Month: December 2008
my menorah is broken, so I’m using tea lights. they lack a certain something
More goofy Salton Sea goodness via Lung
From the perpetually delightful brain of Mike Levens:
1. Get born in Mecca.
2. Move to Medina.
3. ???
4. Prophet!
Happy first day of Chanukah, everyone!
Apparently it’s Christmas this week too. Generally I notice a little earlier, reminded by parties with good cheer, but this year, not so much. Parties have been thin on the ground and I’ve barely seen more than ten people in the last week. I’ve been too distracted by my computer slowly imploding at home, the failing bus system, my thinning relationship, maybe not having enough money to successfully cover both rent and utilities, and feeling more trapped as every day New Year’s approaches a little more while I still have no plans to celebrate.
I’ve been trying to get my mind off it by jumping through the snow every chance I get, letting the pure child-like glee of all the cold white shoot in through my eyes and into every cell of my body. It really helps – I only wish I had a sled or a toboggan or even a crazy carpet.
Tonight I’m going to be filming the lighting of the hockey-stick shaped ice menorah downtown at the Denman St. ice-rink. (It’s by donation, you should come! There’s going to be latkes!) Tomorrow, though, I don’t have any plans after work. Would anyone like to come play in the snow with me?
yum
A group of us went out on Friday evening for Kyle’s birthday at the glorious Sutton Place All-You-Can-Eat chocolate buffet. It was wonderful. The weekend isn’t over and already I want to go back.
Today, however, Kyle’s birthday celebrations continue as he hosts Sunday Tea, (a local institution I’m proud to say it still going strong, five years later), as “the conjoined twin of a birthday potluck celebration with a film.”. Nicole and David and I are going to head over together, bringing rented copies of two of the most ultimately amazing movies I know, Strings and Sukiyaki Western Django, to be the evening o’clock entertainment.
If you know Kyle, you are also invited.
conflageration nation: where we had fun trying not to die
So… yesterday.
The original plan was only for Nicole and I to head over to LIME, a Japanese restaurant that used to be a Turkish restaurant named RIME, (just because, that’s why), for a friend’s gig and some GirlTalktm, but by the time Thursday rolled around Nick, (who I had sort of not-quite-secretly set her up with), was part of the party and I had agreed to pick up cat supplies from Dominique, who had put her suddenly feral kitty to sleep. So instead of taking Nicole’s little car and heading straight to the restaurant, we ducked through downtown to Dominique and David’s place with Nick’s van and visited with their new tiny little wonder for a bit before hauling the cat stuff out to the van and heading back to the Drive.
It was incredibly cold out, with a thick cake of ice on almost every side-street, the result of cars packing down snow. Nick’s a fairly good driver though, so it wasn’t until we got stuck on a surprisingly steep bit of low hill near Commercial Drive that we started worrying. Nicole and I were all for slowly backing up the way we came and trying another street, one with a shallower slope, but Nick had tire chains in the van and decided to use those. Or rather, one of them.
Truthfully, if he’d used all his chains it likely would have worked, but it was freezing out and he didn’t have gloves so he only used the one, leaving his other front tire to spin wildly as he floored the gas, trying to get some forward momentum going. Within a minute, at the same time Nicole’s phone rang, dark clouds began pouring out of the hood and a pedestrian ran up to us shouting, “Fire!”.
Black smoke started pooling in the van almost immediately. Nick, ever able, quickly popped the hood and jumped out to discover incredible flames licking his engine, so I grabbed my camera bag, yanked myself out of the van, and tore Nicole’s door open as soon as I could stand on the ice, “Nicole, time to get out.” Once she was clear, (explaining to her friend on the phone, “Sorry, can’t talk, car’s on fire!!”), I reached across and turned off the engine as Nick used frantic handfuls of snow to put out the crackling fire. Exciting times!
Lucky us, the disaster was a small one. By the time a local resident ran up with a fire extinguisher, we’d already doused all of the flames we could see, rolled down the windows to let the smoke out, and started laughing the adrenalin off. We were fine. It was Nick’s new van that was in trouble. The fire had been behind the engine where we couldn’t make a closer inspection, so we could only theorize at the damage. Our guess, based on the horror movie strobe of the dashboard lights, was that maybe a wire had been sitting somewhere it shouldn’t and caught fire when part of the engine overheated.
We moved the van as soon as we felt it was safe, gently rolling it back down the hill to a corner parking spot out of the way. Except for aforementioned flickering lights and some strange sizzling noises, it seemed fine, so we looked under the hood again, trying to figure out what was hissing, a futile thing, and decided what to do next. Nicole’s suggestion, “Gently drive it home”, was a great idea, except it wouldn’t turn on again. When Nick tried the ignition, all the internal lights went out with a very quiet pop. Somewhere in all of the uneasy hissing engine sounds, the electricals had given up the ghost. We couldn’t even roll the windows back up.
After a bit of talking and a bit of sitting and a bit of turning into ice, we decided to simply abandon the vehicle for a tow truck in the morning and continue on foot. Nick wrote a note that said ENGINE DEAD, ALL VALUABLES REMOVED, I left it pinned to the dash, and we walked the rest of the way to the restaurant where it turned out the food was delicious and the company even better. Thank mercy we’re all cheerful people. The End.
Yes, I live in Canada. Why do you ask?
Jeepers, I thought last night was unexpectedly exciting, what with successfully hooking Nicole up with Nick for the holidays, finally meeting Dominique‘s new little baby, SURVIVING NICK’S NEW VAN CATCHING FIRE, (no one was hurt. I pulled Nicole out and we put the fire out with snow), and admitting rather bashfully to someone that I wrote about our personal life on the interblags, but today’s news sort of trumps it, so I’ll just get it out of the way and talk about yesterday in the next post…
“Skate to Chanukah music or watch and nosh latkes and doughnuts.
Monday, December 22, 2008, 6:00-7:30 pm.
West End Ice Rink, 1750 Haro Street (Between Denman & Bidwell).
Admission: By donation. Skates are free.”
Which sounds, on the surface, like it’s going to be a Yiddish Icecapades, people dressed as sparkling, spinning dreidel, singing songs and throwing glitter under a rainbow of lights, but apparently it’s something a thousand times more hard-core bizarre. Something I would never have the wit or imagination to think up myself.
Did you get that? Shaped like hockey sticks.
pictures from the south, surfacing
Liontamer at the abandoned bathhouse…
This is the very first photo Lung and I worked together in creating. We’ve never done anything like it before, but I’m pleased to say, looking at the finished product, that our first shot seems to be a winner.
Before, he would always tell me to go over there, stand here, tilt your head that way. Almost invariably we would end up with a result I didn’t like. My accusation, founded very fairly though a bit tongue in cheek, is that he can’t take an attractive portrait of someone he didn’t want to sleep with. He agrees, and so when we found ourselves at the abandoned ruins of the Salton Sea bath-houses, we finally took the next step, and collaborated.
It was a strange experience, as he chose the spot, and I chose the position, peering through his camera and deciding where I should be based on the light, then assembling myself while unidentified animals made chewing noises in the ceiling, trusting as Lung had me look over my shoulder just that little bit more.
I’m glad it worked. More than glad, I’m delighted, as I really wanted it to come out well. Our recent trip South brought us closer together than we’d ever been before, and to have tangible evidence of how our friendship is evolving is comforting. It’s nice that I can look at this photo and point to one of the exact moments we shifted, no matter that it was only one tiny step among many over a process of several months. It’s still a singular moment captured splendidly, and one with enough meaning for me.
An added bonus, too, is feeling completely justified that I dragged my Hallowe’en costume all the way down and back just to cheerfully wear it once or twice in highly inappropriate circumstances. Next had better come the boot pictures, where I dangerously tottered in stiletto heels along a shoreline beach made entirely of bone.
re: yesterday’s snow. also, glee.
This is his picture of my reaction, (post rooftop snow-angel): |
This is my picture of Lung‘s reaction:
|
As I said in his post on the matter, “EVERYONE PLEASE NOTE THAT HE WAS NOT EVEN OUTSIDE WHEN I TOOK THAT PICTURE.”
wherupon my brain shows its true colours
We can’t see farther than four buildings away through our eigth story office window.
My bus slid on ice and I had to walk to work from Crackton.
Other buses have also been jack-knifing.
Meanwhile, I can’t stop singing the snow song or doing the happy snow dance.
It’s real snow, too. Dry, crunchy, catch it on your tongue beautiful, glittering gorgeous snow.
None of the gross, clingy, west coast wet stuff.
When I say I walked to work, really I mean I frolicked to work, wide eyed and happy.
Dear merciful life, I freaking LOVE snow.
snowsnowsnowsnowsnowsnowsnowsnowsnowsnowsnowsnowsnowsnowsnowsnowsnowsnowsnowsnow
SNOW!
even this feels like it’s not enough
I had just had a terrible break-up, been thrown out of a last chance desperation relationship, a lower-the-bar can’t-take-it-anymore sort of thing after an assault, when I was spending time with A Boy. Someone I’d known for years, though with a gap in the middle, who popped up at a party with my name in his mouth, as if all the space between I was always a reminder, just like he was for me. Curly hair, kind eyes, all the usual suspects.
When we started seeing each other, it was without capital letters, friends spending time with friends, being delighted, being glad. I made him tea, he made me laugh. When I spent the night over, it was platonic, though appreciative, and only sleep, with a walk alone to the bus-stop in the morning. When suddenly I was single, distraught, he was discreet, but gingerly there in a way that he wasn’t before, and when I stayed over, he kissed me. He kissed me and kissed me and kissed me, moving my body cautiously to press against his, surprising me, attentive, his white linen shirt on the floor, mine unbuttoned and left behind. And I was okay with that.
The next night I was over, his mouth moved from mine to my throat, to the clavicle triangle of my collarbone, to the space between my breasts, and down, purposefully, towards a wonderful idea. I was impressed, ye gods, I was, I’ll never forget it, show me ten men who claim it’s their favorite thing and I’ll show you nine liars, but it was too soon. No, said my hands, no, my knees, my angle and body. I pulled him back up the bed and we stayed there until we fell asleep, nestled together like a carving.
I was terrified of the timing, of the brutal year I’d had bleeding in like poison, of the nightmares I’d still been having of the attack, of why I continued to say no. Eventually, after two weeks more of identical nights, I finally did not call. Sometimes I did not even pick up the phone. The relationship, such as it was, quietly expired. Trapped in myself, we stopped talking, and barely said hello in the street. I felt like I should have had a brand across my forehead, the word ruined in copperplate block letters as if typed there, my blood for black ink.
Years went by, accidentally as they do, the friendship slowly healed in our absence, though never completely, while still I never explained, never sat him down and told him, “Look, I was cagey, but it was a bad year. It was never your fault.” Words well known that don’t generally come out in casual conversation, “I should have told you. I love you. I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt you. Please forgive me.”
I can look back with all the grand power of retrospect and think I didn’t too bad considering my age, considering the date and the time and how much the trauma of my reasons was wrecking me. Considering that trip to the doctor, considering that night I spent up too unhappy with my memories to get back to sleep. I can look back and think a fade out is not so bad a way to go, considering, always considering, but I don’t really buy it. My skull can’t shake that I wronged him. Social penicillin in action. I feel like I missed a best friend.
uplifting through adversity
I spent last night at Lung’s place being wined and dined with David and Claire and writing a glossy, shiny happy proposal article for Reader’s Digest about Slab City, where we were staying by the Salton Sea. Considering that Slab City is essentially a small town comprised of poor and crazy people pushed out to the ultimate margins of society, it was pretty tricky. Not only did I have to write in the sappy, almost vapid style of Reader’s Digest, I had to gloss over anything untoward. Nigh impossible, but I think I succeeded. By the time I was done, I had a rough article draft which failed to note any of the incest, open meth use, unbalanced people suffering from mental illness, or the terrifying number of sex offenders. Instead it talked about how great our friends are. It was pretty awesome, like looking at the moon with a microscope.
Via Lung today:
