pluck nine shiny yellow lemons from the pile, put them in your basket, find the strawberries, try to decide through the clear plastic clamshell boxes which ones contain the best and most delicious strawberries, put two of them in your basket too, and one pink grapefruit, then purchase them and leave the store. peel what needs peeling, tear them apart, lick the tart juices running down to your elbows, smile, laugh, (try to find someone pretty to help), put them in a medium sized pot, then rummage through a kitchen drawer until you find a neglected potato masher, one rarely used no matter how delicious mashed potatoes are because there is just never find time in a busy life to make them, and use it to squish the pulpy sour lemons and the pink grapefruit that squirted while it was being skinned until they are mostly juice. while doing this, the pretty helper should have washed the strawberries in bracing cold water, clear and fresh and cool, and begun to pry the stems out with a fingernail, delicate and certain. they should then open the berries as if they were lips, something sweet to kiss, and toss the pieces in with the wet and acidic mess in the pot, brightening it with berry blood the colour of love and good music. when the first box of plump and perfect strawberries is gone, pressed into the rest of the liquid, take the pot, thanking the pretty assistant, fill it with beautiful water, enough to cover the mixture three times over, and put it on the stove to boil like a mysterious teenage dream of summer. when the mixture has begun to boil, possibly stir in with a wooden spoon, cracked perhaps from being left in the sink too long last month, a cup of the darkest demera sugar, as unprocessed as sugar can be, flavourful as honey. after thirty minutes of bubbling, making sure nothing sticks to the bottom, take the pot from the stove and place it inside the fridge, as arctic and pale as fake fox fur. the frost will lick it clean. when it is cold, it is ready to drink. enjoy.
Tag: writing
artpost: fine Canadian engineering
Bob Partington’s Blood pen
.The pen has a battery-powered mechanism to dispense blood drawn by a syringe. (video).
It’s part of a series that will debut at the Bread and Butter, Untitled Exhibition in Barcelona Spain, January 16th – 18th.
I need to involve myself with a writer again
Looking for a Green Light: “Lighting is a greedy user of energy, and public projects can be particularly heavy consumers. But many lighting designers are in fact trailblazing the use of low-energy technology.”
I sent you a letter with only one word, Hold. A train ticket word for long distances, a place to put your baggage, to put your arms, the embrace awaited, wished for, forgotten. I picture us as if through the lens of a camera, floating in glassy space, anchored by places we have been, where I have touched you, streets that have been warmed by our breath. It is as if an echoed copy of you is still here, imprinted inside the tiny fractures we left on reality with the molecules of our voice, our motion, simply waiting for you to come home. We are clips from some greater film, the title of which is beyond me. (Before the screen, there was the stage.) I think of our constant tired laughter and your sly technical hands, the way they drifted, fidgeting, up and down the hems of my skirts. My imagination wonders about the airport, wonders at my apprehension, (as it creates shaky lists of reasons why I might not like you again), asks why I feel so dreadfully shy.
I have been refusing to count down days; instead we are down to my Cassandra test of silence and all its implications. (Really we are down to fingers now, less the number of a clumsy butcher. I can feel my panicked heart constricting.) When, to combat my almost professional anticipation of misfortune, I sent you flowers, I irrationally felt like I had betrayed an unspoken agreement, yet my smile supernovae bloomed when I discovered the accompanying note had been garbled through a game of florist telephone. It was like discovering a new favorite song, transforming the simple into the sublime, with my eyes wide open.
I am looking forward to seeing you again.
Some electric companies have created tourist interest with their manatee populations. “… conservationists say the potential closure of aging electric plants is an unsolved problem for the survival of the species.“
please work please pretty please
A Guest post from Jhayne:
I apologize for leaving everyone with a bit of a cliff-hanger earlier this week. My journal has been innaccessible for the last few days and is likely to remain so until Livejournal screws its proverbial head on straight over the latest SixApart fiasco. (For those not in the know, this is what’s been going on.). I am hoping that using a third party to post will break past the endless 404 display that has cropped up every time I attempt an update.
So! news!
Someone’s willing to buy the theatre and lease it to us.
However, and this is a nasty however, we have to give him a proposal stating WHY we would be the best tenants in the known local universe. This is an investment, he requires a return. This proposal has to be delivered as soon as possible, because he leaves on a business trip in about a week. Of course, that’s “about a week” as of Tuesday. Now it’s Thursday night and I have just spent the last couple of days glued to my computer, ignoring so-called normal-human hours, typing my fingers to the bone and aggravating my carpel tunnel beyond rational belief, all so we would have a completely new HotW proposal done as quickly as possible.
You people had better thank me, even if this falls through. Thank me and Lee, the groshing accountant Warren‘s provided us out of the utter blue on no warning whatsoever who’s willing to work through the night for free, and thank Merlyn, who came and made me dinner and cleaned my kitchen, all so I didn’t have to pause what I was doing, and Alastair, who’s been hacking at my horrible rough-rough drafts, and Carlos, who’s been doing the same, but from Washington, and Silva, who’s been helping me write all today, and Michael Green, for continuing to know more about theatre than I have ever wanted to know.
And with that, I have to somehow extricate myself form my computer and find something to eat, because I’m fairly certain it’s in the manual somewhere that one should not go over twelve hours without a meal. This may even require I leave my apartment, but no worries. I’m brave when I’m starving. Signing out.
this album is too sexy
In memory of language, I will spit you, craven, from my mouth. Every day that was a letter with you, I will burn. In memory of words, of meaning, of the double-handed dealings of my tongue between your lips, I will tear you from me, reject your chrome sensationalism, my infatuation, my glorified attachment to your acquisitive frame. I will deny and repeal all rights your hands had, all liberties of motion, all the rapacious, itching greed I had mistakenly, lasciviously, authorized and stamped with the sanctioned approval of my gentlest kiss.
I will not allow you the animistic gift of speech. It is mine.
In respect for adoration, I will not name you. Your face will be blank, as slate on concrete, as lacking in feature as you were in grace. In respect for devotion, I will not need you, not crave or desire your golden smile, your irrevocable beauty, your unfortunate habit of junk crashing my mind. I flatly refuse to focus on your absence or notice the anger on my hands, my thwarted fingers, or my dizzying feeling of rejection. Your singular admiration will sink into time like twinkling stars into a cold winter sea, your voice will be like an aftertaste, and the flame of your being will be as to ashes dusted out of a failed marriage bed.
Medical-tophat, the creator of The Doctor Pepper Show, has a flickr account.
The latest in WTFJapan: “I think I have that song for DDR” with dubious thanks to Ed, who wants to know why Japanese women “sound so uncomfortable?”
Stevie Wonder setting fire to Sesame Street with an injection of pure funk into the Sesame St. Song and Superstitious.
kind of like guest blogging
“You know, most people don’t do that,” the farmer remarked off handedly as he tilled his vegetables.
“What?” the girl asked, genuinely curious, as always.
The farmer stood up straight, wiped his brow with his red kerchief and locked eyes with the girl. “Walk around with a flower in their mouth,” he replied, nodding to the phenomena.
This gave the girl pause, she tried to look down at the flower but her eyes got all crossed and made her dizzy. She looked up at the farmer and asked tentatively, “Why?”
He gave a long sigh and continued with his tilling, “‘Cause it’s strange, that’s why.”
“Oh…” She thought for a while, her bare toes stabbing idly at the dirt as she balanced on the other foot. “But it’s not strange that people don’t have flowers in their mouths?”
The old farmer snorted, “That’s right.”
The girl considered this further and said, “What do you call it when a girl has a flower in her mouth and yet is able to speak without it falling out?”
The farmer grinned and looked up at her, “Bad story-telling.”
photo by alois
text by kindelingboy
ontological
|
1. This is not a love letter. |
|
Who, if I screamed, would hear me among the angels? ~ rilke ~ |
ficlet: not the man you think he’s for
The door opens and a man walks in. (The beginning of a thousand stories.) Tall in a brown suit and tan shirt, his tawny eyes scan the room, glancing off strangers, trying to pick out a face. Dark shoes, no cufflinks, a tie close enough to straight to count. His fingers snag a drink off a passing tray and an intelligent smile slowly finds his face. A girl is animatedly talking at a small table crowded with people, a bundle of personality traits he’d always wanted to meet. He can tell from her coloured hair.
she’s staring up at the building, not certain how she came to be there, because she should have called, but it would have been awkward to say hello in front of people because she is shy of their so called intimate relationship and so she decided she would call as soon as she was alone, but then the bus was there and it would be another twenty minute wait if she didn’t get on as it pulled up to her feet, and then it was her stop out front of his building, and her heart feeling heavy and
At his apartment, she is quieter, tired. Taking her shoes off, she pulls without any of her previous grace. “How many times are we going to do this?” He takes off his jacket, sits down in front of his computer. “As many as it takes.”
A nightclub, dim lights and a red fish-tank behind the bar. The crowd is helplessly young. Older than they are, the man walks in wearing the same long suit, the same discovering smile. He carelessly pays for a drink with stolen quarters from a laundromat. A girl is dancing to the thunder, clever porcelain hands trying to grasp the sound around her, everything he wants to change about himself. He can tell from her painted nails.
she’s arrived, so it’s pointless to think of calling, and it’s always like this, indecision making her decisions, but she could go across the street to the public telephone, but then she would have to walk past the building to the corner and then she would have to backtrack and that would feel so stupidly inexperienced because of course it’s okay that she’s arrived and why is she calling from the corner, come up, come up
Damp from a shower, she drops to the couch, a towel wrapped around her head. “How did this even start?” He offers her another towel, “You’re dripping on the carpet.” She looks to her pale feet, looks back up and slowly accepts the second towel. “I remember when I loved you.”
Surrounded by pigeons, a girl is sitting on a bench by the water. From a paper bag, she is scattering birdseed. Her friends are laughing at her attempts to have them eat from her hand. Every time they laugh, the birds startle and flit farther away. She does not care, the sun is warm. The girl laughs too. Under a tree, the man in the suit waits with a box camera, the carapace of an enthusiastic black insect. He raises the instrument like a hammer. It chitters when the shutter snaps. With her, he would not have to sleep to dream. He can tell from the shape of her name.
“these could be from your future husband. you could have three kids together”
Hit the ground, keep on running. Take this braille ink and trace it. Don’t stop doing what you’re doing.
I still haven’t. Instead I’ve arranged for dinner with Silva. Red, gold, her house is such a treasure. I leaned over and pulled a antique hunting horn out of the rubble of my room. Something to keep, something to throw away. He sat on the bed and looked around in wonder. The word trove. I leaned over and pulled on his curiosity, showed him the horn. Silva’s house is all silver and glittering crystal. Mirrors and shiny things. Cat haven, dinner at the table, fur at the feet. He took the ring from my keychain in the restaurant. It fit, but the price was impossible. Montreal. Could I fit in the luggage? Possibly. Cramped over in darkness, x-rayed and vulnerable to deprivation. The hallways at the hospital, plastic, granulated, we walk them, one pathway. Go left, go right now. Either way the answer is the same. The bed with buttons waits at the end, uninviting, unwelcome, too cold.
Katie‘s finally selling prints. I’m listed on her site as a “writer, among other things,” though I can’t say I’ve been feeling like it. I was published, but outside of that, I haven’t been doing very much lately. Nothing I come back to. I think it’s because I’m so rarely home. It’s difficult to concentrate at work. I’m interrupted too often to construct a coherent thread of thought.
I received another anonymous myth-letter arrived in the mail last night. I read it to Francois, and he wasn’t sure how to handle it. “No way,” he said. “There’s a stack of them.” “And you don’t know who wrote them?” “Not a clue. I thought I’d guessed, but I was told I was wrong.”
Dearest Jhayne,
Once upon a tomorrow, before the
applause fades away, a little boy sits
in a park, holding a fistful of feathers.
“I know where your wings are,” says
a voice from behind him, and he turns
around to see a little girl standing
there. “Don’t be stupid,” the little boy
says. “I don’t have any wings.”
“I’m sorry I told you that,” says
the little girl. “But it’s your fault for not
believing stronger.” The little boy just
looks at his feathers. “Nobody has wings,”
he says at last. “People can’t fly!”
“Don’t listen to the pigeons, they don’t
know anything,” she responds. For
his sake, she turns into
a swan before
she flies away.
X
Love.
Previous letters: one & two, three, four & five & six, seven.
It’s comforting. It solidifies my impression of message-based narrative and adds credence to the assumption that I am The Girl.
Hello letter-author. Thank you. You’re appreciated.
this is my problem
Point A is a little shop twenty feet wide by fifty feet long. Point A has taupe walls and a varying selection of shiny PVC boots in black, red or white. Point A is only properly bearable through the magic of the internet. Points B are exciting. Points B are made up of concerts, house-parties, restaurants, theaters, and various happenings. I suspect later I will leave Point A for an A.2, A Place Where Good People Are.
However, what I’m constantly searching for are Points B. There’s a slew of scientists here, as well as video game types, some skilled illustrators, a couple more musicians, and assorted accomplished writers. I know you folk can cough up. Be my friend, tell me what’s going on where you are and where I am. Die Puny Humans has been tickling my Need To Know with a damned heavy hammer.
Mike discovered where the Adicolor ads are coming from. Red and Green are now available. They make me happy.
Australian writer, Ben Peek, says “I quite like Nathan Ballingrud’s blog.” So should you.
“Serious writers have an obligation to empathize. If you can’t do that — if you can’t make an effort to feel the experience of another person, no matter how cosmetically and culturally different, then who exactly are you writing about? Are you writing the same set of characters over and over again, only with different names and in different settings? Am I?
Recoiling for fear of fucking it up is unhealthy for the writer, unhealthy for the genre, and unfair to people who find themselves either under-represented or all-but excluded from the genre. It is also downright criminal for a category of fiction which styles itself as forward-thinking, and culturally literate.”