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March 3rd, 2006
07:51 pm
There was a whisper outside. Wind sliding along the sashes. Dipped down, swung on a great curve, singing through the endless curls of stone and hair, edging the angles of the city. In a thousand deep places, the city thrummed like a string, reverberated and echoed in long waves, humming through the living bedrock. A dog barked twice, strained against a leash, pushed sideways stupidly. With the bite of wind came innumerable scents: sweet rot, old meat, salts, grease, the neddle-prick smell of fear, the warm slick of lust. A man swished through the snow like a ghost, the corners of his long coat gusting particled swirls like wings. Transparent, heavy, burning with a core of beer and wine, slinging words like stars into his collar. He muttered about skin and fire, about fingertips and the transcendent point of intellect. Somewhere in the snow words prismed together, flexed like a muscle and spat out light, which spun away in the wind and darkness.
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January 18th, 2006
02:53 am
Stop. Just stop. Please just stop.
It's been a long time. It's been too long a time.
Please stop. I've told you. I've told you often.
It's been a long time and I've told you often.
I told you. I talked a long time about birds.
How they swept clean lines across the skies. Please.
Children were singing. I told you.
Singing while lines swept the sky. Please.
I told you while the sky swept into exhausted white.
It's been too long a time. The white seeped like cold.
Into the veins of yellow lines. Into the cracks of the sidewalk.
I told you all of this. It's hard to remember.
It's been too long a time. Please. I'm white too.
Memories excised. Pasted over with thick white.
I told. Please stop. I fell in love once.
It was a parking lot. Children were singing.
Her hair swept clean lines across the skies. Please.
They were black. The feathers of her hair were stiff against the white.
And she was singing. Children and her were singing.
They were singing against the sky. While I made mistakes by the instant.
Every motion a mistake. I've told you often. Please.
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January 12th, 2006
11:05 pm
Being a nice person isn't really a matter of weakness. It's a matter of genuine concern, quite frankly, with yourself. On what your actions say about your own character, on what they reflect into the world around you. Your behaviour is your standard, it's your banner. It's how your reputation is spread among your friends. It's also a matter of being understanding about the foibles of others. Nothing says "maturity" more than an ability to comprehend and compensate for the weaknesses in others' characters.
But seriously. Even I have my limits. There's only so many times I can get spit on before I just say "fuck it". Apparently, that number is four. Exit stage left. Lights dim.
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01:05 am
I woke up to a grating dryness in my throat, so intense I could feel the muscles in the back of my throat rub together. The sheets around my feet were moist, but my arms were cold. A patch of hair on one side of my head was rubbed in the wrong direction, and pulsed with a dull pain. I ran my fingers straight through my hair, felt the pull of short curls, absently rubbed my now oily fingers together.
I felt the vibrations of my mother's motions downstairs in the kitchen. From the bed in my boyhood room, I traced her steps according to the long memory of touch. Under the sink, garbage can, slam; long pantry door, hollow slam with deep reverberation, probably a buscuit; high pitched slam, fainter, likely the cupboard where we keep the coffee; sclick suck noise of the fridge seal opening. Probably milk.
I stood up. Ran my fingers ritualistically along my body. Strong shoulders; strong chest, fibrous and solid from yesterday's exercise; soft stomach, but hard muscle underneath; strong, thick legs. My toes flexed, cracking exactly three times. Twice for each big toe, and a third time for the second toe on my right foot.
I pulled on clothes. Walked downstairs. Instant coffee thick with instant, some sugar, some milk. Too bitter, but some mornings I like it too bitter. So bitter it bites the sides of my tongue, gradually fading to sugar and the creamy mouth-feel of milk. My bag was packed; tees, shorts, the pants I used at last night's kickboxing class, the gloves I snapped against pads; leather on leather with a slap almost alive with character.
My mother, in a pale pink terrycloth robe. I don't know where she got it. A long unearthed creature, or did she get it for christmas from my brother? Why don't I know that? Strange. I hugged her softly, saying goodbye into the soft smell of her hair. Strangely, her arms felt almost exactly like chicken - soft flesh around bone, mo musculature to speak of. She's a very small woman, I thought protectively.
"What are you doing today"
"Well, I'm off to another kickboxing class, then home, then check if my employers got back on touch with me. Eventually they have to, I suppose."
"But you haven't eaten anything."
"I'll grab a bun on the way out. I never really eat a breakfast. You know that".
"Where are your employers?"
"I don't know, vacation, I suppose."
"You mean they never even told you?" Looking through her glasses, my mother's eyes are magnified slightly.
"No."
Large eyes.
"You're going to remain penniless for the rest of your life."
Headphones on, I grabbed a bun on the way out.
All I could think was "right in the eyes, kickboxer. Right in the eyes". You've got to keep your guard up, all the time. Even when you're hitting, you're always in danger of being hit. It's the single most valuable lesson in fighting. The person who wins is the person who gets hit the least. And you only get hit when you fail to guard.
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January 7th, 2006
01:50 am
Hey.
If anyone is actually reading the things that I write, feel free to leave comments. I'd love to know who's actually reading this crap.
My brother registered the site "crookston.ca". Should I bother to create a website for myself? Maybe? Would it be fun? Or, more accurately, more fun that sitting around my apartment wishing I had more fun things to do?
Spent the night with a bunch of gay men who'd like to sleep with me, and one straight woman who would sleep with me. For me, this is a wierd, wierd night.
Also: The M.F.A. proram at UBC only accepts registration every November. So this November I'm applying for the following year. Megan was right! I should have believed!
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January 6th, 2006
12:13 am
The night was simple, it thrummed with promise. It swallowed him sublimely, feeling around the curves of his flesh with grateful hands. It darkened and smothered, smoothed, made whole what cracks it could. It felt more like a mother than anything he could remember. If he could not sleep, he would get drunk. It had never seemed so simple to him in his entire life - that these choices were so easy to make, that all it took was one slight tip, one simple minute at the red and suddenly he was in motion. Shouldn't this be how all choices are made? In the simple rolling instant between now? No gradations, no correspondence, no rational movement of the mind. Not even a connection between emotional states. Just the sudden start, the amazing liberation that is achieved when you skip hesitation. Like the sudden turn of a sentence, the flex of a given word; so the body could move independently, dragging the mind like a reluctant buoy to rationalize and try to fix itself in a shifting world.
He slipped into the thick German coat he had inherited from his father, feeling the comforting heaviness of the wool on the tops of his shoulders, and the bones of his hip. Somehow the coat made him feel enormous, massive, confident. He imagined it buttoned securely around the form of a brawny army officer, standing langorously in the back of a smoky tent, or parading in front of a troop of his own men. Striding a deep trench, boots pulled up securely and clacking against the duckboards. Somewhere there were shots, somewhere a lone German sniper has killed a young boy from Kelowna, but here, here in the heavy wool of this commanding coat a brawny army officer enjoyed the feeling of heaviness around the muscles in his biceps. It gave him a feeling of power and solidity while the ghost from Kelowna slipped out of a flesh cracked and splintered.
All this was imagined in the heartbeat between creaking stairs, in the space between gulps of a beer. Soon out the door, bottle in hand. Suddenly the bottle lay in a snowbank, deep and rich green against the whiteness. He stopped for a second to stare at the startling emergence, as startling as if a flower had suddenly slipped up between the frozen paving stones, and blossomed with rich pollen. Striding; the muscles in his legs gathering in bunches, flexing powerfully, pushing forward against the sodden earth. A girl with short, red hair had once commented on the power of his legs. At the time she was fresh, lovely with freckles, so fresh she smelled of earth and grass, her juices of fresh water; now she would be older taller, the skin around her eyes would have absorbed pains, pleasures, drinks, drugs. But her freckles would be intact; as would the way she turned her head after two kisses to present her neck. Some things never change. Some things he could remember with relish, avoiding the humiliation of the past entirely. Sometimes memory was as startling as anything he could imagine, suddenly providing for him a refuge, a place of stillness as sudden as a flower blossoming from broken paving stones, or a beer bottle shining beautiful against the thick, Canadian snow.
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January 4th, 2006
11:03 pm
When the city burned, it lit the slopes of the surrounding mountains for days.
Eventually, the children gathered under an old plum tree,
they gathered the dropped fruit, and, when
the creak shatter of building smash echoed up from the great hearth
cheered and pelted each other with the soft, sweet fruit.
For days the tinkling crack of baking clay filled the valley
like a chorus of gnome bells, a sort of fairy music
while the char smell of meat mixed with the smell
of toasted wheat from the old silos.
When the next rain sweeps the city clean, our men
will scavenge among the foundations, seeking steel iron copper glass
they will occasionally laugh, while deep underground,
old seeds will begin to feed on the bone dust and ash of
people we once sold old seeds to.
The smoke will clear, and the ash flakes that drifted over our
forests will be breathed in by the trees.
Next year's coffee will be more fragrant, next year's honey sweeter,
our bees fatter and drowsier among the fat, drowsy clover.
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December 29th, 2005
06:46 pm
It is twice now the angels have slipped through my fingers. I had one, until he slipped the teeth of my bear trap, through the closed window, and sprang aloft, leaving behind only a drop of blood the colour of warm gold. It smells of old honey, wildflowers I can never name, the fresh sap of trees, and my first girlfriend. I keep it on my nightstand, stoppered in a Victorian lead-crystal perfume bottle from my Grandmother's collection.
I shall not be lazy anymore. Stretched on my lap, my old Scouting handbook is opened to the trapping page.
Angels can be caught, one must just fashion the right kind of loop. The bait was a simple matter; Angels follow sadness; they can't help it. It's in the nature of an immortal thing to try to understand, to desire complete knowledge; but sadness is an imperfect thing, rooted in lack and insecurity. Of course it can't be understood by Angels. So they just float around sadness, looking for a way in with their vastly beautiful, stupidly puzzled eyes.
The loop is the trick, the real rub of this particular proposition. What can you fashion to hold beings with no definite mass or substance? In fact, I don't even know if the contents of my bottle are real. Theologically, angels shouldn't leave blood. It could simply be an elaborate joke at my expense, performed by beings with incomprehensible faculties of humour.
So I have it. I have fashioned the idea of a loop, then twisted that knotted shape out of locks of my own curled hair, and soaked it in my own human miseries. The tears from my last break-up, vomit from my nights of drinking, sweat from the gym, blood razored from under the vulnerable skin, used come from an unfulfilling night of sex.
Now, I simply fix it to my headboard, and wait until I dream of unhappiness again.
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December 28th, 2005
04:15 am
Atonement is simply this:
that one evening my footsteps may echo
a soft snap of "no" across the hollowed ice
echoes the endless corners and chasms of brick
slips the links of fences, and threads of screws
licks up and down the avenues in tar-stripes
And all the while the wide swept stars of heaven
swirl and rise within me,
an echo slightly faster than an echo
glimmering in distance, beating in my time.
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December 21st, 2005
01:17 am - The Swedish girl.
I'm bored and drunk. My Swedish friend, whom I've resisted having a crush on, and with whom I've just spent six hours editing an essay, smells EXACTLY like sex. I'm not kidding. I'm absolutely, dead serious. On the topic of girls, I can never be anything but as serious as electricity. She smelled like sweat, but her sweat was absolute perfume. It was every smell of base attraction I've ever hit. Every hair, every wisp of skin, every drop of oil, every bit of moisture. I've never, NEVER been so affected by a smell in my entire life. Usually smells hit me with emotional content. I smell the shampoo a girl left on my pillow, and my heart cracks some with passing love, with a vague sense of loss and a hopeless yearning for heaven. But this one hit me like a truck, in the most biological sense. In the roots of my muscles. Once, we leaned in close, because we were laughing at my nonsensical creation of the word "mostably", and I got hit with a wave of her smell, and my fingers just clenched involuntarily.
Holy smokes. Well, bid welcome to my newest crush. It's been about a fucking week, it's pretty much time. Jesus. Well, live and learn. If only having a new one managed to push my former ones aside. I'm getting better at it, but the joys I find in the existence of women are precious and perfect. I've got a long roster of longing.
( Read more... )
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