A Thousand Kisses Deep:

I've been grappling for the words to trap my night in the presence of Leonard Cohen in black and white form, but I've concluded that I cannot. At least not yet. I need to keep tasting the experience, again and over, until I can do any sort of justice to it in writing. I was raised on this man. And he as good as had me on my knees all night; much respect, much speechlessness and so much inspiration. I am letting my lips fall together at this point, because (really, who the hell are we kidding) he just says it so much better. Close your eyes and listen to this.

The age of self:

Last night, Meg and I splayed ourselves amidst brown boxes that yawned open (poised for her imminent departure to the bush) and owned the fuck out of a trillion-dollar bottle of wine. Thanks Uncle James; you placed a very posh night straight into our fingers. I do not know the exact value of this liquid brilliance that we slid down our throats....all I know is that it came in a long, skinny box with a blood-red ribbon looped around it. Cool. Our fake boyfriends, Devendra Banhart and Jana Hunter licked our ears on repeat all night long, again and over more times than I became capable of counting. Candlelight flecked the nearly-naked walls of Meg's living room, and blackened chocolate lay broken into bits on the low table between us. A strange blend of sadness and the loosest contentedness settled in around me as I sat there, folded into the blanketed couch, ribs grazing against. It will be weird to see that space go; for some reason that I cannot quite decipher, I have the fiercest attachment to those walls. Or rather, all that has transpired within them...food and drink and records and laughter and friends and photoshoots and meltdowns and secret-spilling and...I could go on. Here, instead, is a glimpse of what expensive alcohol will do to people whose budgets typically accomadate $10 bottles of wine:









On a completely unrelated note, I have been intrigued lately by this artist named Robert Wyatt. He is a wildly interesting musician who I also find a great deal of inspiration in as a writer. I think that he twists words together in a really unique way. Like this...

Sea Song (Wyatt):


You look different every time you come
From the foam-crested brine
Your skin shining softly in the moonlight
Partly fish, partly porpoise, partly baby sperm whale
Am I yours? Are you mine to play with?
Joking apart - when you're drunk you're terrific when you're drunk
I like you mostly late at night you're quite alright
But I can't understand the different you in the morning
When it's time to play at being human for a while please smile!
You'll be different in the spring, I know
You're a seasonal beast like the starfish that drift in with the tide
So until your your blood runs to meet the next full moon
You're madness fits in nicely with my own
Your lunacy fits neatly with my own, my very own
We're not alone






He was a young babe and now he is an old man. Either way, in my opinion he oozes coolness.

Onwards with my Sunday,
RB.

Caliente.

I wake earlier than I should--cat weeping at the edge of my door. My fingers, grapefruit-stained in the dirty light filtering through my window, peel through pages; page after page after another, and so on. Reading the ghost of your own words (especially recent, that is the best and also the hardest) is a strange way to spend a morning. And yet. There are a few stretches, lanky scrawl that dips in at the margins and seems to have little regard for the structure of lines and any any sort of structure, that inject memory like fluid warmth. (Here are a few bites.)
:
--(8th Feb, bus station) Buenos Aires bus station. Afternoon. Feet are dirty and smoke (cigarette) trails into my face from nearby. The speakers shriek announcements in harrowing Spanish, slicing through the hot air. Our white skin draws continual glances; stares even. We are getting used to it. The children are beautiful here; dark dark butter-soft skin and eyes, black that goes on for miles. There are dressed, for the most part, simply and haggardly. Babies abound. It is really almost unbelievable, the amount of new life that is scattered, it seems, everywhere. The mothers are young and tired, but also act almost as if toting fresh children in their arms is not really anything all that significant. I notice, again and again, women walking the streets with a baby (new newNEW) slung casually in one arm. It's like more people than not have babes attached to their bodies from some limb or another, and there is a very casual air surrounding this. I feel like in the setting that I am used to, parents are constantly absorbed fussing and preening and obsessing over their small ones, in a way that seems somehow overwhelming in comparison. I kind of like that children here look perpetually dirt-fringed and disheveled. NOT to minimize at any level the poverty that likely lies behind that visual, but my observation is that I like the fact that these kids don't seem reluctant or at all afraid to get dirty. I have seen countless little bodies already, sprawled out in the middle of a sidewalk, playing hard. I cannot get enough of that. And it seems that in this culture (Buenos Aires at least), everyone is chill with the fact that there may be children rolling underneath your feet as you walk the downtown streets.

--(9th Feb., rooftop terrace) I am reading "The Time Traveler's Wife" in the slowest bites so that it will last. It is so drop-dead good that it almost makes me sort of sick. Here is a taste: "I place my hands over her ears and tip her head back, and kiss her, and try to put my heart into hers, for safekeeping, in case I lose it again."

--(10th Feb., dingy bed) Back at the heart of everything, I drain you off the crevices of my body. You are liquid energy; watery hope. Right now, I still feel the underlayer of trepidation...and so I filter you (reluctantly) off of myself. Where you once may have responded grimly, you seem visibly unaffected by this. I like to think that it is because you know I am near. We are both aware of it; starkly aware. The strange and ironic thing about consequences, though, is our inability to predict them. Like, if I keep him at one hundred arm's lengths and then with time realize that I want him nearer to me than any others...will it have slipped out of my reach? Will he slip away; will you? This is the fear that causes me to fret in my sleep...did I fuck it up too far? I can only stand to believe that the answer to this ugly question is no, adamently no. Even though the past with others has often been unkind...comparisons are ugly; I choose something different.

--(14th Feb, waterside) Just this: "There is the hidden presence of others in us, even those we have known briefly. We contain them for the rest of our lives, at every border that we cross."--Ondaatje, M., "Divisidero". Damnation, soso good.

--(17th Feb., cafe.) I feel an evenness in myself right now. These last weeks have lifted a clinging layer of weight off my chest and shoulders and mind, and that organ that feels so sharply. Perspective is a soothing, cooling thing.

--(18th Feb., night bus) The light thrown from the bus station was pale; grunge-streaked. I peeled wooden limbs from beneath my body and unraveled, stretching so as to feel again. Forehead pressed against the cool window, I noticed his naked back, slick with sweat in the moonlight. He was young, so young, barely more than twelve or even eleven. Amidst the muted tones of whitewashed building and rusted fencing and pavement, the wet sheen of his skin stood out like hot breath against winter air. Running lightly; loosely; with a strange sort of beauty, he reached a long and slender arm down, reeling the stray basketball into his left hand. Hardly faltering, he twisted direction and began to leg his way back to his gang of friends--also shirtless; also sweat-laced. They moved with the restlessness of swarming insects around the nearby field, not pretending to conceal their impatience. I watched as he melted back into their midst, suddenly indecipherable in the thick of twining, darkened bodies. All I was aware of as I averted my eyes was how alive I felt.


--(23rd Feb, bus station) Just a little while back, as I was slouching here forcing myself to eat three lukewarm empanadas, I saw a couple about my age saying goodbye before the girl stepped onto a bus. They pressed their forms together and kissed one another's faces all over, like they meant it--neck, cheekbones, forehead, verging on lips, and finally lips. I wonder how long she is leaving him for...are they in love...is it a smooth or a resentful parting, or rather just the predictable bittersweet. I wonder. They looked like nice people, there was a certain sort of ease in their movements; a happy coolness.

--(24th Feb., in the grass) All words from hereon in stolen from "The History of Love", penned by Nicole Krauss (who fast became my idol ten pages after opening this book).

"Her kiss was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering."
"Her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering."
"They collected the world in small handfuls."
"The oldest emotion in the world may be that of being moved; but to describe it--just to name it--must have been like trying to catch something invisible."
"Having begun to feel, people's desire to feel grew. They wanted to feel more, feel deeper, despite how much it sometimes hurt. People became addicted to feeling. They struggled to uncover new emotions. It's possible that this is how art was born. New kinds of joy were forged, along with new kinds of sadness..."

--(26th Feb., Bolivian soil) It is hotter; balmier here--that, and also almost frigid. It seems that the air and the sky change often, every few hours or so. Even though we have only left Argentina just behind, already there are significant shifts. This feels barer; simpler and more stripped down. Also more colourful. We are whittling hours away planted outside the train station awaiting our ride to this quaint-looking town called Tupiza. We are draped across a stretch of cracked sidewalk with this Israeli boy who seems to have latched himself onto us. A bit annoying but nevertheless, it is further company. The sky to our East is so ominous right now. The smoky tones are building by the minute, it seems, and it (the sky) has a fierce look about it. I feel as if I want to photograph and/or write about every other person that walks past me on the street--there is so much beauty here. The elderly women especially draw me..their sweeping head wraps and intricately-lined leathery skin. This is the South America that I had envisioned...the one I have been pining for introduction to. I am thankful to be here in the now. Despite how destroyed my body has felt all day, and how frustrating all these legs of transportation have been, there is nowhere else I would rather be.

--(26th Feb., train) Balance. I am interested in balance.

--(6th March, out of doors) Hot hot hot HEAT. I am splayed out, bare-legged and naked-armed on hot stone. It is beginning to hit that time of evening cool, but nevertheless the cement is still throwing insatiable amounts of heat. It feels smooth and lovely. The height of the sun-drenched day is brilliant, but also a bit intolerable. So this fall of evening is always welcomed with a lightened breath.

--(7th March, hammock) My current read is called "What is the What" written by one Dave Eggers. It is heavy as hell, but breath-stopping at the same time. Here you go: "It's odd to say this, but I loved Tabitha most from afar. That is, my love grew for her each time I could watch her from a distance. Perhaps that sounds wrong. I did love her when we were together in my room or on the couch, our legs entwined and her hands in mine, but when I could see her from across a street, or walking toward me, or stepping onto a broken escalator, those are the moments I most remember."

--(9th March, rooftop terrace) It is late Sunday night and I am nursing a (surprisingly delicious) McDonald's coffee. Kate and I are back in Buenos Aires and I am happy, so happy to be here. The last string of days has been seemingly fraught with travel and movement, so a steady stretch of time banked in one place is completely what I have been craving. This is good, yes. My body feels trashed from last night's bus ride, and tonight's installment of vino blanco. Even now as I write, my eyes are falling shut and my fingers are weary; I realize full well that it is time to call it a night. Hello, Rebecca Louise--your body is crying out for some serious sleep. I am off to oblige.

--(14th March, balcony) Saturday morning--heat drips like liquid through the air. It is like a softly knitted web, this heat. It is light and infused with heaviness all at once; it is sensual, almost. You breathe in and it saturates your lungs and down to your limbs like twisting energy...it is extraordinary. It want to hang onto this; the sensation of how it feels. In a week or two, once I am immersed like a shivering creature in Winnipeg wind and ice, I want to draw easily on this memory. I am fairly certain I will be cursing myself for my lack of realization and worship or the warmth and light that is almost a given here. I know that I will dream of it behind lidded eyes, and crave and yearn for it like a woman hungry. It has been a blessing already, though, in so many ways. My body has never felt lighter or smoother...my skin has a sheen to it and my head remains clear. It is refreshing; addicting, almost.


(There are eight hundred thousand more where that came from. I am unemployed, so you will likely find me siphoning them onto here in my endless spare time.)

Amen,
RB.

Emily Haines--Buenos Aires.

For some reason I was incredibly inspired by this.

Feathers of deep black and cool green.

Sunday morning. Stop. Can't leave sheets. Stop. Laughter, my roommate's, drifting from the bedroom down the hall. Sigh, stop. I've chosen this, but I wish it wasn't mine; this starkness. Stop. Sleep, but fitfully. In my state of half-wake, half-dream with an injection of self-pity, my mind wanders wildly. Green, pale, eye contact, water, damp salty hair, incomprehensible words (this is not my language), catching one train then another, rearranging cutlery, tracing the bony line of your back and not knowing why but it feels like perfection. Stop.

The black material against my skin is soft; worn. I don't know where it came from and I don't at all care. It feels like smooth hands and that is all that really matters. I make too much coffee, watch absently while it brews and once a cup coiling heat finds its way into my hands, I wander my apartment, immersed in thought (yet thinking nothing in particular). Sometimes, rather than reflecting or sorting out or analyzing, I find myself identifying emotions. Like, here I am leaning against the side of my hallway that is covered with art: sadness. I trail fingers along the wall, deep red and cool to the touch, and by the time I've transitioned into the living room in one fluid motion, there is also regret. They layer against one another, companions that lend comfort and also unrest. I twist myself into a corner of the couch, the sun-streaked one, drain the last of the black liquid warming my innards, and all I can hear is the softness of my own breath. There it is...confusion. It settles in like an old friend; a ratty t-shirt that you put on and remember its exact folds; how it falls and feels against your body.

My insides bleat for another coffee, and so I peel myself off the couch and slip into the dining room. That is where the fear resides, or at least where it preys on me. My steps falter for a moment; wondering, recognizing. I don't even need to look that one in the eyes to name it and know it. Being afraid is a sensation as familiar as exhaustion or hunger. It's there and I know it. I stand, wordless, as it joins the sadness, regret and confusion. They are an intimidating force, and it seems that they are a united front today. Bastards.

In the kitchen though, there is hope. As I drape the remains of the coffee pot into my mug, I feel it. Compared to the daunting gang of negativity, it is weak, but it is there. It beats like a baby sparrow heart, frail but determined. It strips a layer of the weight off me, and the lightness is a significant change, if only to myself.

It is there, and I know that it is not going anywhere. If anything, it has yet to fully flower and show itself. When it reaches the surface, I am confident that I will know it and embrace with a vengeance.

Until then, bisous.

Dream exorcism, and other endeavours...

The other day I stood in a bus shack listening to Charlotte Gainsbourg and feeling okay. Limber arms and cold breath made for a wait that I didn't at all mind; observation and motionlessness. A little girl with eyes--glassy, large--hovered next to me on the bus, chirping an endless string of questions into my ear, and I loved her for it. I didn't know her name but I pretended that it was Iris. She looked as if it would be.

It seems that lately a blazing topic of inquisition (directed my way) has been children and whether they are in my plan of action. It's strange because up until now, the odd question would snake itself my way, but it seemed cool and manageable, given the long stretches between. For some reason though, these days the mother interrogation ("Do you want to be one?") chases after me like a loaded gun. I don't necessarily mind it, but its frequency is becoming startling. I always feel as if I answer awkwardly and vaguely, which is not what popular demand seems to be looking for. To burn the spotlight on this issue by choice for once, my position is that yes, I think that I do. Want little beans of my own, that is. It just all seems so far off and not really at all relevant to my focus, and the rhythm of my days in the now. The thing is that, unlike a lot of people I trade words over this with, I can envision my life edging in either direction--that is, sans babies or with. When I leap ahead in my mind to the years that have yet to play themselves out, I don't necessarily see a sharp image. I don't see anything all that concrete; recognizable; detailed. I see, rather, warmth and meaning and balance and joy. I see taking pride in what I do, whether it is baby-holding or writing or office-inhabiting, or any other number of motions. If I am living intentionally and with a smile against my lips more often than not, then that is all I really care about.

A few evenings ago, Meg, Kit and myself had a lovely reunion over dinner with our friend Beatrice from Belgium. She is sixty-eight years old and one of the coolest ladies I know. She has skin that is bronzed like pale leather and eyes that radiate light and energy. She has a husband named Raphael, and a slew of dogs, and a gorgeous spread of home in the Belgian coutryside, and a secret garden, and a vocabulary that would make you reel. Her French is smoking and all throughout the evening, she and Meg's Auntie Daryl flipped, smoother than rushing water, from one language to the other. It was amazingly beautiful to listen to. The evening was dominated by the sounds of those two twining languages, but when Lady Bea fround out Kit and I are flinging ourselves onto South American soil in a matter of weeks, she obliged us by layering some boisterous Spanish into the mix. Draped around the dinner table, us five bodies, in the heart of Auntie Daryl's breathtaker of a lanky apartment (I would die to inhabit a space like that at some point in my life, even for the briefest interval), something fell into place. There was a click; a sigh; a distance broached. Two elders and three young, wispy individuals with so much to discover; so much yet to learn...it was like we just relaxed into our respective roles, and it felt right. It felt better than good, actually. We poured over photos from those months spent an ocean across, and we laughed and stories flowed and we all three missed it very much, I think. Long after the warm, delicious arrangement of food was consumed, long after melting wedges of chocolate cake had found its way to our bellies, we lingered there at that table, sipping at the last dregs of red wine and exchanging words. I sincerely hope one day to be with my best girlfriends as these two are, Beatrice and Daryl. They extracted stories of insane love and lust and humour and injustice like plucked blossoms from a source from which I am sure held endless amounts more. These women have had passion and they have had devastation and they have lived abroad and traveled everywhere and cascaded down into despair and been left alone only to be picked up again, whether it be by a kindred spirit or a lover who just knew what to do and how to do it well, or by one another, or most importantly themselves. They inspired me in a unique way that night, and I would want them to know that. Aging gracefully has never taken on such a lighthearted, appealing air as it did for me during those hours, in the presence of those women. I left altered, in a subtle way but also in a permanent way. It was almost as if I was flown back to Europe for a single night, in the company of a lot of wisdom and laughter and good food and it was absolutely perfect.

I passed yesterday afternoon, Sunday afternoon, quietly hidden away in a Bar Italian nook. Both halves of the room were mayhem; apparently the whole of our neighbourhood congregates on the corner of McMillan and Cockburn, in that lovely dingy space, come mid-day Sunday?! It felt somehow nice to be a part of things, yet definably removed. At one point, I glanced over the array of objects littered across my table, and thought to myself, if I were to step away for a few moments, would somebody be able to tell it was me hanging out here just by my belongings? It is an interesting thought. I took inventory my possessions in the present--one coffee (half-drained, second round), one book ("The Mysteries of Pittsburgh" by Michael Chabon, courtesy of Hilary's intimidating book collection), one issue of British Vogue (outdated; October 2008. but still alluring in every way.), one pen, one folder (containing all four glossy issues of G.Love; a portfolio of sorts I guess), one pair of mittens (green, containing rips, stolen from my brother one season ago) and one heavily-laden snakeskin/paisley tote bag. I would like to think that anybody who knows me well would attach me to this paraphernalia. Any takers? Madge? Drewber? Lopez? Etc. etc. etc.

My dreams in the dark have been haunted as of late. I don't like it; they cause me to sleep fitfully and wake feeling angsty and scattered. These days, the content is always similar and it leaves a wretched taste on my lips. Space and time seem all fucked up by the time that I pull myself into wakefulness, and it takes some intention to feel reality out again. I am learning, though. Lessons weathered and perspective gained, right?

I'll find you after dinner, in that place we call summer.
Time to start the day,
RB

Desire and decay...

I read the other day somewhere that "love is a brittle teacher." I think that I agree. It's not negative; just honest in a refreshing way.
---
brit⋅tle   [brit-l]
adjective, -tler, -tlest, noun, verb, -tled, -tling.
–adjective
1. having hardness and rigidity but little tensile strength; breaking readily with a comparatively smooth fracture, as glass.
2. easily damaged or destroyed; fragile; frail: a brittle marriage.
3. lacking warmth, sensitivity, or compassion; aloof; self-centered: a self-possessed, cool, and rather brittle person.
4. having a sharp, tense quality: a brittle tone of voice.
5. unstable or impermanent; evanescent
---

Yesterday evening found me curled, chin on knees, at Meg's kitchen table. We made dinner; translation: I listened to her banter (always intriguing) and watched her cook. This is the usual scenario when the two of us peel ourselves away from our beds/bars/studios/etc. and break bread together. I sip at my glass of wine and hunker down in perching mode, and Madge whips magic together over a stovetop. Bless her. I think that if I am ever a mother, I will force her to teach me her ways. I know that she will be more than game; gleeful even. Bitch. I'll read aloud to you, poetry and fashion literature, while you coo my babies to sleep and sling cakes and casseroles in and out of my oven, okay lover?

The night was eventless and effortless; it was exactly what I wanted. Exactly what I needed and she knew it; I knew it. One of my most cherished things about this lady (and there are many) is that I don't have to pretend around her; ever. I can cry or rant or make slim to no sense or say absolutely nothing at all, and it is always okay. She is a tirelessly graceful audience for all of the glaring highs and lows I have pulled, and everything in between. We just mesh in a way that I cannot explain and I carry the mystery of that around like something very dear and rare. Je t'aime, Francie. You are one in a trill.

On a complete subject skip--Argentina count: one month, less three days. I feel so so ready for heat-streaked mornings, and fresh cool nights. Drapey dresses and damp hair and sand against skin and Spanish lilting through the air and water. Water, water, water. I want to walk and write and lay and listen and feel and observe and learn and reflect and be.
I am chasing it and it is near, nearer than I think. Somehow our take-wing date seems a lofty distance away still, but it is creeping like an insect and it is moving with haste.
Going going going gone.
Rab Louise.

PS. Apologies, Demetra, if this wasn't the profound collection of words you were hoping for. I owe you one.