Month: February 2005

It’s time to let me breath, let me take a minute to remember what it’s like. It’s time to lay a breadcrumb trail back in time but not too long ago, else the birds will eat them and I’ll never find my way home again. The first time Hansel and Gretel went into the forest, they left behind pebbles. These are my stones, my solid pieces of molten core.

When I met him the first time, it should have meant nothing, but it preyed on me. My awareness clawed at and scarred by gracious laughter. I sat with the wrong person, physics was twisting, leaving my heart to pound inside my chest. The discrepancy feeling, the emotion which floods your cells to tell you that you are to be somewhere else. It’s like rage in that it’s formless, shapeless, a cloud made of nagging demon. I felt his presence like a candle in the dark room. I kept myself from looking around with an effort of will. The screen lit up, washing us in beautiful light, tried to distract me but didn’t succeed. How shallow of me, I thought, that I want to touch that man. Hold his hand to my lips and drink his smile. To be realistic, there was a seed of something planted in our three minute interaction. I intended to ask my acquaintance who that stranger was after an appropriate amount of time had passed. The film cried by like a dream, a science fiction declaration of passion, animated sex dolls surging past like a choir of gandharvas. Warmth dove through me at her camera eyes, and I considered what colour his might be.

I had never been in love when I was younger, only when I grew closer to adulthood. I was an empty emotionless child. When the girls were entranced with boys, I was alone, learning about minerals and stars, learning dead languages and pieces of italian poetry. Eventually I fabricated a first crush, enacting layers of desire I never felt to defend against the waves of misunderstanding surrounding me. I considered it to be what everyone else did, no-one being honest with emotion but aping what we supposed to know. This was dropped as soon as I was able, never to be returned to. Later, I occasionally liked someone. A man or a woman, they were always older, always with more knowledge. It was the mind that called to me from it’s frail flesh casing, but I found that I somehow warped what I enjoyed. My personality brought out their worst, carefully reached inside hearts and pulled the darkness out until I couldn’t see them anymore through the blackened glass of their eyes. Violence, anger, antagonism, jealousy. There was nothing to hold onto and no reason to want to. I didn’t know who they were anymore.

Seeing this man, I recognized him immediately. Disposition, ambiance, it clicked. He found me, the next time, as I sat on stairs in the dark. Comfort immediate, I knew his moods, his mien, his mind. When we talk, we are treading the same mental paths, lighting the way with similar brands of fire, however trivial the topic. I bring moments of language clarity as he brings moments of vision and history. Together we weave a predatory tapestry that is somehow more accessible for the sly pieces we did not know. When we wear matching black it’s as if Clotho walks in our shadow.

We didn’t kiss until just before it was okay to break the rules. He wears my dressing gown to pad to the kitchen and I like that. It is strange to enjoy being possessed by a handsome stranger, as it is strange to lay a claim that I would fight for. We never had any say in the matter, as our tongues met it was if all iron bindings shivered and broke, releasing me to fall into our binary nucleus and taste his heart. I’ve been a romantic in denial for several years now, deciding over and again that to continue with it is wasted foolishness, but it’s like I’ve finally found an outlet. Electricity dreaming, I never knew I required such fancy stimulus. In a way it’s like I’ve always been waiting, like everything that came before was preparing me for this. I’m chained, I’m charmed. There is no way to leave, as I captured myself.

It’s sexy, trusting someone. I might finally tap into my damned young girls libido which I put so carefully away. It’s time. Time to devour someone and hold them by me. Strip them of every inch of skin and lap them as they bleed screaming dear god and yes. Pale skin running like water with fingertip precision creating an arch of back and eyes closing. Unravel myself into a honed and skilled body, as if I never was in any accident. Claim my right, set muscles to writhing, trembling. Unleash hunger and consume it. Need really is my only aphrodisiac. It’s time I want to taste it. Carve with sweat, erosion stripping thought away. I’m setting this in stone. One day he’ll take me home.

Welcome to the happiest interaction definition of procrastination.

Again I’m opening my eyes to sunlight. Trapdoor imagery of light falling into a black hole forever, that’s how it feels on my skin. I’m pale and I glow with it. I need an event horizon. Suction of warmth, I’m a little animal crying for heat. I hear it’s raining again in California.

Dressed in blue with gold hair, it’s like I time-warped. I will step outside and find dead birds on the sidewalk, I will step outside and be sixteen. I feel somehow like it’s time to go sailing again. Barefoot against white hull, pulling the ropes with my weight. Suspended over the water, leaning, wind.

Gavin is arriving on the 22nd. The party is on Saturday, the 26th.

Time to celebrate the moment where I laid eyes on happiness, comfort and cream. There was a porch, an interesting place, between earth and sky. Something solid and something high in the air. The skilled ladyjaida posted a piece today which has instilled a deep delicious need for painfully expensive chocolates. I think it might be about time to create a kitchen again, to spend afternoons concocting my decadent desserts, my painfully rich chocolate fantasies.

This is what my mind throws at people when I’m too tired for conversation.

A physicist is speeding along the highway and a siren pulls him over. The policeman asks, “Excuse me sir, do you know how fast you were going?” The physicist looks around, “No, but I know where I am!”

So why was Heisenberg’s wife unsatisfied?

When he had the time he didn’t have the energy, and when he had the position, he didn’t have the momentum.

.. and two elephants and a snake fall over a cliff badda bump ssss.

Speaking of elephants, what do you get when you cross an elephant with a grape?

Elephant grape sin{theta}

Just like asking what’s gray and proves the nondenumerability of the Reals?

Cantor’s Diagonal Elephant

Sheerly in self defense, Dee added, “why do elephants put springs on their feet?”

The answer: to rape monkeys

Next, what is the monkeys most feared sound?

boing boing boing boing

Yeah, I should go to bed…

It’s cold. Nightclub in my hair, I can taste hipsters and black t-shirts with ironic slogans.

Once upon a time in a far off land, past the horizon yet closer than your next breath, there was the flavour of earth when she sighs in her sleep, the inner workings of a fires orgasm, wind at a molecular level.

Heavy handed angels sing themselves to sleep in my head when I’m alone. They can’t help the shrieking or the battering of wings against my skull. I dream of my love with open eyes, how it is a solid thing. My voice cracks into dust to blow from my lips like cigarette smoke when there’s no one to talk to. My brittle mouth, my painful eyes. It’s a face made up of description, snowscape blinding because when you catch me when I’m not paying attention, there’s nothing there. Defined by grace, it’s all interaction. Wit rapier parry slash, never an organized dissent, but spontaneous. It’s a prelude to nothing deeper, nothing more than a mapped mirror visible. You make me real, yet I’m still an aside.

Joey Comeau, the writer behind the A Softer World, is serializing a novel on-line to be available by donation. A new chapter is being put up publicly for every goal amount of money received. The first chapter is already posted.

This picture is something pretty that Nico made today. You should go look and praise her muchly. Her work is excellent, some of it’s rather haunting. She did a painting of me once, but my favourite is The Lies You Tell Yourself. I want a poster-sized print for my home. I adore what it says about people in general and I adore the harsh use of three colours.

The sun today can’t burn too brightly, I feel like wandering outside to the Seawall. I have my devil horns on that Alastair gifted me with and I want to use them. Flutter down by the water in a long skirt and splash in the ocean a little. Shade my eyes and kick as high as I can on the swing-set. I know the night-time likes me, it’s time to ty out the day. Take a look around me when there’s light to colour in the lines. I want to question my city more than I have recently. I want to find something new in something familiar. I would like to try and fall in love with where I am. I want to beg the streets to hold me, for the trees to whisper my name in my ear like they want my head bent back to bare my throat for a kiss.

Not going to happen, of course, but it’s a sweet fantasy.

Tonight The Secret Machines are playing at Richards on Richards. We haven’t tickets yet, but if music falls though, there’s always films to watch. Ray is talking of coming and I mean to drop by Golden Age and drop a word to Mike as a reminder. Dinner and a time out. I feel like dancing. I hit the floor hard on Saturday night, I feel it still. I’m a different shape now, muscles worked out and stretched. It’s negligible but noticeable. I wasn’t expecting to have made such a difference with only a few hours.

He turns to look at the city, shading his eyes with his hand at the scraping glare of light flashing off windows. This is where he buried the body, this is where he took her necklace off. He was younger then, in the middle of being a teenager. Pearls. His friends had been contemplating suicide, but he somehow decided that was too de rigueur. They had sex first, of course. She was a socialite slumming with the bell hop and he was more than willing to take advantage of the situation. She asked him to leave the red jacket on and a brass button tore a little at her dress. A tiny detail which makes him hard, he always comes back to it lovingly. He pulled out when he came, leaving pulses of pale semen to drip down her legs. He wasn’t old enough to know to catch it in his hand. That button is always in his pocket. He considered putting it on a chain but somehow never got around to it. He takes it out occasionally and licks it, holds it on his tongue. Now he’d ask for a striptease. Pearls, it always comes back to pearls, shining on the inside of her thigh. He’s since developed a fetish for nylons. The image curls him into himself, a clench of teeth and eyes closing against the glare.

Alright, don’t know where that came from. I was going to write out a happy picnic but somehow it was usurped. Sorry.

roses are red
violets are blue
badger badger badger
mushroom mushroom

It only takes a chance encounter for the world to blossom again. Ten words, two eyebrows raised, one phone number. Close your eyes and remember the last time you met a stranger who later became your friend, your lover, a partner in life. It’s so simple to create interaction, to caress a minute into meaning something. I want to find a metaphor for my entanglements, an image to describe how everyone connects. I used to be able to trace people back to one night of the year 2000, but it grew exponentially. I know your friends before you do now. I can introduce you to your future roommate’s girlfriend, though we don’t know it yet. It’s a small city and I make it smaller every day.

There was a sound, that’s how I woke. A romantic comedy moment of The Girl digging under a pile of coverlets for The Phone, Ringing. I was a moment too late, answering to a dial tone. I could take that as my cue to begin my day but I was too tired for whatever hour my clock would show me if I put my glasses on, so I didn’t bother. When the phone rang again, I considered my options then answered it in spite of them. It was Matthew laying dibs on my day. As no-one else wanted them, I said, he was more than free to them. After hanging up, I swayed uncertainly on my feet in the late morning light and tried to sum how many hours of sleep I had accumulated since my eight a.m. bedtime. I figured not-enough while brushing teeth, unlocked the door, and went back to bed. Matthew can let himself in, I thought, then the buzzer rang. There was a delivery man with a large package on the other side of the door. “Are you Jhayne?” He didn’t ask for ID or confirmation, just looked me over as I stood sleepily in a shawl and my underwear and abruptly handed me the parcel before turning and leaving. It was surprisingly heavy, five pounds of mystery carefully wrapped in brown paper with Michel‘s name and address written so tiny in the upper left corner that I felt somehow like they were hiding.

I stood in my bedroom and looked at the package, turning it over in my hands. I fetched my knife from the shelf, but hesitated. Instead I lay the two items on my bed and contemplated what might be inside. It’s a book, I know that much, but what book? This has the weight of endearment and responsibility. What could be so heavy? I sat at my computer, intending to send him an e-mail before I sliced open the time-bomb, but as I raised my hands to the keys, I heard footsteps in the hall. Matthew arriving in time for the cliffhanger.

CAGES by Dave McKean.

I was torn between awe and a very carefully repressed acrimony. Inside was a long intelligent letter written on story-boarding paper, with no explanation as to why I had been sent the book, but a long monologue on a computer game I remember having myself, sometime back in the 80’s, where the player is to collect resources, one of which is beautiful young women. Thoughts flit through my mind of sending the book back after I’m finished reading it twice, but I feel somehow that would be absurd. I’ve barely flipped through it, almost certain there must be some mistake. It’s too beautiful. Heavy enough to be a murder weapon, it’s a work of art. Jessie and I have been sleuthing it. The ISBN put me at ease, as I was finding entries through Google which told of Limited Edition One Run Printings. This may be a trick, a lure to bait me into traveling cross country to fall futile at the feet of a comic artist. I can’t bear-hug kill a man long distance. Not yet.

This morning was made of conversations. Moments hard like brittle notes strung together on the palest thread of my hair. I was wanting to see eyes tonight, to have hands in a strong grip and hold them. I’ve sent them to bed, all of them, every last declaration of need and love and memory. I’m alone now, talking to myself with typing fingers, continuing my chains of thought. My forged links of words leading into sentences to reach for a hollow place inside me where fear lives, where rejection hides. I need to find all the questions I never look at, all the needs I’ve managed to shut away from myself. I need doors opened and breath flowing into me from another. There’s no such thing as this, there can’t be, there’s no way for my sciences to explain it. I can take you with me into my dreams, but I don’t know if you meet me there or if I create you. First there was a conversation, on-line discussion of intimacy from across city. Around the topic rambling hit with the scattershot shrapnel of direct questions. We never knew we were such a hot topic, something to decipher. There’s a low sweet tone in the voice of it, a quiet talk on the porch. I’m curled in your lap, you never knew what you mean to me. I thought I would politely sleep in comfort, fending off nightly inamorato by lightly remembering fine gossamer certainties. Then there was a phone-call. A drunken brawl of a phone-call, shattering with vulnerability. I suspect that someone realized tonight that they actually need me. Desire has flown into unknown territory on wings of steel. I have crawled under their skin and wear it now. They taste my name on their fingertips and I can feel them crying.

“My greatest hope for you is that you don’t have to choose.” We can all feel it. It’s permeating the air, infecting the cells. You’re Mine now, I’m sorry. You know I never meant for it to be this way. I’m sorry I have access you never gave me, that I can see the place you lived when you were sixteen. I’m sorry I know what happened to you in the dark. You know I won’t let it come true. It’s too soon for you to think about. You must give yourself grace. This is a declaration to match your own, the one you are scared to say out loud. I would wear your ring, but I’ll leave if I have to.

I have to keep you safe, even from fire.