Author: foxtongue

I’m going to be a father

There’s a reason the world dropped me to my knees. It put me there so it could kick me in the teeth.

I can’t write anything down without the word travail right now, without the word abort and birth. I can’t deal with this new bit of information. Ray and I, we ran into Bill this evening. He waved from a corner and we were trapped in traffic and a red light. Of course I leapt from the vehicle, of course I ran to his arms and asked he come with us to dinner. You are still one of the most beautiful people I’ve ever met, I thought, and I almost blurted it out. I almost ran my fingers down the side of his face to tuck his hair behind his ear before I remembered. No, we’re not together anymore. We said we would work on it, but it’s his turn to call me, I thought.

I can’t tonight. I’m putting up a show. You know.

And I do. I love this man and I remember. Everything hurtful was erased already by how I know with every little memory of his back hunched over the console, every sunny afternoon through a duplex window while explosions rocked the tiny living-room. I love his hands, how they’ve bent to the guitar, how he plucks soft notes from everything, how he tears sound from the world with them, from me. He lives in red in my body, but when I met him tonight, he was in black. Theater dress, and I matched. It made me grin a little to think that now I was the red, that his smile was real to see me.

I have some news for you.

I’ve been thinking of him lately, how part of me is still clamoring for his voice to talk to, how it’s been maybe not too long yet to fix this, how we said we would and that maybe it’s time to look at that. When the right music comes on, I can’t help but think of him dancing. A muppet shake of back and forth, the sweetest goofiest shake of the hips and hair. My first reaction was to stop. Everything stopped, the world continued, traffic around me, but it wasn’t real, because I was stopped. You’re putting me on, I said. I looked at him with the first denial stage of shock. No, you’re not, I said.

It’s true. I met a woman and

It’s the violinist, it has to be, it is. The woman with the wonderful name who I wanted to meet because she could be making music with him. There’s a V and maybe a Y. The time-line, tell me the time-line. Tell me when and tell me why you didn’t tell me before, why you didn’t think I should know, why running into me on the street was enough to balance three years, was enough to balance you.

We’re not really telling anyone yet.

but I was dying. I was not breathing, not seeing. Everything was too hot and blurring and I wanted to reach out my hands and crush him to me and say,

but I still move like you. The tilt of your head still crosses my body and when I dream, you’re there.

Instead he gets on a bus and calls from the window,

Really, this is good news.

and I say probably

and I fall as the bus turns the corner and he can’t see me anymore. I killed our child with him. I was sick, so sick that I coulnd’t see. That death, I could feel it dying in a knot inside me, felt like this. I fall and hit hard, the pavement unfriendly. It doesn’t matter anymore, however, because again, I’ve stopped. I’ve stopped and my heart has ceased breathing.

amber is pretty in ways I am not

thenowhere posted my piece for her meme.

It makes me sad to talk to him on the phone. Everything I don’t have but need becomes apparent. Each word thuds into my heart. I’m reminded why I said No, why I said I Can’t Do This Anymore, while aching throughout for even a tablescrap crumb of affection. I lean into the receiver, trying to press myself closer to what hurts me, as if by curling up with the snake, it might become friendly and decide not to bite. I feel absurd. We get closer to Goodbye and my eyes grow hot. If there had been an explosion, a blooded kill of an end to us, I might be able to suspend this endless crumple as I hang up the phone. Instead he didn’t even understand until I asked for my keys back, until I demanded that he change something and pointed out how rather than put the effort in, he’d been coasting. Nothing less, I said, I can’t live like this.

When I went away, he was the only one who didn’t send a letter.

this is what memories are made of


Our Dailies
Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.
  • Childrens Manga: “Just about everybody who bought the book here was a man in his 30s.”
  • Protest over child brides.
  • China outlaws ‘naked sushi’ meals
  • Crying while eating.

    ~~

  • Newspaper giving away classic novel PDFs.
  • “The Cartoonist’s” ultra short story collection.
  • The DC Circuit of the US Court of Appeals struck down the Broadcast Flag.
  • Senseless Acts of Beauty


    • I’m a cat-mourning pale-face

    download: a smattering of The Faint

    My eyes aren’t working as well as they should. I open them and I still see a lovers sweep of dark hair or a hand bound with a silver ring. I looked up to the sky last night, remembering something Gavin told me. He knew a woman once who was a stripper and a whore who wanted to be an astronaut so she could be alone in orbit around the Earth and look down at everything. No one would ever touch her again until she wanted them to, until she came down in a screaming fire ball of atmosphere. She’s a scientist now, works at a particle accelerator up north some. Walking up a dark street in the middle of forest, I looked up at the sky last night and imagined myself there, as I do every time I think of her. I picture myself alone and glued to a port window, a cold hand pressed against the glass, my hair tied back and my body curled in on itself. I know I would be crying, that’s my only certainty. A fetal position stabbed through with something aching and nameless. To look down on the world, no horizon visible, only the blazing curve of globe, it would hurt me to be that alone.

    Immoral, wanting to call you on the phone. You left me slick with children dead, with a cold bed in the middle of the winter, with half a dozen unpaid bills. How hard is it to maintain integrity when you’re a disgrace?

    Today is hiking in Lynn Canyon, a deep cut of wilderness attached to the side of this little city. Half of humanity lives now in cities.

    That, to me, is beautiful.

    it claimed FLAME on the label


    date rape carrot
    Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

    I woke up ill today. I woke up with nerves mis-firing. My teeth ached and my muscles felt as if they had been laced with broken glass. Words were gone, language deserting me for somewhere more hospitable. I tried to stand but fell. It took me too long to realize that I wasn’t in my own home. I tried to find something familiar. I found a mirror. Who is that? They’re also on the ground. Ah, right. That must be me. I woke again a few hours later, feeling far less deserted by my flesh though still aching. I’m not used to being sick. This starvation thing isn’t working out. I need to die in a far more interesting way. This shutting down of the resources one by one by one just isn’t me. Too trite, you know? I require some flaming inferno so you can see me again one last time on the WIERD NEWS collection in your local paper. Some personality accident where they thought I was trying to assasinate the Queen.

    There’s a televert on-line for General Electric that I rather like. It reminds me of Banassi’s Satisfaction, (right click to download). The music is an especially amusing choice.

    sounds more interesting than not

    I feel like I might be part of some little war today. Ross Nukem arrived at my door for tea with an unexpected white plastic bag containing a packet of sausage, a carton of eggs, and a small bar of chocolate. Can’t have you living off bagels only, dear, you’ll die. Things are obviously getting out of hand. Next the resistance shall bring me dried coffee and a handgun. I can tell. My next task will be to seduce someone of importance and discover the whereabouts of the sekrit dokumentas.

    It’s likely the chocolate that struck me with this thought. That, and Ross is a weapons dealer.

    I think I like that a weapons dealer just dropped by with Rations. In fact, have some delicious music.

    Stop your crying, sky. I want the rush of storm to be of flame, not wind with water.

    THE CIRQUE DE FLAMBE PRESENTS

    In The Shadow of The Giant

    Dates:
    Sat., Sun., May 21, 22, 2005

    Time:
    All shows – 9:30 p.m.

    Location:
    1601 Ontario St. at 1st Ave., Vancouver, BC
    Science Center Sky Train
    100 meters to the south of the Science Center along False Creek

    Cost:
    $20.00 Adults
    $10.00 Children under 15
    Free to children under 5 (Parental guidance suggested, as performance includes unusual acts of fire and pyrotechnics)
    Free parking on site

    Tickets for Adults available on site or pre sale at the following stores :
    Red Cat Records 4307 Main St 604-708-9422
    Zulu Records 1972 W4th Ave 604-738-3232
    Scratch Records 726 Richard’s St. 604-687-6355
    Highlife Records 1317 Commercial Dr. 604-251-6964
    Noize Records 540 Seymour St. 604-681-7007

    Tickets for Children available on site only

    Encouraged:
    Bring lawn chairs and blankets

    Vancouver, BC – Victoria weekend in May brings the world’s only flaming vaudeville circus, the Cirque de Flambe. The latest production of this local troupe, In the Shadow of the Giant, will set Vancouver into a fantastical burst of inflamed clowns, Robots and Jugglers.

    In the Shadow of the Giant is the collaborative by-product of 33 artists’ imaginations, made uniquely evocative when combined with fire. “Cirque de Flambe prides itself on taking fire to new heights of beauty, comedy and awe,” said Maque DaVís, Artistic Director. “In true circus style, we use our hard-won skills in performances that play with on our audiences’ natural apprehension of fire, while stealthily employing safety precautions that assuage even the toughest Fire Captain.”

    With vaudevillian flair, the Master Wizard ringmaster guides us through the Cirque de Flambe tall tales of laughable bravado and blunders. All ages will leave with fond childhood memories, except now those memories crescendo with more pyrotechnically-armed fire performers per square foot than any childhood could ever imagine.

    In the Shadow of the Giant’s displays are brought to a resounding vibrancy by the Fremont Philharmonic. Orchestrations are 99.99% original music by Seattle composers Fred Hawkinson, Stuart Zobel and Jeremy Reinhold. “We are going to ridiculous lengths to please you,” assures band leader, Fred Hawkinson. “Calisthenics, diet regimes, fireproofing and something brand new.”

    Cirque de Flambe has presented West Coast performances including Spokane First Night, Utah Arts Festival, the Bellevue Art Museum, Northwest Folklife Festival, Edmonton Fringe Festival, Seattle Fringe Festival, Tacoma First Night, Burning Man Arts Festival and numerous local appearances.

    Walked through rain last night, beating water rain, the sort that drives to soak through your coat.

    It was brought up repeatedly yesterday that my birthday is in a week. Folk have been asking what sort of wee gift I would like for my annual number switch and I’ve decided it’s time to proclaim it. I want every single last one of you who is available to dress in your most typical clothing and come with me in a large group to have our portraits taken somewhere like Sears. I think it would be fabulous. Everyone toss in five to ten dollars and I think we could cover it adequately. I’m thinking horrid blue sponge wash backgrounds and awful prom photos. I’m thinking those family portraits what happened when you were ten and thought that goofy headbands were cool. I don’t expect this to happen before my birthday, as apparently there’s only a week left, but in early June I want this organized. Spread the word, find out when people could come.

    It hasn’t been very long. My dreams are out there, fluttering and pretending to fly, managing without me. The air smells like fire and rain, a strange combination maybe, anywhere but here. Instead, this is usual. This evening tableau, I saw it in the forest of my hair three weeks ago. I even knew he would bleed. I swabbed his cuts with alcohol on a damp cloth and lay him on his side. I see a child in his painfully hurt eyes, but not one of mine. This one loves me with the breath of gods again. My teeth are the stars and from my tongue hangs the moon.

    Tonight is the Fire Circus. It was last night as well, but I haven’t been keeping track of days well enough to have set myself up to go. I saw posters up two weeks ago and avowed then to go. Tickets are 20 a head, which is rich, but I’m hoping someone will want to go with me. So far I think I’ve a chance of roping in Inevitable Bill. Which reminds me, Travis is back from Egypt and is going to be moving into Gamer Hall this upcoming month. This is a happy thought. I get too gloomy, I shall endeavor to remind myself of it. I’m not sure what sort of show there’s going to be tonight, but I don’t think it’s particularly going to matter. They can be bought at Noize, Scratch, Zulu, and likely one or two other alt record shops.