Tag: flickr

questions that could save my life


josef astor
Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

I am not a swan, to beat your body into a prone position
I am not disguised in feathers
white, downy, strong
by default a god

I fell and skinned my knees
a long time ago
someone picked me up
then hated me
it was a long long time ago

this program
wasn’t asked for
but created out of flesh

Tell me preacher,
explain and denigrate
tease forth the reasonings
of why I’m not allowed to like laughter
Show my holy things, your gasp
blasts apart the doors of the chapel
a thousand hymns that make and pray
to illustrate
my sins and stay
in spite of your eyes

hold silence to me
house these twisted skies
the laces in my skin are becoming tight
I fear my soul is leaping
no matter your hands
twisted together
or your knees
which sleep in a crowded cloth

You are not a swan
your wings are wax

To out-weigh the cost of making it, it has to run 24/7

“Built by Krupp, seen here crossing a federal highway in Germany en route to its destination (an open-pit coal mine), it is cheaper to move the thing like this, than to construct or re-assemble on-site.The mover stands at over 311 feet tall and is over 705 feet long. It weighs over 45,500 tons (yes that’s 45 thousand tons!) Cost $100 million USD, took 5 years to design & manufacture and 5 years to assemble. It only requires 5 people to operate it. The Bucket Wheel is over 70 feet in diameter with 20 buckets, each of which can hold over 530 cubic feet of material. A 6-foot man can stand up inside one of the buckets. It moves on 12 crawlers (each is 12 feet wide, 7′-10″ high and 46 feet long).There are 8 crawlers in front and 4 in back. It has a maximum speed of 1 mile in 3 hours (1/3 mile/hour). It can remove over 76,455 cubic meters (100,000 large dump trucks at 40Yds. each of overburden per day).”

others of this family found http://mining-technology.com/

hubris justified


I approve
Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

Sunday was an insane day for people. At first it seemed as if in among the thousands of people thronging Commercial Drive for Drivefest, Dominique and I were not to meet anyone we knew. It was fascinating to walk among so many and not have our names called out once. We were beginning to feel odd, in fact, as we were almost at Venables before we discovered friends. I was bolstered, however, by the unexpected pleasure of encountering David Garfinkle at the Mad Hatters Tea Party. (Matthew and I had arrived in time for tear down, missing the show entirely, but with time enough to gather up Dominique, Rowan, and Anna.)

David is an old friend, originally an associate of my mothers, who I’ve known since I was ten or twelve. Later I met him again as one of Bill’s best friends, (he being the catalyst for my meeting Bill), and I suspect that he and I get along better than he and my mother. We lost touch when Bill and I had our common law divorce, as I have with a few people, so when we met at the park, (he played the King of Hearts), we immediately sat down with smiles that tried to touch our ears. I’ve got a number for him now and I’m going to call him after work tomorrow for tea. It will be a treat to catch up. The notes of the dial tone and number pad, they are music. They are rings in water to grasp onto and kick.

I met another member of the Tea Party later, a girl named Burrow, who by coincidence is staying with my friend Kyle. Incestuous City Syndrome hits again. We ended up at Kyle’s place, the two of us, and he and I stayed up attempting to watch the Dr. Who that James gave me until three:thirty in the morning. (They were too badly scratched, so we only made it through one episode. We gave up when Kyle was literally losing the gift of speech.)

I met Marc on the street as well, which was a Joy Incarnate TM moment. It’s unlikely that anyone who didn’t know me last winter could understand how giddy I am that I’ve collected again this member of the Lost People. I invited him to Korean movie night. In my life, Marc’s been missing for about a year. It took a lot of effort not to bury him in kisses. He’s brilliant. We would go for long walks and discuss too many movies. He was Placebo Cine, but some time last spring his e-mail address changed and he stopped answering midnight pebbles at his window. I’d assumed he’d moved, leaving me with his camping tent and favourite shirt. However, it seems that he hasn’t changed address, only rooms. Apparently it is no longer his window, but Paul’s. I am genius.

this is your fault

Gravity plucks
the apple from the tree
easier than any hand
from flesh to divine
it’s all memory
the contest
the days next to water

She spoke quietly, looking out a window that was really a sheet of rain, her eyes painted electric green. “We didn’t have to talk at all. This town, the lights go dim when I press the power button. There’s a gasp, a sigh, and the energy inside collapses. You into me, relationships wearing coats of particles over wire. Tonight I miss you. I remember my name from your voice, how the inflection was different.”

The phone is a bare sliver of plastic, silver and blue-lit from within. “No, I can survive like this. Bare walls aren’t as taboo as an affection lapse. I felt like that bed was a refugee camp, finally I could stop running.” There’s a cup in front of her, slowly being stirred. The spoon is tarnished, antique and ornate with a dipped rose on the handle.

“I don’t know what makes you beautiful. When you reflect off my eyes, my heart eats you as shadow, intrinsic but ethereal, to live off later. Every moment with you feeds me, satisfies hollows inside me which say, ‘we have gone hungry long enough, there is no turning back’. I can’t help myself. Your eyes shone with a light that was devastating. It was converting, a religion of only you and I together in a little nameless room.”

She smiles, a new expression. She looks cut out of time. A glossy magazine spread featuring smooth lines and gray.

“I don’t know if I can explain. I knew I was flaunting something when I came in, that I was changing rules with my behaviour, but I continued onward. Before there was you and I feeling awkward, admit it. I was pushing past and forward. I was right on track until I was derailed by your eyes. Crash and burn and this is love in a manner I’d never encountered. Suddenly I was your salvation. I was every epiphany in the middle of the night over your entire life. You were the metatron and I the heaviest mote of light to have ever been dropped spoken from your lips. You made me think of fire, of flying.” Her long hair has fallen into her face and she pushes it back with one hand as she leans back in her chair, adjusting her skirt and crossing her legs at the thigh. Her stockings are black.

“There’s many nameless rooms, I know, I’ve lived in them, but they were not that one, they were not right there. That was a flowered wallpaper sheath for power in the middle of the night, that was a terrible fire that blazed in the softest little colours. You want to know what I thought? ‘This is permission,’ I thought, ‘for anything I want to do with you. This is something I have never seen before. If I am lucky, I will see it again. There will be no furnace falling from the sky to consume you, there will be no front page accident hurling metal like rain to dash brains into the pavement.'”

I want to write something real, but I’m far too tired


like those posters from WWII
Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

You know what I realized today? There are no pictures of anyone in hand-cuffs. There are no pictures of me especially in hand-cuffs. This impresses me. Not only did I dance with Avery in hand-cuffs for almost an hour, I was at one point hand-cuffed to a chair. My wrists, in fact, hurt. They are circled with abrasions and badly bruised. That I didn’t notice until many hours into consciousness may be a telling sign toward my level of exhaustion. I managed just over an entire twenty four hours awake on something like four asleep and then proceeded to sleep fitfully for only another three.

Ridiculously, I am awake still and the world is turning in the direction of yet another day. I found an answering machine message on the phone when I got home. Dream Designs has called me back again. I harbor a hope that this means that I’ve landed the job I’ve been crossing my fingers for. I’ve been in for two interviews and though the second was dealt in an impromptu manner, I can’t think why else they would have phoned me a third time.

Translink has finally sent me an in-voice and it bays an ugly cry of two hundred fifty, which is approximately half as loud as I was expecting. Still a blow, but a lighter strike than I imagined. This I should be able to roll with sooner than later, though it hurts to have such an unexpected chunk torn from my budgets. The fund raising party is still under consideration, complete with colour-it-in thermometer to measure distance to goal.

as evinced by

Party Pictures have been made available. Please add tags and names where appropriate, as I have yet to go through these. I’m not even certain which pictures are off of which camera as I have uploaded not only my camera, but Chris’ and Patrick’s.

the collected entries: beth’s description, angus’, and derek’s. rick and an unidentified lump which I suspect to be tristan are still passed out on the floor and tim and chris have gone to the farmers market. I’m going to take this opportunity to have a shower and steal clothes in which I do not look like a hooker.

edit: as Flickr pro accounts have an impressive capability, please send me your pictures of the evening to add to the folder.

flesh and blood are 90 points water


are watching
Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

Andrea is taking July SinCity as conquest for her birthday. Her army is to be the Pantheon.

I am part of that army, as Eris Discordia.

If anyone has any ideas as to where to find tiny golden apples…?

Today I feel as if I’m procrastinating, though I can’t think of what I could be doing. My playlist is on random, my entire music folder shuffling back and forth between righteous piano and demo mixes for obscure bands that I feel sometimes like only I’ve heard of. It’s appropriate, somehow, melding well with the invariable sirens this neighborhood attracts, and it occurs to me on days like this, as I look out my window at blank rainy gray, to ponder if art is created more at night. Every painter I’ve ever lived with, every musician, all the illustrators I talk to on-line, they’re always up late at night, running themselves into the ground to finish something, to get that last detail just right. I imagine all the insomniacs creating beauty to fill up their time and their loneliness while the stars turn overhead.

Which reminds me, Chris wrote me something. In an odd way we wrote it together, much of it being pieces of my conversation, though he’s the one who put all the words on screenpaper. I want to actually try writing with someone, but I haven’t the first idea as to how one would go about that. Megan is having a blogprov week in her journal, and I’m tempted to do the same, just to throw me back into writing things down. (I gave her show me on the doll where the internet touched you as a seed line.)

Sunday afternoon is the Mad Hatters Tea Party. An event that I am continually trying to get involved with, only to be thwarted by life in general. Chaos raining down upon me as if I’m simply not fated to be an Alice In Wonderland Character. It’s at Trout Lake (15th and Victoria) from 1-4:30pm. I’m due at Jenn’s Last Sunday Tea in the morning and early afternoon, but this is where I’m going right after. (Come in Costume!) Sunday is also DriveFest, a neighborhood event where Commercial Drive is closed off for a few blocks. There’s going to be performers for hours and little kids wandering around with face-paint on. If we’re lucky, there will even be balloons. Commercial Drive is the only unified neighborhood in Vancouver, so this should be lots of fun. There’s been gentrification at work, but it’s still the artistic core of the city. (Come one, come all!)