Dreampepper

Tonight a whole bunch of us will be performing at Catfish and other Delicacies, Beth Brown's musical brainchild. (Nicholas is coming from Victoria to play).

Johnny Depp to play Sweeny Todd.

Have you ever met someone who tasted like wind? Their hands feel pleasingly tarnished, as if at one point they were molten. One day, walking, you may find yourself an inch above the ground. They will not notice and you will not tell them. They open their clear water eyes and the earth slips away, tumbling away like rainclouds. It rushes away with the sound of quick violin.

Treading on shadow, voice like the vectors of a moths wing, he is skin tattooed with opiates. Installed into his world, I feel the fortune-teller again, like my body is becoming a messy chapbook of small beautiful prophecies. My kiss becoming inexplicable, knowledge pooling in the crevices of my joints, ready to spill out and stain my lips with black twists of old-fashioned ink. His name becoming something other in my mouth, a brocade curtain illuminated as a religious manuscript, each letter exhaled as stars, reclaimed into treble clefs, sharps, bright notes of terrifying purity.

He has built a thousand ships so that I may capsize within them, day by day, every time I step toward him. My eyes are cameras that will never be good enough. Our plans coalesce from whims, they thicken and grow from thin candles to blazing soprano ravens. This is a man who grew up in homes, celebrating roots and history and form. He speaks of security as a casual thing, the waxing of the moon, as I watch and feel as a mouse might, worried about being trod underfoot. It is as foreign a concept as a rainbow in a catacomb.

Mexico’s Partial Vote Recount Confirms Massive and Systematic Election Fraud.

For those who are interested, I have been informed that the zombiewalk will probably be covered on Canada Now at 6PM PST tonight.

CBC TV as well as CBC Radio both spent the last 45 mins interviewing Andrew and getting some of his photos of the event, including the car photos, (license plate & driver). They're possibly interviewing a couple of high school kids as well and the whole thing will apparently be on sometime in the 6 o clock news hour.

Apparently the driver of the car has only received a traffic ticket at this time. The police are getting in touch with Andrew tomorrow, so expect further details then.

Bush Now Says What He Wouldn’t Say Before War: Iraq Had ‘Nothing’ To Do With 9/11.

Toot-a-Lute has put me in charge of their website. This makes me happy, as it needs a hell of an overhaul, and they're a good group of people. They deserve a better on-line face. I'm thinking something sparse and clean, with a little bit of edging in green. In the interests of up-keep, would anyone with appropriate photos send them to me? Your work will be fully credited, with a link to you when possible.

Nouvelle Vague is coming to Vancouver!

So I've returned from Clinton, which wasn't as strange as I thought it would be. In spite of my worries, I fit in well. It turned out I had fifty or so semi-unexpected friends and acquaintances there. More than I knew the names of, by far. As soon as we arrived, some pirates tucked us into a good camp spot and we were told to make ourselves at home at a number of different camps. Everyone was surprised to see me, but glad. It was fun though the sun beat us hard enough for me to question its self-esteem.

On Saturday, after an initial exploratory wander, Isabella tied me to her merchant tent and put up for ransom. Eventually James set out with this news and fetched Oliver back to rescue me, who manfully offered them his accordion. A price too steep, we decided, so instead we dressed him up in women's clothing and took pictures. Emancipation was not so easy, as then she wickedly tied him up too.

Later in the evening, we started a dance circle and I taught steps to people and sang with the band. I'd forgotten what that could be like. Lantern lit and dust everywhere, hallelujah. Singing isn't as terrifying as I remember it to be. It got dark as we were there. I partnered with Gerald for Morris dancing after that. I don't think I would have gone through with it had I been paired off with anyone else. He's a lovely giant of a man with tawny gold hair longer than my arm, and our crazies are so compatible that I used his machete instead of a stick during one of our rehearsal run-throughs and the only thing he did was laugh. See, I had this problem where I was breaking his sticks, all of them, until he finally gave up and, because he's big enough to do so, used a length of tree trunk instead.

Sunday was more of the same. During the day was socializing with the ridiculous number of people I knew and wandering about with Oliver, who didn't know a tenth of them, playing music, and eventually visiting the lake. It was atrociously cold. When people tell you something is brisk, what they mean to say is, "I would be a coward if I didn't jump in and cowards are reviled, therefore..." I don't recommend it. The chance to wash clean of the desert was nice, but the price was a little too high for comfort.

We were dancing and singing again by the time the sun set. When it came to be night, too dark to dance in large groups, I took out my chemical packets of powder and threw them in fires as we traveled from camp to camp, acting as an alchemist, bruising the flames into different beautiful colours. Blues and greens and purples. Instead of a lantern, I used extra long sparklers. The light was fantastical, radiating magic to the drunk people who were watching and didn't quite understand. I felt like I was creating a circus all by myself. It was almost as glorious as fireworks.

On a more somber now, Veronica and I sorted out as much as is possible in such circumstances. We sat under the shooting stars and didn't quite cry together, but it was close. We are in sympathy, we both know where the other person is, and I'm glad it worked out. I believe she'll take time to vanish for a little while, but we'll carve out a place to be friends again soon. I'm proud of her as I'm proud of myself. I was going to do what she's doing now, and walk away, but she beat me to it. Honourable we. I'd like to catch her as she's falling, but it's not my place. I hope she knows I understand how it's a lonely thing to be, brave.

Nicole is needing a two bedroom apartment for September. She's looking for $1000/month maximum, East Van from Commercial drive area to Kits, and nothing over 30th Ave. Laundry on-site and with a deck or a yard. It's a tricky one, but if you see anything, please drop her a line at 604-306-6188.

Ever speculated on how much of a bad idea something would be, then jumped off the bridge anyway, inevitably changing everything and quietly saying "oops" under your breath, almost as if you meant it?

I'm beginning to think it's simply how I run things. I can't escape my name, my natural anthem of love's disaster. Missing chances to death, walking strong and emotionally detached, I want it to end so much that it hurts bone deep. I feel like a stranger to my own body, to my own needs and choices and liabilities. Upon my breath, Sunday morning I was flying enough to let my impulses die a steady slumbering death, but today, in the smeary hour of midnight, I didn't bother to keep myself in check.

Wearing myself out with all this sticky importance, I was in my element Saturday, not a visitor. Usually I feel somewhat out of context, a tourist in my own country, but stomping around in work boots and a corset was utterly perfect. This was the first year in five that I was also a visible performer. Pyrotech, dancer, different clothes, different steps. Tiny changes and all smiles. I almost kissed someone when they walked into a room. The partner impulse there and whole, downloaded entire into my frame without thought. Familiar and strange. I almost ruined the edges of my heart.

(Today my feet are criss-crossed with black electrical tape, my answer to the common plaster. In one place, it's possible to see bone where I wore through my foot. Poor little toes, they will recover, but the body politic, it is not happy.)

I said I was planning on getting a good night's sleep last night, but subtext occurred instead. I went to bed near five a.m. full of double-meant conversations, explanations slipped between words. It's been going on all week, all before too. Supportive people, my hand being held, a place to fall to if I need it. It's terrifying, this encouragement. I'd forgotten what it's like.


(The mad poet, the awesome-sauce Mike McGee, wants the world to see this.)

When I was a kid, I wanted a tree-house. I liked the idea of having a little place that was my own, high up, and floored in the cloth bound books I liked to read. I would hang tassels, I would paper with comics and pieces of sari. I wanted to tumble down the ladder in a rush of limbs to a mother waiting with ice-cream. I wanted what the real kids had, only to try. I could see them sometimes, transitory, from the window of the truck I was growing up in as we drove past little houses. Surrounded by trees, always on the highway, these houses, with a gas station at the end of the row that would sell cold things and packets of shrink wrapped pepperoni sticks that my father would open with his teeth. My favourite treat was the Cadbury cream eggs with shiny tinfoil that I would flatten with the back of my fingernail until I could pretend it was tain I'd peeled whole from some antique washroom mirror.

Andrew had a comment published on BoingBoing this week.

Have you ever been in love with someone to the point where you're afraid? They meet your eyes and the amount of feeling that shoots in to your blood must betray you, it feels certain, but then they blink and look away. Disaster averted. It's terrifying, like suddenly discovering you've got a red jewel of cancer in the palm of your heart.

I'm selling my old monitor on Craiglist for $50.

The fireworks last night were nice. I led everyone directly to the waterfront, with nothing between us and the show but for water. Blooming explosions of mostly gold, laced with red and Italy's particular green. Their music choice was a little damning, no match of Denmark's Abba medley of last year, the cheesiest possible clips of Celine Dion, Queen, & Ennio Morricone, but they made up for it with the intense amount of bang.

After, though, was better than nice, it was magical. Police arrived on horses, with back-up from police boats and helicopters, to clear people from the beach. Horses in riot gear, to be more precise, with little see-thru plastic helmets and shiny reflective socks. Lit only by beacons and searchlights, they came out of the heavy sulpherous smoke like a slowly solidifying dream. It was impossible to focus on them, they were so ephemeral, such perfect phantasmagorical memories come real. They seemed both bigger and smaller than horses are, because they faded in and out of the flashing lights so strangely, so beautifully. The police on top seemed grown from the same dark flesh, details were so randomly precise. A leg would show in stark detail then vanish again into the sand and night. I've never seen anything like it. Pristine wonder, approaching.