He calls, soft, exhaustion laced, considerate, concerned. I recite, trying to remember the swirling words of the story as I find the book, flip pages to the story, “Here is the story of Mignon as I remember having read it in a famous old book.” Somewhere in my day there was news about travel, about death, difficult to process, the sort that kicks in both the head and the heart. “A young man named Wilhelm was staying at an inn in the city. One day as he was going upstairs, he met a little girl coming down.” He is driving, the sound of the city sliding by the windows, an echo of tires and commuters tinted brake-light red. I can picture him if I concentrate, the tilt of his head, the way his hand rests on the wheel, pale eyes on the road, even while in the center of my self, I refuse to believe in our structure. I hate how something so small can keep me alive. “He would have taken her for a boy, if it had not been for the long curls of black hair wound about her head.” I listen to what’s between our conversation, shoes crunching across gravel that I’ve walked across silently in bare, frozen feet, when he sits to undo his laces, the shuffling of a coat being removed and left on a rack. Habits beginning to be memorized, the shape of how he moves through space, the way he signs his name. “As she ran by, he caught her in his arms and asked her to whom she belonged. He felt sure she must be one of the rope dancers who had just come to the inn.” All of this comforting, a little bit effortless, a narrative that smooths like water over stone. I skim through the book, my favourite story on the very last page, and do my best to quietly read, warm as feathers, sharing solace over the phone. “She gave him a sharp, dark look, slipped out of his arms, and ran away without speaking.”
Tag: there is no god
as through this, we transform
Today is the anniversary of the day I was hit by a truck seven years ago. It threw me thirty feet, peeling the skin from my knees like red fruit, shifting my bones, and tearing my silk skirt and shoulder like they were made from the same tissue. My hips were no longer a cradle, but a crooked cup, dropped and badly repaired. My right arm wouldn’t follow commands.
Your heart, it tastes like something I used to remember. Words restarted, strange memories, reverb, a breath of fresh air, and shift. (Standing in a room torn down years ago, shouting at a man who will no longer talk to me, never see, don’t mention, “I never said it would be easy to be with me.” If I could have seen the future, I would have walked out then, every step away a commitment to a better tomorrow.) We sit in your vehicle outside my building, the third night in a row, dark, midnight warm, a scene from a movie we’re writing with all the verve of a massacre, interpreting the strings, showing our scissors, oxytocin gleam, sharpening knives, as close as the moment at New Year’s Eve when we kissed under confetti and flashing lights. A change, the weather, our sea, research material, a history beginning to mingle, to be.
Between my arms, pride, peroxide corrosive, sincere and loaded as a gun. Lying on the couch, discussing humanities, a button floats to the top, ready to be pushed. He stiffens, ambiguity banished, a familiar motif, easier for me to get to than him for me, a center of Rowan tree, witch tree, anger, dense and thick with power, almost spitting his words as, counter-intuitive, I relax, comfortable with the coda, the moment, hatred matched with an alpha sympathy. We both have this. It is a gift, as well as a curse. Us as graphic motif, living, crackling towers of fury, hands raised, ground shaking, pulling down a storm. He apologised, though it was unnecessary, an instinct ground deep, appreciated as part of a medley, a comfort carved from context, clever and adored. Though you make me afraid, I wanted to say, it does not stem from this, but how much I want to live in your heart.
This week: stuffed with potential.
In an effort to prod myself out the door more often, I’ve started scouring the city for events again. The next trick will be to actually go to some of them. (Ex. I intended to hit up the PuSH opening gala last night, but spent time with A. then Lori instead. Fail? Not fail? Still social, though stayed in. Tough call.) That said, here’s some good ideas I’ve chalked in, but haven’t solidified yet. Who’s in?
Tuesday/today
7:00 + 9:30pm – Half Price Tuesday, The Green Hornet by Michel Gondry at The Rio. $6. (With A.)
7-9pm – PuSH: Boca Del Lupo‘s free La Marea, Gastown, zero-hundred block of Water Street.
Wednesday
8-11pm – Jack and Martin from Maria in the Shower, an intimate duo show at The Helm restaurant, 1180 Howe Street. (With Jess.) Company bailed, stayed in.
Thursday
12pm-6pm – PuSH: Iqaluit at the Woodward’s Atrium.
7-9pm – PuSH: Boca Del Lupo‘s free La Marea, Gastown, zero-hundred block of Water Street. (With Beth.) Went to Bin 942 after for delicious tapas and killer chocolate fondue. Holy hell, I had forgotten how completely magical a raspberry tastes. There are no words.
9:30-late – EXCISION (Dubstep Invasion Series) at Gossip, 750 Pacific Blvd. $25.
Friday
9-late – Isaac’s Freaks & 45’s Formal birthday party. (With Tony & ?.)
12am – City of the Lost Children midnight movie at the Rio, (subtitled). Admission is $8 or $7 in costume. Stayed at the party.
Saturday
8-12am – The Tequila Mockingbird Orchestra with Jess Hill at Cafe Deux Soleils. $10-15 sliding scale at the door. (With Tony & ?.) (Sold out before we arrived).
8:30-12am – Stay Wet: An anti-celebration of the 82nd anniversary of the Dry Bill, featuring The Furniture, Blackberry Wood, Antiparty, and The Brass Action at The Railway Club.
9-12am – Karaoke at the Main St. Legion, 3917 Main Street. (Added to this list by request.)
10-2am – SinCity at Club 23 West. (With Tony & A.)
Sunday
2pm – PuSH: 46 Circus Acts in 45 Minutes, UBC Frederic Wood Theatre. 2pm. $12.50 General, $5 Kids under 12, $25 Family of 4 (max 2 adults). Box Office 604.822.2678 Went to brunch with Tony and A., then for hot chocolate at Cocoa Nymph.
3pm – Day for Night: Full Moon in Paris by Eric Rohmer at the Waldorf Cabaret.
There is no public face.
What’s this scar, I ask, a finger touching his body somewhere the skin is pale and slightly warped, maybe damp, warm from a shower. A crowbar, he says, or a computer case. Something fell, a knife slipped, there is a different explanation for every twisted mark. The disfiguring slice that runs up his thumb, the white curl that runs around the top of his right foot. I am collecting each story, building a narrative, assembling a picture of his body through history. Actions, reactions. Attacked, sleeping somewhere he shouldn’t. Carving a fall through the air, a parachute failure from fourty stories up.
“What would you do if I cut my hair?” “Could I have it?” “That’s not at all what I asked.”
He looks through me like a strange mirror, the reflection off by a fraction. In the deepest center of things, the beginning of a spark. We map territory almost the same, drawing conclusions at an almost cellular level, uncanny and intimately familiar, a dance I’ve never had a partner for, though I long ago conquered the steps. Even as I dig for bones, there is a return archeology, a chemical reaction that burns through skin down to the raw, bloody, hard and honest, that knack of knowing without necessarily knowing why, the same way that when we’re asleep, we unconsciously hold hands in the dark.
rationalists
He turns on the television, flicks through some options, a way to feel useful while too tired to do anything more. On screen, a pornographic backdrop behind the menu, a naked woman sitting on wrought iron fleur-di-lis, shot from below, the metal pressing into her soft, photoshop-perfect skin. She is anonymous, mostly a silhouette of legs and shaved genitals, though it can be seen that she has a ring piercing in a sensitive place. I mentally wince, thinking of how easy it would be to get caught on things, but grin, looking at him, silently expecting an explanation, as that’s what such situations generally require. “It’s not mine, if you’ll believe it,” he replies to my amused face, “I would have fixed the aspect ratio.”
It’s amazing the moments that feel like home. Because yes, I would have too.
IF FOUND, PLEASE REPORT
My asymmetrical purple fedora has vanished, lost somehow in the earliest hours of Boxing Day, most probably to the Metrotown parking lot. It was a fine hat, resilient, much loved, and my utter favourite, the best I’ve ever had. Already I miss it, along with the lovely feather fascinator attached to it that Sugar made me for my birthday. A moment of silence, please.
Also mysteriously gone this year: The Scarf of True Love.
what is already yours.
Tonight consists of unpacking similarly to how yesterday was shaped around fitting things into suitcases, all things fractal, unfolding to limitless depths on the edge of a very great height, hands outstretched, my girlish heart aflutter, all wind, gravity, and power. A small break-down, page turned, chapter ended, an entire new book about to be written. I left much behind, small pieces of furniture, antiques, black and red, a crafted library of films, the gentle framework of an entire life, another city, an origami of possibilities, the word home engraved in stones. We rested briefly in the midst of scouring the apartment for my things, a dove outside, pure in the middle of a flock of pigeons, white like bone against a blue sky.
Today I cried for my city and fell in love a little bit and felt a weight on my heart as thick and suffocating as any poem. I was held, I was rejected, I cried for my city and in that moment was everything. This is the new, this place of surprise comfort and reliability, this strange mix of invisibility suddenly reversed, of truth and beauty bombs, no secrets, no delay. The new, but inevitable, even as I claimed it is not, as I tripped and fell, yet was caught. “Everything else is just filling in details.” I am afraid, but inside my concern seems to be freedom, seems to be a map of what I remember being, the word thrive, crackling, the electric incredible. Deep in the center of things, essential, past the pain, there is still strength.
I am glad we are friends
