I’m at The Green Room again. A friendly place full of musicians on Hollywood Blvd. It’s loud here, not noisy, with music and conversation. The staff and I get along well, we’re planning on going to Bodyworlds later on, after the shift change. I’m waiting for umbriel with hope in my heart. I’ve been here almost an hour, and I’ll wait a little more before walking down to his hostel. I have no idea where he would roam, but I figure it’s worth a shot.
Author: foxtongue
it’s only 99c at the supermarket
Every minute has been ushered in by pattering rain on the roof. Endless sound, sweeping waves of it. It woke me in the night and has kept me constant company today. I’ve been working the chat room, my intelligence being sucked away point by point by nattering children. Tonight we go dance with umbriel. They’re in town from Toronto, chance allowing us a chance to meet over in L.A. I like how life works out sometimes. If weather permits, Alastair and I are going to stay overnight in town. It would be a blessing of the highest order, but flooding may keep us away. The water is rising and sweeping over trees in some areas, the gutters rivers clocked at too fast an hour.
There’s a fire in the grate, joss sticks in with the quietly crackling wood. Thick scent rising like stars, curling smoke fists to the ceiling sky. It reminds me of a Saturday in the forest I may never actually have had, dreams of pine needles under bare feet and climbing gray stones. The summer feeling that the endless stairs leading up from a beach impart, sun sliding between the branches of tall evergreens to fall in patches that splatter the shade with gold and burnished brown.
Spiel czech pro grahams suck.
not being a yahoo user, I haven’t verified this
In case you are interested in protecting your online privacy: Yahoo is now using something called “Web Beacons” to track Yahoo Group users around the net and see what you’re doing and where you are going – similar to cookies. Yahoo is recording every website and every group you visit. Take a look at their updated privacy statement: http://privacy.yahoo.com/privacy
About half-way down the page, in the section on cookies, you will see a link that says web beacons. Click on the phrase “web beacons”: http://privacy.yahoo.com/privacy/us/beacons/details.html
That will bring you to a paragraph entitled “Outside the Yahoo Network.” In this section you’ll see a little “click here to opt out” link that will let you “opt-out” of their new method of snooping. Once you have clicked that link, you are exempted.
Notice the “Success” message on the top of the next page. Be careful because on that page there is a “Cancel Opt-out” button that, if clicked, will *undo** the opt-out.
a minty note of self
I’ve discovered that I have a craving for Grace. Intelligence, dance, wit, and form.
I’m desiring charm and movement like a sleek black panther purring his way toward me. I want to render clemency like pure scented wax, I want to dream of Euphrosyne when I think of my lover. Elegance might become a priority soon, paired with allure encased in a decent dose of heavy heady aesthetic. There must be desire, there must be subtle glamour like sweet lovely magic. Social charm, the time of day in the tilt of your head, something strong to break my heart.
I don’t know when this happened. I can’t explain how hard it was to drag this from inside of me. Refinement of desire into only one word, sleep-talking my way through the pacifying, “I don’t want anything really.” until the sky lit up with a seemingly effortless flash of understanding. A sense of style, I think I watch for it and I drink it down. I want the grace to look embarrassed, refinement of the most terrible proportion.
eyes blue as the wind
I’ve been sent a very sweet acoustic cover of Heartbeats, by The Knife. It’s unexpected, the taking of a crunchy bouncy makes-me-dance-no-matter-what and turning it into a rather soothing song about a one night stand.
One night to be confused
one night to speed up truth
we had a promise made
four hands and then away
I was young when I met him. I liked his golden hair, his wicked twist of conversation. He made me laugh, and I claimed him. That night I felt his hands around me and knew that he was mine. I used to think it was a quirk of happenstance, I used to think it was a strange accident that I met so many of these malleable people. I was young then, he was the first one. He’s still there, in love with me. His hands are waiting for my waist again, his eyes searching for mine in every crowd he dips in. There was a moment when I realized he would never go away, but it was years later, when I started channeling my emotions to call out and take souls.
both under influence
we had divine scent
to know what to say
mind is a razor blade
The plan is to move in and conquer. Take over the host for a moment and plant the seed of need with a twist of hair around the fingertip, a touch brushed against the shoulder. Cult of personality, they called it. Devoted at minute five, there’s a trick to it, knowing who’s available for desperation. Everyone is susceptible at some point, it’s as easy as finding out who’s lonely. And lovely? Everyone is alone inside.
To call for hands of above to lean on
Wouldn’t be good enough for me
It took me a long time to bloom. I imagine a black rose, unfolding stop-motion, when I think of what I used to be. How clumsy everything was. The time came when I could flick my passion out and snare the young men I wanted, and that was the blossom. I’m left wondering what I’m training for, how this skill can have some use now. In the days of castles and courtships, I’m sure it did a girl good to have her choice of Lordly husband, but now the castles have crumbled to be replaced by citadels of frame and glass. Change overwhelming my talents with shiny eyes and plastic coated deception.
One night of magic rush
The start: a simple touch
One night to push and scream
And then relief
Ten days of perfect tunes
The colours red and blue
We had a promise made
We were in love.
is it a step up? or down?
Twice today I have affected the hearts and minds of a few thousand geeks.
One for something unbeliebably atrocious and the other for something painfully nerdly.
edit: don’t follow the first link.
now I’m ready to feel your hands
Richie finally did it. Walked in front of an ambulance on Boxing Day, died a few days later. Dan Hughes told me over the net-lines, so I don’t particularly have the details. It’s a shame striking a hollow chord within me. Last I’d heard, he was doing better, out of the hospital. Bill and I stayed with him when we went to the Island second summer back. We sat on the back porch in the dark and talked about politics and music and the swirling moments that make up the world. I was on a porch swing and there were cold beet bottles in their hands, something golden. Plastic covered seats behind a upper class house, he had a room in the basement with framed Metropolis posters. We curled up there and watched The Muppets, drumming the walls with laughter. His mother collects fairies, there was a room of them upstairs where we slept. Little framed pictures of flowers. He drove us in his VW van on a search for Bill’s crazy mother. Apparently rumour had it that she was feeling better, but we never found the cabin. Instead we spent time at the bookstore and I bought a book that he sold to them only a few weeks before. There was a letter inside from somebodies mother, thanking him for giving her son music lessons. One Thousand and One Nights, he was wretched at answering his e-mail.
I wonder how Bill is doing. Richie was his best friend. I imagine he called Trish about it, but he never told me. I’d never have known if it weren’t for finding Dan on-line a few months ago. It’s a habit I get into, thinking that I’m going to be important enough to be remembered, but I really should quit as much as he needs to finally quit smoking. I’d like to tell myself that I knew Richie better, but I didn’t. It’s not as hard for me as Jon hanging himself, but it adds a sorrow to my day. The empty space is getting bigger, though it’s being filled with bodies. Jon I loved and will continue to. I’d like to send my condolences but I don’t know what to say.
I suppose this is part of being older. Friends kill themselves or die in accidents. It’s a Fact of Life like everything else. Relationships, affairs, how the neighbor steals your newspaper daily. It’s poison gas to think about, a miasma of “my friends are killing themselves”. I can’t think of Jon without crying, so I think around him. I think of his big hands and the way he got his hair cut, but when I think of how he would phone, I hold his voice to my heart like burning sand. We had a game of flirting too seriously. His hands would inch up my thighs until I stopped him, I would hold his eyes and claim something outrageous, severely physical, until he laughed. It was a terrible game, terrible like formidable, terrible like intense. He would scare me, I loved it. Warm heat in his hugs, it was ridiculous and charming. I wrote a letter to his mother, but never sent it. It sits in an envelope, stamped, ready to fly from my room, and I look at it. I hold the rectangle of paper and glue and consider sending it, but somehow I never do.
When I get back to Vancouver, I’m going to. My silence is a crime.
glitterati : the promised land of the free is north
When the crazy one came
She placed her finger on my forehead
And pushed on through
I woke up, face on fire
Spitting out diamonds
Thoroughly lost to logic
Craving her madness
– r. sakamoto
I have just had an extreme brush with rasicm. A boy came by, selling magazines. He’s twenty-four and underspoken, a good salesman to those who must believe in such things. He’s got a warner bros tie on and a packet in his hand with a list of the people he’s brought over “to his team”. It’s dark and cold, the sun driving under the horizon with a suddenness I’m not getting used to, so I invited him in for some cookies and bit of chat. The first thing I did was discard his sales pitch, break it over and over until he threw it away. That’s when he dropped his cover and became an amazed boy from Louisiana, stunned that a white girl was talking to him.
I hear about rasicm sometimes, when I’m in Canada, and my reaction is surprise. Surprise that it still exists as an issue, that people still regard skin colour as something to create differences over. Down here it is apparent in everything. The poor are the coloured, and the races don’t mingle. I am looked at strangely every time I take the bus, over and over I am the only pale face.
I kicked him out after half an hour, politely ejecting him from the premises, as his questions grew more personal in his confusion. “Have you ever been with a black man before?” That I might not only be a desperately lonely housewife is somehow unbelievable. I told him to come to Canada, as almost all the women there are fine with “that sort of thing”. I told him about globalfreeloaders and it was like a revelation. I think the poor boy is going to find a computer and get internet access for the first time in his life, just to keep up contact with me.
I wonder what I’m doing to these people.
I’m not a flaming liberal, but I feel like one here.
refinement strikes back
Yesterday was a success in a very peculiar way. Rather than make it to Jerry’s Gallery shin-dig, a spectacular affair where I would have hooked up with artists and musicians, I caught the attention of one James White, a dandy of the highest order. A fantastic gentleman in a plaid sport jacket with a burgundy turtleback and matching handkerchief, we met on the Metro, the both of us dressed oddly and helping a blind man to his subway car. He took me for a tour of Hollywood from the roof of the Kodak Theater. He’s part of the preparations there for the upcoming Academy Awards. We talked about Los Angeles and the Hollywood depression. Fascinating snippets of history would drop from his lips like roses from the best daughter that our mothers told us about when we were young, “never mind the thorns, little one, for here, there aren’t any. It’s magic”. His wife is head of Creative, the company I did my anime princess video game voices for. Asgard, I never saw the final product. It’s a pity I didn’t get the pretty car in the picture.
It was brilliant, and he drove me down to La Brea and Melrose in the continuing quest for Necromance, the both of us aware that most things would be closed. I took a picture of him with his car outside of Pinks before we parted ways, and I hope to see him again. We’re in contact already through e-mail. It will be enough, I trust, as all things usually are. Today it’s getting a late to try L.A. Work is throwing me some curveballs, which are keeping me in, but the net is rich enough today with news that I don’t mind terribly much. Not enough to slash everyone here with something grotesque. (I may have found an equivalent to the eels.)
Livejournal has been bought by Six Apart, which is both good and bad news. It’s bad in that I’m suspecting that Six Apart is perhaps not up to dealing with communities. They have some rather large cock-ups in their history with dealing with net-worked systems. The PR mess when MoveAble Type came available was cringe-worthy. As usual, there’s some useful links and intelligent commentary over in Warren’s journal on the topic. This isn’t the same sort of system as Six Apart is used to dealing with. Hopefully they will let mostly alone. We tend to think of this as a place, as people, rather than users speaking out to nothing. We have friends here and actual communities. Relationships possible because in this system, it’s possible to access that the internet is made of people.
Speaking of such, my mother is hoping to start a science fiction novel in her journal and Matthew, who some of you met at my party, has joined us as well, though I don’t believe he has been posting as of yet.
Professor Paisley in the Drawing Room at Dawn, Madam Greensward with a Joystick in the Solarium.
This is a spin-off thought from months ago. What are the real world names of everyone here? There was a meme regarding the idea sometime last year, but my flist seems to have exploded since then. There’s approximately two hundred people who drop in here and I can’t claim to know more than two thirds. That an anonymous someone has gifted me with Pro account status for a few months only adds to the smoldering curiosity that threatens to singe my dancing with little cinders of dissatisfaction. I can’t figure things out without clues.
He brushed the hair from her face, sad, lost. Not the way he wanted to reunite, he thought. It was his invention that brought him here, his oddball basement contraption that blew out the power. She was suffocating in her highrise palace bloc. He found her wrapped in laser etched plastic, her eyes filling with blood. Corporate kicks for money. He fought for her, to reach her here. Her lovers hung at the door, otherworldly, black make-up smeared that he hates so much. It’s not as important now. Nothing ever is entirely what it seems. He brings a cup to her lips, hoping she will drink. Back home at the trailer park, the dismal rows of blank christ-shrine houses, his dog stands up and growls at the door. She blinks, unable to focus on what he’s handing her. “I thought I used to mean something to you,” he says. “You did, but now I know better. I saw how I was trapped with you, how I would never reach out unless I left.” He looks down to the coverlet. “That hurts, Simenne, that’s nasty.” She puts the cup down on the bedside table. “I’m glad you’re here. What did you do to my security? I can hear people screaming.”
He’s tall, tanned lean leather. A brush haired man with an inventive personality, fairy tales fall from his fingers. “No one’s hurt, they just think they are.” “You’re a wicked man, dearest. A nasty, wicked man. When does it wear off?” “When I click this button.” He thumbs something, a thick plastic square, and the ragged screaming stops. He smiles finally as someone swears, inventive and loudly. “Your name is always associated with the best of things.” She laughs. She’s the devils daughter. A slender girl with thick braids of long hair that cable down the bed to lose themselves in the crumpled sheets. He watched her grow up, her parents marketing her DNA traits by the time she hit fifteen. Her smile on billboards in every big city square. He was her story-teller, her connection to myth and history and modern networking. The dog is barking loudly now, drowning out the sound of the neighbors television.
“Tell them to leave” he says, and she does.