smearing my smile back on for you
Month: January 2009
in self defense
In spite of the three chests of drawers currently in my bedroom, I’ve taken to an unfortunate habit of treating my floor the same way I treat all other flat surfaces. Namely, by covering it in stuff. In this case, laundry. Clean laundry. (Or was-clean, rather, as Tanith and Tanaquil have been having a field day curling up in the unfolded towels, purring as they burrow between my shirts and scattered pairs of underwear, getting bits of fur on absolutely every bit of cloth possible.) This leads to a problem in the early morning, when it appears I can function, but deep down I am really not so full of sense. This leads to realizing that the towel I blearily grabbed for the shower is, in fact, a cat, or that the shirt I’m looking for has been somehow twisted through of one of David’s socks.
“now that these days have conspired against us, we keep our fists up”
The PuSh festival starts today, Vancouver’s most fascinating little performance festival. Two weeks of perpetually rewarding dance, theater, music, and, this year, astonishing puppetry. (festival event calendar). A slice of my heart is breaking that I’ve no resources this year to make it to anything. Shows have been especially calling to me, too. Ronnie Burkett’s Requiem for a Golden Boy, Bang on a Can All-Stars, Woodpigeon at Club PuSh, and a rare concert by one of my favourite bands, the beige, who are playing at Performance Works at 11 pm next Thursday. After all, what’s life without marionettes, otherworldly collaborations, and stripped-back sweetheart jazz?
they say they remember when we first were sweethearts
lightning around us
and i knew you were the one for me
come one, come all
“A feast for the senses… a challenge for the brain.”
Film at 7 sharp. 400 West Hastings. Arrive early as doors will be locked.
In the confusion following a massive power outage in small-town America, human doormat Donald Turnupseed (actor-musician Will Oldham, Old Joy) suddenly vanishes, setting in motion a surreal series of events affecting his hapless father, his pregnant girlfriend, a pack of wild boy scouts, a lactose-intolerant roller rink employee, an elderly woman in search of her lost poodle, and his best friend: a ten-year-old girl named Turkeylegs.
One of Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film, writer-director Todd Rohal charts strange new cinematic waters with his madly innovative feature debut, The Guatemalan Handshake. Winner of Special Jury Prizes at 2006 Slamdance and Torino, Rohal’s vivacious feast for the senses “bristles with his anarchic visual language, offbeat humor, ephemeral sense of narrative, circuitous character sketches, and freewheeling sense of mirth” (Baltimore City Paper).
Corey McAbee, (Billy Nayer Show, The American Astronaut), also stars, and has sent me some anecdotes about making the film to pass on to everyone who attends.
congratulations, he wasn’t shot
Today I felt it was more important to watch Obama’s inauguration through the magic of live streaming video from my bed than to get up get to work on time. (Oh future, you are so magical.)
My early morning head muzzy on time differences, I missed most of the show, but as the speech drew to a close, I could feel my eyes stinging with a rich mix of emotions. Pride, wonder, worry… but most of all relief.
Congratulations on your recent transformation, U.S.A. On your recent return to morality, decency, and fair play.
We’ve been waiting for you. It’s going to be a good day.
“And he decreases the number of clocks by exactly one”
Thank mercy for young boys. Young boys who will drive, at the slightest provocation, many many miles to come see me. On a whim. Then take me for dinner. Then dessert. They are splendid creatures. Rare and exceptional, wicked and sly. Somewhere there is a poem waiting in all this. Thank mercy for young boys.
There is a boy of my acquaintance who is far too old to be considered a boy by most standards, who is also likely coming to town soon. Any day now. There is an annual event he attends here that begins on Tuesday. We used to be close, me and this gentleman I persistently call a boy, (as well as a dove, another pet name misnomer), but there was a falling out which felled us apart, and now I am terrified that if or when he comes, he will not call.
It used to be we would talk every day. Months of it, mostly out of the same city. Logging in long distance every night before bed, turning on the camera just to have company. Reading to each other, waving, singing, writing our lives out like diary entries to be late night tattooed on our skin. Always, as ever, it was the thought of you that held me through. An entire dictionary range of love letters and affectionate inspiration. Calling in the morning, saying good night. We were perpetually in presence, even over mountains. I could not imagine a day without saying his name. When, after a very long while, he finally topped my patience, a significant amount of time after our relationship had smoothed from flame into family, my letter said I didn’t want to talk for only a week. Once that was done, I sent another hello. “I miss you.” After all, some people you can’t but help to continually love. Almost all I’ve received in the year since is silence. Now, somehow, the possibility that he may not even call.
I cannot help wonder what it is I could have possibly done to be so wronged.
ps. by the way, if you happen to come across a copy of Fever Ray, (the new solo album from The Knife’s nice howling lady), fallen off the back of the internet truck, I would like a copy, for it is Good.
something in vancouver that’s amazing (one of my favourite food things)
Kaeta makes her enchanting specialty, Delicious Flaming Coffee, at Poncho’s Mexican restaurant, (827 Denman st).
dressed for the weather
Friends up from Seattle, Jordan and Christopher, snow hiking in wildly inappropriate clothing.
snow hiking today in lynn canyon
Randa just brought me back a keffiyeh from lebanon
Copied from spiderfarmer via James Grant:
Palestinian doctor has house shelled on Israeli news.
If you cannot see the subtitles do the following:
1. Play the video
2. Click the triangle button at the bottom-right corner of the video
3. Click the Turn on captions button that looks like the letters CC.
Israeli TV broadcast a father’s heartbreak Friday night when a Palestinian doctor living in Gaza made a frantic phone call to a newscaster saying an Israeli tank had shelled his home, killing three of his daughters and injuring other family members.
Izz el-Deen Aboul Aish, who speaks Hebrew, worked as a gynecologist in an Israeli hospital. Even as the crossings between the Gaza Strip and Israel had largely been closed in recent months, he had traveled frequently from one place to the other. But he had remained in Gaza since the Israeli offensive began 21 days ago. He gave frequent interviews to the Israeli media on living conditions in the seaside enclave. He spoke of having tanks around his house and of passing through checkpoints; he told Israelis what it was like to be Palestinian.
Minutes away from a scheduled phone interview on Israeli TV 10 with newscaster Shlomi Eldar, Aboul Aish called Eldar’s cellphone, screaming and weeping in Arabic and Hebrew. The doctor’s home had been struck by a shell:
“Oh God, oh my God, my daughters have been killed. They’ve killed my children. . . . Could somebody please come to us?”
Sitting at his news desk for one of Israel’s main evening news broadcasts, Eldar held his phone up. For three minutes and 26 seconds, Aboul Aish’s wailing was broadcast across the country.
Eldar welled up. He put his head down. He looked at the camera. He looked at his phone. He made pleas for helpfor the family, but the doctor kept crying, his voice scratchy, like sand on paper, until Eldar took out his earpiece and walked off the set to try to arrange for help. The newscaster’s bewildered face seemed to capture a bit of pause in a nation that has largely supported its military campaign and prefers not to question its course.
News reports said there had been shooting in the area of the doctor’s house before the shelling. The Israeli military had no immediate comment.
Israeli officials permitted ambulances carrying members of the doctor’s family to cross the border to a hospital.
Aboul Aish was a single father. His wife had died of cancer. He made his daughters sleep close to the walls of their home in hopes that would keep them safe if airstrikes or artillery collapsed the ceiling.
“I don’t know how this man will stand on his feet again after this tragedy,” Dr. Liat Lerner-Geya, an Israeli who worked with Aboul Aish, told the Hebrew-language news website Ynet. “He would come to Israel and sleep at friends’ houses for three nights. Even though he had all the necessary permits, they always gave him trouble at the crossings. But he believed there should be coexistence and practiced this in his work.”
After the newscast, Eldar met with reporters. He said the doctor told him that evening “that since his wife’s passing, the girls had been his entire life. He said his eldest daughter wanted to study at Haifa University. Just today another one of his daughters had told him she had gotten her period. ‘In the middle of a war you get your period. You are a woman now.’ ”
She and her sisters are dead. The news spread across Israel’s websites; the video of the doctor’s broadcast quickly made it to YouTube.
Eldar said of Aboul Aish: “It is simply surreal. He is part of this place yet not of it, belonging and not belonging.”
Even so, across Israel the doctor’s anguished voice kept playing over and over.
jeffrey.fleishman@latimes.com Sobelman works in The Times’ Jerusalem Bureau.
Photo from BBC News, Gaza, Early January 2009, via Warren:
