Dreampepper

Today's best telescopes could see the amount of light produced by Tokyo from as far away as the Kuiper Belt.

I put the idea down, feeling like a fool as I walked down the path, dismissed from the large green house, and stepped under the arch of the overgrown hedge, a thick, living wall as solid as any made of stone. From the street, the house is hidden by its branches, as invisible as the steady burst of static that clouds my brain every time I approach it or even pass it, as I usually do, a solid block away. Something deep in my chest thudded as I walked under its shadow, wounded, let down by my own betrayal, that I had even approached that door. Why do I do these things? Why do I try? I was an echo of the spring, drained of everything worthwhile, too tired with myelf to even be angry. All that was left was to walk away.

Seattle was nice to visit. I rearranged all the furniture in Aleks' apartment while he was at work and made a bed out of pillows in front of the fire. I enjoyed the concert, then the after concert concert, and two different movies, all of them good in distinct and lovely ways. I introduced friends to friends, met new friends of friends, spent some time chatting with Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaimen, who were gracious and sweet, had a cup of drinking chocolate while I wandered Pike Place Market, and Tony bought me a steak. It was like a teeny, tiny vacation. I no longer have any comforting intimacy there, nothing deep, it's not my home, I still couldn't sleep, but it was enough to feel okay on the surface, just to navigate a handful of days without any struggle.

Tonight is the first night of Passover.

I am meant to be taking photos today for an art exhibition in New York. I am meant to be doing laundry, looking for work, applying to be an enforcer, editing my belongings, putting more of them for sale, and processing pictures from Seattle and yesterday's shoot with Shane's band at the Cultch. I am meant to be showered and dressed and fed. Together, sharp, useful, active. Defined. There are things to do, tasks to conquer, opportunities waiting. Instead it is as if the air itself has thickened until even breathing is an effort. I am suffocating, a captive unhappily complicit with my aching inactivity.

It has been a week of silence. Out of respect for my love, for his dismissal, his vanishing outburst, I did not call for days, even when the wet beauty of thunder and lightning was too much to bear, when it cracked me as open as it did the sky. Even when I felt that all I could possibly desire was his voice kindly speaking my name. Instead I bruised my fingers knocking at his door. Small gifts in my pockets, a snub nosed bottle of imported ginger ale, a tiny square of rich, hard to find chocolate, my hand raised once more to the wood, knuckles swollen into a pale rainbow of purple and blue from repetition, (less painful than the quiet), but to no answer, even when his vehicle was parked in the drive. At home the phone would ring in a quick, beautiful burst, but the numbers were wrong - the wrong people, the wrong names. Outside would be footsteps, car doors slamming, false hope leaping up in my heart like flames. Every night, sleep became farther away.

When Friday slid into Saturday, still without word, it became obvious that the relationship had been abandoned, released into the wild without even the courtesy of goodbye.

What's this scar, I ask, a finger touching his body somewhere the skin is pale and slightly warped, maybe damp, warm from a shower. A crowbar, he says, or a computer case. Something fell, a knife slipped, there is a different explanation for every twisted mark. The disfiguring slice that runs up his thumb, the white curl that runs around the top of his right foot. I am collecting each story, building a narrative, assembling a picture of his body through history. Actions, reactions. Attacked, sleeping somewhere he shouldn't. Carving a fall through the air, a parachute failure from fourty stories up.

"What would you do if I cut my hair?" "Could I have it?" "That's not at all what I asked."

He looks through me like a strange mirror, the reflection off by a fraction. In the deepest center of things, the beginning of a spark. We map territory almost the same, drawing conclusions at an almost cellular level, uncanny and intimately familiar, a dance I've never had a partner for, though I long ago conquered the steps. Even as I dig for bones, there is a return archeology, a chemical reaction that burns through skin down to the raw, bloody, hard and honest, that knack of knowing without necessarily knowing why, the same way that when we're asleep, we unconsciously hold hands in the dark.

...But That Was [Yesterday]

Song on repeat, fingers frigid from typing, everything around me perfectly still. We're talking about dying, about family in the hospital, about relationships that never were, chances that perished almost as quickly as they had become. I think about fire, about how much tragedy stains my heart, how much sorrow clogs my breath. The boyfriend who committed suicide, the woman who was almost my mother, dragged to death, pregnant, under a truck. Family wrapped in white sheets, counting minutes. A different parent, one of many, confused, waiting to die. There was a phone-call. Later, at some unknown time, there will be another, and perhaps the person on the line and I will cry together.

I’m helplessly needless and needless to say I owe you.
Helplessly needless and needless to say I owe you.

Outside is cold, the rain has half frozen, but I expect colder still. Clothed in frost, in the shirt of someone I used to love, winter is crawling through the windows, offering loneliness in place of flowers, memories of years when I still had a future. They play out like beads on a string of days, tallied in small bursts, bright but too long ago. How is it that days are so long, while years are so short? Fractions of lifetime stretched out over bone. Cells replicating. I used to believe that one day would be easier. Soon I will be too old for it. I will be done, the last page written. The book closed. Somewhere out there, past the glass, there is snow.

Well I’d wait ten thousand picks for just one more chance, just one more chance to see your face again.

The people around me do not know how to cure this sorrow. Tender, they insist on holding me or pet my hair, as if rocking silently is enough. Shivering, I require more, to engage, to pull my intelligence out from my pain. Perspective as everything. (Not everything broken can be repaired.) On the east coast is a grandfather, lungs filling with fluid, and a boy near the phone. We write back and forth, filling the void with comforting words, distractions, poetry, and rough jokes. We write back and forth and I do not know if I am helping. I do not know if I am like my friends, heartfelt yet inadequate, offering solace that would comfort me, but not them.

Well I’d pull, teeter away, at the earth with my teeth, the earth with my teeth to touch your face alive.

The piano kicks in, quiet, insistent, with a sound like birds. I am collapsing, fracturing, splintering, shivering into pieces. If someone were to touch me, I would explode, shrapnel embedded in every wall, with a sound like a wounded animal, terrified and very, very young.

You lie helplessly still as your face falls apart.
You lie helplessly still as your face falls apart.

My stress betrays me. Inside of my belly, chemicals misfire, hormones fail. I do not release an egg. "Progesterone secretion is prolonged because estrogen levels are low". My womb is lost, continues singing for fertility, even with the map misplaced. The walls thicken, then slough. Bleeding seven days, eight, now thirty. A flood. I grow pale. The red spills like an endless creek, enough to fill a pail. I am a tributary, coloured scarlet. Chunks of flesh escape me as big as the palm of my hand. My breath vanishes, the world glitters, and suddenly exhaustion, fatigue. It is too much effort to ask my heart to beat. I cannot move. My body is a heavy as lead, my veins filled with gold.

With wax and wires and hair from the back of your head.
With wax and wires and hair from the back of your head.

With my blood, so sleep. I am awake in the dark, endlessly so. My breath solidifies, but my dreams do not. Instead I write, I reply, my back-log of messages attacked, finally, until dawn, the sun a smudge of gray the same tenor as a cough. To a former lover, lost for too long, I write, "Your silver hair makes me think of feathers, of flight, and the purity of light seen through the fractures of a crystal. Perhaps you are, in fact, slowly turning into a dove, one the colour of lightning, a tongue like glass and a brain ripe with electricity." Our love was a wonderful thing, poetry balanced on edge, the quirky, deprived, and mad meeting together as one. Maybe somewhere is a world where it worked out.

Well, I can make your face brand new.
Well, I can make your face brand new.

We stay up late, my current love and I, an ordinary history of affection warped by misunderstandings, his lack of experience, the way he abandoned us the first time we fought. Where do we go from here? Defining what is wrong is only a first step, almost a year late, too late, almost a year since it all began. My eyes are glued shut with salt, hot and sad. His arm bleeds where it scraped against the side of the bed. My role has been counselor, not partner. Tearing words from his tongue has been almost impossible, the squeezing of blood from a stone. Together we have been teaching him responsibility, and though he is quick, he resists.

La da la da la da da da da da da da da da da

Dawn painting the top of the mountains, the world's orbit sliding day into place. The urge to shift from bed, to draw on the window, withers against the memory of warmth, of shifting discussions, the lace of conversation drifting over my eyes like something imagined from a far away land.

You are warm, you are warm

There are only four ways for a relationship to end; stuck together or split apart, drowned with misery or flavoured with subtle joy. Duality doubled, basics, building blocks, the future laid out as cabled strings that tie lives together. Abandonment, paperwork, making tomorrow always better than today. I fought for us until he apologized, truth the most harrowing weapon of all, and then my heart burst, as if there was nothing left inside the pain but exhaustion, terrible, cruel, but free. Even so, we are lucky. Now, no matter how it turns out, as a couple or merely friends, we will find peace. We'll love each other until death do us part.

Come take my hand and I’ll take your hand
And I will bring you out
Come take the line and I’ll take the line
And I will pull you out
In the sun.

I pulled back. Wait. With one hand on his chest, I reached down with the other and plucked our favourite caramel from the small, expensive box on the bed. Here, so we'll always know what our first kiss tastes like. I put it between my teeth and held it there in my mouth, then leaned forward to his, and broke the dark chocolate into gooey citrus caramel just as our lips began to meet.

The last few days have felt like a wonderful vacation from the various crushing worries that have been become the fabric of my recent life. Instead of worrying about rent or groceries or perpetually postponed photo sessions, I've been floating, spending time in Seattle with Tony, celebrating our one year anniversary with whatever pops into our heads. I arrived to find chocolates on the bed from Chocopolis, the place on Capitol Hill where the flavour of our unbelievably delicious first kiss came from. They no longer sell that particular sweet, but Tony bought approximations, and we fed them to each other like little bullets of joyful reminder, coated in smooth, delicious happiness.

He also presented me with a copy of Taxidermia, so Friday night we stayed in, made supper, and let wonder unfold on the screen. Neither one of us had seen it before, but I've been quietly lusting after it for years, since seeing this clip when it was first posted. I warn you now, it's one of the most beautiful films I've ever seen, but it's relentless. I've been trying to think of a way to recommend it to people for days now, except I want to do so safely, so no one ends up traumatized. Describing it would ruin it. Telling everyone to see it would be a mistake. I mean, it's heart-stoppingly gorgeous, but there is a man with a flame thrower penis within the first ten minutes. It needs one of those old thriller movie posters that didn't bother with anything but NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART!! in 89 point bright red type. Nothing else would be appropriate. I will say this, though, if you're a squeamish sort of body, either watch it with someone who will tell you when to look or simply avoid it altogether, excluding the scene I've already posted.

Since then, we've wandered downtown, had dinner at the Space Needle, saw lightning, practiced our massage skills with ebony current cream, enjoyed at least one sleep-in of epic proportions, played peek-a-boo with a baby giraffe at the Seattle Zoo, fed popcorn to squirrels, been rained on with some red pandas, were pleasantly defeated by steaks at Morton's, and fallen asleep in front of Sonny Chiba movies and seriously vintage cartoons. Our love is awesome.



ps. I also got him a present, but it's not here yet, so mum's the word until it arrives. Shh.

Let me fall out a window with you. Place your hand here, upon the jut of my hip, where it rests in your sleep, where you grip my body to yours from behind. Let me lean back, just a little off balance. Let me feel the center of my gravity shift and slide. Place your other hand like a cradle for my head, as it hangs backward, trying to get the perfect shot of something sixteen stories below. The shape of you, the perfect heft of you, let it join me as I slip. Let your eyes widen in surprise, then smile with me. Let your lips find mine as they do in the dark. The sound of our clothing against the sill, the relaxed, casual laughter that will explode from my chest, these sounds will protect us, keep us safe, as we listen, absently, for impact, the beginning of the end.

Before that, (our collision with the indifferent ground), let me float away with you, hands twisted in the cords of a enormous balloon, brightly coloured, impossibly huge. Place your trust in my wrists, where they strain at the ballast of our weight. Let me drift on the wind in your tightest embrace. Arms screaming, my fingers numb. Under our feet will be the sea, the turquoise horizon a feather shimmering gently away. Let us endure until land, our anatomy twisted into one tangled shape. Aceept that we are stranded. Let me make fire as you wave at ships, as you hold me close at the curve of your hip. The warmth of our totality, the sweet, delicious taste of our kiss, these things will protect us, keep us fed, as we signal, unwavering, for delivery, until the rescue ships.

Valentine's is creeping up, the candy coated holiday founded on Lupercalia, a Roman parade festival celebrating sex and werewolves. It basically involved sacrificing a goat, wrapping the wet and bloody skin around you, then energetically racing naked around the city and cackling madly while smacking women with whips for pregnancy luck.

Me, I just can't be bothered to put that much effort in. Someone hands me a goat at the crack of dawn, there's not going to be any leaping out of bed to kill it, no, nor running. At least, I wouldn't be the one running. This is dawn we're talking about. AKA bedtime. Also, seriously, what did that poor goat ever do?

So rather than running naked and bloody through the streets of Seattle, something I'm theoretically capable of if I weren't so damned lazy, sure, I've decided to celebrate this Valentine's by sending Tony treasures through the mail instead. How pale in comparison, I know, but wait! Don't judge yet! These treasures might not involve flaying animals or whipping nubile young women, but they're awesome.

The first present arrived last week, a new Crankbunny design made in collaboration with poster artist Brian Ewing called the Tell-Tale Heart Custom Valentine Card, a paper ribcage which opens up to reveal a personal secret message under a scarlet scratch away foil heart. My message read you have my heart. xox jh. It was a tricky choice, given that she has so many beautiful cards, but as I gave Secret Decoder and Dancing Robot cards last year, I wanted something new, something a little more to Tony's specific tastes, so I decided the macabre ribcage would appeal more to his recovering goth-osity than anything else in her shop, especially as it comes in a smart black envelope. Ha.

The next present arrived just yesterday, a valentine by Lea Redmond from The World's Smallest Postal Service! The letter is transcribed on a miniature desk in the tiniest of script, sealed with a miniscule wax seal with the sender's intial pressed into it, packaged up with a magnifying glass in a glassine envelope, and finished off with a large wax seal. The finished letter is just about the size of an American quarter, almost a little bit smaller. Tony was absolutely delighted to open the regular sized envelope and discover such a strange tiny gift inside.

The miniscule envelope, not having anything to do with actual mailing practices, can be marked as anything you like, so I wrote out the smoochiest addresses I could think of, mailing it from Jhayne Holmes, Lover's Court, Inamorata, L0V34, Valentia, and to Tony Jackson, #1 Beloved Blvd, suite: 2 serenade, Inamorato, H34R7, Valentia, something Tony got to read out to Michelle and her friend Kevin, who were over as he unwrapped it.

Inside, it read;

Now comes the long blue cold
by Mary Oliver, (with one word changed)

Now comes the long blue cold
and what shall I say but that some
bird in the tree of my heart
is singing.

That same heart that only yesterday
was a room shut tight, without dreams.

Isn’t it wonderful—the cold wind and
spring in the heart inexplicable.
Darling boy. Picklock.

-:-

Here's to closing in one one year together, to holding hands even when we're sleeping. Here's to finding love together and trust, truth, and beauty bombs. Here's to you, my exquisite love, my Tony, my only. Happy Valentine's. I love you, I love you, I love you.

Jhayne

september, seattle, fire spinning at gasworks park

One of the most amazing things about this trip, past the fact that it's happening at all, is that Tony and I are going to get to spend an entire two weeks together, the longest period of time in each other's company we'll have had since we met in 2002. Once he gets off today's bus, we'll be inseperable until November 29th.