Author: foxtongue

At any given instant
All solids dissolve, no wheels revolve,
And facts have no endurance—
And who knows if it is by design or pure inadvertence
That the Present destroys it’s inherited self-importance?

—W.H. Auden (1944)

What happens when we have no more heroes? It’s like our biggest secret. What happens when what we worship becomes human, when we realize what we idolize is just like us.

I don’t think we need religion, but we need heroes. Blazing tales of creation we’ve carried from the campfire to a modern landscape of silver screen stars. It’s not about gods, it’s about the way we’re wired. A heart to heart with heaven, “You’re one of the lucky”, it matters what I do with this. We are sad little ghosts, creating special people, celebrity trails of undiluted glory and light.

But they’re not. I had breakfast with someone who spoke in awe about my friends and friends of friends. Envy dripping to his plate yellow as the yolk of the egg I swiped up with my brown bread toast. He didn’t know the compartmentalizations inside my brain. The way my neural network touches these people. I didn’t have to care, but I did. I’ve seduced my heroes, shattered my poets. I’m Penny Lane to the world I want. Techno tart perfect, I don’t need this.

I am potent, I can conquer.

To my American friends, I say this, as a Canadian, I can offer you a little bit of freedom.
To those of you trapped, I can offer my hand in marriage.
There’s nothing that doesn’t say we can’t lie about consummation.

I still want Cascadia to happen.

On a similar note – does anyone know if I can British Citizenship through a grandmother? I loathe this place. It’s too new, there’s no history here, no stones to walk on. Trapped by it’s mountains and the small townies who think they’re in a city now. It’s terrible. If not, does anyone over there want me?

Is there a local Guy Fawks? Effigy burning might be a nice thing to do this week.

I woke this morning in the friendly room. Non-euclidean until I focused-put-on-my my eyes, the master bedroom is nicely lit by sun in spite of being in the basement. I could like it here, comfortable is cluttered with AV gear sure, but not for long. Don’t ask me to live here. November light is somehow more diffuse than October’s. Fill me with something other than this chocolate cookie and passionfruit juice breakfast. Bitter stale chips of political revelation don’t count. I don’t remember feeling so empty over a swan song vote.

Tonight is the house-warming/goodbye.

Sweet world, with it’s inconsistencies between reality and observation – I love thee like a classical quintet at a birthday party. Like the dark kitchen lit by the cake, full to the wooden rafters with humming people. Like they all love you, that’s why they’re here. Let them sing the song and be filled to the brim with their silly off-key trilling music. Someone will always be attempting to harmonize, maybe this time they’ll succeed.

This time, the cupboards are painted dark blue with white handles.

Standing in line at the grocery store with Alastair seems unreal somehow. My mind is so used to having Mine away that when they’re here, it’s like an artificially constructed ghost. I’m certain if I touch him, my hand will pass right through him without any resistance. Leaving ripples across his face or not even that. Like he wouldn’t even notice. My mental hard-drive is going to run out of time here, by the time I’ve encompassed what’s truth, he’ll be gone.

Tonight we’re spending at his place. The yuppie picket fence condo across from the park. The view from the upstairs window is like a tourist postcard named “trees aflame”. I’m sure by the time he’s done with it, there will be at least one framed poster on the wall and a black piece of furniture. One day he’ll come home to find I’ve done his fridge in some horrible fun fur fabric. I expect to be a slightly less generic influence. Young Man With Tech Gear Like Turntables plus Oddball Girlchild With Strange Aesthetic should be a good mix.

Off to movies, champagne, cheesecake, and Dominique.

Today my boy gets the keys to his place. There may be some cleaning involved, but his box he bought is now His. Today he’ll be moving things from storage likely all day. It’s only my dues to help. I don’t have to care about the weight of boxes, I only have to haul. Lift like this, nothing can keep me away.

The landlord came far too early this morning, softly knocking. The professionally polite knock knock flashing me back a moment to living in hotels. How hotel time never changes. No matter where you are in the world, there is always that brass lamp on the side table and the feeling that you’re only there in stasis. Spooling until the next location event collision – a reason to leave. Fluctuations are the bathroom amenities, what comes free in the minifridge. Check the lock before you go to bed, turn the knob, depress the buttons. Don’t get trapped out shuffling for ice in the middle of your foreign TV movie of the week. Something haunted in the always empty hallways, corridors with soulless carpet and little signs gleaming in yellow lamp light. Your room is numbered like everyone else’s. Even inside you can feel it. Anonymous places always and forever. You may try to scatter your things around: laptop on the table by the window, a towel thrown over the back of a chair. It never works. You fall again into the everyroom void, conquered by the carefully chosen plants, the gideon bible in the drawer you would never have at home. A space too obviously designed by someone in a brown power suit.

Yesterday the stones finally rained on the the studio from heaven. Icarus falling. They have been given their three month notice. I’ve never been in a more beautiful place, perhaps, then standing in the burned out half of that old building in the mellow light of an oncoming electrical storm. It’s been hit by lightning so many times you can taste it over the blasted pigeons. The feathered corpses were everywhere. They flew in circling flocks as we stood inside, shush shush shush. Hundreds of them, framing us among the blackened wood beams that no-one has dared to walk across and the once dripping twisted metal. A tree grew from the basement to brush the sky slightly above the remains of the second floor. Rusty orange razorwire, rooms that looked untouched. I kissed my lover for the second time there, open to the sky, to the flashing crackle of the storm. The whole world encased in gorgeous decay.

Wolf Parade is bloody well LOCAL! And they JUST HAD A GIG. My melody cravings require all of their work. I’m irritated that I missed out. It would have been a transcendal discovery in time for Hallowe’en.
figuring the lyrics

A mostly mechanical cyborg and his human-looking partner track robotic sex dolls that have murdered their masters. Animated.

“sounds like a plan”

It’s fully dark here now by 6 o’clock. Autumn turning into winter, the curvature of the earth evident in the colour of leaves. I would put a soundtrack of quiet flute over walking in forest now. Crisp early afternoon, the leaves too damp for the shush sound of feet through crunchy discarded leaves.

I think we learn slowly and all at once. We, as people, accumulate. There’s not a lot we don’t know about things when we’re around them all the time, even if we’re not aware of our knowledge. This is a personal thing, perhaps, but it’s unlikely that I could properly talk about the inside of anyone else’s head. I know I learn by osomsis, that I know many things for which there is no explanation of my expertise. I enjoy that about myself, that I hear pronouncements spill forth from me with the heavy edged conviction of assurance.

All day I somehow knew that I would do nothing for this evening. No tangible reason, just what I knew. I don’t mind. It would have been nice to go dancing, but there are other factors in play with such. Fuel for one. In spite of the fact that Silva brought over a tartus bag of food hours ago, I’ve been barely able to take the effort to chew and swallow. It’s simply not that sort of day. All plans are meaningless.

I think to myself why I wouldn’t kill for you. Icy sparks of hazardous material flashing behind my eyes, creating blue out of gray. Nostalgia music. Technically I sing this song of desire for more than you. What I whimper I give to you, but I create it now to be shared. The touch of my hands outside is the same. Communication whispering in the dark behind me. It’s gone now, cut free to the world, down by freeway. Monogamous addiction like morphine breathing. I miss you when I’m waiting, so blistering pretty, dolled up for you. One day I’ll start taking pills. Darkest twist of medicine for humming blood and body and breath. Down, down until a holy day. It’s better than literacy, it’s Love. Down until the smallest echo of hello dies on your dry lips. Kiss me with them. Steal my soul you sucker boy. Etch your words into my flesh with skillful fingers. Create a museum to place our ordinary moments on display.
Visit. You’re close.

Take your hands off the keyboard and come to me.