Tag: lung

wear those poppies with pride

Lung

Lung asks Claire, “How many people have you slept with?” and suddenly we’re all counting on fingers, measuring numbers, months, morality. I’m there to pick up a copy of the Senior’s Living Magazine that Lung and I have an article in – my first bit of glossy-paper local hard-copy. Vancouver’s 50+ Active Lifestyle magazine. There’s a steel haired woman jogging on the cover, sunglasses, IRONMAN t-shirt, and yellow text declaring someone’s else “Artist. Author. Actor.”. It looks very much like the sort of thing you might find for free between the pages of a community newspaper. We’re on page 30, messily rambling about Lung’s travels.

Though it’s interesting to see my name in print, especially with his, reading it over is a little painful. Lung gave me a rough draft so dirty certain passages were completely incoherent and I only spent about an hour cleaning it up before we sent it in and went for dinner. Flipping through to the other articles, however, I found we fit right in. Absolutely everyone in the entire magazine abuses punctuation and laughs vindictively at grammar. “You, have to Love It” kind of stuff. It makes for easy reading, if odd, as if the writers of Dick and Jane had copy-edited every page. It’s almost soothing, which, it occurs to me, might be the point.

25 unexpectedly useful websites

100 ways to save the environment

110 resources for creative minds.

As of today, I have a new roommate for December. Her name is Karen, we don’t know each other particularly well, but she seems like an incredibly nice young woman. (We went to highschool together. Bizarre, that). Very much one of us, she goes to BarCamps, SFU, and has a passion for engineering transit. She’s even got a livejournal. Vancouver’s rental situation has moved past ridiculous into outright obscene, so it’s a relief to have found someone without having to resort to the vague social terror that is Craigslist For Rent ad.

Another thing checked off the list today – finding a place to stay in Calgary the first week of December. Sean, (yes, someone else with an lj), a comp-sci, pure math guy that Dominique and Rowan introduced me to a few years ago, has volunteered his spare room! Yes! An exclamation mark! Somehow, in spite of the mini-catastrophes plaguing this trip, things are coming together. Now to find a way to get there. Pity there’s no easy way to put a transmission back into a van…

the descriptions are terrifying

Oh hell, Lung went to Greece to shoot Angel‘s dream wedding, just in time for it to all catch fire. Half of it’s burned. At least 62 people are dead, whole villages have been consumed, and there’s a chance that the original site of the Olympics and a World Heritage site will go up in flames. Even worse, if reports are to be believed, it was started by an act of Arson.

“A 65 year old man has been charged with arson and homicide in Greece while two youths are also being questioned. Eleven countries are sending planes … ”

“Uncontrollable fires burned across Greece for a second night yesterday, with villages cut off from help by towering walls of flames …”

I don’t know how well I’ll be sleeping tonight. All my best wishes to those affected.

edit: They’re fine. “Different part of Greece…I am on an island paradise (caldera of a volcano). Having a great time eating grilled sardines and roasted lamb with lemon sauce. Wish you were here.”

“somethingsomething the bees knees somethingsomething try to please”


the photographer’s frazetta
Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

The One Laptop Per Child Foundation’s beginning production.

Fourty-five minutes until freedom. There’s a loud show downstairs, lacing the air with frantic piano, lathering the foyer with a nervous energy. Some student thing. It’s the sort of music I would choose to unsettle an audience with, as if I wanted to dislodge their perception of time, kick it disjointed and paste filters all over the lights. In my head, the dancers are testaments to fanciful make-up and Cirque-style motions. They kick, scream, and astonish.

It’s actually a ballet performance. Something bleach-blonde and mild, culturally appropriate for the family and friends in attendance, many of whom were too old for the stairs. Many of which, I’m sure, are currently wincing at the thrashing rock music that’s replaced the piano, that’s begging for big hair and glittery tight pants lined-up outside of cheap bars where the floors are perpetually sticky with spilled and stolen beer. Of course, any minute now, this will all segue into something hideously classical.

And, yes, there it went. French baroque, rather, and overcooked, dreaming of soulful arpeggios that might travel barefoot on horseback in the rain along the Seine into the sunset. And it didn’t do the dishes, either.

Oops, no. Now it’s faux-traditional Irish rock, a la Riverdance. Mixed with beat-mix 60’s remixed retro-pop.

Thirty-five minutes until freedom.

Return of the Son of Monster Magnet


picture by Lung Liu.

Well, fine, doom us all, you petulant country, you. You’re not very original.

Quote of the Day goes to my good friend Ian. He says: “Oy. Geek boys going after you is like a guy with one week of martial arts classes under his belt going to a bar and looking for the hugest guy in there. And then pissing in his shoes.” Ian’s known me a long time.

Today at work I was reading Carl Sagan and a collection of re-contextualized post-modern fairy-tales. Possibly, I need to get out more. More likely, I need to figure out which of these books are mine and which are borrowed and from where.

Terence McKenna’s library was just destroyed in a fire.

He had been a well-lathed challenge, a good time waiting to be had. She didn’t know about the long drive, about the night. In her astonished stride, motivations were uneasy, rote, at war. She said, like kicking a small cat in the ribs, “I’ll wait if I have to.” Almost instinctively, he had flinched and reached for her body.

“Why does the wolf care,” she asked, “for your voice?” She sat alone in a wooden room, a crumpled red cloak a metaphor at her feet. Her tongue flickered when she spoke. The floor was littered with spices; sugar, cloves, and cinnamon. She had prepared a bed of leaves, flowers, pine-needles and double-starched sheets, her smile as lemon pie. Streaked across the ceiling was a moment suspended in time, static clouds she had painted in gold. Anxious, she spoke to herself again, “It’s only a story.” She remembers how his fur had felt in the taxi. Like the forest, she is barefoot, in a soft and fragile state of grace.

Blood and beauty. “Fill his belly full of stones. Cut open his belly and fill it with memories, reasons, excuses, stones. Wear his skin. The old formula – remember to breathe.” His teeth retracted, his eyes closed, their mouths had opened, they had kissed. Almost ceremonially, she had taken off her clothes, undone his belt. Wood fell under the axe of her tongue.

Alone now, she remembers how his fur felt in the taxi, and waits.

how on earth can I sleep with nightmare tectonics


Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

It’s the people absent from my bed who are changing my name, eroding at my identity like a negative space sketch of rain. I can’t help but recall my conversations, the blankets inspire me, the delicate, familiar movement of taking my glasses off and putting them on the windowsill. I’ve been setting my eyes down on various surfaces every night of my adult life, slowly evolving into someone who doesn’t like to be on top because I can’t see my love’s face from so far away. I remember Marc’s laughter, his climbing strong melody as he cradled my glasses and explained to me very carefully where he was putting them down. Another windowsill. Like mine, to the left, but not the same at all. A queen size bed but we still managed to fall off the sides. I remember Lidd crying, viciously attacking the life given to him, threatening to smash my vision to the street below. Too much alcohol, too little faith. I could see myself in a mirror then without them. Worse now, my astigmatism, my trained lack of sight. I remember lots of things, voices attached to shining blurry faces. Different colours. Lindsay, he had a desk with a computer from 1995. I put my glasses down next to the keyboard, under the red guitar that hung from the brick wall. Lindsay, whose chocolate hands made my skin look like iridescent milk.

A flash to Lung taking a picture down his pants on a dare, how we discussed Oliver’s skin tone as something to photograph nicely against mine. To my silver haired scientist twisting away from my camera, hiding under the blankets, breaking my heart. The beautiful images Alastair would send me long distance, driving my adoration from over a thousand miles away. Kyle was so beautiful I could have cried.

Repetition with improv over the top. Notes of fire, of searing words. Burning too hot, too fast, too aware of the desperation inherent in oxygen, a poison gas when taken straight. I didn’t like the wall sized mirrors in that fugitive hotel, how they turned my blurred body into a pale shifting ghost, messy hair and all. Not to say I don’t find hotels mirrors friendly. The man who is named the evening star, he grasped the delicacy of my blindness right away. Gently murmuring about his father’s death to the glow of craving a cigarette, he ran his hands along my arms, guiding me to where I needed to be. I took a picture in that mirror, wearing his shirt, my hand upraised, a final thank you and eventually, later, a good-bye. He undid the buttons and every doubt I had about my body fell off me in shards, never to return again.

These are the things that stick, a hundred final scenes. Kissing a man in a restaurant, only a few blocks from my apartment. Touching his tattoo and wondering briefly, the closest I’d flirted with infidelity, if anyone would see us. All a long time ago now, these memories held like dried flowers, delicate perfumed things, willing to break details if handled roughly. Photographs seen from the wrong end of a telescope, out of proportion, fading when the phone-calls do.

—

The Moon Festival starts tonight at 7:00. Renfrew Ravine Park, at 22nd and Renfrew.

Easy to get to by transit: Take the skytrain to 29th Ave. Station, then take the Arbutus bus five minutes to 22nd.

My fire show tonight starts at 7:30. There will be fireworks, an underage contortionist, a band made of eight trombones, a percussionist, and an erhu, and half my crew are delinquents, including one multiply convicted arsonist.

If any of the fire people on my list would like to come perform, I can toss you into our finale if you check in with me early enough.


don’t you remember?


011 by Lung.
Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

I walk by the house like hanging up on an answering machine. It’s dark and I’m too delicate for this. Easier to walk home, continue, and not dare to put my hand on the gate. Footsteps the tempo to an old slow song. Lyrics winding through from my feet through my spine. “Hello, I’m so lonely, And it feels like disease, Come and stay, stay beside me”. The air like velvet wiping my face with the back of my hand. Child’s play, this is easy as child’s play. Something I never could understand. Tag, you’re it. My books were always thrown into puddles. My desk always full of sticky wet chewing gum. A young man walks past me, tastefully dressed in an unexceptional way, and offers me drugs. I hesitate and wonder what to say. I tell him that he’s not what I need. He looks offended a moment, as if I’d insulted his hair, then shrugs me off and walks on. I can’t wake up from this, because it’s not a dream.
Britain art project photoblog: “Little hand-painted people, left in London to fend for themselves.”

Talking with Alastair earlier on his black leather couch, the one I have the photographs on, he said, “All I offered you was stability. I think you wanted more than that.” I replied, “Stability was nice, I appreciate stability.” “I think you needed more from me. I think you needed romance, attention, affection.” “That last one, yes. That was what I needed the most”. A little peculiar, it was a miniature revelation, realizing how that’s the only base-line of my demands, just like he used to always give me. Two years almost and practically nothing’s changed. He’s better at communicating as I am more sad. He was never scared of me.

good news is on the way

Graham‘s got a friend, Christie McRae, who has an Art Show Opening called ALTERNATE REALITIES tomorrow night at the Bump ‘N Grind Cafe at 916 Commercial Drive. He says be certain to be there, because there’s going to be a DJ and free shots of espresso. He really leaned on mentioning the espresso, so it must be tasty.

Also, Graham and I are hosting Sunday Tea tm this Sunday, so come visit, bitches. I have been cocooned, I need to see your scrubbed faces to remember you exist.

This week’s been full of music and strange adventure. Jon Bartlett lent me Mervyn Peake’s first book, for one, Lung and I went to a porn theater, (which was a far more unpleasant experience than we’d supposed), my mother sang with the Now Orchestra for the improv Metropolis soundtrack for Eye of Newt’s Silent In The Park series, I’ve installed an angel in my house, and begun a drawer of personal goods at Oliver’s. There’s more, but trying to remember everything is like trying to read text in a photograph damaged by salt.

So last we heard, our girl Friday is sitting outside a backpackers hostel, waiting for Esme to come rescue her from the appalling chance that one of her exes, who is now filthy homeless junkie upon the streets of Victoria, may come upon her and attempt to molest her person. American Brand Fear. She’s sitting with her book, appalled at how much she’s read already, and beginning to worry about her phonecall. She only had a moment, did she convey everything needed?

Olbermann’s Special Commentary Towards Bush.

Esme was only late because parking was hard to find. The cafe was nice, (though it’s the only place anyone’s tried to pick me up by telling me that they’re an astrologer), the music not terrible, (Nicholas was playing in a corner that was pretending to be a stage with two friendly middle-aged men), and the drink Esme bought me was delicious, a mixture of hot chocolate and chai I rather liked. It was a fund-raiser of some sort, likely for a cat. A good welcome easy to slide away from.

After we went to a velvety restaurant that floated Goldfrapp softly over a crowd of beautiful people, but it was too late in pretty little Victoria for food, all they had left was small plates of unsatisfying tapas, so we ended up in a second-rate late night chinese restaurant with comfortingly unidentifiable lumps of strange coloured food, the same you’d find in any Canadian town with a population over 1000. I don’t think we got home until two in the morning, full of grease and weak yellow tea.

OK GO doing the impressive treadmill dance live at the VMAS.

Nicholas’ house is a wonder. His “Mad Uncle” renovated it something like six times. Camouflaged to look like any other pebble and glass fronted house, it pretends to be middle-class and rather unassuming. Inside is another story entirely. Nicholas lives in the basement, a 1960’s style wood-paneled German porno bunker complete with secret passages. The walls glows with a shiny oppressive veneer that inspires me to start collecting vintage Playboy covers for us to varnish onto his ceiling and the only way to get upstairs without leaving the house is to go into the washroom and climb inside what, from the side, looks like a medicine cabinet. It actually opens into a tiny carpeted passageway lined with moldering vintage board games that lets out into the floor of the upstairs front hall closet. Upstairs looks fairly normal again, until you take into account the stripper pole in the bathroom and the occasional mad scientist electrical box. (Apparently they make scary ticking noises and, in the past, have genuinely blown up in proper mad scientist style even.)

the last link in this post is one of my universal favourites


Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

Lung is picking me up this afternoon, a break in my transcription work, to visit the Fox Adult Theater. He’s always wanted to go, but no one was ever willing to go with him. Spur of the moment planning, we’re going to dress up in evening wear and take lots of pictures. I have to remember to dig out my bow-tie for him before I settle too deeply into my work and lose track of time.

Superflat Monogram, an ad campaign for LOUIS VUITTON by Mamoru Hosoda.
Music by Fantastic Plastic Machine.

I search the tangled mess of my room for traces of you as if I might unearth a shrunken head. Somewhere here is a silver hair, a pack of guitar strings, an earthquake. It’s true though I’ve said it before and not to you, I want the taste of your fingers trapped in my hair. Between my sheets I find your fingerprints. I think I see you creeping past my door in the corner of my eye like a pet that only pretends to be kept as it hides some sticky dead thing under the table in half a tin can. I know better than to look.

There are frozen images of you trapped on my computer, pixilated views into memories that don’t whisper for more than a few seconds long. I long to tap on the glass and hear it crack. It feels like your ghost is flying to me as if it lies on the wind as a bed and the wind obeys my needs.

I trust you. In times of disaster, you would let me climb the burning buildings.