On the wall of the ladies room there is a picture, a long, soft-focus black and white photograph of a woman lying mostly naked on a bed in Seattle, only a few blocks away from where I live when I’m with you. I identify the city by inference, the lights of the tower, the three streaks of white light dotted in rows along the top of Queen Anne, washed out, pale, seen dimly through sheer curtains. There is no way to know when the picture was taken, what year, how recent, no clues, the bed is ordinary, the bedside lamp a timeless shape with a round bland shade, except that it was night. Instead it sits on the wall like a secret, knowledge of a moment, nudity, vulnerability, where I have never been, but have walked past, ignorant. Her face turned away, her luminous body partially draped with a thin white blanket, she could be anyone, somehow she could even be me. It seems for a moment like this recognition should feel like a message, that my bones should ring, that my blood should ache, and I should miss you, your city, your being, but instead I recall a memory, a terrible waking dream; how it would feel to walk by your apartment and no longer own a key, to arrive and understand that your home is my home no longer, a vibrant flash of possible self so hollow it shed time as irrelevant and moved backward, showing me a future I hoped I’ll never have to see.
Tag: tony
yo
According to Wikipedia “Homie” or “Homey” is a contraction of the American slang words "homeboy" or "homebuddies", but seriously, people, "homebuddies"? Really?
I changed the word girl to boy (and there’s still more to come)
Valentine’s is creeping up, the candy coated holiday founded on Lupercalia, a Roman parade festival celebrating sex and werewolves. It basically involved sacrificing a goat, wrapping the wet and bloody skin around you, then energetically racing naked around the city and cackling madly while smacking women with whips for pregnancy luck.
Me, I just can’t be bothered to put that much effort in. Someone hands me a goat at the crack of dawn, there’s not going to be any leaping out of bed to kill it, no, nor running. At least, I wouldn’t be the one running. This is dawn we’re talking about. AKA bedtime. Also, seriously, what did that poor goat ever do?
So rather than running naked and bloody through the streets of Seattle, something I’m theoretically capable of if I weren’t so damned lazy, sure, I’ve decided to celebrate this Valentine’s by sending Tony treasures through the mail instead. How pale in comparison, I know, but wait! Don’t judge yet! These treasures might not involve flaying animals or whipping nubile young women, but they’re awesome.
The first present arrived last week, a new Crankbunny design made in collaboration with poster artist Brian Ewing called the Tell-Tale Heart Custom Valentine Card, a paper ribcage which opens up to reveal a personal secret message under a scarlet scratch away foil heart. My message read you have my heart. xox jh. It was a tricky choice, given that she has so many beautiful cards, but as I gave Secret Decoder and Dancing Robot cards last year, I wanted something new, something a little more to Tony’s specific tastes, so I decided the macabre ribcage would appeal more to his recovering goth-osity than anything else in her shop, especially as it comes in a smart black envelope. Ha.
The next present arrived just yesterday, a valentine by Lea Redmond from The World’s Smallest Postal Service! The letter is transcribed on a miniature desk in the tiniest of script, sealed with a miniscule wax seal with the sender’s intial pressed into it, packaged up with a magnifying glass in a glassine envelope, and finished off with a large wax seal. The finished letter is just about the size of an American quarter, almost a little bit smaller. Tony was absolutely delighted to open the regular sized envelope and discover such a strange tiny gift inside.
The miniscule envelope, not having anything to do with actual mailing practices, can be marked as anything you like, so I wrote out the smoochiest addresses I could think of, mailing it from Jhayne Holmes, Lover’s Court, Inamorata, L0V34, Valentia, and to Tony Jackson, #1 Beloved Blvd, suite: 2 serenade, Inamorato, H34R7, Valentia, something Tony got to read out to Michelle and her friend Kevin, who were over as he unwrapped it.
Inside, it read;
Now comes the long blue cold
by Mary Oliver, (with one word changed)Now comes the long blue cold
and what shall I say but that some
bird in the tree of my heart
is singing.That same heart that only yesterday
was a room shut tight, without dreams.Isn’t it wonderful—the cold wind and
spring in the heart inexplicable.
Darling boy. Picklock.-:-
Here’s to closing in one one year together, to holding hands even when we’re sleeping. Here’s to finding love together and trust, truth, and beauty bombs. Here’s to you, my exquisite love, my Tony, my only. Happy Valentine’s. I love you, I love you, I love you.
Jhayne
what we’re doing for our octolunaversary nye
We fly to San Diego tomorrow, late in the evening, arriving at eleven. I write the words, I say them, and they feel like myth, like a story I might tell a child. We will pack today, wake up tomorrow, make breakfast, make love, do all the things we do in a day, then get onto one of those roaring machines in the sky and step off in San Diego in time for an incredible party for New Year’s Eve. How… How… fictional!
Today I’ve been figuring out the last pieces of our San Diego itinerary – where we’ll be staying on which days, how to get to Evolve from downtown – and having a surprising amount of fun doing it. It helps that Tony and I have similar tastes, and while it’s going to be incredible swanking it up in the luxury of the Hilton, we’re also excited about the The Dolphin Motel, where we’re staying tomorrow, which looks like it fell out of a snazzy movie set, (check out that neon!), and The Balboa Park Inn, right across the street from the San Diego Zoo, where the fiction and wonder continue, as we’ve booked… the Orient Express Theme Room! Swoon. SWOON.
Our trip is going to be so very transcendant, it’s surprising my head hasn’t fallen off.
This evening we’re gearing up by sorting out laundry, packing and electronics, and glueing long iridescent feathers to my purple hat. We still need to work out schedules with friends in L.A. and check the local weather and all those responsible things, but so far we’re doing pretty good, having settled in to wait for the dryer with West Wing, bowls of steamed vegetables, a saucer of fruit salad, and pumpkin cake with caramel sauce. Tomorrow we’ll look at what we’ve accomplished, shake our heads, do a bunch more of it, then pop out for last minute essentials, like matching bindi decorated with sequins, glass beads, or rhinestones from the Indian shop on Broadway for our dress up on New Year’s Eve, because we can’t be all rational thought and action.
We’re spending New Year’s Eve in California.
2010 starts this week. Sweet. Weird, yet sweet.
THIS IS OFFICALLY THE FUTURE.
Again.
Current itinerary: Fly to San Deigo on the 30th, dance ourselves dead at EVOLVE, stick around until the 4th, visit the zoo, maybe ride a gondola, then take the train up to LA, visit with Antony, Crunchy, and Kevin, then fly out of LAX on the 6th. Holy mercy, do I love California. I swear I’m going to go lick the first palm tree I see.
i. the honey to my lion
There is within me a space which perfectly defines your absence, as if the edges of where I am hollow exactly outlines the velvet surface of your skin.
Anybody know where to buy or sell a stolen/found laptop? Do you know anyone who does?
Bad news from Tony this morning:
I’ve been lying low busy with work and other stuff for far too long. but I hope you are proud to know that you are the first people I thought of when I was considering how I might contact the crinimal element in Seattle. You are people who know people. Be proud. :-T
I left my backpack on a bus last night and it contained a bunch of unimportant and replaceable odds and sods that I am willing to let go of. It also contained a laptop which I am also willing to let go of and replace with something newer. Unfortunately the last time I backed up the photos and saved data and IM logs and such onto my external drive at home was a few months ago and so it contains 4-10GB of photos and video of my recent life and that is irreplaceable.
I tried the bus lost and found and (no surprise) no one turned in my backpack last night. I will be trying another few lost and found searches and emails, but I expect them all to fail. A found backpack on a bus driving through downtown is not likely to be ignored or altruistically turned in.
I would like to find my specific laptop amongst the volume of “found goods” in Seattle, specifically if it has not been wiped yet and I can get the data off of it. I would be willing to pay any reasonable (and almost any unreasonable) price and would be uninterested in punishing or being mean or being anything but incredibly thankful to any person who might have been trying to to profit from my stupidity. I don’t even care about the hardware, only the data.
There is no way this is going to work. No way that one of you can point me to “Jimmy the fence” or “Mikey the Hand who works the 545 bus route” like they do in the movies. None of you are going to be able to “put your ear to the ground” and “talk to your contacts” and find some specific laptop in the “cold, big, dark city” of Seattle. Life is not like a movie.
That said, if any of you think you might be able to pull of some kind of miraculous feat like this or know people who could then feel free to contact me with any tips you have. Otherwise you can just alternately pity me or mock my stupidity, your choice. :-T
tonyja blip microsoft bloop com
Thanks,
TonyTime and place details:
I left work and got on the 545 sound transit bus at Overlake transit center in Redmond at 9:09PM last night and traveled toward downtown. At Stewart and Denny I got up and got off the bus without picking up my backpack, leaving it at the very back of the bus (on the right hand side while sitting looking forward). I expect my backpack traveled another stop or two until someone found it unattended, discovered that it contained some useless junk and also an HP Pavillion 17″ widescreen monitor black laptop (and maybe a little green 8GB iPod). the person who found it is either trying to find me know (hope hope) or trying to turn a reasonable profit off of my laptop and iPod (which I don’t really begrudge them for if they are, economic downturn and all). I expect there are some paper print outs or mail envelopes or other identifying items in there that could reveal my name and/or address and/or Microsoft email address.
We’ll be scouring Craigslist for the next two weeks and posting this letter anywhere we can think of. Please pass it on!
purr
photos by lung liu
now to figure out how to permanently move to seattle
september, seattle, fire spinning at gasworks park
One of the most amazing things about this trip, past the fact that it’s happening at all, is that Tony and I are going to get to spend an entire two weeks together, the longest period of time in each other’s company we’ll have had since we met in 2002. Once he gets off today’s bus, we’ll be inseperable until November 29th.
Tony’s such a fox
-::-
Somehow somewhere in the next twenty-four hours, the maddening mess around me has to coalesce into a travel ready me. I’ve no idea how I’m going to accomplish this, as I’ve put all my warm clothes into a suitcase and discovered it’s still half empty, even when it contains a sleeping cat. Apparently over time I’ve renounced being an Owner of Sweaters, or even of Pants or Long Sleeved Shirts, essential ingredients during the last biting Montreal winter I gleefully survived. I suppose today I’ll take a bit of time, disguised cleverly as my lunch hour, and unearth some, though I’m not entirely sure anymore where such things are sold. The Le Chateau sale place is close, though, as is Winners, and if I don’t find anything there, I might as well give up until I can go shopping along Rue St. Denis or St. Catherine’s, a plan that gets shiner with every passing hour.
Most of our plans for Montreal are the shiny sort, (Go Directly To Santropol, Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Get $200 Dollars, and the equally obvious Purchase A Warm Coat Already You Foolish Girl), though they did a bit of an unexpected shimmy recently, shaking off the drive down to NYC with Melanie and Lung, leaving us with some uncertainty in regards to our adventures. I remain optimistic, however, even as I face the terrible pressure of being an inexpert wedding photographer, as according to a quick poll over on Facebook, which very quickly took on some serious consistency, everyone’s favourite thing to do in Montreal is eat delicious food, a skill at which I am pleased to claim to be somewhat of a master. Om nom, om nom indeed.
ITEMS STILL MISSING: warm clothes, camera flash, ear cuff, bras, ipod cord, jammies, one lime stocking.
A beautiful picture of a crescent Earth, taken by the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft.