Tag: love

run away to spain

365 day one hundred & twenty-four: cover letters

California lifts the ban on gay marriage, becoming the second state to do so.

From the tongue of bees, I step into the warm night, instantly reminded of living somewhere else, a towel around my waist, soaked to the belly, thinking of humidity, how it used to be impossible to see the sky in summer. (At the store, the clerk said it made him happy to see young people in love, “I miss my wife.”) The water on my skin evaporates as I count footprints to the porch, wondering at the heat, and listen to the siren that comes up from the water. Three years I’ve lived here, almost four, and all I know is that it’s from the docks.

David is still in the shower, rinsing bubbles from his hair, I can almost fancy he is quietly singing, though he is not. I stand a moment on the porch, listening to the places I used to live that are suddenly humming under my skin like oxygen, gathering momentum, feeding on the thick texture of the air. I want to have him there, where I once was, in the dark, watching lightning blow in from a roof eight years ago, hair whipping up to blind the clouds that looked as gray as stone, as solid as paint, hands out-stretched, as if with my hands I could catch every drop of rain. I want myself there, but now, like a match-stick struck, flaming into travel faster than thought, as if we could fly on the fire of our belief.

Maybe this will be alright, perhaps I have had my fill of mad genius for now, this could still all work out. Two writers together, mild and bright, making a joyful life, walking, hands held, alright with ourselves, our places, our names. I love him. Already I think in we not I, in us more than me, as if the habits of relationship were merely waiting for me to assume them again like a ring I had merely misplaced, not slowly destroyed or completely forgotten how to wear.

This morning when I woke folded against him, my head on his chest, not yet sleepily reaching for the alarm, I smiled – there was a dried flower petal pressed, like a good luck charm, perfectly in the hollow of his throat.

Campaigners on the Greek island of Lesbos are to go to court in an attempt to stop a gay rights organization from using the term “lesbian”.

the only theme I could find is black

Sidewalk Psychiatry graffiti.

365 day one hundred & eight: have a nice day

This is a story: ink hair, Queen street, where the roots are, I walked barefoot, crucified by how beautiful he was, how beautiful he could be, I was unknown, achingly young, it was perfect enough for me. Learning the boundaries of narrative, learning the theme and flow of biography. Another: ink hair, on stage in love, wings as wide as geometry, meeting, a lobby, a lost book, a romance of hotel rooms and late night cameras, smoked with his passions, it was more than it seemed to be, and sometimes less. Summaries, diagrams, lists. An old project is percolating in my head with a newer idea, photographs, coloured string.

He doesn’t like it when I chew gum, but he watches me take out my hair pins as if the act carries the same intimacy as removing my clothing.

Being constructed naturally of disciplined angles, his only defense was to move with a maximum of constant, weightless grace.

Chapter headings in the shape of their hands, page count off how much poetry I can wring from their skin. Something is taking shape: ink hair, a familiar bar, an unfamiliar feeling of awe, music parallel to skill, traveling the next day, his unmatchable grin, every day always too far away, a myth, circling the world twice to end everything thirty feet from where it began. If I took a photograph of every one and layered them, there might be details submerged, but perhaps a clarity for all of that. It looks like: ink hair, eyes meeting, singing in the street, a miracle, his poetry, his children later on the phone, impossible, the sweetest thing.

Digital culture-inspired oil paintings.

keep the engine running

1guyporphyre frontyard

photos, unsurprisingly, by lung liu

“This life turned out nothing like I’d planned.” “Why not?” “When I was younger, living in L.A., I only wanted to grow up to be a famous pro-skateboarder. Pretty good at it too, not one of the insane guys, but up there.” “So what happened?” “My father moved us back to San Francisco and I became a musician.”

Saying goodbye, listening to the taste of every word that’s falling from my mouth like a flower petal, pearls spilling on the floor, why doesn’t he hear them? I hope the waiter doesn’t slip. A fortune of curiosity rilling across the floor. Formica table, silver edged, I’ve written about this before. It seems to be a place I say farewell to lovers. Late night, wishing we had picked the music, juke box saviors, noise, funk, tanned in the red light. My taste buds are crying out for the flavour of his sentence structure, how I find myself pronouncing his the word friends. A wild-eyed longing for something new, for all the stories he has to give the world, suffering from never enough. We should have, his future, another time, my past, we could have, but we won’t. Rain check. I want to lick his eyes, tri-coloured, red in the middle like a demon, green edged, the colour of jealousy, getting to fly away and jump away from here, cramped maybe, but I can’t care about that. Amazing. Summertime. Warmth. I’ll see him then, same old city, secrets open, wide, blazing. Press passes. Another stage, another show. Performances on and off, back behind fences, over by a beach, tucked around the lake. Maybe I’ll catch him a rabbit, eight track ears, folding back the soft fur, the sunburned faces of the people in the front row. For once, I don’t mind that I crossed the river. At least he held my hand.

“When I was sixteen, I had a decision land in my lap which would have changed everything. He was very rich, very famous. I see the face of the girl who said yes on magazines.” “I think you made the right choice.” “I think so too, or at least, I like to think so. Sometimes it’s hard to tell, but right now, all of it brought me to being here with you, and I’m okay with that. That feels alright by me.”

Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free

On the heels of my time in Seattle, then my time in Whistler, my lover came through town for a weekend. And broke up with me. But it was lovely. My blood is still gently humming contentment from the weekend with the same satisfaction found in tying a good knot. Mike and I had the nicest, kindest, most genial, and convivial split-up I have ever encountered, then spent all of Sunday on The Best Date We Never Had. Seriously. I feel all warm and fuzzy and completely and utterly loved, all the way from the roots of my multi-dyed hair to the very tips of my bare little toes.

Saturday started out badly, we had a worrisome phone-call notable only for the gulf of heart-bruising silence that ran underneath everything we said, but it brightened immeasurably as soon as we met at the club. There’s something baked into his smile which unfailingly cheers me up, like an open door with sunshine on the other side.

The gig was marvelous, everyone had a fantastic time. The albums don’t do him justice, they’re great music, but seeing him live.. it’s an extraordinary, inspiring experience. He twists, dances, and contorts around his instrument, setting a mad pace thick joyful exuberance. I’ve been to his concerts more than anyone else’s and yet I still don’t think I quite have the words to describe what it’s like. There was one boy dancing along at the front so enthusiastically a wind came off his limbs.

Thankfully, it was an early night, with another band playing after, so we got to pack up and go for dinner at a half-way reasonable hour, something which doesn’t happen very often. We went to the best Korean Tapas Fusion place, over on Robson, with James, Lung, Claire, her boyfriend, and my mother, Vicki. Delicious, nutritious, and tremendous fun. We toasted unlikely things, celebrated, and ate the perfect amount of far too much. On the ride back to my place, when it was just the two of us again, we went over the conversation we had neglected before, fitting our words together like the devout gears of a crystal mechanism, casual and insistent, gently examining our language to see where we’d gone and what would happen next. When we got to my place, it was somehow finally okay to go in and sleep alone.

Then all of Sunday, as if to make up for lost potential time, we spent on The Best Date We Never Had. He called when he woke up, drove straight over, graciously crammed into my windowsill with me so Lung could take our portrait, then brought me out to Pnohm Pehn, one of my favourite restaurants, for a few hours of religious experience late afternoon breakfast, then to La Casa Gelati, home to 208 flavours, for double-scoop ice-cream cones. When it was time to scoot over to the gig, we had elbow room enough to sit in the car and talk music before going in and facing set-up, and when it was time to vanish before the show, we settled into a coffee-shop with delicious tea to talk politics and the state of our worlds. (The Cold war, Rush, growing up believing in The Nuke, where we were when the Berlin Wall went down, the natural disasters created by man.)

I took video, That 1 Guy playing the Railway Club, April 5th & 6th: Forgotten Whales, How’s ‘Bout Those Holes in the Moon, Buttmachine, Somewhere Over the Rainbow (on the magic saw), Dig (on the magic boot), Solea (w. a bit of Iron man), The Moon is Disgusting (It’s Made of Cheese), Cameo’s Word Up finale, and one just for me, as I threw panties at the stage in Seattle.

After that we went for late night burger and shakes and the waiter thought we were so cute drinking two strawed from the milkshake that he took our picture. I even got a kiss goodnight at the door. It’s like we should break-up all the time, “I NEVER WANT TO SEE YOU AGAIN, where should we go for dinner?” So though I’m suddenly single, it was done with such grace that I feel completely undamaged. He figured out the magic combination, like how to kiss angels without being scalded.

moving in on the first date

Once upon a time when time was shivering apart and memories seemed more real than reality, the girl who fell from the sky and the west coast hacker king came to an agreement.

Today was gloriously stressful, much more than I bargained for. April 1st is my one-year nonniversary with Antony, which struck me in the heart like the world wanted me to understand the word “smite” in a pure, holy way. Every living cell in my body misses him, they take turns reminding me. Today, however, they ganged up and jumped me. All today, as the last of the SecWest cool kids came down from Whistler and connected with the airport and chores, I could rewind a year back and see exactly where I was, minute by minute, 365 days ago. As I write this, we were smiling. He was saving me from darkness, I was inviting him back to my place. It was a Saturday, then, and we had gone to dinner and dancing, as if we had drawn a straight line on a map from meeting to what would be. Any minute now, we’ll have kissed.

I called him tonight after I got home, half an hour after midnight, and left a message. I told him I miss him, that I love him, that of everyone in the world, it’s his blessed voice I would like to hear the most.

Editor’s Note: To wit, my life took a left turn and fell apart and came back together and all those things that lives tend to do, but all in one day instead of stretched over a reasonable amount of time. I’m back from madcap Whistler, I met keen new people, Dragos came over, Nicole took me out, I called home, and now I’m alright. Watch the Brothers Quay video, it’s splendid and makes me glad the world exists.

Alex and I prepared by charging our camera batteries. I appreciate glory that can be so mundane.

My mother, bless her heart, found too much worry in the idea of me being on the bus alone at, (gasp), one in the morning, so she hauled herself out and drove me to Alex and Chrissy’s new house on the North Shore, the one they rented especially to raise their child in. Wood floors, a basement, a back-yard with a deck. Perfect space in which to grow. I’m here now, though she’s left, (it was the first time she’s seen Alex since he was six years old), typing from their couch while they try to get some rest upstairs. As I have a habit of making people laugh, I decided that I should sleep downstairs, where I won’t be distracting. Still, though, even from here in the livingroom, I can hear Chrissy singing through her contractions.

It’s really quite pretty.

I feel I have a better perspective on my parents just from being here. Maybe most parents, really, like this is a rite of passage. It feels so adult, waiting for the birth of a best friend’s child, as if a line has been crossed. There’s just something about it I can’t yet explain. Maybe later, after the waiting is over and we’ve seen the child as more than a strange photograph, black, white, and gray. We’re all so happy, run through with wonderful anticipation, that this feels as unreal as it feels important. (I couldn’t help touching her belly and asking Xander, the creature inside, when he’s going to come out.) It feels like an occasion in a way that none of the holidays ever do, like finally, something real. I’m glad to be here, like this, writing everything down.

(I wonder if he will read this when he’s older.)

Hi Xander, good morning. Welcome to the world.
Already we love you and you’re not even here.

delicious

In Finnish, “onni” means “luck”.

I think of them in metaphor. Black doves, shape changers, the old stories of Prometheus. I lick my writing from the taste of their skin, my words from the twists in their gestures. By the woods of our correspondence, a river flows. From the shape of their hands, I can place every single one against my fingers, the places I truly call home, and leaf through our fingertips touching. Encapsulated interaction, catalogued small details that I can carry later. Preferences. Coffee, cigarettes, tea.

“Here.”
“What’s this?”
“That’s a hundred dollars to cover a taxi to get you into town and back.”
“What? That’s too much. I can’t take that. You know most men give flowers or chocolate or, like, earrings.”
“Well, I’m giving you money.”
“You tawdry American. You’re just buying off the guilt of leaving me.”
“If I give you another hundred, will you just get the abortion and promise never to talk to me again?”
“It only costs fifty here in Canada, but I’ll take the other fifty as a promise never to send you bronzed booties. Is that what they’re called? Those little knitted baby shoes?”
“Yes.”

They are the second generation warfare of my inspiration, prodigies, a reason to ‘take my shoes off and throw them in the lake’, the impetus I require to create, to claim the word artist as my own. Without these black and ivory dreamers, I have no focus, no lens to collect light into fire. That high holy spark. The currency of competition. Engendering wonder by twisting the world into a better configuration. The etymology of the word awesome, a sacred dread mixed with veneration, an education in love.

In Japanese, “oni” means “demon”.

this was going to be something else

Switzerland Invades Liechtenstein.

If you stare at a dead channel long enough, you begin to see pictures. It’s like picking out mythology in static. Imagine a line, a straight line, and you’ll see it. Imagine a letter, an initial, a simple symbol, and it will appear. Pattern recognition, linked to our ability to recognize faces in clouds, but the image will keep moving, you’ll follow the line back and forth around the screen. Letters will slowly rotate. This is a trick I learned in hotel rooms. If you’re dedicated, it will also work with scrambled pornography.

Jon was the kind of tall that has to slouch to smile. I’ve written about him before. Thick plaid shirts and dark black jeans, he would whistle like a bird, a beer can in his hand and a mischievous smile for the confused cat, Merin, that came with the house. He would look up and catch me dishevelled, new to morning, watching shyly from the bedroom door, all of nineteen, and I could see how much he wanted to quietly reach out to pull back my robe and push me back against the wall. Soft-spoken, he used to scare me, but I never felt it as anything but a sacrament. Every conversation we carried was a dare. He would lick my heart with illicit games, see how far I would be willing to shed my skin.

I only wish I’d said yes a little earlier. I should have been brave. I’m even sorry I wasn’t the one to find him. I miss the kiss of his hands, his insane intelligence, the strength he offered me that I was too nervous to take. No one else could catch him looking anything but nervous, but he was a beautiful man. With him I could look past the static to pick out stars, supernovae, all the gentle secrets of the big bang. It’s been a few years, but I will never know all I lost. The categories are too vast, the themes too closely kept.

Mortality. Love. Just do something.

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