Sweetness, sunlight, warm days and two wills held up like a slightly cracked mirror. I stayed up late, walked everywhere, and, for awhile there, I did not feel so fragile. On my second day, we went out on a lake in Central Park in a little rowboat like the owl and a pussycat singing handfuls of song, and posed for our very first photograph, magical, digital evidence of our parallel lives finally coming together. It had been shocking to see him at the airport, standing casually by the side of the baggage carousel as if he could have been just anyone, instead of my dearest friend. Two weeks later, drastic change, while on the surface, things are the same. I am back on the west coast, still reverberating from my trip.
Tag: seattle
I bought my train ticket to Seattle. I leave Wednesday, then fly out on Friday night.
This past weekend was exhausting, the sort that feels alright to leave behind. Saturday was eaten up by David’s sister’s wedding, a strange affair out in Abbotsford at a family restaurant, small, informal, slightly terrifying, and Sunday was taken up with Slutwalk, a thousand person protest march against victim shaming that Katie N. helped put together. Oddly, out of the two, even though Slutwalk was four hours of being on my feet, running around and taking pictures, surviving the little wedding took more out of me. Something to do with social shock, maybe, or walmart-culture inspired depression. Either way, it’s not something I would be willing to do again.
There was also a long, miserable walk home from Broadway on Sunday, broken and alone. It ended with John catching me in my room crying, so he went out and brought back two delicious cupcakes from the new place up the street, presenting them to me in a small paper box, “Here’s some men-are-scum cupcakes.” I sniffled and laughed, and said, “Men aren’t scum.” He replied, “Yes they are sweetie. Trust me, I am one. Eat your cupcake. It’ll help make everything better.” And he was right. It did.
(He also, tongue firmly planted in cheek, brought me a voodou doll when he arrived from New Orleans to “help” with my heartbreak. It’s a grassy thing dressed in pink, with a burned plastic doll face and a magic lima bean tied to its waist with some leather. Creepy looking, yes, but with the effect somewhat ruined by the mass produced tag around its neck: FOR ATTRACTION.)
Today I’m processing pictures, doing laundry, and last minute packing for my trip to NY, making certain I have cords for things, trying to remember if I packed any stockings, triple checking that I’ve put aside pants that fit me, shirts for every weather, vitamins, hairpins, toothpaste, moonlight, music, the moose hat, and things with feathers on them. Really I’ve been more or less ready for a couple of days, I could have left yesterday, the only thing left is to find a missing bird skull earring, but there’s something comforting about being extra sure.
with a baby any day now
Rebecca‘s due date is this week. Exciting times! From our pregnancy shoot in Seattle at the Uni. of Washington.
Today’s Best Spam Subject Line: Can Lupus Sufferers Use Henna?
Rise Up Fallen Angel, an imaginary exploitation film poster.
Yesterday was a good day. It started fraught with computer problems, the stupid sort that feel like steel wool endlessly scrubbing against the back of your eyes, but ended on a high note, with a visit to A. that left me feeling better than I have in weeks, to the point where I caught myself beaming at strangers all the way home, waving a broken stick of flowers I picked up off the ground. Oh dopamine, how I have missed you. It’s left me feeling super productive and significantly less like I’ve been crushed by steel plates. Not quite myself again, but a step in the right direction. I got up at eight and have been working on neglected tasks ever since, answering e-mail, putting away laundry, calling people, making plans, and continuing to tackle the broken hard-drives of idiotic doom*.
*First I could see the hard-drive, but not interact with it, then after Joshua worked on it an hour, it was discovered that the case was too old to be supported by Win7. Then, after the case was swapped, the drive, ostensibly a terabyte, refused to show up as anything but 1Gb, while the SeaGate software specifically meant to fix such errors has refused to run. Kill it with fire.
There’s been other good news, too. Tony’s going to be in town this weekend, up for a visit with me and Tamea, and staying here on Friday, the better for dancing and Saturday breakfast together. Apparently I’m being paid for my gig with The Short Story Long this weekend and my antique bureau should be selling soon, too, (see all my listings), which should go a distance towards clearing away my credit card bill and getting me down to Seattle for my NYC trip.
Unemployment has left me financially devastated this past year, so it will be especially delicious to finally shoot down some debts. To wit: EI sends me monthly letters, asking me to pay them back over a grand. ICBC calls every three weeks, reminding me to pay off $100 in fare evasion tickets someone put in my name while I was in Montreal. My credit card’s maxed out, a slow death that one, used up on groceries. I finally did all my taxes, dating back ten years, (minus 2010 and 2011), but through the magic of interest, late fees, and general tax evils, even after living below the poverty line for a decade, I still owe them $70. It seems like the worst part of being poor is that the system is set up to keep you there.
But back to the good stuff! David was just promoted to manager of the Yaletown Book Warehouse! Not only will he be finally making a living wage, soon he’ll be able to start saving to go back to school to be a primatologist. Related to books, but more personally, I got to meet Zsuzsi Gartner, one of my favourite authors, at her book launch for Better Living Through Plastic Explosives. She’s going to be doing a reading at the VPL main branch on May 11th that I’ve decided I cannot miss. Also, the Dusty Flowerpot Cabaret is hosting a pay-what-you-can, tickets-only-at-the-door show at the Roundhouse on Sunday, 2 pm. Would anyone like to come with?
it’s may day: make a joyful noise
An angelic Rebecca from our pregnancy shoot in Seattle at the Uni. of Washington.
captured laughter
Delightful moments of silliness with Rebecca and Graham from our pregnancy shoot in Seattle at the Uni. of Washington.
I’ve never been to NYC
Given that my recent job interviews have all fizzled, my relationship has horrifically dissolved, and my birthday is fast approaching, I have decided it’s finally perfect timing to use up my plane ticket to visit Van Sise in New York city*.
I am going to miss Rafael’s Folklife and a few other things, (my original birthday plan was to set up a Whole Beast Feast, hit up the 40th Annual Folklife for a day, then hitch-hike with some strangers to the 10th Annual Sasquatch Festival for the rest of the long weekend), but given my present circumstances as a connoisseur of sad situations, it just seems like a better idea to be gone. Every night my dreams ache, my body wrenches with unhappiness, yet in the morning, I can’t seem to find reasons to be awake. I lie there motionless, wrapped up in nothingness, unable to conjure any appetite for life, any thread of grace, any desire at all for my bland, banal hopes or disembodied future. If I had a job or were in school, I’m sure it would be different, I would feel that my life was moving forward instead of slipping away, but as it currently is, a lonely narrative of inevitable failure after inevitable failure, all I want is to be away from here, all I want is escape.
*Originally we were going to wander around the southern states, visiting Atlanta and New Orleans, rounding off the trip, if we were lucky and it was delayed, with the last Space Shuttle Launch. Instead his work got in the way and the already-purchased plane ticket was cashed in for credit and put aside for a visit with him later.
astounding in person
Detail shots I took of “Ode to Herculaneum” and “Czarina Promenade”, the sculptural work of Kris Kuksi currently on display at the La Roc La Rue Gallery in Seattle.
Click HERE to see the full show on-line.
yes, I have a favourite sixty belgian girls. don’t you?
Spending this weekend in Seattle to attend the Ainsley baby shower and take some pictures of Rebecca’s baby bump. It’s going to be a great trip. Not only am I staying with some of my favourite people on the planet, there’s plans in the works for an obscenely epic Friday. If you’re in town, you should come! The rest of you, start your jealousy engines revving. I’m starting with an early dinner in Belltown, the better to attend the opening of a Kris Kuksi show at La Roc La Rue, (also featuring monochrome pop-alt darling Travis Louie), then dropping South to see the Scala Choir hit the stage at the Showbox. Oh yes. YES. Favourite tumbled upon favourite upon favourite. I’m drooooooling. Drooling like a happy kitty. Meaow purr durr.
Also, reading that over, I am considering that my considerable lack of sleep lately has left me with temporary brain damage.
I just saw a bald eagle snatch a fish from the water
“A kiss would do it.
One sprinkle of milkwhite salt
and I’ll break like bread at your table.”
– S. Sloat
Uncertain about my weekend away, I find everything I wanted to write about draining away, replaced by the landscape outside the train windows. There is a large, strange boat abandoned on part of the shore, a hulking, rotten thing, the discarded corpse of a predator. Every time I see it, I want to visit. Climb upon its ribs, explore the depths of its throat. The house near it, that of a witch. Driftwood, black paint, sorrow. Somewhere a hand-painted sign, STAY AWAY. The water is smooth today, enough to reflect the sky, a strange illusion of clouds and occasional threads of blue. Soon it is replaced by green farm fields dotted with tiny isolated homesteads, the tracks swinging in-land. A bridge, blue herons, the shock of a log yard with violent wood-chippers, the elegant, golden spray of chewed material gouting from the top of a long metal tube, propelled by a quick, vicious conveyor belt and the hunger of consumerism. Touch it and you’d lose your hand. (It scares a child sitting behind me). Next, a dense, sputtering flock of birds swarming like massive bees, a horror of movement next to a small white farmhouse, paint peeling in antique strips as potentially old as the magenta hot-rod rusting out beside it, fins pointed to the sky like a prayer.
The closer I travel to Canada, the more everything is gray. The more the trees I like, honest, naked, are replaced with depressing evergreens. To another set of eyes, the view might be spectacular – inspiring, pristine nature of the sort usually found only in magazines – but if it wasn’t for my lover in Vancouver, I would be certain that I’m traveling the wrong direction, towards failure. My home behind me, as if I am running away.