Tag: jenn

scraps collected from the floor

The polished cement floors and tall white walls of the The Dance Center foyer give an impression of being professionally vacant and irrepressibly busy, all at the same time. I like it. The desk I sit at faces a long glass wall that I watch the street through, its beveled edges act as rainbow prisms on sunny days. I am mostly here in the evening, however, as the dinner-time crowd travel undistractedly past in long black coats and oversize hoop earrings. Sunday nights are traditionally unexciting.

Occasionally a man comes in who looks homeless, long scruffy gray hair, a bright yellow rain jacket with a small hole over one elbow. He collects all the new reading material that’s accumulated over the week, pamphlets, brochures, upcoming events, and sits quietly reading them at the table, one after another, until either he is finished or it is time to close. I don’t mind, it keeps him warm and he seems inoffensive. I only wonder what he does with them after. A favorite idea is that of a small cooking fire flaring in the dark back doorway of a rich downtown hotel.

—

Jenn’s party last night, I felt like I’d wandered into three years ago. I wanted to be wearing something improbable, a snakeskin dress, a PVC corset, something with unlikely handfuls of feathers, just to put myself off balance, to rid myself of the feeling that I will never escape this place, that I will always return to these same people year after year in these similar places. That I can’t evolve or forget.

Even dropping by Oliver’s birthday party on Saturday after going to see The Prestiege did not feel so alienating. Of course, I’d made sure to arrive as late as possible to ensure that the guest of honour would have been steadily drinking himself into inoffensiveness since five in the evening, and I’m certain it helped. That and Mark dragging himself out of bed at two a.m. to threaten making me dinner after to fix how I might be feeling.

—

This year’s global ecological debt day, which fell early on October 9th, symbolizes the day of the year when people’s demands exceeded the Earth’s ability to supply resources and absorb the demands placed upon it. This means that it would take the Earth 15 months to regenerate what was consumed already this year.

My ecological footprint, last time I delved into this, turned out to be surprisingly small, (minus that I live in a first world country), so omitting some regrettable things, like not being able to shop organically or fair-trade at two in the morning, I think I’m doing okay. What’s your excuse?

there’s a membrane drawn over my week


axismundi
Originally uploaded by camil tulcan.

A sound like god, what happens when a man covered in microphones walks into a room full of speakers.

I have been measuring things more in my eyes than my hands this week, which leads to interesting bits of missing time that I worry for, as if they’re my children and I’ve abandoned them for that crucial minute too long in the shopping mall where now the only way to get them back is in newspaper articles I clip out and tape to my fridge.

Last weekend, Burrow was in town. I know that for certain. The order of her arrival is written down, there were pictures taken. She stayed over Friday night with Sam, the evening of Meat Eatery. Sam and I had walked to BJ’s after dinner, watched atrocious movies with Bob and his girl-darling from Parksville, then returned to curl up with Burrow asleep in my bed. We were quiet, but woke her unintentionally.

Saturday we crawled out of bed in time for the Fool’s Parade. Sam went home to shackle himself to his desk and Burrow and I rolled like tired thunder downtown and met with Duncan, Jenn, Georg, and her pink-dyed ferret, Silky. The parade was rainy and under-attended, so after coming close to winning the Fool of the Year award with ferret breasts, we abandoned the street for Taf’s. When work didn’t have my paycheque ready, we turned around and walked to the Bay to visit with Eva at her clinical cosmetics booth. It was fascinating, in a quiet colourful way, but not enough to keep Burrow and I from going home to rest before Duncan pulled us out to the graceful Fool’s Cabaret on Main st. Reine‘s mother was there, and Siobhan, a friend of friend’s we went to dinner with after.

Monday is missing, a played out afterburn. I took some self-portraits, but I don’t know if I slept there at home or not. There was one, two ideas. A number, undifferentiated. Something.

Tuesday is more concrete, not only written down, but recorded. Video, audio, photographs. Imogyne and I at Hawksley Workman with darling Sophie. The Cultch in all it’s warmly worn desiccating glory, intimate, red curtained. I remembered all the shows I’d played there. Running through the back when I was a child, that one time making love inside the roof. Downstairs hot-boxing the worn office, how there was once a pane of glass violently shattered in the middle of an orchestral piece, how the beads of my necklace clattered as I bounced and clapped. The music was good too, his acoustic version of striptease sincerely captivating.

After, Devon came over and we stayed up until the last bus, listening to our bootlegs and drinking weary tea. Imogyne eventually went home, and Devon and I talked until far too late, making me late for work Wednesday. The day I went to Andrew‘s after work and Georg and I re-dyed my hair into the colour of sticky quill ink while watching Ghost in the Shell. She came back to my place after, and we let the ferret run free through my apartment as we talked about partners and lives lost, the soulmates of just then and not today and maybe yesterday we knew something and maybe tomorrow we’ll have some hope. She wrote poetry and I woke up in the morning holding her hand.

Thursday I had a date with Sam, a real live date, not one of those on-line long-distance approximations my life seems to enjoy lauding me with. Cleaned up versions of us met at Tinseltown for the Brick preview and had dinner at Wild Ginger before walking out to False Creek to hang out on a water fountain and eat caramel ice-cream. We sat under the moon passing the tub back and forth like a cheap cigarette and talked about some of the same things that Georg did. We’re all divorced, the lot of us. It’s like a curse or a disease catching in all the social circles. It seems like every split has had very little to do with love and everything to do with a basic need to keep evolving, to keep trying to touch forever.

Friday Michael stole me out from under dinner with Andrew, Navi, Ryan, and Eva, and accompanied Robin and I to Thank You For Smoking instead. It was gleeful, with some damned nice moments, (there was a montage of Bad People that slaughtered us like baby seals), and led well into creeping alone up the stairs into Duello for the end of Fight Practice, a small red flower as my sword. I sat on the couch with Lee, letting him show me knife tricks, as people cleaned up and we sat for coffee until it was too late to think of going anywhere else but home. Friday nights, however, traditionally lead into mornings without work, so we survived.

We survived well, in fact, not doing a damned thing until somewhere after two in the afternoon, until the body-call to breakfast was too deafening to ignore.

listening to deep forest so as to connect myself with the first link in this entry. it makes me happ


next to city hall
Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

Strangely, I found myself in a house last night that I used to be intimately familiar with. It’s a small place just off Cambie, an odd little duplex left over from the sixties. Almost ten years ago, the tree out front had bicycles lashed to the length of it. It used to be a party house. If there was a crowd gathered out front, I would just walk in. Being there again was like looking through an incredibly distorted photograph. All the furniture was gone, replaced, different, but the underlying structure remained identical. I remember sweeping things off the tile counter that separates the kitchen and the dining room and using it as a small square bed. I curled with candles in my hands in the little window nook, my bare toes against the old thin glass, offering fire to the smokers congealing on the tiny porch next to it. Now Alec lives there, with his twin brother, gradually filling it with strange mechanical bits of home-made light-up furniture and rich vintage finds gleaned from local alleys.

I met him Friday, at Alicia‘s delightful Anti-Valentines party, and we spent from there until 7:40 this Sunday evening together. If he never talks to me again, I’ll quite understand. However, I found him marvelous company. We stayed up late last night watching Six String Samurai and, honestly, anyone who doesn’t question my sleeping with a knife is probably that much closer to being okay in my books. Thank you Alicia for the goodly gracious idea of inviting him. (Though you’re only half right. He can out-geek me on technicals, but I out-geek him with culture).

Earlier than that, Friday, I was caught being ridiculous at my workplace by someone off the street I vaguely hope will either never see me again or spread the legend farther. See, the computer had been played with by the owner, James, the previous night and something he did had destroyed the sound card drivers. Silence drives me crazy. It was hours before he called me back and I received permission to do a RESTORE on the system. Hence, singing Gorillaz at the top of my lungs, trying to echo off the very back wall, and dancing on top of the counters in a lull between actual bouts of working. In my defense, it happened gradually. First I was simply singing, then louder, then dancing as I put shoes away and filled out little bits of paperwork. Finally I vaulted up and did the deed, shaking booty for the entire walking world to see. We have incredibly large front windows. People think I’m strange, but really, it’s just that I forget what I’m doing.

The year 2005 may have been the warmest year in a century, according to NASA scientists studying temperature data from around the world.

I made a brilliant deal at the club tonight. Nicole and Matt brought me to Sanctuary and by chance we sat next to a friendly stranger. When I first began talking to him, I asked why he wasn’t dancing. When he replied that he’d recently wrecked his ankle, I politely enquired how he’d hurt himself. He clipped a starling while sky-diving, he said. He’d been bringing his seven year old nephew up for a run and had turned on his back to show him what falling through a cloud looked like. Hitting a bird is a one in a thousand chance, he said, in an airplane. Million to one when you’re free-falling.

I was impressed.

More so when I found out that he’s illiterate. “How on earth did that happen to you?” I asked, taken entirely aback. He grew up in Northern Ireland. A bomb blast when he was twelve. “Oh right, you’re the people who leave bullets in your post-office walls.” A quarter of his bones are now made of steel, his right hand is warped, and his skull is almost entirely artificial. He still knows Gaelic, however, as that’s what he’d been taught as a child. Home-schooling, apparently, though he’s lost almost all his mandarin. (go figure?) So I struck a deal. First, before I entirely had a grasp of the bizarre situation, I offered to swap some English for some Gaelic. When he’d filled me in a little more, explaining that it hadn’t been for lack of language programs with incredibly impressive pedigree, I offered something different. He chooses the book and I read to him in exchange for Gaelic lessons.

He stopped mid-thought, struck by that. “I just might, you know. That’s a new one.” I hope he takes it.

I’ve invited him to Korean Movie Night. I drew him a map.

keep jhayne from partying alone


jhayne as a southpark kid
Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

Jacques LaLonde and Jhayne Holmes present

KEEP JHAYNE FROM JHAYLE

a party of proportion

#340 – 440 west hastings

The Date: Friday, November 25th (today)

The Time: 9:00 – onward

The Goal: $300.00


Pass it on.

The day of the party has woken up. A thick spicy thing, too crisp to cut, with a sky too dull to remember. Another average Vancouver morning. It’s warm, but it’s wet. It’s raining, but it’s held close to our wool wrapped breath. I come home and put Brian Eno and Sigur Ros on to play in an attempt to escape the abrupt mundanity of walking home in the middle of a bland Friday morning full of school kids and transit commuters with sweeping grand songs about nothing at all. It’s that kind of day. (The jury is still out on how it’s working). Part of it is that Dominique kept me out later last night than I had planned and, unfortunately, my weariness has not only continued but spread, creating a fine measurement where guilt, intention, desire, and night come together into one thing. I’m not sure how I’m going to survive tonight. My endurance will be entirely complicit with whoever comes. Mark that file UNKNOWN.

Jenn is coming over now, bringing milk to match my cereal, playing the cheerfully complimentary yang to my still yawning and starving yin. We would go out for the traditional breakfast, but we’re broke, so instead I’m providing spoons and bowls and somewhere warm and welcome. Hopefully, I will have tided enough to make a habitable space by the time she arrives. It’s difficult to clean around a sleeping ferret. It’s possible for the animal, just over a foot long, to take over the entire bed. It’s tempting to simply curl up around him, let the day turn awhile without me, and sleep until the heralding buzzer wakes me up.

If anyone is interested in helping set up for the party, please either arrive half an hour early to the venue or call Jacques on his cell phone at 604.812.1496.

Cloth instead of drug store bought, cloth instead of paintings, cloth instead of a tongue.

Usually I can deal with the unexpected, but lately I’ve not been keeping myself well, (not enough sleep, certainly not enough calories), and my dizzy lack of amino acids is leaving me open to feeling threatened. There were people in my house pretending to be characters in some game and I’m wasn’t comfortable with it. I’ve always had a very stiff Leave Your Dice At The Door policy and it’s always served me well. That felt like a breach of contract between me and my life. I was supposed to go dancing after, but those participating didn’t seem to care much either way if I attended or no, so it seemed wiser to hurt alone rather than inflict my hormonal self on the world. One of them is too important to me still to have to heir his false affections tonight, though bonds are thankfully dissolving in his self obsessions and my glad distractions. It’s my time of month to be lonely, to want particular people to call on me in the middle of the night and crawl warmly into bed with me.

  • Accountant “cashanova” embezzles 1.9 billion Yen for 17 mistresses.
  • Ohio Police Arrest Woman For $1 In Unpaid Taxes.

    Saturday I woke up too early, walked out the door before I was entirely prepared. Today I did the same. Today I didn’t go hiking all over a treasured nature park though, instead I went wisely for breakfast with Ryan, Navi, and Jenn, then went with them to Sunday Tea before work. (I hadn’t been for months. It was nice to sit and harmlessly flirt with Travis. My world needs more remarkably tall intelligent gay pirates in it.). I met up with Lori after, a friend I haven’t seen in something akin to four years, though it may be closer to three. We couldn’t remember.

  • A two year old toddler has shot a three year old in the hip and thigh.
  • Dead women elected as councilors in Pakistan.

    Now I’m up again after lying awake for over an hour brushing off Ryan’s in-sleep cuddles and trying not to let my emotions tackle me down to the ground. I found myself wondering where my loved ones are, and then, how many of them are there anyway all told. I am tiny and my mouth newly empty of teeth. My tongue probes and explores the gaps and depresses me. How am I to tear into the world like this? I feel as if there have been far fewer influences on my life than a regular tally would count. Years from now, I will remember Joseph clearly, though not who came before, then my marriage to Aubrey. Then there was a hiatus, a few artists already fading. One, however, overlapped the others with a fish-hook heart that I’m still recovering from. Shaking that from my system has left me a little peculiar, as it was deeply lodged in my own for so long that I still feel an absence. Wisdom teeth coming in. Growing pains. Matthew discarding what self I still had to give. Every person a lesson in trust, in disbelief, in the eternal ridiculousness of pain, in the undying willingness to try the damned idea out repeatedly. As I’m gathering myself back to my feet, I am knocking others off them. Let’s take this as a good sign, a marker stating the game’s afoot again. Same field, different rules. Maybe this round I’ll get to win something pleasant.

    • A little present for a dear friend, who I know has forgotten these.

    This day last year, at almost this exact time, my friend Jenn came over and visited. I took some pictures and promised to send them to her. I did that, but today I’ve uploaded them. She’s married now. I was a bridesmaid a her quirky wedding. At the time these were taken, she was just barely Steve‘s fiance and I hadn’t punished myself yet for being in love with someone. I like the last one best. We’re both smiling for people particular.

    241 242 243

    I wonder if we can still get away with calling her a girl. I vote yes.

    Damn I miss my purple hair.

    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!)