Winter creeping back in, as if it forgot something in the front hall. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out. Our card keys not working two nights in a row. Black suitcases, brocade. He bought me a corset, he did, my heart glowed. It blazed from my chest, a red light to guide the blind, but it didn’t fit. They’re tricky things, all boning and busk, slim lines and I’m ten inches too wide, too thin, too shaped already. An hour and a half at the shop for them to take it back. An hour glass slumped in an old diner on Davie st. falling asleep on a shoulder, yawning wide, teeth shiny like the chrome lining the tables. Formica, red seats, milkshakes, it’s been here forever. Everything already ten years old. This place, these people. I never told you his name. Words flashing by, sparking sweet recognition, laughter. Clouds, muslin, always, always writing about the sky. His brown eyes. I am a gosling, torn. I can feel my heart like a light, blazing, bright, and happy. Inside my chest is thin starshine, the dust we are made of, picture perfect, luminous, shining, only imagined. Plastic bags of yesterday’s dinner, breakfast. It blazes, burning my skin. Stopping in to buy more cigarettes, more prophylactics. Two boxes and one. Our gratitude no less than our compassion. It’s the best shopping list. On the magazine cover 10 THINGS HE CRAVES IN BED. Denied. Trees sway when we laugh, damp with warm Vancouver rain. Nick is down the street, waiting, walking. I recognize his stride, his big black coat flapping. Spring steel, dark with light purple, Valentines, Elizabethan, so my middle name. We shared a taxi up to Broadway before I tried it on. The mirror lied. Construction zone jack hammering on a Sunday morning.
Opening envelopes, my house slowly being buried, neglected, unseen. A bracelet, a pair of earrings, a card, two stories, my name. Green, green, so messily written, so charmingly crafted, a treasure trove. My name. It’s official and legal and I already tore the paper pulling it from the envelope. My birthday present from last year. My Name. I turn to him in bed to say I don’t like how if movies were true, all men would have a father complex. Suicide, murder, be proud of me pops. Gonna be a soldier, gonna take down the man, fight for my country, stand up and be counted as another worn hero, broken bones and shallow dialogue. Don’t like it, don’t want it, don’t have to have it, but here, I insist. Paperwork, with years, with spelling, I erased my parents. Created only my mother, mouse haired, we don’t look alike, to have and to hold, to protect and cherish and yet my last name is mine. Always will be until I can pass it on, give it over, give it away. here, a present. My name. Amazing what spelling can change. Two letters and already I am disconnected from my family. A million cousins, a thousand brothers, stories from farther away than outer space. Sicilian mob bosses, gypsy queens, grandfathers wandering the wars. When she was rescued, she was told she couldn’t eat more than a single slice of bread. Everyone who tried to carry gold was shot crossing the river. Vanished now. Wiped away. My name is mine. These are my hands, capable, but unattached.
The second attempt fit better, a satin shell. It creaks like a ship. Sailing, the sweep of hip, memories of leaning out to catch water in my hand, so blue in my head it looks like the sky had drowned there like we can’t breathe, like we clip our fingers together above his head. No one in the world could echo in such slow motion. Sailing, one of those strange skills. We’re full of tricks. Destruction and beauty, everywhere I swerve, he is straight. Never before have I been so aware of the word flesh, his lack of it. Sticks and stones, my body the anchor, softer, heavier, more capable of balance. I carry him. We are a Waterhouse painting. Idiosyncratic, aberration, he calls me improbable. He tells me I am to die by vanishing in a puff of logic. The pattern of our presents drips off my tongue, the hollow of a thought, the success of clear thinking. The girl at the shop had a tattoo of a heart beaten full of nails, she stays open an hour after close, as he peers in, asks questions. We burn my back tightening the cord. This was my place. Walls lined synthetic pink, soft jelly plastic, PVC on hooks, cheap zippers, bright wigs. Bones. Glad to be gone. Trapped, caught, tying me into another one. Too long, too short, nothing’s just right, velvet, no velvet, we’re on a time-line. He leaves on a plane. Flies away. Don’t let your arms get tired, we’ve got one on the counter, spread like wings, untying, tying, these things take time, grace. Our impatience crawls. His hair like feathers, it’s just a little wind. Outside, we won, satisfied. He flings his cigarette into the street, it arcs, splashes sparks, any minute now, he’s gone.
Personal mythology, the bits and pieces, trapped in amber, rising like liquid. It’s a battle against clocks ticking, this emotional arsenal, holding his hand on the way to work in the morning. Every day back to my life, the shadow of a girl filled in with colours, traced on paper and brought back to life. The crown of my head, a picture on the screen. Smiles that cover my eyes, the lines defining how we fade into one expression from another. The shutter flickers and I keep another breath. It’s important, lining, tracing the slow blast radiating out from his chest, quiet, mine. Safe from sun, safe from dissolution, memory, considerations falling apart. This place, this locket we make of fingers he wears in his sleep, my hand as a bracelet, safe. The unfamiliar feeling. Kind desires bubble under my skin like blood crawling under dew, breaking our bodies into confusion, stroking mythical bees over my shoulders and belly, cool and soft as a swarm of blossoms. Clear, particular, apparently we’re dangerous, wicked spirits, too welcoming. We don’t follow the instructions printed on the box. Housekeeping must hate us. In a way I am writing a eulogy, dramatic music, a canvas of kind words that might glitter the way I see us, might explain what has happened, how ten years out of date, out of synch, our cities matched up, found their names. We’re reflections on still water, a moving knot of stories, my faith restored, an inhuman sound, this comfortable glide from one moment to the next. The last time a long time, five years, seven, we’re moving cities, changing places. Our friend’s wife, she doesn’t understand how much is unspoken. We’re too easy, too familiar, it’s the greatest thing, his leaning over to brush my hair with something clever, sarcastic. We laugh, electric, the three of us, shutting her to the side. We are a postcard. I keep this. It feels important, this odd situation, necessary to get it precisely correct.
This is a pleasure, healed, to be human, flawed, merciless, and embraced. His voice, memorized, I can pull it from air to read my books for me. Inflection perfect, the tilted angle of his head, so fragile, the secret heart of bravery. Experimenting, an inadvertent witness, it changes how I move. There are seams in the edits, wafting hints of his cologne, indications, evidence, digital pictures, him on a beach somewhere in Calfornia, another on a red carpet, the opening of his film. A collection I am creating. Out in the world are wonders, full of third and fourth chances, ocean backdrops, doors opening, alarm clocks in the morning, sunsets, inspirations dramatic and banal. Whispered stories of light and wind, architecture, as escape from sick green glass, the scratchy hotel towels. We are subtle, traveling on each others clothing, creating lines and sine waves on the side of shower walls, not a future, but a conjunction of trust. We are concatenated, tied from every side, unlikely and appropriate, suddenly dead centre. Stories made of endless threads pulling in every direction, the way he looks at me, how I am distracted by the shape of his thinking. Dinner with different friends every night, angles of incidents, who did what, tighter, charming and expressive, radiant. Rock solid truth.At the airport, sunlight, security. We smile. Quickly, have a bad habit. I live in L.A. That will do. Hug. Hold. Our pictures are few, hopeful and happy. We kiss.
Every journey should be so well lit. (Welcome home).
Tag: angeles
aaand, he’s just walked in. I am the luckiest thing on two legs in all of Vancouver.
I did not get to go to Regina Spektor last night, due to a serious of misfortunate moments of Drama ™ where I should have let off trying to respect someones apparent Sudden Dislike For My Company and beat them up-side the head with my presence anyway. Lesson learned. Next time I will be more callous. Yes, I am un-thrilled. Apparently it was a very, very good concert.
However, I was shown off last night and that was wonderful. It balanced out my hot disappointment rather well. We gathered people at the Jupiter Cafe, had a politician buy our drinks, then went to True Confections with Aeon and his wife. We went to bed exhausted, amused, and well. Apparently, when we are tired, we are hilarious. As such, we are clever all the time.
Today I am nervous, as the boy took my measurements when I was distracted and sleepy and seems to be making corset-shaped noises. As he’s ten years out of practise with this city, I’m feeling fairly safe with whatever he’s actually doing. It’s not like he can get very far, she says to herself, doubting.
It occurred to me this morning that we have been co-habitating since, essentially, April 1st. I wonder if I will remember that in a year, the most comfortable joke I have ever encountered in my small life. His apartment was an odd compartment, the hotel feels more temporary, somehow increasingly realistic. Our toothbrushes cradle.
Winter is over, the streets are coated in pink flower petals as if the sidewalk was about to be married our shoes, and the clouds are taking on the consistency of still life paintings from places more interesting and decidedly more Italian. Construction continues everywhere, it is still possible to count cranes like a trail of shooting stars, but somehow, I begin to hope in two generations, what is above water in Vancouver will be a fascinating place to live.
(LJ now lets you embed anything, as long as you wrap pointy-bracket lj-embed pointy-bracket around the embed or object tag.)
things I wanted to do to you
I like tickling people older than me. My heart feels a predatory thrill, as if when they buck, flush, and curl up in laughter, they transform into a glowing universe wracked by seizures, but only six years old. It somehow evens the balance to have a glimpse into Them As Children, from before they ever knew about sex or even thought of themselves as people, let alone adults, people living ten or twenty years ahead of me.
Tomorrow, like today, I will be on set.
like hearts swelling
Betty Hutton, once the favourite doll of Hollywood.
Transparent as sound, we are pieces of the human engine out of old mythology, pet children decanted from bottles of blood. After the boy is blown from this city, I will stand alone by the side of the road, and even if he does not look back before walking through the gate, my legs will continue to hold me up, I will continue to breathe.
That was always the worst lesson, that I will remain alive in my chemicals, wrapped in nerve endings, a collective rumbling of infintismals, (creaks, exhalations, needs), no matter how much my offerings to the gates have been smashed. The modern world is very bad at silence – cities do not hold their breath except in the moment before a bomb falls – but there are occasionally words I feel I should almost kneel to speak.
I’d like to say our first kiss was a special thing, a low slung howl of discovery, but it’s never been like that. That road’s been washed out, (if there was ever order there), replaced by brittle grass made straw in the sun, such-a-shame at-so-young-an-age blame-yet-another-hotel-room-romance damn-those-older-men. I almost don’t care anymore. Instead I count first glances, first realizations, that pause between what I know now and what I knew then. What is more important? The date we met or the amperage of comfortable electricity that ran through my fingers the first time I touched the middle of his back with bare skin?
The proud cities I have built with people, some of them are still standing, giant proud machines of words that circle the globe like air currents of what colour my hair, how long this correspondence, I had a show, they had a child, no, yes, you can’t come visit now. We are stories, novels, little threads in vast pleasing shapes. None of my relationships have been film-noir construction kits. We meet in cynical places badly lit, smoke cigarettes we take from small cases. This is just another connection, another spirit made flesh in the network. All we’re missing is the small confession of where we were the morning of September 11th, year 2001.
This morning he was beautiful, a misplaced dream left over from 1985. Sitting on the bed to put on his boots like having Lost Boys on the record player; leather jacket, long hair, I used to clean my saddest house to that soundtrack album. No one wears slimmer dark blue jeans. In my head, “I like my body when it is with your body” and the memory of his eyes flickering from mine to my hands on my stockings like they do under his lids when he’s dreaming, conversation not missing a beat. This is our generation gap, that I can write this here, display my day, my meaning, my worth. I grew up here, on-line. He didn’t.
I can barely believe how much I still want to go back to L.A.
One of these days, I’m going to have to learn to find a home.
(We are the resin)
Piece of Berlin Wall removed in secret government raid.
We moved house today. This consisted of trying to sleep in and failing, folding endless black t-shirts, murderously cramming three months into one suitcase, trying not to break anything, and finally giving up the bathroom for lost. When we were done, the suitcase weighed more than him. Not a difficult proposition to be sure, but amusing. Today was my first glimpse of what he’ll be like at the airport in a week. Only a week. Already, a firmly planted seed of grief.
The new room is up Cambie street at 12th, dead centre of The Snarl like a hotel patient zero. The only Pros: I have a key, the beds are comfortable and across the street, City Hall looks like a toy.
Billboard ban in São Paulo angers advertisers. from jwz
The law is “a rare victory of the public interest over private, of order over disorder, aesthetics over ugliness, of cleanliness over trash,” Roberto Pompeu de Toledo, a columnist and author of a history of São Paulo, wrote in the weekly newsmagazine Veja. “For once in life, all that is accustomed to coming out on top in Brazil has lost.”
But advertising and business groups regard the legislation as injurious to society and an affront to their professions. They say that free expression will be inhibited, jobs will be lost and consumers will have less information on which to base purchasing decisions. They also argue that streets will be less safe at night with the loss of lighting from outdoor advertising.
“This is a radical law that damages the rules of a market economy and respect for the rule of law,” said Marcel Solimeo, chief economist of the Commercial Association of São Paulo, which has 32,000 members. “We live in a consumer society and the essence of capitalism is the availability of information about products.”
“What we are aiming for is a complete change of culture,” said Roberto Tripoli, president of the City Council and one of the main sponsors of the legislation. “Yes, some people are going to have to pay a price. But things were out of hand and the population has made it clear it wants this.”
We were going to have this here, when COPE was in charge. “Billboard free in five years.” It never happened.
I don’t know if I should write when I’m this tired : 11pm & I still need breakfast
My PRO Flickr account expires this month on Wednesday, April 18.
Acid:
Exhaustion drops him into my lap after work like a fantasy from my most feminine of secret hearts. Even in such tired disarray, he’s baroque jazz music – eyes drawn shut – every meeting another delicate discovery of something else I like. (His middle name is the name of the first man I lived in love with.) I feel like Rapunzel, the way his eyes seem to light when I let down my hair. Mornings congeal upon arrival, unbearable and vulnerable, to be resisted, so we shed our trembling days like skin in the evening’s tiny gestures, the taste of a fingertip, the angle he rests his head in my lap, clever conversation’s chance miracles. Tilting windmills Myth: We seem to only see each other at night. I may never kiss another blonde again.
Tonight I am sleeping alone. Bruised velvet stockings, a black slip made of something that isn’t silk. My lipstick poorly wiped off, I dressed up too well too late. My only company is a book and a neglected free movie pass, crumpled, a bookmark instead of a date.
Base:
Fireworks only work if the wind is right. Horizons are susceptible, just another line to create the backdrop of the sky. Too high, too loud. It’s never as safe as we say it is, which is why it’s perfect. Our fishnet talk of fire led to phone-numbers, dinner, dancing. Other people do this all the time, but we’re a little out of practice. Loud eighties music, barely recognizable. The almost clinically precise shift between songs destroy the music. DJs as A.D.D. trash. Wankers popular with underage girls and not much else. He’s drinking vodka. We’re dropping the names of dead poets and talking about L.A. It was earnest, not a sly nod to the old fifties protocol of pulling out her chair, but legitimate – possibly the first time I’ve ever properly Gone Out. The only other time was an accident. Slip of the tongue, whoops, what?
The elevator is familiar, so is the art on the walls and the echoes of a previous life. No culture, but no secrets. Everything interstitial. Ready to fly away. Black t-shirts and corporate chosen furniture, everything laid out; change on the table, (a boy affectation I’ve recently started doing myself), and too many dirty cups. Instantly recognizable, like the lyrics to a song you liked as a child, I feel I’ve stepped off a cliff only to be caught by a feather bed. Of course, the bed is like a barely padded brick. The couch, however, is another story entirely. One full of sensitive princesses in borrowed pink blankets and peas individually wrapped in uncoated plastic.
Salt:
“We’re getting better at this.”
A man of smooth angles, I find he’s attractive like a lullabye, something perfectly suited for the edge of sleep, almost an unfinished sketch of some living holy ikon, with dreaming lines that run invisibly off the page. It was a shock to see him in daylight, as if I expected him to dissolve like pale flowers in a heavy wind.
“Affection is as addictive as anything else on earth.”
black and white grainy fear films
The rain against the glass wall sounded like ice-sheets breaking. He found me last night in the hall, a knot of velvet resolution reading at the door. Ninth floor. I held my hand to his heart and felt as he fell asleep. A smile and his entire body sighed.
Ukrainian Fairy-Tale Graffiti.
There are four hundred stainless steel rods precisely equidistant in a field in a valley approximately 200 miles south of Albuquerque in New Mexico. You are not allowed to take pictures. In July and August, the cost to visit is $250 per person. Reservations must be made through written correspondence and you may only reserve one night only. The delineated space of these four hundred rods is a grid exactly a mile long and a kilometre wide. They were placed there by a man named Walter De Maria. They are lightning rods. That is their purpose, their conversation, their drop-dead-gorgeous meaning, to call down the gods. The Lightning Field is available for visiting from May 1 through October 31, seven days a week. I have never been, but I am still in love.
“Tyger, Tyger, burning bright.”
The most terrifying thing I have learned this week is that bees are disappearing. The worker bees are leaving the hives and never returning, and without them the queen and larvae aren’t cared for and the colony collapses. My belly goes cold, reading the articles. No one is finding drifts of dead bees, only that the hives are now barren. Millions of them have vanished. It feels unreal. There is a range of theories regarding the missing bees, but none with any explanation. Most presume the bees are presumably collapsing in the fields from exhaustion or becoming disoriented and dying in the cold of night, unable to find their hives again, but do not say why these guesses are likely. Researchers have given the mystery a name, presuming it’s an illness they call colony collapse disorder. I am scared, understanding only that this is a sign of a ruin far greater than the articles seem to see. Cue music, run credits. Black.
the difference between real bottles and break away glass
I like watching him hold a cigarette. Downtown shines below us, Granville street lined with tiny people, “extras in our movie,” flirtations of humanity. We’re talking about celebrity, the breath of fame that doesn’t exist anymore. People are famous for being famous, but it doesn’t last. The meta time, idol tenacity, that fresh new wonder, is gone. There will never again be a Beatlemania or a name as household as Madonna. We only have this life. Globalization washed away all of the sixties tears, leaving instead a wide wash of sand, every grain a name slipping through our fingers. Commercialized and replaced by interstitial realities, it’s all quick cuts, colour filtered music videos, shadows of elusive hard rock cocaine and a glossy ten minutes before the sad talk show circuit takes over. Media immortality has been transformed, an object of passion and fury re-made into the sort of pleasing detail you do not seem to notice until it is gone.
A ray of sunlight has thrust through the clouds to perfectly illuminate just the cherry tree outside my window. The blossoms shine pink like it was newly invented for precisely this moment. It glows, separate from the street.
My bus came early this morning, Sunday schedule, holiday. I kissed him goodbye, then ran in the other direction, stopping only to turn and watch (admire) his profile walking at twenty paces. In this quintessential Vancouver light, soft and unearthy, lacking shadows, he seemed like the scribble of a soundtrack, something kind used to emphasize the loneliness of industrial neighborhoods. I looked away, suddenly shy. Kittens were waiting, Alastair, messages at home, work. On the bus the driver liked my hair, like everyone does. Six comments a day, all this week.
The skytrain felt like a truck stop, empty and laminated, like there might be heart healthy options and too pale coffee waiting when I got off. Briefly I wondered how I would have to change my schedule to run into Troll, but the thought didn’t survive to the top of the stairs. I was too busy engraving my week into my skin, tracing conversations into my brain. A girl on the bus smiled to herself and crossed her legs, innocent but for the slight blush and a tell-tale whitening of knuckles as she looked down. I caught her eye and smiled back, confident that we shared a secret, the anonymous enjoyment of private reminiscence. Out of silence, we shared a (random) laugh. I think we felt beautiful. She said, “It’s been a long time.” I said, “It has.”
I really want there to be hot water faster
“Honest, your honor, I thought she was 16.”
Look! There’s weather today!
Antony wanted proof, locked as he is in his dark little office, too sick to go out for a cigarette, so I broke the lock on the trapdoor to the roof, took photographs and sent him a pictorial essay: on the treatise that the sky can be a blue colour in the city of Vancouver. It was deliciously warm up there, perfect for my bare feet.
Of course, since I was up there, a gray haze has been taking back the sky. I say we petition and have it thrown out.
Nicole and I are continuing Alastair‘s bathroom today. When we’re done it will be a pale ghost of butter yellow with a cheerful blue sky on the ceiling. It’s all Very! Spring! I’ll try to remember to take pictures. His shower curtain alone is worth the price of admission.
Yesterday Andrew met a man who’d never seen the ocean before. “Tourists took pictures of him, swimming fully clothed, just off the seawall.”
(Apparently it’s a holiday. Happy Guy-Onna-Stick Day).
breathe
Time is a cruel and whimsical creature. This week I’ve been barely sleeping, too busy with other things, kissing thin shadows and wrenching my system into sudden early mornings so hard I can feel my body protesting when I move, as if even walking is a strained effort for my tired muscles. Yet, oddly, I’m feeling rested for the first time in years. It’s like I’m finally feeding a deficiency I never knew was plaguing me until now.
Stephanie was writing today about how human memory works, how all positive memories are linked together, so when one is activated, they all light up. I’ve been trapped for a long time on the other side of that. After my Year Of Disaster, my positive experiences had little to link to, they felt constantly isolated. “Fleeting” was the word Steph used, and it fits, but now everything’s falling into place. My theatre project is ticking along quietly, just as it should, (though I sincerely need to take some time away from job-hunting to write some copy), my personal life is new, easy and only complicated in highly amusing ways, and rather than be simply ignored by magazines, I’m beginning to get rejection letters.
I think I’ve reached an ideal, the stable place I’ve been wanting from which to shake my life into some semblance of what I’d prefer it to be.