Tag: flickr

welcome to global warming. it isn’t what you think it is

Apple Store Paris set to open under Louvre Pyramid.

For a moment of amusement, I went and took a look at the yahoo-search referral terms that led people to my Flickr. In order, the top thirty are were: postsecret, cute puppies, maine coon cat, topless, oralsex, tiara tattoos, apartments, oldboy, alien animals, lesbianism, opus bloom county, gamelan, goths, animated club gif, cannibalism, sex oral, cute puppies wallpaper, maple leaf tattoo, dionysius god, pussy licking, steven meisal photography, blind eyes, beetle plate, tattoo koi, kris millering, columbia sailboat, lung, licking pussy, ferret, and topless girls.

Now we know. Go team internet.

I want to take a day soon where all I do is take pictures. Where I get up, shove furniture out of the way, do ridiculous things with random objects, cover the floor in newspaper, pin sheets to my ceiling, and treat my apartment like a set. I haven’t done it in a long time, though really, we haven’t had the greatest weather lately either. It’s like winter just never got the hint to sod off. If I owned even one light, it wouldn’t matter, I could just set it up and call it the races, but serious as rain, I’m stuck waiting for sunlight in a city where the cloud cover is so thick that two in the afternoon looks like dusk. And the cold! All of the local pundits have dubbed this month Junuary, as if it’s sort of cute that our seasons have shifted by a solid three months.

Hotel Elda offers a fifteen percent discount to bloggers.

eating practically nothing but chocolate and words, a debt

365 day one hundred & two: new tomorrow

From a letter I wrote to Juan, “I wish I could mail myself to you in a great cardboard box, foolishly mark myself a gift and sleep until you found me in your kitchen. Oh look, I would say, I’m real after all. See my problems? I will give them to you like ripened apples for you to chew. They will turn sweet in travel. I thought once that if my life refused to improve, I would just begin walking, not look back, and find my way to where you live. Life did improve, though. It feels alright now, like a place to live, at least until the next thing happens.”

Edward Lorenz, the founder of Chaos Theory, died Wednesday of cancer.

My eyes slip across the street, noting where sand collected in what used to be rain puddles. I think if this moment could be collected, I have friends who I would like to send it to, who might understand the feeling of weight my blood carries in my body. Everything is heavy, even while curled on a couch, resting my head on a pile of silk pillows, my dreams full of choreographed shouting, difficult and lonely. A sheathed short sword in my hand, taken from a shelf, held in my hand, jabbed in the air for emphasis. If we’re going to do this, we’re going to do it my way, thick with mythology, mired in darkness, as pregnant with promise that only mystery can be. The tip of the black bamboo case held at his throat, keeping him still, an implied threat. Any minute I could drop it, any second, I could put it down, and wait for his hands on me. A pass, forensic, you are healed, lightning coming down layer by layer, impressed upon the landscape like a gravestone rubbing, rain falling without regret, reminding the grass to be green.

Behind my eyes, I rewind, reposition him, the stairs, the way I might reposition a tea-cup for a photograph. I attempt to find a configuration that has nothing to do with frustration or anger. I rewind, reposition, I suggest lines to the scene as if to an actor. My body lies perfectly still, except for a frown, one tiny crease. Why can’t I be dreaming of cat strange eyes? I am sent to the river. Washed of glory, he walks down the stairs again. I again gesture, upset, incontrovertible. It is a loop, queerly criminal, taken out of time as if it were stolen. My footsteps are silent, but his are not. There is no wall where I want one.

Above all, I require grace. I said it out loud in the shower the next days, the words like soap bubbles, clean, beautiful, a renewed realization of what keeps me clear.

“somethingsomething the bees knees somethingsomething try to please”


the photographer’s frazetta
Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

The One Laptop Per Child Foundation’s beginning production.

Fourty-five minutes until freedom. There’s a loud show downstairs, lacing the air with frantic piano, lathering the foyer with a nervous energy. Some student thing. It’s the sort of music I would choose to unsettle an audience with, as if I wanted to dislodge their perception of time, kick it disjointed and paste filters all over the lights. In my head, the dancers are testaments to fanciful make-up and Cirque-style motions. They kick, scream, and astonish.

It’s actually a ballet performance. Something bleach-blonde and mild, culturally appropriate for the family and friends in attendance, many of whom were too old for the stairs. Many of which, I’m sure, are currently wincing at the thrashing rock music that’s replaced the piano, that’s begging for big hair and glittery tight pants lined-up outside of cheap bars where the floors are perpetually sticky with spilled and stolen beer. Of course, any minute now, this will all segue into something hideously classical.

And, yes, there it went. French baroque, rather, and overcooked, dreaming of soulful arpeggios that might travel barefoot on horseback in the rain along the Seine into the sunset. And it didn’t do the dishes, either.

Oops, no. Now it’s faux-traditional Irish rock, a la Riverdance. Mixed with beat-mix 60’s remixed retro-pop.

Thirty-five minutes until freedom.

I need to involve myself with a writer again

Looking for a Green Light: “Lighting is a greedy user of energy, and public projects can be particularly heavy consumers. But many lighting designers are in fact trailblazing the use of low-energy technology.”

I sent you a letter with only one word, Hold. A train ticket word for long distances, a place to put your baggage, to put your arms, the embrace awaited, wished for, forgotten. I picture us as if through the lens of a camera, floating in glassy space, anchored by places we have been, where I have touched you, streets that have been warmed by our breath. It is as if an echoed copy of you is still here, imprinted inside the tiny fractures we left on reality with the molecules of our voice, our motion, simply waiting for you to come home. We are clips from some greater film, the title of which is beyond me. (Before the screen, there was the stage.) I think of our constant tired laughter and your sly technical hands, the way they drifted, fidgeting, up and down the hems of my skirts. My imagination wonders about the airport, wonders at my apprehension, (as it creates shaky lists of reasons why I might not like you again), asks why I feel so dreadfully shy.

I have been refusing to count down days; instead we are down to my Cassandra test of silence and all its implications. (Really we are down to fingers now, less the number of a clumsy butcher. I can feel my panicked heart constricting.) When, to combat my almost professional anticipation of misfortune, I sent you flowers, I irrationally felt like I had betrayed an unspoken agreement, yet my smile supernovae bloomed when I discovered the accompanying note had been garbled through a game of florist telephone. It was like discovering a new favorite song, transforming the simple into the sublime, with my eyes wide open.

I am looking forward to seeing you again.

Some electric companies have created tourist interest with their manatee populations. “… conservationists say the potential closure of aging electric plants is an unsolved problem for the survival of the species.“

“She takes from life, eating its words and minutes and licking her lips, not wanting to waste any, “

Paintings: The Seduction of Oedipus


going hunting
Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

It has been a struggle to sleep this week, and when I do, there has been no comfort in it. I dream of California, but not the California I had lived, full of bleak stories I tell now with terrible humour, but of the possibilities I could interpret from every building I walked past, their sunburnt lawns, every house a microcosm, every business an untold discovery, and the palm trees swaying almost shadowless to the sky, perfect emblems of hot modern fantasy lining every street.

I blame my current reading material.

Before I go to sleep at night, I read. Being a basic thing, there are variations, but it always the same pattern. Finishing with the computer, I turn off my lamp, plug in the ornamental lights, and snuggle in underneath them with my book. When I am done, I pull the plug. It is almost ritual, except that it carries no meaning. It is only the reputation of necessary movements, like washing dishes or putting on a shirt one sleeve at a time, that create the illusion of depth. Every day, the same ingredients.

This week I was reading White Oleander, a harsh book yet beautiful, set in Los Angeles. I am told it was turned into a film once, but I never thought to see it. Why are all my favourite books set in L.A.? Reminiscent of buying my fierce summer clothing on the boardwalk in Venice, they are almost always written by women, couched in some foreign manner of prose that still remains english, always reminding me so strongly of my own writing – as if I were to live there again, it would be my turn to write a book, something powerful and achingly frail, like the bones of the body that I miss so much. Visiting the wild beaches was like stepping into fairyland. A fairyland punctuated by stairs and people in cheap foam and plastic flip-flops.

Sweden opens embassy in Second Life.

I hadn’t put them altogether before

Pillow-fighting now a sport. Go Canada!

I have no relationship I could call such, but I am surrounded by good people. I have a solid idea and a solid model of it to work from. My voice is strong, my hands clever, and I can state my needs simply. I survive crisis calmly, expect things to be harder than they are, and laugh with tragedy. My body will not be found washed up on the shore. I will survive tomorrow morning, no matter my age or the dye staining my fingers.

Heart of the World on CBC.

Heart of the World in the Globe & Mail.

heart of the World in the Georgia Straight (bottom of the page).

Heart of the World on news1130 with errors it almost hurts to read.

Heart of the World on Beyond Robson.

Heart of the World on Artery.ca, (front page, no less).

Heart of the World on Cinema Treasures.

Heart of the World on Sock Puppets From Hell. (I don’t know them, do you?)

Everything I’ve found after those are cannibalizing each other.

Heart of the World on Flickr
Heart of the World on YouTube.
Heart of the World on Del.icio.us.

hey mister pin stripe suit, there is no polite way to remove your underwear in an alley


trying to shut you up
Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

-prelude-

New Years EVE Skytrain Dance Party at VCC Clark. Meet at 7:45 on December 31st, bring everything – music, costumes, party favours, instruments, etc. “At 8pm we hop an Accordion Train to the Future.” Total Trip time 1hr. 8pm to 9pm.

Act 1.

The Dancing Fields. A movement, they kiss. Every smile is a line inscribed. He makes her laugh. This is not a new thing, but another attempt. Her distance allows for the illusion of successful intimacy. This is the first time he’s met her at the door with his hands.

Act 2.

Heart of the World news. The current owner has put the Bollywood films up for sale on Craigslist. The letter of my contract says As Is, meaning, everything in the building is coming with the building that was there when I saw it. I’m sure that it was implied somewhere that this was to mean only fixtures, but I’m willing to kick for a discount off the price. I think we can roll with this. The realtor, though he seems nice, as it is his job to do, is still going to receive a silly amount of money, no matter, so I don’t feel I’m cheating anyone by complaining.

I’m also thinking about what it would mean to us if we bought them off Craigslist ourselves. Currently the films are stacked all over the theatre in big spilling reels and awkward tin boxes that we’ll have to organize, box up, sort, etcetera. If we buy them off Craigslist, not only will we be paying less for them than if they’re included in the theatre price, that will all be taken care of for us, and we’ll have to spend significantly less time cleaning the space up for performances. It might be worth a shot.

-intermission-

W.C. Fields began his career as a juggler, so good that he performed for royalty and heads of state. A portion of his routine was committed to celluloid in 1934’s The Old Fashioned Way. There’s a clip of it up on YouTube.

Act 3.

An Italian cafe, Cafe Calabria. Double-consonant beverages and nude white statues of mythical heroes with santa hats perched on their faux-marble heads. A Mediterranean cover of Bryan Adams’ Have You Ever Loved a Woman, “Lei mai ha amato una donna?”, piped past hanging cakes that frame the renaissance revival ceilings. Two nights in a row I sat there, nursing a delicious hot chocolate to within a drop of its life, and waiting for friends who never walked through the door. Tonight, the second night, I winked at the man behind the counter who called me “bella” and decided to try to be a regular.