Tag: sam

hello.

  • Monkey Fluids
  • Married to the Sea.
  • Cow abduction.
  • Your Paragraph Negates Woofer.

    Duncan as a sweet young thing: part one, part two.

    Saw Brick on Thursday with Sam at the Tinseltown special premier. I watched it with a feeling of deep appreciation, but I don’t think it made the same astounding impression on me as it seems to have on most of my friends. The idea was clever, the follow-through skilled and intelligent, but that’s what I expected. I wasn’t surprised.

    Three more mystery letters have arrived. The last two had no postmark, though they had stamps.

    Beloved Jhayne,

    Once upon a yesterday, when strangers
    woke in familiar places and other woke
    in familiar faces, a young woman walked
    through the forest searching for a flower
    for her hair. Now, any child knows that
    more flowers are found in fields than
    forests, but this young woman was vain
    and wanted a flower one had seen before.
    After much wandering she found a tree with
    golden leaves and blossoms that glittered
    like gems. When she plucked a flower, the
    golden leaves cut her hands and stained
    it red with blood. The young woman ran
    from the forest, and though her hands still bled
    when she arrived home, her mother only said,
    “What a pretty red flower in your hair.” The
    flower never fell or faded,
    and few noticed that
    her fingernails were
    golden and her
    tears glittered
    like gems.

    X

    Love

    		Sweet Jhayne,

    Once upon a yesterday, when the stars
    still sang and the sea still listened, the
    man in the moon came down to visit to you in
    a dream. He said, “Over the rainbow is
    over-rated, you know. I don’t belong in
    a place where blue birds sing, nor
    little girls from Kansas neither.” “I like to
    sing,” you replied. “You’re not from Kansas,
    now, are you?” said he. “And you know
    better than to stop believing in fairy tales.”
    “Sometimes I wonder,” you said, but for now
    you’d believe in dreams, and the man in the
    moon. It’s rude not to believe in someone as
    he sits at the foot of your bed. “I have to
    wake up,” you said, so you may not have
    heard him say, “When the end comes, I’ll be back. We’ll go
    under the rainbow,
    you and I – see
    how far it
    takes us.”

    X Love

    		Precious Jhayne,

    Once upon a yesterday, when certain girls
    cried diamonds and certain trees grew
    gold, a woman lived in a hour on a hill
    from which she could almost see the
    ocean, but not quite. Every night the
    stars would singer her to sleep and she
    would dream of a prince who would show
    her the sea. Every morning she awoke to
    the smell of salt. Once day a handsome
    man passed by her house on the hill,
    and she asked him “Are you my prince?”
    The prince looked at her and said, “I
    would not want an ugly woman.” The ugly
    woman watched as he walked away. That
    night, when the stars began to sing, she said,
    “I do not want to dream anymore.” The stars,
    silenced. Now the ugly
    woman does not sleep
    but looks to where
    she can almost
    see the ocean,
    but not quite.

    X

    Love

    • personality winding away


    on a slow night
    Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

    Sitting in the shoe store alone, I’m getting that absent feeling of two a.m. where you know the rest of the world has mostly gone to bed. The only clock is on the computer desktop, but I can’t escape the impression of ticking, like I should know how to play piano to explain myself. I think of brickwork, of his hands on the keys and on my back, the way he kissed me as if drowning were the way to go. I remember a lot of things and wonder how much of it is important. I should send him a letter. I should send more people writing. I suppose this is my version of dwelling on mortality, mourning for the people I love that are too inaccessible for me to tell them so.

    I don’t think I could put their skills and talent in my freezer. I’m not big enough for that. My family outshines me more than singing for the joy of it. Me, it’s sun outside and I feel like I need a raincoat. I seem strewn into limbo. My feet are pulling me forward on habit alone. People on the street and I’m waiting for them to stop talking and begin using their heads. Waiting and losing time, staring into the sky for an unrecalled twenty minutes, losing my soul to a string of other people’s glorious smiles. My voice is dying, trapped in the amber of a summer I don’t remember enough of, trapped by a time that never came because it’s a film-strip of memories, days and evenings and too many transient whispers.

    Boys calling on the phone and asking for improbable sizes. “Do you have red boots in size 15? I want something slinky.” Boys who sound similar to friends but not quite, enough to pause me a second more, stutter my voice and steal my certainty. I’m abandoning my faith, you see. Rolling up the primrose path and trying to be with someone I’m not in love with. It’s a first, but I’m too exhausted. Maybe it’s time to be like everyone else.

    he’ll be all “oh noes, my face on the internet” and I’ll be like “take that”

    I came home from work yesterday to discover thick smeary pools of black blood in the kitchen and down the hall. Graham had e-mailed me at work, said Skatia was sick. I hadn’t expected it to look as if he’d been torn up. There was more blood than I would have initially thought a ferret could provide. I found him shivering in a pile of my clothes, blood crusted to his fur. He was exhausted, cold, and limp, obviously too ill to move.

    I said to Mike, who was with me, “My ferret is dying.“

    I put him in hot water and Graham called the Emergency Animal Hospital in Kitsilano. I called Stephen, arranged for a ride over, and cleaned up the kitchen. Our theories were either Skatia had swallowed something that had lodged in his intestines or he had a bacterial infection. The vet said otherwise, her $200 guess is cancer.

    In retrospect, taking him to the doctor was a very expensive mistake. (One I’m not sure I can actually afford, so if anyone feels like taking me out to dinner for two weeks…)** Not only did she only tell me what I already knew, “he’s lost a lot of blood, he’s going to die,” the vet also became upset with me that I wouldn’t have him immediately put down, in spite of the fact that he wasn’t in any pain, as there would be “no way he would survive the night” and made it a hassle to get him back. He’s curled up in my lap right now, still breathing, over twenty four hours later, being kept warm in a blanket with a hot water bottle and a space heater. She only made things difficult.

    It’s true, though, that I don’t know how much longer he will last. Sam and I stayed awake until dawn watching over him. It was expected his organs would shut down one by one as the blood that was left in his system worked to keep his brain alive. Slowly he would go to sleep and cease breathing. Now I’m not so sure. I got him to drink an entire tea-cup full of milk last night and at least half of it stayed in. He’s not exactly animated, but he’s no longer in shock and the bleeding has diminished. If he survives tonight as well, I think he’ll be okay for a few days more. He’s a tenacious little thing, even still dragging himself across the room to get to me, so I expect him to remain resilient.


    **


    when a priest walks into my bar

    Old music on, the sort of stuff I associate with far away from here, though nowhere in particular. Songs rarely on my playlist and only in the middle of a lot of other things. Canada midwest, this music, feeling nostalgic for a period that was over before I was born. My mother as a young girl, listening to records and wearing lambskin jackets. Older men. It almost goes without saying these days.

    Flow, an artistically minimalist, highly addictive flash game, easy to control. mouse determines direction, hold down the button for speed. eat anything smaller than you, pick away at anything bigger until you can that too. blue bugs take you up a level, red takes you down

    Perspective shift, we’re writing about different things for similar reasons. Low basement ceiling, low furniture that obviously came with the suite. It’s late. He has a pen and a lined paper book, I have the clacking-engine. I steal glances, theft in the air between us, and study the social interaction. I wonder if he’s aware how someone else would stumble here, silence being unusual in new friends, how they would feel awkward and too assuming, not used to the habits of long cohabitation as tightly woven as silk. I notice because mine have been eroding, evaporating away with my depleting intimacies. I notice and realize how generally unexpected I must be. Mental note: ask before you use the toothbrush or become a secondary mother to someone’s child.

    Google Mars, exceedingly pretty, far more detailed that Google Moon. there are marked sites with links to corresponding articles.

    Tonight is unknown territory. Korean Movie Night’s been replaced by Don Giovanni at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre this week, leaving me to vacillate between a gift-swap dinner, the Cafe Du Soliex poetry slam or the stitch-&-bitch that sprung out of Navi’s head last night. Though there is a certain temptation involved in going to Don Giovanna with super-feminists, I have to pass. A concrete solid week of theater will take me into the back alley and rough me up. This is my night off, my ducking out the back for a metaphorical quiet cigarette, and though I’m not responsible enough to go home and righteously wrest my bed from the ferret, neither am I entirely stupid.

    Wednesday night Here Be Monsters presents Fidel Castro’s Birthday Party opening for Lazy Susan with Michael Green performing The Whaler after. There will be puppets, murder, nudity and water. Everything starts at 8pm and goes to approximately midnight. Tickets are $12.