Author: foxtongue

all counting out musical two three six nine

Ray

Plane touched down and homogeneity was there to catch me. Hello Vancouver. Where is your snow? Your corniced buildings? Your attention to culture?

Thank you so much to Ray for being there for me.

My camera’s died an inexplicable death. Pressing a power button does nothing to dead electronics. I wish it were possible to hard boot a photograph.

There is more Japan in my room then when I left. Ryan‘s been unpacking. It clarifies my idea of what needs to be thrown out. Slimming down impedimenta is essential.

I need to be away.

The ferret feet wrapped around my wrist are charming, his earlier prancing dance welcoming me here tickled the eye. Skatia is novel because he is a surprise. He was left behind when I went native.

These letters are the ladder I use to claw my way up to sketching everything as well as I see it. When I do it right, you can follow the path to where I was feeling, to the people I dreamed with. I’m too tired for anything complicated right now but these words are kicking out of me, a last ditch hazy attempt at packing some meaning into me before I promise the bed my body.

See, my time tells me that it’s three hours more into tomorrow morning. It’s like I’ve crawled from the sea in some kind of discovering dream. I look at the clock and it lies to me. Time here is without teeth, unlike the racing exhaustion cradling my eyes I use to scrape my surroundings. That is teeth with a mask. If I wore make-up, I would think that if I were to strip off my face, my skin might feel the sunlight that’s creeping over the curved edge of the earth somewhere far away. I’m changing the numbers in my head. Three to Montreal, Toronto. Five to the Greenwich. The ones I do automatically, as if my cells were vibrating on a frequency that might drag snow from the sky to blanket me, make me feel at home, instead of just here.

I should be asleep, but I am left alone too long.
I am wondering how to describe how implausibly and importantly I am missing someone singing.

My lips aren’t afraid, only the words trapped behind them.



Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

I leave today, it makes me feel like the sound of rain on pavement. I wonder if I can hold onto this place. I wonder if when I step on the plane, I’ll be able to breathe. I will sit next to a window and consider what options I had while I fly away from here. This was no vacation, this was touching flesh into gold. There was nothing unconquerable, my only pains were usual. Small situations that always start late at night. These streets have transmuted into a home. How did I fall so quickly? How did I let go?

Quietly now, come upstairs. Quietly now.

Every tapestry, when unwoven, will come down to one thread.

I miss you.

If I had the chance today, I would not hesitate to say yes before it was too late. My honour can stand up to life’s offers of warmth now that I have vision and the capacity to give up my fighting. I have turned my back long enough, it’s not crippling to pull your body into mine and ask you to tell me stories, it just feels like it.

This city continues to delight me. It reminds me of my voice.


like a vessel
Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

In the wake of spending the night up with three brilliant Argentinians, (bless them and all their lives), my english has been shot all to hell. This entry’s going to be skimming the depths of my language conscious mind trying to keep me on english, pues no he dormido todavía y había muchas tazas de café italiano negro. (James has been very patient and smiling a little too much.)

Running into Cristian, Hernan, and Martin outside of Rouge was like being agreeably attacked by a very vocal choir of sweetly strange muses. An orchestral conductor, a PHD in Literature, and a Haikido expert. Music, Writing, and Movement. I said later that all they needed was a painter to be complete. They were standing outside when the club closed down, a cheerfully noisy trio who liked the hair that was peeking from my hood.

I am trying to get my hand co-ordination back by juggling small oranges in between tiny spurts of typing. I wasn’t sure it was working until I remembered after five minutes of successfully keeping them in the air that I don’t actually know how to juggle. I think it’s just going to be one of those days. Damn, it’s good to be back.

I’d decided to go to the first club on the left side of St. Laurant that had a line-up, as a guarantee of people and quality, and I suppose the red lights and walls inside should have tipped me off, but I was far too involved in random conversation with the airplane designers that I’d attached to in the line-up to pay much attention to where I was. In a strange city, I find the names don’t matter as much. The music on the first floor was painful to endure, so upstairs I found a corner and kicked off my shoes to dance. The wooden floor was dominated by people dancing in little social circles. I felt like an apprentice to aggression, trying to find space where I wasn’t likely to tread on broken glass or get cracked in the face by drunken elbows. Everything that was playing was nostalgic to a generation that I’m not a member of, but I wasn’t going to care. The atmosphere was fun and friendly and the people I’d met were introducing me to their friends at a mile a minute. There was nothing abrasive for once, which was nice, as my week’s been a strange social mash-up of scintillating discoveries and heavy disappointments.

Speaking of which, guess who works at Rouge on Thursdays. Oops. Back and forth, little snippets of conversation that finally culminated with one of those little Talks that decides things. I never knew I could encapsulate so much in such a short space of time, but I’m not above admitting to grieving in a corner. Nightclubs are good places for it. No one will notice in the dark and flashing lights, and if they notice, they won’t care. Shhh. Hush now. This isn’t the time to care. Let’s do it later, when I have scientifically shamed my thoughts into subservience again.

Lights up, the pebbles of glass on the floor finally shining so that I could see them, time to go. Scrape the black tar off the bottom of my feet and find my coatcheck ticket, stop in the washroom and do one final look around. Nothing but a strong nostalgia for my old nightclub job in Toronto working for The Russian. The stairs let out onto St. Laurant and spit me out into enough of a crowd to hold me. I looked up at the windows and saw nothing. (There had been a moment of light earlier, a flash that dazzled my eyes in the dark enough to sting my eyes. When I saw who was carrying the sparkler I thought, reality has to stop providing flesh to metaphor around me.) Hood up, I was getting my bearings, deciding what to do next, feeling like I’d just been written by some cruelly urban Hemingway, when they found me or I found them. It could be an argument. I only know that I met a pair of pretty impish eyes underneath the brim of a cap some five feet away and the voice they belonged to was trying to discover my name.

Of course I walked over. Wouldn’t you? Soon they were singing like a kindling bonfire, sparks flying and shining on the street.

snow is like lightning


phantomile.com
Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

Though I walk through the valley of strange holidays and mouths that ask me for change in the name of a dead man that people believe in like tables and chairs and truth, to this world I say, “You can not take the wonder of snow away from me, for lo, it is powerful and bright and slides under my feet.”

You Are Beautiful.

My flight leaves from the airport here at five:thirty and arrives in Vancouver, though the strange vagaries of time-zones, at only eight o’clock. I imagine Ray will be there to greet me and whoever else would like to be there should contact him. I understand the Twenty-fourth is traditionally a family evening, so I won’t feel slighted if you’re busy elsewhere. However, if anyone has any parties, get-togethers, pot-lucks, or general meanderings that are open invite, I would like to know about them. I want to continue moving when my feet touch the ground, to distract me from being there and to remind me why I stay.

You Are Movement.

It’s thirty and ten steps to the corner of the street. Another fifty to notice the absence of good friends in the crowd, another fifteen to secretly smile at a pretty stranger. Six backwards and it’s possible to fall into a dream while you’re counting paces. Three, this leg wakes the dead whenever it slips on ice. Three is all stories, three then two, the pair, the holy lovers falling together though all the skeletons that live in the closets that were born in the suburbs. Back and forth, bodies and warmth and winter time is here, not there, but right in this very spot that I am looking up in the sky and trying to catch flakes of alien ice on my tongue and inside my smile. This smile, right here, this smile is wintertime. My feet hit the cracks in the pavement but my mother doesn’t die, only the little sheets of I want to turn back and explain myself. Take away my forgiveness and rain down ambiguous threats of calling you on the telephone until I have a map to follow back home, that mythical place that you all seem to have that I never found. I imagine a hall full of doors, a place of a thousand keys but no, I’ve got these three steps, now two, now one. My schedule is walk under this tree, walk forward, swing my feet like the water crumbling a sand castle by the sea glued together with my lipstick smelling like me.

Swinging like the back door, this is the final part of the operation, setting my feet straight on the slippery street.

I’m so tired of being the responsible one. The star in my heart wants to go out.

A. FOUR JOBS YOU’VE HAD IN YOUR LIFE (all previous jobs):
1. He sent me a letter
2. I met him dancing, I was sitting on the stairs
3. Brought to his theater, we had a friend in common
4. It was a new place and he was standing by the bar

B. FOUR MOVIES YOU COULD WATCH OVER AND OVER:
1. When I replied, I laughed, he thought I would know him
2. He tapped me on the shoulder, acted like I knew him
3. I took him up on a roof, surprised he would not know it
4. We went home together, though we didn’t know each other

C. FOUR CITIES YOU’VE LIVED IN:
1. Smiling, we corresponded every day
2. I was stunned to discover he had a wife
3. Standing outside his window was so difficult and necessary
4. In the cab, his english was better than mine

D. FOUR TV SHOWS YOU LOVE TO WATCH:
1. There were happy pictures, and clever sounds, and fun videos.
2. I kissed him on the cheek and told him to ask permission first.
3. My lips were hungry and two years later, so were his
4. His apartment was neat, plants in the window, books in the glass table

E. FOUR PLACES YOU’VE BEEN ON VACATION:
1. I ran home through the park to meet him on-line
2. We held hands when we walked and strangers told us we looked good together
3. Curled up on the couch, slowly we curled into each other
4. I sat on the counter and he explained his red wine

F. FOUR WEBSITES YOU VISIT DAILY:
1. Description sufficed to make my bed less lonely
2. When I slept over, it was on his side of the bed, not hers
3. Queen size bed now and we still almost fell off
4. There was a wide mirror above the bed framed by two guitars

G. FOUR SONGS THAT MOVE YOU:
1. johnny boy – U are the generation who bought more shoes and u get what you deserve
2. lamb – gorecki
3. emilie simon – graine de etoile, lamb – gabriel
4. marvin gaye – let’s get it on

H. FOUR OF YOUR FAVORITE FOODS:
1. Then the letters came less frequently and I didn’t know why
2. Eventually I couldn’t deal with the fact he was married
3. He was so beautiful, but I knew he never loved me
4. The next morning wasn’t too late, but there was a phone-call

I. FOUR BOOKS YOU’VE READ & LOVED:
1. Hurt, I assumed that work was taking his time
2. Hurt, I broke down, dissolved, died.
3. Hurt, I tried to tell myself not to believe in illusions
4. Hurt, I explained to myself that it’s what I should have expected.

J. FOUR PLACES I’D RATHER BE RIGHT NOW:
1. Then I finally went for a surprise visit.
2. He divorced the wife, I took him back, he went away on a trip.
3. He never calls, so I walk over to his house at night.
4. Today he called me back, canceled our plans.

K. FOUR THINGS YOU FIND YOURSELF SAYING:
1. There was another woman.
2. There were two other women.
3. There might never be anyone.
4. There’s another woman in potentia.

L. FOUR FAVOURITE ALBUMS:
1. He never apologized.
2. I’m fragile too.
3. Living with little is better than nothing.
4. At least he’s sorry.

never get what you wanted

For Jane by Charles Bukowski

225 days under grass
and you know more than I.
they have long taken your blood,
you are a dry stick in a basket.
is this how it works?
in this room
the hours of love
still make shadows.

when you left
you took almost
everything.
I kneel in the nights
before tigers
that will not let me be.

what you were
will not happen again.
the tigers have found me
and I do not care.

as an afterthought: we need a movie with tilda swindon AND adrian brody

King Kong didn’t have enough Adrien Brody, dinosaur punching or kicking ass for the lord to excuse the length, let alone the blatant racism.

It started out with a Al “blackface” Jolson singing I’m On Top Of The World, then moved onto an island, populated only by the darkest natives that special effects money could possibly buy, where all the ethnic characters conveniently died in less then ten minutes. I was amazed. Also, could she possibly scream a little more? I don’t think there was quite enough. Please, take yourself more seriously, because audiences don’t like 100 million dollars movies about giant apes that aren’t burdened with poignant scenes of ice-skating with toy women.

the prospect of suffering

Toronto is measured now more by time than distance. I leave at six, get there close to midnight. I still have nowhere to stay.

Traditional News Year’s is coming, as well as another city, and I’ve been considering if it means anything to me. Today as I was cooking my meal for the train, I was trying to tally up my last three hundred and sixty-five days. So far I’ve been instrumental to one divorce and three affairs. Both my lovers this year ran off on me with someone else and let us all find out by accident. I discovered someone else never loved me in return and one that night stands can be frighteningly easy.

All of it adds up to so very little that it hurts me. It used to be that my passions repaid me in kind. I don’t know what happened or how to fix whatever it is that shattered. Where is the bowl I kept my heart in? The one I used to offer in dreams to passing strangers as an alms cup. I want to think that my soul is racing to find me and that all the time in between is time standing still, but I know that it’s crying for no use. Apologies aren’t coming, I’ve been forgotten somehow. I’ve seen this face before in the mirror, it’s unhappy. At least when I’m not in Vancouver, I don’t have to think, “He’s walked this street.” It’s like changing where I live in my head. There’s a hi-hat hit and a deep thump of bass and the place I was forgotten isn’t inside me anymore. It’s in front of me, on this keyboard, and I’m emptying everything painful into the ether for you to see and read and maybe understand. You’re out there, it happens, just like everyone else. Why did you never call me back? Only the musician ever told me how to find him.

I see your picture, all of you, any, and I smile with a sting in my ribcage. I lie down my walls and I let you in again like the best kind of refrain. I love you, yeah yeah, baby, let’s do it again. The part of me that marries people is still carrying you.

Do-wop-she-bop-pretty-damn-bang.

There are some basic elements that pain shares with surprise, but I couldn’t tell you what they were right now. I’m too busy trying to open my unfinished business like a dried flower in my mind that’s going to draw me back to Vancouver. All I can find is a job offer, Creative Director of a Friendster-type website, and maybe that I need to pack my things properly. My dream machine is hiccoughing, refusing to process anything that isn’t movement forward. What I need versus what I get. The end of this story has yet to be written so maybe I can fight my way through the ranks of mediocrity with a pen. Ink my skin the same way some people use school to charm the corporation. Electric glass pages, as many as I can collect, strapped to the back of my night time invitations. Writing like lyrics, writing because it’s what we came here for. I want to feel my hand in the hand of the world, keening with me that things have to change to be better, that what we have isn’t enough to live off. There’s too much starvation and not enough education.

I just might get that tattoo here. Just to carry something with me.

I’m just not used to it


the first taste of winter
Originally uploaded by -Angela.

I woke up this morning and Montreal felt like home. Siz hours sleep and The snow was right, the fallible plans for the evening, the christmas music leaking up from the street. Everything, click. Out there somewhere is a boy who likes me, and I like him, and out there someone laughed when they walked past snow that I had tramped all over in a childish glee. Out there is a city with no pressure, a piece of land attentive to diversity in a way that the language monoculture doesn’t touch.

Walking on snow feels like walking on creaking cotton wool. It’s soft, but somehow the smooth texture catches on itself. I’ve been falling into unmarred pile drifts of it since Thursday. Just tipping myself backward until the white powder ground has caught me. Unreal, I keep saying it’s unreal. The sense of suddenly trusting the earth is novel, a cellular structure worth of edification.

Typing’s so difficult on so little sleep. I’m not sure of spelling as much, my grammar begins to decay, words begin losing cohesion like entropy coming down like heaven. Flakes cold in my lashes. They fly as if feathers to land in my hair and cake around the cuffs of my ankles. Magic and another name for wonder. Light, these crystals, the sun comes up and smooths them out. The wind comes up, flash and glitter. Pulling a white rabbit out of a hat two minutes too late, because I’m already leaning into gravity backwards, holding out my arms as if I’m being crucified, as if I’m reenacting the feeling given to me on a digital platter of my last two relationships. Then the cold catches me, it cradles my body, the perfect pillow formed exact to my specifications. I fit into the cavity made from giving myself up, pretending for a moment that everything’s all right, and I smile. I want to fall asleep, content in the knowledge that one day I too will die and all of this will have worked itself out and into the next generation of fools who think they mean something.