evanesce, luminesce

mood: seeing people i've not met & pretending not to know
music: the trials of van occupanther, midlake

it begins so quietly, with my bag full with candles.

four of us are in the room, sinking into the sofa & an absent smell of firewood (chemical-fueled by synthetic logs). lanterns beckon out in the lonely street and your house is all darkness and familiar voices.

the lights do not burn down but seep, spatter, surge across the mantlepiece in pale rivulets. (winnipeg winnipeg, let's go all the places we've never. you & i are holding out, so long as we hold.)

my telephone's trite lullaby pulls on the furor of syncopated conversation, too many dissonant dictionaries. i lean my cheek against the windowpanes, listening in the frozen seams. you are a nearby darkness (four shining, streetlamp rows away) but tomorrow already feels far.

we can slip between our languages (english when my meaning is obtuse, french when i need you to understand). laughter, darkness, wax dripping on the finesse of our fingers. i wonder whether we have only words, if there's anything to say.

be elephants old as forests

nothing can equal in hope and apprehension the first voyage east of suez, yourself eager for all manner of oddities, pretending to disbelieve in marvels lest you appear naive but anticipating them just the same, prepared for anything, prepared for nothing, burdened with baggage - most of it useless, unburdened by knowledge, assuming all will go well because it is you and not someone else going to the far place (harm comes only to others), bland as eggplant and as innocent of the hard earth as a fledgling sparrow.

- margaret laurence, the prophet's camel bell

you are simply
patterns patterning
& these are the
bluest of puddle
glum blues.

i am reversing
pathetic fallacy:
my heart deciding
weather systems
for the city.

music: epic home movies & flying machines, oh my! - pigeonbooth
topic: quick (drawn-out) sketches

drenched in the weighing, the waiting

song: sweet darlin', she & him
mood: desperate for sunlight

it is still winter, it is still snowing, time has stopped turning, turned still. and we're growing brave, more foolish; resentful of our heavy coats and inhibitions. you smear your sandwiches thick with dijon, i eat wasabi for dessert. we are railing against ourselves now, my bittersweet.

the best of this week: espresso with cinnamon, toasting marshmallows & cheese & anything else on the electric burner, la strada, aaron booth's back stories, sandro botticelli's paganism, 18th century electrical experiments. a gift of homemade truffles from megan (white chocolate with cardamom & ginger; dark chocolate, turkish coffee). thinking about summer & theorizing with conspiracists. a train-track conversation about all our secrets (the things we cannot say). cats with yellow eyes, a half-dozen oranges. cold-weather walks, puddly streets & red shoes. the whole world seems indelible.

song: black & brown blues, silver jews
mood: streamlining

(this is what you can see from a tree.)

it's a funny game i play with myself, this careful weighing out of our times (rolled-up carpet, a tethering, overlapped transparencies). last easter: a guitar & a snowstorm, an easter dinner, small handfuls of foil, growing hopes. ardmore brunch with m. & now a parallel feeling, ice in the air, three marble cheesecakes for our three sets of hands. coffee plans with m. sun-shadows on the wall. no lilies.

we're arranging holy days for half the world

reading: the tomorrow-tamer, margaret laurence

drawing: conclusions & afternoon doodles

dear you,
now that you are far away,
i can see how you are small.

please stop trying to follow.

love, me.

song: oh! sweet nuthin', bry webb & casey mecija
mood: it's all right there

(the wanderers fill up suitcases with their paint-sets.)

correspondences: incoming, outgoing

music: t-shirt dreams, claire jenkins avec band
mood: indulgent, confident

ocean stillness is the same as caravan sky & stretches far into the immutable dark. we have never been so silent, we have become enchanted listening to the absence of north wind. silk scarves of a heady twilight, melting enamel icicles, empty sunrooms. a burning row of ember lamps like planets, like a handful of suns. the moon is agate & full.

a forgotten promise to return my empty wineglass, so i unfold myself from the second-hand couch. you've disappeared but on the kitchen counter, i reclaim its ruby fullness. the party has abandoned itself for the front porch, so i climb the stairs & house-explore. bookshelves (38 volumes of graham greene), boxes of records (7 beatles albums), photographs (4 fishing boats, black & white). i am curious. i am a listener to conversations in the other room.

but the earth will not melt when you stand on it.

song of the day: ghosts, laura marling
soup of the day: zucchini & lime

the melody loops, it leads me toward unexpected places & the chords fade away and the same chords start again. instead of an afternoon with de beauvoir - library lists, silly banter & sudoku. we sit on top of the newspaper boxes, watching between buildings as seagulls chase a hawk through the blue. (we are looking past argyle sidewalks now, we need places this city simply does not have.) we speak of airplanes with reverence.

yesterday i got a letter from c. (of literary pastimes & academic prospecting). it felt like a signal of new paradigms. we use red sealing wax: i am a thistle, c. is the family signet, a swan. i read my glowing letter in english class, while we were dissecting margaret laurence. then i went downtown and cut off all my hair. (think breathless, think edie sedgwick, then think both.) i am drinking chamomile tea, 'ghosts' is still looping, my journal is mid-sentence, the house is quiet & university college london offers an m.a. in comparative literature. four essays are waiting for their words. i am anticipating, content, i fill pages & wait for spring.

to lose both looks like carelessness.

colour: piazza new york catcher, belle & sebastian
sound: chartreuse

but, once in the open air, she paused. some emotion - pity, terror, love, but the emotion was strong - seized her, and she was aware of autumn. summer was ending, and the evening brought her odours of decay, the more pathetic, because they were reminiscent of spring. that something or other mattered intellectually? a leaf, violently agitated, danced past her, while other leaves lay motionless. that the earth was hastening to re-enter darkness, and the shadows of those trees to creep over windy corner?

- e.m. forster, room with a view

i'm all curled in
my velveteen
armchair, re:
watching 'the
bakery girl
of monceau.'

it's for class,
& i like my
outfit today,
the weather;
i made morning
coffee strong
and dull.

it's been such
a nice week.
sunlight, our
open coats,
picnics of
orangina
& chevre.

tea dates,
wilde nights,
filtering new
albums, stories
& unexplained
feelings of
stagnance.

we've traded
places & i know
you are trying
to impress me now.
leave impressions
in dry cement,
i am years far
removed.

32 short films,
& the goldberg
variations, i
am about to do
something
(what thing?)
desperately
living.

yesterday,
i watched
snowflakes
falling, fat
against the
ceiling for
hours.

everything
feels small.

a record: pee wee hunt's saturday night dancing party!

music: everyday heroes, wendy mcneill
mood: golightly absurdist

that appears to be what is in the book.*

listen: charlottetown, forest city lovers
read: the tale of genji, murasaki shikibu

this sweeping & generous afternoon is an imprint of our glorious day. and on the rough cement wall, you tell the almost-stranger about william's lake, a downtown walk, a pie party in august. and i can feel the sandpaper wall beneath my fingers & we are lucky to know beauty while we have it. we are blessed, and we have known beauty.
later (but not much later) we sit at the table with curled tulips and you are talking while i listen. and the madness of our friends has become exquisite, we do not know what the madness is anymore. (little white bottles fill their apartments like teacandles, extinguished.) their thoughts are starlight and we too want balance, crave brilliance.

last year, the crocus buds were wishes but now they seem crow-feet & wise.

*either the closing note of a copyist, certifying that the copy is correct, or a standard concluding formula for a tale. the tale of the hollow tree, a somewhat earlier work than the tale of genji and roughly two-thirds its length, ends with the same words.

renascence, iii
edna st. vincent millay

mindful of you the sodden earth in spring,
and all the flowers that in the springtime grow;
and dusty roads, and thistles, and the slow
rising of the round moon; all throats that sing
the summer through, and each departing wing,
and all the nests that the bared branches show;
and all winds that in any weather blow,
and all the storms that the four seasons bring.
you go no more on your exultant feet
up paths that only mist and morning knew;
or watch the wind, or listen to the beat
of a bird's wings too high in air to view, -
but you were something more than young and sweet
and fair, - and the long year remembers you.