Author: foxtongue

a long, long list that I continually add to

The Primer
by Christina Davis

She said, I love you.

He said, Nothing.

(As if there were just one
of each word and the one
who used it, used it up).

In the history of language
the first obscenity was silence.

  • An ASL interpretation of Crazy, by Gnarls Barkly
  • An ASL interpretation of F*ck You, by Cee Lo.

    My lover’s been whisked away this weekend, tossed without warning onto a late-night flight. I was going to head down to Chinatown today for the New Year’s parade but, in the light of this very sudden change of plans, I decided to stay in and finally print out my finished tax paperwork instead. Maybe attack some of my often neglected German lessons or my backlog of programming tutorials, too. Do laundry. Productivity in solidarity! Jah. Der junge ist in einem flugzeug. Das mädchen wartet mit liebe in ihrem herzen.

    Also on the to-do list: hang the aluminum deer head, sift through the last three two mess boxes, get printer ink, print tax forms, make a packet of them and mail them off, polish the silver tea-cups, update the minimalfox blog, sort the mending, do some mending, bathe the cats, clean out the hall closet, list more things for sale, finish David’s laundry, fold the towels, research nifty stops for April’s roadtrip, find a SATA case enclosure, apply for another First Aid certificate, patch the wall, fix the coat rack, get signed up for Quest, take the returnables to the recycling center, measure art for framing, find suitable picture frames, write a poem and a love letter, track down An Idiot Abroad, deliver books to Jenn, rediscover my recipe for cake-inna-cup, bleach the shower curtain, harass Young Drivers of Canada, arrange for more driving lessons, rewrite my CV, update A Thread of Grace, identify what’s in the mystery cord drawer, go swimming, soak in a hot tub, fiddle with foxtongue.com, replace duvet, help clean mum’s house, empty and sand the bureau, check my contacts prescription, acquire contacts, replace the VHS, find out the shipping costs for the IKEA flooring, take the medium format film to The Lab to be processed, attempt ice-skating, sort the linens, attack under the bathroom sink, take vitamins, rearrange what’s on the living-room walls, properly group my data, find the paperclips, back up the laptop, shed a light into the shadows of my heart, lime powder my boots, re-glue the soles, find a home for the electric pussy-willow, paint the baroque frame in my bedroom, replace my bike chain, get a spindle of blank DVDs, tidy the pigeon-holes, file and folder paperwork by year, update Craigslist postings, catch up on photo processing, attend a poetry slam, reply to neglected letters, change the sheets, bake cookies, listen to more Vampire Weekend, put all my change into a penny jar, replace a hook on a bra, try to track down silver-notebook, have a snuggly date night, collect my mail from Seattle, take more pictures of my friends, untangle my computer cable spaghetti, make some media mix-tapes, schedule a Sunday Tea…

    • don’t put this letter in the pocket near your heart

    “Some people reflect light, some deflect it, you by some miracle, seem to collect it.” —House of Leaves

    Though set lovingly adrift in a cotton sea of comfortable bedsheets, in the best of all possible company, I didn’t sleep enough last night. To my disgrace, I took Arron along with me, waking him as I tried to creep out of bed, the better to pace outside, dressed in rain, and walk out my stress, the painful squeeze in my chest. We spoke in the dark until the attic of morning, that interstitial breath of night which claims “too early” as well as “too late”. (Stars not quite beginning to fade.) Today I’m left feeling as if I’ve worn out something essential, like the catch to the spring that lives inside my ribs, as well as incredibly grateful.

    Southern States Road Trip

    Hey everyone, I need to know if you live in or in between Orlando and New Orleans, so I can come visit!

    I’m flying out of Seattle on April 13th to Orlando, where I’ll be meeting up with a TOP SEKRIT FREINDZOR, and from there we’re spending almost two weeks in the Southern States, driving from Orlando to New Orleans and back, with stops in Charleston, Savannah, and Montgomery, with everything else being flexible. (I fly back April 26th.) Considering we’ve never met, and I’ve never been any of these places, I expect this is going to be a very interesting trip.

    a crow carrying pearls

    365:2011.01.30 - Once upon a time there was a girl who composed love letters inside her head as she was falling asleep

    “The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances; if there is any reaction, both are transformed.” -Carl Jung

    Once upon a time there was a girl who composed love letters inside her head as she was falling asleep, words in white against the darkness in her lids. She would lie and listen to his breathing, wondering what would be important later, wondering at the odds. In her hands, his, fingers laced, his death-grip a silent promise. She would kiss him goodnight, the angles of his body in the dark the same shape as the word home, while in the center of her body a garden of tightly wrapped desert flowers began to find purchase, patiently waiting for the right conditions to finally flourish into bloom.

    -::-

    I’ve been enjoying being more social lately. Jay came over earlier this week, as well as Joshua, Nadia, and Brian, and though I haven’t been spending as much time with Arron as I would like, we’ve been speaking every day, which is it’s own sort of treat, as it makes me warm to hear how I make him smile. It’s good to be rebuilding, seeing people who shake me out of habit, remind me that there is more to the world than looking for work.

    Today I’m living off oranges, peeling them with chipped silver fingernails, satisfied to be curled up in bed with my laptop with no plans at all except for job hunting and a driving lesson later, though tomorrow I will venture outside. I will dress up my smile, put feathers in my hair, and walk over to The Prophouse Cafe, the highly eccentric coffee shop on Venebles across from Uprising Breads, and settle in for Shadow On The Land, a beautiful evening of music and enchantment, the listening party for Jess Hill‘s darling new album-to-be, Orchard. Mind of a Snail will be performing, too, with everything kicking off at 8 pm.

    the bureaucratic phenomenon of the baby ministry

    Wow! The Ministry of Social Engineering medical adjudicator has approved my application for baby benefits, much, much faster than anticipated! Apparently Parliament just passed a bill giving precedence to the development of registered parent lists to combat the grim business reality of an alarmingly low birth rate, even while giving a lot of lip on TV to synthetics, rejuvenetics, and “aging gracefully” to avert the financial crisis. (I hate those posters, don’t you? Always at the bus-stop, next to all the other ads targeted at poor people.) This is all so unreal, like I’ve fallen down a rabbit hole. Never in my life has the government ever been so helpful! They’ve even given me a chit to register with a far more luxurious creche than my income bracket would allow, because of my high test scores and because I’m such prime birthing age.

    Next step: asking the new partner how he feels about the whole thing.

    Fertility drops 20 percent after 30.

    No matter what the politicians in Ottawa say about population control, I’ve decided I’m going to be a mother. We might be past peak oil, our air poisoned, our water even worse, but my biological clock is ticking, louder every heaving, lonely night, and more insistent with every passing day, leaving me shaking with desire for a baby like a leaf in a heavy wind. So I don’t care if I have to live on the other side of the border fence, I’ve already signed up for the fertility testing and registered with the district as a potential partner-parent, available for insemination, contingent on mutual RBT-H:D results. Wish me luck!

    anything to make that smile

  • An acoustic cover of Home, by Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeros, by Jorge & Alexa Narvaez.

    He calls, soft, exhaustion laced, considerate, concerned. I recite, trying to remember the swirling words of the story as I find the book, flip pages to the story, “Here is the story of Mignon as I remember having read it in a famous old book.” Somewhere in my day there was news about travel, about death, difficult to process, the sort that kicks in both the head and the heart. “A young man named Wilhelm was staying at an inn in the city. One day as he was going upstairs, he met a little girl coming down.” He is driving, the sound of the city sliding by the windows, an echo of tires and commuters tinted brake-light red. I can picture him if I concentrate, the tilt of his head, the way his hand rests on the wheel, pale eyes on the road, even while in the center of my self, I refuse to believe in our structure. I hate how something so small can keep me alive. “He would have taken her for a boy, if it had not been for the long curls of black hair wound about her head.” I listen to what’s between our conversation, shoes crunching across gravel that I’ve walked across silently in bare, frozen feet, when he sits to undo his laces, the shuffling of a coat being removed and left on a rack. Habits beginning to be memorized, the shape of how he moves through space, the way he signs his name. “As she ran by, he caught her in his arms and asked her to whom she belonged. He felt sure she must be one of the rope dancers who had just come to the inn.” All of this comforting, a little bit effortless, a narrative that smooths like water over stone. I skim through the book, my favourite story on the very last page, and do my best to quietly read, warm as feathers, sharing solace over the phone. “She gave him a sharp, dark look, slipped out of his arms, and ran away without speaking.”