Month: October 2005

today someone called me by my middle name


Alto Firenze!
Originally uploaded by Iv0/0vi.

Traffic at this time of the morning is mostly trains. Heavy rumbles of solid metal thunder grumbling too far away to hear properly, fog horns mournful through the record scratch sound of violent heavy rain. If I were to speak, my voice would be a surprising sound, something too big for the space of my hearing to encompass without setting off a quickened heartbeat.

Even my music is off.

Ryan is asleep and recovering from being mildly ill. This was ostensibly to be his last day at work, but they decided to have him on a couple more days before his contract with them runs out. Hours are welcome, he says, and I believe him. We are young and finances not bright. The jobs we have are tenuous, the jobs we have [are/our] small grinding wheels. I don’t have the skills to find myself something better and currently it seems he doesn’t have the will.

  • Red blood cells fitted with artificial tails.
    (quicktime here).

    Respirocytes – Designing an Artificial Red Cell.

    Concern is dawning.

    • I refuse consequence.

    Sunday : working 2 – 5pm ->> 5:30 Lori, broadway stn.
    Monday : working 5 – 8pm, Korean movie night
    Tuesday :
    Wednesday: cowboy bebop 12 – 5pm, rehearsal 6:30
    Thursday : working 2 – 9pm
    Friday : working 3 – 9pm
    Saturday : working 2 – 8pm

    “The morning mists had risen long ago, so the evening mists were rising now, and in all the broad expanse of tranquil light they showed to me, I saw no shadow of another parting me.”

    The body as a home. Every nail, chewed maybe, I do not know, is still a protection, a fine metaphor for weapon tipped fingers. Promises about an intent to future. We are our own checks and balances, our own inner ear and voice. Time will burn ripe without my having to think about it. This is a call to soft arms. My wrists, they crack under the weight of history, one hand a bracelet around bones, crack. This is a slight battle with having to go home. The foundations are iron but rusty. My attic is crawling with what nice people do and the traps I’ve laid down for them. One trick is to turn around in time to see the other person walk away without being caught. Otherwise sadness closes in, reminiscent of airports and long drawn out sighs on the street, as if everything should have changed while you were away for that last ten minutes. The best part is that trick is a lie, but an accepted one, like going home to comfort and safety. Stability deters the basic creature from improvisation, from evolving. Looking back only leaves part of your gaze behind you to drag like a sucking wake behind the sails of your coat and breaks the illusion of independence that pacing away like duelists kindly offers.

    I want to visit Iceland. It appears to me as beautiful beyond measure, as if the music born there were merely a representation of the stones and soil.

    A little present for a dear friend, who I know has forgotten these.

    This day last year, at almost this exact time, my friend Jenn came over and visited. I took some pictures and promised to send them to her. I did that, but today I’ve uploaded them. She’s married now. I was a bridesmaid a her quirky wedding. At the time these were taken, she was just barely Steve‘s fiance and I hadn’t punished myself yet for being in love with someone. I like the last one best. We’re both smiling for people particular.

    241 242 243

    I wonder if we can still get away with calling her a girl. I vote yes.

    Damn I miss my purple hair.

    empty time today



    Originally uploaded by Boytoy.

    I’m vacillating between listening purely to The Arcade Fire and what new music I’ve found this week. It’s a difficult decision, Funeral being a powerfully difficult album to put down.

    The lighthouse is fractured, a flash of light explaining very strange pieces of personal mythology. blink The first time I was seduced by a woman. blink Going there with the band the next day. blink Balancing rocks with my missing lover, my best friend, the only person who’d met him last time. My eyes cannot be covered by my hands to shut it out. blink I don’t want to. blink It’s a strange place to think about only because I’m not used to it. I forget it exists. blink A picnic, they talked about making a music video on a sailboat for a song about whales. blink A different lover, but the same best friend. Fire. blink oh Nikki’s hair blink oh how he used to have a temper blink the painter blink the violent drinker blink different people, the time I almost threw myself in. GLITTER WARNING FLASH. One of the only lights you can accurately see across the inlet. The memories creeping into the fabric of the trees and cliffs and water. FLASH. It’s Vancouver, this particular quality of light remembering. The sign on the road. The parking lot hemmed by forest. Running the path. Running the cliff. The water looks like expensive gun-metal silk shimmering in a radio play. Everyone sits and raises the children of conversation in front of the ocean. It’s only human, but how I wish I could swim.

    `Wearing an aura of rugged-intellectual charm like a plastic raincoat …’ — Sam Merwin Jr.

    Fantasy spark: water warmer than this, with you.

    tag “john peel” should make this easier

    Mark on the calendar, October 13th 2005 is the date of the first John Peel Day. Later I hope to have time enough and the inclination of the awake to collect together as much John Peel as I can to share with you all. audiography has dedicated this week to him and has already been posting some very choice music. However, my main contribution to the discovery of new music will be slightly early, as Nicholas has pointed me to loveliness this evening.

    The artist is that 1 guy, and he is the best one man music I’ve ever heard. His lyrics are superb, his wacky home-made instrument intimidating awesome. It’s called “The Magic Pipe” because it is. I’m not sure I know of anything so captivatingly versatile. There’s a Listen To Entire Album button. I highly recommend it and also say, watch the video too.

    I’ve discovered that I’m still twanging in dangerous ways from my dancing binge. It’s effort to turn my head, it goes against the natural reaction of my body complaint. I’m impressed. I walked away from an afternoon a few weeks ago attempting to teach Graham and Ryan how to use a sword with less bruises. (And Graham catches on quick to the idea of being hit without being hit). Course, part of it is the stupidly long walk I took with Alastair earlier today. He’s only in Vancouver a few days before leaving for San Francisco and Fiji, so we went for breakfast at Slickety Jim’s Chat & Chew this afternoon. My first mistake was expecting service on a holiday, my second was walking with him from there to Commercial and First, then up to Broadway. My eyes waved at some houses I knew and some interesting landmark graveyards, but the blisters are trying to argue that it wasn’t worth it. Lying on the couch at Korean Movie Monday was like sinking into hot chocolate on a cold day.

    The film tonight wasn’t astonishing, My Beautiful Girl Mari was too mellow for that, but it was legitimately beautiful. The IMDB summary tells you nothing of use. What’s needed is an appreciation for magic realism, for the illusion of edgeless animation, and a commiseration with the logic of children. There is no painfully basic plot, only a gentle climb into a remembered summer that unwinds into terrifically averted disaster and cleverly prosaic goodbyes. The alternate world the boys enter is deeply reminiscent of dreaming, (that the cat also visits this world, they do not bother to explain, and nor will I, as it should be evident), being a place of clouds and peculiar consequences that drops them back into the real world without any warning, though certainly with the sadness of parting.

    Subliminal Mind Software – Achieve Superhuman Mind Abilities

    I fell entirely in love with Lost In Translation, did you?

    It’s one of those strange little times, when you and I haven’t spoken and we’re left wondering. I’m reading the notes toward a paper of sexuality and it makes me laugh a little at how little I think about this sort of thing. I’m infatuated with history and mood and mythos, but the holiness of sex? It smacks of religion. Play as something apart from the self. I don’t wax full of jesus metaphor when I think of my desires. Yes, I miss you. I think of my repairing self in terms of myth and archetype. Visions of archimedes screws, that’s sexy. There’s the pun and the history and the lovely lilting action. I think in quivering multi-layer presentations sliding past innocence into carefully arranged chaos.

    In celebration of 50 years of spoken-word publishing, Caedmon has released “Dylan Thomas: The Caedmon Collection,” available as audio cassettes and a beautifully designed 11 CD set. They are all available for free download here, at Salon. Non-subscribers, like me, have to wait through an advertisement. For such a treasure, it’s a ridiculously cheap price. Dylan adds an unimaginable depth to his own work. It’s a rare gift to find an author who can read as beautifully as he does. Even if you’ve never heard of Dylan Thomas, (and for damned shame, if you haven’t, get out from under your weird rock), for the sake of decency, I demand you take this.

    When someone today used the word dragon, I brought to mind more than fantasy and scales. It’s no fun unless every meaning is evident at once. I supply large soaring creations of imagination, terrible art from the 80’s, wicked claws that tore poets apart in medieval Japan and young mythical virgins who were really fucking the millers son, millers sons being all the rage back in the day. They were rich, you see? Not like you and I. We are pulling on opposite ends of a very similar rope. It’s not the McEmployment but it’s as close as pretending can be. Stability and the risk board, all those coloured squares mocking the agonies of war. Roll the dice to find out where you get to kiss me. I need out of my job as much as you’re thinking about me when you shouldn’t be. We only sell those dice to women and that bothers my personality. The western world irritates in it’s persistent subservience to christendom.

    I suspect there’s a line between words that you’re not delineating, but that I might be seeing when you’re looking the other way.

    ow… ow ow ow ow…… OW

    Oh my wrack and toil, oh my heart and stars. The body aches today. Every joint feels violated and every muscle abused. On some very fundamental level, every snap and creaking pop declares dancing a success. I suspect I went into it somewhat violently last night, non-stop from nine-twenty to two-thirty. I jumped on people, was swung around by people, and was generally given plenty of open space, no matter how crowded the dance floor. All while running soley on an energy drink and some candy bars bought from the club vending machine. Take that, groaning machine. However much it hurts, I’m in better shape now.

    a video of plants with eyes
    There are some more videos of fake robots in the directory.

    After my shower, I discovered two puncture wounds, equidistant from one another, on opposite sides of my neck. My best guess is that this is the price paid for hugging people with especially spiky collars. It looks odd, however, as if I were a product of some traditionalist sort of mad scientist who pulled the tiny plugs from my neck before letting me out. Too obvious, you see. I didn’t kill anyone who kissed me, however, so obviously I’m getting better at being in a cuddly public. I’m curious as to what sort of lipstick some of them used, as it took some scrubbing to remove it from my chest this morning, but I’ve no way of asking. Who are you people? I’ve no idea. My livejournal was brought up a few times, entirely by these people I don’t think I know. Apparently there are plans to friend me in the works, so that I might begin to, but so far no one’s followed through. Perhaps they too are lying in crowded knots of wanting to never move again.

    this is for two

    A 13-foot Burmese python burst after it tried to swallow a live, six-foot alligator whole.

    I eye the car-seat and laugh to myself. This is my little escape. I could cut off all my strength with this. I could hold up the pillars of any quiet holy place. The back windows have stickers in them, obviously applied by tiny fingers. This is my beehive caged in the bones of a lion. Instead of pulling down stone, I will pull down delight. It’s just as devastating. Again, I’m not going to be alone, even when I’m by myself and standing in the rain, looking at the sky, and wondering what England is doing. We all have to tie back our hair some day, but my day was last year and this year once more, like a heart-felt coda was hit. Time to let it down. This is my scarlet banner. I will wrap it around my body. Your whisper. Life came crashing down, wasting, and now it’s time for me to remember the outline of my shadow. It’s not as scorched into the wall behind me as much as it used to be. Remember that icons are (beautiful/fallible) painted. Taking a hand in mine, over the lines, I did that. It made me happy. I never knew how before and it’s obviously the season to recapture the flag. My big guns are that I make them laugh, that my affections are devoted, that my hands remember how to pull hair airtight over the keys.

    Tonight is SinCity. This means dressing up and dancing from 9 until 2 in the morning. I’m going to be exhausted by the end of it, and I’ll be lucky if I can walk the next day. Exactly how I like it. I need to let go and stomp around in a giant evening gown. It will help. My angel will be movement and my devil will be my entire lack of breakfast. Brian’s picking me up from work, however, so perhaps we can remedy that. Now it’s time to leave for work, a bag stuffed with black tulle in one hand and a corselette under my shirt. Black and rhinestones. Black and pale skin. Off to sell sex toys and stockings and very short skirt Little-Bo-Peeps. I’ve received a strange gift, one that may let me loose myself from this job, but I’m not certain yet. I want somewhere to go before I leave.

    Scientists have taught dolphins to produce music, namely, the Batman theme song. Next, the escapee killer dolphin form a revenge team, sing their own themesong while hunting down nerdly scientists.

    everything that you are, because this crown of love won’t fall from me.


    E smokes a cigar
    Originally uploaded by George H..

    I love re-dying my hair. Colours get everywhere, marking me guilty of vanity, guilty of having more fun than blondes. Red like roses, like letterboxes, like the inside of your lips when we kissed that once and my eyes were closed. That’s my hands now. That and purple. Purple like a Kate Bush song. In the shower, the dyed water is bright enough to blind and I have to watch where I touch else I leave vivid murder prints on the walls. It makes me giggle.

    The Arcade Fire has made music geeks exceptionally sexy. One member, particularly, stood out as an embodiment of everything Right with them by the way he played accordion like it was a superhero power, hips out and mouth howling, his mop of curly Dr. Egon hair falling into his steamed up glasses. Another played the tambourine as if it was an enemy he could kill with physically demanding theatrics. Wolf Parade was equally intense, a squeezing wall of traditional everything that made rock and roll dangerous to the adults experience, all the way down to the seething mass of crowd that shoved me to front and center at the expense of my breathe and balance. The lead singer still looks too wrung out to be alive and sings like he’s going to continue past us all on sheer adversity. (The other lead singer, the man on the electric piano machine, he came into the shop yesterday. It cheered me up immensely when he didn’t buy anything.)

    Most concerts end with the finality of the period at the end of a favourite novel, but not this one. They crowded both bands onto the stage for the first encore, bringing up a member of the audience to look lost among them, then took their instruments into the crowd for a second one, leading the crowd around with a charming skeleton version of a New Order song. I’m terrifically glad I went. I feel as if my life would have been less interesting without them. If anyone’s got a full album of anything Arcade Fire, I would greatly appreciate it, as all I have to listen to are carefully collected little scraps of from ‘Funeral’.