Tag: life

Landing in London

Zombie Flowers from ANTSANROM, as inspired by Charles Darwin´s first impressions when he first saw a carnivorous plant in 1875.

I had zero leg room on the flight from Seattle to Reykjavik, my bag of camera lenses and hard-drives took up all the space instead, so I spent the whole time curled up in the chair, feet up, reading book after book until we landed in the cold. (Mr. Penumbra’s Bookstore made a special impression, as it had been a gift from Alexandre that we picked up at the Amazon brick & mortar in Seattle the week we took together there before I left. There’s a girl in it I somewhat identified with, though we’re not of a type.)

From the outside, landing in Iceland at night is like landing on the Canadian prairies. It is dark, flat, empty, and cold. Walking across the field into the building, I felt the bite of Edmonton’s winter. The inside, however, looks precisely what I might imagine a minimalist airport manufactured by IKEA might be like, all pale wood floors and sketches of metal furniture. The gift shop sold furs, the cafeteria had an entire refrigerator shelf for greasy fish products, but otherwise what I managed to explore (with my dreadfully heavy bags) struck me as being similar to any other small airport. Mostly I simply sat, curled up with my phone, surfing the wifi, chatting with Alexandre.

The hours were wrong for the Northern Lights, unfortunately, and the airport, also unfortunately, is an hour out of town, so I did not get a chance to see the aurora borealis or visit Reykjavik or , who lives there. No regrets, though, as I have been assured there will be other chances.

Heathrow, however, was a sprawling place. It reminded me of nothing more than a level of an old James Bond video game that I remember playing a handful of times as a teenager. Low-rez, blocky, big open spaces, lots of windows without any view, and the illusion of multiple paths that resolve only into one when you try to move forward. I would love a map of the place, a 3D rendered duplicate that I could wander at will in virtual reality. The illusion of choice was especially interesting, as if the corridors could be reformed like a labyrinth and somewhere there might be a beast, perhaps some metaphor for finance, with gold dipped bull’s horns and diamond tipped claws.

The border questions were nothing after having to handle the US/Canadian border so many times over the years. The guard dismissed me as soon as they gleaned that I own a credit card, all flags dropped and I was through. Waiting for me were Arnand and Dee, my suitcases, a little red car, and a whole new life. “Hello.”

saved from my own ways by beautiful boys

sanfran leap
San Francisco 2008

My summer is about to explode. It has already started, a little, (I sneaked into a rave on Friday night, spent Saturday on a cross-Atlantic guitar lesson with Richard, Saturday night with dear friends at a dinner, blowing people’s minds with synchronicity, and Sunday at an epic wedding that involved a boat, a full-sized, bright red, radio controlled dalek wedding cake that shouted EXTERMINATE, (part gluten free, too!), a hexacopter ring-bearer, and friends from six or seven countries), but this past weekend was just the amuse bouche.

My comrade Nathan is taking us to Cirque Du Soliex’s Totem tonight for my upcoming birthday, then we’re leaving on Thursday evening for the Sasquatch Music Festival. The line-up is absolutely fantastic, many of my favourite bands are playing, (Elbow, Mogwai, Die Antwood, The National, Cut Copy, TuNe-YaRds, etc.), and it’s going to be our first road-trip. I almost cannot wait. I feel like a little kid, counting sleeps.

Then, on the way back, Nathan is dropping me off in Seattle and I’m going to California for my birthday, courtesy of my ability to fit into a suitcase AKA a sweetheart’s business trip to the Google mothership! Flexibility pays off. Apparently I’ll be flying from Seattle on the 26th or 27th and staying for approximately two weeks.

I leave Canada in four days, but know zero about my flights or even where or when I’m to meet up with my dear B. It is so strange and yet delightful to know I am to be travelling, but not know when or precisely where to. It’s like a trust exercise with the universe that I am surprisingly completely fine with. Are we meeting in Seattle? In California? Where? No idea. I have zero information, but it’s.. gratifying? It feels proper. Makes it more of an adventure, for sure.

I imagine I’ll be taking the train a lot back and forth between SF and Silicon Valley for the first week and tucking in for work during the days, but other than that, my time is open. B. will only be there for the first week and mostly busy with work, which is a bit sad, he is smart and sassy and wonderful, but I’m still thrilled. Once I wave my kerchief goodbye to him at the airport, I’ll couch-float with friends in the Mission or the Castro or the Tenderloin.

The only plans I have so far: Jed and I are making sultry eyes at Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind on May 30th, (come with us!), and Richard has informed me that must visit him at the Vulcan on the first Thursday in June. And Morissa says I can use her house for a birthday dinner party! (Party date as yet to be determined). Other than that, it’s almost all a giant question mark. Do you know of anything going on in SF between May 26th and June 6th-ish? Let’s adventure!

Then I’m back to Seattle for a week to go to the the Georgetown Carnival and the Power Tool Drag Races and all that fun stuff. Maybe play some flaming tether ball. Mars and I are learning to be friends again, too, which makes Seattle much better to visit. I don’t know if B. will be around, but I hope so. (If he isn’t totally sick of me after sharing a hotel room for a week, that is. “Why are all the towels stained scarlet?”, “Why is my pillow purple?”, “How did the room ceiling end up covered in glow-in-the-dark stars? Are those constellations.. accurate?”)

I plan to return to Vancouver on June 15th, immediately put my passport in for renewal the day I get back!, collect certain papers from my mother, Vicki, that she’s bringing back from Ireland, do all of the laundry in the world, maybe throw a quick Vancouver-based birthday party, then head out to Ontario. The plan is to go to REcon (June 23rd – 29th) in Montreal via Waterloo courtesy of Ian, my besty who wants to drive up from Ontario in my fine company. Improbable, yes. Possible, very. I owe his cat Dewie about a thousand snuggles. And I think he’s starting to get tired of carrying his favourite Internet Girl around in his phone à la Her. And Audra has offered us her charming AirBnB apartment in Toronto for a couple of nights, (she has a cotton candy machine!!!), so we could home base out of Toronto and visit with people and stay up late in the city rather than having to go back to Waterloo. I’m sure we’ll use it, as I’m five or six years overdue for a visit and the good people just keep piling up. I even have an uncle there I’ve never met who seems supracool. Why don’t I live in Toronto? I Do Not Even Know.

We’ll be stopping by in Ottawa on our way to Montreal, too, to stop by the river market and stuff our faces with scrumptious berries and sugary beaver tails and APPLY FOR MY IRISH PASSPORT WITH THE EMBASSY! Happy birthday to me! I’m Irish! I HAVE EU AND EVERYTHING. As of, like, six days ago. My mother, bless her, went to Ireland as part of a Canada Council art project with Paul and took the packet of my needful documents with her, followed the very detailed instructions, and has filed my birth with the Irish government!

REcon is apparently a marvelous time, too. It’s run by Hugo, who I love to hang out with at CanSec. I’ve never spent as much time with him or his friends as I would like, so this is perfect. And apparently the Circus Festival starts in Montreal on July 2nd, so maybe we’ll get away with sticking around for a day or two longer for that. Either way, I plan to get fat and happy on delicious food, hug a lot of people, dance my face off, and ride a lot of city bikes. Christine wants to go to the new Cirque show, Kurios, too. I approve. There will also be chocolate and a stop by Santropol. Oh yes.

And no, I don’t know anything solid about flight dates on this trip yet either. IT IS ALL A FANTASTIC MYSTERY.

And then I’m in Vancouver until ToorCamp. (That might be for less than a week, oi). ToorCamp is another hacker event, but in Washington State on July 9th. Nathan wants me to go with him, so of course I said yes. Hopefully my passport will have come back by then and I’ll be good to go. I don’t know much about it, except that the people I know who’ve gone in the past are all excellent.

I have also been tapped to work as the Art Director for Hacked Festival, another hacker event from August 11th – 14th, but this one in Vancouver. It’s their inaugural year and maybe I’ll be able to help, even though I’m barely going to be around for the next few months. (Apply to be a speaker or an artist naow!) I’ve told them about my travel schedule, but the founder met me at BIL and he seems to want me involved anyway, so I might end up going through with it just because. If that ends up being the case, that will fit in right after ToorCamp. And right before Burning Man.

I have a number of options for Burning Man this year, but I think I might be tossing a bunch of them over to stay with a lawyer friend from Seattle. Not only do I appreciate him a metric ton just in general, I cannot get enough of his art project, an infrared photobooth. People step inside into pitch blackness, the infrared flash goes off, and though all they see is a small red light, the pictures look like they were taken in daylight.

And then, come September, rest. Playing with ferrets. Adventure is fine, (dying is fine)but Death), but I’m going to miss my ferrets. Pepper and Selenium are the best.

TLDR; If all goes well, I’m going to live out of a suitcase this summer.

Let’s Throw A Riot (Because They’re Romantic)

It seems a number of us have all independently decided that This Is The Year We Bring Blogging Back, (More Specifically Livejournal). And I could not approve more.

I’m not sure why other people are trickling back into the fold, but for me my recent trip was a stunning reminder of what we had all built here. Just about everything positive in my life is somehow built on the foundation we created. My happiness is due to you and this place and what we made. It goes way back; I wouldn’t have found this apartment, wouldn’t have known about the concert I went to when I met my flatmate David, wouldn’t have connected so deeply with so many people. I wouldn’t have been able to make it to California if it weren’t for Jedidiah, who I met through Karen, who I met here nearly a decade ago, but only met face to face last year. I wouldn’t have had the chops to write about my godmother‘s house in Santa Fe, I wouldn’t have had such fantastic company in San Francisco, trying new things and feeling loved and inspired, I wouldn’t have felt so at welcome in Seattle or know how to deal with my people there, I wouldn’t have felt so safe running away with a complete stranger to Napa Valley. This was my very first community, the place where I started to begin.

Our network spread across the entire world, an empire upon which the sun could not set. Tel Aviv, Madison, New York, London, Santiago, these are all homes to people that have shaped me, many of whom I have never met, but carry always in my thoughts. (There’s a woman I know through Livejournal that I haven’t heard from in five years, but every year on her birthday I post to her last entry, letting her know that I still love her and probably always will.) And I want that back. I want all of you back.

I want myself back.

Somewhere in the mire of crappy relationships and scraping to get by in one of the most expensive cities in the world, I lost myself. I withered and I burned out. I was isolated and torn down and I let the bastards win. Radio silence took over. So this year is the year I push back, the year I clamber out of the rubble and get back into business. I’m going to write, I’m going to take pictures, and I’m going to badger you to do the same. Be my pen-pal, be my friend. I’m going to demand that you share and want you to demand it from me in return. I want a life worth fighting for again.

-::-

So who am I, anyways? Given that my audience has grown considerably smaller than the thousand-plus regulars who used to read my journal, but spread to more people that I’ve actually met, it’s probably time for an update. Another member of the Great Coincidental LJ Revival posted a massive introduction and I’m going to shamelessly swipe it because she used to write speeches for Jack Layton and who am I to paraphrase greatness? So here you are, a paragraph by Audra, “I was thinking that I should do a little intro, for all of the new folks. And then I realized that probably a lot of the LJ friends I’ve had for a decade could also benefit from an update about my life now. It’s easy, especially if you are connected by Facebook, to feel like everyone knows what is up with you always. I know that’s not actually how it works, though. More than once I’ll see someone post about a new baby or something, and not have even known they are pregnant. Facebook does a lousy job of helping us keep up with each other, really, since it only ever shows us content from people we have recently interacted with. Kind of defeating the whole keep-in-touch purpose of Facebook?”

So here I am: I’m a creative 31 year old Cascadian woman who writes, takes pictures, and is commonly understood as being “from the internet”, where my name is either Foxtongue or rarely, Dreampepper. I don’t know everybody, but I seem to live two degrees away from everybody, so if I don’t know you, it’s highly likely I already know your friends. (No, it’s not creepy, it’s hilarious. Just accept it, it hurts less when you don’t struggle.) I cohabitate with a vegetarian, contrarian flatmate, David, who is studying to be a primatologist; two black cats, Tanith and Tanaquil; and two ferrets, Selenium and Pepper. (Selenium is cuter, but Pepper makes up for it by being the biggest ferret I have ever seen). We share a two bedroom apartment in the Commercial Drive neighborhood of Vancouver, BC, that I have painted fuchsia, scarlet, orange, white, and gold, and we have filled with books, art, and houseplants. David likes clutter, I do not, but somehow it still works.

I used to have cool jobs, like “special effects pyrotechnician” and “co-founder of an after-hours nightclub”, but right now I’m on a more pedestrian path as the HR and Culture & Process person for a small IT support company based out of White Rock by the US/Canada border, so I spend my a lot of work-related time commuting as well as being paid to sift through applicants and write corporate documents like Standard Operating Procedures or Job Description Templates. Even so, I am lucky that my employers understand that culture creation is needful and doubly-so that I have nearly free rein to write whatever I believe will get the job done. This means I regularly put sentences like “Don’t take it personally, someone will probably have candy for you” in procedure manuals. (Given half an opening, I will also put goofy lines from the original Maxis SIM:Earth manual in, too, but I haven’t had the chance yet. SOON.1)

I also volunteer as a facilitator at CanSecWest, a security conference here in Vancouver that’s held annually every March. I love it there, I basically move into a hotel with a bunch of my favourite people and help make piles of awesome. There’s very little sleep, too many black t-shirts, but there’s also catering, a lot of love, and I’m always super happy to be part of it. (Even as it sometimes makes me seem paranoid to those outside of the security sector).

Aside from work, I have a couple of small projects, but nothing like I used to. It used to be that I was elbow deep in massive works all the time, but that went away when my interiority died, so now I only have a couple of small things: gamelan practice, a coding class, a language class, and my FB Portrait series, an endeavor to take a proper portrait of every single one of the 1000+ Facebook friends I’ve been lucky enough to collect. I would like to take more on, but there’s only so much creativity on tap right now and I have to be careful not to overwhelm what fuel I’ve managed to rekindle. I’m already three years behind on my photo processing! I’ve never even SEEN any of the pictures I’ve taken at Burning Man. Ever. Right this minute, I still have to deliver three weddings, two birthdays, a maternity shoot, about 30 Facebook portraits, and my Daily Photos from two years ago. (Which is why, if you say, “I want you to come up with my portrait!”, you’re going to get something boring, just like the last ten people who told me the exact same thing. Suck it up.)

Recently I’ve been lucky enough to travel a lot more than I have before: Albuquerque, Los Angeles, Madison, Montreal, Minneapolis, Mountain View, Napa, NYC, Oakland, San Francisco, Santa Fe, Seattle, and Vegas. Beautiful things and moments and people and discoveries at each, but it still doesn’t feel like enough. There’s so much of the world to explore, so many people to meet, so many things to do! In that, at least, I will always be greedy. I only get one chance at this and enough of it has been wasted. My goal is still to leave Vancouver for somewhere bigger, but in the meantime I plan to collect more lunatic adventures like, “that time I had that fling with the astronaut” or “that time I played pink slips for panties in a midnight drag race on the I5 and won” and use those to keep myself alive.

Anyhow, I want you to talk to me. Introduce yourselves, inform me or remind me who’s out there listening. I want this to be a safe place. This used to be our playground and I believe that together we can bring it back to life.

1. It’s been over 20 years, but I still use this joke. One day my network will bring me in contact with the person who wrote it and I will give them the biggest, best of hugs:

In general, SimEarthlings are as lazy as Earthlings. They never want
to work, and especially hate physical labour. Whenever there are heavy
objects to move, they argue over who has to do it.

“I don’t want to carry it–you carry it!”
“Not me–you carry it.”

And that’s how Eukaryotes evolved.

Of course, the usual solution is to hire a professional to do the work.
That’s what Prokaryotes do for a living.

posting because stephen asked me to

Fall from jamie scott.

I’ve been defeated. Bad luck won and this is it, as the cold closes in, there’s nothing else to feel.

Been seeing someone since this summer. It hasn’t changed anything, except that his company’s nice when we’re getting along. Still nothing’s getting in, nothing’s getting out. There’s no love, no shine. My heart doesn’t bump, I don’t lean towards their name. I could say that there’s walls up, except it’s worse than that, as it seems instead that there’s simply nothing left to protect. It would worry me, except that seems scraped clean, too. My internal fires have all burned out.

He’s taking us to New York for New Year’s Eve, an odd, confounding echo of last year. He’s never been and lights up at the idea. I’ve been, as usual, the planner, the toss-things-until-they-stick-er. Finding places to eat, visit, and sleep.

Meanwhile, I remain massively unemployed even though I interview with a potentially life-changing position at least once every two months, frequently as one of the two last candidates. A couple of companies even went so far as to offer me employment before reneging, leaving me panic-scrambling to replace the already scarce gigs and contracts I had cleaned out of my schedule to make room for the new job. At least now I expect my second interview to be cancelled before it even happens, which helps keep the stress down.

I want you to know that some things are still hard, but a lot is getting better.

My injuries are still significant, though my ankle is almost entirely fixed thanks to a birthday massage session with Doug in May while I was down there for Joe and Drew's wake. He helped my back, too, enough that I can get around again, even if not very well. I'm still going through naproxin like candy, but I'm no longer so regularly bed-ridden. Hooray!

I'm still dreadfully underemployed, which is a huge step up from the chronic unemployment I've been plagued with. I did a few websites for people and I've taken up work as a Social Media Manager for Matthew Borgatti, a new friend that I met through Willow at the Seattle Mini-Maker Faire. You might have heard of him through the Anonymous Guy Fawkes Bandannas he sells through his shop, Sleek & Destroy. So far it's been interesting and I love my work and I adore doing business with him and it's all completely groovy. Even aside from all that, being paid to write again has been intensely satisfying.

Another interesting opportunity: I hand-waved away a free staff ticket to Burning Man back in May, but a different one just landed in my lap that I've accepted, (though I said no to Early Entry), so once again I'm going to be one of the Luminferous, the Processional torch bearers that bring The One Flame to The Man and kick off Conclave on Saturday night. Right in the thick of it, helping make the important things happen, my absolutely favourite place to be.

I don't have the resources to afford the trip yet, but I have no doubt that things will fall together in the nick of time. My knack for survival is ground right in. 

Today’s Required Reading: HOW TO GET UNSTUCK

Dear Sugar, The Rumpus Advice Column #44: HOW YOU GET UNSTUCK:

[…]I hung up the phone feeling like my sternum had cracked open. Before I could even take a breath, in walked the girl whose mother’s boyfriend repeatedly almost drowned her with the garden hose in the back yard. She sat down in the chair near my desk where all the girls sat narrating their horrible stories and she told me another horrible story and I told her something different this time.

I told her it was not okay, that it was unacceptable, that it was illegal and that I would call and report this latest, horrible thing. But I did not tell her it would stop. I did not promise that anyone would intervene. I told her it would likely go on and she’d have to survive it. That she’d have to find a way within herself to not only escape the shit, but to transcend it, and if she wasn’t able to do that, then her whole life would be shit, forever and ever and ever. I told her that escaping the shit would be hard, but that if she wanted to not make her mother’s life her destiny, she had to be the one to make it happen. She had to do more than hold on. She had to reach. She had to want it more than she’d ever wanted anything. She had to grab like a drowning girl for every good thing that came her way and she had to swim like fuck away from every bad thing. She had to count the years and let them roll by, to grow up and then run as far as she could in the direction of her best and happiest dreams across the bridge that was built by her own desire to heal. […]

I would have done a lot better had I this article when I was a child, growing up the way I did, isolated yet surrounded by violence, multiply assaulted by people I trusted, a victim marked with “survivor”, a word that sometimes is almost as awful as “deserve”. I hate almost everything about my life, that it’s a string of disasters, tragedies, and death, with very little to show, except that, in the words of one particularly useless ex, it’s amazing I didn’t turn out worse. (Thanks, O. You were awesome, the way I came home to find someone else in our bed the week I was moving in with you, the day I was fired because my boss had a husband that thought I was pretty. Right on. Way to go.) Even as an adult, my friends ditched when Heart of the World imploded, my family swings from religious right-wing alcoholics to unreliable leftists who think folk music will save the world, and 90% of my relationships have ended with being betrayed. My only defense is what good I can find, new art, new experiences, new people, new stories, collecting what I can to bolster my thin belief that there is better out there, that not everyone lives like I’ve lived, and to make sure they don’t, sacrificing my own life when required, because it has to be done, doesn’t it, and you’re not doing it, so I have to. It’s to the point where I’m known for it, (even though I hate that too, to be trusted but with no one to trust), a habit so deeply ingrained in my flesh it’s become my second skin, the thing that keeps the bitterness that flows through my blood from dissolving me completely, the acid in my heart from burning it altogether black. I am glad for this woman, for being able to articulate so clearly what I so desperately needed when I was a girl, what I still have to remind myself weekly is true, not that it will get better, it bloody well hasn’t and it damned well won’t, but that reaching is important, even when you’re alone, especially when you’re alone, even if you perpetually, perpetually fail.

my life as a douglas adams character

My Improbability Field’s been cranked up this week. Saturday I went to Shane’s show at the Vogue, (beautiful as always, moving as always), and left with him after. We went to meet some of his friends, then, once the pub was closed and everyone finally dispersed, we crossed the street to Wraps Plus, a late night drunk-food donair sort of shop to get something to eat in the hotel room. While there, Shane received a text from a girl he knows, “Hey, we’re coming to you!” She arrived very soon after, highly excited, “Look! Look outside!”

A man was standing outside with his head on fire.

Flames at least a foot tall, licking the sky, shooting upward from his hat.

Turns out Ole, who it just happened to be, (as he also just happens to be her roommate), had swiped an oil candle from a bar up the street as they’d walked past it, dumped the oil onto his hat, and then set it on fire to impress us. Then, once he knew he had our attention, in a move that would have worked in a perfect universe, he swept the bowler hat from his head to wave out the flames. Instead the flames transferred to his hair. I have to admit, we were, in fact, impressed.

The next morning, on my way back home, our weird neighborhood foot fetishist got me again. Months and months ago, I met him on the bus. I was sitting with one leg crossed over the other, making a table for the book I was reading. He sat next to me and pressed his hand against the bottom of my shoe. I apologized and moved my foot to the ground. Natural, right? But then he dropped to the floor of the bus, lifted up my foot and put his hand underneath it, and asked me to step on him, while continuing to press down on my shoe with his other hand. I refused, tore my foot from his grasp, told him he was being inappropriate, and then he got off the bus. End of story. Weird, weird story.

Until Sunday morning, when I overshot my bus-stop by a few blocks and found myself walking down the hill home, checking my e-mail on my phone like the little net-addict I am. A stranger caught up to me, then fell into step, then very suddenly pulled off his jacket off and spread it out on the ground in front of my feet! Given my years of reading and walking, I auto-corrected my path and stepped off the sidewalk without even looking up. Assuming he had just pulled some sort of bizarre Walter Raleigh sort of move, I eyed the entire motion with suspicion. What terrible thing did he just unnecessarily cover with his jacket?

But no, it was far sillier and almost a little more sinister. As I moved to keep walking, he said, “Wait! Please walk on it, get it dirty.” I almost hesitated for a split second, a nearly uncountable sliver of time, but he continued with, “For art!” So I did. I stepped all over that jacket, very deliberately, from one end to the other. It wasn’t until about six feet later that I realized what had happened. Sure, I couldn’t help but laugh at myself the whole way home for being so easily profiled, but seriously, I really have to start recognizing that guy.

Once home, I started contacting people, scouting for someone to go to the Vancouver Fan Expo with. Chris was game, so we met at the Conference Center and ventured in, running into only half as many of the approximately billion people I expected to. (Yanick was there, in from Montreal as a guest, which was great. It was his birthday on Saturday, so I gave him the best possible present, a tiny sassy miniature of the Bulleteer, the pin-up superhero character he used me as a rough body model for, that Don Debrandt gave me for my birthday many years ago. She’s from a fighting game and comes with a stats card that states, and I kid you not, that she has sixty-nine health points. Fuck the patriarchy, kids.) Eventually exhausted with the endless parade of bizarre anime costumes, and with no further opportunities to stalk John Delancy, we decided to find somewhere to eat. We didn’t have any clue what direction to take, but then! Across the street, a man in a suit, earphones in, wildly dancing the Christopher Walkens piece from Weapon of Choice. So of course we followed him, which led us on the path to Save-On-Meats, where we camped until half past nine, talking about politics, gender relations, authors, and pretty much a little bit of everything. Best possible destination.

From there we went to the theater, spur of the moment, to see Cabin In The Woods, the new Joss Whedon film neither one of us particularly knew anything about. Oddly, it was only showing in a very particular theater, one with an acronym neither one of us had heard of. Curious, I asked an usher what it meant, only to have another theater patron stop a moment to listen to the answer. (Which, for those that must know, boiled down to, “we charge you an absurd price for leather seats and call it a premium experience.”) I replied with something that wasn’t quite funny, but the stranger, being a nice sort of stranger, grinned at my joke enough that a dialogue started. Soon all three of us found ourselves standing in the upstairs lobby, deep in conversation, thrilled to have met, until we were almost late for our films. Contact info was exchanged and a possible plan made to meet up after our movies and swap reviews.

The film itself was spectacular. I want to gush about how completely fantastic Cabin In The Woods is, but I don’t want to ruin anything. Which is more grace than were given, as the projector shut off at the very end of the film, literally just minutes before the credits rolled. Not the sound, only the screen, leaving us listening to the incredible denouement that the movie had been working towards since the opening scene. Improbability engage!

The staff eventually fixed the issue, rewinding the film back, and then forward, and then back again, with the house lights on, then off, then on again, and gave us free ticket coupons for a future film, but it was almost no use. As soon as the projector flicked off, everyone’s phones were out, everyone was texting, and the ending was ruined. Amazing, though, as the movie failure tweaked our exit time just enough to run into the fun stranger again. Noah from Oakland, it turns out, up on holidays for the week, only knows one local and she’s way out in Langley, so he’s completely open to random adventures. Which meant, of course, Hamburger Mary’s at one in the morning until they kicked us out, and then hanging out all yesterday until two a.m.

This evening we’re going to Chambar for dinner, with a stop in at Guilt & Co. after for The Decadent Eccentric, a belly-dance, contact juggling, sideshow spectacular with Luciterra and one of my favourite acquaintances, Chris Murdoch. Tomorrow we’re renting a bicycle for two and riding the seawall and dropping in on Salt Tasting Room. The day after that, who knows? Finally my underemployment has changed into funemployment.

the anatomy of the box under my bed

Still Life at Dusk
by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

It happens surprisingly fast,
the way your shadow leaves you.
All day you’ve been linked by
the light, but now that darkness
gathers the world in a great black tide,
your shadow leaves you to join
the sea of all other shadows.
If you stand here long enough,
you, too, will forget your lines
and merge with the tall grass and
old trees, with the crows and the
flooding river—all these pieces
of the world that daylight has broken
into objects of singular loneliness.
It happens surprisingly fast, the loss
of your shadow, and standing
in the field, you become the field,
and standing in the night, you
are gathered by night. Invisible
birds sing to the memory of light
but then even those separate songs fade
into the one big silence that always
seems to be waiting.

  • Your Weekend Reading: The 2012 Hugo Short Story Nominees.
  • The Mixtape Lost at Antikythera, by Rob Beschizza.
  • 50 Sci-Fi & Fantasy Works Every Socialist Should Read as listed by China Mieville.

    Once upon a time, before the invention of touch but long after writing, there was a voice on the wind that spoke to a boy and the voice sounded like the petals of a rose unfolding. “I offer you a wish”, said the voice. “What is the price?” asked the boy. The voice came closer, with a rustle like red feathers. “You must remember that I am real, even when it will make you unhappy.” The boy stood and thought, his face as serious as his face could be, then said, “That is a fair price. I will accept your wish.” And then there was a flash and he flew away.

    I have now filled an entire recycling bin with discarded photographs. Close to an entire ten year history, destined for shredding. I have been scanning them, envelope by envelope, and throwing out the negatives, taking an entire day to do it, digitizing my past in the name of a better future. (Lung visited yesterday, looked through some of them, said, “Fuck, you need better memories.”) It is interesting how it still feels a tiny bit taboo, even as I find myself enjoying the act of throwing them away. Two piles: one for recycling, the other to be burned.

    Meanwhile, I wonder if I should be better documenting this apartment, this nest that David and I have built together. Taking pictures of what we’ve done with the walls, how we’ve arranged our furniture, decorated the windowsills with plants. The place is changing, the illusion of permanence dissolving as my things leave, either given away or sold. I wonder how I will look back on this apartment, at our time together. Will I miss it? Or do I feel it’s more a duty to take note of my existence, archive it, surroundings included?

    Going through old photos has only reinforced the notion, as I’ve been discovering that I don’t have any photographs of the many, many places I’ve lived, like my teenage bedroom, wallpapered in art posters and poetry, or the room I painted over by Victoria Drive to look like a sunset, stars made from pie tins thumb-tacked to the ceiling, with the tree in the corner that I hauled in from a wind storm and hollowed and carved into a shelf. Rare, even, to find pictures set in my old places, like the one of a friend who happened to be sitting on the couch in the converted storage unit I lived in with my first love in Toronto. Not that it shows nothing of any relevance, only a guy playing video games, homeless as his own apartment was being sprayed for roaches. You can’t see the absurd scope of the place, the huge roll-up door that sounded like thunder anytime anyone went in or out, or the hobbit-sized floor above, accessible only by a rough wooden ladder, which was our “room”, our bed under green hand-prints which probably only now exist as echoes in my mind. The list goes on – the cavernous ex-bank with the working vault that Grady found in the downtown east side, the terrible basement on the north shore with the deviant landlord, the house on 53rd with the gold and black velvet wall where that old guy tried to kidnap me – all of them worthy of being preserved, if only so I remember that once upon a time I lived there. It’s like I abandoned my history, as if because my life wasn’t happy, none of it was worth keeping. It seems negligent, as if I should have been preserving these places as I went, offering evidence that we existed there, that our lives once gave these buildings meaning.

    • half light in springtime

    There are things sadder
    than you and I. Some people
    do not even touch.
    Sonia Sanchez, Haiku.

    I’ve been trying to teach myself to write again, insisting on consecutive events, playing catch up from a month ago – the science conference, cansec, the whistler trip, and now Seattle; Sean Corey Adams, the emerald city comicon, friends, productivity, love, and witnessing the birth of a scarlet wall squid. Not sure how well it’s serving me yet, but here’s hoping. In the meantime, I want to mark this as one of those rare occasions when my life is actually nice. Thank you.