Category: love

Categories
libraries love montreal olympia personal

All of me

In which the author goes on at length about not very much at all and yet still somehow covers a significant distance in both time and space, and most likely tries your patience in the process.

So there I was, a brand new shiny blog and the year was 2004 and I thought Oh my, how I’ll dazzle them. And I was dazzling, occasionally, though I often blathered on insubstantively, and rarely had anything of general interest to say. But this was a blog, and it was new, and other people were exploring it as well and we were all trying to figure out the right things to say in this venue, with these people reading that we didn’t know, some that we did. Who did we right to? To whom did we write? Why did we sound pretentious when we were only trying our best to use the proper grammar?

Some of us figured it out, I think. Perhaps they just faked it well, all the time feeling the same insecurities about their thoughts, about the personalness of an enterprise like a blog, as well as the publicness. Personal blogs are a paradox. LiveJournal seemed like a solution: personal blogs that were less public. It was all the same in the end, though. Who was it for?

I fell off the blog-wagon entirely. Multiple times. Mostly onto my head. Often I thought to myself, There are probably at least several people in the world who do not have a blog, and I thought that perhaps I could be one of them. But I wanted to blog. I really did. Maybe it would be more true to say that I wanted to write; one is strictly the other, but not when you reverse the two.

Up to speed. Right. The part where I talk about me. What I’m doing. How I feel about what I’m doing. How I feel about what I’m feeling. Good writers take their lives and turn them into stories. I guess they don’t even have to write them down, technically. Some people are just good story-tellers. I’m a decent writer, sure … but stories? Who knows.

So, anyway … I was living in Ohio, right, in Oberlin, and trying to pretend to like Ohio when really I never felt like I fit in. Getting work was hard and I didn’t know anyone except for my girlfriend and her family and for some reason, having left the comfortable womb of college and armed with a BA, I had no idea how to make new friends. I tried working in restaurants, but Ohio had this ridiculous server wage of like $2.50 an hour and the place I managed to find work was strange, poorly managed, and fairly unpopular. The only perk was that I got lots of free scones.

I got my first library job in Ohio, due to this horrible restaurant business and my desperate need to do something different. It was small, part-time, low on responsibility and fairly cookie-cutter. Alright, so it was basically retail work, but it was in a library after all and I thought that was pretty damn cool. Cool enough, at least, so that when a full-time library job opened up in the neighboring town I took it and never looked back.

By 2006 I was living back in Washington and had experience working in no less than … four libraries. Good for me, sure, but I’m getting off track with the library thing.

By 2006 I was living back in Washington. I had ended a three-and-a-half year relationship. We had ended. I had no more reason to be in Ohio after that, and fled back to Washington, moved in with two guys, and spent some serious time being confused by the female gender. Breaking up is liberating. It’s heart-breaking, and it sucks, and you feel like you’ve wasted time and that you’ll never find the person that is right for you, but all the same it’s liberating and at times you feel like your entire future is wide open and you can do anything at all that might strike your fancy. The problem is that my fancy was inordinately dull.

That’s not true. My fancy was pretty … well, eccentric. My actions were what was mostly mundane, but that makes all the difference. All the same, I went through a series of … relationships involving poor judgment on my part, and some that involved fine judgment but just didn’t work out anyway. I dated people much older than I was, much younger, and more or less in between. I never did become the slut I always kind of wanted to be, but then it’s so far against my nature that the chances of it ever happening, despite the earnestness of my desire for it, was always slim at best. All the better.

By 2006 I was not only living back in Washington, but I was living on my own for the first time and I was absolutely loving it. I was dancing, I was feeling attractive, I was accepted to graduate school at a major Canadian university to get a Masters degree in Library and Information Studies (i.e. I was goin’ to library school), and I had successfully broken enough hearts to feel as though maybe I’d burned off all the good karma I’d earned in my life and could finally start the life of crime I’d always dreamed of. Of which I’d always dreamed. Fucking prepositions.

By 2006 I was living in Washington and I joined a softball team where I was the pitcher and despite my best intentions I fell in love with a girl I’d just met, because who was I to fall in love with a girl when I was about to mosey off to Montreal and become an actual, factual librarian, and who was she to fall in love with me when she knew I was about to do such a thing anyway; but there we were, regardless, and by July of 2006 I was living in Washington and in love and ready to mosey off to Montreal for library school and I found myself proposing one quiet evening as we lay in bed with all the sincerity and love I ever knew I could possibly feel.

By September of 2006 I was loading up my brand new Scion breadbasket with all of my worldly possessions and moseying off to Montreal as I knew I would, though at this point it felt much less like a mosey and much more like a very important and serious trip that I had to take before I would be able to move on with my life in any meaningful way. For clarification, saying mosey is much more light-hearted than saying a very important and serious trip that I had to take before I would be able to move on with my life in any meaningful way. And so you can only imagine how it actually felt at the time.

This was no breakup. It wasn’t liberating, at least not in the same way, nor did I want it to be. It was a new adventure and sure, exciting, but also kind of “meh” because I’d found this great thing, this person I’d been looking for my entire life, and yet somehow almost as soon as we met I had to say “All right, well … see ya later, then,” and go trekking off into another country and for a two-year commitment, no less. Yeah, sure, Montreal is magical. I don’t say it with disdain, just the simple knowledge that yeah, it’s true but it doesn’t matter so much to me anymore as maybe it did right at first.

Since first arriving in Montreal I’ve gone through the adventure stage. It’s well over. It was fun and all, a new city with new customs, setting up new bank accounts was fun and getting a cell phone was fun and finding places to eat and buy things and going into bookstores with books in French was all fun and good and new; of course school was a big deal, too, being back in it after so long and wondering what everyone would be like and finding out that while library students are exceptional people, and interesting to a one, that a feeling of impermanence even early on pervaded everything and I felt nearly incapable of making friends as I once had back in college. We were all adults now, our lives completely underway, and it seemed like we were so much pickier about who got in and how far. Maybe it’s all just perspective. I don’t know.

Montreal is almost over, now. Library school almost done, and this mosey/muchlongerdescription thing that I’ve done is ready to buy its one-way ticket back west and bury itself beneath the damp rainforest peat of the Pacific Northwest, never to mosey again. At least, not alone and not for such a long time. Some places feel like home, after all, for whatever reason. Home is the place where your heart resonates and where you can feel the intent of everything around you: every raindrop, every leaf that falls from every tree, every bite of food and every dance is something that adds into the story of you in that place. That home.

Montreal is almost over now and I’m pulled so strongly to the west that concentration is difficult and I feel like a climber who has gotten himself onto a difficult ledge after a long climb and though he only has a little ways left to the peak he’s already spent so much energy that he doesn’t know how he’ll ever finish. Even though he can see the peak, now, part of him doubts that he’ll ever really reach it; he’s climbed so long and hard already, and maybe he never even really wanted to go climbing in the first place.

But Montreal is almost over now and with everything inside me that is capable of being certain I know that it will end, that I will reach that peak, that I’ll turn my eyes west and then I’ll turn my body west. I’ll find solace in the cool Pacific winds and in the warmth of this love that has sustained me so well for so long and that finally, soon, I will be able to devote the attention to that it deserves.

Montreal is almost over now and most of the time I believe that we will, all of us that have been involved in this story in some way or another, be better for it having happened. In the meantime I’ll occupy myself with the little stories, the day-to-day accomplishments between now and then, and the soft moments of sweetness that rest even within these, the most frenetic of days.

Categories
love personal poetic

All The Things We Forget To Say

All the things we forget to say
fall between the cushions
hide nestled in lint and loose change
grow warm and complacent and dusty
and we never think to clean them off and speak them.

All the things we forget to say
fall somewhere within the distance
between here and there
shimmy loose in the abstraction of cords and wires
and we never think to search them out and speak them.

All the things we forget to say
subside quietly into the sea
sink gracefully through the currents
come to rest at the bottom of oceans
where we dive for them and find
all the things we thought to say
and all the things worth saying.

04 Jan 2008 — Ahniwa Ferrari

Categories
internet love poetic

A Softer Snippet

Joey Comeau, who writes A Softer World and who lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia (a place I hear good things about constantly), also has a blog, which is called Overqualified, and which is beautiful and funny and often meaningful. He has also just released a new book of short stories called It’s too late to say I’m sorry.

Here’s a snippet from his most recent OQ entry:

Late at night, drunk, our language changes. Our adjectives shift, becoming stronger, more romantic. Our verbs become more clear, more specific, occasionally more desperate. They change even when we’re talking of simple things, like eating an apple if you will excuse my example. In the day we simply eat an apple, but late at night, while my wife sleeps, I tell another woman how I am piercing the apple with my teeth. Then I am cutting flesh from it and laying those pieces on my tongue. I am imagining that its flavors are hers.

Categories
love personal poetic

Disparation

As if the things that bothered us
really mattered anyhow.

We were clenched so tight,
knuckles white,
someone had snuck through in the night and
monkey-wrenched our stomachs.

Why’d the blue skies turn gray, anyway?

It’s easy to play like
there’s no such place as far away,
like distance can drop
like a pin when you call.

Even though the voices penetrate
sometimes the closeness gets lost in the signal.

But it’s not the far away that matters,
but the mutters in our memories,
the murk of missing you that
blends your face into the trees of Mont-Royal.

And there was freezing rain, too.

I came back, expectations akimbo and
high as a kite flown over at least
eight states and two provinces but
not dinged up in the least.

Expectations perform tricks in the slightest breeze.

Fuck freezing rain, anyway.

It nearly took until July before
a heat wave melted those thin ice blankets,
those preconcexpectations that,
like veils,
obfuscate everything.

As if the things that mattered
ever really bothered us anyhow.

At least

I can say that now.

06 July 2007 –Ahniwa Ferrari

Categories
love personal

Limber

It seems to me that, in order to get by gracefully in this world, the most important skill that one can possess is being able to adapt easily to change. There is no stasis in this world. As much as we might feel it, there is actually little entropy for anyone who lives life with, at the least, two legs and eyes in the front of their heads. Even small changes: a friend gets a haircut, your poker night switches houses, you start going to bed at 11:30 instead of 11:00; even these little things can have a great effect on your life, and if you’re not adaptive, not willing to say to yourself “Okay, this is how this is now and I’ll just have to get used to it,” then even these tiny details can be grating, difficult, and ultimately destructive.

And when it comes to relationships, change is the dealbreaker. Or the dealmaker. My brother had to make a fairly large change before he could marry the woman he loved, but he did so, and gracefully, and so was able to move on with a happy and fruitful existence. My own relationship has gone through so much change of late — engagement, my moving to Montreal, my coming back from Montreal, building rooms, visiting friends, and starting new jobs — that sometimes I feel like I hardly even know which way is up anymore, and at times I just wish it would all stop. Where is that moment when, returning from Montreal, I finally get to rest, bask for a moment in my own happiness and fulfillment, and take a nice, long, deep breath? Where my deep, deep relaxation? As I’ve sought it out, I’ve come to a rather painful realization concerning my ability to adapt well to changes.

I don’t.

How did that happen? I always thought I did great. I always thought that I was the zen master of living a simple and uncomplicated life where the events of the world did not have the ability to affect my tranquil and positive state of being. Evidently, not so much.

But I’ve still got hope for myself. The next fourteen – sixteen months will provide me more than enough opportunities to, hopefully, get over myself and, in doing so, find myself again. I sound like a fortune cookie, even to me, but I know that there’s that core there, somewhere inside me, that remains unflappable. Perhaps I’ll find it. Alternately, maybe I’ll come to realize that being unflappable? Not so great after all. It’s the people that flap, that are sensitive and emotional, that live with great passion, that burn and seethe and cry out in the night their joys and heartaches. I’ve envied these people for years, but somehow I just don’t think that it’s the way I was built to be.

Either way: change? Yeah, I’m gonna learn how to deal with it and maybe, one day, to even enjoy it.

Categories
libraries love personal

Je devins une biblioteque fabuleuse

No matter the facts of our past, it seems that every memory carries a hint of melancholy. What are these days we’ve put behind us, what bonds were forged then broken? What then do we become, we strongly forged yet pulled asunder chains? Are these chinks in our armor, then, from gnashing together, from pulling apart, from trying to find that place where we could link together like a magic trick?

When it comes to separation, I’ve never been very proficient. One lucid moment of deja vu and deep inside I’m sure that all of this happens simultaneously. But we organize, we pull things apart here, put them together over there, arrange them by genre and color and place, until the synchronicity is all gone and we’re left with neat little piles, each one tagged and indexed and we wonder why we feel sad when we look upon our great achievement.

It’s natural, maybe inevitable. There’s no reconciliation. Once we’ve made our piles, we’ll never again find their homes, never again be able to separate them out and recreate the synchronous, chaotic jumble that we somehow tumbled out of.

It’s okay. We’ve arranged ourselves into vast libraries, now we get to be librarians: we provide access to some, deny it to others; we give out parts of ourselves and then, almost inevitably, demand them back; we reclassify certain parts as our standards change; and maybe, if we’re very lucky, we find a quiet moment when, alone and lost in the stacks, rustling through pages of memories, we rediscover some beautiful treasure that we had long since forgotten.

Maybe that’s what makes it all worthwhile.

That is over. Now I know how to salute beauty.
– A. Rimbaud (tr. by Louise Varèse)

Categories
libraries love montreal personal tech

Unconnected ramblings…

pistedusinge

With a title like that, I’m sure you’re excited to read on.

My Sony Dream System ™ arrived, and as I had feared it doesn’t have a digital audio connection. Also, it has an integrated dvd-player. WTF!? Okay, so I ordered it and I should have known. But I had thought to myself “NO WAY does a decent receiver in this day and age NOT have an optical port!” Well, I guess you showed me, Sony. FutureShop, for their part, were annoyingly vague in their description of available ports, and had no pictures on the website of the back of the receiver, which you’d think would be the most informative part to show prospective buyers. I thought that true DTS support required a digital audio connection, but somehow mine is still working through my handy red and white connectors. Perhaps my presumptions all this time have been wrong, in which case I blame Theo. Also possible is that the receiver is faking the DTS connection, but I don’t know how that would work exactly, either. In any case, my apartment is tiny and it actually sounds pretty good, so I decided to keep the damn thing, though I’ll try to sell it before I move for the summer. I’ll take a loss, that’s fine. No optical as a temporary situation is okay, but in the long term I simply can’t exist in such a state of squalor.

Did I mention that FutureShop has listed, as a recommended accessory, an optical cable? That’s just tricky, that is. The bastards. Oh yeah, and as a dvd-player it doesn’t have an hdmi port, which seems ludicrous what with television going digital and all. Here’s a link to the system, if you wanna see.

Some guy in Lawrence, Kansas wrote an op-ed piece essentially positing that libraries are worthless and obsolete. The write-up itself is incredibly annoying, but the responses to it have been really interesting. I forwarded the story on to my classmates, since it’s the kind of thing we’re going to have to stand up against soon enough, and we may as well start now. To briefly outline my description here, libraries are NOT worthless and are, in fact, AWESOME. These are facts, and therefore undeniable. So there, Mr Hirschey of Lawrence. I wrote a more eloquent proclamation (if you can imagine such a thing), in the comments proper. I encourage everyone to go and have their say. Lawrence could be a masthead for the library advocacy movement, if enough people took notice. Michael Stephens and the Librarian in Black have both posted verbose rebuttals, which is a start, but I think we really need to steamroll this issue. Their posts are worth reading, in any case.

My trip to New Jersey to see Abigail was fantastic. It was a slice of heaven, spread over a little less than two days, and that’s even considering the fact that I was suffering from some flu symptoms. Ain’t no disease was gonna get me down! The wedding itself was very sweet, and got us talking about how we want to do OUR wedding, which was fun in itself. If you’d told me a year ago that I would be making wedding plans in Jersey, I’d have given you my quizzical eyebrow look. Now it makes all the sense in the world, except for the Jersey part, of course. We’re looking at July of 2008, which will be right around our second anniversary, so it seems like a good time. Mark your calendars, etc.

I just finished watching season 4 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which took me all of … oh, three days to get through. Maybe two. Much to my homework’s chagrin. But hey, once you start watching Buffy, it’s all over. I was powerless to resist its spell. It’s my first time through the series, as well, and a journey I began with Tim back when we were living together in Olympia. I’ll get through the rest of the series before the end of the year, and will finally be able to call myself a fulfilled and cultured individual. Until then, I have seasons 1 and 2 of Deadwood to keep me occupied, as well as, oh yeah, schoolwork.

Go figure. On one last note, the Pharmaprix up the street has Orangina for sale for $1.99 CAD per 1.75L, which makes me the happiest and orangest guy in the province, at least until Oct 13th or so, or until they run out. I bought four, which wasn’t nearly enough, but a guy only has so many arms. Until later, then: stake em if you got em.

Categories
love personal school

Comme les Quebecois

Susann from McGill's GSLIS called yesterday about some funding they found for me.  I called her back this morning, and in the interim dreamed that perhaps they had seen my library experience and wanted me to do some sort of work study bit in the library there, since I was obviously so well-qualified.  It's not work, sadly, but it is an international tuition waiver, which means that, for my first term at least, I'll be paying Quebec tuition rates instead of international rates.  She told me that it's a $3500 difference for the term, and I'm definately not gonna quibble about that.  I do wish more people would just call me up, out of the blue, and offer me money, though.  It's a disappointingly rare occurence.

I'm getting more revved up, and more scared, about the impending departure.  In the meantime, I've tried to make the most of being where I am and particularly in taking advantage of the people I love who are nearby.  I went to Friday Harbor over the Fourth of July to see Cree and Benj and Gypsy, and to meet Nomi and Anne and Renee and little Aye-la.  It was unaccountably good to see these, my friends, my best friends, of gradeschool through highschool and beyond, doing well, living happily, in good relationships and making healthy choices.  All of them went through rough patches, during which I didn't speak with them much if at all.  We all have to go through things on our own sometimes, and nothing I could have done would have helped, I think.  It's great to have them back, though, even if I am leaving.

This past weekend I went to Port Townsend, where I was born and where my mom lives still.  It was a little hectic but a lot of fun in a house packed with my mom, Abby and myself, Coyote and Paul, and even Kas and Lavinia.  Kas is another best friend from highschool, my acting buddy, and has been living in Holland with his musician wife.  Last time I saw him was four years ago when I graduated from Evergreen, and our visits always seem to be for too brief a time.  Brief or no, at a visit every four years, I'll take what I can get.  Seeing my sister and mom is always nice, of course, and being in Port Townsend is ever-relaxing, even when the time spent is busy and occupied.  Abby got along well with everyone, and vice versa, which is nice since I imagine her being in the picture for a long, long time.  I wasn't worried, but it's still nice when these little details work themselves out.  

She'll meet my dad this weekend, which should be interesting.  I'm sure they'll get along, even if my dad's a little strange.  Still, I'm a lot strange, and she seems to like me okay, so that shouldn't be too much of an issue.  I've yet to meet her parents, though I imagine I will before I head east.  So far, she's been a gem about meeting my family, and I'd be lying if I didn't admit to being a little nervous about meeting hers.  It's not that I've heard horror stories, or have any reason to be concerned, except she's been so good and my family likes her enough that I want to be able to return the favor.

August 15th.  Now less than two weeks away.  Sweet zombie jesus … 

… please keep my ailing sanity in your prayers as I get ready to leave behind the city and friends and woman that I love to pursue some silly graduate school … thing.  It'll all be worth it, right? 

Categories
love personal

Things that are happening, an update.

Quick updates on the life of the Wa (that's me).

All my ducks are in a row to go to McGill.  I got my CAQ (documentation) and my funds (loans), and I put in my notice at the two places that need it (my apartment and my job).  I've been telling people I'm leaving August 15th, which is indeed the plan.  I'm scared to death.

Part of the reason I'm scared is that I've fallen in love.  Really, really more in love than I was even a little bit prepared for, and now I have no idea what to do.  I've got some big decisions to make, and some serious conversations ahead.  And some tears to shed, I'm certain.  Love has the very strangest timing.

Theo's been talking about revitalizing La Casa, which I guess I'll believe when it happens.  He's still sitting on two scripts, and after that … well, honestly, I'd really love to get back to writing comics on a regular basis.  I've had some good ideas while we've been on hiatus.  If we do get back to it, I'd like to try a different format.  The 2×2 panel at 600×800 now seems a little too cumbersome, and I wonder why we ever chose it.  My super-secret goal is to be nominated for best new webcomic for next year's WCCA.  We've also thrown around the idea of starting a webcomics-review site.  We've been thinking about it for about a year now, and mostly because Eric doesn't update as often as he used to and Fleen is more-or-less completely uninteresting to us.

I've been playing softball over the summer, and our team has won one game out of about … ten.  We can't even maintain a perfect losing record.  We were on track to win a second game, but then the bastards came back in the bottom of the 7th and kicked our asses.  It was hell of fun, though.

Yesterday it hit 101 degrees.  That's not hell of fun at all.  That's just hell. 

Categories
art cinema love

Everyday

Everyday is a sweet, romantic, predictable animation that simply made me smile, so I thought I'd share.  I'm sure it helps that I've been in a wacky, romantic mood lately.

(via lore) 

Categories
love personal

absinthe makes the heart grow fonder

I found out via email this morning that Emily is getting married. I’m not sure why the news affected me as much as it has, but my stomach immediately tightened up. I decided to take a half-day off work. I’ll go home and relax, drink wine and watch the rain fall.

Every time I’ve thought about her in the last two years I’ve had this same feeling.

Anger. Regret. Confusion. Longing.

I don’t think of myself as someone who lives in the past. Perhaps packing up my car and moving 3000 miles away wasn’t as good a closure as I thought it would be. I still think it was the only thing I could do at the time that made any sense.

Perhaps I’m just bitter. Of the two relationships I’ve fully committed myself to as an adult, one ripped me apart in France and the other has, one way or another, been quietly gnawing at me now for nearly two years. I don’t know why I haven’t just let go and moved on. I’ve tried and it hasn’t worked, and I don’t know why that is either.

Sometimes trying to be self-aware is such a nuisance. And yet I remain a romantic, despite myself.

Categories
love personal

re: The Way I See It #76

Concerning the quote two posts ago.

I think part of the reason I like that quote is because I once tried to explain the exact same thing in a completely different way when I was with Emily, and I don’t know if I ever got it to make sense. In visual terms, my explanation was something like this.

Alone, | is a solid, balanced existence. If you’re alone and you’re / or , you’re bound to fall or tip over at any moment. You can’t support yourself. I think it’s important to be able to be | when by yourself (i.e. relationship independant).

/ and people tend to thrive in relationships because they can lean on each other. The problem is that they require that support. Rather than it being a bonus it’s a neccesity. | people have a very difficult time leaning, but I think it’s important that they learn to depend on someone outside themselves in some respects.

Having a relationship that is || is all well and good, but even || does not create as strong a base as /. The / foundation is stronger, both people are showing that they are committed to making it work.

Even here I muddle this explanation, which is exactly why I liked that quote so much. It says very simply what I just botched in a very complicated fashion. People should learn to stand up on their own, but just as important is that they learn to commit.

Categories
love

The Way I See It #76

Every once in awhile, I like the quotes that Starbucks puts on its cups.  Aside from the McSweeney’s “Rejected Submissions” entries, I think this is my favorite to date.

“The irony of commitment is that it’s deeply liberating – in work, in play, in love.  The act frees you from the tyranny of your internal critic, from the fear that likes to dress itself up and parade around as rational hesitation.  To commit is to remove your head as the barrier to your life.”

— Anne Morriss
Starbucks customer from New York City.  She describes herself as an “organization builder, restless american citizen, optimist.”

Categories
dance love personal poetic

The weekend could be summarized in one haiku.

Even two days later,
my bed still smells like beauty.
My couch smells like me.

Aside from the fact that I shouldn’t be “getting with” anyone right now, what all with leaving the city, state, and country in about five months, there are certain people that I REALLY should not be getting with, for other very valid reasons.

Of course, those are exactly the people that I am insanely attracted to. Grrrrr. 

So Friday night my friend Amy and I drove down to Portland to go to the Portland Lindy Exchange. First off, the Crystal Ballroom is mad cool. The floor is air-cushioned, which offers the effect something like that of dancing on a very firm trampoline. On the faster songs it was fun sometimes to stand back and watch the floor ripple. Aside from the visual effect, it was a dream to dance on, considering how much give the floor offers, and thus takes off your joints. I danced with people from New England, Chicago, and a flurry of other places. Had I known that there was an after-dance (from midnight to 6am) I might have geared up the energy to go, but as it was I was tired, and we left Portland around midnight:thirty.

Amy and I wandered around Olympia pretty much all day on Saturday, which was really nice. We had breakfast at Darby’s and later went to Chopsticks for Bubble Tea and green tea icecream. Seperately, good. Together, entirely too much sweet. It seemed like EVERYWHERE we went, every store and shop and restaurant was playing swing music. It was the soundtrack for our day, and all I wanted to do was dance. It’s hard to get a shy girl to dance with you in an antique store, though, where things might be broken.

Saturday evening I dropped Amy off at her house on the way to Seattle, and arrived at a party around 10:30 in the p.m. for some jiggy conversational action. The girl throwing the party is a friend of my sister’s, and used to be my babysitter. She’s a Cornish grad, so she knows all sorts of interesting artists and dancers and such types, which made for a fun crowd. Her downstairs neighbors are a band, so they came up and played, and there were a few dance performances at points that were fun to watch. We left after a couple hours and I crashed at my sister’s place.

Sunday we went to breakfast at Mae’s and then went ice skating. It’s the second time in my life I’ve ever been ice skating, and though it was hella fun, I think I prefer roller-skating, honestly. Plus, I had to pay constant attention to not run over little kids. Which is true when rollerskating as well, but seems more dangerous when you have sharp metal objects attached to your locomotive shanks. I guess, for the kid, it would be the difference between a crushing death or a slashing/stabby death. Hmmmmm…

Later, we went and watched “Night Watch” at the Neptune Theater in the U. District. I liked it a lot, and I’m interested now to see how the rest of the trilogy plays out. It’s nice to see good films coming out of Russia, and it was fun to listen to Russian. As a Russian film MADE to be seen by an American audience, they got to plan the subtitles out ahead of time (rather than just tack them on as an afterthought), and therefore had some really neat subtitle effects that I’ve never seen used before. Some characters practically gathered their energy and shouted the subtitle at the other character, in a very illustrative fashion (giant subtitle lashing across the screen), while some dripped, and some glowed, and while most were white, some were red or orange. In a word, it was neat to see subtitles included as an actual part of the artistic process.

I got home around midnight on Sunday, and went straight to work Monday morning. My bed smells like dangerous dreams, and I’m constantly torn between throwing myself into them or holding them at arm’s length. It’s all completely ridiculous.

Just like anything worthwhile.

.

Categories
love poetic webcomics

Questionably Content

Everything changed today.
You’d think I was overreacting,
that the sky had fallen,
or that I’d kissed a chicken.

The sea isn’t boiling,
not yet, but even so,

everything changed today.

Tomorrow,
it will likely change again.

Categories
love personal poetic

When haiku have kids.

I don’t know what the plural of “haiku” is, but I refuse to say “haikus”. I imagine, like geese, it could be “heeku”, or perhaps “haaku” or “hiiku” (but absolutely not “hooku”, which is obviously the plural for “hookah”). However, I’m going to go with the “moose” methodology instead, which remains “moose”, and which stands as a testiment, when combined with “goose” and its plural, that the English language really doesn’t put forth a whole lot of effort towards being consistent. And that’s exactly why I love it.

In any case, here are two haiku that I wrote. Afterwards, I decided I didn’t like them in haiku form (it was actually their choice and not mine), so from their loins sprung (that’s a really ghastly image) the poem underneath. Actually, haiku are hermaphroditic, but will rarely spawn anything but more haiku when left on their own. When two haiku spawn together, you’ll often get a poem. Haiku orgies often result in odes, ballads, sonnets in iambic pentameter, and children’s songs. Don’t look at me. It’s the natural order! Without further ado …

one

it’s not too late yet;
i want conversation past midnight and
to fulfill your smile’s promise.

two

you smile like moonlight.
fingers brush fingers.
your cheek is smudged with stardust.

it’s not too late yet

it’s not too late yet;
minds wrapped around distant angles,
long exposures drawn out and
sometimes so long that I become aware
of nothing but your presence beside me.

it’s not too late yet;
stepping back into the night’s
artificial flicker.
stars make wishes on our cities.
we hazard fingertips brushing,
too hot to be a holy palmer’s kiss.

it’s not too late yet;
as you smile like moonlight,
your cheek is smudged with stardust
and there’s so much time left to go.

it’s not too late yet;
i want conversation past midnight,
and to fulfill your smile’s promise.

Categories
cinema love personal

For lack of a suitable thought …

Shazzam! It’s a ramble!
I’m here to gamble,
my pocket pair is gonna
leave you in a shamble.

…

so on and so forth.

Man, what a glorious life as a rapper I could have had, passed up for the off chance that I might become a librarian one day.

Lately, I’ve been falling in love a lot.

A week ago, I fell in love with Stephanie. You may recognize her from MirrorMask.

Since then, I’ve fallen for Emily Mortimer, from Dear Frankie.

This is to say nothing of my past loves.

And heck, any of them are certainly still welcome to call me.

Three cheers for this totally pointless post!

Categories
love personal

Clanging in the New Year …

… because “ringing” just wouldn’t cover it, and I’m not entirely sure what it’s supposed to mean, anyway. I have never, intentionally, “rung” a year, much less a new one. I find that, once they age a bit, their tone improves, so why ring them when they’re all new and shiny? Let them tarnish a bit, collect some wisdom and experience, and then RING THE SHIT OUTTA THEM!!! Evidently, I will clang a new year, which conjures up strange images in my head, and ever stranger sounds. Who knows what that’s all about.

This is a newsy sorta update, and I may be prone to ramble, as I do when I haven’t updated for some time. If you’re looking for something interesting to read, move on. If you find ME interesting, then feel free to stick around, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Christmas, for me, is about tradition. Every year builds on the memories of previous years to help make each year a little more special. The cool thing about traditions for me is that the longer you do them, the cooler they get. I don’t ascribe to religious or spiritual traditions, just the ones that I have chosen to personally adopt into my life, and my favorite of these is probably spending Christmas in Port Townsend. I spent a few with my dad, from time to time, but without siblings around, and lights downtown, and being able to sit on a street-corner and watch random people walking by in holiday bliss, it was never quite the same.

I went to Port Townsend this year for Christmas, to spend time with my mom, my step-dad, and my sister. Coyote had been living in New Hampshire, and just moved back, so this was the first time in awhile we’ve been able to share a Christmas. Holidays in PT are always relaxing, and I get a lot of reading done, sans distractions, which is very nice. I was up there for about five days, blissed out on good food and pleasant company, lots of walks, and red cheeks from the brisk wind blowing off the Sound.

After Christmas, I recuperated a few days in Olympia, then drove down with Theo and Rachel on the last day of the year to celebrate with Jason and Amy in Portland. I have mixed feelings about New Year celebrations. It seems to me like nothing aside from a blatant excuse for EVERYONE to get drunk. I understand the idea of making new beginnings, though I try to be aware, and make beginnings, whenever they need to be made, rather than waiting for a number on the calendar to change. Which isn’t to say that the holiday itself wasn’t charged with revolution.

The first day of the year, I broke a sweet girl’s heart. On the one hand, it’s a horrible way to start a year. On the other, I did it because I felt it was the right decision, and the resolve and courage it took to follow through are not a bad way to make a new beginning. The idea, now, is to maintain this “single” existence, partially because I really do want to work devotedly on making a better me, and also to avoid hurting any more wonderful people. Eight months. It seems so short and so long, and it’s all still a mystery and a dream, an idea that may or may not come to pass, though I declare that something will happen in that time, even if it be not what is planned.

Anyway, I toast you readers, in this New Year.

May it, indeed, rock your faces off.

CLANG!

Categories
love personal

In the arms of winter’s debauchery

Perhaps today is the day I finally break my brain trying to think up something topical and interesting to blog about. Perhaps my brain will actually fry, or implode, or create a small but powerful black hole into which all the world’s matter will be sucked. I suppose I could just talk about crocodiles, and their factual or fictual tendancy to eat monkeys. I could even talk about gavials a bit, and try to reason out why our illustrious Archcroc V dislikes them so. Like a coward, I’m sure I could go on for at least two more paragraphs, in a mildly amusing fashion, about not knowing what to blog about. I’ve always enjoyed the irony in that, simple though it is, and if you go back through my archives you’ll notice that I’ve done it at least three or four times. Nothing like beating a joke to death until it’s just … not … funny … anymore.

In the end, and since I have to finish this up in the next five minutes or so, I think I’ll keep this factual and sentimental.

Yesterday I was sick and I called in to work. Then it snowed. So I got a snow-day, with hot cocoa. How fucking rocking is that! Right? Then I got to have coffee and lunch with my sister, who just moved back to Washington. Then I cleaned my apartment, watched a movie, and got my cuddle on.

I’m a snuggler, big-time. It’s ridiculous. This last week I’ve been very happy to have someone, who I think is pretty damned awesome, to snuggle with. And on a snow-day … well you just can’t get more ideal than that.

I wish you all the warmest and happiest moments of snuggle, as this cold weather heightens and persists. Our snow didn’t stick, ’tis sad, but we’ll surely get more as winter sheds its timidity and advances upon us with a libertine smile on its lips.

Categories
love personal

I wish you a merry turkey.

I’m sleepy and happy today. It’s an obvious, tell-tale condition, and I guess I’m just not that good at keeping secrets. But I’ll be damned if I’m not masterful at vague insinuation. I should take up a career as an professional insinuator, confusing situations to the point of hopeless illogic. What can I say, it’s what I do.

If the sun were made of marmalade …

… I’d need a much, much bigger slice of toast.

As it is, I feel like butter spread over just enough bread.

I was forced to post or forfeit my life, so if this rambling makes no sense to you, blame it on my antagonists.

—

Five years ago and change –
and if you were here now …
things would not be as they are.

I wouldn’t change a thing.

I wouldn’t change us. Not a bit.

Well, maybe that time you got killed by orcs.
Sorry about that.

—

I bought a typewriter on ebay the other day. It’s not just any typewriter, either. It’s a Hermes 3000 and it’s going to completely change the way I type my writing. Watch out, world!

No, but I got it specifically for writing letters. There’s something about the way a letter written on a typewriter looks. It’s classy without being impersonal, eccentric without being trendy-eccentric. To be honest, there is one letter that I need to write, to release, to send out into the world. And it couldn’t be done, honestly – it couldn’t be done at all if it weren’t done on a Hermes typewriter. So, there you have it. I’m sentimental. I cry during movies, I’m moved by music, and I buy typewriters to send letters that are long overdue.

I don’t know what good may come of it. Perhaps none. It may, before it has even begin, be a futile gesture. Nonetheless, I will persist. Sentiment beats reason, everytime.

—

I wish you all the very best of Thanksgivings. I met a lovely girl, who charms the hell out of me. So much for being vague. 🙂

Oh, and just so the universe knows:

I make the best blackberry pie, ever. People WILL attest to this, perhaps even in writing and not at gunpoint. Just wait, I’ll post pictures as proof. My lattice-top crust is awe-inspiring!