Tag: love

More than a couch, less than a rocket ship.

I pulled back. Wait. With one hand on his chest, I reached down with the other and plucked our favourite caramel from the small, expensive box on the bed. Here, so we’ll always know what our first kiss tastes like. I put it between my teeth and held it there in my mouth, then leaned forward to his, and broke the dark chocolate into gooey citrus caramel just as our lips began to meet.

The last few days have felt like a wonderful vacation from the various crushing worries that have been become the fabric of my recent life. Instead of worrying about rent or groceries or perpetually postponed photo sessions, I’ve been floating, spending time in Seattle with Tony, celebrating our one year anniversary with whatever pops into our heads. I arrived to find chocolates on the bed from Chocopolis, the place on Capitol Hill where the flavour of our unbelievably delicious first kiss came from. They no longer sell that particular sweet, but Tony bought approximations, and we fed them to each other like little bullets of joyful reminder, coated in smooth, delicious happiness.

He also presented me with a copy of Taxidermia, so Friday night we stayed in, made supper, and let wonder unfold on the screen. Neither one of us had seen it before, but I’ve been quietly lusting after it for years, since seeing this clip when it was first posted. I warn you now, it’s one of the most beautiful films I’ve ever seen, but it’s relentless. I’ve been trying to think of a way to recommend it to people for days now, except I want to do so safely, so no one ends up traumatized. Describing it would ruin it. Telling everyone to see it would be a mistake. I mean, it’s heart-stoppingly gorgeous, but there is a man with a flame thrower penis within the first ten minutes. It needs one of those old thriller movie posters that didn’t bother with anything but NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART!! in 89 point bright red type. Nothing else would be appropriate. I will say this, though, if you’re a squeamish sort of body, either watch it with someone who will tell you when to look or simply avoid it altogether, excluding the scene I’ve already posted.

Since then, we’ve wandered downtown, had dinner at the Space Needle, saw lightning, practiced our massage skills with ebony current cream, enjoyed at least one sleep-in of epic proportions, played peek-a-boo with a baby giraffe at the Seattle Zoo, fed popcorn to squirrels, been rained on with some red pandas, were pleasantly defeated by steaks at Morton’s, and fallen asleep in front of Sonny Chiba movies and seriously vintage cartoons. Our love is awesome.

ps. I also got him a present, but it’s not here yet, so mum’s the word until it arrives. Shh.

Incredible, once you figure in the 100+ miles distance between our cities.

I was considering skipping Norwescon this year now that Myke and Beth have had to cancel, but after some deliberation I’ve decided to attend anyway in honor of one simple, sentimental fact: it was there that Tony and I silently came to the tacit understanding that we were both going to go home, clear out any distractions, and embark upon the complicated process of transforming into a couple.

I can’t pinpoint how we did it, exactly, given that we discussed nothing of the sort, but that we did so was undeniable. (In fact, nothing related was said until I got back to Canada, where the first thing he said to me over messenger was not “hello”, but “which bus are you taking down here?”, to which I already had a reply.) Two weeks later, I arrived on May 1st and so began our Month of Sundays, which has now stretched out almost to an entire, (and entirely), wonderful year, without even one weekend skipped.

Next year, excepting a social miracle, it is unlikely I will go, but this year I can’t help but see as a proto-anniversary, an excuse to celebrate what I am thankful for absolutely every day.

what we’re doing for our octolunaversary nye

Largest Man-Made Mountain Could Rise Above Berlin’s Skyline

We fly to San Diego tomorrow, late in the evening, arriving at eleven. I write the words, I say them, and they feel like myth, like a story I might tell a child. We will pack today, wake up tomorrow, make breakfast, make love, do all the things we do in a day, then get onto one of those roaring machines in the sky and step off in San Diego in time for an incredible party for New Year’s Eve. How… How… fictional!

Today I’ve been figuring out the last pieces of our San Diego itinerary – where we’ll be staying on which days, how to get to Evolve from downtown – and having a surprising amount of fun doing it. It helps that Tony and I have similar tastes, and while it’s going to be incredible swanking it up in the luxury of the Hilton, we’re also excited about the The Dolphin Motel, where we’re staying tomorrow, which looks like it fell out of a snazzy movie set, (check out that neon!), and The Balboa Park Inn, right across the street from the San Diego Zoo, where the fiction and wonder continue, as we’ve booked… the Orient Express Theme Room! Swoon. SWOON.

Our trip is going to be so very transcendant, it’s surprising my head hasn’t fallen off.

This evening we’re gearing up by sorting out laundry, packing and electronics, and glueing long iridescent feathers to my purple hat. We still need to work out schedules with friends in L.A. and check the local weather and all those responsible things, but so far we’re doing pretty good, having settled in to wait for the dryer with West Wing, bowls of steamed vegetables, a saucer of fruit salad, and pumpkin cake with caramel sauce. Tomorrow we’ll look at what we’ve accomplished, shake our heads, do a bunch more of it, then pop out for last minute essentials, like matching bindi decorated with sequins, glass beads, or rhinestones from the Indian shop on Broadway for our dress up on New Year’s Eve, because we can’t be all rational thought and action.

A giant “digital cloud” tower structure that would “float” above London’s skyline has been outlined by an international team of architects, artists and engineers, which also includes the writer Umberto Eco

like hearing that pitter pat after a dead line of silence

Happy Holidays!
Enjoy yourselves, whatever it is you’re doing!

I have to admit that this December wasn’t looking very good. Bad luck was piling on bad luck, until I felt like I had somehow started an invisible count-down to an early grave. It seems, however, that everything was just clearing out of the way, leaving space to celebrate new, better foundations. There has been a bright side to every disaster. Because I was let go, I’m able to spend the holidays with Tony, who’s been saving up his use-it-or-lose-it Microserf vacation, and go with him to San Diego to see our friends, Mutaytor, perform with Rabbit In The Moon on New Years Eve at Evolve. Because my life crashed down all at once, I have been surrounded by love and care and support beyond my wildest dreams. I’m currently wearing a little silver frog ring and a pair of swooningly soft groverskin socks from Karen, for example, who sent me such a beautiful treasure package that I came down with a mild case of the weeps as I was carefully opening all the enchanting layers of ravishing colour and glee.

Thank you, my loves, my friends, my acquaintances, and you strangers. Thank you for everything!

now to figure out how to permanently move to seattle

f4925624

september, seattle, fire spinning at gasworks park

One of the most amazing things about this trip, past the fact that it’s happening at all, is that Tony and I are going to get to spend an entire two weeks together, the longest period of time in each other’s company we’ll have had since we met in 2002. Once he gets off today’s bus, we’ll be inseperable until November 29th.

a tiny punch to the heart

Reposted from Sean:

The definition of love.

My housemate works at a men’s formal wear shop in downtown Vancouver. Yesterday, a customer by the name of Justin came into her shop with both his mother and girlfriend, wanting to rent a tuxedo. Justin is eight years old, his girlfriend is ten, and Justin decided that he wanted to rent a tuxedo for a party that was being thrown on behalf of his girlfriend, so he tried on some of the finest suits in the shop for the love of his young life, accessorized with his brightest smile.

Nothing out of the ordinary, right? Well, the party is being hosted by the Make-A-Wish Foundation. You see, Justin’s girlfriend has a brain tumor which recently started growing at an alarming rate – so quickly, in fact, that she’s not expected to make it past this coming weekend. Justin’s in love with a girl whose life is being measured in minutes, hours if she’s lucky.

Justin got his rental for free.

Spaceship in Spanish is “nave espacial”

Contrast

When he lays down with me, it is as if my flesh lightens, I become milk spilled against the shaded tan of his nutshell skin, we are so distinct. I feel drawn to our differences, how his muscles are shaped dissimilar from mine. The softness of my body, the taut, fragile corners of his. Sometimes I will wake when he sleeps and simply admire him, this curious and perpetually buoyant creature with the temerity to fall in love.

We are so full of possibility, I can see it like maps on the inside of my eyes.

Disparity

He is slow to reply when we are sad, our bodies curled heavily together, depressed letters thrown to the bed in a mess. I do not react well to silence, not while asleep at night, not when we speak. His pause, the length of fifteen breaths, disrupts my communication, sends me casting nets, discarding what I started with, trawling the ocean of our alphabet for a topic, any topic, that will be worthy of response, anything to delay my please talk to me.

Somewhere in the gaps when he’s not speaking, there must be something to say.

I will never be your beauty queen

Her hair spreads out like fire and its like she just can’t stop
and then the cops come: Doughnut guard state car rolling up along the side
With the fire lanterns burning, the sirens opened wide and they say,
“Excuse me, little miss, it’s time to take this home”
and they try to get her address, she says, “Sorry I don’t have one,
it’s only me and these feeding fields, look where you are”
She kicks at the hem of her skirt, and on go the cars.

He sits across from me like a carving in diamonds and soft, stupid gold, caught in the betrayal he wrought, delicate and final, wet, salty, and full of things I dare not speculate, not if I care to stay sane. We are at lunch, recovering from the power outage at work, offices on the same grid, the mean infinitesimal click of my machine shutting off, along with the lights. A sound like his eyelids slipping into place, the smallest of tics in the middle of the night. (Remembering, suddenly, how he cried.) I am not well, too torn, too unhappy. There was too much to gain to have it so thrown away. (Remembering, too, how he drew in ink on my flesh, how I traced the word redemption with my finger on his chest.) Watching our silence, watching words lash like justice out of me, I order an ice-cream sundae instead of a meal, a frivolous urge born of rioting self defense. Meeting him blankly, gesturing with my spoon, the ice is broken but it does not save me. It is all I can do not to leave, to leave and keep walking, to keep walking until I am half asleep, crumpled and restless, a nameless bundle treading sacred ground by the side of a highway. South maybe. East. All I can hope is that one day this will be behind me, a memory of pain my brain might not decide to keep.

She says, “Take me around and dance me outside, show me a place where we might hide.
What I want, I’m afraid, that you can’t afford to buy”