A fresh bouquet sans roses
(I don’t particularly like the things),
a red vase holding oranges and scarlets.
The card read:
Dancing has given me great balance…
but I fell for you all the same.
Am I a sap? Absolutely.
I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone.
Whether you celebrate with the sappy or the irony,
I wish you the best of days.
I got fifty-nine submissions for this week, but unfortunately they were all written in invisible ink (hahahahahaha), so I’m afraid it’s just me. I hope you enjoy it!
The topic for next week is: a well.
————————
The Morning After
– Ahniwa Ferrari
Brandon woke up slowly, and lay in bed staring at the ceiling for a long time, blinking at the bits of crust rubbing against the corners of his eyes. Finally he threw off the covers, stumbled naked into the kitchen, and opened cupboards to search for coffee. He found some beans, ground them, and yawned as he filled the coffee pot with water to pour into the machine. His eyes drooped a bit, his nose felt all snotty, and he tried to remember what he had done the night before.
The smell of coffee made him smile a bit. He poured himself a cup before the pot was done brewing, making coffee drip directly onto the heating-surface and give off an angry, burnt smell. Some splashed onto his foot, and he shook it off as he and his coffee mug made their way into the bathroom to take a shower.
It took two minutes for the water to get hot, which was ironically enough time for his coffee to cool down enough for him to drink. When he stepped into the shower, he got scalded, and he cursed as many things as he could think of before he got the temperature right. He leaned against the wall of the shower so that the showerhead was right over him, and let the water make rivers down the creases in his skin.
Famously groggy in the mornings, he felt awake after twenty minutes in the hot spray, and turning the water off he stepped out of the shower and reached for his towel. He dried his hair and waited for the steam to let go of the mirror so he could brush it to a fairly reasonable level of control. It wasn’t until the mirror cleared that he remembered; everything that had happened the night before, the week leading up to it, thinking if he just fell asleep he’d wake up and it would all have been a bad dream. But he was awake now – he was fairly sure of it – and it hadn’t been a dream after all.
He glared at the mirror for eight minutes and thirty-one seconds exactly, counting in his head superstitiously, but it did no good. Finally he grunted, turned out of the bathroom and back down the hall, muttered, “Fucking invisible…” as though it were something that might happen to anyone at any moment, and went back to bed.
… shoot first and ask questions later.
I watched The Boondock Saints for the first time the other night. I’d been avoiding it because of all the 1337 D3WdZ who said how awesome it was. I trust not the ‘leet doods. But then, some movies are enjoyable to many different kinds of viewers, doods and modest geniuses alike. Chances are (and wouldn’t it be ironic) that geniuses is not actually the correct word. I’m too lazy to check. The title for this post is in honor of the autistic bar-tender, for whom I mourn when he is shot, and all his mixed idioms.
————————
There’s a beautiful woman in my life now, with whom I connect amazingly well. This last week we’ve spent nearly every free moment together, without a trace of boredom or dischord. We’ve admitted openly that we’re completely smitten with each other, and have both acknowledged that we have an uncommon bond, one which very much entices the fatalist in me. Unfortunately, and perhaps I should say, of course, there are complications. I’ve a knack for complications, it seems. And in this case, the least of which is my moving to Montreal in the Fall. Funny, isn’t it?
I won’t get into particulars. My theory is that no relationship is perfect, and despite the fact that our connection honestly seems to be, chance has tossed in factors that make things tricky. So what to do? It’s only been a short while, so I figure it’s best to take things slowly, and see if maybe some of these snags work themselves out on their own, or with minimal tweaking. Which will leave others that will require care and attention. Who knows what the future holds? Each passing moment, and each day that goes by, I feel a little luckier to be alive.
My friends are alternately supportive and critical, and when they start to question me my response is: There may be the “one true love” out there; there are probably a few people, at least, that are extraordinarily compatible with you, but there are certainly not millions of them. When an opportunity comes along in such a way that it seems right and good and meant to be, to be put off by “minor” details is a matter of cheating yourself.
Which is not to say it will work out, necessarily, but that it is definately worth the effort. This is a brand new adventure.
————————
Supposedly we’re performing our “Tainted Love” routine on Tuesday. I say “supposedly” because I highly doubt that we’re actually prepared to do so (though I could probably muddle through it today, there are seven other people involved), and pushing back the date may be the best recourse to avoid someone’s head getting split open during a botched back-flip. Yes, swing dancing: fun AND dangerous.
Aside from that, I’ve been dancing my ass off even more than before, thanks to having a fantastic dance partner that loves to learn new things as much as I do. We lindy, we shag (dance *cough cough*), we salsa, we balboa, we charleston, we may learn tap, we sway (what I like to call blues dancing), and we have a rockin’ good time. My legs are getting tough, my arms are getting sore, and I tend to laugh a lot. Dance is a good thing, go try some.
In parting, one last bit of autistic Boondock wisdom:
“If you can’t get out of the kitchen …
… don’t cross the road.”
My dad sent me an email of taglines from Steven Wright. Surprisingly, I hadn’t heard some of them, and some of them are quite hilarious. Hence, listed here for your reading pleasures.
(I was going to pick and choose, but I’m lazy and quite tired today, so I’ll just list all of them.)
1 – I’d kill for a Nobel Peace Prize .
2 – Borrow money from pessimists — they don’t expect it back.
3 – Half the people you know are below average.
4 – 99% of lawyers give the rest a bad name.
5 – 42.7% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
6 – A conscience is what hurts when all your other parts feel so good.
7 – A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.
8 – If you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.
9 – All those who believe in psycho-kinesis, raise my hand.
10 – The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
11 – I almost had a psychic girlfriend but she left me before we met.
12 – OK, so what’s the speed of dark?
13 – How do you tell when you’re out of invisible ink?
14 – If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.
15 – Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm.
16 – When everything is coming your way, you’re in the wrong lane.
17 – Ambition is a poor excuse for not having enough sense to be lazy.
18 – Hard work pays off in the future, laziness pays off now.
19 – I intend to live forever — so far, so good.
20 – If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends?
21 – Eagles may soar, but weasels don’t get sucked into jet engines.
22 – What happens if you get scared half to death twice?
23 – My mechanic told me, “I couldn’t repair your brakes, so I made your horn louder.”
24 – Why do psychics have to ask you for your name?
25 – If at first you don’t succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.
26 – A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking.
27 – Experience is something you don’t get until just after you need it.
28 – The hardness of the butter is proportional to the softness of the bread.
29 – To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research.
30 – The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard.
31 – The sooner you fall behind, the more time you’ll have to catch up.
32 – The colder the x-ray table, the more of your body is required to be on it.
33 – Everyone has a photographic memory, some just don’t have film.
If you’re not reading the stories over at Brief Lies, you’re missing out. Some good stuff so far, and we’re just getting rolling. You should all get involved. For ease of access, and because I’d love some creative feedback, or even just little comments, I submit to thee my two stories so far, below. Enjoy!
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Tacos aren’t romantic at all
-Ahniwa Ferrari
So last night my roommate’s girlfriend came over and they made tacos and I had some and they were amazing like tacos of divinity or ambrosia or something. So we were sitting around eating our tacos – mmmmmm – and I’d had some ice cream earlier and that was good too but not like a heavenly taco, and I was telling them the story of the Summer of 2000 when I walked across town in a state of pure romantic distress. I was also distressed because I had no tacos, mind you, but also flustered by romance. I like tacos but I don’t find them romantic. They’re sexy though, but I wouldn’t bother buying them champagne or taking them on a moonlit walk on the beach. They’re sexy and I’d just use them and then leave before they woke up, and I wouldn’t be able to respect them anymore afterwards.
So I was walking across town, all the way across, from the west end to downtown and then up the hill to the southeast, to see my friend who’s my roommate now and whose girlfriend made tacos last night – coincidentally he knows this story already – and about halfway there I was like “Well fuck, I’ve walked a lot, and if I turned around I’d have to walk a lot more just to get home, and that’s where I came from so I’ll keep walking forward and get to my friend’s house and then maybe he’ll drive me somewhere and we can have tacos.” So after like another hour or something I made it to his house and he wasn’t in his room asleep like I thought he’d be so I could easily wake him up and make him drive me somewhere. At first I didn’t know where he was and stood outside wondering how I might be able to find a taco at two in the morning walking – I’d be walking, not the taco – and as I was wondering I saw the light flashing in the upstairs window like you see when someone is watching a movie, all blue and the dark and then flash and flash and from outside it seems so bright you wonder how someone could watch it without going blind.
So I’d found my friend, but he was upstairs and I was on the ground outside and I couldn’t just walk in because he was living with his mom at the time and I didn’t want to get shot or hit with a frying pan or have anything else violent happen to me. I warily eyed the fence that ran around the little house and thought that if I could get up on it I would be nearly at eye level with the window upstairs and then I could throw little twigs at the window and get my friend’s attention, because surely he’d prefer my company and tacos to whatever movie he was watching. So I climbed up the fence, and then I fell off but I landed on my feet, and I had to climb up again, which I did. Then I could see my friend, but throwing little twigs at the window didn’t seem to be having any effect. There was a tree that loomed over the fence, and had branches that extended very nearly to the window, so I grabbed a branch and shook it so that it hit the window and made a big motion which my friend wouldn’t be able to miss. And so I guess he was watching a really scary movie and the branch hitting the window on its own – because he couldn’t see me – really freaked him out and he screamed. But then he looked out and he saw me, and we laughed about it and he drove me to Denny’s at three in the morning until five in the morning while we drank coffee and ate food.
But not tacos, because Denny’s sucks and they don’t have tacos, and I was bitter at first but then I got all strung out on coffee and cigarettes and romance and lack of sleep so then I was okay with it, and I had a sandwich instead. Sandwiches are okay, but they aren’t as good as tacos at all.
————————
Dimmer Switch
-Ahniwa Ferrari
Cal leaned against the wall and made an effort not to squint as light danced across the room and fake smoke drifted past his eyes. He’d heard that the parties senior year were bigger and better, but he’d never imagined they included light shows and smoke machines. Still, he knew that to the people who threw these parties image was everything, and the expense was the equivalent of pennies. In any case, he hadn’t come to see fancy special effects. He had a purpose.
Liza was the kind of girl every boy in school had dreams about. She was head cheerleader and valedictorian, and had already spent a year studying in France. She’d come back with a certain savoir faire that made her seem mysterious and unattainable, and an accent that over time had faded until you could only ever hear it when she got very emotional. It was fate’s cruel joke that her locker was right next to Cal’s, but he doubted that she had ever really noticed him.
If you asked someone at school what they thought of Cal, most people would sum his character up in a single, concise word: “Who?” . He wore clothes, ate food, walked about and talked, laughed, smiled and joked with his friends; all in such a way that no-one but his friends were ever inclined to pay him any notice. How he’d ever gotten friends in this state is a mystery, though could most likely be attributed to the fact that they’d been his friends since the third grade, before he’d realized that he was destined to a life of inexorable obscurity. He went about his business like a shadow, was never called on in class, got straight ‘B’s, and avoided school activities or doing anything in which he might stand out like the plague. Even his senior picture in the yearbook had turned out fuzzy, as if he were blurred around the edges; a ghost.
Tonight was different. The dimmer switch of Cal’s personality, halfway down his entire life, was now in the full “On” position. Dressed in a suit, he had a distinct outline, a physical presence that dominated a particular space. His hair, usually a bland brown and neatly parted, seemed to change in the light, one moment wild and the next, keenly sophisticated. His eyes, usually brown, were now hazel and chestnut and cedar, mahogany and driftwood, and they sparkled as they set upon Liza Anne Hartley and never strayed.
Liza had noticed him, too. Noticed, but not recognized, despite having the same lockers for the past four years. She laughed as a friend told a joke, excused herself, and let her feet follow Cal’s gaze across the floor. As she reached him, the music changed from a loud beat to something slow and intimate. She wasn’t used to being shy, but her breath caught in her throat and she was held transfixed by Cal’s presence. It was years of natural social instinct that allowed her to ask, “Would you like to dance?”
Cal smiled, his teeth flashed pearls. His brown eyes engulfed hers, blue, and the music flooded out the world.
As he left the party, all he could think was that if he hurried, then he and his friends could have a good long party themselves before the night was over. He ripped off his tie, threw it out into the night breeze, and grinned as he remembered his response:
“Sorry, I don’t dance with cheerleaders.”
Elle est sans elephants,
sans soucis ou souris,
sans sens mais elle danse,
et pour moi ca suffit.
———————–
Tant pis? Tant mieux?
Je ne sais pas.
et toi?
Toi non plus.
Je danserai comme d’habitude,
en France ou non,
n’importe ou,
je m’en fou.
————————
Today I need to bust ass on my McGill app and scholarship and financial aid stuff, so I’m gonna go get to it! Wish me luck!
Wired magazine has this very provocative article on the future of nuclear energy. Or rather, the present of it. They make very enticing points. It’s not perfect, obviously, but we need to stop burning coal and soon. I say we go for it.
Any thoughts? Let’s discuss.
Only three stories again. Thanks to everyone that submitted this week. My big goal is to get ten stories a week, or so. Here’s dreamin’!
The topic for next week is: Being invisible. Either metaphorically, or literally.
Enjoy the stories!
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-Anne Jindra
Val comes in wide-eyed like usual, sporting her gap-toothed grin and maniacal (and always unprovoked) laughter. She sits down in one of my wooden office chairs, then immediately gets up to look out of the window, then sits down again and laughs. She smoothes out the folds of her worn wool jacket, tames the fly-aways in her hair, and finally rests her hands in her lap. I watch as she goes through her ritual, noticing that her fingers look like a Diego Rivera painting, and I stare at them.
A brief silence follows before I remember that I am her social worker, and she helpfully reminds me by offering, “I’m in a lot of trouble,” which she follows with another cackle.
She had been receiving unemployment for almost three months – she lost her job cleaning rooms at the college inn. Recently though, she got a letter in the mail from the Office of Job and Family Services telling her that she has to pay back her almost $2,000 award because they didn’t really mean to give her anything to begin with. After she relates all of this to me she says, “and I know I can trust you because you didn’t tell anybody about the other thing,” but I have no idea what she’s talking about.
She gets up again, looks out of the window in my door, stands for a moment, then sits back down in the stiff chair. She cuts right to the heart of the matter, with a swift decisiveness, “Do you have any cereal?”
To which I reply, “Yeah, we have Cornflakes.” She mulls this over and eventually decides that cornflakes are acceptable. She proceeds to verbally go over a mental list of items that she needs (chocolate chip cookies, toothpaste, sugar, potato chips, pudding) and I jot each down on a drab yellow post-it, my pen racing to keep up with her stream-of-consciousness. When she finishes, she rolls her eyes back and tries to recall if that was everything she came for.
She fixes her gaze forward again, and looks me in the eyes for the first time since this visit began. “I am tired of this shit. God. I am tired.”
I offer back a smile, and get up to procure her needs from the shelves of our emergency pantry.
————————
Sustenance
-Theo Porter
Martin sat on the couch and thought about food. He couldn’t help it. There was a poster opposite him of a perfect French crème Brule and the more he stared at it the more drool collected in his mouth. He arched his back, reaching into his back pocket for his tattered wallet, trying desperately to run over his monthly budget in his head. It was useless. He was a gadget guy and if the purchase of a mediocre doohickey for his home theatre meant he would starve for the rest of the month, it was worth the sacrifice. As he separated the corners of his wallet and peered inside, he imagined a little cartoon fly zipping from its empty interior at full speed. Feeding the habit had taken on a whole new meaning. The poster on the wall had never seemed so far away.
The need to eat filled Martin’s head. He knew how to cook, that wasn’t the problem. There was just nothing to cook. Anywhere. He rose from the couch, sighing heavily. “Old Mother Hubbard,” the old nursery rhyme, ran through his head at full volume. His own mother loved to repeat little rhymes while she cooked and Martin had taken up the wand when the beloved family matriarch was hospitalized for being too old to live on her own. Shoving loving nostalgia aside, Martin searched the empty cupboards for even the ghost crumbs of a forgotten loaf of bread. No such luck.
He pulled out his wallet again and there, at the very bottom, was his lone credit card. Fund management was a foreign concept, but somehow, probably through the influence of a micro-managing father, Martin had paid off most of debt owed on the thin, unobtrusive piece of plastic. Though he tried never to use it for technology, maybe food was worth it. Yes, it definitely was. Survival is paramount and these were dire circumstances. But, standing alone in the kitchen of his apartment, he couldn’t help but feel that if he was going to dip into the irresponsible jar, it needed to be for a good reason. He pulled out his cell phone and began to make phone calls. The friends lined up like bowling pins the moment he said that he was cooking. Several agreed to bring salad, bread, wine, dessert, and it was set.
His heart skipping a beat, he walked down to the store around the corner. It was a cool, clear night with the moon sitting just above the horizon in perfect counterbalance with the ruby red sunset. Martin couldn’t help but break into a smile. He could see it in his head: good friends, good food, and good music; it would be perfect. There was a perfectly good shopping list in his head and he went over it again in his head as he picked up a little red shopping basket.
The little card in his hand felt lighter as he exited the store. It hurt, but when it comes to sustenance, sometimes one must go to extremes.
————————
Tacos aren’t romantic at all
-Ahniwa Ferrari
So last night my roommate’s girlfriend came over and they made tacos and I had some and they were amazing like tacos of divinity or ambrosia or something. So we were sitting around eating our tacos – mmmmmm – and I’d had some ice cream earlier and that was good too but not like a heavenly taco, and I was telling them the story of the Summer of 2000 when I walked across town in a state of pure romantic distress. I was also distressed because I had no tacos, mind you, but also flustered by romance. I like tacos but I don’t find them romantic. They’re sexy though, but I wouldn’t bother buying them champagne or taking them on a moonlit walk on the beach. They’re sexy and I’d just use them and then leave before they woke up, and I wouldn’t be able to respect them anymore afterwards.
So I was walking across town, all the way across, from the west end to downtown and then up the hill to the southeast, to see my friend who’s my roommate now and whose girlfriend made tacos last night – coincidentally he knows this story already – and about halfway there I was like “Well fuck, I’ve walked a lot, and if I turned around I’d have to walk a lot more just to get home, and that’s where I came from so I’ll keep walking forward and get to my friend’s house and then maybe he’ll drive me somewhere and we can have tacos.” So after like another hour or something I made it to his house and he wasn’t in his room asleep like I thought he’d be so I could easily wake him up and make him drive me somewhere. At first I didn’t know where he was and stood outside wondering how I might be able to find a taco at two in the morning walking – I’d be walking, not the taco – and as I was wondering I saw the light flashing in the upstairs window like you see when someone is watching a movie, all blue and the dark and then flash and flash and from outside it seems so bright you wonder how someone could watch it without going blind.
So I’d found my friend, but he was upstairs and I was on the ground outside and I couldn’t just walk in because he was living with his mom at the time and I didn’t want to get shot or hit with a frying pan or have anything else violent happen to me. I warily eyed the fence that ran around the little house and thought that if I could get up on it I would be nearly at eye level with the window upstairs and then I could throw little twigs at the window and get my friend’s attention, because surely he’d prefer my company and tacos to whatever movie he was watching. So I climbed up the fence, and then I fell off but I landed on my feet, and I had to climb up again, which I did. Then I could see my friend, but throwing little twigs at the window didn’t seem to be having any effect. There was a tree that loomed over the fence, and had branches that extended very nearly to the window, so I grabbed a branch and shook it so that it hit the window and made a big motion which my friend wouldn’t be able to miss. And so I guess he was watching a really scary movie and the branch hitting the window on its own – because he couldn’t see me – really freaked him out and he screamed. But then he looked out and he saw me, and we laughed about it and he drove me to Denny’s at three in the morning until five in the morning while we drank coffee and ate food.
But not tacos, because Denny’s sucks and they don’t have tacos, and I was bitter at first but then I got all strung out on coffee and cigarettes and romance and lack of sleep so then I was okay with it, and I had a sandwich instead. Sandwiches are okay, but they aren’t as good as tacos at all.
Everyday puns to make your friends groan, with apologies.
Q: Would you like a Certs?
A: CERT-ainly!
Q: Want a piece of gum?
A: Hmm, I dunno. I’ll have to chew on that for a minute.
Q: Hey, is that a pirate!?
A: Arrrr! [run them through and steal their booty]
Sorry, I ran out of puns, and wanted to mention pirates.
Okay, okay, and booty. Mmmmmmmm, pirate booty.
Last, and least. A bad joke I made up.
Q: What do you call a freeway that runs underwater?
A: The Otter-bahn.
I hope you’ll all forgive me.
I steal all my Montreal links from the Montreal City Weblog, so you can always just go there and read more. But these are just the links I find of particular interest.
A man named Richard Florida talks about how Montreal has become a “creative center”, a “cutting-edge city that others would love to emulate.”
Over 2000 pictures indexed under “Montreal”. Woo, pictures!
A snazzy-looking journal from Montreal, with some slick film reviews.
David Carr of the New York Times talks about Montreal’s anglo-music scene, mentioning The Stills, Simple Plan, and others. One Montrealer scoffs at the attention, saying “What is going on here will continue to go on long after the attention has gone elsewhere.” Montreal is hip with or without attention from the New York Times, thank you very much.
The Hour talks about Montreal’s recent mention in Spin Magazine. More talk of music, and how the creative scene has been molded by the political background, though it sounds like Spin may have been a bit off the mark, there.
The following from Google News:
A tourist trip to Montreal,, and talk of art. Neat!
CTV offers proof that telemarketers are evil. Like we didn’t already know that. The shocker of this entire story is that people actually talk to telemarketers.
Ubisoft plans to create 1000 jobs in Montreal. Yay, video games!
And thus ends, for today, my obsession with Montreal.
À la prochaîne.
I would like to take a moment to make a simple announcement. Vin Diesel is not another muscle-bound, no-talent hack. So you watched The Fast and the Furious and you watched xXx and they sucked. I know they sucked. I liked xXx, but I still know it sucked. But did they suck because of Vin? On the contrary, they sucked in spite of Vin. TFatF was just a stupid movie; I really don’t think I have to go into explaining why. xXx is your basic explosion movie, and like most basic explosion movies, it sucked mostly because of a weak script. Despite that, I feel that Vin did his best to instill his lifeless lines with aplomb and a cheeky sense of humor.
Think Vin sucks? Time for your re-education.
Vin did the voice of the giant in The Iron Giant, an animated film by Warner Bros now defunct animated-movie studio (Iron Giant was their final film, finished as Warner Bros was literally tearing the studio down around their heads. The big honcho is now heading Pixar), which nobody can’t love. From the extra features, it appears Vin achieved that voice without any digital modification. I think he did a superb job.
Pitch Black. Yes. It took me a while to watch this movie, because I thought it looked kind of dumb. It’s now one of my favorite movies ever, and mostly because of Vin. This is Riddick before Twohy went all Lucas and tried to make an “epic” adventure. He did much better keeping it small. Vin’s interplay in this movie with Cole Hauser, who plays Johns, is frickin’ awesome. His play with Radha is a little over the top at times, but bear in mind that he’s Riddick and usually stuck underground with a bunch of men, and I think you’ll find his interactions with her more believable, if not underplayed.
Knockaround Guys. This is a fairly small role for Vin, but an excellent one. He’s a quintessential tough guy, and he plays it straight. He doesn’t try to make the role bigger than it is, kicks ass when required, and in general pulls the role off with pinache. Listen to his “500” monologue. The monologue itself is fairly cheesy, but Vin pulls it off. And how many other people could?
Finally, watch his short film that he stars in and directed, called Multi-Facial. I doubt you’ll find it by itself, but you can watch it as part of this Shorts Collection. I think it displays Vin’s versatility well. Also, his role in Boiler Room, though tiny, is great.
Watch those movies, and if you still think Vin is a hack, we’ll talk. Just you, me, and my crowbar. Oh, and if you just want to look at Vin’s shiny muscles, go here.
“500?”
“500 what, douchebag?”
“500 fights, that’s the number I figured when I was a kid. 500 street fights and you could consider yourself a legitimate tough guy. You need them for experience. To develop leather skin. So I got started. Of course along the way you stop thinking about being tough and all that. It stops being the point. You get past the silliness of it all. But then, after, you realize that’s what you are.”
Ignore the gibberish, this story’s tantalizing.
Last night, live band rockin’ the swing,
mostly older tunes: St James Infirmary,
Blue Skies, Take the ‘A’ Train; live with
the Kevin Buster Quartet.
On the slower tunes, I made like a blues bandit;
stole away into the arms of beautiful women and
sssssswwwwwwwwaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyeeeeeeeeeddddddddd.
Leg against leg, movement in the shoulders and hips,
pushed close by gravity and rhythm;
not grinding, but closing your eyes and trying
to translate the music into movement,
into the connection you have with your partner,
into electricity and light and heat and breath.
Slow songs, as played by a band, last a good ten minutes,
if not more. After, you peel away with a sense of loss,
but also a new connection with whoever you danced with.
It’s not romantic, really; just intimate,
like sharing a secret. Afterwards, we hugged a moment,
and smiled, and tried to remember how to breathe.
Later, she told me I was officially the best lead
she’s danced with since her grandfather. This from
someone who’s basically started to come dancing because
of her fond memories of dancing with her grandfather.
I was flabbergasted by the compliment, and my gast
doesn’t often get flabbered. Quite the pick-me-up.
I feel like I might, finally, be getting the hang
of this connection thing, and especially
these slow, sultry stylings. It’s a matter of being
comfortable in your own skin, of letting go of the
attachment involved in being intimate with someone,
of relaxing and connecting and listening.
In short, it’s neat and it’s liberating.
I’ve no doubt I’ll still approach it with some
jittering of nerves and anxiety, but trudge on
I will, into that brave new world.
We had a marathontacular weekend, involving oodles of screen space projected onto our white-smackled wall, creating a sort of matte finish to the film which is kind of artsy in a way, a subwoofer which makes your ass tingle if you’re sitting on the floor, and the fate of middle-earth. Yes, we marathoned the extended editions of all three of the Lord of the Rings movies with a digital projector and a boat-load of malted beverage, and it was glorious.
More excitingly, I stopped procrastin’ and applied to McGill for the Fall term. I also emailed my fave professors at Evergreen, and they’re going to hook me up with some fantabulous letters of recommendation. Now I just need to bust ass on scholarship apps, and my support documents, and I’ll be all set. Then it’ll just be left for me to shiver anxiously in the corner until I find out if they accept me or not. I’ve got all my eggs in this basket; and I’m in the mood to make an omelette.
I wrote a story on Saturday for the Brief Lies microfiction. I think it turned out pretty well, though I’d love some critique. You can read it here.
Only three stories this week. I hope more people will get into it as we progress, but I’m not going to twist any arms. If people want to write stories, that’s excellent and I’ll enjoy reading them. And if it comes down to just me, putting up one story every week, that will be okay too.
The topic for next week is: Cooking / Food.
As you can tell from this week’s stories, adherence to the topic is lenient, though I think it more fun to challenge yourself and try to write about the subject. Length restriction, it turns out, is fairly optional too.
Without further ado, stories!
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Two Sisters
-Emily Jindra
“I quit smoking,” she told me in passing, and I tried to bury some of my excitement. The fact that she said it nonchalantly meant that she was readying her mind for a relapse and didn’t want to get too excited, lest she fell off the wagon. I was happy, though, and have never been very skilled at hiding my emotions.
“That’s great,” was my reply, probably delivered too quickly and genuinely to mask my eagerness for her to be successful. “When did you decide to do that?”
“Well, I’ve been wanting to for awhile.” She sighed. Paused. Looked at the ground, probably hoping that the words to express what she was thinking would somehow materialize on the earth beneath her. My family has never been very skilled in the art of communication. Dialogue with each other is the dance we all fumble through awkwardly, like pubescent teenagers at their first mixer. She looked at me and I met her gaze.
“Do you ever think about death?”
I scanned my brain for a frame of reference, a precedent by which to make my response, some clue that would explain how and from where this question had come, and where she was taking me with it. My older sister and I don’t often get beyond the weather when it comes to conversation. The brain scan was inconclusive, and in a moment of resolve I decided to stop being so reserved around my own sibling.
“Yes,” I offered. “Sometimes I think that death is the only worthwhile thing there is to think about.”
She paused for another moment, trained a sharp gaze on some far-away object, and began to speak. “I was covering part of someone’s midnight shift last night. It wasn’t a full double because I only had to cover until 3 am, but I was pretty tired when I was driving home.” She stopped and once again searched the ground for the words to accurately build her recollection. “I try to take the back roads when I’m coming home that late, to avoid the drunks. I was on Oberlin Road, about to turn onto Russia when I saw it. I couldn’t make out what it was from the intersection, but the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end and that damn cop instinct we all got from Dad kicked in. I turned left instead of right, my impulses taking the reigns from my logic. First it was just a cracked side view mirror glistening like a beacon in the other lane. Then there was glass, pieces of chrome, and the crimson. God damn, to think about that awful color painting a picture all over the road…”
She shifted her gaze and looked me directly in the eye. “I hope that you never see anything like that. It isn’t at all like what you think it would be. The smell was,” but she stopped to clear her throat, and the far away object called her gaze back. Another moment and her face was emotionless again, but there was a new franticness in her eyes, something akin to desperation, the urgency of sustained hunger.
“Libby…”
“It was an accident scene, and I was the first one there. Discovered the body I guess you would say. He must have been going over 100 to smash the bike up that badly. The trail of scattered motorcycle parts stopped at the telephone pole that served as the object to prove Newton’s first law of motion. The bike was wrapped like a pretzel around the base of the pole, I had to blink several times to convince myself that this was tangible reality I was looking at, and not something from a dream. The high tension wire must have then grabbed hold of the bikeless driver, because it stood sentinel over the bifurcated corpse. It was a cold night, and the wounds were… they were steaming.”
She looked down again, but this time with closed eyes. “Everyone says that life is so short, but it’s not.” A pause. She opened her eyes and that wolf-like desperation was even stronger than before. “We spend eons squandering it away, placating ourselves with the vacuousness of daytime T.V., tax deferred annuity payments, trips to the mall and low interest rates. We hide our true feelings, argue about meaningless bullshit, wait like idiots for greatness to happen to us, wait for meaning to one day magically appear. We spend our entire long ass lives waiting, and then in an instant the wait is over and we’re lying in two pieces on the side of some stretch of abandoned road. I’m going to live, Emily, every second that I draw breath into this body.” She looked at me. “Waiting is a game for a fool.”
She held the gaze a few moments longer, and then returned to her hawk-like surveillance of the distant horizon. I didn’t turn my eyes away from her, for fear that this fragile and tender moment between us would crack like an eggshell if I dared even breathe. She stirred suddenly, got up, and walked back toward the house. My eyes were transfixed and followed her up the familiar steps, and I noticed for the first time how strong my older sister is. She has yet to light another cigarette.
————————
The Dance
-Don Ferrari
“You’re a very special person.”
“Take’s one to know one.”
There was a pause as their eyes held, – similar to the two or three times before in the last hour – only this time it wasn’t from across the room – wondering if they were together or if you were reading it right – this time you were close, as it felt it should be.
“You make me want to touch you.”
“Yeah, I know.”
The eyes remained one, both open and vulnerable. A hand moved up of its own accord and laid itself gently on a cheek, remaining motionless while 2 sets of I’s sang songs that children sing.
“Phew.”
“Bawaack – I got the little ones,” a voice called forth and they both suddenly regained note of where they were. The tavern was crowded this Sunday night, yet no gaze was upon this meeting and faces once more turned to find hand still upon cheek, – then hand held cheek moved down and met a hand in hand and the tavern had two less people.
A silent journey thru the night – pine tree crest met starlit sky and air of breath for both to see. Soon they were making fire in the cabin on the rim of the mountain, the wood smoke sweetening the fragrance of this life.
A hand held cheek once more reached out and gently took a coat from form – Fingers weaving – dancing thru a land of button – Thru this hole to the other side, and you – and you, and then a turn.
Plop on the floor and flesh met touch and eye.
This hand of mine, on myself it seems
Then both, a dance of flickering flames,
Two foreheads touched
And eyes
And nose
And tongue traced patterns new unfolding,
Then hands moved down and pulled the final bit of name to none,
And both wide-eyed souls met dancing.
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Dimmer Switch
-Ahniwa Ferrari
Cal leaned against the wall and made an effort not to squint as light danced across the room and fake smoke drifted past his eyes. He’d heard that the parties senior year were bigger and better, but he’d never imagined they included light shows and smoke machines. Still, he knew that to the people who threw these parties image was everything, and the expense was the equivalent of pennies. In any case, he hadn’t come to see fancy special effects. He had a purpose.
Liza was the kind of girl every boy in school had dreams about. She was head cheerleader and valedictorian, and had already spent a year studying in France. She’d come back with a certain savoir faire that made her seem mysterious and unattainable, and an accent that over time had faded until you could only ever hear it when she got very emotional. It was fate’s cruel joke that her locker was right next to Cal’s, but he doubted that she had ever really noticed him.
If you asked someone at school what they thought of Cal, most people would sum his character up in a single, concise word: “Who?” . He wore clothes, ate food, walked about and talked, laughed, smiled and joked with his friends; all in such a way that no-one but his friends were ever inclined to pay him any notice. How he’d ever gotten friends in this state is a mystery, though could most likely be attributed to the fact that they’d been his friends since the third grade, before he’d realized that he was destined to a life of inexorable obscurity. He went about his business like a shadow, was never called on in class, got straight ‘B’s, and avoided school activities or doing anything in which he might stand out like the plague. Even his senior picture in the yearbook had turned out fuzzy, as if he were blurred around the edges; a ghost.
Tonight was different. The dimmer switch of Cal’s personality, halfway down his entire life, was now in the full “On” position. Dressed in a suit, he had a distinct outline, a physical presence that dominated a particular space. His hair, usually a bland brown and neatly parted, seemed to change in the light, one moment wild and the next, keenly sophisticated. His eyes, usually brown, were now hazel and chestnut and cedar, mahogany and driftwood, and they sparkled as they set upon Liza Anne Hartley and never strayed.
Liza had noticed him, too. Noticed, but not recognized, despite having the same lockers for the past four years. She laughed as a friend told a joke, excused herself, and let her feet follow Cal’s gaze across the floor. As she reached him, the music changed from a loud beat to something slow and intimate. She wasn’t used to being shy, but her breath caught in her throat and she was held transfixed by Cal’s presence. It was years of natural social instinct that allowed her to ask, “Would you like to dance?”
Cal smiled, his teeth flashed pearls. His brown eyes engulfed hers, blue, and the music flooded out the world.
As he left the party, all he could think was that if he hurried, then he and his friends could have a good long party themselves before the night was over. He ripped off his tie, threw it out into the night breeze, and grinned as he remembered his response:
“Sorry, I don’t dance with cheerleaders.”
A full month later, and we’re just getting started on cleaning this all up. Another article I read compared the medical problems we are experiencing in these countries to ones we had during the US Civil War. Hopefully this can be improved, and fast, though I reserve my cynicism. As the article states, a disaster such as this, sudden and unpredicatable, makes us realize that it could have happened to any of us, without warning; reminding us that the Earth is not compassionate, and that we need to make the most of things now, not later.
How pathetic can you get? I would like to feel some compassion for the guy, but he “tried” to slash his wrists, “tried” to stab himself, and then “tried” to get hit by a train, killing ten other people and injuring hundreds. Perhaps, right along with suicide prevention hotlines, we could use a couple suicide success lines, providing helpful information about how to end your life successfully without wrecking trains in the process. Like S*P says (I tried to find the particular strip, but couldn’t), “Remember kids, it’s up the river, not across the street.”
Isn’t this what therapy is for? Or perhaps a sound talking to from the principal? Since when do kids get felony charges for drawing violent pictures? I bet you every kid between the ages of 8-12 has drawn something somewhat violent at some point or another. They’ve a morbid fascination with death, because in general it’s not a particularly real occurence. So yeah, explain to little Timmy and Billy why it’s wrong to draw pictures of stabbing and hanging your classmates, but don’t throw them in a federal, pound-me-in-the-ass prison.
Sorry, I couldn’t resist my own clever headline. Still, eleven nominations, hot damn. I guess I should go see that, and soon. I think Moore’s an idiot for taking Fahrenheit 9/11 out of the Best Documentary category to run for Best Picture. For someone who does documentarys on American society, he sure seems kind of clueless sometimes about our … tastes. I loved the movie, personally, but I was never less than absolutely sure that it would never win Best Picture. That it didn’t even get nominated is no surprise either. Besides, what’s wrong with the Best Documentary category? Perhaps Moore needs to come to terms with the fact that his movies are, in fact, documentaries (though some might argue), and that there’s no shame in that. Like he said when Bowling for Columbine won, documentarians are people that focus on the truth in fictitious times. This is important, and in my opinion, commendable, regardless of whether or not you agree with this “truth”.
When it comes to spiritual beliefs, I try not to be judgemental. It’s a fairly non-factual field, where what you feel is more important than what you can prove. I don’t know if I think that resurrection is likely, but I certainly think it’s possible, and as an idea, I kind of like it. Even so, I don’t think I would ever, ever equate the reasoning behind a belief in resurrection as “Well, it’s like a video game. You just hit the reset switch.” I just mean, c’mon! You’re Japan! You’ve got a gazillion years and eras of history, myth and folklore, and the best your youth can come up with as an analogy for resurrection is resetting their gamecube!? Only in Japan, I tell you.
Microfiction is rollin’.
The topic for this week is: dance / dancing.
No longer than 500 words, if you can help it.
Drop them at brieflies (at) gmail (dot) com.
Stories will be posted here on Saturday, Jan 29th.
Get ’em to me before then!
Happy writing!
The hiatus is back off, again.
Micro-fiction is now set to “On”.
I know there are some super-creative folks who stop by here every so often. I’d love to read some of your stories. If you’re interested, check out Brief Lies. The first batch of micro-stories will be posted this coming Saturday. Under 500 words and the topic is dance/dancing. It’s a small, super-fun creative enterprise to undertake, and oh-so-much better the more people we can get involved.
It’s no NaNoWriMo.
It’s only 500 words!
Just do it!
Life’s been flowing really smoothly lately,
such that the year is passing quickly;
and somewhat lacking in moments of stunning catharsis.
Yesterday was summer. We danced out at the Evergreen campus
in the main square while students sat outside on the grass
and forgot their studies in the sunshine, eating healthy
lunches and watching the grass think it’s spring.
Unseasonably warm.
Talking with Emily about love, and the process of saying
“I love you” for the first time to someone. We were together
for three and a half years, but almost didn’t last out
two months because she told me she loved me and I just smiled.
The summer just before Emily and I met was an odd one.
Theo and I had arrived home from France in June,
and we spent the entire summer hanging out at a dive,
writing poetry and philosophy and talking about relationships.
I also assisted with a french class on campus,
where I met a young woman named Whitney.
Perhaps it was post-France fervor,
or a misplaced, overzealous confidence
now that I was a world traveler;
I walked the neighborhoods ’til four in the morning,
I left notes and flowers, wrote poems,
stared at the stars and sighed melodramatically.
I belonged in 19th century Paris that Summer,
burning at both ends, a bottle of absinthe in one hand,
pen and paper in the other.
Whitney gave me the runaround for awhile,
I came to terms with a lot of things and mellowed out.
It ended abruptly, somehow with no loose ends
though we never talked to resolve anything.
The summer trailed into Fall, and the Russia program.
I knew Emily was going to be in the program,
because I’d talked to her sister, Anne, over the summer,
and she had mentioned it. Anne has mentioned it to Emily
as well, and told her to look for me.
From such simple chains of events are life-altering
relationships formed.
My summer rambling and roamings had left many ideas
lingering in my head. Two of which:
People say “I love you” too much, and why?
Would it be possible to emote love obviously and often
enough that ever saying the words would be redundant?
And more sensibly, to never say those words without
first being absolutely sure that they were true,
and that I could live up to the promise that they made.
A relationship isn’t a sterile lab, where one can
test the ideas one’s posited on paper alone in
the bowling alley restaurant while horse-racing
played on a 20″ television and people bet in the bar.
Even so, I think the ideas are sound.
The first, perhaps only if you’ve discussed it,
and you’re on the same page.
I’ve come to think there’s no harm in saying the words,
a thousand times an hour each day, if you mean them.
I stand by the second more strongly.
You can’t tell someone you love them
just because they want you to.
I’d like to think it was noble of me,
but who’s to say it wasn’t just needless torture?
I delayed a month before I told Emily I loved her,
and I was sure of it when I said it,
but we almost didn’t make it through the month.
We give these words such power over our happiness.
Inversely, they have such a bearing on our sadness.
It’s a good thing we have chocolate.
Swing dancers are a perverse sort. Preparing a valentine’s routine to “Tainted Love” brings us to an apogee of perversity. Conversations revolved around: pain involved with female’s donating eggs, versus people donating plasma, versus guys donating sperm, including various lewd comments about men’s donations, and the process involved; the proper way to “sexy dance”, which eventually got narrowed down to simply “drop it” (like it’s hot), except on the guys leg; the monetary possibilities involved with releasing nude swing dancing videos (here I was shocked to hear that someone had actually witnessed two people swing dancing in the buff; they mentioned that it looked “awkward”); and various references to shaking ass, bouncing bits, pimp-walks, et al. We finished the night by listened to Jack Black croon “Fuck Her Gently”, then went off for a couple drinks at a gay club. Fun night.
The one seemingly non-perverse topic we covered was theme songs from 90s’ television shows, most notably “The Fresh Prince of Belair” and “Saved by the Bell“. I guess it’s proof you’re a twenty-something if you know all the words to the FPoB themesong (though looking at the lyrics, I didn’t know the middle bit, which I guess was only in the first three episodes of the first season). But all the rest of the words, I know … I know them well. Keri mentioned to me that one of her friends has the SBtB themesong as her ring-tone, thus “showing her age”. Is it so bad to be twenty-something?
