singing back a week

If any one has any pictures, the license plate number or footage of the car attack at 1700 block robson that happened during Zombiewalk, please contact me. I need it for police and ICBC. Thank you.

It’s been a bloody long week. Today, walking from Act 1, I ran into a group dressed like a prison break. A block later there was a group dressed like American police. I was glad I slept last night. Earlier this week, there were twin midget strippers. Jet black hair and matching little white outfits, trendy as all hell. They swore a lot, asked me for directions, and wanted to know why I was dressed like a zombie.

Zombiewalk was a success, again, and the photographs just keep rolling in. My extra work was super good, I made all sorts of very odd contacts that I hope to keep up. The Organic Turkey Farmer who’s currently Choices spokesperson, for example, and his lovely wife. She told me my new favourite party joke. “Why do rabbits have so many babies?” “Their ears are too long to give head.” I’m going to have to write all about it, and the band tour of Vancouver Island, but I’ve been spending my evenings at a house with no internet, so my productivity has been shot like a caught revolutionary.

“On stage, I make love to 25,000 different people, then I go home alone” (Janis Joplin)

Paula snuggled into me, waking me up early. I was naked in the bedsheets, tugging on her braid with my teeth, wondering how I’d slept through when she arrived. This is Friday, other people are expected over, but I don’t know who as of yet. Modest Mouse is singing in my head about crashing into police cars, catchy, I’m standing up and groping blindly for my clothes. I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand and ask when Troll arrives, I’m told any minute. The bra goes on, the pants, and I find my way to the bathroom.

Walking later, some trick of the light and I’m sitting at home in front of my computer, trying to explain that I’m going to be away. My second date, the first one being Clinton. The van has been miraculously packed and has driven away. Barefeet in a park. The grass like velvet. It’s two weeks already and I haven’t slept once in my own bed. The bus I catch goes to Horseshoe Bay, left over habits from my childhood. Wrong. I get off, catch another one going the opposite direction. More than twice half-way across town and I’m not at the ferry terminal until three hours later.

(awesome)

On the ferry is a man named Gabe, organic cotton clothing and I don’t know him but he saw me ride by on my bicycle the day before on my way to the transgendered bee extravaganza. I smiled at him, he said, a big smile, right at him. He went into his friends house and declared that he would meet me again. Now, on the ferry, he offers me a ride into Victoria. We talk a little, but I’m not sure what to say. He has a sketchbook full of turtles and some photographs of a garden sculpture he made of hands above a window.

Downstairs he has a station wagon, an old thing, solid as the sixties. I love it. One window is broken, permanently open, there are action heroes tucked unobtrusively into the dash, and from the rear view mirror, among a cluster of obviously found feathers, hang buddhist hand chimes wrapped in string. He has a girl with him, they say they met a couple of weeks ago while visiting Robert Hugh ‘Standing Deer’ Wilson’s son. She’s into documentary, wants to tape native communities until they crack and spill forth ethical ways of sustainable living into everyone’s house.

In Victoria, we stop at the Backpacker’s hostel. It’s busy, filled with people I think I would like to sit down and talk with. I remember the one in Toronto, how the place was friendly but I felt excluded anyway. This was different, this was busier. I wasn’t full of glory. Gabe and his friend left, riding off to their sustainable sunset without me. I got change for the phone, called Esme long-distance on only a minute of time. Directions happened, then I sat outside.

flickering dead television skies