11/25/2007

Halo

The moon has a halo tonight;
it's fuzzy behind the clouds.

I'm looking at it through november bare branches
that are moving in the breeze.

I'm wearing my winter coat
and two pairs of leggings;
standing on a carpet of leaves
that didn't fall until after the first snow.

11/04/2007

Sunday

I'm going for a long walk. I'm dressing warm and bringing a camera.

10/07/2007

Thanksgiving

So my friend breezed through Toronto this weekend and stayed with me. It was so fun. We just giggled, and it was like that; it was breezy. All we did was hang out at my house, chatting, eating, smoking, sipping ginger tea or cafe lattes. She was on her way through to her folks place up north for the Thanksgiving weekend. I made us leek and cheddar pizzas, a super-delicious dinner we'd discovered when she'd let me stay with her for almost a week. I was happy to show off my house, 'cause I love it so much, and hoped she'd get it why I wanted to move back so so quickly. And maybe she'd bring up in future conversations with my mcgill/montreal friends, "yeah, I've seen her place in Toronto. It's pretty cool. I can see why she wanted to move back," or something like that. After pizzas she brought out the big brownies her friend had baked without gluten and we were supposed to let him know if I liked them. They were DELICIOUS. Then some sweet pot in glass pipes and so more giggles, about exes and dates and friendships in flux, about shortcomings and long shots. Wouldn't it be nice to create something and get that delicious satisfaction when you bring it to completion. Something cool, and real, and hey maybe even marketable. Damn, I hadn't thought of that. So satisfying. A sense of completion neither of us may really get with the kind of work we do. Work that's meant to be worked over anyway, even if it turns out totally cool.

Ginger tea. Tidy round. Show off recent purchases, model them or just hold them up. Check out the quality. Nice.

Morning meant lattes on the back porch swatting at a wasp and giggling about pets and house demolitions and the heart-shaped "Mimi" tattoo on the house-painter's arm. Noon departure to carry on homeward, it's hugs and more chat at the car. Nice freakin rental and the glovebox can even keep drinks cold. I wave my friend 'round the corner and run into the house, dodging the first raindrops of the day.

10/06/2007

October

I think it's kind of wrong that I can sit out late at night, comfortable in barefeet and t-shirt, and hear crickets and it's warm and rainy.

8/25/2007

Night sounds

Pony and I sat on the verandah last night and listed all the sounds we could hear: ciccadas; crickets; the voices of greek grannies; wind; the dull clank of southsea shells hanging from creepy voodoo windchimes; the soft sustained gonging of metal pipe windchimes; broad wet catalpah leaves rustling; distant traffic; less distant traffic; visiting children playing nextdoor; footsteps; a car horn; my cellphone beeping with a waiting text message; a dog barking.

8/12/2007

Stink of the Danforth*

The annual Taste of the Danforth weekend, a tribute to Hellenic culture, where one can enjoy samplings of Greek cuisine and music, sport and performance, surrounded by a street festival atmosphere in the largest Hellenic business community in North America.

Except every year it runs during August when it's a gazillion degrees and the Air Quality reading is off the scale anyway and half the city makes their way to Greektown, packs themselves into a sweaty mass of sunburnt manfat and bad boobjobs and waddles the Danforth Strip from Broadview to Jones** stuffing their gobs with barbequed meat on a stick.

The locals flee, those who can. And local vegetarians? Even the most polite of them who normally wouldn't get in people's faces about their dietary choices have a really fucking hard time. It's an out of control meat-fest shrouding the neighbourhood in clouds of smoking animal fat, clogging the subway stations with slowmoving over-stuffed carnivores (and their kids), and making a general stinking mess of the otherwise pretty streets.

Ever seen Souvlaki on the sidewalk the next day once all that grease coagulates?

And who hired that crackerjack creative team this year for the posters and banners? A vaguely mediterranean-looking woman in a white sheet gazes vacantly at a sword skewered with little pictorial icons of Hellenic culture, such as a lyre, an urn, a soccer ball, and pint of beer (well, don't look at me), something red, and a chunk of burnt lamb.

The only good thing*** about the Taste of the Danforth weekend is the early mornings before the fat-splattered barbeques have been fired up and no one's around, but the street is closed and so you can walk down the middle of the road and only see like a bicycle or something. That and the cute rookie cops they always haul out for special occasions. Ooh Mary.




* This is Tonia's name for it. I was just calling it Taste of the bloody Danforth. Lame. I know.

** Jones now is it? Fuck.

*** Okay okay they've raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for Toronto East General Hospital.

8/06/2007

Perfect long weekend: Monday

The day starts slowly; I think I'm the first in the whole city to wake. The backdoor is propped open letting in the early morning sun. My neighbour waters his newly landscaped backyard, gardenhose in one hand, lit cigarette in the other. His mug of coffee steams on a new glass table. I've proofread a chapter from a colleague's dissertation and earned 50 bucks before my lover's even stirred. I picture her now in her bedroom, rolling over into her sinful dark curls and petting her kitties who have likely been poking at her for a while.

The long walk I will take will start at the re-vamped Tod Morden Mills and meander beside the river all the way down the Lower Don Trail. I'll want to follow it to Cherry Beach then through the cruisin' badlands of the Eastern Port to Ashbridges Bay and then the Beaches boardwalk. But it'll be blocked for construction before Lakeshore and so I'll have to climb the Queen Street Stairs past the snotty girlfirends who are making their sweaty boyfirends carry their bikes all the way up from the valley to street level. I love walking. And today, because of my quick pace but frequent stops for photographs I'll end up doing a strange long-distance leapfrog with a chinese guy until he exits the path at Gerrard Street.

The power will be off when I arrive home though there's been no heavy winds or other signs of a summer storm. I'll be reminded of the Blackout of '03 and become nervous about widespread societal breakdown. I'll curse all AC-hogs. The power will come back on within an hour but I'll pretend it doesn't and get high and think about how brittle my body feels. I'll reflect on the bitchin fitness routine that has my body showing me where it's weak and misaligned and I'll truly realize what a tailspin I'm coming out of: two years of high-level academic performance while coping with displacements, loneliness, steep weightlosses, a lover's bipolar diagnosis, and daily prayers that my tenants will please please check the lint trap and not burn my house down in my absence. But the spin's almost spun and I can feel myself slide into my situation, relaxing into my funky place, cruising into my work. Getting ready 'cause these are going to be some hot years.

I'll have a shower then make a savoury tofu scramble that I'll eat from a bowl with red chopsticks and gaze out at my crazy front garden while the sun sets.

Perfect long weekend: Sunday

Make lattes for two.
Chill in lounge chairs next to the AC.
Take a stroll to the Rogers at Gerrard and Vic Park for a movie and chips.
Get high.
Watch the movie and eat the chips.
Kiss at the door.

Walk home smiling past all the men oozing out of the sports bars that line the shabbier part of the Danforth strip from Main Street to Pape...

Perfect long weekend: Saturday

I've slept in. Difficult for me as I've actually become a morning person. But today is a special day and I've needed my beauty rest. I have much lounging to do before I get to the serious fluffing and buffing.

Tonia and I started dating three years ago and tonight we will celebrate our spicysweet love with sexy outfits, serious heels and martinis. Party girls that we are we have a history of actually having too much fun* so we decide to make it a relatively early night and limit our drinks to two at the bar and one later at Tonia's.

I spend the morning in barefeet, dawdling around the cool interior of my home, tidying clothes, making sure my outfit works, digging through shoes and purses. These remain spilling out of suitcases in the basement because I have yet to create a home for them. I snatch the sultry black high heels that my friend Keely gave me last summer.

Keely: "Hey Lizzie, you want these shoes? I got them in L.A. They KILL my feet."

Me: "Ohmigod, YEAH. Thanks honeybunch!"

Several lattes later I'm in the shower. It's fantastic and I almost drain the hotwater tank. It's a full-on prettygirl shower in which every part of my body receives some form of punishment or pampering.

I am nervous. I only find out later that Tonia has been as well. I'm in a white linen skirt through which my thighs are completely discernible and a tight black microfibre halter. I LOVE what this top does for my breasts. The shoes are downright gorgeous and I am wearing silver dangly earrings, my solid silver cuff bracelet and two simple silver rings. I spend a frightful few minutes in front of my mirrored closet door wondering if I look like a call-girl.

I arrive at Tonia's with the barest overnight necessities and a gift in a shiny silverblue bag. Before she answers the door I hear the bells she's recently been wearing around her ankles. She opens the door dressed in a white linen sundress-style dress, feet bare, hair loose. She's dropdead sexy.

Dressed in our finest we head to the Village. Not that we really need the gaybourhood particularly or that we don't like to party in the straight world; it's just that we can relax more here, look sexy, hold hands and kiss without actually putting ourselves in personal peril. A slice of PizzaPizza pizza before martinis may not sound that hot to begin an anniversary date but considering our history** we decide some food before alcohol is the smartest thing to do. Hence the hottest.

Byzantuim is THE place for martinis now that Babylon is closed and we find a sexy little nook out on the patio. Fabric throw-cushions on white benches, glass table, and we ease into soft banter while the waiter fetches round one—The Blackout. Stoli, Black Sambuca, and Jagermeister. It's a righteously delicious martini. Thankfully it's mostly finished before something drops into my glass from the treetops high above our patio nest. We peer into my glass and start to giggle. Oh, do NOT tell me that something is bird droppings!

Round two includes espresso and Créme de Cacao but no poop and we're both that nice kind of tipsy when we climb into a cab.

One more martini and we're kissing; one hand up her dress and we're in bed. Tonia is holding my skirt in her left hand. "Are you wearing this tomorrow?"

"No."

She drops it to the floor and we giggle some more. Within moments there's white linen and lace panties all over her bedroom.




* So much fun that when it comes to the lovemaking part we're too exhausted. This has happened on numerous occasions. It's a crime against sexiness everywhere.

** See note supra.

Perfect long weekend: Friday

I'm on the subway to Main Street Station where I'll meet Tonia and we'll head over to her workmate's surprise 40th birthday party. I see a familiar face. It's Ab, one of Tonia's best friends. I lift my shades and wink at him. He looks confused then grins and sits next to me. He's getting off at Main too so he's happy to get a chance to wave to Tonia. He's really cute. I like him. He's good looking, maybe of Indian or Trinidadian descent and unmistakenly gay. Just look at his eyebrows. We climb the escalator and wait inside the windowed entrance, chatting a bit awkwardly. Only awkard since he's Tonia's best friend from highschool and I'm her hotgirl and we just want to be cool and nice and like each other. And we do. I think. We just don't know exactly what to say here because the only other time we met was last year at Pride and we were both really really high*. We decide let's each send Tonia a text message at the same time for a joke.

My text: i'm at main w a cute boy. better hurry. i love you.

Ab's text: hey your girlfriends picking on me.

Tonia arrives not having recieved the messages but does a kind of squeal when she sees me with Ab. She pays her fare and comes in for hugs and kisses. We all chat for a few minutes and then part ways.

Tonia and I arrive at the house, which turns out to be not more than a few blocks away. It's modest on the outside and downright plush inside. We enter realizing we really know no one except for the surprise dude and we're marched around by the hostess to put on name tags and get drinks. There is a massive spread on the diningroom table. The kind of expensive shit you can only get at the St. Lawrence Market. I see a slab of Balderson's® three-year-old cheddar the size of a patio stone. We are issued sort of ley things that we are to wear on our wrists. I snap mine by accident and it continues to unravel into a streamer. I'm kind of embarrassed but I laugh and remove it before someone trips over it. I'll get another before too long. Hostess—surprise guy's sister—is already firing questions a mile a minute and the host is already flirting with my lover. Something to do with writing on her hame tag which is already pasted on her pretty breast.

A few other guests arrive—cute gay men all of them—and we are all instructed to stay away from the front door for obvious reasons. The heat is dissipating and we are all hustled into the backyard, which is multi-decked, leafy, and just freakin stunning. There is a table for gifts, many lounge chairs and an ivy-covered hobbit-looking stone garage that looks nicer than my house. Tonia has trouble with the stairs. She's more afraid of stairs than scary rides.

Party-boy's surprise face is a perfect suprise-party face**,
complete with queeny hand to cheek and "oh my gawd!"
Hugs, kisses darling, snapshots, laughter.

The food is freakin stellar.

Party boy takes us on a tour of his sister's house. We marvel at the walk-in closet and I make a mental note of the back bedroom in my place. Serious walk-in potential. Tonia nearly has a heart attack at all the shoes this chick owns and has to remove her 'queen of shoes' crown. At my request the tour also includes a quick peak at dude's new Prince Albert piercing. I haven't seen a penis since my gay neighbour showed me his Prince Albert piercing. What's up with that?

The smokers assemble out front and giggle in hushed tones. As ever, the coolest people end up in the smoking section, like Tom and Eric who've been together for 14 years and warn us about the 7-year itch, and the superpretty man who actually teaches figure skating.

We smokers are hustled out back again for the cake and presents which include gift cards, knick knacks and an anal douche. Tonia and I discuss wether to use it before sex or after and can't really agree except that one should probably experiment at home alone first to get a handle on the device's effects.

Post-cake and presents, the party boy is demonstrating how gay he is by grabbing my breasts and then holding up his hands and shouting, "Look! Nothing!" Flirty host is over like a shot to see if he can get in on the action, which, forget it.

It takes Tonia and I a while to say goodbye to all the fun people we've met. I have a nice feeling inside because that was a really big deal and took a lot of work. We're given a lift home from a quiet dude and we talk about how good it is to be with cool people who do this stuff. He drops Tonia off first and then lets me out at the foot of my street.



* Get me to tell you about the time at Ab's Pride party where I hallucinated a baby toddler clinging to my skirt and looked down and there was a baby toddler clinging to my skirt and I nearly lost my shit.

** Say that five times really fast.

7/26/2007

In the nest of girls


Dock spiders rule the otherwise beautiful and multi-decked waterfront just by being freakishly huge and ugly and able to swim underwater by trapping air in their hair. Days begin with bong hits and Baileys® coffee. Us girlies change bikinis frequently to suit sunbathing, swimming, shade, spider monitoring, or 'shroom trips. The only guy up here this weekend is massive, tattooed, bald, occasionally hilarious but, in the final analysis, far too full of himself. He's in the nest of girls. He needs to mind that.

I find a spot to lounge on the poop deck—a few feet higher and a good ways back from the dock and its hideous occupants. My most arduous task is to get rid of my flip-flop tan lines. The sky is extra-blue, the clouds super-puffy, and the water ultra-sparkly because I'm high on my friend's homegrown. A card carrying medical user, she hits the bong every hour and you'd never know it.

I close my eyes and open them again. The cottage door squeaks open and closes softly. This sun is hot on my tummy and I push my Muskoka chair further into the shade so as to get optimum colour on my legs but avoid looking like one of those over-tanned women. The ones whose chests look leathery. Plus I don't want to spin out by mid-afternoon all sick and dizzy from the sizzling July sun. It happens. It'll happen tomorrow. Big man will eat his 'shrooms really fast and bake in the sun without a hat or something gay like that and then drink a bottle and a half of homemade red wine all by himself to impress us ladies and pass out on the verandah then sway off to bed before 6pm, down for the count, while us chicks make and eat KD® and salad, watch a documentary about wild horses and giggle at the descriptive video function, play round after round of Crazy Eights between bong hits and stargaze out back until midnight. We'll laugh about him on the drive back to the city.

Sun is creeping up my belly again and someone has put on a Cat Stevens CD at a volume respectable for cottage country. My girlfriend wanders down with an ashtray and a bottle of water. She's wearing a different bikini than before. She heads to the dock to check up on the spiders—their size, whereabouts, activities. It's very important. She's armed with a camera. The breeze dries my bikini bottoms that got wet in the rainbow coloured kayak. It makes no difference if I'm awake or asleep.

7/13/2007

After the storm

You decide to sit outside on the vernadah. It's chilly. You're wearing cotton flipflops and a mauve terrycloth bathrobe. A few pale clouds roll by but mostly it's clear. Both cats are inside and the backdoor is double-locked. You've just had a magnificent shower. Today you finished putting all your books out and even unpacked two more boxes. Your mother has offered to buy you a couch.

The night is cool and the sound of raindrops drips through leaves. Two branches frame a star. It's really dark in this front garden. Almost too dark and you make a mental note to trim back the big Catalpah tree and clip the fattening cedar hedge. In the eaves-troughs you see the reflection of streetlights. You get to go to sleep soon. The distant Parkway traffic hums.

7/08/2007

Overheard on my verandah during tenants' birthday party late last night:

.

Male party guest: "What IS that thing hangin from the tree?"

Female party guest: "Oh, chick said it's a windchimes."

Male party guest: "It's kinda freakin me out."

Female party guest: "It doesn't chime much. She said it's made of shell."

Male party guest: "Are you sure it's not, like, crowns of skulls or something?"

.

7/06/2007

Garden lady

It's official, I've turned into one of those chicks who gardens in her bikini top and cuts the lawn with a handmower in bare feet.

It's looking good in here

I'm shoving a load of laundry into the dryer when Tonia shows up at my door with coffee beans, raw sugar and two kinds of milk. I make us iced lattes that we share in the backyard and talk about what the hell am I going to do with this crazy garden. I ask her to help shift a piece of furniture down the basement stairs. I can tell she's totally not liking it so I suggest instead why doesn't she run out an get us some Sushi

that we share on the front verandah facing the lowering sun
then jump on the subway to her place.

It's Canada Day.
We're in a 29th floor penthouse overlooking Lake Ontario.
The whole shoreline flashes with fireworks displays.
Ashbridges Bay, Ontario Place, Hamilton, Burlington, Something, Something, Niagara-on-the-lake, Niagara Falls.

We smoke a bowl together.

The moon rises big and round and red and fat over the lake.

7/02/2007

Moving Days

Picture this:

You're sitting on a wooden box with your lover, eating takeout from a vietnamese buffet, giggling and watching 'So you think you can dance.' Your worldly goods surround you in cartons you've brought home from local shops on recycling days, most of them from the pet store. You two make love that night.

You merge into holiday weekend Montreal traffic—a full hour behind the movers—in your mom's borrowed car with your trunk and backseat packed, including your cats. One of them has just pooped in his pet carrier. Traffic's pretty smooth.

You have to call VISA from the payphone beside the toilets at that big service centre just before Kingston while your lover wanders around and buys a Powerpuff Girls® keychain from a coin machine. It's a teeny tin box, "just big enough for a little bud! Think I'll get one for Erin!" You're uncertain that this $2G payment will go through.

You let your lover play DJ so you're treated to The Orb, Led Zeppelin, and ELO. You love her so much. Traffic's light all along the 401, except for around Oshawa, which forget it.

You pull around the corner. The big blue truck is already outside your house. The evening sun shines through the trees that canopy your street. Your lover disappears for a while on a mission. The mover guy, who's been hitting on both of you the whole time, and his jolly old dad, whose missing pretty much all of his teeth, have to unload the truck from the neighbours' driveway because your front walkway is almost completely overgrown. Your house looks shabby from several years of renters but you can't swallow the lump of pure love in your throat.

Your lover returns with brie and strawberries and ice wine and new windchines made of old wood. And when you hang them in the tree it looks like some voodoo lady lives here.

A neighbour actually hugs you.
The variety store lady says you look just the same.
You hear blackberries falling through leaves.

6/24/2007

My friends rock

Sunny sunday afternoon; this may be my last visit to Parc Lafontaine. It's been 'the last time' a lot these days. I'm getting a lump in my throat. Some lady just walked by holding a white cat. Two children giggle in an impromptu hammock behind me.

On the waterside rocks below me a woman with blonde dreads and two hyper sons strums a guitar covered in stickers. She sings 'Dear Prudence.' Her voice is sweet. With my chin on my knees I let my head fall to the left and watch the late afternoon sun sparkle through the fountain. The air is soft. I've brought a book but leave it unopened, deciding instead to let my 'last time' feeling keep me company. I'm thinking about last night's 'bon voyage' party. 'Til 3am we sat, torchlit and barely noticing the chill, eating weird snacks in no particular order and sipping 'fruity quebeckers' that my generous host concocted for this event only.

Pulling jackets tighter against the cool night, lighting smokes in unison, laughing over each other's border-crossing horror stories that included such highlights as: a vibrator; homeless drug-sniffing dogs on a canine WorkFare program; eating the acid; smuggling illegal immigrants in a Budget® rental car; a customs officer who was all but ready to subject a sleeping dog to a breathalizer, and German police officers yelling "dickhead! dickhead!"

The water is pretty and chick is strumming a tune I don't recognize. Some dude named Pablo has just walked up to me again and asked me for the third time if I want to smoke a joint with him. I decline. I'm smoking alone. Besides I'm deeply content to smile over my friends' most dear generosity that has left me with a wacked-out painting, a mild hangover, and a salty taste from the specially selected cheese that you have to eat with your hands and looks, for all the world, like creepy scary doll hair. I'm going to miss this. And the conversational meander that happens between intelligent quirky people, the crazy connections: the "no way, I have a 'being high and seeing a racoon' story too;" the 80s punk bands, the same awful drive-share guy with the photo album and the terror-inspiring driving habits. I'll miss sharing a taxi with a brand new friend that I wish I'd met ages ago.

I'm losing the sun now. Dreadlock lady must have taken her guitar and her boys home. I place my half-finished water bottle into my bag. It'll be time to walk back soon and finish packing the cartons I've been pilfering from the nearby shops and neighbours on recyling days.

6/21/2007

Prayer of Midsummer

According to the Celtic calendar, the season of summer—Beltane—begins on the first of May. The solstice then is summer's midpoint. I like to think about this:

"On this, the longest day of the year, an annual miracle occurs. At dawn, the first rays of the sun touch the hele-stone, the solitary sighting stone that stands outside the great circle of Stonehenge. The miracle of the longest day is celebrated by peoples all over the world as the time of greatest light and blessedness. Tonight we will have the shortest night, the least darkness of the year, as the sun climbs to its zenith in the heavens.

At midday, stand in the sunlight, which (unless you are very far north or very far south of the equator) will be directly overhead. Check to see where, if anywhere, your shadow is. Most people will find that there is scant shadow at all. All living creatures cast shadows; it is only spirits who have none. This is the nearest we can come to resembling spirits in this reality. Become attuned to the midsummer sun. Absorb the warmth and blessedness, and in return hold in your heart those who lack the blessing of light. Do not make any prayer for things to be changed one way or another; just hold these places and beings in your heart and let the sun shine upon them. Come back to awareness of your own time and place, and give thanks for the longest day.

It is traditional to make a bonfire at twilight and stay up late dancing and singing with the community. If you cannot do this, light a candle and make your own blessing for all beings on this happy day."
—Caitlin Matthews, The Celtic Spirit

6/19/2007

Benediction

Evening sun
at this late hour and sloping degree,
is possible only at this time of year.
It bathes my small yard in a most hallowed light.

Weeds throw complex shadows
onto the mossy ground
and breathe some benediction
to an open sky above.

6/18/2007

Waist deep in lilac

It turns out all those weeds in my front garden—the ones that have grown waist-high through my negligence—have bloomed into a tiny meadow of lilac.

6/14/2007

Reconstituted

I've just walked from St Henri to the Plateau in terrycloth flipflops.
I didn't really mean to. I mean, I did mean to end up in the Plateau. I just didn't mean to start from St Henri. It's just that I'd ended up in St Henri in a taxi-van from Verdun with my friend and two free bookcases that she'd just got from a totally cool couple who were moving to Nun's Island. She paid my metro ticket at Peel Station since I'd agreed to help her go fetch them. This we'd discussed over a cigarette on the steps in front of Thomson House after my colleagues had somehow reduced my dissertation proposal to powder with nothing but their nakedly honest questions.

6/09/2007

Park Lafontaine

Remind me to tell you about my friday afternoon,
smokin a joint in Parc Lafontaine.
And the rush of joy that swept over me
at opening a greeting card from my lover that reads,
"I'm soooo fucking in love with you!"

And get me to tell you about my troubling newfound love for Montreal.
It's like Montreal is on best behaviour now that it knows I'm leaving.
Too late pretty Montreal. You were too hard on me.
I'm small, I only talk big. You were hard on me.
Cold and dark and mean.

But now I walk the plateau every night while
dragonflies play over the pond in Parc Lafontaine.
Two days in a row of bliss
Bliss that reminds me how good my life is.

6/03/2007

The History Eraser Button

Imagine my dismay at turning on my cellphone to find that all my text messages have been wiped out. Inbox (0) Outbox (0).

Over two years worth of dirtysweetlovin communiqués are just gone. I'm heartbroken. The wintry morning greetings on the Scarborough LRT, the sultry summer night kisses, the occasional gems from my closest of friends, the countless I love you's, the endless you're beautiful's, the misspellings that made me laugh out loud:
"im head over heals in love w u my queen."

Oh my heart.

Texting's become a way of speaking that I've loved getting used to. Each message window a place of performance; every line an opportunity to excite. How to write porn in 160 characters or less.

Yeah sure, ephemera and all that. Satellite signals, digital dispatches—brief, faint and insubstantial. Text messaging is a fire-and-forget medium. But maybe that's why I'm so disoriented, a sensation I could never have expected. Erased now are moments that had already been forgotten.

But I do remember this: for a few days last summer I needed to leave my phone 'in the shop' and I'm sure whoever worked on it peeked into my Inbox. Who wouldn't? I liked to pretend that whoever they were got a pleasant surpise at finding dirtysweet flirting between two hot chicks who are SO freakin' hot for each other. And I secretly believed that—having read hundreds of messages without a single meanspirited word—they went home that night and turned their marriage around.

6/02/2007

Saint Viateur Streetfest...

...amounted to some dude playing a fiddle outside the BioTerre Organics supermarket. I suspect the fair was long over before I got there. A few deflated balloons fluttered from a chainlink fence and sweet autumney woodsmoke tinged the latespring air with meloncholy.

5/31/2007

shrug

My VISA card just got declined while I was trying to order Yves Rocher beauty products to pamper myself and forget all about my financial woes.

traffic on St. laurent is *nasty*

5/27/2007

Flickr? I hardly know 'er!

I've done it, taken the plunge and bought a Flickr Pro account. A whopping $25 US for a full year to upload as much as I like. I think that's a fair deal. And since today is a
low slow
grey sunday,
I'm migrating photos.
The ones I deem acceptable for public viewing in any case. I could showcase everything—let it all hang out—but that's really not my style. It's kind of like tidying up before having company over, or making your bed before heading out to the kitchen for breakfast. I put it down to deeply ingrained protestant ethics and early childhood lessons in good breeding and propriety—something that's been both a blessing and a curse to me in my adult life.

5/26/2007

almost summer

wow I miss my sweetheart.
wish I were at the lake tonight
getting high by the fire.

5/25/2007

half-asleep letter on the corridor commute...

I got your message on my cell as I was on the train heading back here (mtl). Dude beside me was a buddhist named alex who had just been on some meditation retreat. he crunched dried seaweed that looked like dark green paper and i tried to read his notes over his shoulder but they were half in chinese. Damn, I could have been *this close* to enlightenment.

and get me to tell you about the cute gay soldier at Kingston station.
sun was sloping low over green spring fields. wow it was pretty.

back in TO by june 30th.
can't wait
be good
do you have a phone number?
please come home

my verandah will welcome you into its leafy arms.