Month: November 2005

it’s been a busy week


derek
Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

Last year, they said, they were crying. They didn’t know what they were doing, if who they were was worthwhile. I can’t imagine why. They haven’t told me yet. Last year, I was so happy that I ran instead of walked. That my feet were faster than my thoughts. Last year at this time, the boy I was trying to be in love with, he was so far away that I couldn’t sleep, knowing that we were living in the same time-zone wasn’t enough. This time last year, there was a painter. He would trace my body like a sculpture and we could never find enough to talk about. We were just tying up loose ribbons of who we used to be. It was enough. This time last year, I was up until early morning because eight hours difference was perfect. I used to watch the dawn lick the sky when I was talking in fingers. Last year was freedom before I went to L.A.

This year, I’m going to Montreal. The play I was in has kicked me out for it. I will be gone too long, nevermind I have my lines and planned on forcing Michel and James to play parts for me to work blocking around. I understand. Time is time, and it’s unreal. It only stops in hotel rooms. (It’s like my childhood didn’t exist). This year, I’m pearlescent with the heat of events hitting me, like if I were into that sort of thing, I wouldn’t sit down for weeks. Winter is upon us, fog has eaten the city for three days. Thick ashes of potential rain billowing across every street, erasing the world in portions of thirty feet.

I walked past a murder scene at two in the morning on Saturday(Sunday). It unfolded like the pages of a book, every increment walked giving me another details. Trees coalescing into police, all the sounds of the city being replaced by a constant quiet chattering buzz of ear-beads and car radios. No one was talking. The street was lined with officially identical cars, every one empty with a laptop glow.

Last year, they said. Last year, what? Everyone has little stories, it’s our dream. I want to collect them all and make them matter, but I have no idea how to do that. Last year I was living, this year I haven’t been. Last year turns into this year, but when? There’s some period of time, like how August brings change. I think I’ve been partnered, but all I know is that I’ve a lover. I think I’ve found family, but instead they were tribe. I think I’ve found my friend, but I’ve been introduced by others as their significant other. Instead of meaning, I’m just watching. Hoping with a terrified heart that they still like me, that I’m not the imposition that I think myself to be.

I can’t see the logistics, but I don’t care what’s in my bank account.


andrew dimmit – urban clowns
Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

I leave Vancouver for Montreal on Saturday December 10th, 9 in the morning. I’m returning December 24th in the evening, arrival expected around 8pm.

These strange anchors in my life, I’m visiting with them tonight. Chains several years long, I’m always the only one. Over in decency, I’m singular, the bed. This one, he cried once. It meant a lot to him that I held his hand. We see each other more now, but less. His computer’s broken, our connection severed. This one, they confessed beautiful things looking at me with eyes like sand, my fingers trapped in his hair. It’s all been waiting for the blossoms to burst into fire. Time creeping along on little cat feet, giving me more reasons to be wanted. This is picking up the pieces I dropped a year ago, two years, three. If this is growing older, I like it. I’m better suited, pin stripe and today a historian stopped me in the street. This will sound ridiculous, but you’re like a chic version of a rich person from the middle ages.

Sunday night, a group is getting together to go to Lady of the Camillas. 8pm at the Havana, tickets are either $15 or half price if you can pretend to remember the password, some long complicated word beginning with L.

The picture framed in my closet used to be in a movie theater. I wonder if somehow metaphorically, it burned down this week. Unborn, our friend yelled at us. All of this wasn’t allowed, so instead we held our breath and closed our eyes. Nothing changed but perfect timing. It’s a little rescue.

Tonight Jason, Jeff, and W. Stretch are hosting a gathering in New West, Benn Neufeld is finally having his house-warming over by Commercial and First, and the Work Less Party are having their Circus party down at the Maritime Centre. I’m going to attempt to hit as many of these as possible, armed with the knowledge that at each place are people visiting who I otherwise would never get to see before I leave. Burrow is up from the States for the Masque, for example, and this is the first time Benn has lived in civilized confines for something like a year. It’s now nine:fifteen. My clock says go.

the beginning oh whoredom

I have so much mail to reply to that it’s ridiculous. In form, it would have been half a young tree bleeding sap all over my carpet. A damaged piece of earth trailing broken roots across my kitchen and onto my desk. Printed and slippery, a texture taken for granted more than telephones. In face, it is the trappings of other hands, dancing like slow two fingered rain to flood my computer box. I can’t stop randomly smiling. I look down the other way inside me and feel a tingle flow from the soles of my feet. My world, those gods of laughter, this is the beginning of soon I’ll run.

When I have time, I will reply to you. I promise.

Until then, tell your friends, post it on forums:

You can vote for both COPE and Vision as they’re not competing with each other (one runs for 19/25 seats, the other runs for 6/25). That means: night buses, actual support of four pillars drug program, cheap housing, community policing and no Wal-Mart.

You can vote if you:

* are 18 years of age or older
* are a Canadian citizen
* have lived in B.C. for at least six months
* have lived in Vancouver for at least 30 days

So bring ID with an address and some back-up ID. Stamped letters and parcel-wrappers are good.

To find out where to vote, go here.
For descriptions of all candidates in their own words, go here.

Between my mind and my hands, my words are getting lost. They are collecting in all my joints, crackling when I move. I stretch and a paragraph shattered. Unfortunate, as I need to pretend I’m functionally literate in spite of my complete and utter lack of sleep, and whore myself out some. Because guess what? The time has come.

Back in spring, I had the misfortune of being arrested for smashing into shards the glass door of a bus with a paper sandled foot. I, having not noticed this misfortune, continued walking home. The police car, lights flashing, was not as unexpected as the police that poured from it to pin me with handcuffs and write me a court date. The ridiculousness of the situation was not lost on me, nor the officers present. All charges were subsequently dropped. However, the broken window must still be paid for, and my time is running out. Translink have begun to call. I’m planning on a colour-in-the-increment thermometer, like we had in grade school for food drives. If anyone’s got any bright ideas, feel free to pass them along. As well, invite friends, invite family. Jacques has asked me to make a flyer image for him to hand out at his play this week. (A weary inability to focus my eyes is demanding that I do that tomorrow). If you care to perform, just give me the say so and I’ll add you to our list of entertainments.

Jacques LaLonde and Jhayne Holmes present

KEEP JHAYNE FROM JHAYLE

a party of proportion

#340 – 440 west hastings

The Date: Friday, November 25th

The Time: 9:00 – onward

The Goal: $300.00

(secretly) I turned around (to love you)


tinted vintage by onfinite.com
Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

Start Again: Blue haired calling. Blue haired, one-eyed. Wisdom like a bitmapped earth, programming the tree to find all the answers. Breaking fast with genius, reminiscent of the night before the night before, lasting impressions of that would be really great, that would be enviable, let’s spread disease through the pommels of guns. DNA discussions, eggs on the plates, grasping for a cure to AIDS. We walk to Broadway with time still left in our pockets. We sit where I sat last Sunday. Half a million dollars at this meeting, I got to go. People walking past, strangers with bags, with different coloured jackets. It’s winter time.

Work is a back-seat exploration into self-pity glad I don’t know how to drive.

Start: Missed rehearsal, missed Sophie. Very simply missed my walk to the bus-stop. Missed a bit of everything. My eyes were closed. Open now, the phone rang. My directer, in a panic. Fluster and worry, flashing to life, spending the night. The telephone, answering questions, reassurances. Exhaustion trying to claim me back but now I’m awake. I’m got left-over chinese food on the stove, I’m going to be a gourmand’s nightmare. Toss it all in one pan, toss it all around with a fork, drip out the grease and call it food. I’ve got creases on my belly where my clothing pressed too tight in my sleep.

Work is a multi-lingual dull burning drive into why am I not done yet with this?

Start a year ago: His hair is tied in a kerchief, nothing imagined, but I like it. This is cotton street. Blue print patterns, every line a perfect curl. Cleaning, I found him in a photograph, behind me. I was so sad, corsetted and dismal. I can feel the black behind her eyes, I am surprised. I’d forgotten the day. How my love would not come to my show. Instead, this one crept behind me.

The door opens, I am blinded.

overheard in NYC: Little girl: I’m tired of thinking about ponies! Now it’s time to kill!


candy corn
Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

Intelligent conversation is good for the release it brings. I am not a joyful girl, I don’t know how to express myself. I have a careful library in my head collecting things I care about, but not in any particular detail. My education is practically non-existent. I’m a highschool drop-out without obviously marketable skills. I was never taught, like so many of you, another language or how to fix something or write something or how to do anything useful, but I can remember. You tell me something, I will keep it. You lend me a book, I will file the words away to dust off when the topic comes up. The input of another mind reminds me that I’m clever, that I can keep up and surpass. I need someone to prod me into illustrating the lack of time on the internet, while pointing out why it makes sense that it also moves faster than social light-speed, because otherwise, I’ll forget that I can. I lapse into only remembering how disordered everything is, how little I’ve actually learned. I’m beginning to suspect it’s a self defense mechanism. Something to do with being angry with the systems currently in place.

Jenn told me today about a woman who’s calling out for articles for her anthology on female geeks. I think it looks like it’s going to be another Go-Grrl empowerment book for people who are old enough to remember being hassled in a computer workplace for being female. Me? I am not the target market. I’m too young. I’ve never struggled with living my gender. Jenn wants me to write for them because, she says, she wishes she could see the world more like I do, claiming they need post-feminists, people who’ve already moved past equality of gender to seeking equality of access to information, but I don’t agree. The book looks like patting the past on the head, like people congratulating themselves on how politically correct they are for not hitting on the secretary without looking at her past fortitude from when they didn’t “know better”. Write about St. Jude overcoming prejudice, not people now who don’t understand that to overcome sexism, they need to ignore the idea that they are doing is special because they are women. Sorry, womyn? w0m3n?

The write-up claims that “More than anything, She’s Such a Geek is a celebration and call to arms: it’s a hopeful book which looks forward to a day when women will pilot spaceships, invent molecular motors, design the next ultra-tiny supercomputer, write epics, and run the government.” ignoring that all these things already happen. I’m reminded of how I want to kick newsboxes when I see a front-page of our “news”paper congratulating a group of young people for being tolerant and pan-ethnic. Thanks, idiots, this is Canada, they didn’t notice until you pointed it out.

I’d write more if it weren’t five in the morning.

Earlier tonight I was basically paid in tasty food and delicious chocolates to examine Picasso with people who assumed that I was important. These political things, I should really go to more of them. Both the company and the conversations, were wonderful, surreal on many minuscule levels. For one, I had my HENTAI INSIDE bag with me at almost all times. For another, I got away with saying rather audacious things to people who are apparently running for various offices in the city of Vancouver. Oh, right, it’s the children of unwed mothers you tie into sacks and dump in the river, not kittens, my mistake. The ones who didn’t blink, they’ll get my vote. I felt somehow like I was representing alt-youth to some of them. An odd sort of dyed hair child who can speak lucidly on whatever subject you want is here, let’s go see, honey. From controlling the police to art history, political correcting institutions or obscure attempts at bailing out on theater, it was all easy, it was speaking back to them. An echoing trick of the light, fade out then on to the next person washed up on the beach of this gathering of people who live in a tax bracket that I only swim in on a guest pass.

from domystic
link
11/10/05 – Aretha Franklin was teary-eyed, Carol Burnett was teasing, Alan Greenspan was reliably taciturn, and “The Greatest of All Time” stole the show when President Bush bestowed the Medal of Freedom on them and 10 others in a White House ceremony yesterday.

Bush, who appeared almost playful, fastened the heavy medal around Muhammad Ali’s neck and whispered something in the heavyweight champion’s ear. Then, as if to say “bring it on,” the president put up his dukes in a mock challenge. Ali, 63, who has Parkinson’s disease and moves slowly, looked the president in the eye — and, finger to head, did the “crazy” twirl for a couple of seconds.

The room of about 200, including Cabinet secretaries, tittered with laughter. Ali, who was then escorted back to his chair, made the twirl again while sitting down. And the president looked visibly taken aback, laughing nervously.

I’m not sure what one wears to a politcal soiree


(c) Vee Speers
Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

This link is vikings rocking out in marching band fashion in ships that transform into giant musical samurai. Just watch it. It’s too awesome for me to describe in any accurate way without using up far too much space. I say too much because you will be reading my descriptions instead of watching it, which is the important bit.

I’d also recommend you watch this, as perhaps the most accurate portrayal I’ve ever seen of SinCity, the monthly fetish night I’ve been attending regularly for four years. That and just sort of goth clubs in general, when they don’t suck. I swear I’ve never been to one that played Cat’s in the Cradle, however. That bit was added purely for comedy. Either that or I fail at wearing fishnets even more than I thought.

“The World Summit on the Information Society starting on Wednesday is heading for a showdown over governance of the Internet, amid attempts to shift the balance of power away from the United States.“

More comics from Michel arrived in the mail today. I am on more pages of Star Wars than I thought, though I still don’t get a lightsabre. I am going to have to borrow a scanner from someone so that I may theft and pirate my slick little pages. Now I’m wondering how to possibly word such a thing on my resume. Incidentally modeled for pages of Star Wars.

sounds like zappa


all the way down
Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

Obscene, the number of people who came down tonight to our Korean Movie Night. There was Ray, and Beth, and Christopher, and Erin and Tilly, but then the last two left after I took pictures of someone’s breasts for them. They left us to have the room to ourselves, couches full only with one or two bodies each, and seating for everyone. It was like there was something wrong. (Not the breasts, that sort of request seems normal now). It was more a family gathering than a weekly event of some slightly epic proportion. Comfortable but unexpected. Expecting a battle, there wasn’t even a war.

Sara, Graham, and Nick arrived later, though only Sara got see part of the movie, the bit where father’s just bashed a head in. It was a Korean movie, after all. There had to be some statement of graphic violence that slapped us in our jaded eyes. It’s partially why we keep coming back. The ability to shock is a precious one and something we hold dear. The cinema we find refuses to hold back, details are upfront and basic. Fish-hooks in faces, child autopsies, slaughterhouses based on actual events like soldiers lined up on a particularly militaristic mantelpiece. It’s what we want. Art, truth, and beauty bombs. The shrapnel glitters like blood because it is. Death, there’s a lot of death. We’re learning history and camera angles, cultural references, ambiguities, and the delight that can be found in basic story-telling. We’ve been at this for months now and it’s very rare we watch anything lacking in story. It’s a relief after most modern western films, things like Corpse Bride, which are pretty but meaningless after the nice Hell-is-An-Oingo-Boingo-Jazz-Club bit.

This is where, if I were more awake and aware, I would launch into a miniature tirade essay on the nature of story and how we don’t have enough of it anymore. How our myths have died, eaten mostly by a lack of education and an unwillingness by major studios to believe that an audience does not, in fact, require explosions. I want special effects, I will go find some Peter Greenaway. No one’s made movies like he did. I want explosions, I will make some. In part, that is why I paid for my pyrotech tickets. I want some plot instead. Honest. (In fact, all of you, go see Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. It made me exceedingly glad). However, the time is inching closer to three in the morning, and I am expecting a long day tomorrow. Visits and breakfast and taxidermy rounded off with an evening at the Art Gallery for a political gala. My life sounds better on paper.

I’m listening to people sing who’ve never seen a television


vincent cassel divers (2)
Originally uploaded by BorNv@gabonD.

  • “PATRIOT” Act secret-superwarrants use is up 10,000 percent.
  • Vatican rejects intelligent design, accepts evolution as compatible with the bible.
  • Evidence emerged that the United States dropped white phosphorus on Fallujah during the attack in November 2004.
  • Israelis receive organs of slain Palestinian boy.

    My fingers have grown cold while I’ve been sitting here, ingesting various bits and detritus pieces of news and updates. All of it a few days old and so ancient. Old news, scattered by wind and the constant flow of new information pouring onto the web. People like you and I and us, tip tapping away, quickly, slowly, two fingered or with ten, and always, always adding to the cause, to a place that isn’t real to half the humans on Earth. I live here though, so I don’t mind cold fingers. It’s expected, a side effect of too long with a mouse, too long sitting in one position, but never long enough to learn everything I want to. My eyes almost always give out before my mind. I fall asleep thinking about social equations, how to build an iPod and if I have the capability with my very limited knowledge of electronics, if tomorrow will be the day I hear an apology or tell a secret, if tonight I will wake up in the dark to an unfamiliar body in my doorway whispering, “come”.

  • Man goes mad in flat with chainsaw.
  • Pillow-fight mob in Toronto’s Dundas Square.*
  • Purse snatcher takes woman’s finger.
  • Brian Eno auctioning off some of his personal music-making gear.

    And someone asked how I write things down, how I sculpt my words into being, but really, the trick is I speak them. I silently say them out loud to these imaginary trees that use light like paper instead of falling, cut so directly to cypress knees. And yes, that was a terrible pun. And yes, you deserve better, but the window is open, the air says winter, and I’m too tired to argue with my train of thought. Any two cents I toss in will derail it. Flatten the thoughts like atoms destroyed and release a blinding spasm of I should go to bed please.

    Also, augh, I left the room for five minutes and my ferret deleted my Dylan Thomas folder in a mad dash across the keys that said YES, DELETE THIS BECAUSE IT IS TOO BIG FOR MY TINY RECYCLING BOX. Darling Chrystalene, would you be so kind as to yousend them to me? I’m feeling unfairly robbed. I did, as a matter of fact, only leave him in the cage for two measly days. This exacting revenge seems a stated overkill. Next I will find messily typed notes, telling me that I either walk him more or the roommate gets it.

  • Conservatives oppose HPV vaccine.
  • Bacteria modified to combat HIV.
  • Antibiotics are proving to be a wrong answer.
  • A clip of a thousand-hand Bodhisattva Dance.

    *I’ve danced in the water fountains there in my underwear somewhere close to midnight. One of the best stupid things I’ve ever done. I highly recommend it.

    • winding up in the sort of movie that middle aged women would take me for the hero


    city glance
    Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

    I wish you were here in my empty bed so it would not be so hollow. It’s been filled with clothing to mimic the twisting forms of company, but last I checked, sweaters don’t talk. They don’t try to keep me. I wrote once that my sheets felt like sand, that if I were to turn over in the middle of the night, absence would hit me like a blinding storm. They’re doing it again, right now, with this soft music playing that reminds me so much of your hands tracing my cheekbones when my glasses are off.

    because

    You are small beautiful simple things, like a line perfectly written, the only one in the novel that you’ll bother to remember later, but when you’re away is all the time. It reminds me of the time I missed someone to death. When it happened, my pillows and blankets quivered, shuddered, and stopped breathing. My heart was dazed, dropped from a great height, and I have yet to recover its wings from the wretched broken mess of glass shattered connection.

    because

    The shape of you fills with mistakes when you are not around to fill in. The secondary characteristic of your absence is my dwelling on how much I can’t deal with it. When I’m missing you, your smile bleeds out of my mind, to be replaced by how often I sleep alone and never with you. You right now are someone else. A heavenly creature I don’t know, who sacrifices something that looks like my integrity to an altar I’m not allowed to approach or respect.

    because

    Then it slips out, my joan of arc moment, seeping through the cracks in all my routine and argument. It’s the pattern. You cut here and put these seams together. You prick your finger on the pins that have somehow found themselves between your lips. My fear is a foot on the pedal, the sway and yank of social fabric. I’m uncertain. I can’t wear this dress, it’s heavy and the embroidery’s just tacky. Not already, not so soon, but then your voice is crashing into me. I’ve been tackled by a thousand foot wave of feeling like myself again. You push me up to the firmament.

    Tonight I thought I saw you standing on the corner of that memory, just enough out of vision that I could place you where I wanted to. It was a conversation about skin, about nerve endings. The technology that craves contact. Our first hint of compatible loneliness.