Tag: holidays

singing you’re one of my only friends who knows my love

Good morning to the new lunar year. On the Chinese calendar it’s my year, the year of the Dog.

The roof of my mouth feels lightly of electricity. Yesterday was falling backward, a door opening accidently, opening onto a room full of people I never see and don’t think about often enough. I have a new ring, a silver thing like the branch of a mother of pearl tree. I have eyes too open to see sleep properly. The parade through China Town was extremely beautiful. Ray and I bought explosive paper twists, you throw them to the ground and they spark and bang. I fell in love all over again every time I dropped one to the pavement. I took a slew of incredibly colourful pictures, but I will upload them later, when I am not rushing against the time I need to be at work.

She retrieved a clove cigarette from her purse and put it to her lips. I hurriedly offered her a light with my lighter.

“I want to sleep with you,” she said.

So we slept together.

-Haruki Murakami

“This General Motors Futurliner was one of only 12 such vehicles ever built. They were introduced in 1940 as part of GM’s “Parade of Progress,” spun out of the 1933-34 World’s Fair, themed “A Century Of Progress.” There are nine known Futurliners that have survived. Three are in operating condition, including this 1950 model which sold at an auction last week for US$4,320,000.”

  • Vintage UK electronics ads.

    The day before yesterday, I felt like terrible company. Saturday night I simply crashed. Blearily I answered the phone a couple times, tried to wake up enough to get myself together enough to go to dinner with my friend, failed, and finally closed my eyes. There was a knock on the door a little past midnight, Andrew and Ian to pick up some electronics pieces, and a bit later, Matthew to tuck me in, but no one stayed and I fell back into uncomplicated darkness, tangling my ferret in my hair and forgetting to dream.

    • 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.

    • It’s time to fake the knowledge of how to write a book


    audrey-kawasaki – grumpy girl
    Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

    Living here, it doesn’t come easy, but I suppose it’s what I have to do until I find the funds to permanently leave.

    Time slowed in the dark bus to the dark trickle of molasses. Travel encased in warmth and looking out at cold, the perfect orange of sodium lights, dirty highway, I felt my chest packed with string. It unraveled as we drove, sliding roughly out of a tiny hole in the center of my back, as if one end was tied to a rib and the other end behind me in the city. Oh the snow, the light crystals of shine that I would gather in handfuls and toss in the air.

    I wanted to run.

    Last night, for the second time in a week, I was to be found spending the night up in a home that was built from the bricks of a tax bracket that lives indifferent to my existence. But unlike the bed in Outremont that felt comfortable, redolant of music and welcome teeth, the bed here smelled like a museum exhibit, like I had crept into it past glass or a red velvet rope, all untouched history and neglect.

    I fell asleep as the sun came up like a stone, trying to remember Sylvia Plath:

    I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
    Whatever I see, I swallow immediately.
    Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike
    I am not cruel, only truthful –
    The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
    Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
    It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
    I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
    Faces and darkness separate us over and over.

    Soon I’ll have to explain about Outremont, the people who saved my trip and forced me native overnight, breaking my heart and the language barrier with letting me drive, a grand piano, tango lessons, and singing.

    I’m still irritated that I didn’t bring anything back with me.

    there is no higher ground

    Does anyone knows where to find a copy of Useless by Kruder & Dorfmeister? I’d be happy for any of their music. What Do You Want Me To Say? by Dismemberment would be good too. I’m running out of downloaded music I like, and Pandora, though useful, runs itself into the ground when left alone too long. I set it to play Lamb and when I came back from a shower it had decided TATU would be a good idea. That I have no iTunes account merely adds to that particular annoyance. When I find enjoyable new music, I have no access to it.

  • Anti-teenager sound weapon.

    Day by day I have nothing planned. There’s a gentle tick tick tick in the back of my head. I’ll be gone in two days and I’m still uncertain what I’m doing. My house is cleaner, my room tidied, but my suitcase is sitting like a guilty house-pet on my bed, mouth open and half empty. I expected a call from Ray this morning, but the phone’s rung once and it wasn’t for me. Nicole tells me I have to face down a mall somewhere. Living in Vancouver doesn’t prepare a body for anything cold that doesn’t come out of a gelati parlour. I mostly have slim pieces of tie-on velvet and little black t-shirts with subtle line drawings of aliens on them. Nothing ready for snow, except for my scarf, and honestly, I’m not sure how many times I can pack that.

    Speaking of aliens, darling theramina posted this link to a video of a contortionist woman with especially extraordinary flexibility that is worth watching if only for the reminder that humans are capable of the weirdest things.

    Part of my shopping dread stems from the time of year I happen to be doing this in. There’s christmas lights in every display window and piped in “holiday favourites” in every store. Fake plastic trees that grab at nothing, offering hope only to little kids and people with real families. (And how many of those have secrets tucked away in sad apartments the other side of town?) I used to make stockings out of silk organza and taffeta edged with rhinestones as an attempt to fight against all the tacky red fake fur and gummy white fluff. This season though, like last year, I should be lucky to find a moment of respite in the places I plan on going to. I’ve no weapons against the overwhelming false cheer. All those beautifully wrapped boxes are empty.

  • A NOLA-area mall’s Katrina-themed holiday display has been gaining coverage.

    Nick, the regular godsend he is, has volunteered to take me down to Army & Navy today. He’s a heavy snow boarding enthusiast, so I’m going to let myself fall into his hands as if in a trust exercise. Is anyone else willing to dive into shopping hell with me? I don’t know where yet. The rare times I go shopping, I do it on The Drive. Someone suggested Metrotown, (Why don’t they ever name these places interestingly? I’d rather spend time somewhere called the virgin-whore complex.), which sounds pretty evil. Unless there’s a store marked WARM SOCKS & SWEATERS ETC, I suspect I’m going to be unsuccessful alone.

    • and I still don’t know who sent me this song

    I’ve got Low playing on repeat, as loud as the laptop can sing to me. The rain outside is pounding in heavy sheets of water, occasionally relenting, but not enough to let me out so I’m making cookies. Dancing in black jeans and a pink lace bra, I’m sifting the dry together to top of my voice holiday music, this is so out of place for me that I might like it today. I want to thank whomever it was what sent me this song, it’s been brightening my time stuck inside to a bell peal glow. The train rhythm especially makes me bounce, and the sweetly sung lyrics remind me of back when the holidays meant something, back before my dad lost sanity.

    We lived on Grandview Highway one year, over by Boundry. A white stucco house with bright red steps, a plum tree in the back and a two story garage. It’s not there anymore, though the house down the street where the witch lived is still there and the house with the adopted kids. There was a silver flake tank underneath my window which had the most wonderful boom to it, my feet could never move silently on it, (boom-thud-boom), just tall enough to climb. I would sneak out at night and was always amazed when no-one heard me coming home. We had snow that year, heaps, enough that people still talk about it. I think I was six. It was the edge of my fathers insanity, the spring upcoming was the beginning of hell, a foster-home waited, but at the time, we didn’t know that. It was piles of shining white to build tunnels through, to ride my sled down at the park next to the highway. It was the year the elf came to the door.

    I was supposed to be in bed, my parents were in the livingroom, maybe with a glass of wine. I was lying in my doorway, wrapped in my blanket, ready to dart into my room the moment they stepped toward the hallway. I couldn’t see them, but I could hear them. I was going to fall asleep there, listening to the low murmur of my family, when there was someone outside. A knock on the heavy door and my father opened it. I crept farther out into the hall to see. A man was there in green, with pointy shoes and a fluffy santa hat. It was a bit unbelievable, I was raised to be a rather adult child, and that’s when I fell asleep. I hid in my bed from my parents, who peered in to peek at me, and didn’t open my eyes until morning. Outside he had a pick-up truck full of toys and holiday goodies. If I think about this too much, I’m going to cry. It was my first real christmas, maybe my only one. We had the tree put up and presents underneath. I woke up to paper wrapped boxes and candy canes. I wonder where the pictures are.

    I think now that my teacher must have signed us up for a charity. She as a wonderful woman, and I think about her sometimes. She had brown hair and the kindest smile, the only nice adult at school. I consider stopping by Renfrew Elementary and seeing if I could track her down. I don’t even remember her name.

    here, have the song