Dreampepper

I found out second hand, when you cheated on the girl you were fucking behind my back. She came to me, crying,
and asked what she had done wrong.
She didn't know that we lived together, that you and I spelled a mutual m-i-n-e.
All she knew was that I was her friend.
I considered the satisfaction of throwing your things out the window then,
the meticulous movie moment of exploding chaos, socks spiraling to the street, books flapping their pages like miraculous paper birds attempting futile flight.
I had your childhood pictures and birthday cards from your sister.
Your special keepsakes in a box you had brought with you all the way from Australia, all the way from when you were born.
Perhaps it would be raining, when I did this Hollywood thing, this burst of scripted anger.
Even in August, it rains here a lot.
Your letters would get wet and the ink run in the gutters. Your jeans would soak through and become too heavy to carry.
Enough water and you would have nothing left with to remember your mother.
I thought about these things, and the mess, and the shouting, wondering if it would be satisfying, if I would feel absolved from your crime,
and I whispered a statement to the empty room, claiming it, before saying it to her,
and somehow, to you, rich with disappointment, I am sorry.

And now, once more, a drawer. What's inside? This time I do not know. Clothes, a toothbrush perhaps. It is a mystery contained, hard-edged. A simple pull on the handle and the secret is out, but I do not want to look. The idea makes me flinch. It is terrible how small I am in your absence.

I do not wish to be reminded, nor read again the topography of your things.

I love him like fire. Warmth, light. Temptation drives me farther away, of desire, malicious, feigned, humming electric through my body like waking up to a kiss, welcome in the middle of the night. Chorus end, refrain. My hands flex, the desire to blacken his eyes, break his fingers, as I say to him as he clatters down the stairs next to me, invisible as I refuse to look up, "because that would mean more to you." The verses repeated, wait, I love you. Funny way of showing it. Every day, a song that sounds the same. Bridge. Sharps, flats. Chorus again, our voices together. Refrain.

Silence. Only the collapsing echo of my love, a birdcage, emptied and drowned.

These hands, remove them for me, fold and press their digits gently, remember what they once touched, remember the velvet folds between the digits, how they tasted, and make sure to pack the nails extra carefully. Press them too hard into your skin and they might break.

These wrists, full of frail, bird-like bones, light as crumbs, take them too, for the sin of curving too well, for allowing the hands to cup, to make shapes in the air. Layer them in paper, remember they do not need starch. My feet, including the tired ankles and the firm flesh up to the knee, may be treated the same.

Remove, as well, my tongue, tear it from the root like a vegetable from the soft, red earth of my mouth. Strip it of skin, of any velvet layers of language that survived after the word goodbye. Do not spill whatever sad whispering kisses remain. They are of limited number and will be worth more later, each delicate, easy to tear, a collector's item.

Take, too, my lips, stained scarlet, but drained of blood, pinched, sorrowful. Press them like a plucked and dying flower between the pages of a book.

Behind these is my larynx, my voice, now as dark and mysterious as a cardboard tube. Close it, sew it shut, and hang it outside in the rain. It will predict thunderstorms with the accuracy of a stick charted tide, with the acumen of an owl late at night. Once that is done, reach in again, press the roof of my mouth with the tips of your fingers as we did in love, wetting your nerves with the heat of my mouth, and twist out my teeth, each fanged ivory key a bead for your rosary, an atheist’s prayer for peace.

Stop my pulse next, the musical hammer of blood through veins, the countdown beat between this second and the next. Slice open my arteries with your fingernails, as tenderly as you might touch me in my sleep, allowing for the sweet balanced tension and compression of dreams.

Once you have broken my skin, peel my forearms, elbows, arms, and shoulders, organic fabric tatters, then take the hard knife of your mercy to the cream between my breasts, illustrating scarlet lines like elegant letters only the dead may read, break upon my ribcage, and note the already amputated heart, orphaned without you. Remark upon it, the hollow gap, the empty cavity underneath the cracked bones in the moist center between my lungs, remark upon it and continue, excise the organs that carried the breath that beat with your name. Pat them dry. Wrap them in silk, my undyed hair.

Dig out, as well, my liver, ancient seat of bravery, and my bile, black for Spring, to mark when first we met. Unseat my pancreas, my kidneys, my overweening spleen, as livid as it's ever been, (anger, as you know, is in these days), my perpetually mistaken brain. For the sweetbreads you will need vinegar, for the ovaries you will need salt.

Somewhere underneath my organs, my failing stomach, the deeper tissue structures, frail as the same, rests the train crash of my spine. Pull it from my body like segmented string, each knob a memory under your fingers, a zipper torn from the history of our flesh. Caress where the joints surrender to movement, think of puppetry and wood, the blue milk pale of bone, think of how it arched when you asked it to during the dark forensics of sex, then coil it, paint it white, coat it in silver, and wait. Your guilt will subside.

I am proud to announce the winner of Your Best "O" Face '09 is Michael by an incredible seven votes.

He will be presented with the coveted lesbian porn chessboard by local artist/girl-about-town, Tillie King, in a private ceremony later this week.



For your further entertainment, I conducted a short interview with our illustrious winner, Michael, this morning, before his busy schedule called him away:

Jhayne: What brought you to the O Face arena, Michael? Your work is impeccable, your poise and display are the best I've ever seen.

Michael: Well, you see, I actually come from a long line of "O" Face artists. My father and mother met while on the promenade, competing against each other in the Welsh finals. It was very romantic, apparently. They even turned it into a double act later, which also runs in the family.

Jhayne: That's fascinating! I had no idea.

Michael: Oh yes. I was told that one of my great aunts even "O" Faced Queen Victoria.

Jhayne: How juicy. So is that how you began your studies? With your parents?

Michael: At first it was my parents, but I didn't really feel a connection to the art until I was older. I can actually pin-point the exact moment it shifted from being something I practiced at home to make my family happy, to something I was doing for myself.

Jhayne: Can you tell us about it?

Michael: It was at a competition on the Drive, the local neighborhood where all the poets and hippies hang out, kind of an open mic gig where people would go up and do their routine for, like, 30 seconds and then be rated on their technique. Very tongue in cheek, and I could tell the people up there weren't really trying. It was a joke to them, you know? Something to film and put up on the internet to laugh about later. I think that's part of the problem these days, part of what I'm trying to do now is create more of an awareness, that this is a real art that people take seriously. Anyway, I never really practiced my "O" facing out of the house in those days. I mean I knew I had the background and I would always be practicing with my parents and stuff but I never thought that this was really for me. But when I went up there, it felt right. It felt like that was what I was meant to do. When I was finished I looked at the judges, and you could see it. You could see that they had witnessed something really special, that this wasn't just someone's hobby, it was real.

Jhayne: I'm familiar with the recording. It's grown to be quite a popular bootleg, and cited as an inspiration by some very influential people.

Michael: It's lost it's grandeur these days though. You go into a coffee shop, meet a nice girl, tell you that you spend a lot of time pretending to have orgasms in front of a mirror, and she looks at you like you just fell from space.

Jhayne: And what effect has that had on your career?

Michael: I don't do it professionally anymore, just, you know, charity gigs, stuff like that. I went into philosophy because I knew I couldn't cut it as an "O" Facer, what does that tell you?

Jhayne: Yet you've kept your hand in, continuing the small circulation specialty magazine your parents founded, Le Petit Mort, and turning it into quite the success. It seems like you're actively cultivating a burlesque cult of personality.

Michael: It's true. When Le Petit Mort was founded, it was very DIY. We would spend our evenings hand setting the type for the printer we kept in the garage. Our clothes would always smell like ammonia. It was pretty punk rock. Now, though, with the advent of the internet, I've been managing to expand our subscription base. Offering a forum where "O" Facers can find each other and connect, share tips, it's like a miracle. All these people thinking they're laboring alone, and I get to offer them a community. It really made me, as a celebrity, in a totally new way. I'm hoping to eventually gamble on that, and try to expand our web presence, maybe push our tiny empire back into regular public consumption, restore "O" facing to its former glory as the face of American culture, back where it belongs on the front of every magazine, like the good old days. Sex sells, after all, even when in caricature.

Jhayne: You're saying appearances are more important than objective truth?

Michael: Yes, definitely, though I don't mean to say "O" Facing is insincere. It certainly isn't. Making an O face isn't just about sex, it's about life.

Jhayne: Enjoying life, maybe.

Michael: Ha. Yes. Well it's like we've always said in the magazine, it all comes down to the core rules of the "O" Face: Concentrate. Build. Relax. It's true for pulling off a good "O" face, and I think it's true for everything else, too. It's about empowerment.

Jhayne: It seems that's an interpretation that's been lost in recent years, replaced with the idea that it's no longer a lifestyle choice, but an eccentric hobby.

Michael: Very much so.

Jhayne: Did you feel any sense of regret about that, or was it a relief to say, "Okay, this is how we have to do it"?

Michael: It was weird, like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders, like I was finally coming into my own as a person, reinstating myself as the defender of the "O" Face. I could feel that I had a responsibility, that I couldn't let the tradition go on like this. All these amateurs, mocking what used to be a respected institution.

Jhayne: Was that part of what's prompted your recent re-emergence as the undisputed master of the "O" Face?

Michael: Completely. I'm a veteran "O" Facer with a loyal following. I couldn't just walk away from such a public challenge. If someone else won, I'd have to start over, building my cred from the ground up. I'd rather step in to stay on top, even at the risk of being made fun of, then fade away, forgotten except as footnote. "O" Facing is important, and I'm glad for the chance you offered to showcase talent.

Jhayne: Well, thank you very much for showing up and giving us your best!

Michael: No, thank you. It was my pleasure.

Thank you to everyone who participated, with a special mention to Chris, who actually got naked.

"Who's got the ball...I've got the ball..".

In a bit of a gravestone triumph, I've got reliable work in the week upcoming, but only because a friend's mother has caught thick with cancer and, as she flies north to take care, her absence creates empty shifts at the Dance Centre. I'm going to be spending next Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday evenings there. Time will go by slowly. Visitors with, say, cupcakes, juice, bags of frozen vegetables, cheesecake or turkey sandwiches and especially delicious books will be met with especially slavering open arms. Bonus points for [CENSORED-edt] with red.

More on Baudrillard.

For those who like philosophy, there are two plays coming you should take a gander at, (not to, if you have a goose you want to abandon somewhere, I suggest my freezer. furthering the thought I should have scrounged more food earlier):

Our resident Official Thinker-Person, Michael, is going to see Socrates on Trial, March 14th at 7:30, at the Chan Center. Tickets are $12, $5 for students. It's a short run, only two nights, with a talk-back after the show on Thursday. Tickets can be bought at the door, unless you're a keener, in which case you deserve the woes of Ticketmaster. Go with my blessing. I'm not going to be there, not being much a fan of Socrates, but Michael will be and he is cute and single. Kyle (as seen on the left) will also be going, but he is less single, so not as much a draw, though he does recite dirty poetry about otherkin dragons furries and in return for taking nice pictures of him, he'll write horrible plageristic things about you and chocolate pudding in Mike McGee's voice. He's a dear. Honest. We're only at war when the dessert supplies run low.

The second play is Bertolt Brecht's Life of Galileo, running March 29th to April 14th, at The Western Front. Tickets are $20, $15 on discount, $10 on 2-for-1 Tuesday. Mimi is stage manager, our friend Peter New is in the lead, and Sam's playing, um, something with a slightly pretentious title that I don't actually have the power to recall right now. Needless to say, it's got a good tag-line: He showed us the universe. The church showed him the rack. Despite the cost, I'm going to try and lure someone into going with me on Tuesday. Peter is always clever, and Sam, well, I haven't seen Sam act in anything in the last year other than films about creepy black and white priests. In fact, I may have only ever seen him play priests*, so perhaps a different sort of cleric will be a breath of fresh air. (This role may not be that different, but suffice to say, I do not expect they have him singing with a kids toy or a crucifix-in-the-eye scene).

Than is dreamed of in your philosophy...

*I lie, I think he was a skinny opera singer in Lady of the Camillas.

The BodyWorlds Exhibit opens today at Scienceworld! (His website's been updated, it's nice now. Really).

I went with Alastair to see it when we were down in L.A. It's beautiful and liberating in a way that's difficult to describe. I wanted to cradle every body, kiss thier eyes and know thier names. I stared and I stared, I crept as close as they'll let you to try and memorize every exquisite detail. The exhibition is full of moments of deep, abiding, and very surprising glory, where you find yourself suddenly enraptured with unexpected appreciation for things you'd never think you might see. The volunteer application sheets they have on-line require that all applicants have "Solid comprehension of moral issues regarding death and the displaying of human bodies." I suspect I would fail the test, if there is one. I am brimming with admiration for what Von Hagen has done, I am delighted in respectful awe, but I doubt I have any idea what other people's moral issues might be. Mine are unperturbed, only upset that there are not more of these shows, that it is not at least mandatory for school-children at the age of nine or ten.

Censearchip: exploring search engine result differences returned by different countries' versions of the major search engines. (The Web and image search functions of four national versions of Google and Yahoo!: the United States, China, France, and Germany.)

Summer is over and I'm not sleeping well, though I should be alright. My Oliver-inspired Pirate day is getting posted around as it should be, {it's come around back to me from three different sources today}, and people are saying they'll come. (My man Crow: "I was almost an innocent man!"). Last night I was ship building. Stephen supplied all the construction materials, minus silly string and blue glitter, I made the body of the big one, then Michael came over and made me a mermaid and an anchor, and Ed helped make some brackets for the ropes. Cardboard boats with broomstick masts, it looks like the big one will fit three to five people and the little one will fit two or three. That way we'll have a main ship and an attacker. I plan on simply chucking them off the balcony instead of wrestling them down the stairs when Tuesday comes. Should be fun.

Bush 'Slush Fund' possibly courtesy of the Canadian softwood lumber industry. (hell.)

I brought Sam two baby frogs in a fishbowl and a green mint cupcake for his birthday Monday and we curled up in a chair together and talked. It's comforting to have him back in town, extra special to feel safe and warm while being given small stories from Burning Man. I'm glad he went. He said he didn't miss me because I was everywhere he looked there. Funny how the man keeps me sane, like he's a shadowy mirror of a relationship or a wish I made as a child on the dried out fluff of a dandelion.

"You know, most people don't do that," the farmer remarked off handedly as he tilled his vegetables.

"What?" the girl asked, genuinely curious, as always.

The farmer stood up straight, wiped his brow with his red kerchief and locked eyes with the girl. "Walk around with a flower in their mouth," he replied, nodding to the phenomena.

This gave the girl pause, she tried to look down at the flower but her eyes got all crossed and made her dizzy. She looked up at the farmer and asked tentatively, "Why?"

He gave a long sigh and continued with his tilling, "'Cause it's strange, that's why."

"Oh..." She thought for a while, her bare toes stabbing idly at the dirt as she balanced on the other foot. "But it's not strange that people don't have flowers in their mouths?"

The old farmer snorted, "That's right."

The girl considered this further and said, "What do you call it when a girl has a flower in her mouth and yet is able to speak without it falling out?"

The farmer grinned and looked up at her, "Bad story-telling."

photo by alois
text by kindelingboy

KindelingBoy Michael is having a party tomorrow evening to celebrate his final freedom from Too Much School TM.

My cool news today is this letter:

Hi,

Just a head's up to let you know that I've added your blog, Dreampepper, to the British Columbia Blogs directory and aggregator at publicbroadcasting.ca - if for any reason you do not want your blog listed, please let me know and I'll take it back down immediately.

Cheers,
Justin

I don't know how they found me, but the list looks pretty small, so I'm pleased. Apparently the main criteria be that they're well written, been around for awhile, and update frequently, as well as having that undefinable "something".

Max Headroom creator made Roswell alien.
Deathboy makes a song based on the very first episode.

This week has been a successful book of matches, every day burning when I strike it with my eyes. I feel like a chemical reaction, sparkling and fizzing, exploding strong-box secrets and licking what's inside. If I were Rapunzel, this would be me letting down my hair, suddenly afraid that my princes were just a dream. This would be taking myself and my bedding and my famous blue raincoat to wind my fairy-tales a rope, offering them a way in instead of a noose, banishing my fears, losing them one by one like beads from a broken string.

AXE's GameKillers advertisement series.
Adidas Idicolor viral-marketing films. (watch PINK especially)

A sound like god, what happens when a man covered in microphones walks into a room full of speakers.

I have been measuring things more in my eyes than my hands this week, which leads to interesting bits of missing time that I worry for, as if they're my children and I've abandoned them for that crucial minute too long in the shopping mall where now the only way to get them back is in newspaper articles I clip out and tape to my fridge.

Last weekend, Burrow was in town. I know that for certain. The order of her arrival is written down, there were pictures taken. She stayed over Friday night with Sam, the evening of Meat Eatery. Sam and I had walked to BJ's after dinner, watched atrocious movies with Bob and his girl-darling from Parksville, then returned to curl up with Burrow asleep in my bed. We were quiet, but woke her unintentionally.

Saturday we crawled out of bed in time for the Fool's Parade. Sam went home to shackle himself to his desk and Burrow and I rolled like tired thunder downtown and met with Duncan, Jenn, Georg, and her pink-dyed ferret, Silky. The parade was rainy and under-attended, so after coming close to winning the Fool of the Year award with ferret breasts, we abandoned the street for Taf's. When work didn't have my paycheque ready, we turned around and walked to the Bay to visit with Eva at her clinical cosmetics booth. It was fascinating, in a quiet colourful way, but not enough to keep Burrow and I from going home to rest before Duncan pulled us out to the graceful Fool's Cabaret on Main st. Reine's mother was there, and Siobhan, a friend of friend's we went to dinner with after.

Monday is missing, a played out afterburn. I took some self-portraits, but I don't know if I slept there at home or not. There was one, two ideas. A number, undifferentiated. Something.

Tuesday is more concrete, not only written down, but recorded. Video, audio, photographs. Imogyne and I at Hawksley Workman with darling Sophie. The Cultch in all it's warmly worn desiccating glory, intimate, red curtained. I remembered all the shows I'd played there. Running through the back when I was a child, that one time making love inside the roof. Downstairs hot-boxing the worn office, how there was once a pane of glass violently shattered in the middle of an orchestral piece, how the beads of my necklace clattered as I bounced and clapped. The music was good too, his acoustic version of striptease sincerely captivating.

After, Devon came over and we stayed up until the last bus, listening to our bootlegs and drinking weary tea. Imogyne eventually went home, and Devon and I talked until far too late, making me late for work Wednesday. The day I went to Andrew's after work and Georg and I re-dyed my hair into the colour of sticky quill ink while watching Ghost in the Shell. She came back to my place after, and we let the ferret run free through my apartment as we talked about partners and lives lost, the soulmates of just then and not today and maybe yesterday we knew something and maybe tomorrow we'll have some hope. She wrote poetry and I woke up in the morning holding her hand.

Thursday I had a date with Sam, a real live date, not one of those on-line long-distance approximations my life seems to enjoy lauding me with. Cleaned up versions of us met at Tinseltown for the Brick preview and had dinner at Wild Ginger before walking out to False Creek to hang out on a water fountain and eat caramel ice-cream. We sat under the moon passing the tub back and forth like a cheap cigarette and talked about some of the same things that Georg did. We're all divorced, the lot of us. It's like a curse or a disease catching in all the social circles. It seems like every split has had very little to do with love and everything to do with a basic need to keep evolving, to keep trying to touch forever.

Friday Michael stole me out from under dinner with Andrew, Navi, Ryan, and Eva, and accompanied Robin and I to Thank You For Smoking instead. It was gleeful, with some damned nice moments, (there was a montage of Bad People that slaughtered us like baby seals), and led well into creeping alone up the stairs into Duello for the end of Fight Practice, a small red flower as my sword. I sat on the couch with Lee, letting him show me knife tricks, as people cleaned up and we sat for coffee until it was too late to think of going anywhere else but home. Friday nights, however, traditionally lead into mornings without work, so we survived.

We survived well, in fact, not doing a damned thing until somewhere after two in the afternoon, until the body-call to breakfast was too deafening to ignore.