Tag: there is no god

A month later and I haven’t yet learned how not to cry myself to sleep.

  • An interview with Richard Pell, Director of the Center for PostNatural History.
  • Ugly Truth of Space Junk: Orbital Debris Problem to Triple by 2030

    It is terrible how I ache to lean into him. Terrible, giant and baroque, this need, covering ground with great footsteps, to reach forward and touch his hair, leagues, miles, to press against him and taste his naked fingertips, every one, unmistakable, each drop of memory an ocean to drown in. The last time I wore this dress was New Year’s Eve, when our pinstripes matched and I took out his cuff-links to put in my own. We kissed, then, at midnight, caught in each other’s laps under confetti and flashing strobes, surrounded by strangers and glitter and chaos, and then, quietly, with a sincerity that shocked to my center, he met my eyes and said a toast to us, perfect, heart-felt. I wanted to stop time to stay in that moment. I felt like I would be transformed forever, a happier person from then until death. The champagne was bitter, the entertainment spotty, and I limped back to his place half ruined, my twisted ankle a broken thing, but what stayed with me was that moment, that untouchable, pristine moment that filled me with stunned silence, that poured through me with light.

    It is terrible that I am wearing this dress. Terrible, obvious and provocative, this dress, covering nothing, a candid sheath of longing to be undressed by him, shouting from rooftops, through megaphones, to feel his hands cradle my hips like a cup, so loud is my desire, this catalogue of cravings, deafening, vulnerable, terrified. The first time we were at this restaurant we asked if it was a date. We decided, then, that it wasn’t, even in the face of all evidence, yet grinned, conspiring, maybe lying, while offering our histories, shyly admitting our shames, building a shelter together, every beam of the structure a story, a narrative link. This will be love, I thought to myself, surprised, this will be love like I’ve forgotten how. I wanted to go back in time to hurry this moment. I felt like I was braving a dragon’s lair, safe with the knowledge of the hole above its heart. I had been isolated, a furtive species too rare to breed, spectacularly ill equipped for such good luck, but what stayed with me was the trust, that pure, mysterious conviction, that maybe for the first time, everything would be alright.

    • off to go gypsy dancing

    nadia nadia

    Pictures of my friend Nadia in the park across the street from my house.

    -::-


    I come across your picture and my consumed heart shakes, a little quiver of reminder, the smallest of chemical starts, as if every time I am inspired, it carries your name.

    I’ve been pleasantly busy with photography work lately, taking pictures for expecting friends in Seattle, Shane’s band here, and Duncan’s before-the-charity-hair-cut series. Soon, too, headshots for Joshua’s new website, publicity and documentation for the upcoming Vancouver SlutWalk, and bridal pictures for David’s sister’s wedding.

    Today’s Best Spam Subject Line: Can Lupus Sufferers Use Henna?

    Rise Up Fallen Angel, an imaginary exploitation poster

    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?

    “I want to be happy, but I also want a unicorn. It seems more likely, so I’ll work on that first.”

    “What should we get? Do you like ice-cream?”
    “Always. Ice-cream is my only true love that never leaves me.”

    Today I finished my image for my mother’s New York art show, Rise Up Fallen Angel. The more I thought about the theme of the show, the more I was found myself attracted to old grindhouse exploitation films, faded Russ Meyer style prints of unhappy women, a girl named Angel in need of revenge. Now that it’s sent, I vaguely wish I’d done more, but one afternoon slathered in black facepaint, screaming my frustration in an empty apartment, eyes clenched shut trying not to cry, is enough for now.

    I saw A. earlier this week, on Monday afternoon, during the beautiful warm. The first time since he broke off the relationship. I was jittery, approaching his house with a very frayed heart, almost too scared to go on, but pitting the starkly intimidating possibility that he might actually answer his door against my near overwhelming desire to see him, with no idea what one says to a person who’s left you sobbing in the street, breathless from pain and sorrow. It was an extremely short visit, held close, but reassuring. He missed me too. He is sorry he’s been unfair. I haven’t had a nightmare since.

    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 fly out of SeaTac to NYC on May 20th and return June 2nd.

    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.

    my life as a misery ghost

    Portal 2: Exile Vilify, a hidden song by The National

    Monday: It was just after midnight when he opened the door. In the interest of brevity, I will leave out the next three hours, excepting my desire to be wanted, kicked in like a knife, a piercing pain that has yet to fade. Suffice to say, A. has gone away. Like in the old stories, antique, anonymous and trying, everyone a letter instead of a name, places expressed as an initial and an em dash. Off to the sanitarium, he cried!

    After: I sat crumpled in the street where I had been dropped, left salty eyed blind and exhausted, my glasses on the hood of a stranger’s cold truck, too tired to stand, even as the the night evaporated as thoroughly as the warmth on my body where his hands had apologized and cradled me goodbye.

    So that, for now, is that. After a multitude of absences and various failure situations, he has decided that he is not currently capable of being responsible in regards to my un/happiness and has withdrawn from my life. I do not know when he will return or in what state, but it is my hope, however small, however sad, that he will come home to me when he can.

    scraped empty

    When I have said “I love you” I have said
    Nothing at all to tell you; I cannot find
    Any speech in any country of the mind
    Which might inform you whither I have fled.
    In saying “I love you” I have gone so far
    Away from you, into so strange a land;
    You may not find me, may not understand
    How I am exiled, driven to a star

    Till now deserted. Here I stand about,
    Eat, sleep, bewail, feel lonely and explore,
    Remember how I loved the world, before,
    Tremble in case that memory lets me out.
    Islanded here, I wait for you to come —
    Waiting the day that exiles you to home.

    by Valentine Ackland

    Tonight is the first night of Passover.

    I am meant to be taking photos today for an art exhibition in New York. I am meant to be doing laundry, looking for work, applying to be an enforcer, editing my belongings, putting more of them for sale, and processing pictures from Seattle and yesterday’s shoot with Shane’s band at the Cultch. I am meant to be showered and dressed and fed. Together, sharp, useful, active. Defined. There are things to do, tasks to conquer, opportunities waiting. Instead it is as if the air itself has thickened until even breathing is an effort. I am suffocating, a captive unhappily complicit with my aching inactivity.

    It has been a week of silence. Out of respect for my love, for his dismissal, his vanishing outburst, I did not call for days, even when the wet beauty of thunder and lightning was too much to bear, when it cracked me as open as it did the sky. Even when I felt that all I could possibly desire was his voice kindly speaking my name. Instead I bruised my fingers knocking at his door. Small gifts in my pockets, a snub nosed bottle of imported ginger ale, a tiny square of rich, hard to find chocolate, my hand raised once more to the wood, knuckles swollen into a pale rainbow of purple and blue from repetition, (less painful than the quiet), but to no answer, even when his vehicle was parked in the drive. At home the phone would ring in a quick, beautiful burst, but the numbers were wrong – the wrong people, the wrong names. Outside would be footsteps, car doors slamming, false hope leaping up in my heart like flames. Every night, sleep became farther away.

    When Friday slid into Saturday, still without word, it became obvious that the relationship had been abandoned, released into the wild without even the courtesy of goodbye.

    a pale mother to a dark place

    Staying up impossibly late, waiting for a step at the door, trying to demonstrate faith, a burst of forced optimism trying to erase pain. I am shut out while shut in, unwelcome, made to walk home in the rain, every step on glass, echoes of years ago, chest hollow, hair wet, the blood of love on my hands, refused, pushed off an edge from a great height, broken, breaking. Morning brings panic, an irrational jolt wondering what could have happened to keep him away, before I fully engage and instead hate.

    commitment/abandonment

    Today, for April’s Fools, I sent A. a note saying I’d been looking for ideas for when we get married, and “what do you think about this as an inspiration page?” In reply he said, “That’s actually kind of scary. And it makes my news a little ill timed.”, and then proceeded to explain that he was moving back to England for a job opportunity.

    I’m not sure how it happened so perfectly, but I think we just exemplified a rather amusing gender bias. Why yes, we do regularly mock stereotypical hetero-normative behaviour, even while embracing it, why do you ask?