closer in love to your bitchin face. Look at this mess. No wonder poets never get laid. The humour is highlighted with the occasional somber moment and waylaid completely by the puns.

Killing My Brain : R.C.

Nicole came with me and together we kept Dominique from leaving. We were a proper Globe theater audience, with comments and suggestions at appropriate intervals. Two people are playing scrabble on the floor in a shuffled mess of paper airplanes as the audience filters in from the gallery and the restaurant. From then on is carefully contained chaos, mostly skits settled in a framework made of words. There are long poems and short poems and long introductions to short poems. There is beer on stage, music played, and costumes. At one point R.C. has a television for a head. Rarely does it drag and such areas are quickly done and even faster forgotten, replaced with a new crackerjack distraction. Tomorrow is Last Chance To See, so I recommend leaving your houses and moseying over to the Drive. I uploaded some pictures, but they sincerely don’t do it justice. There was too much movement for a camera, too many sudden outbursts of sound and motion to capture in a still. Lucky I got a little video.

I’m considering rushing up to see it again after work tomorrow.
8pm at the Havana restaurant, across from Grandview Park on Commercial Drive.

a flower


Gavin
Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

Gavin appeared on my messenger for a moment to describe work today.

Goth moment: Hanging upside-down 25ft above the stage listening to old Nick Cave and rigging a petal drop for Rose petals and I cut my hand but have to finish rigging so blood and rose petals are raining down in a soft light center stage to a perfect sound cue.

I am intimidated by the sheer wonderful that exists in every moment of our beautiful world.

I want to be part of it, somehow, I want to spring forth and create.

As another odd messenger aside, the Joseph boy I was with in Toronto came on-line yesterday and asked if I would consider attaching myself to him again, in that girlfriend-boyfriend kind of way. We haven’t seen one another since the year 2000 and we talk on-line perhaps once every six months. It was a rather odd request, a non-sequiter in our conversation, but strangely not one I mind. “Might I be your Toronto boy?” has a certain respectful charm. I believe it would be revivifying our older arrangment, the one we let lapse, where “when in Rome”. His town, my town, they’re across a country from one another, but airfare can be cheaper than expected. I laughed delightedly and told him I would consider it, reminding him that my home will always be open to him. I dream of his hair sometimes, covering me in the darkness like a red black cloak. I’ve never met anyone with the same colour eyes. Beaten gold, purified and bred with the sun. His laughter matched and he was shy in the shower. I think it might be the only time we were naked together. Everyone should have one perfect summer, a time with lightning and strangers and love. This is why I go home with people, this is why I talk to strangers. The sudden possibility of people that scar you and burn with everything meaningful. They were musicians, with them I sang.

Rowan’s thing is tonight at the Havana. It’s also Al Mader and R.C. The show starts at eight, we’re meeting there closer to 7:30.

it’s called ‘love’ I think. I read about it somewhere.

The owner of Kidzworld has found some of the pictures I have on-line. I’m of rather mixed reactions, part of me is complimented by the fact that he commented with the word “lovely” and the other is considering a quiet panic because, well, this is my boss. The man who signs the cheques but doesn’t quite understand what HTML is. He sends terrible forwards about once a week. Golf jokes, articles on marketing written by people who don’t quite understand the shifting morass which is the internet. And that, your honour, is how I met the farmers daughter.

Downstairs the whores are yelling outside, shouting at each other and slamming the front door. One of them is drunk, cursing loudly. They’re calling each other cheap, it’s an argument of verbal bitchslaps, they’re being nasty about sucking dick. I wish I could carry the simplicity of their insults in my conversation, there’s a certain filthy purity I can’t access, it’s no vocabulary required. I’m thinking about a night I had in Hollywood. Driving with Alastair up by Mulholland, how it was thick night lit simply by glimpses of the sprawling city and expensive driveways launching off like winding airstrips which went for miles. I can imagine these women there, stranded in the darkness, standing by the road in spandex shirts and tiny skirts over clunky shoes.

I laughed

I thought I could do something and now I’m beginning to fear that I cannot. I thought I could manage. This is a serious fear, this is what you were terrified of when you were four in the dark. I didn’t know until the second time I began crying. There was no spark, only my every day I call normal. For two contiguous days this week, I didn’t leave the house, only sent out calls and letters, trying to find some reason to step out from my door. No answer. I’m not strong enough to treat the train station like an airport every day. There are no luminous letters on the inside of my skull, only gray like a latent Vancouver day crying out for harsher light. I’m so good at justice, I’m queen pragmatic, but I’m slipping. Looking at my needs out of the corner of my eye has been dangerous, it’s getting harder to hold myself at arms length. Dots are connecting, tracing a picture which can only be described as impractical. An image full of unforgivable insurmountable fact. Finally when I’m not being punished from without, I’m castigating myself. There is no wall to throw myself against, my nails have already been broken. That’s my trick, you see, to never feeling anger, instead refashioning it into sharp sadness, to aim inward. Too much I feel like knives. Enough is red shifting, moving faster into something I can’t reach. Enough procreating, enough losing patience with quiescence, enough infatuated with being unable to be found. If I wore make-up, I could create a mask, but there’s nothing to hide now. I still live as an aside. It was self betrayal to ask for time. Suspension, disbelief, until everything, and crash. I can’t explain how silence is killing me.

I’ve started the steps required to leave the country. A letter is being sent to my grandmother for her marriage certificate, my passport is to be re-issued.

I can’t breathe intermission. I need to be real.

ruined like the carpets

I have no history, no structure to build myself on. I’ve always wanted a home but all I have are people. Most of the time it’s not enough, I don’t think it’s how humans are made to be. I have the distinct feeling that everything I remember could have happened to anyone else, that none of it attaches to me except as some sort of vague narrative for me to tell. There’s hardly any emotion, as if I’m looking backward in sepia, not colour. It’s not my history. I’m only made of now. I suspect that I was made a little wrong, a tiny piece defective. The root structure never took hold, I never found anything to care about. I talked with two medical types at the bus-stop this evening. One’s a molecular biologist, the other an E.R. doctor. One of them said, “Everyone has dreams,” and the other nodded in complete agreement while something inside me screamed for one. I’m constantly feeling young and stupid while the people around me seem to know what they’re doing. They find gossip enthralling and their passions engrossing. I feel so empty, like something hollowed me out and didn’t leave anything left.

I manage to care about people but there are friends who’ve known me for years who’ve only recently begun believing that. My friend Shane used to call me his Ice Princess. It picked up and passed around because it apparently fit so well. I would answer to it on the street. Now I seem to have shaken at least that off, but I’m left with concern. When everything pours out, when I find a direction for my affection, it floods me. I am blinded by it and filled from fingertip to fingertip like my blood carries it like an infection. I think about my fathers madness, how if I concentrated enough, I could see his visions. It felt like this, like release. I remember being six and looking up to see the ghost of my half mother standing by the wall. How close is love to insanity when it hurts this much? I need to learn how to operate like it seems that everyone else does. They have goals and hobbies and reasons for being.

I only feel like I’m waiting.

the bandwagon just ran some people over

I don’t know what happened. About a month or two ago, new people began friending my journal at the rate of about one every two days. If it continues the average, sometime this week I’ll hit an official listed 200. Then there’s the random people who come up in conversation. Jenn and I were discussing the vagaries of family and a sculptor came up with my last name. I don’t know him but she does. On messenger later after she sent me the link, I told her that I love his work and she replied that he’s a reader. I have my feet on the earth, solidly planted, I would like to think, but this knocks me over. There’s some sort of momentum. I feel like I should take up a soothing habit. Sucking on death, perhaps.

because yeah, dude, sex is, like, so uncool

This from :

 http://www.sexisforfags.com/

This is an Abstinence site, tongue in cheek, and the pledge is awesome. An excerpt:

I, [MY NAME], hereby pledge:
1. To stay massively cool by not having sex. Because only major losers have sex – which everyone knows is only for fags.

2. To never let any slutty girls peer pressure me into touching their vaginas – because vaginas are totally gay.

3. To ignore my raging hormones and burning drive to fondle, suckle, and thrust furiously into a hot gooey pit of creamy-soft fleshy ecstasy.

Also, the sister site: http://www.ironhymen.com/

A testimonial:

Muffy P.: “OHMIGOD, like, Iron Hymen taught me to respect myself way too much to ever let some hairy creep hock man-lugies on my Godly cervix like it’s some gross subway platform!”