foxtongue: (moi?)
foxtongue ([personal profile] foxtongue) wrote2006-02-20 02:54 am

listening to deep forest so as to connect myself with the first link in this entry. it makes me happ


next to city hall
Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.
Strangely, I found myself in a house last night that I used to be intimately familiar with. It's a small place just off Cambie, an odd little duplex left over from the sixties. Almost ten years ago, the tree out front had bicycles lashed to the length of it. It used to be a party house. If there was a crowd gathered out front, I would just walk in. Being there again was like looking through an incredibly distorted photograph. All the furniture was gone, replaced, different, but the underlying structure remained identical. I remember sweeping things off the tile counter that separates the kitchen and the dining room and using it as a small square bed. I curled with candles in my hands in the little window nook, my bare toes against the old thin glass, offering fire to the smokers congealing on the tiny porch next to it. Now Alec lives there, with his twin brother, gradually filling it with strange mechanical bits of home-made light-up furniture and rich vintage finds gleaned from local alleys.

I met him Friday, at Alicia's delightful Anti-Valentines party, and we spent from there until 7:40 this Sunday evening together. If he never talks to me again, I'll quite understand. However, I found him marvelous company. We stayed up late last night watching Six String Samurai and, honestly, anyone who doesn't question my sleeping with a knife is probably that much closer to being okay in my books. Thank you Alicia for the goodly gracious idea of inviting him. (Though you're only half right. He can out-geek me on technicals, but I out-geek him with culture).

Earlier than that, Friday, I was caught being ridiculous at my workplace by someone off the street I vaguely hope will either never see me again or spread the legend farther. See, the computer had been played with by the owner, James, the previous night and something he did had destroyed the sound card drivers. Silence drives me crazy. It was hours before he called me back and I received permission to do a RESTORE on the system. Hence, singing Gorillaz at the top of my lungs, trying to echo off the very back wall, and dancing on top of the counters in a lull between actual bouts of working. In my defense, it happened gradually. First I was simply singing, then louder, then dancing as I put shoes away and filled out little bits of paperwork. Finally I vaulted up and did the deed, shaking booty for the entire walking world to see. We have incredibly large front windows. People think I'm strange, but really, it's just that I forget what I'm doing.

The year 2005 may have been the warmest year in a century, according to NASA scientists studying temperature data from around the world.

I made a brilliant deal at the club tonight. Nicole and Matt brought me to Sanctuary and by chance we sat next to a friendly stranger. When I first began talking to him, I asked why he wasn't dancing. When he replied that he'd recently wrecked his ankle, I politely enquired how he'd hurt himself. He clipped a starling while sky-diving, he said. He'd been bringing his seven year old nephew up for a run and had turned on his back to show him what falling through a cloud looked like. Hitting a bird is a one in a thousand chance, he said, in an airplane. Million to one when you're free-falling.

I was impressed.

More so when I found out that he's illiterate. "How on earth did that happen to you?" I asked, taken entirely aback. He grew up in Northern Ireland. A bomb blast when he was twelve. "Oh right, you're the people who leave bullets in your post-office walls." A quarter of his bones are now made of steel, his right hand is warped, and his skull is almost entirely artificial. He still knows Gaelic, however, as that's what he'd been taught as a child. Home-schooling, apparently, though he's lost almost all his mandarin. (go figure?) So I struck a deal. First, before I entirely had a grasp of the bizarre situation, I offered to swap some English for some Gaelic. When he'd filled me in a little more, explaining that it hadn't been for lack of language programs with incredibly impressive pedigree, I offered something different. He chooses the book and I read to him in exchange for Gaelic lessons.

He stopped mid-thought, struck by that. "I just might, you know. That's a new one." I hope he takes it.

I've invited him to Korean Movie Night. I drew him a map.

[identity profile] michel-lacombe.livejournal.com 2006-02-20 03:45 pm (UTC)(link)
Uh. All strange people are strange because they forget what they're doing, sweetie.

And the knife would worry me less if you didn't occasionally attack your bedmates. I've know people who do either; both just doesn't sound like such a hot idea.

[identity profile] inri33.livejournal.com 2006-02-20 04:19 pm (UTC)(link)
I've been a victim of the Jhayne nighttime assault! She rolls over into me and just explodes in this minor frenzy of claw-related violence. Then immediately falls back asleep, leaving me there to try not to laugh so hard that I wake her up.

[identity profile] michel-lacombe.livejournal.com 2006-02-20 05:00 pm (UTC)(link)
It says how much you love her that she makes an attempt on your life and you still worry about letting her get her sleep.

[identity profile] inri33.livejournal.com 2006-02-20 05:47 pm (UTC)(link)
You of all people should know how often she sleeps, so when she actually gets to bed, I'm willing to take a few scratch marks to ensure she stays there.

Hm. I sound like a rapist.

[identity profile] michel-lacombe.livejournal.com 2006-02-20 06:39 pm (UTC)(link)
An unfortunate turn of phrase, yes.

Me of all people?

[identity profile] inri33.livejournal.com 2006-02-20 07:23 pm (UTC)(link)
Meaning that she visited you and therefore stayed with you and probably slept at some point (though rarely).

I realized after the fact that that may have been yet another unfortunate turn of phrase.

[identity profile] michel-lacombe.livejournal.com 2006-02-20 07:31 pm (UTC)(link)
She in fact stayed with [livejournal.com profile] onik. Though I am aware and critical of her sleeping habits, yes.

[identity profile] inri33.livejournal.com 2006-02-20 10:19 pm (UTC)(link)
Well as long as you're critical of it, that's the important part.

[identity profile] michel-lacombe.livejournal.com 2006-02-20 11:04 pm (UTC)(link)
It's not as if I should let an occasion to mind someone else's business slip by.

[identity profile] porphyre.livejournal.com 2006-02-20 06:05 pm (UTC)(link)
It was a butter knife I'd left in my pocket from the day before, when I'd gone up with Alec onto the roof.

[identity profile] michel-lacombe.livejournal.com 2006-02-20 11:05 pm (UTC)(link)
Minus one on the threat level, plus one on the strange person meter.

[identity profile] porphyre.livejournal.com 2006-02-21 02:56 am (UTC)(link)
Well yeah.

[identity profile] http://users.livejournal.com/ruka_/ 2006-02-20 05:18 pm (UTC)(link)
Wait... Korean movie nights are monday nights right?


[identity profile] inri33.livejournal.com 2006-02-20 05:44 pm (UTC)(link)
yes, as in tonight.

[identity profile] porphyre.livejournal.com 2006-02-20 06:06 pm (UTC)(link)
*nods* Psychic lady building at Broadway & Commercial.

[identity profile] isthmene.livejournal.com 2006-02-20 05:53 pm (UTC)(link)
Glad to see you two got along so well. :D

[identity profile] porphyre.livejournal.com 2006-02-20 06:07 pm (UTC)(link)
I was pleasantly surprised, yeah. *hugs* Sorry I left LD-50 behind. When should I come pick her up?

LD-50

[identity profile] isthmene.livejournal.com 2006-02-24 06:46 pm (UTC)(link)
You can come get her whenever this weekend. I was thinking of Cirque De Sade, but of course.... I'm sick..... *thud*

Re: LD-50

[identity profile] porphyre.livejournal.com 2006-02-25 04:12 am (UTC)(link)
Aw hun. I'll see what I can do about dropping by.

[identity profile] arrogant-gamer.livejournal.com 2006-02-21 09:40 am (UTC)(link)
Hi

The mowhauk brings to light the obsurdety of the whole thing: black man in a white man's world being told where to go and what to do by those who are austensibly his peers. Serving as an example to the rest of us without ever having crossed a real street.

z.