Tag: events

(verso) I can’t remember to forget you.

http://sevenphonecalls.org/

Devon came out of surgery fine. He’s tired and looks worn, but that’s to be expected when your innards have been slipped out of your belly and rewound, I’m sure. His intestines had twisted, kinked themselves into knots in ten different places. There’s no need to worry, he’s resiliant, recovers like I do from damage. I have a fabulous picture of him in the hospital bed, looking put upon by uncomfortable plastic tubes, holding hands with his beaming parents. I didn’t get to post it last night, unfortunately, but it will be available soon. He’s possibly not sleeping enough, but that’s so close to normal that it almost doesn’t bear mentioning. We’re a batch of night owls, we are. A coven of ridiculously interesting people who are most alive when everyone else is in bed. Dancing with blades, dancing in gruops and apart from eachother, dancing and being glad that life continues. Sneaking into hospitals at ten minutes to midnight and being turned away at the last possible moment.

Duncan’s got a livejournal.

Various people have been asking me what my plans are this week. As of yet, I really don’t know. I’d been planning on going to the Pacific Cinematheque double-bill tonight: Paul Williams hosting THE MUPPET MOVIE and PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE, followed by an After-Party at the Media Club where he’s going to play a set alongside July Fourth Toilet, (no, I don’t know who they are either), but I expect to skip the first film entirely for the sake of visiting hours. Tomorrow I may end up missing rehearsal for the sake of other things. Visiting Devon in the hospital, for example, or dropping by Bob‘s for a showing of A Tale of Two Sisters, one of my favourite movies, (just as Phantom of the Paradise is my mother’s), and finishing the cleaning of my room that’s been dragging on for something akin to a month simply because I’m never there anymore.

http://notyourusualbollocks.squarespace.com/

not what I thought I’d do



Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

Charity Larson’s put up another lovely page of Busted Wonder.

Hands like sand falling through water, a smile too of something the same. Eyes that scratch the ceiling of shyness, colour storm-skirting the edges of decency. Laughter of coffee, small movements ducking the head away. Laughter of hiding like inside a box of perfectly warped glass. Hanging a shot to dry between the lips, watching wrist to elbow, it’s recalled in an instant, the taste of soft intimacy holding hands with polished copper, the mix of colours, the white cream roses cloudily blooming in clear licorice alcohol. Lightning and thunder, the gravity hand of wind in the basement, part of later, not yet.

Pick up the gift, make the liquid vanish. Magic tricks, sleight of nothing up my sleeve. Everything will be alright. A toast to sitting here, a toast to being alive and smiling.

I joined a gamelan earlier, helped them carry heavy instruments to a waiting truck behind the Museum of Anthropology. I joined a lesbian burlesque troop the day before and scheduled the day I begin my fencing lessons.

Now Mondays are Korean Movie Night, Tuesdays are Gamelan, Wednesday will be Ghost In The Shell until we’re done, Thursday have fencing, and Fridays will be the Funk-Motown night starting March 3th at the Waldorf, (the day a group of us are going to watch NightWatch on opening night, want to come?). Suddenly I’m having to peer around corners to find time for taxidermy. Unexpected, this shift of personal physics. I feel domestic, tamed.

Here’s a trailer for Harry Kim’s still-in-progress Dave Choe documentary.

my toes went blue on the mountain

We went up the mountain this morning to watch the dawn. We sang in the car and wore my beaver fur hat. Earlier there were hot dogs, a birthday thing with different people. I brought an incense holder in the shape of a ying and yang together in gray glazed and fired clay. First, however, was Rabbit Hole Day, then work, then home. The lusciously soft plush roses, the isopropynol alcohol, the whipping chemical fire on the back porch was after the sausages came and before we stood in the rain for an hour waiting for the city to rescue strangers from an accidental deathly chasm-trap where a fence fell down on the edge of a construction site, leaving behind a two story cliff on the bare edge of a sidewalk. What a night. I feel like myself again.

arc-en-ciel

No sleep, of course, but that can wait.

I was meant to go to Seattle today, drop by the Roq La Rue, but instead I double-booked plans with a friend here and decided it would be kinder to stay. My ferret, Skatia, is looking at me, asking silently when I will come to sleep, and Michael is lightly snoring, somewhat like I imagine a child might when they want their parents to believe them asleep.

charmed, I’m sure


how old-fashioned
Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

Every day has been something new that stretches late. Dawn has been the time I put my head to the pillow for sleep, quarter past the sun has begun to come up. I’m buried in this thing then that thing. It’s good and I wonder where my phone-call is. There’s a boy in the shower and I wonder if I’m going to do anything about him. Cult of personality and we had sandwiches for breakfast at four in the afternoon because we’d been up watching Emma Thompson swan ravishingly through Much Ado About Nothing.

  • EU launches first phase of satellite navigation project.

    I breathe and the story continues. Backward, last night was Patti‘s birthday, the night before that was Tilly’s. Sitting on a ball at the Treehouse, eating green icing from a giant glass measuring cup and harmlessly flirting with old friends. Wednesday was Kareoke at the Veterans Hall, spending time with Ray alone for once and Tuesday I’m not even sure I remember, except I know I walked home from Christopher‘s place, a bedraggled leftover from Monday night Korean Movies.

    The days go back like that until the flatline day I got off the plane. It’s an obvious try to pick up the telephone and connect the wires between me and the rest of the world. It’s been so long that I feel like I’ve forgotten the number and I know that’s terribly wrong for me. Horror movie music inching under my door like a flat killer realization, that’s what that is. Walking into a basement with only a flickering flashlight, the spark-plug smashing the car window moment of let’s Split Up.

  • Retrievr is a Flickr hack that searches a database of images based on drawings instead of tags.

    The window didn’t give me light today. The city’s closed against it, our ceiling of cloud is endless. Ice-skating will be the brightest place in the past twenty-four hours. The inside of my eyes are thinking of a bed underneath a star of lights. Ask me over or come yourself. You knew where I was living before anyone yet you’ve never visited. The number’s been the same, electric tattoo easy. Consider this an invitation.

    • the spell check does not auto-correct

    Sunday night, after the excitement that is Morris Dancing, there’s going to be a small group going ice-skating at the Burnaby 8-Rinks. The plan is to meet on the Metrotown Station platform between 8 – 8:15 pm. If you miss us, take the 144 to Sprott Street. (If you’re driving, there’s a Sprott Street Exit from the highway.) I don’t know the price of things, but I suspect ten dollars would be enough to cover both skate rentals and ice-time.

    I’m carrying myself lightly. My feet are lifting slightly off the ground, though the toes are still dragging. Again, I am lifting my head and holy. Welcome to the sacred. Service begins at waking.

    Patti’s hot-tub party was relaxing, a pleasant group of people in the house I spent my Christmas in. Nick had a smaller turn-out than expected on Thursday. At least five sparkling people who had asked if I was going to go were no-shows. Silly people, they missed out on cake.

    Sociability is breathing into me. On my return, I have taken up the ropes of friendship and madness and have begun tying myself back into having some sort of family. It’s difficult, relearning all the different knots, the phone-numbers, the remembering names, the confidant stride and swing of contentment. I’ve held in these hands the strength to carry on, but it’s like the callouses are gone. Everything wears anew, roughing up aspects of myself that were all but forgotten.

    Oh yes, and TooTaLute will be playing at the Work Less Party’s showing of “Alarm Clocks Kill Dreams” on Tuesday at 8 at the Pacific Cinemateque on Howe. (Which, by the way, is showing Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance January 5-9. Excitement!)

    time to play doctor

    For those also interested in silly antique cultural events, our Vancouver Morris Dancers will be taking on weird old Plough Sunday celebrations at Grandville Island on January 8th around 12:30. These are the fellows who dress up similarly to Alex in a Clockwork Orange but with bells tied to their ankles and either bang sticks together while they skip about or wave hankies in the air like surrender flags. (For some reason, Liam, will be dressed awkwardly as a woman instead. Do not ask me why, I do not know). They’re meeting up at the Backstage Lounge, (the bar behind the Arts Club Theatre), and performing in the little stage area just west of The Net Loft, (the marketplace directly across the road from the main Island Market). Being an english thing, the dancing will be sandwiched between bouts of drinking beer, with people bringing instruments and singing after.

  • A teen girl deeply violated military security on four occasions through sheer chutzpah.


    My blog is worth $7,339.02.
    How much is your blog worth?

    In more international news, the ever-fascinating crisper has announced a “second verse, same as the first”, a reminder of our most favourite of holidays:

    In honor of the birthday of author Lewis Carroll, three weeks from today– Friday, January 27th, 2006— will be the Second Annual LiveJournal Rabbit Hole Day.

    “For one day, instead of all the usual normal stuff you would write about in the course of a day, wake up somewhere else, wake up in another time, wake up as someone different and write about a day that isn’t like any other. Fall down the rabbit hole for 24 hours and see what you find. Those who did it last year were, I think, quite pleased that they did!

    ——
    For consideration: mark on calendar, tell a friend, etc. etc.”

    I took part in this event last year and it was deeply satisfying to log in and find creative chaos, no matter how far in any direction I surfed through my friends. I implore everyone to plan for this, (tag it with RABBIT HOLE DAY), and pass it on as best you can. We’ve got three weeks to collect as many writers as we can, the goal’s to infect as much of our lists as possible, and I’m certain we can do this. We have a fantastic network, really. It’s as good a time as any to prove it. Ready, set, go.

    • I can’t see the logistics, but I don’t care what’s in my bank account.


    andrew dimmit – urban clowns
    Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

    I leave Vancouver for Montreal on Saturday December 10th, 9 in the morning. I’m returning December 24th in the evening, arrival expected around 8pm.

    These strange anchors in my life, I’m visiting with them tonight. Chains several years long, I’m always the only one. Over in decency, I’m singular, the bed. This one, he cried once. It meant a lot to him that I held his hand. We see each other more now, but less. His computer’s broken, our connection severed. This one, they confessed beautiful things looking at me with eyes like sand, my fingers trapped in his hair. It’s all been waiting for the blossoms to burst into fire. Time creeping along on little cat feet, giving me more reasons to be wanted. This is picking up the pieces I dropped a year ago, two years, three. If this is growing older, I like it. I’m better suited, pin stripe and today a historian stopped me in the street. This will sound ridiculous, but you’re like a chic version of a rich person from the middle ages.

    Sunday night, a group is getting together to go to Lady of the Camillas. 8pm at the Havana, tickets are either $15 or half price if you can pretend to remember the password, some long complicated word beginning with L.

    The picture framed in my closet used to be in a movie theater. I wonder if somehow metaphorically, it burned down this week. Unborn, our friend yelled at us. All of this wasn’t allowed, so instead we held our breath and closed our eyes. Nothing changed but perfect timing. It’s a little rescue.

    Tonight Jason, Jeff, and W. Stretch are hosting a gathering in New West, Benn Neufeld is finally having his house-warming over by Commercial and First, and the Work Less Party are having their Circus party down at the Maritime Centre. I’m going to attempt to hit as many of these as possible, armed with the knowledge that at each place are people visiting who I otherwise would never get to see before I leave. Burrow is up from the States for the Masque, for example, and this is the first time Benn has lived in civilized confines for something like a year. It’s now nine:fifteen. My clock says go.

    the beginning oh whoredom

    I have so much mail to reply to that it’s ridiculous. In form, it would have been half a young tree bleeding sap all over my carpet. A damaged piece of earth trailing broken roots across my kitchen and onto my desk. Printed and slippery, a texture taken for granted more than telephones. In face, it is the trappings of other hands, dancing like slow two fingered rain to flood my computer box. I can’t stop randomly smiling. I look down the other way inside me and feel a tingle flow from the soles of my feet. My world, those gods of laughter, this is the beginning of soon I’ll run.

    When I have time, I will reply to you. I promise.

    Until then, tell your friends, post it on forums:

    You can vote for both COPE and Vision as they’re not competing with each other (one runs for 19/25 seats, the other runs for 6/25). That means: night buses, actual support of four pillars drug program, cheap housing, community policing and no Wal-Mart.

    You can vote if you:

    * are 18 years of age or older
    * are a Canadian citizen
    * have lived in B.C. for at least six months
    * have lived in Vancouver for at least 30 days

    So bring ID with an address and some back-up ID. Stamped letters and parcel-wrappers are good.

    To find out where to vote, go here.
    For descriptions of all candidates in their own words, go here.

    Between my mind and my hands, my words are getting lost. They are collecting in all my joints, crackling when I move. I stretch and a paragraph shattered. Unfortunate, as I need to pretend I’m functionally literate in spite of my complete and utter lack of sleep, and whore myself out some. Because guess what? The time has come.

    Back in spring, I had the misfortune of being arrested for smashing into shards the glass door of a bus with a paper sandled foot. I, having not noticed this misfortune, continued walking home. The police car, lights flashing, was not as unexpected as the police that poured from it to pin me with handcuffs and write me a court date. The ridiculousness of the situation was not lost on me, nor the officers present. All charges were subsequently dropped. However, the broken window must still be paid for, and my time is running out. Translink have begun to call. I’m planning on a colour-in-the-increment thermometer, like we had in grade school for food drives. If anyone’s got any bright ideas, feel free to pass them along. As well, invite friends, invite family. Jacques has asked me to make a flyer image for him to hand out at his play this week. (A weary inability to focus my eyes is demanding that I do that tomorrow). If you care to perform, just give me the say so and I’ll add you to our list of entertainments.

    Jacques LaLonde and Jhayne Holmes present

    KEEP JHAYNE FROM JHAYLE

    a party of proportion

    #340 – 440 west hastings

    The Date: Friday, November 25th

    The Time: 9:00 – onward

    The Goal: $300.00

    the voice of “Ducky” from the Land Before Time: a girl who was murdered by her father at age 10

    Tonight after work is Wolf Parade with Architecture in Helsinki then Cirque De Sade with possible Big Birthday Bash afterward.

    When my camera download died is when I felt myself finally geared up into taking real pictures again. The irony of this is no more lost to me than the multitude of little chocolates that Ryan has scattered through my room. Picture a girl, pale skinned, almost the tint of home made strawberry ice-cream. Remove her shirt and put a cloth over her face. One eye can see you, the other is closed. Title this do not shoot me. Picture a boy, his arms are stretched out and his face painted gold. Picture bottle green velvet against mulberry crimson, a giant red lizard like sleeping with a voodoo doll, a feather mask dipped in a bowl of dead flowers, an x-ray lit from behind over the head of a sleeping man, this is what the doctor said – a eulogy for the dead party city. Click.

    I shan’t admit


    091705-021
    Originally uploaded by aeillill.

    My suppositions were correct, the power supply had popped, and now we’ve got my machine plugged into Andrew‘s. We’re crowded on his bed, clearing big chunks of tasty media off my hard-drive onto various sized discs. When James left me his machine, he left it filled to the brink with wonderful films and brilliant programs. There is almost nothing it isn’t capable of, if I had the skills to take advantage of it or or if it had a damned power supply. Ah well. Tomorrow such problems will be fixed. I have breakfast in the morning with Matthew, which will lead into our mutual appointment with Sarah and drop me off at the lunch reservations I made for my mother‘s birthday.

    He tells me he loves me when I say goodbye on the phone. There has never been a voice so sad as mine in my heart when I cradle the reciever back in its plastic bed. I don’t say it back, what need? I am branching, my arms boughs, my fingers as twigs. Someone has offered to teach me to float glass like air in my palms, like dreams. I want to. These lips are remembering his eyes and hair. I feel my Saturday as a wondrous thing. The Party Not Starring Peter Sellers was exquisite. The bit with Chris, at least, he is magic incarnate, and Crystal does things with two sets of tassels that defy the imagination. I won a dance contest while in a corset, though I will never attempt such a thing again. I felt like dying for fifteen minutes after. The rest of it was fairly basic, but enjoyable nonetheless. I reacquainted myself with lost theatre people, Terry, Jacques, darling Chris, and I finally met Bill’s wife ma’am. I touched her stomach where his child is brewing. I saw how he looked at her, I’d forgotten. I can feel his face in my expressions again. When he swung down from his perch, I had to squash my urges to go and hug him, instead I left my smile intact and tried to not crowd him. When I was downstairs in the hall, a staff member asked what I came for. I joked, “To see the show, of course, and to discomfit my ex.”

    We laughed, but I’m so sorry to say that it’s what happened. I miss his muppet gestures. In my recent cleaning of my room, I found a picture of him from one of our earlier anniversaries. There’s flowers in his hair and ‘I love you‘ written in chocolate on his chest. The rest of it, I dare not say in public, but needless to say, it was rather touching. I’d put up blue lights on the wall over the bed in the shape of a giant heart. It stayed up for months, though every time we had sex, we would tear part of it down.

    I found Vancouver’s secret burlesque bar, Saturday. It’s a room fifteen feet wide, and as long as the block is wide. The second floor is a golden balcony overlooking the dancefloor, and instead of a disco ball, there’s a silver merry-go-round horse studded with mirrors. I fell instantly in love. Terry and Ryan and I arrived just as the very last of the burlesque ended, (two minutes of shadows having sex), and soon set up camp upstairs. Terry is especially brilliant, as he is one of those most precious people who continues to be astutely brilliant when proceeding to be drunk. We leaned over the balustrade and shouted communist political slogans at appropriate moments in between dancing ironically and splashing the people below with ice-water and gin and tonic. Within half an hours, I collected an entire stag party, (with phone-numbers), and commandeered a few of them into affixing a fan to a table for me to have a private dance-floor on the balcony. I felt, finally, like I was having the sort of evening that silver_notebook regularly inspires my jealousy with.