and every time, it’s a surprise. they never used to have gray hair.

Three cats and a programmer, that’s who I’m living with. The house drips with the edges of stories we’re not quite telling. Out for dinner, up in the morning, laptop in the livingroom, random laughter talking alone. Moments I want to remember.

Sigur Ros is filming a documentary.

The Fringe Festival lounge is constantly full of people I used to spend my life with. Now I only see them this once, every year, though I miss them. It makes it a very strange place for me. Everyone is a flamboyant memory of someone I used to be. Words thunder across the room, bringing back burning flashes of the smiles I wore, the names I used to sweetly remember, but my personal mythology doesn’t have an anchor anymore. I adore these people, their theatrical grand gestures and ridiculous, rewarding turns of phrase, so much I forget how we lost each other. We hug close, damp with laughter, talk about how great it was, how great it will be, but sobering, know that we’ll just do it again next year. Wonder where we went as every week passes by at the introspective speed of light, while the days drag on, threatening rain with every mile.

Dan Mangan was playing at the Lounge when I left tonight, another note in an absent chord of friends. I wanted to stay long enough to properly say Hello, but Ray was my ride and falling asleep on his feet, so I badly scribbled the word COFFEE? on one of my cards and left it on the stage where he was singing.

As I went, I promised people I would be back tomorrow. I’m already surprised at how much I’m looking forward to it.

I know this is a little late, but it’s where I wish I was, so here goes anyway:

ROOFTOP CIRCUS

Johnnny Frem & Dave Horswell have finished installing another roof in the James St. neighbourhood, so they’re putting on another rooftop circus, which includes a chimney headstand, (inspired by Steve Galloway’s book, “Ascension”), as well as a parade, some skits including very young talent, magic tricks, kid’s songs, clowning, fire-breathing and fire-spinning.

Where: 4505 James St. @ 29th Ave, The Jang residence, SouthWest corner of 29th Ave and James St. (2 blks West of Main St.)

When: 7:00 – 8:30 pm, Sun. Apr. 15
(Rain Date: move ahead one wk. to Sun. Apr. 22)

With: Johnny Frem, Musicians: Ross Barrett; Brian Siver; Dan Vie, Clowns: Naomi Steinberg; Jacques Lalonde; Dan, Celia and Ruby Vie; Matthew, David and Nancy Jang; Dave Horswell, Magician: Brandy, Fire-breathing & acting: T. Paul Ste Marie, and Fire-spinning: Josh

ADMISSION: FREE!

now my hands are bleeding and my knees are raw


slaves to money
Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

There are no birds today. The sky has become a hard stone floor waiting to be swept by wings, but there are none forthcoming. The threat of rain hangs too heavily over my neighborhood. All the flying voices are hunkering down, trying to get comfortable, and waiting for the inevitable soaking. I understand where they’re coming from. My desire to go outside is being stifled by the overbearing clouds as well. Cities feel out-dated on days like today, like no one’s progressed in architecture since the seventies but we’re all too cowardly to say so.

New Googlebomb: Scientology. Pass it on.

Two days of barely moving from in front of my sleepless computer, surfing the tepid industry* of employment websites, I feel like I’ve been joylessly glued to a square of carpet. Telus turned be down, albeit as politely as they could and with many personal remarks upon my general awesomeness, so now I’m holding my hand out to the internet, hoping to feel a brush of work upon my palm. Sara is in town scouring for funky apartments, so tomorrow her and I are going to attack the city classifieds as a brightly coloured yet highly dependable unit that you so want to know.

New Music: my Masque Soundtrack that never aired.

Tonight I was supposed to be with Jacques at a Karaoke Fundraiser for something, but I accidentally double-booked, so I’m due up at UBC for a bit of an analytical nature-walk through the endowment lands instead. Due in about twenty minutes, actually, if I’m going to be a little bit early. Apparently I’m to bring an umbrella. Amusingly, my friend who’s arranging this didn’t expect me to actually own one.

* Russia’s something too awesome for words.

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.