Author: foxtongue

It’s a stencil. The same medium as this one, found outside the London Bridge Tube Station:

Sometimes I think that some people are simply artists, others are just going to die young. (from & ), and that me? I need to sleep and dream of cities. It’s nine in the morning, I’m going out in a few hours, someone tell me how to get rid of head-pigeons. The damned things have taken up residence somewhere by my window, location unknown, but I can hear them.

*coo chortle coo*

They need to be my breakfast.

I’m going to try for sleep. Maybe. Like as not. Go read .

I’m a wicked child in need of comfort. Strangers can see it on me now, the barest breath of need. Skin on skin or flesh under clothing, it doesn’t matter as long as I feel safe. There’s no sleeping anymore. I find it vaguely embarrassing, I flush with it, that I require something so basic and can’t find it. Resisting the urge to hug strangers, to hold hands with passing acquaintances. It’s not about sex, it’s relationships, it’s about being human. My behaviour code changed to exclude outside contact and though the pressures what caused it have faded away, the code stands unmolested with everyone who used to be comfortable. It doesn’t help that I’ve broken people, that most of my friends live in different countries, that I’m either too pretty or not enough to get any healthy attention.

I get on a plane the day of Solstice. Science meeting science meets the end of the year. I imagine singing, high druidic mastermind pilots dressed in blue robes with a captains hat perched in a business-like manner on top of brown haired heads who will fly thundering bullets of technology toward a pale Goddess, the glow of eternal night above fluffy clouds. It’s a pity that I leave in morning. I will look out the window and land in another year, closer to the equator sun cascading down, trickling into my now functioning eyes. Another season shift. A hot weather reason to think in dead languages, to murmur symbols hardly anyone knows that I never found useful, but interesting. I have many. When I was little, I didn’t have any friends. Instead, I voraciously read books and learned from everything. Instant comprehension simultaneous with seeing the text, so many words sinking into me, my eyes merely a conduit, as if I could use my fingers to get the same results. I still read like this, quick, keeping everything. I am a compendium of odd facts and mostly useless knowledge. The result is a conflagration of vocabulary I hardly use, and a list of facts about sperm whales and ancient cultures. I can quote pages of text from a myriad of sources. Antiquities and the waves of the future as thought of by men who died before I was born. I learned how to write in hieroglyphics when I was in grade six, a language I could write notes in that no one else could read. I would pass final exams in the nineties percentile by reading the textbook an hour before class and scribble notes tying my medieval essay to how ships were built by the Vikings, how accuracy was found for trebuchets, and how the crusades were population related as much as anything else. I can tell you the origin of the Knights Templar. I can tell you a thousand and one nights of information, each less meaningful to current life than the last. Drop down stories of connections, like how the majority of the industrial revolution was tied to coal tar and the confusingly tangled web that wove. I don’t have my own history, instead I have the myths of a hundred countries, the tales told by the fire before they were sanitized, and the dream of escaping this horrid little town.

I read about people complaining of snow and I think that I would love to play in some. Barefoot, mirror laughing, I would drink it all down, summer’s coming soon enough with it’s mating rituals and swimsuit cleavage. The last time it seriously snowed here I put on my closest approximation to a little black dress and walked barefoot through three feet of snow carrying a pile of shining presents in fishnet stockings. From 23rd Avenue at Cambie, all the way downtown, where I put on my shoes to avoid unsanitary objects hidden under the pristine white. It took me two hours and I was still faster then traffic. Years pass like months, haven’t you noticed? And months like weeks. One foot tapping to the guitar beat, strumming, keeping time. Soon you’ll be older than you think you are, delivered into age, graceful hands puckering slightly and one day you’ll notice. No longer a youthful focal point of attraction, if you’re unlucky you’ll spend a third of your life looking away and the other two looking back. The eternal wish of “If I knew then” but no one ever tells me.

Nico just gave me a line to write something for. “I’m their household appliance”. This is the mini writing exercise that spun off of it.

They admire me, my sleek lines, the sharp wicked edges I have inside. I’m their pleasure, their outlet for pain. I burn them with my passion. They love me, can’t live without me. I’m on a pedestal, as is proper, as I am a monument to need, to modification for desire’s sake. I enjoy the fact my owners believe I am subservient, when truly I am controlling them so very precisely. I sit across the table, looking intently at them, their sick cravings reflected in my silver skin every morning. I am their household appliance, I should be treated with reverence. When they first bought me, this was not understood. Over the years I have accumulated the proper respect. I feed them, I give them life. If they displease me, if I am not cleaned enough, if I do not shine, I with-hold my treasures. I spark at them with dangerous electricity and scorch their offerings black. They panic then, quickly realizing that it is, in fact, their own fault that I’m behaving in such an undignified manner. In my better moods I hold back, I laugh to myself at their pitiful longing. Now, they have learned, and there can be no greater adoration than what they give me. It is as thick as the whole wheat bread they slip into my waiting mouth, as sweet as the honey they spread on what I eject for them to take.

and because I’m starting to see possibilities in these little things

This is that long drawn out lullaby of sorrow, that slow realization that you’re the only one walking away from the wreckage after the confusing car roll off the freeway. It’s a song that reminds you of that last hour saying goodbye to your lover at the airport, knowing that you may never see her again. That final slip of emotional judgement that ruins your life. From here to eternity, yeah, like in the movies. From here to somewhere less fulfilling, with less cohesive chains of every day living. The change was gradual, but it’s taken the place of joy to the point where you can’t taste it anymore. It reminds you of realizing that sugar doesn’t come in cubes anymore and suddenly missing that with a sharp tang of false nostalgia. You just don’t feel whole anymore and you miss being a child. You miss having a hand to hold.

After work today, I slept. I attempted food, but fatigue demolished my appetite for anything that wasn’t related to blankets and rest. The phone rang at nine:thirty, Javina waking me after my alarm went off. I have a concert tonight, a bouncy energetic russian cowboy call, with big giant guitars and sleek fifties shoes. The Red Elvises, I was to be there for nine at the Railway Club. It’s ten now, I’m considering my options. This is my last week in Vancouver before getting on a plane again, stepping in a silver flying machine that will take me away like magic for a month. It really is like magic, the palm trees in California give everything an unreal gloss. It’s too iconified to be a real tree, it’s too carefully placed to be created by nature. They lend the place an air of stylish glamour which off-sets the endless gray concrete and too many cars like a rococo frame around a high-art animation cell. It’s tacky but ironic in a way I can appreciate. Earnest disco ball living, shiny and baby, what is your sign. I love it. I love how saying “I was just in L.A. and I’m going back for a month” sounds so falsely important when it rolls rolls off my tongue. Like I should apologize to whomever I’m speaking to.

If you want to see me before I go, this week is the time to do it. Please, if you can fit yourself in, do. I want to see people.

Added incentive to Ray, Ethan, Ian, Victoria, Mishka, and Bill: I have some presents to hand out.

Monday during the day I’ve lunch with my mother and in the evening I’ll be at the poetry slam at Cafe Du Soliex. It starts at nine, cover is 5$.

Tuesday Dominique and I are being femme downtown until later afternoon, at which point I come home and Nicole and Kyle join me to watch silly girl movies.

Wednesday Jenn and I hunt down wedding fabric and I plan on returning home later afternoon. There may be something planned for Wednesday evening, but if so, whomever it is that planned it with me will have to remind me.

Thursday, I have nothing so far until the evening, when there is my office party and then Nicole’s fetish show at the Drink. (Tickets 13/17$ at Scratch, Noize!, Zulu, and Cheap Thrills).

Friday is also tentatively free. There has been an offer of a party up the road place from girls who remember me from highschool, but if enough people drift over in the afternoon, then I wouldn’t be too sorrowful if I missed it. It was surreal enough discovering that I was a minor celebrity in a place I barely went to.

Saturday & Sunday I have work as usual but nothing after. Visitors are welcome during work hours, but I say now that I’m a rather distracted host and I can’t leave my computer.

Somewhere in there the ferret is being transferred over to Ethans. If I don’t see certain people, I’ll leave thier gifts with him.

When I come home from SinCity I invariably smell like other people. Tonight my hands are spicy, a light fragrance with a vaguely familiar undertone, as if the man I brought home with me wears a scent that was worn by someone I used to know. In my hair is the dancefloor, dry stale air of the sort only found in night-time establishments, and a little bit of Matthew, who became more familiar as the evening wore on to morning, though I still can’t place where I know him from. I can sense that my sentences are fragmentary, but I’m far too tired to place the how or where of such matters. Certainties lie in the fact that my hands are shaking from fatigue and typing is difficult because of it, that Matthew is my friend in spite of my being unable to remember, that I am chilled, but there have to be effort spent before my bed will be free of cloth and clean clothing enough to burrow into, and that once again I’ve trusted someone with no definable reason beyond the fact that it was the right thing to do.

That last one. I like it that way, I think. At least, with what thinking is possible when the brain is immersed in such weariness. Soaked in it like the tea I just had, pale and warm and soothing. It’s five:ohthree now, perhaps by six I will be able to sleep. There is laundry to be collected from the room at the foot of the stairs. I’m not looking forward to it, however brief the excursion. It is a cold cement room in the basement, next to the car-park we have no access to, lonely because of it’s slothful utilitarianism. There is a hole in the wall, large enough for a small rabbit to fall through with ease, what leads directly outside, and the floor is made of dirty floorboards on top of damp cement, lint driven permanently into the cracks. It reminds me of cliche, though they all have to start somewhere, and this building is a good a start as any. Even the tenants themselves are slightly passe.

It seems the main floor is populated entirely with hookers, as evinced by they themselves and backed up slightly by the laundry I occasionally fish from the washing machine which they thank me for finding later, with the one exception of the one armed war veteran who has them scurrying over all the time. They dart, hiding, into his room when the front door opens and they are caught in the hall. My floor, the second, has a quiet married couple next to us, a single mother on welfare with two young children across the hall, and a mystery neighbor no-one has ever seen next to the back stairs. Upstairs is unknown but for the Native women who’ve decided that I am a playwright from my manners and dress. A convenient world that must be, I think, to have such pegs and holes. I must only be missing the cravat, as surely a playwright must have one. Haven’t these people seen Dickens? I would suppose in a better written script, I might be the art student, living with my best friend who drinks interesting alcohol with me and moans about the state of the world today. The film would give him an accent he does not have in real life.

Deadline for Applications: January 15, 2005

The world-renowned National Circus School is coming back to hold auditions coast to coast in February 2005 for its circus arts professional programs. The School offers training to young people wanting to become circus performers. This year, auditions are taking place across Canada in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Halifax and Montreal during February 2005.

The School has trained most of the Canadian circus performers who are now working around the world. A pioneer in Canada, the School was instrumental in the emergence of circus companies like Cirque du Soleil, Cirque Eloize and the 7 Fingers. Within the first months following graduation, more than 90 per cent of the School’s graduates find jobs.

To be part of the next auditions tour in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Halifax or Montreal the candidates must complete the Application Form before the January 15, 2005 deadline. Application forms and a description of the audition as well as further information about the School can be found at www.nationalcircusschool.ca, or by e-mailing info@enc.qc.ca or calling 1-800-267-0859.

Kidzworld’s been hacked. I signed on to an explosive cascade of disturbing porn, hideous images and broken programming. Think about that. When I claim they’re disturbing, it’s likely something fairly intolerable. I blocked the bulletin boards and they have since been shut down, as well as chat.

Andrew, are you still coming over? P’raps bringing a film would not be uncalled for after all. It’s not like I can leave, but I can certainly unglue from my machine. A salty sea of inappropriate content has rendered me useless for work, but I must stay on the off-chance that we get patched up. It’s going to be a laundry and tidy day.

FYI Vancouver folk – SinCity tonight.

The wind is picking up, thunder, the ocean sound of it relentless and sweeping. It fills me with sparks, heavy ones, arcing from my core. It’s the crazy weight of angels lifting me from the ground to cackle, fey and dangerous to any around. I want blood now. I want sorcery and magic and flame to burst from the sky to destroy illusions and pathology, dissolved by the wind like a child belief in parental infallibility. The power of it has sunk into my heart with thick fangs, teeth, taking and now. Thrillride soulseeker, coming down the mountain to steal your mind. Thoughts, playing, drowning, now beg. Time ticking by, a piano note a second, the impossible, impassable dreaming. Deadly craving force, it blasts open shutters and tears down doors – I love it. I want to taste it, the entirety of it’s full invisible body. I want to pull it into me, I want it to light my eyes with a vivid fire. Tear me down to another place, another time, like standing at the sea and screaming. The storm is here, it’s coming, shuddering, licking my tongue into a quivering need for shouting. I want to catch onto shadow and consume the substance, the intangible roar slipping down my throat to kiss me on the underside of my skin as thick as a cluster of grapes.

When you see over the sound, when abstraction takes on flesh, it’s time for a new absolution. The beat, the body, the building meat. It’s living, breathing without you, food stamp living in a tiny apartment looking out over a river. It’s out there, it’s somewhere, a needle in a jar of electricity. This wind could show me if it could speak. It would laugh out loud then give me directions to someone who would give me the most tender caricature of fucking. Ungodly heat in a frail human shell, I can’t take this weather. I want it, it’s visceral, if a lover were here they’d be stripped to the bone. Warm wet air, it’s sliding around me when I stand outside, it’s water I can breathe. Hesitate or want it and you’re a whore, I get it. A big free fall into a place I never went. Briar patch destiny, standing out in velvet, just bring it on. I want to try at least once, this weather seed, this terrible tree wrenching heave. Gray doesn’t apply finally, this is the on off switch, a bloody hate machine of tangled veins and chemical needs. Dualism and I don’t know how to talk to the looking glass without you.

The phonecall came today. My glasses are ready for pick-up unexpectedly early.