Dreampepper

alt-text: i hear smashing glass in my head, ever time i laugh

I awoke a little panicked, aware of a certain dreadful absence of pinging alarm, not quite damning my day job, but coming close to it. The entire morning thing seemed insurmountable. It had been a long, unexpected evening, the sort I am generally familiar with, but never actually had, so all I wanted to do was sleep in. Drinks in a bar, an invitation up, my cue to pass out chastely on half of a hotel bed, that's how it goes, how it suits my blood. But he was impossibly sweet and it seemed, after an indeterminate sleepy amount of cuddling, that my desire to cling to the familiar had evaporated somewhere, possibly seared from existence by his fiercely protective intellect, and the only path available was towards a new choice.

We went to the Aquarium after dinner later that night, (foreign dishes in a basement, the beginning of my stories, the tragic litany, the darker side of a thousand and one nights), me to crash the party, him with legitimacy, both with an equally sound purpose. Mine was to sneak in, the better to get me into even more later. We split up right away, once it was assured I had successfully bluffed past security, and that was that, I was on my own, a mercenary butterfly released into the opening party of the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

It's startlingly easy to make fast friends at the beginning of conferences. There are always a few people who've been attending since the dawn of time, but the majority of the crowd are strangers thrown together or people who've only known each-other tangentially or on-line, so the ground is primed for the sort of introduction that doesn't generally fly in public, where you simply walk up like a little kid to a friendly looking face and say, "hi!".

I almost immediately fell in a lovely women, Shauna, a fellow burner from Berkeley I knew I would like, then together, after taking pictures with the sharks, we found Elizabeth, there for CNN, best characterized by her amazing smile, as permanent as the moon. We chatted about the fish and science and wondered about the whale, elusive and grand, sequestered in an area of the aquarium that the conference hadn't rented. Occasionally I drifted away, encountering new conversations and faces, making mental notes for later, attaching myself here and there, but made sure to keep swinging back to touch base, so as the night progressed, as I fluttered, I forged a little group with which to found a conspiracy.

Eventually we made a feint at sneaking past security to see the whale, but we'd gained mass, our core blossoming as we went into an unwieldy six or seven, too many to slyly saunter into an area we weren't supposed to go. Then, sadly, after some magic with the otters and the dolphins, it was time to leave, the staff ushering us past the sleeping octopus and the shimmering glass cube of tiny blue fish that look like living streaks of light to a queue in the the parking lot for the hired buses that were shuttling everyone back downtown. I lost my partner in the crush, perhaps because I lingered too long, loitering in a hope to find him, yet I found surprisingly good company in his wake - Alan, Estrella, and Marc, who I first met inside as part of the attempt on the beluga tank. They wanted to walk, but didn't know the way, so I put aside my concerns regarding my misplaced self as less important than the possibility of an entire lost group and appointed myself their guide.

The walk home was beautiful, if long. Mostly I fell in step with Marc, who I pressed for details about the Ig Nobels and traded stories of odd employment paths, but got on well with Alan, too, who possesses a Patient Zero level of infectious cheer. By the time everyone peeled off for their separate hotels, we'd discussed several adventures, planned a couple more, and all traded business cards, a habit I was to pick up even more as the conference went on. (The trick is to remember later which card goes to which face).

My fellow turned out to be table camping with the rest of his crew at the hotel bar, which I walked through on a whim, hoping to stumble across where he might be, my lack of cell phone again a strangely crippling artifact of the shockingly recent past. I joined them, of course, and was immediately taken with RJ, a clever young man from Waterloo University who was sitting at my end of the table. I spent the rest of the evening pulling ideas from him, chatting about clean energy and the internet, until the table finally dissolved, leaving me and mine to drift upstairs into the sweet oblivion that promises endless wonder but only ever delivers tomorrow.

Friday was close to being a complete write-off. First I went downtown to take someone's photo, only to stand about waiting for an hour in the cold, at home a note sent through the digital, "stuck in a meeting, sorry!", my lack of cell phone stranding me yet again. Things cheered up briefly when I walked home to find an invitation to a job interview, only to find out, once I'd trekked back downtown, that it wasn't for legitimate employment, but instead with a guy who wants a girl to "boss around" his home. "Oh good, you're pretty enough." Pardon? I explained he should be advertising in the personals section and left, but not before he referred to special needs people as "feebs", (the second person to do so in my presence in as many days, ugh), and demanded I pay his bar tab. The entire experience lasted perhaps a total of fifteen miserable, uncomfortable minutes, but felt like a shotgun blast to the day. Walking home from that was even worse than the morning's photography failure. And, of course, at soon as I'm home again, home again, there is a voice mail message with my name on it, from the non-profit I interviewed on Wednesday, "we've gone with another applicant".

But David got home in time for me to borrow his bus pass to go to the Ayden Gallery opening, where I met up with my brother Kevin, in from Montreal, his friend Nicholas, and Diego, recently back from Spain, and the art was nice and the company nice and Diego gave me a pretty necklace as a holiday gift and we got slurpees on the way out of the mall and cadbury cream eggs and there was a clutch of hipsters at the bus-stop all wearing fake mustaches and it snowed a little and I got to show my brother Nightwatch when we got back to my place and everything turned out pretty well after all. Hooray.

Saturday was significantly better. Kevin took me to breakfast at Locus, one of my favourite Vancover restaurants, and we wandered around in the thin crust of snow a bit, talking about our mutual love of Montreal, before I dropped him off at a friend's place and bussed home. He's grown from an angry, unpleasant child into someone I am glad to know, for which I am thankful. It spills from me like water in cupped hands, brimming past the edges of our sad memories of childhood, a slow moving river that is going to take some time to get used to.

Then Aleks came over and napped in my bed with the cats for awhile before driving us over to Andrew & Sara's for an in-house Molly Lewis concert that was stuffed to with spectacular people. She sang about Myspace and having Stephen Fry's baby and generally charmed the heck out of everyone and for the first time all week I relaxed. It was wonderful.

Eventually the clever after-party dismantled for a trip to The Whip and though outside it was cold, it was beautiful, with snow, real snow, the dry, enchanting stuff, floating down like feathers after a televised pillow fight. We sparkled up the street, running in bursts then sliding along the frozen road on the flats of our shoes, arms akimbo, all transformed into ten years old. The group splintered at the bisto-bar, breaking off to different tables, mine against the far wall, the kitchen party, with Michael and Andrew and some folks from Seattle. We talked about terrible twitter jokes and a scandalous lot about nothing, but it was as full of odd glory as the weather, if inevitably more silly.

When it was time to go home, we skated down the road again, sliding even farther, whooping with cackling laughter, occasionally colliding, but never remembering to fall. Plans were made, Sherlock mentioned, and I fled down the street, trying and failing to get Andrew with the one tiny snowball I managed to make. S. drove me home, spinning the car down one of the back streets near my apartment, just because he could, with the sort of wicked joy usually reserved for roller coasters and haunted houses, toothless darkness and danger followed by ice-cream in the sun.

Tony and I leave for New York tonight. Here is our itinerary so far. Please, if you're around, come join us! Make plans with us! Take over our question marks!

Aside from the shows and an overwhelming desire to eat at Shopsin's, (I Like Killing Flies), our itinerary is very open. We figure any unaccounted chunks of time can be filled with sillies from the ZoomDoggle Fun List NYC.

Friday

6 am - Arrival.
??
Noon - Lunch with Mordicai.
??
7 pm - Sleep No More. Punchdrunk, a British site-specific theater company, has taken over three abandoned warehouses and crafted them into an insanely detailed, art deco, film noir, one hundred room Hitchcockian hotel, for a haunting, immersive performance loosely shadowed on Macbeth. The level of detail sounds astounding, especially given the wide range of rooms, (everything from a sweets shop to a hospital room, and the witches have a rave). According to the NY Times review, "everyone who attends “Sleep No More” is required to wear (and keep on) a Venetian carnival-style mask. You are also asked not to utter a word during the two and a half hours you are given to follow the characters of your choice from room to room. But you are encouraged to poke around in corners and trunks and bookcases, and allowed to get as close as (in)decency permits to the lithe-bodied denizens of this chic spook house. (Just don’t touch them, though they may well reach out and touch you.)".
??

Saturday

??
?? - Walk along Highline park.
8 pm - Dances of Vice presents their 4th Anniversary bash, Enchantment Under The Sea, a Back To The Future-esque 50's themed junior/senior prom at Morningside Castle. A teaser from GeekChicDaily says, "... like Marty McFly's hand, tickets will vanish fast. Don't be a slacker. Get yours before the clocktower strikes the 11th hour. It's gonna be heavy."*
??

Sunday

??
?? - Visit CB I Hate Perfume.
5 pm - The COILHOUSE Black & White & Red All Over Fundraising Ball at the velvet drenched Red Lotus Room in Brooklyn, featuring music and spectacle galore from people like Kim Boekbinder, Brian Viglione of the Dresdon Dolls, Molly Crabapple, Jessica Joslin, Muffinhead, and the Purevile! Girls. "A Love Letter To Alternative Culture" come to life! This just might turn out to be the party of the year.*
7 pm - Fuerza Bruta, an extraordinary show, absurd, messy, and very, very fun. There's bright lights, loud music, dancing, confetti drop bombs, explosions, someone gets shot, it rains indoors, and a swimming pool comes down from the ceiling. It's kind of A Thing. I loved it when I saw it in May, (thanks to Duncan for telling me about it), and now Tony is determined that we go.
9 pm - Back to the Coilhouse Ball!
??

Monday

??
Noon - Lunch with Mordicai.
??
5 pm - Departure.





*There's a special $25 package deal available for general admission to both Enchantment Under The Sea and The Black & White & Red All Over Ball.

Congratufabulations to Nicholas and his mad and merry crew of crackpot visionaries! After an improbable amount of work, and slightly too many years, his video game, Dungeons of Dredmor, has finally launched!

Get it on Steam for 10% off and slay in the name of the Lutefisk God!

An excerpt from the journal of Metrocentric:

Across from the pub, an office building, presenting to us its side elevation. A column of windows, about half a dozen in height.

In many workplaces people making or taking calls on their mobile phones will leave their desks and make their way to a more anonymous part of the building: a corridor, a stairway, a lift lobby. There they stand and shuffle as they speak - if there is a window they will typically look out of it for all or part of the call.

It was that part of the afternoon in which anyone going back to the office would have done so, and the post-work clientele had yet to appear. I was drinking Bombardier, because he got the first round in and he can't ask for lager, he says.

Every now and then a face and torso would appear at one of the windows opposite. At one point there were four. Four in a row. "Connect Four!", I remarked. All this was happening behind him.

Once, when all four fully presented themselves at the window, and none were crouched into themselves in their phone calls, and two were gesticulating, the sun came out; the light fell on all four. The squares of window stood out against the dark concrete. It was like looking at a grand opera stage set: they could have flung the glass aside and burst into song.