n: vb: the spice of imagination
Tony apparently commissioned Eliza to create portraits of us as part of The Very Commercial SWEATSHOP. I adore what she’s done, Tony’s a delicious aristocrat and I’m a hot Armenian. Sweet!
EDIT: I’ve gone and bought delicious frames for these, and the one of Tony is going to live with me in Vancouver and the one of me is going to live in Seattle with him! And we have wings! Wings!!! So freaking awesome!
via Doug:
The “second power” is the square of a number.
The “third power” is the cube of a number.But what of the EIGHTH power? What’s that called?
That is called the Zenzizenzizenzic.
Zenzizenzizenzic! Zenzizenzizenzic! Zenzizenzizenzic!
We saw them through the late night window of a junk vintage shop, wandering out on a Friday looking for thumbtacks, an accidental discovery of a commercial zone corner a block away from our apartment, (a doughnut shop, a corner store, a bar, a chic asian cocktail lounge), six brushed industrial metal letters a foot high, as silver and kind as clean water, so smooth fingers might mistake them for soft, B E A U T Y.
Fourty five dollars said the bearded man in the shop, the next afternoon when we asked. We’ll think about it, we said, we’ll be back. We liked him, his enthusiasm, his pleased surprise at our esoteric knowledge of old, strange parts. The rest of the shop was trash, (minus an eau de nil electroshock machine and a modern, colourful painting of a horse made of scissors), all broken furniture and the sort of costume jewelry even hipsters wouldn’t wear. Piles stacked on other piles, used newspaper messy, nothing to invite a body in to dig.
Fourty five dollars, he said, and the next day we paid it. Sunday on our way to somewhere else, not quite almost running late. Fourty five dollars and we brought our own bag. (They sounded like a factory accident as they rubbed together, like the foley for a train crash, unexpected and intense.) Soon the letters will go above the bed, a literary headboard, both statement and fact, to remind us who we are and what we’re after, our us-against-them cure for the world.
He dances for me as I leave, every time, out next to the bus as I sit inside, glued to the window, helpless but to smile. I breathe on the glass, trapped in my seat, and smear cartoon hearts in the resulting childish fog. I ADORE YOU, block letters, mirror formed, blowing kisses off my fingers, then holding my hands to my heart, messy with roughly mimed song lyrics. Bang, bang, my baby shot me dead. He runs alongside as the bus pulls out, skipping, swinging around if he can to stand on a street light like he’s singing in the rain, while I wave an invisible hanky, eyes locked on each other until we are defeated by the bus turning away.
We are reduced to texting then, once our line of sight is broken, my travel undeniable fact, snippets of poetry 160 characters long. I type awkwardly, all clumsy thumbs, until my cellular gives out by Bellingham, (Bellingham being north enough to be Canada according to the phone company). You are the answer to Samson’s riddle, I carefully type, arduously, letter by slow letter, the sweetness built inside my chest that coats my ribs in honey.
We came home last night with bags full of treasure – groceries, favourite films, promising books, and a round black pot, some soil, and two miniature rose bushes tucked under my right arm, one red, one moonlight white, like the flowers assigned by Hans Anderson to Gerda and Kai. I planted the flowers before I even took off my boots, sitting at the kitchen table, fingers smeared with beautifully scented dirt, palms pricked scarlet from the thorns, smiling as if I was giving a home to a child. I potted them so close their roots will mingle as they grow, tying their lives into a thriving, inseparable mass, his and hers, with the simple breathing act of survival.
They amputated
Your thighs off my hips.
As far as I’m concerned
They are all surgeons. All of them.
They dismantled us
Each from the other.
As far as I’m concerned
They are all engineers. All of them.
A pity. We were such a good
And loving invention.
An aeroplane made from a man and wife.
Wings and everything.
We hovered a little above the earth.
We even flew a little.
Yehuda Amichai, (translated from Hebrew by Assia Gutmann)
Tonight looks like to be much of the same. As does Wednesday and possibly Thursday, all the way until the weekend, by which time I’d better bloody well have a bunch of it figured properly so I can work on my pictures during my eight hours of to and from Seattle or I’m going to be terrible sad. Ray got me a laptop for my birthday, (!!), for precisely such a purpose, and given that it’s Sept. 1st, I’ve now an entire year of neglected material to catch up. I don’t think the battery on it will last the entire trip, but even a few hours of meddling through should put a significant dent in the pile of work still to be done.
Computer complications aside, I can’t overstate how glad I am for this upcoming long weekend, even if eight hours of it are spent on a bus. We’re going to Bumbershoot, a three day music festival friends have played at over and over that neither one of us has ever been to, so even if it turns out to be ten hours on the bus, it will still feel worthwhile for the change of pace and scenery, for the chance to meet new people and try new things. And, of course, to spend more concurrent time with Tony, comforting delicious company he is. (And by comforting, I mean sexy. You hear that, boy? You best be ready.) The more time we spend together, the more convinced I am that he’s wonderful.
“I love you like I’ve never loved anyone,” he says. Later I lie awake, unable to follow him to sleep. I sit up a little, just enough for his curly head to shift from my shoulder to my lap. I watch him, silent, until I finally whisper, “I think I feel safe here,” aware he will not hear or know any of this in the morning.
We began with Craigslist ads, scanning through pages of apartments that offered beautiful views in inconvenient neighborhoods or move in bonus televisions instead of laundry rooms, weeding them down until we had four likely candidates, two of which called us back to view.
The first building felt like a horror movie set. Wide, dark hallways lined in red, with wavy leaded windows on the stairs occasionally missing a pane of glass. The building manager was a young man, passably nice, slightly more sleazy than eager, who in another situation I might have liked, but in this time and place felt like a liar. The apartments we were shown were much the same. Old, antique, almost pretty, with hardwood floors, high ceilings, and wide, open windows, great to visit, but not to live in, even the newly renovated ones. The kitchens were cramped hallways thin as the galley of a small sailing ship, with washrooms much the same, but more awkward, and the entire building slanted as if entire rooms had bumped their heads and never quite recovered. The word charming was thrown around, as was quaint. It was a relief to leave it behind.
Our second building, thankfully, was not so disheartening an experience. As buildings go, it was merely uninteresting. The outside looked promising, a great red brick edifice shaped like a castle, and the hallways were nice, as befit its history as a posh art deco hotel, but the room itself was less than inspiring. We were more concerned with the shaky emotional state of the nice, young building manager whose grandmother was in the hospital than for the space she showed us, crooked, cramped, filled constantly the sound of the I5 louder than live music. When we left, we were glad we let her vent about her family, but also that we’d never be back.
Capital Hill is currently bristling with APARTMENT FOR RENT signs, however, so we called and took reference photos of at least one building every block we passed on our way to lunch at the B&O, basing our choices on capricious things like garden friendliness or how much we liked the font of their signs. Though we’d been having a rough start, our mood was far from dire. Instead we were having fun, finding an unexpected delight in our arbitrary superficial judgments. Even better, they snagged us the perfect place.
The phone rang over lunch, “We could come by in half an hour,” we said. “Perfect,” they replied, “Come on down.”
Our first good sign was the woman waiting for us outside, Penny, and our second was her amused reaction to our amused reaction to the “flesh” tone dildo tied to a pair of colour matched expensive leather boots hanging from a telephone wire just across the street. Smiling, competent, she seemed immediately our sort of person. As did the building once we were inside, a 1920’s three story, with six or so apartments on every floor, even the foyer was gorgeous. Someone had come through and meticulously faux finished every wall to be a fancifuly distressed work of art. From then on in, it was all roses. The apartment itself was utterly lovely. Graceful, airy, well balanced, with wide, pretty windows, and incredible light. Describing it feels like trying to capture dance. Even cluttered with the detritus of someone else’s life, it glowed with the possibilities of home.
Tony put the deposit down on Thursday. We move in right after we get back from SF.
My weekends out of town have pushed me out of the habit of writing. Potential words are constantly spilling from my mouth and mind, but not landing where they’ll stain page or paper and stick around awhile and have a drink. Instead I find myself busy and busier, living a pace just this side of insane, and never in front of a computer when I need it most, but wrapped instead around chocolate curls and blonde exhaustion, tangled in too many things to set out straight.
The best I can do is point form after-the-fact, small glimpses into moments that stuck, like snapshots taken from a moving car, anecdotes I tell over tea or as we walk, hands carving out the expressions in our bodies as we did this or that, laughter infectious, haltered to speech.
Memories of the Mercury, wrapped in cigarette smoke and surrounded by black, dancing with Dee like the first time we really met, physical strangers in L.A., when he was still from London, and we had never lived in Montreal. Of Tony curled in my lap, days later, slightly drunk at Grahame and Becca’s, explaining ‘performing’ as my partner in front of my mother at Gasworks park, “See my patience!” He says, “how clever and kind a teacher I am! How carefully I’m showing Nick how to spin these poi, how I’m responsible, understanding. Look how perfect I am for your daughter, because I’m AWESOME!” Of Folklife and music and Richard’s music just for us, letting us play, the video we took, the glitchy, delightful beat. I think of Rafael dipping me in time to marimba music, all wrapped in tie-dye and a purple skirt, and Tony on the ground leaning forward to kiss me precisely on the lips, as if the entire moment had been perfectly rehearsed. I think of standing in front of the Circus Contraption audience, faking desire, shuddering with it, breaking my plastic glass with the heated deep breaths of my theatrical orgasm, ready to beat the band. The warmth and depth of my smile. Of flying my pocket Pirate kite, of limping gladly, of free hug signs and breakfast and pliers and giving a necklace away. Of sound effects and posed photographs and doing the tango with only my hand, two fingers for legs, stepping along the ground so prettily it was like we could see the invisible held-in-teeth roses glowing alive in our love.
Watching him through the partially closed balcony screen, he is beautiful, pensive, sitting with a cigarette, uncertain what he needs to say next. His gestures as he smokes are familiar, the slow, absent dance of the resigned to fate. (I am a comfortable witness.) In his head, he is silently writing a letter as he stares into space, turned inward, performing and rehearsing how to say goodbye. to my dear friends and family… He is new to this, but competent, and I expect him to survive.
(In my memory a day not quite the one before, myself in a mirror, comforting, holding a man through almost similar things.)
We fall asleep wrapped in the couch before the letter is sent, our heavy limbs a knot of courage as well as care, though his writing was finished by midnight, (a time significant only in passing, like a fallow attempt of a traditional childhood’s magic spell), marking like a hammer blow one of the last indivisible links in this particular chore.
We’re lying on the couch, grinding on the couch, when he says, finger to my lips, in an overly innocent voice that has no idea the incredible faux pas it’s about to commit, “Now you be a good little girl and don’t move. Just wait right here.”
I pause, distracted, jolted. “Excuse me?”
His eyes widen as the multiple potential layers of his statement sink in, meanings rife with candy, white vans, and puppies. “Oh dear!” he says, “I promise that’s not where I meant to go with that.”
We collapse laughing, the moment lost now in something else. We lie curled together, our hands lost in each other’s hair, and I tell a story of being approached once by a young man in a nightclub who’d had one too many beer, “We’d been dancing, nothing special. We didn’t know each other at all, but he came up to me in a pause in the music, drink in hand, smiling, and said, You know what I’d like? Of course I shook my head no. I didn’t even know his name. If you came home with me so I can show you who your daddy is.“