Month: August 2005

we’ll all float on all right


fireworks finale
Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

Two days and two misapprehensions. Happy birthday Chris, you’re twenty-four now. I think that’s to mean something, but for the life of me, I don’t know what. Have this link, at least, it’s word heroin. It’s been a hard spring, burning into a difficult summer. There’s redemption somewhere, we just have to figure out where to find it. I’m sitting in my home, armo(u)ring myself with unlikely colours, with the strength I have in my body that a writer gave to me. I am hoping that if harm befalls me, if my heart stops, if he is there, it will set my blood to boil and I will flower into flame and burn again. Twist my hair around my finger and speak some magic words that will lighten the weights that drag my feet from dancing again.

I’m not allowed to love you. It’s the same script, all over again. Audience of one. The evening is just beginning and I’m thinking of brake-lights, red glow into the distance. How cars will trail in long snakes through the mountains away from here. The freeways of L.A. were like that, incredible embers speeding past and forward and always going, just going, flying between yellow lines and white. There, however, without a vehicle of my own, I was lost, a child trying to catch up with little tiny steps. My legs were tied, my sight unable to see unless I was near the ocean. Here there is water, there are mountains, there are miles filled entirely with trees. In a way, it’s a cage all the same. I’m tired of it, I’ve done this place. My precious people, I want to shake their roots free of dirt and set them walking our of here with me. I’m glad James got away.

Navi is asleep in my bed and Ryan‘s out fetching supplies for SinCity tonight. I’m alone with a rabbit and a ferret, though they’re kept separate now. We’ve found proof positive that rabbits are genetically food for ferrets. It won’t matter if they’ve seen one before or even know what to do with one, it will try to drag it away and eat it. The rabbit, Kitty, has escaped unscathed, but perhaps not so me. Now I know Skatia can attempt to be sneaky, I want to see it again. Again, the thought occurs to me to fetch him a mouse from the shop to have.

nostalgia parade in barefeet on broken glass


resting here with me
Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

Summer is beginning to end, just yesterday it was possible to taste fall creeping into the weather, and yet to me, it’s still spring. My run of bad luck began then, and there I have stayed, foolishly expecting a shift in happenstance to accompany the weather. It’s basic and slightly animistic of me, perhaps. As if the world might lick my wounds with sunshine.

Ellen is leaving us, moving her family eight hours away. Her children, Kevin, Brin and Maz, are my godchildren. They call me aunt sometimes, or mum when they’re not thinking about it. I’ve known them for such a long time it hurts to think about. I’ve watched them develop personalities and grow into decent human beings from mewling toddlers, backlit by their amazing mother. Being with them makes me happy, they’re family in such a basic sense that it goes beyond friends. I’m already scheming a road trip to visit them. There’s going to be a huge gathering at their new place for Thanksgiving, Max’s second birthday. It’s a camp out deal, tents piched on thier four acres of backyard.

My reactions seem so far away from my body lately, voices are quiet, touch is remote. Everything is mild, as if I’ve grown a new layer of skin, one made of thick lucite. I feel like a widower not yet ready to crave life again, instead still lying on the coffin or holding my corpse husband’s hand in a brightly lit room. He slept here. I’ve been sifting through my memories, holding them up to my inner eye and trying to understand where things went so sideways. I remember standing, vibrating with the first anger I’d had in years. How could you? I remember standing, my body molten honey, my hands unable to stop pulling him into me. His hair, his voice. Feeling like this was just right. What have I done? I don’t dream at night anymore. I won’t allow it. I’ve thrown down my gallows, soon maybe I’ll remember how to breathe. I’ll stand up out of the dust and wipe my hands on my trousers, readying myself to walk back home. I don’t understand how you can love me so much You’re persuasive, now I don’t either.

I want a long walk off a short plank. An unexpected drop off to give me my catalyst, three months has been and gone, too long, too long. SinCity is this Saturday and I don’t know if dancing is finally going to help. My spirit wants to fly out past the edges of the cliffs that hem this city at the ocean and just keep going, out until my arms can’t help me swim anymore. Except for a brief period when I had emotional support from Matthew, I haven’t had a good week since the beginning of May, since I came back from Toronto. I think that I have friends who understand not to press me, who are kind enough not to force me to care. I’m thankful. I don’t want to call anyone on the telephone, I don’t want to leave this apartment alone. I got as far as the park today before breaking down, falling by the side of the road, a crumpled excuse for a small girl. I want a voice that I can’t trust to call me and apologize, explain, but I know that life doesn’t work so well, it doesn’t reach down a hand from over the prison wall so easily. This dream is an everyday agony.

because life continues, it has to


Down At Fraggle Rock
Originally uploaded by cabbit.

From Andrew:

“Hey Everyone,

It’s Navi’s birthday on Thursday and she demands bowling. Meet up with us at 10pm at the Scott Road skytrain station in Surrey, there’s a crazy laser bowl place she likes across the street that we’ll go to and bowl til we get bored or the skytrain stops running! No presents or sexual favours necessary, your mere presence is enough to send her into paroxysms of joy.

Please leave a comment or otherwise let me know if you can make it so we can reserve a couple lanes.”

A group of us, (you are invited to come along), are going to go to Tinseltown for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory at 7:30 before meeting up with her and Andrew for whatever lazerbowling is.

Right, and I don’t care, even if you’re on dial-up, watch this video.

“You said you would show me another country, and you have. It’s right here, in me.”


isn’t she pretty?
Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

There was flying yesterday. I opened my eyes in Reine’s bed, not having slept at all. Karen and Patrick were downstairs with her mother. Ten minutes later, we were driving. Smooth ska on the stereo, too early for people to be aware. Up Victoria, up fourty-first, taking the bridge past the airport and out onto highway. I held my breath through the tunnel and wished I could remember how not to be wounded. I let it out half way, feeling empty and futile. A child thought, how hollow they make these places. The way the music played made me think of movies, of black pvc.

The plane was small, familiar. Fuselage white, pale as they always are in such places. Karen and Reine looked like headset angels. I rode in front, co-pilot pretender. Once I took the handles, but all I did was steer on course, something anyone could have done. It dragged to the left, heavy somehow so far above the earth. We flew to the airport outside of Victoria, touching down and lifting back up without pause. I held my hands out with my camera on top and said, “do you think we can do it?” to Patrick. Zero gravity, it lifted and fell upward, my fingers cradled under it as it swooped for the windscreen and I could feel my hair twisting away from my scalp, it was beautiful. Enough to unknot my eyes, to pry open my muscles enough to move.

Light seems different when you’re flying, like above the clouds there’s a different texture. I thought of marbles, cats eyes glittering, and agates, how I dearly wanted to walk back in time and say, “teach me now, not later, before you make mistakes.” I wanted twin handfuls of them, glass smooth and clear. I wanted them to spill and fall into the ocean beneath me, a mystery to any witnesses as much as my relationships. I miss him, of course I do. His hands hold my heart still, that burning thing. Blood, however, has left me barren. Think of burned houses, only the shell and metal remaining. Let my honour be my unwarped steel. Picture red hair and eyes like blue quick silver. My strawberry heart is useless, obviously, or else I would be able to stop my crying. I could return it home and let it flutter back into my breast like a nesting bird.

I have a doctors appointment this afternoon. A question asked of me demands it. The other women are likely wonderful people, but.

I remember trust.

My lovers, of late, have been dying. Piece by piece, becoming less of people and more of liars.


Better Living
Originally uploaded by cabbit.

I’m still awake.

The sun is well up, we’re slowing stealing the light from across the water, too imperceptible for the unaided human eye. Hindsight, however, can tell you what happens next. I’m bloody tired, my friends, bloody tired and feeling grounded in being lost. I have some strange assumptions, like trusting people is not a bad thing, nor is telling the truth. Everything we know should be brought to bear, all the stories seen for what they are. Divinations and mysteries shown for wonders, but also for frauds. We are predictable, we the people. We the people who demand a revolution while forgetting that means we have to do something, communicate with the rest of the world what we really desire and intend. If such assumptions were more common, perhaps my life would have been happier, would have not been such a trial. Hanged from the neck until dead, days like the kerchief they would place upon the judge’s head. Deeply aggravating, for my need to minimize myself has been shot down. It’s not a reclamation, but perhaps an awakening.

Matthew has been false in every direction. With pooled information, we are willing to believe that he is married, yes, that he worked at VanCity, yes, but nothing much else. Everything we have to say matches in disparity. Lines upon lines, whole paragraphs of identical promises, identical reasonings, excuses. This has cemented things for me, hopefully for us. Us implying my voice raised with other women. There is a bloody trail of us torn across two continents. I see no reason for silence.

because I think it’s time to say it

This week has been insulating, my heart too bruised for anything but a cotton wool retreat. Reina and Ryan have been mild life-savers, smiling circles floating on waves. Underneath my feet I can’t bear to see, though I should look. Matthew is coming back this week or the next.

Apparently he’s been fucking around again. Not only on me this time, but a couple of others.

Welcome to the lie, ladies. Take a number.

Matthew called and my heart stopped

Fields of fire that passed the train
The sky is victorious but here comes the rain
Friday is taking me home again,
And I’ve nothing but you on my mind.

Grass is greener without the pain,
I think that I’m changing but I’m just the same
My sun is ascending again
And I’ve nothing but you on my mind

Sometimes I feel like I’m glad to be free,
Sometimes I still want your arms around me,
Sometimes I’m glad to have left you behind,
The Crazy English Summer has put you back on my mind.
Life’s a riot, a lover, a friend,
Pity the day that it has to end
Friday come speed me home again,
I’ve nothing but you on my mind.

Sometimes I feel like i’m fine on my own,
Fifty thousand miles from home.
Sometimes I’m weak and the past is my guide,
Summer returns and puts you back on my mind.

    • the history books never mentioned us

    Cohesion drifting: goodbye James. He’s left now, on the plane for Montreal. If he has a window seat, he’ll have already lost sight of Vancouver. Soon even the mountains will fade. Echoes and footsteps in departure hallways. We saw him off last night, Reine and Ryan and I, my friend Steve caught along for the ride.

    We wish you luck, boy, wherever you land.

    medousa will be opening her apartment up for pre-fireworks meet-ups again on Saturday. Meet on the North West Corner of Barclay & Thurlow beginning at 7:30. (By the firehydrant). Any who are inclined are suggested to drop in between 7pm and 7:30pm, and we’ll probably head out around 8ish. There’s a possibility of heading out sooner as it’s the finale and will be more insane than usual.

    edit: I’ll be attending the Leo party after the fireworks.

    I’ve been out of charactor today, but would like to mark for the record that I blame the eye-liner


    City Girl
    Originally uploaded by cabbit.

    St Peters wolf is hunting me, licking at my traces on other peoples skin. My nails ask for defenses back please, they ask for water to drain from my eyes somewhere not in public. I saw today that someone’s referred to me as an ex, and when night falls, that’s what it feels like, though I know it only as a convenient term that explains really nothing of what happened or what might have been. He kissed me, you know, when he shouldn’t have. I understand deeply, like standing under trees, that there’s been a fundamental shift, that I forced myself to remember that I am a star collapsing. In waking to myself, I had to be alone of this one, this gold skein mannerism. Otherwise, when my heart was beating, it would be a violence, a darkening room without a coloured door.

  • stencil art billboards
  • the wooster collective

    Amusing to me, I realize as I write this that I’m wearing a stolen ring. Usually a sign of solidarity, this time it means a freedom in vocabulary, it means someone I feel quick enough to keep up with. These round celtic knots tied one into the next, this band, this loop, I’m twisting it around my finger. Metal there feels right, the flesh feels righted, but the implications, the loose ties of acquaintance versus friendship, they nag at me with a peculiar fascination. In my mind, there’s something waking. A fierce creature with steady cravings, I can’t see it, though I feel it growing restless. What it is I’m uncertain, something to do with words, with expression.

  • pictures of wall
  • intricate x-wing t-shirt

    Yesterday was long, a golden musical chairs of people in and out. It began merely an hour after returning from Beth’s delightful house-warming. Navi was over in the morning, and Ryan, with James visiting in the afternoon. We went to dinner with my mother, Vicki, and her father, John, at Wild Ginger. My first time meeting my granda as an adult. It was, shall we say, illuminating. He reminded me that I’m a quarter gypsy, which is something I had almost forgotten, but that we are related to the highest placed mafia family in Canada. This is especially delightful considering that I’ve finally discovered what it is he does. It was rather surprising. I knew that he used to be a salesman of sorts but I was entirely unaware that currently my granda is a bootlegging gigolo. I swear, my family only gets better. The best part? He’s a British Citizen, has been for thirty+ years. A landed immigrant back in the day when bombs still fell in first world countries. The way the laws are, that means that so am I. When I get my passport, depending on how soon I reapply, then it just might not be Canadian. (So anyone I asked to marry for citizenship, if you’re still interested, you’re going to have to supply another interesting country or two).

    • hold the wheel



    Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

    I saw you and looked down. I changed the subject of conversation. You walked past like silver, as if I could touch the air you had just walked through and feel solid flesh.

    I counted my lovers the other day, using myself as one unit. My body, my bended bones and muscles, an abacus bead. Click, like this, and he slipped in here and my back arched taut, hips drawing the strings of shiva’s bow. She bit me once, hard, at the bus-stop, one of the first times we kissed. I’m at twelve consensual, my friend at thirty-four. I thought about water falling, how many times I’ve held hands in rain. The contrast of skin colours, how I loved to see my white against the wood colours of tanned skin, how I loved the white of my skin matching the belly that I kissed. I would like to meet a boy this time who wants things I’ve never thought of, tells me the secret names of roses, tells me that he likes touching me in public. I would like to not be shot through with sacrifice.

    There’s a girl sitting alone in a room, her music is as lonely as she is and she can’t find anything else. Her clothes are piled on the floor among too many books and papers. She’s scared.

    Newly minted life, that’s another thing coming. Bill and I were talking about technology the other day after fireworks, and I felt for the first time in a long time that I was aware, like I’d been roughly shaken from a trance. He argued that new things weren’t that, only the newest illustration of an age-old idea. I pointed out that new species only come from previous iterations of animal, that everything comes from somewhere. The system self-propagating. The New finding you because you’ve put the settings that way. I know enough for two of us. The trick is in the procedure, the knowing how to act with it, the finding out what to do next. I feel distinctly unintelligent because I have so many tools, so many pieces of information, yet no ideas.