Author: foxtongue

sway me now, when andrew said he saw the car, I thought something else


artist unknown
Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

My mind began kindly to me then slipped into exhaustion. By the time I was in bed, all my thoughts were old. I should have called up Brian and had him fetch me over. It occurred to me, he would have banished my bad percussion nightmares. What’s good for me, I’m barely doing it these days. I hold out my hands to all the people who can’t quite help, and expect the rest of me to simply deal with it, forgetting that my reserves have almost entirely been used up. I think of running through a neighborhood, I think no, that place isn’t mine anymore. I don’t have a place anymore. My second home’s been closed to me.

I ran into Bill on my way to Dominique‘s Ghost Train evening. He still doesn’t know what to do with me. Jacques says after the baby is born, he’ll be able to deal with me as a human being again. I only know I could feel his bones through his coat like he was stuffed with sticks held together with fluid grace and days that stretch too long. Scraping himself thinner. Dominique and I talked about him later. She pinned him down with one word as if he were a particularly large butterfly. Elemental, she said, and I replied, he is a forest. I’m glad she knew him, she understands. In three years, no one else had a chance.

I’m dressed as a witch today, all flowing black and glitter. Work allows me costumes this week, so I’m taking advantage of it by dressing like myself instead of a vague corporate whore approximation. Customers have been asking where to buy my out-fits, which would amuse me if they were perhaps a little more polite about it. It’s full time hours this week, because of Hallowe’en. Long shifts of not having a chance to take away sandwiches from across the street. I want to fall down at the end of it, take my shoes off and walk barefoot in some rain. I want to find myself a warm and willing partner to sip hot chocolate with and look out over our little bit of sea.

Mirrormask is playing here this weekend at TinselTown. I hear of a group trip today at two o’clock, which is when I start my shift. The only weekend showing I can manage is the nine:thirty. Is anyone interested? I’m considering dropping in on it before the Saturday Clubhouse Party. I’d get there unpardonably late, if I could but care.

Before I finally fell asleep, I lie in the dark alone for awhile while Ryan and Eva were in the livingroom, trying to pretend that I had my bed to myself, (excepting the ferret I had lodged in my belly). But for the five days he was at DragonCon, Ryan‘s been with me every day for almost three months. The feeling was alien, as if stretching out was a transgression against the basic nature of the world.

come back to my spiders web of beautiful things

  • the conditions in Iraq for subcontracted workers under Halliburton.

    Doing sixty downtown, she’s going to be late for work, but the view reminds her of other cities.
    How the lights and by-ways of freeways work, how it’s strange now to see them in movies.
    I was there, she thinks, and that place, and that one. She can’t see a street she hasn’t walked on.
    The lights of the car behind them catch her eyes in the mirror and she turns her sight to the driver.

  • 85-year-old Seattle woman recruited by marines.

    A man in an orange hoodie picked up a sodden page of junk mail from the street and lay it across his shoulders like a cape, then rushed us. Dominique cried out, “hey look, there’s superman.” and I smiled, but didn’t feel like laughing. I was too tired, too worn by my day. I should have been home hours before, but the circumspection of social maneouvering left me outside. We had just been at a half-empty nightclub, trying to dance to eighties music. Dominique knew all the words. I didn’t. I barely recognized the music and none of the clientele. The rules of the dancefloor were strange, with not enough people to keep any cohesion to the space. Without warning, one might find themselves suddenly surrounded by the small group of japanese tourists or being threatened by the tiny elbows of the tottering girl in the corset who was trying very hard to be something. What, I couldn’t say. Only with Rick and Dominique was I comfortable. I sat on the side for a little while, watching everyone and feeling slightly too cliche to actually be doing what I was doing. I pulled out my book to write in, but decided instead to pull out my camera and threaten Rick with pictures. I shouldn’t be writing what my brain was trying to think.

  • U.S. Air Force testing new transparent aluminum armor.

    Vast layered conversations spanning six topics at once. She should find partners who speak like her.
    “I swore I wouldn’t do this again, but I think I’ve figured out why I’m going through with it.”
    She’s referring to three people. She’s referring to keeping a secret and possibly telling lies.
    She’s explaining why and who and when without them.
    “I wasn’t raised to believe in anything. I never expected to encounter something sacred.”
    Words, meanings. The resolution of a two puzzles pieces finding conclusion.
    He replies, “Religion was never something I had a use for, but sometimes the vocabulary is right.”
    Confirmation, a deduction of between the lines.
    The same path, but one person facing backward, one person blind.

  • U.S. finally gives up on upgrading missile defense.

    • Quick brainwhacking clip before I go smother Ryan with a pillow for snoring.

    Remember the ten thousand superballs sent pouring down Kearny Street in San Fransisco like a gleeful tide of bouncing doom?

    Here’s the commercial they were making.

    (For fun, the official site has making-of clips and little explanations about how incredibly wonderful they are for making all this and isn’t it imaginative?)

    The music is that sweetly unreal Jose Gonzales cover of Heartbeats, originally a pop-crunchy song about a one night stand, by The Knife. At various times, I’ve been addicted to both, though mostly the original. I like the Gonzales cover mostly for the novelty and for how it reminds me of the little beach-house with Alastair, down in California.

    Here is the original, here is the cover. Here are the lyrics.

    Does anyone else think it’s an odd choice?

    Also, as another odd SF piece of “art”: San Fransisco made of jell-o.

    Plastic, a new proposition. I remember that stuff. It sears.


    Another Japanese Tale
    Originally uploaded by Simon Pais.

    Cold one o’clock in the morning. An idea. I’m sitting on the rim of my bath, suddenly overwhelmed by how tired I am, staring into nothing. This is alone with thoughts, head tilted, leaning forward, hands on knees. This could be a portrait. Controlled tense, muscles for blood flow. It’s chilly. Toes, hands, working inward from the edges. Inside my shoulders, underneath. Hold, two, release, two, next. Madness in the family. The inclination to sell the soul for not enough. I touched teeth like gamelan bars with my tongue. Ping. Tense. The thought. The idea that affection is tied to appreciation. A skill. A factor attached to how our eyes cried. There’s something different, of course I’m allowed to trust this one. That’s the trick. Hands out, fingers stiff, concentration focus, the smaller groups of muscles. The long curve of inside wrists.

    “In the further the tower becomes a favourite place of condemned men and jumpers with a parachute.” The pigeons are awake.

    A place to kiss sixty cycles of vibration remembering your name. That line again. Wrapped in memory, sporadic, thick. Eyes close and grin. The girl response, duck of the chin, eyes and pulse. How long and far and quick and deep and how very little can we ascribe to meaning but this. Question, query, I stand with joints popping, sinews complaining of the temperature, the lack of movement. The culmination of decision. Toes curling, protesting the artic linoleum. The idea. Standing, the mirror lowers into view. This can’t mean as much as crying.

    Hypothesis: It’s all about commitment. Not the theology of the reluctant dutiful, but the soul threshing terrible awe. The trick now might be to build a time machine or a portal to another dimension. One where our shadows have as much substance as life.

    I caught myself purring at work today. I was late, over so, but under by chance. Early, but not as early as I should have been. Another girl reached out from under my skin and stretched, breaking a film that had coated me. Commiseration should have limits. Same denial. If this is breaking apart, it is slow entropy, and better for it. There is a term for this similar to crawling through ashes. Another culture would say it’s a crime.

    This may be the healthiest undertaking since I lived home, a third a continent apart from this.

    petrichor: i’m tired of being blind.


    nan grey
    Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

    I dreamed but cannot remember it. My eyes feel soft this morning and as clumsy as my fingers dropping words on the keyboard like leaves in a dry season. My body craves metaphorical rain. Something to clean my gutters and streets of dead things and wasted paper. On my closed body, the debris is noticeable. This is where nobody touches me. My heart is buried. It craves some kindness to fall from the sky and wipe my spirit of disarray. Wash my buildings of ashes, rinse these sixfold shaded windows.

    Ryan and I are going for breakfast. Given my schedule, I assume that I’ll return home late Sunday night.

    I figured what the hell


    snsterkddz_sm
    Originally uploaded by illf0.

    This is going to be a busy time. Likely good, all things considered. I require some distraction, lest I find myself bitter.

    Tonight is Indie Movie Night at Sara’s house.
    Tomorrow night, Antonio & Mimi are having a slumber party.
    Saturday is Jenn’s Hallowe’en Birthday Bash.
    Sunday is Sukkot, which takes me firmly out of the picture.
    Monday is Korean Movie Night.

    So Tuesday then. Is anyone interested in going to see the Wallace & Gromit film, Curse of the Were Rabbit, on Tuesday?

    On an entirely unrelated note. I have a bit of curiosity to throw at you all. You’re an incredibly diverse group of people, and perhaps perfect for this sort of query. My recent sense of wrongdoing has to do with some fairly basic ettiquite, I thought, but he’s claiming that it’s all in my head.

    So, the question posed:
    If you’re in a casual sexual relationship with someone, it’s only right and proper to inform them before you take another partner, no? Otherwise you’re being rude to the point of possiblly endangering them, right? This is my assumption, and the assumption of everyone I know, minus the one, so I want to know, are we just an exceptional group of people or are we an aberration of some kind?

    Secrets are packets of seeds that require fertile ground. I threw his over the bridge he just burned

    I heard the answer before he answered the question. I was right the first time around, when people change, it barely touches their intellect. Where is a notebook to spill into? I don’t have anyone I can call and cry to the sacred with. I don’t have a bastion of whole world at my feet to rely on. That was last year, this is this, the only now I’ve ever had. Too late. I swear into the phone, receiver falling into the cradle, heavier than gravity. His foolish answer, his petty games of justification. Cut. Respect is not a nebulous concept but simple. Unspoken contracts are trust, are the blood and bone of relationships. You don’t bring them with you when you fall, they are there to hold you up.

    beat me to it because I forget

    I tried to dye my hair bright pink today. It didn’t take, something deep in my physiology rejecting such a painfully vivid colour, but it’s coated my hands adequately as proof of after the fact. Otherwise, there would be no sign. I suspect it’s the first time I’ve ever attempted to paint myself something so.. cheerful. Here’s hoping that it didn’t take because my body’s learned how to reject falsities.

    Ms. Kelly Foxton does very unusual things with her pet squirrel. Her website is mostly photo galleries. When I link to this sort of thing, can you believe I forgot the day before yesterday to link to the incest baby-death news story here? (similar somehow to the ‘only in the land of the free’ man charged for shocking his 8 year old daughter with electric coller.)

    It’s like I’m slipping.

    Another nice bit of news, a mysterious ‘half-animal, half-plant’ marine microbe was discovered by Japanese researchers.

    Today I had my first time on a scooter and my first time driving one. It was terrifyingly easy. I’ve decided that I need to drop by ICBC and find myself one of those horrid little books on The Rules Of Our Roads so that when I play with such things, it’s legal. oh canada, we stand on guard for thee. My papers from the government should have arrived by now, the ones confirming my english citizenship, so I don’t think that I can stand to trust the office that said they would mail me one. Instead, this might become this weeks miniature crusade for meaning. Seems likely I need one.

    hiding in front of everyone


    The Mask
    Originally uploaded by MemoryMotel.

    I checked because I knew I would have been written to. An entire paragraph was there this time, a little window of wondering about. Wandering about. A room full of people and a small commiseration. I remember this. Lying down together. I remember and hands. Glass as an element, as a metaphor, as something to see through, something that the eyes read, something that allows us to see outside when we are within walls.

    I met with my friend Andrew this afternoon before breakfast with Ryan, and he gave me a tour around his area of the university. It felt like a treat. He’s lovely company and I think I might have visibly drooled a little while scanning the titles on his bookshelf. I’m looking forward to attending his lectures. I don’t get credits, but nor do I have to pay. A damned good deal, in my books. It’s my first time looking forward to school, though I admit being on campus feels irritatingly like hostile territory. These Are Not My People, This Is Not My World, E T and C. Academia’s foreign in ways that surpass language and delve directly into conditioning. I’m comfortable in an agora atmosphere, I was never wired for muted halls lined with lockers. I prefer to have words inside my head instead of on silky paper on my wall.

    Calling on the Vancouver web: A soundproof space is required for the late afternoon and evening of November 18th. I’m told it’s for a student film about an alien abduction. The ideal space would be a grotty basement with a drain in the floor but privacy, accessibility, and that it’s okay to scream are the most important. They’re willing to rent, but the most they could afford is $100.

    Cloth instead of drug store bought, cloth instead of paintings, cloth instead of a tongue.

    Usually I can deal with the unexpected, but lately I’ve not been keeping myself well, (not enough sleep, certainly not enough calories), and my dizzy lack of amino acids is leaving me open to feeling threatened. There were people in my house pretending to be characters in some game and I’m wasn’t comfortable with it. I’ve always had a very stiff Leave Your Dice At The Door policy and it’s always served me well. That felt like a breach of contract between me and my life. I was supposed to go dancing after, but those participating didn’t seem to care much either way if I attended or no, so it seemed wiser to hurt alone rather than inflict my hormonal self on the world. One of them is too important to me still to have to heir his false affections tonight, though bonds are thankfully dissolving in his self obsessions and my glad distractions. It’s my time of month to be lonely, to want particular people to call on me in the middle of the night and crawl warmly into bed with me.

  • Accountant “cashanova” embezzles 1.9 billion Yen for 17 mistresses.
  • Ohio Police Arrest Woman For $1 In Unpaid Taxes.

    Saturday I woke up too early, walked out the door before I was entirely prepared. Today I did the same. Today I didn’t go hiking all over a treasured nature park though, instead I went wisely for breakfast with Ryan, Navi, and Jenn, then went with them to Sunday Tea before work. (I hadn’t been for months. It was nice to sit and harmlessly flirt with Travis. My world needs more remarkably tall intelligent gay pirates in it.). I met up with Lori after, a friend I haven’t seen in something akin to four years, though it may be closer to three. We couldn’t remember.

  • A two year old toddler has shot a three year old in the hip and thigh.
  • Dead women elected as councilors in Pakistan.

    Now I’m up again after lying awake for over an hour brushing off Ryan’s in-sleep cuddles and trying not to let my emotions tackle me down to the ground. I found myself wondering where my loved ones are, and then, how many of them are there anyway all told. I am tiny and my mouth newly empty of teeth. My tongue probes and explores the gaps and depresses me. How am I to tear into the world like this? I feel as if there have been far fewer influences on my life than a regular tally would count. Years from now, I will remember Joseph clearly, though not who came before, then my marriage to Aubrey. Then there was a hiatus, a few artists already fading. One, however, overlapped the others with a fish-hook heart that I’m still recovering from. Shaking that from my system has left me a little peculiar, as it was deeply lodged in my own for so long that I still feel an absence. Wisdom teeth coming in. Growing pains. Matthew discarding what self I still had to give. Every person a lesson in trust, in disbelief, in the eternal ridiculousness of pain, in the undying willingness to try the damned idea out repeatedly. As I’m gathering myself back to my feet, I am knocking others off them. Let’s take this as a good sign, a marker stating the game’s afoot again. Same field, different rules. Maybe this round I’ll get to win something pleasant.