a winter's tale (story without words)

with claw-feet on our bathtub, please

hear: dreamer, by jenn grant
hope: i'll become a professional treasure-finder and paint the insides of my closet fancy-name colours (cadmium, vermillion, xanthe)

i've walked past the basement closet forever and never wondered to look. with time starting to run out, my cold fingers force back the door, crossing rough concrete. new light seeps in and paints shadow angles onto old brick from the twisty undersides of stairways. they lead somewhere once, in the days when this house was still a home. a dusty suitcase is sleeping away from the walls, now forgotten by the invisible arms that carried it down to this closetcave a long long time ago. it has grown the same elephant grey as stale air, crumbling wood, potato sacks, semi-darkness.
i edge forward, lacing my way between slow-rusting water pipes. and now there is no time. i am close and the case is the right size and looks the weight of a record player, one of the portable kind i've always wanted. i can imagine giving my hand to the handle, carrying the player upstairs, wiping the dust clean. i can slip one of the silent lps leaning against my bookshelf onto the spindle, fingertips guiding the needle into the sharp grooves of sound. the speakers crackle and hiss at first, then come clear like early morning voices.
i flick open the latches, holding my breath because everything reeks of old. inside -- mildew damp lining, lumpy boxes of kraftdinner and handfuls and handfuls of fruitsnacks. the suitcase is overfilled with every flavour: cherry, blueberry, applecranberry, wildberry, orange banana strawberry. the bright wrappers slide through pirate fists like smooth, lonely treasure. they are plastic and rich.

in the great grandmother's house

music: lullabies for barflies, amelia curran
thought: time slipcurves away and my body is spinning circles; dreams are full of spindles, stars and fairytales

things are happening but they feel right and belong to this mysterious unknown now. so my heart is watching like a child. days become more perfect as daydreams slowly, peacefully come apart and drift off to sea. i treat myself to expensive coffee (hazelnut lattes) and borrowed books (the poems and journals of elizabeth smart). i'm seeing people i never see, saying words i never say, asking questions i never ask. the familiar is thrilling and strange. new. last night, nick, connor and i watched 'lost in translation', ate curry and homemade tiramisu, drank fancy red wine and espresso. this afternoon, i met neta and richard at pete's frootique where we ate samples of otherland fruits and colourful cheeses. neta stole a pecan in her pocket and gave it to me because i'd fallen for its smooth pinkpurple shell. we climbed citadel hill and, sitting on wooden stairs snowcovered with thick salt, we picnicked on pears and smoked salmon. we tried to split a canary melon on our frozen knees because alladin does it so effortlessly in the movie. ours bruised and bounced, leaked juice, made hurt shivering noises against our bones. it was cold though, and delicious.
these stories could belong to someone else. i claim them for my own.

in perfect time

listen: the last waltz, jenn grant and goodbye twentieth century
taste: fresh bread and cafe-au-lait (in a bowl) at the italian gourmet

the rhododendrons are slowly flattening their coldcurled leaves. in point pleasant park, dogs can smell the soft promises of spring and so can i. they can't help chasing tails, quick red squirrels, the overwhelming almost green of the afternoon. a pair of ravens hides in the high crosswork of pine branches, dropping twigs whenever we, the unsuspecting, pass below. i can feel trees begin to stretch against the insides of their bark.
i almost didn't see jill barber last night because i was a bit tired and much too young to go all alone. while fifteen-year-old hipsters giggled and flashed cameras between sets, i leaned against the comforting brick wall, reading myself poetry. eventually, jill barber played - without a mic, without lights, without a stage. instead, we made a kindergarden circle around her feet, while they turned her guitar and her voice round and round under the strange blacklight colours. i wish there were words enough to tell you. i wish you'd been there to hear.

all the people have thoughtful eyes

mood: a bit in love with blueocean skies, jenn grant's voice, the long ago child who left palmprints in a busy downtown sidewalk, hyacinths in my room, the coffee mug beside me and most of all, you

i solve heartsecret problems with words. i've had my hair cut in a look i'd never tried before. my dreams draw abstract pictures of the mornings that follow them. yesterday, i went to a concert in a church so old the pews had numbered doors that click open and shut. (if you wonder, we sat in 33). i read/write/think/talk/listen in coffeeshopcafes with assorted friends, then go home and am happy. i've borrowed library books of short sad japenese poems and english ones so long they seem to never end. i read each poem twice.
the troubadour who makes me smile with early morning leonard cohen has come back to his streetcorner and i am planning wonderful reading-week adventures!

these are good days for being me.

someday we will be wonderful

listen the whole way through: oh heart, jill barber

at the library, i didn't lift my eyes from the book in front of me except when a yellowish leaf drifted from the tree sheltering my table and into the text (page 355). i was bored by today and the flower-carrying procession of boys, all ready to suprise their early morning sweethearts.
but then someone tied a red balloon on a crimson ribbon to the dark fence of the public gardens so the wind had someone to dance with all afternoon. it wasn't for me but i stopped, pulling it down with mitten fingers, to read the small rectangle note.

Love Is Safe

after, i kept walking. but i looked in the eyes of all the strangers that i passed. there is much i want to understand.

punch and judy

Children at the puppet theater in the Tuileries, Paris, 1963.

"It took a long time to get the angle I liked, but the best picture is the one I took at the climax of the action. It carries all the excitement of the children screaming,"The dragon is slain!" Very often this sort of thing is only a momentary vision, my brain does not register, only my eyes and finger react. Click." Alfred Eisenstaedt

of sand and snowglobes

music to make you happy: chamomile, royal wood

overnight, someone built a gentle snowglobe around the small city. when i woke up monday morning, there were fat snowflakes drifting everywhere, catching in buttonholes and eyelashes and mittens. i tried to blow snow off the tip of my nose and it melted there instead. the glass sky was so close and curved that i talked softly, careful of the gathering echoes. instead of going to the library, i went on a point pleasant walk because visiting the ocean was more important than reading about it. on the way there, i listened to the mix cd i've sent mum (blossoms wait for lonely hands) and on the way back, i played the one michelle made for me (songs to fill a wanderer's notebook). the foggy sea looked just like neverending sky. i tightrope-walked along the neat edge of land, admiring the salt smells and blue-rimmed musselshells. they filled up so perfectly with snow.
then i went home and sent letters to all my loves.

the seance

at the cast party on saturday, we raised the ghost of anna nicole smith.

"We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are." Anais Nin

hush your voice child, listen softly

song: a thousand tiny pieces, the be good tanyas

i am making patterns of the ice ridges that cling fiercely to frozen pavement, my careful footsteps across a busy stage, the way everything comes together and the way everything doesn't.
before last night's performance we circle the paint-stained bathtub wearing ribbon and lace and canvas sacking, passing round a hug and a kiss and the lights come up and they go down and suddenly it is all finished. out of costume and back in streetclothes, we filter into the empty theatre but, in that brief absence, the shadowy faces we'd picked out in the audience have all but deserted us.
looking out cold bus windows, i'm so lost imagining how we look from outside (glowing with sickly yellow light) that we almost miss the bus stop theatre. and inside, the silence of everyone's listening is deafening. the chairs at round tables all twist the same direction. tanya davis sings sweet songs of home and we hug the friends we've been waiting for and the ones we didn't know we'd find. on the otherside of midnight, amelia curran comes onstage, the plaidshirt rainboot roadies become the mercy band, and they dance with their instruments in the early morning stillness.

time for tea-time

music: if you were for me, rose cousins

today i am happy for the world to unfold slowly around my quietness. everything is blank and fresh and expectant. even the seagulls fold like envelopes high, high in the pale open sky. i eat lunch early (peppermint tea, scrambled eggs on toast) still in pyjamas and walk in circles round my room while reading nabokov's 'the gift'. i make a list in my journal of all the things to do while i'm in paris and beckie drops by for rhubarb tea on her way home from class. i finish my chapter, eat dinner and get ready for opening night. there are clean effortless lines around all the minutes of today and i'm waiting on what happens next.

one for the penguins.

wearing: my best pretending-to-study cardigan
hearing: nobody has to stay, mirah

instead of going to my favourite class this afternoon, i just didn't. it was cold at the gingerbread haus but everything smelled of warm pastry and i gnawed happily at my gingerbread person, saving his chocolate button eyes for last. i sipped coffee hot chocolate and watched carefully, waiting for the last of my guilty time to slip out the frostbitten door.
michelle and i, shivering in skirts, talked about memories on our endless way home. we wonder silly serious things -- when everything and everyone is gone, what is the meaning of memory?
this world is so frozen that i'm starting to forget the feeling of sunwarmth.

a poem for your pocket.

"White Towels" by Richard Jones

I have been studying the difference
between solitude and loneliness,
telling the story of my life
to the clean white towels taken warm from the dryer.
I carry them through the house
as though they were my children
asleep in my arms.

between these covers

sights: mug-warming cold hands while blossoming tea blooms
sound: seashells & bluebells, john southworth

i have built a bedside tower of babel, words worth reading stacked so high and still waiting to be read. there are books about science and books about art and my favourite chilhood stories -- somehow all set in long forgotten castles. the biography of belle & sebastian teeter-totters atop the slim collected poems of gwendolyn macewen (volume i, volume ii) while richard dawkins and c.s. lewis argue with paper-lion whispers through the mournful pages of plath. sometimes my sleeping hand reaches over in the night and knocks them all to the floor, where they lie tumbled over, open inkstained fans until morning creeps in.