singing a hundred thousand fire-flies:

(why do we keep shrieking, when we mean soft things?)

the family motto: "tout ou rien"
personal motto: let's not make a fuss

if you want to become an aeronaut, this is what you'll need:

strong-steeped leaves & as many tea cozies as you can find, a bootlegged concert by wilco and andrew bird, the music turned up wonderfully too loud, pots of glue and paintbrushes, choreographed fingers, patience. at least one pair of lion-mittens, metal ties, containers of isopropyl & water, paperclips and a frozen hilltop. an engine built from soda cans ("citrus fizz," for the name), a friend with bravery, and the watching elementary-school windows. cold hands measure warm air and growing unresistance, scorched & wet pavement, the timing of when to let go. (up up up! burn into nothing, dissolute black snowflakes in the park.) toasted croissants with ginger marmalade, second chances, hot chocolate bubbling on the stove-top and most of all, warmth.

our friendship with her gallant horses

listen: parasol, sarah slean
mood: puttering & parallel tracks

(the postmarks come from hong kong.)

i left the house just before teatime. this day has been uncomfortable - not wasted, simply wanting. it's the second morning this week i've woken still in a dream (more lurid than morning sun, birdsong, my face distant in the mirror). entrapment in surreality leaves my mind heavy and silence is more reassuring than a voice. i have not talked about them yet and carry them with me, everywhere. normally my night-thoughts are quiet & true day-to-day. but these, these are terrifying, oh.

dream #1: the world is all marble, stretching draperies of silk and cabin fever in the vastness. the faces of all the people have become glass. they are crystal & glowing in the candlelight. your arms open and i am struggling away, choking in snowfall feathers.
dream #2: the raging waves tumble and a wind-swooping airplane is falling, crashing into pewter ocean. our pilot is a mermaid with undertow hair, siren song, but the ocean is forgiving of irresilient bodies.
baroque, burlesque, bewildered.

so i am sitting under coffee-empire lights, trying to feel normal and watching the sky turn to dark, again. and i'm working on a proposal to adapt 'speak, memory' as a graphic novella for my documentary class. on the walk home, i will stop at the photoshop to buy expired rolls of 120 & the grocery for macha tea, steam buns. i will revel in the clear night & the quiet. it will seem safe.

and when the reckoning arrives.

music: san bernadino, the mountain goats
mood: afresh

her chevrolet is parked against the very last wall of stones, she is waiting beside the atlantic. feet asleep on the mat, a bouquet of keys hangs unswinging from the accelerator. this morning when she left the house, she carefully sat her purse in the passengerside so that the leather straps would twist up and lean against the seat. she is watching through armourglass and the seagull pantomime -- plunging high to drop musselshells onto the cramped rocks below. her hands wrap around the binoculars of an ornithologist (her father's) and she spins the dials, trying to make the water clear but the distance is a vastness melting into sky. she puts down the twin spyglasses and she rubs fingers at her eyes. she can feel wrinkles, saline, the eroding indentation of her glasses. the voice reading the morning news into her legs is intimate, nearby. the sharp smell of ocean gushes in with warm air from the heating vents. so she lifts the binoculars and she looks again.

greetings (& fleeting moments of magnificence)

d: don't mind us, jane vain & the dark matter
b: let's say everything we want to say then we'll say it in reverse.

peek through the front glass: widows are gathered around the table, stitching into their embroidery hoops, in time. the neighbourhood cats are all wearing bells. my pencil slides across the paper after the professor calls "time's up." i make steaming green tea & scald my lips, eat an orange with seasalt (this reminds me of ea). chimney smoke is curling up, up and obscuring the moon. its opaque glow seems a funnel falling right into your hearth: the charred wood, the embers.

give them crazy sundials to tell the time

mood: follow the seagulls that follow the ferries, fall horsie
music: overwhelmingly

a secret: on weekends,
i press 'feed' on the register
and draw on the small bits
of paper that come out.

when the bus-driver's voice whines from the speakers above, the wheels have already turned stationary, five cars are piled up across the harbour bridge (crumpled in inbetween; glass falling as snow into the ocean). m. & b. abandon our impromptu excursion and walk into the pale glowing halfnight, their shadow disappearing up the hill toward home & supper. but c. and i are resolute. we sit cross-legged on the seats, eating cashews from salty brown-paper, catching up on readings. (me: in the skin of a lion oddly about bridge building, c: french articles about the economics of industrialism.) and when we finally lurch forward into darkness, i will hold my breath, i will hope for better luck.

fortune cookies.
saturday: you are capable of great creativity.
tuesday: stop searching. happiness will come to you.

a wonderful visit with dad last week and right now, everything is busy & sleepless. but beautiful. monday was birdsong & tweed coats, old-fashioned shoes & humming jill barber because i purposefully forgot m-ipod. yesterday, an empty chinese restaurant, grimm's fairytale records by danny kay, talking about c.'s kitten and the memory of goldfish. and today, a different m. & i went grocery shopping at the asian market for poeticisms of uneven english (i will post the description of 'crispy broad beans' soon.)

i need to review for my canadian lit midterm tomorrow, the last worry before reading week. here are things i would rather do: watch bande a part, drink peppermint tea, walk seven times around the block. write you a letter, tune my guitar, learn to make mochi, re-read miranda july's short stories. bear witness to an eclipse.

after "the sound of silence"
clickstop spinning and then,

the moonlight folding
against my translucent,
still candid legs
and glass ceilings,
painted obscure
& cirrus-rich.

bayes' theorum:
the probability of a
given the existence of b
equals the very reverse
times a's probability,
divided by the probability of b.
the letters are ciphers, but not
symbols; we draw them out
with pinprick arms.

i sit crossed-up & curled,
vibrant mantis
elegant, oblative
under my quiet moon.
arthrotomists listen for the
careful sounds of fissure,
but i have grown old
to take such comfort
in simplicity.

song: art and design, darren hayman
mood: pineapple & black coffee

sunday mourning update: a half-sad smile for my constant sense of zero-timing.

and all the fields are yellow

feelings: ginger lime tea, laundered sheets
hearings: absentee, emmy the great

anna pulls her face back from an orange lily, aware of its pollen and of the hovering bee. its ancestors must have done the same, shimmering down a stem of chicory some day in 1561, here or beside the church in the distance. she has noticed the guardian cycle past to unlock its doors. there must always have been a bee here to hear Catholic music and witness a verger's arrival. the past is always carried into the present by small things. so a lily is bent with the weight of its permanence.

-michael ondaatje, "divisadero"

i sit on a buttoned sofa that is dimpled with age & by our tuesday night bodies. beside me, a man who wears round glasses and has moth-holes in his sweater. (a calm voice, a smile turns his face to circles.) he talks of thirty-five years working on poetic translations; waiting for a word, transmuting the voice. from russian (the richness...) to unforgiving english is difficult & painstaking & slow. not everything can be turned. i listen, hoping that the syllables will break into units of meaning but they do not. i linger wistful over such futile sound.

this week: extravagant & grown-up dinners, quince jam on toast for breakfasts. the beginning of a polaroid project (600 film & the darkest setting & a playing card seem to work with my SX70). nibbling at tiny squares of last week's osmanthus cake & making up teas with lonely pieces of ginger, lemongrass, vanilla. reading the library by shelves: fortune-telling dolls & the windsor castle dollhouse. (on one embarrassing occasion, queen mary caught her earring on the beard of the plumber who was showing her that the lavatory cistern really worked.) last minute articles and early work on midterms. torturous torte puns during coburg coffee lunches. alighting teabags in alleys to watch ashes fall, more slowly than the snowflakes.

i am collecting sidewalks that end with red doors.

i think your heart was just like the moon

morning: almond croissants & cafe-au-lait at julien's
afternoon: chai lattes & film group meetings at the coburg

the first day of february (pronounced: fe-brew-ary) was dripping with sun, was a hundred crisp blank pages. sidewalks deep with shadow lattice, the sharp-cut brilliance of sky. i wore my iconic sunglasses, a little girl's peacoat, sheer tights and i went north. the windowside loaves glow amber & light varnishes the seductive-sweet confections. two women (bobbed grey hair, mec windbreakers) knit side-by-side, their stitches and party teapots on the table. they chat with two bicycle policemen (yellow jackets, helmets), the only ones of the city. and hidden at the table behind the staircase, i listen, watching the morning's pageantry unfold. i am writing, writing and i finish a very short story before i leave. my fingers, soft with powder sugar, are restful, delicate against the ceramic bowl.

i'm never ready for the newness of a new year. i like things better once i've settled into their patterns. (i have stopped thinking about eight, the serpentine lines now easily drawn.) so here are my not-so-new year's proposals: take more photographs & get something published.

i know four songs about february: two are bitter, one joyous & one instrumental.

before work; faux-lomography & french toast

mood: vantage, vintage
music: black angus, wendy mcneill