I woke up this morning like a murder victim, posed and cunningly placed to display the blooms of blood to the best advantage. I woke tired and I woke too early. Five:thirty the clock said, and how I wished it had lied. In the mirror I looked like a fashion disaster, some high couteur model with an ill chosen penchant for ice-cream, my make-up shimmering and flecked with sleep.
I haven’t been home lately, not at all. My room is so messy that the right kind of doctor could look in and see a disaster ground zero for the terminally depressed. Saturday was Illuminaires, something I still want to talk about but haven’t had the chance, as Sunday was the day my computer caught fire. Monday was Korean Movie Night, an evening where the last people always leave at one o’clock, and Tuesday was an evening in with Nocole and my mother. We talked about relationships, three weary women of differing generations and differing points of view. We found something in common though. All three of us are alone.
Wednesday was the first night of the Symphony of Fire, the Celebration of Light it’s called now. Navi and I were running late, having been in the forest out in Langley, our naked flesh being eaten alive by the whining wildlife. Also, we were attacked by an owl. That sort of thing tends to slow down city folk and traffic was bad, so when we arrived the show had already begun. Through the crowd we forded, finding the path and as we ran, we could look out over the thousands of dark heads and see the barge rocking with sound concussions underneath giant blossoms of flame. It was beautiful, as it always is, and our friends were where they said they would be, which is a new thing and practically a miracle. After the music crescendo, I stood in the water and stared at the ocean, watching the city reflected on the waves. My arms wrapped around me, I don’t know what I felt. I feel it now, but it’s a hollow thing. My thoughts were on the horizon, on how black the water was, how I couldn’t see my feet or the sun. I looked out and farther out, thinking, “there is light there, over that line, and how I need to see it.”