The week I spent in Vancouver last month left a distinct taste in my mouth. The fabric of what I learned from my time there (layers upon layers) is multi-faceted, but one realization I came to was that I am a lover of being near water. There is something about the open scape of cool blue-black that gives me shivers in the best sort of way. One of my favourite nights, that remains tattooed on my innards and emblazoned in my memory, was a stretch of hours spent in the darkness, laying barefoot on cold sand. Cigarettes were chain-smoked, humid midnight air was breathed in and out and over again, crevices of silence were embraced, and hearts were cracked open. I don't know one thousand percent, but I feel as if that experience would have been altered in a significant way if it had not spun itself lazily out alongside ocean.
Either way and anyways...
Here are a few more pieces of my world:
Lately, on days when I wake up and feel like I cannot possibly spend another day slash night behind a bar, I pretend that I am Amelie. Somehow, that changes everything. Instead of feeling primarily listless, I feel whimsical, and rather than frusterated, fanciful. It is actually quite a remarkable transformation, if significant only to myself.
I am really beginning to miss the presence of a cat in my living space. In reflection of my days as a Wolseley inhabitant, it's all too clear to me that one of my most cherished hours of every day was the one where I would piece together some sort of (usually trife) dinner, Magnolia Jade twining herself at my feet. It became ritual for me to talk aloud to that loco insano cat jewel about my day. She didn't mind the trivialities and often mundane details, and she was a beautiful listener. So yes, in the coming months there is a good chance that my mothering skills will come forth from the distant woodwork and test the waters of cat ownership once again.
I had a laughable slash interesting experience yesterday afternoon. I was way down in the sinewy heart of far-reaching Portage Avenue, my arms laced around an approximate five hundred pounds of thrifting prowess. I felt lighter than I have in a long time, perhaps as a result of my magnificant grunge vintage finds, or perhaps for no particular reason whatsoever. Regardless, as I was traipsing solo down God-knows-what St, weaving my way towards catching a bus en route home, the dirt-toned sky ripped open and shrouded me in torrential rain. This rain did not give me any sort of a grace period, and it carried on in angry fashion for hours upon hours after its untimely (in my circumstances) beginning. This is the funny thing. Having given up on keeping myself from hobo drowned-rat status quo, I waded down the street, water grazing my bare ankles, hands clutching my treasured finds. So there I was, thrashing towards Portage like some homeless herion-chic sketchbag, and straight out of nowhere, a cab reeled to a stop beside me. Open inched the backseat door, and an immaculately-dressed man, suit, mid-fifties, eyes fiilled with laughter and an edge of pity, beckoned me inside. Flowing water like a mermaid, I flung myself inside, shopping bags streaking water all over, black eye makeup slinking down the skin of my face. I said a tentative "Are you sure you want me in here?" (the obligatory question when one is beckoned by a flawless Mr. Big-type while looking like an absolute train wreck). His response was to laugh at length and question me as to the ins and outs of my life, including just how it had led me to my current state of dishevelment. I think he thought I was funny, in an extremely pathetic way. He then made the cab driver escort me home. It was quite nice, when all is said and done. Not entirely unlike a pride-slashing moment experienced by one of my favourite femmes in a world not ours:
On a complete change of subject matter, I discovered as of tonight that sometimes a potted plant says enough. This sweet piece of life appeared in my bedroom after a rough day. Madge, I love you. One thousand "merci beaucoups" for always, always knowing.
I have been very much in the vein of feeding off of the creativity of others, while floundering to bring my own forth in organic a way as possible. Here are some vitamins that have fed me to the marrow the past while...
"When the vultures rise it's a sign that night is about to end..."--Italo Calvino, 'If On a Winter's Night a Traveler'.
"Then I find...that I have given away my whole soul to someone who treats it as if it were a flower to put in his coat, a bit of decoration to charm his vanity, an ornament for a summer's day...nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul."--Oscar Wilde, 'The Picture of Dorian Gray'.
"And you know that she's half crazy but that's why you want to be there."--Leonard Cohen, 'Suzanne'.
"If you want me satisfy me, if you want me satisfy me, if you want me satisfy me, if you want me satisfy me"--Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, 'If You Want Me'.
"Go to him, stay with him if you can, oh but be prepared to bleed"--Joni Mitchell, 'A Case of You'.
"You held on to me like I was a crucifix, as we went kneeling through the dark."--Leonard Cohen, 'So Long, Marianne'.
'No hands are half as gentle or firm as they'd like to be..."--Iron and Wine (Sam Beam), 'My Lady's House'.
"Do his hands in your hair feel a lot like a thing you believe in... How I've missed you lately, and the way we would speak and all that we wouldn't say"--Iron and Wine (Sam Beam), 'Bird Stealing Bread'.
"We were always weird but I never had to hold you by the edges like I do now."--The National, 'Start a War'.
"If we put our hearts in twenty thousand tiny jars they'd never leave their homes."--Final Fantasy (Owen Pallett), 'This is the Dream of Win and Regine'.
"And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt."--Sylvia Plath
"Ukrainian girls are easy."--Meg Kroeker, 11th October/2007, London, England. (referring to yours truly...! regrets, but i had to slip it in there; it is far too good not to be shared.)
"The death of desire is a bottomlessly sad thing. Books are written, documentaries are made, and counsellors are paid to help people want each other again. Perhaps it's just a momentary ebb in the tide of our relationship, let's take this opportunity to see what treasures have washed up on the beach in the meantime. Get to know one another again. Take a holiday. And perhaps it comes back, or perhaps it does enough for one party but not the other. Desire can be detected at such low levels that it's difficult to say when it's dead."
and
"Memory breeds memory. The very air is made of memory. Memory falls in the rain. You drink memory. In winter you make snow angels out of memory."
--(both the former and the latter courtesy of wordsmith) Ann Marie MacDonald, 'The Way the Crow Flies'.
"Be happy. Love life."--Lesley Dianne Bohay, circa an email she wrote me months upon months upon ages ago.
"Entire forests have been felled to provide all the tourist literature that has been written about France's capital. Everyone has an opinion on Paris, having travelled there or not...Paris stands in a class by itself. France's bijou extraordinaire remains the benchmark for beauty, culture and class the world over. Even the most cynical traveler, skeptical that any city could live up to Paris' reputations, can't help but be charmed by its magnificent avenues and cozy cafe life, its unparalleled arts scene and energetic but composed pace. Paris is the Paris of the Parisians, the Paris of France, the only and only Paris. Nothing comes close."--'A Note' on Paris (Je t'aime) a la 'Europe on a Shoestring'. And you know what? Its dead fucking true.
"I can see a lot of life in you...I can see a lot of bright in you...I can see a bed and make it too..I can see a fireside turn blue..."--Sufjan Stevens, 'The Dress Looks Nice on You'.
"They enjoyed the miracle of loving each other as much at the table as in bed, and they grew to be so happy that even when they were two worn-out old people they kept on blooming like little children and playing together like dogs."--Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 'One Hundred Years of Solitude'.
"They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself."--Andy Warhol.
"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it in tact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries, avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket--safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable."--C.S. Lewis, 'Mere Christianity'.
"For when people leave our company in our time we are never certain of seeing them again, or seeing them unaltered."--Michael Ondaatje, 'Anil's Ghost'.
"If this were the last night of the world what would I do? What would I do that was different, unless it was champagne with you?"--Bruce Cockburn, 'Last Night of the World'.
"The world is full of seasons; of anguish, of laughter...and it comes to mind to write you this--Nothing is sure, nothing is pure, and no matter who we think we are everyone gets his chance to be nothing. Love's supposed to heal, but it breaks my heart to feel the pain in your voice, but you know it's all going somewhere...and I would crush my heart and throw it in the street if I could pay for your choice..."--Bruce Cockburn, 'Isn't That What Friends Are For?'.
"A million faces at my feet, but all I see are dark eyes...All I feel is heat and flame, and all I see are dark eyes...Nature's beast fears as they come, and all I see are dark eyes...The earth is strung with lovers' pearls, and all I see are dark eyes..."--Bob Dylan, 'Dark Eyes'.
et pour la fini (suchSUCH shoddy French. regrets.)--
THE EMBERS OF EDEN (Cockburn, Bruce)
You knelt on the carpet, crimson and stained
Light trickled over your black dress like rain
Your lips were hot and my shocked heart screamed
And I can't scrape my eyes free of this dream
We each occupy the same space/time
Matter, antimatter, tangled like vines
And the awful tolling, and the cold rain outside
And I cannot scrape this dream off my eyes
And the embers of Eden burn
You can even see it from space
And the great and winding wall between us
Seem to copy the lines of your face
And the embers of Eden burn
You can even see it from space
And the great and winding wall between us
Seem to copy the lines of your face
-----
Cockburn is a poet and a bloody briliant one, if you ask me. He is sacred to me on soso many levels, the foundational one being that I was raised on a steady diet of his music growing up. There are few individuals I currently idolize more as an artist than this man. To me, he is a magician.
Apologies for the absurd length of this posting. I was feeling introspective.
Finally, finally finally...to ice the cake...
Eff those two. No honestly...I adore them. In a viciously envious sort of way.
XXOOXXO.
I'll kiss your chest, just below your throat.
And so on and so forth.
Rebecca L.B.
