Dreampepper

The buzzer at two:thirty in the morning, a brief sound, then a longer, more insistent beep, as grating to the ear as that alarm clock you meant to turn off, but didn't. There is a wind storm outside, huge, tossing, beyond chilly. November brought snow once already. I decide to ignore the buzzer. It is likely, as it often is this time of night, for one of my more illicit neighbors. A junkie hitting the wrong button, someone drunk maybe, wanting to get in from the cold. I decide to leave it, but then it comes again, irritating. Deliberate. A voice calls from outside, but the weather tears it away. Defeated, I put on my permanently borrowed hoodie, draw up the zipper, and step out to the hallway in my stocking feet to go downstairs, too tired to puzzle out who it might be, too awake to simply let the stranger in.

It isn't a stranger, but it is, in a way. Someone who used to be a friend, though not anymore. Hasn't been for years. "Hey Jhayne!" He's almost shouting through the glass, over the wind, weirdly cheerful. He must be freezing. "Do you recognize me?" He takes off his ball-cap and runs a hand through newly cut hair. "Hello, K-. Yes. It's quite late. What's up?" The last time I saw him it was difficult to get him out of the apartment. It was exceedingly uncomfortable. I had to involve a knife. He talks through the glass door, motioning for me to open it, but I shake my head no. That seems like it would be a stupid decision. He's bigger than me, I'm tired, and he has a bicycle. As if to prove my point, he launches immediately into a well known scam, twenty dollars for gas for some guy he met down the street, sketchy details and a giant smile, as if it isn't the middle of the night, as if the storm were instead a sunny, summer afternoon, as casual as butter. I gesture, dismissing the patter, "I'm going back to bed K-." His grin becomes manic as he sees me begin to step away. He talks faster and faster. "But, do you have twenty dollars?" "No, I don't. We barely have bus-fare. You still owe me rent. This isn't a place for you to ask for help anymore."

For a very brief moment he almost looks like he used to, before the drugs ate him up from the inside out, cracked the inside of his mind, and I raise my hand against the glass, like visiting a zoo exhibit, a glimpse into the past, and he puts his fingers against mine. Maybe one day he'll be better, a father to his daughter, a friend again. But no, he doesn't stop talking even as I try to say goodbye, too locked in his message, his bright, strange smile, his uncomfortable face. Finally I just walk away, his words, muffled by the glass, smearing into background noise as I slowly go back up the stairs and to my apartment, where I make very certain to lock the door.

A promotional headshot for my mother, Vicki.

We're going to Stanley Park today for Vancouver's 125th birthday celebrations.
There's free concerts all weekend, (featuring Neko Case, The New Pornographers, Fond of Tigers, Veda Hille, Said the Whale, and Dan Mangan), and some splendid sounding art installations, (rumour says someone will be folding ten foot paper cranes), as well as performances by groups like Kokoro Dance, Gamelan Gita Asmara, and The Dusty Flowerpot Cabaret. Schedules at the link.

More bad news has come in. If anyone local to Vancouver has any contact numbers for support groups or counseling for families who have lost members to the Downtown Eastside sex & drug trade, it would be appreciated. Information or resource centers available to parents of underage delinquents would also be relevant. Thanks.

I am tired today, exhausted almost to the point of sickness. Absolutely everything hurts, my body a canvas of bruises faded to a spectacular spray of purple and green and yellowy red, my heart a tight and unhappy fist. Depression has closed over me again, a horrid glue I can't wash off without resources I do not have. I am hungry for more than this, for sunshine, for a place where I don't know anyone, where I have something to do.

So I am lurking on-line, examining work-visa options, all of them rushing away from me faster than I can run, opportunities closing each day I creep closer to thirty. I feel absolutely trapped, too poor to make requirements, too undereducated, too sad.

If I don't find a way to escape before my next birthday, I'm walking out.

I dragged 40 pounds of books over to Pulp Fiction on Main St. yesterday, only to have them buy two titles, basically reducing my trip to $8 for an hour's work. Boo. Then, on the long walk home, after a lovely streetside conversation with BJ, one of my cart wheels snapped off. Double boo. Luckily, after about half a mile of unsuccessfully attempting to drag a broken cart, some very nice guy on a bicycle pulled up and said, "Did you lose a wheel? Yeah, that's ruined. Hold on, stay here, you going far? I'll give you a ride home.", spun away, then came back and picked me up in a big shiny jeep with a canadian flag on the back. (Turned out to be Oliver's neighbor, because this city is small like that.)

So that was my tiny, merry adventure, and once again, like many of them, it involved hopping into a car with a total unknown. Thank you random man, for making my day so much better!

New score - Jhayne: 1. Stranger Danger: 0. Win.

The other exciting thing that happened yesterday was that I recieved my very first HST return. Not a huge chunk of money, not even remotely enough to get me in the clear, but enough that I've been able to kill some of my debts. I paid off the $70 I owed on taxes, set aside what I owe Karen, and half of what I owe Paula, put some cash towards my EI debt, and today I'm paying off the ICBC transit tickets someone put in my name while I was in Montreal, so I can continue working on getting a driver's licence. Sounds mundane, perhaps, but it feels bloody brilliant all the same.

This past weekend was exhausting, the sort that feels alright to leave behind. Saturday was eaten up by David's sister's wedding, a strange affair out in Abbotsford at a family restaurant, small, informal, slightly terrifying, and Sunday was taken up with Slutwalk, a thousand person protest march against victim shaming that Katie N. helped put together. Oddly, out of the two, even though Slutwalk was four hours of being on my feet, running around and taking pictures, surviving the little wedding took more out of me. Something to do with social shock, maybe, or walmart-culture inspired depression. Either way, it's not something I would be willing to do again.

There was also a long, miserable walk home from Broadway on Sunday, broken and alone. It ended with John catching me in my room crying, so he went out and brought back two delicious cupcakes from the new place up the street, presenting them to me in a small paper box, "Here's some men-are-scum cupcakes." I sniffled and laughed, and said, "Men aren't scum." He replied, "Yes they are sweetie. Trust me, I am one. Eat your cupcake. It'll help make everything better." And he was right. It did.

(He also, tongue firmly planted in cheek, brought me a voodou doll when he arrived from New Orleans to "help" with my heartbreak. It's a grassy thing dressed in pink, with a burned plastic doll face and a magic lima bean tied to its waist with some leather. Creepy looking, yes, but with the effect somewhat ruined by the mass produced tag around its neck: FOR ATTRACTION.)

Today I'm processing pictures, doing laundry, and last minute packing for my trip to NY, making certain I have cords for things, trying to remember if I packed any stockings, triple checking that I've put aside pants that fit me, shirts for every weather, vitamins, hairpins, toothpaste, moonlight, music, the moose hat, and things with feathers on them. Really I've been more or less ready for a couple of days, I could have left yesterday, the only thing left is to find a missing bird skull earring, but there's something comforting about being extra sure.

I took Lung and Nicole to a film shoot at the Burrard Street secret stairs last week, where we took a ton of pictures. The sound inside was beautiful, like the ocean on a rainy day, but heard through a megaphone, crackling and thrumming and incredibly comforting, and the light was so perfect it was almost unreal. I'll post more pictures later, as I get to them.

"A kiss would do it.
One sprinkle of milkwhite salt
and I'll break like bread at your table."
- S. Sloat

Uncertain about my weekend away, I find everything I wanted to write about draining away, replaced by the landscape outside the train windows. There is a large, strange boat abandoned on part of the shore, a hulking, rotten thing, the discarded corpse of a predator. Every time I see it, I want to visit. Climb upon its ribs, explore the depths of its throat. The house near it, that of a witch. Driftwood, black paint, sorrow. Somewhere a hand-painted sign, STAY AWAY. The water is smooth today, enough to reflect the sky, a strange illusion of clouds and occasional threads of blue. Soon it is replaced by green farm fields dotted with tiny isolated homesteads, the tracks swinging in-land. A bridge, blue herons, the shock of a log yard with violent wood-chippers, the elegant, golden spray of chewed material gouting from the top of a long metal tube, propelled by a quick, vicious conveyor belt and the hunger of consumerism. Touch it and you'd lose your hand. (It scares a child sitting behind me). Next, a dense, sputtering flock of birds swarming like massive bees, a horror of movement next to a small white farmhouse, paint peeling in antique strips as potentially old as the magenta hot-rod rusting out beside it, fins pointed to the sky like a prayer.

The closer I travel to Canada, the more everything is gray. The more the trees I like, honest, naked, are replaced with depressing evergreens. To another set of eyes, the view might be spectacular - inspiring, pristine nature of the sort usually found only in magazines - but if it wasn't for my lover in Vancouver, I would be certain that I'm traveling the wrong direction, towards failure. My home behind me, as if I am running away.

In an effort to prod myself out the door more often, I've started scouring the city for events again. The next trick will be to actually go to some of them. (Ex. I intended to hit up the PuSH opening gala last night, but spent time with A. then Lori instead. Fail? Not fail? Still social, though stayed in. Tough call.) That said, here's some good ideas I've chalked in, but haven't solidified yet. Who's in?

Tuesday/today

7:00 + 9:30pm - Half Price Tuesday, The Green Hornet by Michel Gondry at The Rio. $6. (With A.)
7-9pm - PuSH: Boca Del Lupo's free La Marea, Gastown, zero-hundred block of Water Street.

Wednesday

8-11pm - Jack and Martin from Maria in the Shower, an intimate duo show at The Helm restaurant, 1180 Howe Street. (With Jess.) Company bailed, stayed in.

Thursday

12pm-6pm - PuSH: Iqaluit at the Woodward's Atrium.
7-9pm - PuSH: Boca Del Lupo's free La Marea, Gastown, zero-hundred block of Water Street. (With Beth.) Went to Bin 942 after for delicious tapas and killer chocolate fondue. Holy hell, I had forgotten how completely magical a raspberry tastes. There are no words.
9:30-late - EXCISION (Dubstep Invasion Series) at Gossip, 750 Pacific Blvd. $25.

Friday

9-late - Isaac's Freaks & 45's Formal birthday party. (With Tony & ?.)
12am - City of the Lost Children midnight movie at the Rio, (subtitled). Admission is $8 or $7 in costume. Stayed at the party.

Saturday

8-12am - The Tequila Mockingbird Orchestra with Jess Hill at Cafe Deux Soleils. $10-15 sliding scale at the door. (With Tony & ?.) (Sold out before we arrived).
8:30-12am - Stay Wet: An anti-celebration of the 82nd anniversary of the Dry Bill, featuring The Furniture, Blackberry Wood, Antiparty, and The Brass Action at The Railway Club.
9-12am - Karaoke at the Main St. Legion, 3917 Main Street. (Added to this list by request.)
10-2am - SinCity at Club 23 West. (With Tony & A.)

Sunday

2pm - PuSH: 46 Circus Acts in 45 Minutes, UBC Frederic Wood Theatre. 2pm. $12.50 General, $5 Kids under 12, $25 Family of 4 (max 2 adults). Box Office 604.822.2678
3pm - Day for Night: Full Moon in Paris by Eric Rohmer at the Waldorf Cabaret. Went to brunch with Tony and A., then for hot chocolate at Cocoa Nymph.