Tag: darling thomas

a verb’s action noun

Trucks like monoliths, grumbling gods to some sort of travel plan, the kind of yellow covered maps you only buy in gas stations. Row upon row, headlights as big as our heads, snow gritty with gravel, running to skid on the ice, arms silently flung out for balance like sweatershirt wings. We walked through them transformed from adults into children by sheer scale. Machines built by hands like ours, but unimaginable as only a collection of parts, a warehouse of nuts, bolts, and aluminium siding. Machines that growled, spit smoke, carried worlds in their bellies and dwarfed us, our chilled faces, our frozen laughter. The way I wanted to kiss him there, between the vehicles, between history, but didn’t.

Crunching white footprints leading back to the hotel and I still wouldn’t do up my coat.

My trip to Alberta was like a trip to Canada, too. It felt like time travel. Vancouver is warm winters, high heels in December, ocean sunsets, miniature dogs, Kitsilano graphic designer vegetarians with tans, fake nails, and eight word coffee orders. Twenty four hour internet cafes lined with serious young men with short hair, Mac laptops, and Clark Kent glasses, planning on working in video games, dreaming of going to Japan.

I’ve been anti-social since returning, picking my company with exquisite care, unwilling to give up my time away. My trip spoiled me with inspiration, with company, with care. The people I went to see put me back on my feet, lifted me from myself and gave me new direction. As we drove to the airport, he held my hand, and I gave him directions that included I was pretty. I worry that if I give myself back to Vancouver, I will lose the complex taste of these memories, that they will flatten and take with them that precious ice edge of rediscovery that we so sweetly forged together. The cloud machines, the black sticks of prairie fire licking the sky. How terrible to fade, to disintegrate like a chalk-drawing photograph left out in the rain.

delicious

In Finnish, “onni” means “luck”.

I think of them in metaphor. Black doves, shape changers, the old stories of Prometheus. I lick my writing from the taste of their skin, my words from the twists in their gestures. By the woods of our correspondence, a river flows. From the shape of their hands, I can place every single one against my fingers, the places I truly call home, and leaf through our fingertips touching. Encapsulated interaction, catalogued small details that I can carry later. Preferences. Coffee, cigarettes, tea.

“Here.”
“What’s this?”
“That’s a hundred dollars to cover a taxi to get you into town and back.”
“What? That’s too much. I can’t take that. You know most men give flowers or chocolate or, like, earrings.”
“Well, I’m giving you money.”
“You tawdry American. You’re just buying off the guilt of leaving me.”
“If I give you another hundred, will you just get the abortion and promise never to talk to me again?”
“It only costs fifty here in Canada, but I’ll take the other fifty as a promise never to send you bronzed booties. Is that what they’re called? Those little knitted baby shoes?”
“Yes.”

They are the second generation warfare of my inspiration, prodigies, a reason to ‘take my shoes off and throw them in the lake’, the impetus I require to create, to claim the word artist as my own. Without these black and ivory dreamers, I have no focus, no lens to collect light into fire. That high holy spark. The currency of competition. Engendering wonder by twisting the world into a better configuration. The etymology of the word awesome, a sacred dread mixed with veneration, an education in love.

In Japanese, “oni” means “demon”.

the first time we’ve seen each other since (b. said to write, so I write)

My nervous heart clenched into a tight fist. I knew going in, but oh, to be there, to see, to hear – there is no preparation. I could belong to this creature, I could lay down everything I am, (again), how terrifying, intimidating, how one hundred percent expected. And so, it clenched, it tightened, it stung and palpitated and, always faithful and willing, fled my chest to glow in my hands with lost promises, fingers of memories that were reaching out, forward and back, (too late), to take his in hello. He was an uncompromising hit of oxygen. The heart is created of four chambers, two on the right receive depleted blood and push it to the lungs, two on the left receive rich blood and push it to the body. Mine, to keep from being damaged, attacked, stolen, (too late), or injured, had crippled itself, had preventively rearranged the compartments. I had not forgotten even minutia, but had shifted in self defense, as one may shift weight to protect their balance in a fight. A quiet decision, made of dread, the transfer of a holy name, (a physical structure, a treasured arrangement of cells, laughter, hope), from the left to the right, like the hand he used to wear my ring. my eyes could not help but glance for it, knowing it was gone. And so it survived, infrangible, not destroyed, but starved, withheld of his presence. Sadly, achingly, denied.

Splitting from, sacrificing, those desires was one of the most difficult things I have ever done. It went against the sum of my precepts and every temptation, but not, unfortunately, necessity. I am charmed to see him again, if decidedly overwhelmed. (My powerful mess of deprived love is a dose only matched with remorse.) Thankfully, restraint is complex, and family still counts as public through one way glass.

I am still smiling randomly on the street, I am trying not to wear my memories thin


the sound of your absence
Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

It’s been discovered oral sex leads to throat cancer.

I wear a pin that carries a last kiss from a common name on the lid of my eye, around my neck coils a scarf that brought my fluttering wings back to life, my wallet is camouflage for how much I still love him, it lives in my witty black bag, the stain of two infidelities. I am armoured, the only one who can break my heart. Pieces and parts, twisting my hands in the sink, water running red, the lesson of a clothed walk through life. Things, how little of them are mine. Of course I want more, to have their voices rise with mine again, to create a rhythm of easy conversation, the happy patina of bitten tongues and worlds beyond words, but these are what I have; the way I wear my pocket watch on my wrist and cradled in the palm of my hand, my ear against the door of the sky, my permanently borrowed hat always the word No. There is no cavalry.

I leave the room, hear behind me, “she’s my brothers girlfriend.” remember to write. My surprise is mechanical. Shelter. I rest my head on his shoulder, let the flesh give substance to a ghost, and settle in.

What is passive? This is my kit, the way I wear a skirt, lipstick, stockings, the way I shift my hips against a close explosion or brace my feet when I swing to defend myself. Nothing to be scared of. The angles of these faces, lighting up on a street corner, attached sweetly to my memory, wear quietly. Composers, compositors, blocks of personal mythology, barely attached, like birds fluttering along a wire. I have never laughed so much in my life.

wish I heard his voice more often

BABIES AS WEAPONS is the most twisted thing you will see today, even if you’re a regular at ModBlog. It’s the inelegant site of XenoSapien, a man in the States who believes he is “suffering from deep feminist-culture side-effects.” I hope he never discovers gifs, as the flame motif is bad enough already. (Warning: for reasons unknown he plays inappropriate music very loudly). The front page has a pencil sketch named MyPain of a woman dressed as a stripper about to whip a prostrate man with a baby that’s still attached to her by an umbilical cord that snakes from between her legs. For added wtf, the diapered baby seems to be angrily shouting into a microphone. The entire thing gives me the quesy feeling he watches Wicker Man and touches himself on Friday nights.

  • “NASA can no longer afford the future.”
  • Plans for making a Jacob’s Ladder from readily available parts.

    Today has been full of unexpected phone calls, disco light moments, when the blare of music fades into almost silence at the exact moment you see her face. Theatre people, friends, night and day. Someone’s finally read my pen written letters, public transit edited. A long distance shout from an ex-lover, three defeated countries away, sunburned voice peeling across the lines, unexpected and welcome and a little puzzling. I love him, but why now? Little mirrors refracting light, circling in the room. Another chrome ring, pick-up-the-phone – a potential investor, in town from Memphis, surprise, someone I’ve been considering handing the project off to once I get it up on its feet and properly connected to my city. (We all know I want to leave.) I’m cancelling my plans this evening so as to see him.

    Just as a reminder: Bertolt Brecht’s Life of Galileo opens tomorrow at The Western Front. Further details here. I’m going, are you? Especially quick comments have a chance at a comp.

    • sorry I’m only thinking out loud

    There’s a black silhouette engraved in the corner of my screen I find as comforting as a cigarette always seems to be (looking from the outside in). He drinks coffee and talks with his hands almost savage enough I might pick out words. I’m working on the pictures I took at the Cultch for Shane. Some of them burn with light, some of them are too blurry to use, but there’s not one bad picture in the lot. I’m a little proud and yet it’s anticlimactic. They’re everything I expected them to be. Everyone kept mistaking me for a reporter.

    BomChickaWahwah.

    It’s snowing again. Two days now of brittle sunlight and these flakes floating down like the ashes of someone’s favourite million page book. It makes me want to find a vast pale room with a giant skylight and a hardwood floor and lie in the middle of it with grand orchestral pop music on, just staring up into the sky.

    Return of the Son of Monster Magnet


    picture by Lung Liu.

    Well, fine, doom us all, you petulant country, you. You’re not very original.

    Quote of the Day goes to my good friend Ian. He says: “Oy. Geek boys going after you is like a guy with one week of martial arts classes under his belt going to a bar and looking for the hugest guy in there. And then pissing in his shoes.” Ian’s known me a long time.

    Today at work I was reading Carl Sagan and a collection of re-contextualized post-modern fairy-tales. Possibly, I need to get out more. More likely, I need to figure out which of these books are mine and which are borrowed and from where.

    Terence McKenna’s library was just destroyed in a fire.

    He had been a well-lathed challenge, a good time waiting to be had. She didn’t know about the long drive, about the night. In her astonished stride, motivations were uneasy, rote, at war. She said, like kicking a small cat in the ribs, “I’ll wait if I have to.” Almost instinctively, he had flinched and reached for her body.

    “Why does the wolf care,” she asked, “for your voice?” She sat alone in a wooden room, a crumpled red cloak a metaphor at her feet. Her tongue flickered when she spoke. The floor was littered with spices; sugar, cloves, and cinnamon. She had prepared a bed of leaves, flowers, pine-needles and double-starched sheets, her smile as lemon pie. Streaked across the ceiling was a moment suspended in time, static clouds she had painted in gold. Anxious, she spoke to herself again, “It’s only a story.” She remembers how his fur had felt in the taxi. Like the forest, she is barefoot, in a soft and fragile state of grace.

    Blood and beauty. “Fill his belly full of stones. Cut open his belly and fill it with memories, reasons, excuses, stones. Wear his skin. The old formula – remember to breathe.” His teeth retracted, his eyes closed, their mouths had opened, they had kissed. Almost ceremonially, she had taken off her clothes, undone his belt. Wood fell under the axe of her tongue.

    Alone now, she remembers how his fur felt in the taxi, and waits.

    Happy Chinese New Year, everyone. Gong Xi Fa Cai.


    danger
    Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

    I got a bright rush out from a poster I saw on my way to work today: George Clinton with Parliament, March 4th at Plush. I stopped and immediately scribbled the details on my wrist. (“If anyone gets funked up, it’s gonna be you“). Is anyone else excited about this? I’ve been a burning square the last few months, I need to get out and boogie. Tickets are a terrifying $60, but if it’s anything as catchy as the Afrikaa Bombaataa last year, it’ll be worth it. (I danced through my favourite pin-stripe fishnet stockings at that concert.)

    —

    It’s like he was made to be played on the piano, his body all black key self confidence and gentle pale ideals, a skeptic caught in the violent wake of an irrefutable miracle. I liked him on sight. His dreaming mouth, too busy to notice me, giving smart voice to idiosyncratic creatures of feigned precision, reminded me of an unconscious Rembrandt. I rolled up my mental shirtsleeves and tried to think of other things. Six thoughts at once, I decided, and found five easily to replace him – until he looked up and met my eyes. They were the colour of a favourite song of hard-earned nostalgia or an elegant walking stick from another age, polished from two generations of impeccably gloved hands.

    Too stubborn to look away, trapped by the pure audacious mechanics of competition, I was suddenly too close to a vanishing point to get proper perspective. Lines were being drawn around me, inked with subsumed intention, in the shape of a conversation with conspicuously missing words. Unbidden, I imagined the mark of his teeth on my neck and our bodies together like Tristan’s handmade boat, rocking soundly through a storm wherever next we encountered a flat surface. The ghost of my faith shook in its sheets, unable to consolidate this encounter with its bitter heart. We crossed the space between us in an indecent freefall, threading through the crowd suddenly as insubstantial as clouds, as charming as grocery shopping alone.
    —

    (Just as an aside, baby-ballerinas are possibly the most doll-like human beings I have ever encountered outside of a fetish club.)

    books for sale

    the scent of your pretty black hair


    Jhayne, by Andrew Dimitt
    Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

    haiku for ___:
    he reminded me
    of the twitchy tip of a
    purring cat’s tail

    Paula came over yesterday and helped me begin sorting my things. Now everything’s a precarious mess, there’s paper piled on every surface, slippery memories tangled underfoot, stacked CD’s of old music, and violently coloured stuffed cats curled up to calligraphy kits next to antique instruments and gold framed mirrors. To orate the list would make for a glorious message on an answering machine, much in the style of a baroque-gypsy version of the semi-infamous monologue from Trainspotting:

    The truth is that I’m a bad person. But, that’s gonna change – I’m going to change. This is the last of that sort of thing. Now I’m cleaning up and I’m moving on, going straight and choosing life. I’m looking forward to it already. I’m gonna be just like you. The job, the family, the fucking big television. The washing machine, the car, the compact disc and electric tin opener, good health, low cholesterol, dental insurance, mortgage, starter home, leisure wear, luggage, three piece suite, DIY, game shows, junk food, children, walks in the park, nine to five, good at golf, washing the car, choice of sweaters, family Christmas, indexed pension, tax exemption clearing gutters, getting by, looking ahead, the day you die.

    Now that Wayne and I have picked up boxes, things have been going quicker. It’s beginning to make sense outside of my head. Already the detritus of my life is beginning to classify. Speculations correspond with a basic duality: Things I Appreciate / Things I Will Never Miss.

    books for sale

    leaving without a conventional expression used at parting

    Poetic Justice found in the trailer section of the imdb page for Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life.


    Landscape on skin, by Huang Yan, from the East Link Gallery, Shanghai.

    Robson street, Vancouver’s brand-name straight-line shopping district. Peace as body lotion instead of solution, sold for fifty bucks a bottle behind white walls and vast plate windows, images torn from magazines that cost more than a meal. Thick with logo stamped angels, tight strappy sandals and tight strappy jeans, wide retail smiles and cocaine-bright children surgically attached to thin cell phones and even smaller hand-bag dogs, this is not my neighbourhood. Barefoot, I can feel the concrete but don’t feel connected. “Can’t buy me love, everybody tells me so.” Looking for nothing in particular, I stop for breakfast.

    My dyed hair is a flag, marking my place in line. I look for my reflection in the black marble facade in front of me and find nothing but the eyes of red haired chef making crepes. On reflex I wink at him, but my thoughts are elsewhere, threading from the apparent cure for cancer just found in Alberta to the neuro-chemical reactions that trigger love; dopamine, serotonin, vasopressin. Triggered by the sad knowledge that I’ve likely burned out all the neurotransmitters that are part of the brain’s built-in reward system, I order my memorized taste of a perfect oxytocin kiss – strawberries, lemon juice, and sugar.

    It works. Instant flash of a cold stone floor, the second hand taste of wine, cigarettes, a forged key to my weakness, waking with tousled black hair and my favourite voices. Music sent back and forth to finally meet in an airport, meet in a stairway, on the street, the lights strung up above the bed from before Persepolis abandoned me back. Why do they always have dark hair? I never noticed until just now. Curls. Temples going to silver, little places for me to kiss.

    By the time I reach the bus-stop, I’m already talking to strangers and figuring out who to contact to prepare my house as efficiently as possible. My roommate, Sasha and I are on the same page. Out as soon as we can without leaving the other in the lurch. He’s going to be moving in with Mel, I’m still uncertain where I’ll end up. I need a staging ground for our last shot at the theatre before I finally give up, fold house, and leave town. Mihi cura futuri.

    Akira Kurosawa‘s Rashomon has fallen into public domain and is now available on Internet Archive and Google video.