Tag: photography

In the mornings, with the dread of a long day ahead, your voice soothed me and gave me strength

For those who are new here, and there do seem to be a lot of you, here is a published book you should buy a downloadable copy of and my story in it.

I would like to say this is going to be my last six:thirty a.m. awake for awhile now that I finally have a job, but I know that would be a greedy lie. My face down unhappiness has been heaping lots of them upon me lately and I don’t like that my bed no longer smells like me. The air of the apartment has been filling with Kier, our house-guest who hasn’t paid his rent yet. It’s unsettling, it makes me want to double-wash all my sheets and blankets. I have no desire to climb naked into a bed that someone else has been rewriting while I’ve been away.

Flickr just reached a quarter of a billion photos.

Sam’s lent me a novel, Futureland by Walter Mosely, that I’m halfway through and still can’t decide what to do with. I get the feeling off this book that it’s not trying to be anything but a sci-fi novel. It was not written to be enduring, inspiring or to be especially moving. This isn’t rocking me, not even like a baby. It was written to be put in a bookstore and bought off the wire-rack shelf, to be consumed and then lost to some second-hand table fair. It’s a little.. baffling. I remember skimming past books like this in gift shops when I was younger, (and still commonly bought books), scanning the covers and dismissing them, the metallic newspaper quotes on the back covers.

“5,000 of the most important photographs of the last 150 years.”

I decided then I was only going to read books I would like to write, or literature that pushed my envelope, built of a nature so different that I can barely grasp them, insisting in my head that the better quality I read, the better I will write. Input matching output, I decided I want my shelf to be full of books that are endlessly interesting, not quite classics, but of the sort that can light up repeatedly and at different times of my life. This leaves me a rabbit in the headlights, uncertain what Futureland is for. This book is entirely alien to my nature. I suspect it’s meant to be entertaining, but it doesn’t survive my criteria, I don’t feel challenged. Is this what people commonly read?

Fujitsu develops “invisible” barcode for photographs.

How much chi can a cheetah tie if a cheetah could tai chi

The Take-Space people were at it again yesterday, this time renting a parking space just off Main st on Hastings. When I went in the morning on the bus, they had put out bright green astroturf and a few lawn chairs, though they were still struggling with a summer awning.

Photojournalist Martin Adler murdered in Somalia.

I was on my way home from Michael’s place. I’d stayed over after the delirious Cirque Du Soliex show, Verekai, not wanting to shift from such wonder to my drab apartment. We stayed up watching Harvey Birdman Cartoons on his lap-top until we couldn’t keep our eyes open anymore. My sleep was full of exhausted glitter and the strong desire to find something I cared about doing. When I woke, nothing had congealed, but I felt distanced enough from the Circus to face Vancouver again. Previously I had wanted too hard to see costumes on every corner, spiraling away from me in the morning clots of commuters, I wanted to look up and see stars in the bright day-time sky, and find giant colourful birds singing in unexpected places. I wanted to wake up in a Romany camp in Italy, grungy and smoky and full of red cloth. I wanted to wake up with longer hair and a prettier smile and some strange skill I don’t have a word for.

Everyone keeps asking why I don’t try to be a writer.

Finally by S. Koyczan

Boyfriend man is so glad
your dad hates him

he’s finally the dangerous man
he always wanted to be.

Shane Koyczan will be performing a free show on Wednesday at the Western Front at 9pm, 303 East 8th, just off Kingsway, as part of the opening night of the West Coast Poetry Festival, (July 5th through 8th at The Western Front. All events are by donation.) Show up early, as seats are going to fill. Bravo TV has been following him around all week taping a documentary and this performance is going to wrap it all up. Winner of countless awards, including a few World Championships, Shane’s got a talent, a hard-worked gift, and he’s worth the hard traffic of half way across town. I’ll post as much of his performance as I’ll be able to tape, but there’s nothing like seeing it live. He thunders.

arguing the worth of starshine doesn’t get me hired


picture by livejournal user seafoodmwg (more in her journal)

Someone plays two chords on a guitar as they pass my window then stop, their hands become busy elsewhere or maybe they are still. I don’t know, I can’t see them from here, my place on the floor, between my computer and the foot of my bed. It feels like a visit from my ex-husband, as if I could go to the window and see him there. Red pants, shirtless, a guitar on his back and his long brown hair getting in his eyes. My vision gives me the way he looked when we went to Vancouver Island and visited Robbie, the summer before Robbie purposefully walked under an ambulance on Boxing Day. My vision reminds me of when I had faith. The sun was perfect, blaring down, a rock concert of light, heavy-handed and meaningful. The neatly kept streets were full of tourists who tried to put coins in my coffee cup. We slipped into the change room of a store with a dress we couldn’t afford, just for a breath of air conditioning, just so he could take it off of me.

I suppose this means it’s summer. Spring has slowly crept away, a child uninterested in conversation going outside to climb the glorious trees waiting there. It makes me miss Toronto, this atmospheric humidity reminiscent of an afternoon I slowly poured a glass jug of icy water over my head outside the Black Bull on Queen street as if I were in an eroticized shampoo commercial, the way the water coldly pushed my clothing onto my skin like a textured tattoo, the way my hair dried into curls not five minutes later. I felt like the first pages of a book newly opened, a story about to be told by a fresh new author. Now I feel unwritten, like I had a story but it got lost along the way. Like words left unspoken that were meant to fall from some lips I missed meeting. I feel displaced, conditioned to not have a home. A modern gypsy denied the dignity of reason.

The masquerade has a Flickr Pool: Masquerade Ball.

Michel posted a new page of Jesus Monkey Pants in Space.

For my job interview with Telus, I had to go to an imposing building that looked like a secret government industrial facility. I was escorted through an impressively locked security door with shatter-proof wired glass and upstairs into a small, windowless, bile-green room that could have passed for a holding cell in a women’s prison, then interrogated by two older women who rarely frowned. They read the buzz-word questions directly from papers on the table, leaving me with the impression that the entire thing could almost be left to teenagers. Once, near the beginning, the power cut, leaving us in a confusing pitch blackness. “They’re working on the generator today.” After half an hour, they left me alone long enough with an examination sheet that by the time they returned, I had corrected the punctuation of the questions. Possibly an unwise thing to do under the circumstances, but I grow depressive in silences with nothing to do. A closer examination of the metal cabinets wouldn’t have been wise, though I considered it, and there are only so many times I can read the sides of cardboard computer boxes without beginning to feel claustrophobic. I think they liked my stories of working in theater, but were uncertain what to do with me. Either way, I get a phone-call by Friday. They can’t say yes or no until after a criminal record check.

kind of like guest blogging

“You know, most people don’t do that,” the farmer remarked off handedly as he tilled his vegetables.

“What?” the girl asked, genuinely curious, as always.

The farmer stood up straight, wiped his brow with his red kerchief and locked eyes with the girl. “Walk around with a flower in their mouth,” he replied, nodding to the phenomena.

This gave the girl pause, she tried to look down at the flower but her eyes got all crossed and made her dizzy. She looked up at the farmer and asked tentatively, “Why?”

He gave a long sigh and continued with his tilling, “‘Cause it’s strange, that’s why.”

“Oh…” She thought for a while, her bare toes stabbing idly at the dirt as she balanced on the other foot. “But it’s not strange that people don’t have flowers in their mouths?”

The old farmer snorted, “That’s right.”

The girl considered this further and said, “What do you call it when a girl has a flower in her mouth and yet is able to speak without it falling out?”

The farmer grinned and looked up at her, “Bad story-telling.”

photo by alois
text by kindelingboy

“these could be from your future husband. you could have three kids together”

Hit the ground, keep on running. Take this braille ink and trace it. Don’t stop doing what you’re doing.

I still haven’t. Instead I’ve arranged for dinner with Silva. Red, gold, her house is such a treasure. I leaned over and pulled a antique hunting horn out of the rubble of my room. Something to keep, something to throw away. He sat on the bed and looked around in wonder. The word trove. I leaned over and pulled on his curiosity, showed him the horn. Silva’s house is all silver and glittering crystal. Mirrors and shiny things. Cat haven, dinner at the table, fur at the feet. He took the ring from my keychain in the restaurant. It fit, but the price was impossible. Montreal. Could I fit in the luggage? Possibly. Cramped over in darkness, x-rayed and vulnerable to deprivation. The hallways at the hospital, plastic, granulated, we walk them, one pathway. Go left, go right now. Either way the answer is the same. The bed with buttons waits at the end, uninviting, unwelcome, too cold.

Katie‘s finally selling prints. I’m listed on her site as a “writer, among other things,” though I can’t say I’ve been feeling like it. I was published, but outside of that, I haven’t been doing very much lately. Nothing I come back to. I think it’s because I’m so rarely home. It’s difficult to concentrate at work. I’m interrupted too often to construct a coherent thread of thought.

I received another anonymous myth-letter arrived in the mail last night. I read it to Francois, and he wasn’t sure how to handle it. “No way,” he said. “There’s a stack of them.” “And you don’t know who wrote them?” “Not a clue. I thought I’d guessed, but I was told I was wrong.”

we have blue eyes too

Dearest Jhayne,

Once upon a tomorrow, before the
applause fades away, a little boy sits
in a park, holding a fistful of feathers.
“I know where your wings are,” says
a voice from behind him, and he turns
around to see a little girl standing
there. “Don’t be stupid,” the little boy
says. “I don’t have any wings.”
“I’m sorry I told you that,” says
the little girl. “But it’s your fault for not
believing stronger.” The little boy just
looks at his feathers. “Nobody has wings,”
he says at last. “People can’t fly!”
“Don’t listen to the pigeons, they don’t
know anything,” she responds. For
his sake, she turns into
a swan before
she flies away.

X

Love.

Previous letters: one & two, three, four & five & six, seven.

It’s comforting. It solidifies my impression of message-based narrative and adds credence to the assumption that I am The Girl.

Hello letter-author. Thank you. You’re appreciated.

my itinerary’s solidifying

All who are interested in heading down to Santa Monica for the Gregory Colbert show say “Aie”. It’s time, duckies. Easter Long Weekend. The show closes when May begins, so we’re running out of time. If I have to, I’ll go alone on the train, but I think this should be by group design. It’s too beautiful otherwise. Help me, come with me, let’s go.

In the same sort of vein, Sophie‘s looking for Sin Borrows. I’ve just recently tossed out everything I could have given her, does anyone have anything proper that would fit?

we're so awesome

HOWTO tag walls using laser electro LED graffiti.

I hung up the phone and smiled again. I feel like I’m at a train station and one of us has run next to windows, shouting “I’ll see you again sooner than someday.” There is reason and love in my mind and it’s nice. So few are my moments of grace.

I watched, enraptured, as someone played the saw last Saturday. I love the tonal structure of it, the glissando that arc out to pierce the audience so effortlessly. I swore again, as I have at least once a year since seeing Delicatessen, that I would find someone to teach me. Burrow tells me that all is required is a saw and some insubordinate patience, but I’m not so sure. I’m going to trust her on this one to the point of digging out a saw and an old bow, but past that I’m shy. How silly will my injuries be from holding this sort of musical instrument wrong? I can only dare not imagine. It’s not like gamelan, where the worst I do is pinch a finger carrying some of the bigger gongs.

IC BEO EGESLIC

Alicia says I’m expressive, resourceful and accepting, so you should all come to her most awesome annual Anti-Valentines Party. There will be 60’s of rum and other various hard alcohols to make you wish you had never been born. Come February 17th, 2006, 8ish. The blender is available, the martini shaker is ready and the place is dying for a party. Your part is easy. Wear all-black, bring hard alcohol, no beer, bring your friends, find some dead flowers and write melancholy poetry to be read aloud from at atop a chair ~ whatever your broken little heart desires. If you don’t know where she lives, then drop me a line and I shall tell you. We can pretend it’s a secret.

Also, please go worship briefly at the altar of Hakkenkrak, the quirky journal of the delightful Christalline, who I never damned well see, because I am stupid.

She made me a pretty thing when I really needed one. Turning this:

into:

Which looks ever so much cooler and is also apparently some sort of vector thing which can be blown up successfully in ways that the original cannot? (& looks incredibly stencil-able, I can just picture the three layers I would choose, which is nice, but oh the vanity involved in stencilling one’s own face. Also the not legally clever.) I don’t actually know a thing about vectors, but it sounds fairly impressive. (Also, the way she has her background do that crazy immobile gorgeous woodblock thing… damn, I wants).

People who meditate grow bigger brains than those who don’t which is perhaps why I am never intelligent enough to corner hakkenkrak for a sunday afternoon. My brain is like a library what won’t shut up.

Which reminds me, here’s both my Johari window and my Nohari. Fill them out, (though I admit a mixture of the two windows would be far more interesting to me). I insist on the basis that I control the wind. Well, no, but I am sad because the boy who is ostensibly my boy hasn’t tried to see me and it’s almost been a week, so it would be neat, and neat things cheer me up. Also chocolate, though as I had incredibly rich chocolate for breakfast, supper and dinner, I’m feeling a bit odd on that subject. See, I’m living a self-imposed week of not chasing after him, no tapping on the window of the hotel or dropping a ring by the front desk at improbable hours. Sunday to Sunday, then I go fetch my clothes in a very mopey manner that feels unloved and pretty well unwanted.

Monday had wind strong enough to break trees, however. Wind strong enough to shift the course of the sun around the corners of taller buildings downtown, which is good and right and as it should be. Wind like to play piano, wind like to breathe for your body as you walk into it. That’s what I head into the day before last, a leap of faith on my way to work. My window felt like the portal of a space-ship with me looking out to the dark clouds tearing into the broken blue, pushed too hard to threaten any sort of rain, too busy trying to keep themselves together as they scud violently across the sky.

I really liked it. I was sorry, for once, that I was caught inside my store. I wanted the force of the blow to touch me, as if the world was putting invisible arms around me, shrouding me in some elemental forgiveness while it shredded my clothes. Last year I was on a bus going across a bridge when an especially classic gust hit. It was like the entire vehicle had transformed into a strong linen sail. It was beautiful, feeling us drift into the next lane with the force of it, as if the wind was going to propel us sideways and off the bridge and out over the water, like we could fly on the strength of it, reminiscent of a raygun-gothic aircraft, (which they’d better damned well go through with it lest I go over there and pluck their eyeballs out to use as ben-wa balls instead), but with orange duct-taped plastic seats instead of jazz music and improbable wood paneling.

Oh yeah, and how cool is this? The Phillip K. Dick Robot’s gone missing! Next trip out, I’m going to make myself some pink lights to defend myself with. (which is also a supremely cool link that’s making the world a better place, so go look, then make some, then send some to me.)

I spent up all night taking photos

IMG_0334

i carry your heart with me
e. e. cummings

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

Voting is now open for the 2006 Bloggies™
Click here to vote.

In similar news, I discovered today that Van2.ca, a tiny website I’d never heard of before today, has listed me as one of Vancouver’s Best Blogs of 2005. Thank you Javina for placing me on the roster. I’m baffled as to what the site is about, but I appreciate it. (In fact, excellent timing, as I just today re-worked my sidebar to include a directory of where I am on-line and, yes mother, a donation button).

Ashes and Snow will be on view in Santa Monica, from Jan 14 to May 14, 2006. I want to go.

[pj harvey – water]
Now the water to my ankles
Now the water to my knees
Think of him all waxy wings
Melted down into the sea
Mary, Mary what your man said
Washing it all over my head
Mary, Mary hold on tightly
Over water
Under the sea

Ashes and Snow
&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp Gregory Colbert has updated his website. &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp Remember to breathe.

I’m so sorry there are not more angels. That there are not more years for grace.

I’m sorry I don’t have words for what I feel I want to say.

This is a universal thing, I know, but it brings us down every time.

May you have time to give everything you still have to say to the family you’ve made.

You have my deepest sympathies for your sorrow.

This isn’t enough, but I don’t know how to play the song that needs singing.