neptunian now

i've always loved the ocean.

when i was little little girl, perhaps 3 or 4 years old, my family took a trip to the maritimes. i can't remember much (hell, i can barely remember last week!) but i do remember one thing. or.. do i remember, or is it lodged in my memories from having been told again and again around the holiday table?

either way, it's there, in my brain, in my soul:
a young wild precocious girl emerges from hours in the back of a hot, smoky, gas guzzling "pontitac" (as i cutely called it). she emerges from her travelling cage and is confronted with the ocean. and the young girl doesn't run amok or giggle or do any of the silly wild things you can so often see her doing. the young girl, instead, stands transfixed, mesmerized by the vast beautiful ocean.

now, not so young but certainly as wild, this girl (sometimes woman) has fallen in love with a man from the ocean, of the ocean, with eyes like the ocean. and i muse over my oceanic love for him. deep, mysterious, stormy and beautiful...

i met him 3 months ago
and i ran
and ran
and ran.
away
and back
away
and back
a fickle ocean
of tidal disquiet
until finally
waves tossed
whales beached
storms passed
finally
i collapsed in the
gentle
lulling
sigh of his love.

and so here we are
and i am hungry for it all:
the hurricanes
the swells
the depth
the mystery
the titanic
oceanic
thrust of us -
our now
our tomorrow
our yes.

ho

...ho ho

this sunday, toronto played host to the fat man's arrival and the official launch of the tackiest, shiniest, loveliest season of my year! i'm of course talking about the Santa Claus parade. before going further: yes, i know capitalists have done everything they can to co-opt the season. yes, i know i'm not christian. yes, i prefer to actually celebrate solstice than the 25th. yes, i could choose to grumble at every tinseled tree i see, and dismiss it all as a fascist ploy or gawd knows what.

or i can choose to embrace it. i can choose to savour the time friends and family dedicate to making merry with each other.

as a kid, the playing of Elvis' Christmas Album was always the official launching of this merry season. but since moving to toronto 3 years ago, the parade has become a delicious substitute. i LOVE parades. i love being huddled with my city's people, smiling at tired waving children, tapping my feet to marching band tunes, and feeling my heart swell at the familiar belting out of the ho ho hos. I. LOVE. IT.

and this year, i got to enjoy it with my fella, who had somehow never made it out to the parade, despite a lifetime of living in toronto... (ahh, what men will do for love, and god bless them for it!)

and let me tell you: it was a beautiful day. a beautiful mild day filled with beautiful smiles, candy apples and clowns. (although admittedly, some of the clowns looked a little too much like drag queens on new year's morning...) my favourite moment (other than seeing Santa, of course) was hearing the little girl beside us LOSE IT when she saw Clifford the Big Red Dog. too fucking precious.

i took a few pics with my handy dandy camera phone and just look at my face - how giddily happy am i?? it was a splendid day, topped off with a mountain of whipped cream atop a white hot chocolate and a peanut butter cookie. yum! (as a side note, isn't it strange how grammatically, it would make more sense to say "hot white chocolate", but how that somehow sounds dirty - like a porn star name or something? Keith was clever enough to point this out, to the counterperson's giggly delight. words are funny.)

all in all, a gorgeous day. yay!

SNOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i may be the only happy adult in toronto right now, because when i emerged to gather some lunch, i noticed it was snowing. oh, not much- just a few floating flakes, but it was snow and I LOVE IT!!!

i LOVE snow!

i love mittens and scarves and hot chocolate and tinsel and twinkling lights and snow angels and skates and eggnog and sleds and frost and pale moons and crisp skies and wool and fireplaces and mulled wine and and and... i love snow.

it's already stopped, but i don't care. even a few flakes can carry me through the next few days.. : )

i hope it snows for real in time for the santa parade this weekend. yes - the santa parade. i may like de phazz and mammalian diving reflex and peter chin and robert priest, but i also like the santa parade.

dammit.
(grin)

*mwah!*

Remembrance day

in canada, today is Remembrance day - a day when most of the country's 9-to-5ers get the day off to remember. (there are a few notable and disappointing exceptions to the observation of remembrance day. for some reason, new year's day merits a holiday, easter merits 2, but our nation's soldier's get barely a nod from 2 of the country's provinces - one of whom houses the nation's capital. it says something, doesn't it. but i digress.)

at 11 am, i dedicated a minute of my life to the memory of theirs. the classic rock station wrapped up its minute of silence with Dire Straits' Brothers in Arms. cbc 2 featured a very impressive organ and a very earnest choir. cbc 1: bagpipes. of course. (and why not; i love bagpipes.) i finally settled on the alt rock station's offering of the Pogues' Waltzing Matilda. and i stood there as i do every year, tears insistently silently streaming down my face as i contemplated the horrors humans relentlessly unleash on each other.

and as the planes flew over toronto, i remembered. or, well.. pondered memories. as best i know, nobody in either of my families has ever fought in a war. i have no grandfather stories, no sacrificed uncle after whom a brother was named. and yet, there are memories. maybe they are the memories of a universal consciousness, a glimpse at the blossom of our humanity. because my heart feels heavy with a hundred thousand memories. a hundred thousand tears. a hundred thousand souls lost in battle. and i mourn for each gasp, each drop of shed blood. and i mourn because we're still doing it.

and yet, world war 2... hitler... how to not fight such a war? are those deaths not well earned? unlike our new wars. when did wars go from being important and noble, to fucked up and begging for protest? did they change or did we? did the nature of the beast change, or did our perception of it evolve? devolve?

i don't know. i guess it's not supposed to be easy. i guess that's kinda the point.

top of the world!

i'm on top of the world! powerful! amazing! wonderful!

why? cuz i climbed the CN Tower, that's why! that's right - i managed to drag my wonderful ass up 1,776 stairs and raised what i think is a pretty amazing $360 for United Way - extraordinary, really, considering most of my friends are broke-ass artsy types just like me. so hooray! (as a side note, i'm the chair of our office's United Way campaign, and i'm thrilled to announce we had an amazingly stellar year, raising over 140% of our goal. yea!!!)

it's funny... i mean, the climb was challenging. definitely challenging. and yet, it was easier than i thought it would be...

i work on the 5th floor of a building, and tried to prepare myself for the climb by taking the stairs in the weeks leading up to the big day. well, i can tell you i was getting awfully worried when the day before the climb, i was still winded by the time i reached our floor. and a few times i climbed all the way up (12 floors) and it damn near killed me each time!! well, believe it or not, climbing up the CN tower was easier. seriously! i even took the work stairs after the climb, and still they kicked my ass! fellow climbers concurred.

there could be a few reasons for this, most notably the clever/not-too-steep/many landings design of the CN Tower stairs.

all i know is this: unless you have some serious physical ailment that absolutely prevents you from climbing stairs (and i don't mean "oh i don't think i can"), i *strongly* urge you to take on this challenge next year. i know it's silly compared to, like, winning the Pulitzer Prize, but holy man, the overwhelming sense of accomplishment that fills your every pore! for days and days, i'm sure i radiated pure joy every time i glimpsed the tower...

it's aliiiiiive!

yes: i'm still alive.
no: i have not forsaken you.
yes: i still love and adore every single one of you.

it's just been...
my plate's been...
i've been...

well, you know. the dog ate my homework and all that.

really though, i'm doing GREAT. after a gruelling few months of pathetic indecision (do i choose the funky soulmate, or the sexy kindred??) i finally decided: i choose ME! fuck this love business. every time i stumble into it, i obsess and i fuck up. so i've decided it's high time to chillax and spend a bit of that quality lovin on the one person i know i'm stuck with: moi. and so i'm back to writing, creating, doing...

in the next few days and weeks, i promise to regale you with my endless tales of wonder and deeply illuminating ponderings (ha!). for now, a bit of shameless self-promotion. and to show you how busy i am, i'm cutting and pasting the email i sent to the people i love best (or who happen to be on my mailing list) - so apologies if you were all excited to finally read something on my blog, only to discover you already got the email. heh heh.
___

stand back and gaze in wonder as ladykaen's theatrical career SPIRALS OFF INTO THE STAR-STUDDED WILDS OF OUTER SPACE!!!!! yea baby!!! or in other words, i got a coupla things coming up this week, should be fun, hope you can come...

wednesday nov 9: RED Festival
Lula Lounge, 8 pm
i'm doing a puppet show. (yes, you read that right.) as part of the fabulous RED Festival, I'll be joining a busload of other impromptu puppeteers and presenting a 3-minute glimpse of the extra-ordinary. i gotta tell ya, i'm pretty excited about my fabulous little puppets and deluxo little stage!

sunday nov 13: Lab Cab
Factory Studio Theatre, 8 pm
i'm presenting a 10-min excerpt from one of my plays (she spoke such words). i've had the great honour and pleasure of working with two incredible actors, Sheena Lessard and Elley Ray Hennessey, so i'm VERY excited about this. it has been too wonderful to watch these talented women help two ladies who've been living in my brain for the last year take their first breaths, stretch their limbs, and grip my heart with their tragic beauty. i really hope you can make it for this... details about the whole soirée are included below, for your reference.

and in case you don't know, i'm moving back to Vancouver in about a month, so this may be your last chance to sink your teeth into my art. ..until a tour brings me back this way, of course!

flashback!

damn, time flies. where did the last week (since my last post) go!? and for that matter, where did the last 14 years go? well no, they haven't raced by, they've been full and lived completely - that's for sure. but it's been fun to reflect on them...

see last week, i was found by an ancient ex. and ah, the memories heretofore well and solidly dammed up have flooded my mind - frankly, i'm amazed by how much i remember.

if you've been paying attention (or if you're reading my words like you care, ahem...), you may remember that in my many exciting! amazing! death-defying! world travels, i've also lived in thunder bay. don't worry if you didn't remember: i try to never talk about it. (a note for non-canadian readers: thunder bay is by all legal definitions a "city" located somewhere in the woody cesspool of northwestern ontario.)

at the ripe and tender age of 16, i was transplanted from Montreal (french girls, dépanneurs, modern dance, poutine and Super Sex) to Thunder Bay (lager, loggers, legions and Bambi Bambenek). although this may bespeak a maniacal cruelty on my parents' part, there were reasons other than my torture. and anyway, as a colourfully-clad, bottom-feeding, artsy urban grrrl, i can clearly see the big shiny bullet i dodged. (shortly before the move i'd acquired an agent (modeling) - who told my 5'7" 115-lb anorexic ass to lose weight. i was also lambada-ing up a storm at the yuppie joints de choix. really: what might i have become?? shudder at the thought.)

but i digress.

so at 16 i suddenly found myself in a school that had a football team instead of an improv troupe, cheerleaders instead of a world-travelling jazz band and pep rallies instead of dance class. whoa. it was like i'd suddenly found myself trapped in an ABC After-School Special. this shit existed in Canada??? damned "distinct society" robbing me of dog squads and class-free, pepped-up wednesday afternoons...

my first few weeks were particularly scintillating. when i wasn't outside polluting my lungs with my cousin and her friends, you could generally find me sitting alone eating baloney sandwiches in the back corridor by shop class. despite this, and perhaps because i wore perfume, make-up, styly black clothes and spoke with a slight indescernible accent, i had earned myself a reputation!! that first week, the hushed voices spoke of "Parisian model". dayem, that's fun! i giggled and kinda liked this whole "gossip" business - something that somehow didn't really exist in my Montreal high schools... well the thrill ended when somehow, still sitting in the back corridor like a loser, i had become THE WHORE.

er... hm??

well what the hell eh. i was 16, alone, confused, and insecure as all hell and i now officially had nothing to lose. so i went on a bit of a rampage. say something witty (or, well... amusing anyway), be cute (or well... not uncute anyway) and buy me booze, and you had yourself a cute "foreign" girlfriend for the night or week.

until i saw him.
...met him? sadly the details are lost. but i do remember some things. like smoking in that far-back walkway as we started our solemn trek home (had to make sure he knew i was cool). i remember snow bros. at the 7-11. i remember the slow, lingering flirty walks home as we tried to ignore our raging loins (he had a girlfriend). and i remember that night... we were walking home from a friend's party, engaged in the ultimate act of adolescent foreplay: laughter-and-scream-laced wrestling. we manoeuvred ourselves into the perfect position: he sat straddling me as i lay looking up at his beautiful face framed by a naked sapling and a cool, crisp moon. and i remember my brain screaming out "kiss me kiss me kiss me kiss me". i can't remember how it happened - did he lean in? did i have to lure him? did i reach up? i don't know. but i do know we kissed and he became my first full-on, really real thunder bay boyfriend. i'm talking months of devotion (which hey, for a 16 year-old is something) and 18 ct gold bracelets. oh yea, this was teenaged love at its best.

and now, 14 years later, he's stumbled on me at classmates.com. yes: someone actually gave the bastards some cash and got to actually contact me! i gotta say, it's sorta fun. haven't thought of Hammarskjold High in a helluva long time...

hunh

daydreamin

i'm indoors all day, but my soul doesn't have to be! she's off adventuring...

it's a beautiful day. although there is a flavour of fall whispered on the wind, the day is sunny and sporting a misty smog that speaks more of summer than autumn. it's noon and she has emerged from the recycled air to savour her hour of freedom. she has decided to cycle to a farmer's market to get something fresh for lunch while supporting the hippies and environmentalists she wishes she were...

she is elated to discover that this is no outdoor mall, but a small community. the people are smiling, the prices are negotiable, and there are musicians. the musicians are all cool and carefree, oozing a casual sexuality - but it is the drummer who catches her eye. a feast of thick hair coyly brushes past eyes raging with intensity, sparkling with mischief. he seems transported, carried to mystical realms by his masterful rhythms. she is instantly mesmerized.

she watches his eyes. she watches when they are closed, and he looks almost reverential. she watches when they are turned to a sky filled with invisible but potent gods. and she blushingly stops watching when their focus shifts to her. although she has averted her gaze too quickly to see the salacious smile, she can feel the sudden charge in his playing. it seems now laced with a lascivious drive that pulses right into the yes of her.

eyes downturned, she tries not to think of his eyes. tries not to imagine them inspecting the contours of her dress. tries not to imagine them drinking in her details. tries not to imagine them piercing her thoughts and exposing her soul.

smiling softly, she tries not to think of his mouth. tries not to imagine it smiling wantonly just for her. tries not to imagine it whispering into her hair. tries not to imagine how sweet and soft it must taste.

fidgeting timidly, she tries not to think of his fingers. tries not to imagine them easing her clothes off. tries not to imagine them pulling her hair, exposing her neck to his fierce hunger. tries not to imagine them gently but insistently unfurling her like a rose.

but his dancing fingers and charging pulse lull her into the decadent daydream and she is powerless to his rhythmic seduction. and so she dreams on...

that's nuts!

ah the silly rambly things that flitter through my brain while savouring a slow ride into work on a bright, crisp morning...

riding down a tree-lined street, i chuckled at the sight of a chestnut being chucked from a tree by a clever squirrel. the nut popped out like a stripper from a cake, it was beautiful. and for no apparent reason, that got me thinking about tree huggers. i mused over how many of the friends or people i've met who were radical environmentalists or tree planters or greenpeace warriors or whatever were also vegans. i get it, it all kinda fits together, ya know? it's all about the celebration of the sanctity of non-human life, right?

well then i thought specifically about the dedicated tree lovers - the ones who are just oh so in love with big wise ol fluffy trees dancing in the breeze just for them. and i thought of how, as vegans, many of them consume a startling amount of nuts. gotta get their protein, right?

well...

don't they realize that nuts are tree fetuses??

(shrug)

theeeahtah

i know that for most people, autumn signals a time of hermitage: time to curl up under fluffy blankets after a summer of feasting on the city's non-stop smorgasbord of cultural offerings. but for theatre types, the opposite is true. while the summer has its own delicious treats (fringe and summerworks, for example), september is when the theatres come out with guns blazing, eager to lure you into their seats (as well they should!).

so last friday, i sank my teeth into my first play of the "season"; i saw Judith Thompson's latest offering, Enoch Arden at the Theatre Centre.

as the Globe and Mail so accurately states, it is "a beautiful, wise piece of theatre and what a thrill to experience it..." skillfully, tenderly, it combines music, poetry, pathos, grit and soul-stirring/heartbreaking beauty. i could not recommend this play more. it's only fifteen bucks, so ditch the comforter and head down to Queen West. you'll thank me...

and tonight i'm off to CanStage to see "What Happened Was..." not sure what it is, but i know it's theeeahtah, and that's enough for me!! (grin)

trent reznor saved my soul

i fancy myself a bit of a life savourer. what i mean by that is i like to stand at life's buffet and try a bit of everything. so a long, long time ago, when i first tried my hand at post-secondary academia, i sampled a little christianity.

ok - who am i kidding. i dove right in: born-again pentecostal (though sadly i never got to speak in tongues, sigh), bible study groups, even the early-morning prayer marches around campus. yup, i did it all! i even practiced celibacy - to the dismay, i'm sure, of my boyfriend with whom i'd shared some red-hot fire engine sex for several months prior to my unfortunate conversion.

now, there are a lot of reasons for my foray into religious insanity, but i don't feel like getting into all that. i'm more interested in telling you the story of how i emerged from the holy water, back to my good ol' debauched self...

when school released me from its jaws in late april, i returned to my home. no longer subjected to the daily encouragement/chastising of my converter and other christian friends, the lord started to lose his grip on me. i stopped believing i was alcoholic. i stopped believing my instincts and impulses were actually the misguided whisperings of the devil. i stopped believing i was evil and going to hell.

i started hanging around with non-christians. i allowed the f-word and other such blasphemy to find its way into my vocabulary again. i started to smoke. i enjoyed the occasional alcoholic beverage (egads). i may even have smoked some marijuana. yet though his grip was loosening, still my fearful heart was squeezed in the good lord's frightful fingers.

and then i moved to vancouver, and discovered luvafair. every thursday and sunday night (nights without cover), you could find me sitting on the speakers (a luxury position placing me between floor- and speaker-dancers, where i could feel in the centre of it all), or on the dance floor, thrashing my hair and limbs about. and oh, i remember this so clearly...

week one
a song i didn't know began pulsing through me. oh, this is goooooood, i enthused, and jumped to my feet. frenetic and wild, it filled my pores with yes!! until the chorus belted out "god is dead, and no one cares," that is. the song: heresy by nine inch nails. as though god's hand had come down and smacked some christian sense to me, my limbs froze. sorry god, i murmured, and returned with bowed head to my seat on the speakers.

week two
there i was dancing like mad, and the song i did not yet recognize well enough again urged me to well up with energy. yes! yes! yes! i danced ferociously until the chorus snapped me back to god's fold. fuck. sorry god, i murmured, and returned to my seat on the speakers.

week three
again, i was compelled to dance. only this time, when trent screamed out "god is dead" i screamed with him. fuck you, god, and your ridiculous rules. fuck you and your archaic morality! i'm gonna fucking dance!!!

to this day, i consider that dance my final break from christianity. you could say trent reznor saved my soul.

now please, don't get me wrong. that christ fella had some interesting things to say. assuming anything in the good book is actually in any way close to what he actually said, i think he was a hell of a political visionary and we have a lot to learn from him. and buddha and confucius and muhammed and so on... but christianity made me more evil than my current debauched lifestyle ever could. i became judgmental, condescending, paranoid and i hated myself and all my instincts.

now, if you find a religion that actually makes you a better person, then i'll support you 110%. just ask my raelian brother... but if it makes you a bitch from hell, as it did for me, then trust me: slip on some trent reznor cuz you needs some proper saving.

frosh

frosh week has desended upon our fine city. or certainly our corner of it.

i just sat on a desk, legs curled under me, forehead leaning near the window, looking down on masses of frosh parading through the streets. cheering, laughing, dancing, proudly donning their new colours. and it brought a sting of tears to my eyes. don't know why really... i guess a bit of envy: that sense of hope, of belonging, of community. there was something really exciting and beautiful about it.

labourless weekend

i had such a lovely weekend. i went up to my friends' beautiful new home, a converted barn just north of the hurly burly, but still south enough to be relatively city-esque. indeed, close enough to be torn down to appease the suburban sprawlers. yes, in less than a year this beautiful home with its pond, its large lush garden, its serene perfection will be torn down and replaced with an army of bland, oversized suburban dwellings. but i don't want to talk about that, not now...

i want to talk about sleeping in my tent (likely the last time this season) on nights so beautiful i was brave enough to leave the fly off so i could gaze at the stars. i want to talk about slowly waking up to clear crisp mornings, lying in my sleeping bag, listening to birds, watching soft fluffy clouds float in a careless sky. i want to talk about making breakfast for friends in a beautiful big kitchen, while being serenaded by a jazz pianist and upright bass player.

could anything be more perfect?

how about playing in the dirt on a hot day, sun beating on my back as i dug a fire pit with garden tools. it was such fun! like a sandbox, only filled with cool creepy crawly bugs instead of syringes, yay! or how about eating my first fried green tomatoes - plucked fresh from the garden. or just in general eating way too much delicious food, grilled to perfection by the lovely and masterful alana. or drinking just enough delicious beer.. (grin) or cozying up by a raging fire and talking shit, punctuated by acoustic favourites.

it was so splendid, i didn't want to leave. and so on monday afternoon, after all the lightweights left, us few intimate stragglers decided to grow some sideburns and be real men: we set up the card table by the tv, turned on some cfl (i'm not a sports fan, but i do love the occasional joy of feeding off other fans' enthusiasm), ordered some pizza, cracked some beers and played poker.

from nature to friends to good manly fun, i'd have to say i had a perfect labour day weekend! : )

dreams

Romeo: Peace, peace, Mercutio peace,
Thou talkst of nothing.

Mercutio: True, I talk of dreams:
Which are the children of an idle brain,
Begot of nothing but vain fantasy:
Which is as thin of substance as the air,
And more inconstant than the wind

kindness of strangers

he has been yearning for adventure, for something to happen. he has been invoking something new.

he and his friend have spent the night at the bar, taunting the bartenders to entertain them. "the robot" was their most succesful offering. the night has been amusing, high in entertainment. and yet... nothing new. he has invoked, and the universe has not listened.

until they are stumbling through their apartment building's front door.
___

it's 3 am and she's hovering over the landlady's buzzer. what to do what to do. two guys walk in behind her as she hesitates, debates. "do you need a hand?" he asks. she turns to him and giggles, embarassed but needing a little kindness from a stranger.

"i've lost my keys, and so i guess i have to wake the landlady to be let in."

his eyes go wide, "don't do that!!"

"i know, i know," she enthuses.

the landlady is a fiesty 80-something year-old woman with sharp eyes and a sharp tongue. the prospect of waking her to drunkely explain how she's lost her keys is most unsavoury. he takes pity, dons his shining armour, and offers her a couch. (it doesn't hurt that he's seen her riding her bike from his sunroom.) she accepts the salvation immediately, gratefully. (it doesn't hurt that he has mischievous eyes and a sexy smile.)

she has found shelter.
he has found an adventure.

such a nice man...

"he was such a nice man."

the rallying cry of the neighbours of psychopaths, sociopaths, and some of my ex-boyfriends. people who, if they're catholic enough, might torture themselves with the idea that they should have known better.

is the fact that serial killers, rapists, bombers are viewed by many of their neighbours as nice:

a testament to how antisocial us social beings have become? oh, we'll nod our good mornings, we'll chitchat about sitcoms and reality tv in those forced moments of social interaction - colleagues in the kitchen, neighbours in the elevator. but there's no depth to any of those exchanges, no furthering of our crucial interconnectedness. in overpopulated cities, in an overpopulated world, should we not learn to respect our neighbours? look out for our neighbours? rely on our neighbours? interact more, more regularly, more meaningfully with our surroundings and with each other?

or

is it a chilling testament to how we treat our weak? our quiet? our "nice people"? dedicatedly ignoring, perhaps even scoffing them, until their exile eventually, inevitably drives to the ultimate antisocial act?

just wonderin...

childhood

the tears came out of fucking nowhere, man.

we were sitting, enjoying a quiet sunday, a calm breeze. we were talking in semi-hushed tones, careful not to disrupt the intensely easy-going vibe. we were talking about.. oh, this. that. a bit of everything, a whole lot of nothing...

how did we lead into it? i can't remember. but i remember how the anecdote started. playfully waving my fist in the air, i decried Sean P---. "if i had minions, i would get them to do some serious damage to Sean P---." Sean went to grade school with me. ah yes, grade school: purveyor of all my happiest memories. (she stifles a shudder)

my friend laughed gently, wondering what Sean had done to me. first i gave the short answer, "oh you know, the standard grade school semi-torture..." and then i decided to flesh it out with an exemplary anecdote. i guess i'd never told this story before, not out loud.
anyway.

i was in grade 2. i had just gotten these death-locks, these bear-traps-in-training on my molars. the idea was these silver bands wrapped around my molars (top and bottom, one each side) and had a wee jagged bit (not unlike a thumbtack) that jutted out into the cheek, onto which you would hook elastic bands that would then straighten out the jaw. (as a side note, i love my semi-straight smile, but come on: orthodontists are sadistic fuckers.) anyway to be fair, the metal hooks that jutted out were not that big, but in a little girl's mouth, they were giant enough to wreak some serious havoc. anyone who's bitten their tongue or the inside of their cheek while chewing might be able to extrapolate...

to try to allieviate the damage being done by these metal rods that were incessantly tearing into my cheeks, i'd been given a box of wax strips. the idea was i would roll up a wad of wax, stick it onto the metal rod and round out the protrusion.

the bell rang, and i remember running across the field to get in lign. somewhere near the end of the field, Sean was waiting for me and with deadly precision, stuck out a leg and tripped me. did i say tripped? somehow that word doesn't do it justice. i caught air, man. as he laughed and jogged off to get in lign, i felt the air soar through my hair, felt my chubby little body land hard and fast, heard my little box of wax fly from my pocket and shatter on the ground, and watched in horror as the wax flew in all directions.

when i said caught air, my friend winced sympathetically for me. i kept on, but didn't make it to the end of the sentence. somewhere before the landing, i had to stop myself: "holy shit, i'm going to start crying, this is ridiculous." valiantly i breathed deep and plunged forth. my voice cracked. i tried a few more words, but tears came instead.

wow. i was blown away. here i thought i was telling my friend a silly little story of childhood malice. instead i found myself crying, remembering a pathetic little girl, pathetically wiping the dirt and grass off those fucking pieces of wax, terrified by the gruelling alternative of not having that fucking wax.

i was hoping in retelling it i could be a little stronger over something so small, so long ago. but jesus fuck, i am crying right now as i type.

Sean P---, know that there is someone in this world who will never forgive you.

weekend pass to cottage country

it was friday evening and i was an urban virgin, embarking for my first time on the journey so many city folk take every weekend: fleeing to cottage country. i was off to whitestone lake, and could not be more thrilled. grinning and humming in the passenger seat, i was a tangle of giddy excitement and profound mellowness. ahhh, the weekend at last.

it was somewhere around barrie that i noticed the air had shed a few pounds. released from the shackles of humidity and smog, she danced naked and unfettered in my hair and lungs, and swam through my veins making me feel calm and luxurious. i gotta tell ya, there's nothing more exhilarating after a few weeks of intense heat than feeling the air's cool bite as you race topless (car, not me) through the countryside. as the sun fled to the other side of the world, i craned my neck to smile at a sky shimmering with stars.

finally we arrived and gathered on the beach to swill cool beer and swap ghost stories. the goosebumps charged over my flesh and Bruce made me yelp and jump with the ol' hand-on-the-other-shoulder trick. fucker. (giggle)

a night and morning of giggling in bed and our saturday began. i moved steadily but slowly, from the patio where we feasted on eggs florentine (how civilized!), to the chair under the tree, to the chair on the beach, to the raft on the water. and such water! not too cool, not too warm... had my fingers not been uber-pruned, i would never have left it!

then we got all energetic-like and rented a boat. a boat that would take us to cliffs ripe for jumping off of. i love riding in boats, and since i was knee high to a grasshopper, my favouritest thing, as the wind and spray whip through my hair, has always been to daydream about boys. being kissed, specifically. mmm, eyes closed i savoured each succulent thought.

as for the cliff diving, well.. i'm glad i did it. the best part was the anticipation. as i peeked over the edge to the water far below, i realized i'd never really done anything dare-devily before. lived in the downtown eastside? yep. put myself in precarious positions around the globe? you bet. but nothing like this. the anticipation was great, the soaring through the air was amazing, but the hitting the water... well, i could have done without that. but even the raging pain that seared through my freshly cleansed colon could not take away from the yay of it all.

saturday night we sank comfortably into some poker. but you know, as a side note from someone who doesn't watch tv, all i gotta say is: hey, there are more games out there than texas hold-em! christ. well - we had a great time anyway, recklessly gambling away all our little risk men until exhaustion carried us to another night and morning of giggling in bed.

sunday was mellow. the sky was gray (rain at last! hurray!), the souls were quiet, and i sat and listened to keane and mused and watched the water and wrote until hélas, at last, we donned our brave faces and made for the city...

so a giant thank you to Bruce for inviting me, and to Lindsay and Michael for hosting us and to the countryside for being so damned lovely. whee!

break on through

so they're doing this promo thing on the radio, one of those classic rock odes to the doors. it's quite good, actually - cleverly written and aimed at my generation. that doesn't happen super often, wedged as i am between gen x and gen why. (ah, labels.)

but all the song snippets they're highlighting their fan-o-rific words with are the pap - sorry, i mean pop hits. they don't even skim through any of the really good ones, like crystal ship or ghost song.

i mean, don't get me wrong, light my fire's a good song and for a good part of my adolescence, also what i said to get my smokes lit by friends. (and a big thank you to them for never punching me!) but it's not quite good enough to be heard as many times as i've already heard it.

and no end in sight, either. i will surely hear that song a staggering amount of times before i die.

(shrug)
meh, whatever.

___
have a lovely weekend! i'm heading off to where the wild things are for some swimming, chilling, writing and tequila drinkin. hell yea.

mmmmm, yes

the heat has abated, and i'm feeling sexy for the first time in days. that sweet succulent tingly feeling is washing over me, and my mind is racing, racing with thoughts of mischief...

i'm thinking of being out somewhere, anywhere, writhing on some dance floor to deep, grinding music. i'm thinking i can feel eyes watching me, sending a charge of electricity through me. i don't return the gaze, but with a peripheral smirk i thrust my hips toward him. it's subtle but he sees, and moves toward me.

a cat-and-mouse game of coyness, drinks and sly subtle laughs ensues until we are raging for more. my bag is slung over my shoulder before he can finish saying: "let's go back to my place."

as the cab peels away from the curb, our fingers are already laced in each other's hair. he pulls me toward him and i yield completely. his mouth is hot and soft and fierce as he licks and sucks and bites my moist lips. our breath dances wildly as as we fumble and stumble into and through each other, desperate to be alone together.

when we arrive, finally, at his place, he pushes me up against the wall just inside the door. i long to have him tear off my shirt, but he unbuttons it slowly, watching me as i yearn impatiently for his lips on my flesh. i pull him into me, grinding my hips against an erection i can feel straining against his pants. i begin fumbling with his button, his zipper but he grabs my hands and holds them forcefully behind my back.

i'm panting softly as he reaches in the hallway closet for a scarf. he uses it to tie my hands behind my back, and continues his slow, torturous discovery of my body.

he covers me with slow, soft kisses: my lips, my neck, my nipples, my ribs, my belly button. i'm moaning softly, trembling as he slides a hand up my skirt. i feel his hands gently brush my heaving cunt and i softly cry out "Please." he looks up, smiling sardonically, and pulls away to watch me wriggling, desperate for him. he approaches slowly and i gasp as suddenly, ferociously, he yanks my skirt off. "is this what you want, lover?" i sigh softly, "yes, oh god yes."

i'm naked before him, and he appraises me appreciatively. his hands smoothly caress my skin as he sinks to his knees. he lifts one leg over his shoulder and begins to shower my wet pussy with gentle kisses. i moan plaintively and he acquiesces at last, lazily sliding a tongue along my swollen lips and deep into me, and along my lips, and into me. he sucks gently on my clit and i cry out ecstatically.

his lips and tongue savour me completely until my hips buckle and i come, screaming, in his mouth. i'm breathless and delirious, and collapse into his arms.

christ, i'll have to finish this fantasy elsewhere than sitting at a computer...
(hoowee)

smoke blues

i stayed up way way way past my bedtime last night and of course did my 9-to-5 shtick today. throw in some dedicated fringing since our fringe theatre festival opened on wednesday and you've got yourself one tired monkey. so no fresh new ladykaen thoughts for you today. instead i'm going to share a poem i read, from an anthology called Without Reservation (Indigenous Erotica), collected and edited by Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm and published by Kegedonce Press.

it's a piece called Smoke Blues,
by Daniel David Moses

You watch the smoke slip through
and catch, blue on his lips.
And you think No, it's not
the blatant cigarette
that puts the heat into

this habit, friend. Rather
it's the revelation
of limits, how the glow
of tobacco shows where
his exhalation ends.

It gives breath a body
and the body shows This
is how close you get with
out getting burned. Before
you trespass or you kiss.


lovely, hunh?
have a glorious weekend ducklings!!

happy canada day!

this past friday (july 1) was canada day, for those international readers who might not know. in addition to enjoying a day off (a treat i always savour), i got to see my friends and idols, Tabarruk, playing in Nathan Phillips Square. despite the raging heat, i danced from first chord to last beat. damn they just keep getting better and better, how is that possible?

alas, the day also had a less than shiny moment. hanging out in a pub before the show, sitting alone, it was impossible for me to not overhear a young couple having a discussion a few feet away. here's what i wrote:

i'm listening to some young dumb idiot talking about Canada, and how Canada specifically doesn't have a culture, because there are so many cultures. he makes a comparison: could you survive in Brazil without speaking portuguese?? see because in Brazil, there's such a strong culture that you have to fit into... like this homogeneity is some kind of ideal. like "culture" is a scale, with homogeneity as the pinnacle.

and i want to hurt him, he's so stupid. my muscles are rippling with revulsion.

does he not realize how incredible this mass array of unique and preserved cultures is? does he not realize that this mosaic of cultures IS Canadian culture?? does he not realize that the systems we've created that allow people to preserve their individuality, yet coexist mostly peacefully is a rare and precious thing that makes Canada so fucking exquisite?

does he not realize that the ability to choose from pizza, falafel, hot dogs, shishtaouk, mcdonald's, chinese or vietnamese after a night of boozing doesn't exist everywhere else?

man, people can be so fucking stupid. it's amazing how much people take for granted...

ugh, i'm going to hit him! he's talking about Québec now.
i'm outta here..

(she grabs her book and flees before doing something decidedly unCanadian: beating the young stupid stranger.)

soul bits from the scribble book

first of all, happy saint-jean-baptiste!

i’ve spent the week dragging my ass around, smiling sloppily and washing the last vestiges of a month of delicious semi-mayhem from my pores. so no full, lushly rounded thoughts for you, my ducklings. instead, i offer a smorgasbord of soul bits from the infamous scribble book.

(ok, this one goes back a little over a month (which somehow seems so far away!) well whatever: relive spring!) the air smells of autumn, but it looks like spring – complete with the neon green peach fuzz that now canopies our sky with its retro meshness. all this frolicking – pre-pubescent trees rubbing up against each other, giggling their coy consent on the cool breeze.
___
we are standing outside the party, smoking anything we can wrap our lips around. we gaze lazily at the sky. we do not know, but the northern lights are backstage, smoking cigarettes to soothe their jitterbug blood or standing in corners retracing sections of the choreography they're about to thrill the city folk with. one of us speaks staggeringly, “what time is it?” another ventures a guess: “12:30? 1?” another looks at his watch and laughs – it’s exactly 12:31.
ahhh, it’s the little things that delight me so…
___
i am on the threshold of trouble, and i beg for more. yes, yes, make me dirty with your shy gaze and wanton laugh.

paper cut

i try to ignore you, my badministration badge, try to ignore your murder-mouthed grin. but the cool water streams down my fingers and finds you, my purple heart of 9-to-5, and tickles you into dark searing laughter.

___
i fucking hate paper cuts! but hey, at least they're not as bad as folder cuts. those fuckers'll have you wincing in pain for weeks. i once had a folder jump and contort itself, seeking the smooth, soft flesh that lay hidden well underneath my giant ring (unfortunately not the protective armour it could or should have been), proving that folders are evil, malicious little fuckers.

sigh - the trials and tribulations of office work...
(grin)
.

home for a rest

ah – here i am, back in front of a computer, feeling slightly dazed and smiling dopily: i have had the bestest couple of weeks ever.

i have savoured theatre in three cities. the highlights:

• the Children’s Festival in Toronto. i saw a charming and funny and beautiful piece from.. erm… somewhere in Europe, called Past Half Remembered, and a lovely, intriguing, strange little show from the Netherlands, called Museum of Memories.
• the Festival de théâtre des Amériques in Montreal. this is where i saw La Chambre d’Isabella (the magnificent delight of Belgian wonderfulness that i talked about a few posts back). another notable artistic experience was being allowed to sit in on the presentation of a work in progress choreographed by Sylvain Émard. it was so beautiful, and i hope they come to Toronto so i can see the final product – it’s sure to be stunning.
• and finally, the Magnetic North theatre festival in Ottawa. i got to see Daniel MacIvor’s Cul-de-sac again (had seen it here in Toronto), which was just as incredible the second time around. also loved Old Trout Puppet Workshop’s very beautiful and dark and magical Pinocchio, Pi Theatre's charming, slightly haunting and inspiring Élisa’s Skin, and i laughed my guts out with Andy Jones' King o’ Fun.

it’s been quite the few weeks, but the shows i saw don’t even scratch the surface of what makes the whole experience so gratifyingly incredible. if you’ve been reading a while, you may remember me gushing over this place i spent my thursday nights, called “the shop.” crammed with theatre types, beer, smoke and stories, i loved being there. well – every night at these festivals was like that.

whether in the cinemathèque in Montreal, or the mayflower in Ottawa, oh the hours i spent talking shit, sharing ideas and laughing richly. i met people that i know will be friends for years to come, and also with whom i hope to work. you know, make some theatre... like the glowing-grinned Virginia: writer, director, choreographer and shiny soul. and some of the half life folk – (in order of appearance) Randy, Richard and John. it was also great to spend some more time with the ever-charming and wonderful David and sweet-smiled, bright-eyed Jonathan from Calgary. and there were Vancouver kin too: Del and DK!!! always a delight to spend some time and ah DK, so glorious and delicious to kiss those sweet lips again…

so a big fucking YEA! to my month of june! it's been... unforgettable. well.. except the parts that are too hazy (ahem) to remember, of course... (grin)

kissed

today, my lips are tingling: i need to be kissed.

looking lazily out the window, i tilt my head back and savour each succulent snapshot: soft trembling fingers curling in my hair, a rush of hot breath rubbing up against my neck, a soft hot tongue gliding gently along my lower lip.

today, i feel like i could spend a month kissing. my lips are hungry, longing for the taste of mouths frenzied and tangled in a lusty tango, gliding and panting in and through each other until we are overwhelmed. until breathless and ecstatic, we begin gently savouring, tenderly perusing.

today, i'm lost in those slow searching licks, the soft playful bites and sweet sucking. i'm consumed with a furious longing for the feathered brush strokes of impressionist lips, the hurricane of heated breath, the inferno of yes.

today, i really need to be kissed.

what is this intimacy thing?

i was riding into work this morning, breathing in the smells of summer: trees, earth, rotting garbage and smog. mmm, summer in the city (back of my neck getting dirt and gritty). and i spent the time musing on intimacy.

i was recently talking with someone who read my astrological chart, and i wondered if it was a sort of cheating, like "instant kaen." not that the chart was oh so revelatory, but when he read the qualities out to me, i either agreed or disagreed. and i wondered if we weren't maybe creating a false intimacy?

but no, i don't think so... let's say he was paying attention to what qualities i identified with: yes i'm passionate, no i'm not obsessed with success and so on. fact of it is, that would only tell him who i think i am.

i think friends or lovers only know each other - achieve intimacy- when the friend or lover truly discovers not only how i see myself, and not even how i want to be seen (though these are insights the lover and close friend alone are offered. well.. and blog readers.) the keen friend or lover will see also how i really am, the depth of my unknowable soul.

although... i guess people fake that knowledge all the time, by focusing on stuff like how we want to be seen rather than who we really are. they stroke the ego with platitudes that we've created for their abuse. so perhaps false intimacy is indeed possible after all. perhaps even rampant.
but anyway, that's not the case or point there so let's just... leave it at that. (shrug)
.

flemish fantabulousness

beautiful.
beautifulbeautifulbeautifulbeautifulbeautifulbeautifulbeautiful
beautifulbeautifulbeautifulbeautifulbeautifulbeautifulbeautiful.
if i wrote it a hundred - a hundred thousand times - it would still be a word, a pathetic two-dimensional hiccup attempting to capture the most incredible and profoundly impacting theatre i've ever experienced.

so i went to montreal last week for the festival de théâtre des amériques, and saw La Chambre d'Isabella, written and directed by Jan Lauwers of Brussels' Needcompany. i'd never seen anything like it. i've sinced learned that it's part of what the kids are calling "the belgian aesthetic" which among other things incorporates a lot of movement - and a very particular kind of movement - into theatre: i.e. movement theatre. if you don't know what movement theatre is, it basically incorporates... well... movement into.. you know, theatre. it also happens to be the kind of theatre i've been writing.

as i jumped to my feet after the show, hands flapping furiously, the slow steady stream of tears started. blocks away from the theatre, they slid still, and my heart raced and my body vibrated. it wasn't sad - it was just so beautiful...

but it was also more than that. it was new and powerful and inspiring and overwhelming. days later, i'm still not entirely sure why i cried. oh sure, the story is sad and beautiful and that inevitably played its part on my heart. but the sensations that coursed through me ran deeper.

maybe i'd felt my brain grow and knowing i was changed, mourned for the child, an infant in the world of movement theatre, who was no more. or maybe i felt challenged, supercharged with a deep desire to create something so exquisite. or maybe i cried because a few nights earlier, i'd met the company. after a flirty, giggly stumble back to the hotel, Jan suavely tried to turn a chaste kiss on the cheek into a lusty smooch and after seeing his show, i really wished i had kissed him...

whatever it was, i was deeply moved and look forward to seeing more of their work.
.

rush hour transit

i love how fighting your way to the back of a rush hour streetcar can feel like victory. like reaching the end of a strenuous, deeply important pilgrimage.

you know, when everyone jams themselves into the first half of the streetcar, completely ignoring the back where they're serving margaritas and telling dirty jokes.

of course, i know why they do it.

they do it because they're so sensually neglected. too untouched. and now that they've outgrown discos and hot tubs, it's the only chance they get to press up against strange flesh, to commune with unknown auras...
.

oh, roar a bore! yea, liz.

what a weekend! all together now, let's heave out a lusty grunt in honour of my fabulous weekend. doesn't that feel nice?

the weekend included friends new, newish and old and lots and lots of talking shit which is _____? that's right kids, kaen's favouritest activity in the wholest widest world. although i do have to say the weekend featured a smidge more turning-down than i'm comfortable with. though i do know that of the two parties in such situations, i'm the one coming out ahead, it still fucking bites. the worst is when it's with a friend. i can't tell you though how many male friends i've lost once they've crossed that bold threshold into telling me they want to fuck me. that's generally the point at which my friendship becomes absolutely expendable, useless in the midst of all that potential fucking.

well hey fellas, here's a clue: if you're my friend, and we've hung out - perhaps even gotten drunk together - and i haven't kissed or fucked you, then i probably won't. i'm a fuck-on-the-first-date kinda gal...

anyway, enough about all that silliness.

saturday wins the highlight of the weekend. standing on mondo's rooftop patio, chain smoking and meeting fellow lung-polluters, i was standing with new friends when one breathed out an exclamation. we all turned our gaze upward and were blessed - spoiled really - to have front row seats to a rare performance of the northern lights. in toronto, one night only!! and oh, it was spectacular.

now i'll be less than romantic and say that having lived in whitehorse (yukon, a.k.a. "way the fuck up there" for our non-Canadian friends), i've seen some truly spectacular northern lights before, and these were not quite so glamorous. relegated to the light green hue, though, they made up for their monochromatic costume with an exuberant, energetic display of frivolity. i slid my arm in my new friend's arm and we gazed, awed, at the sky's show as the other two spoke in hushed tones of aliens and conspiracies. we were mesmerized, super-charged, reentering the party a lifetime later glowing with excitement, dazed by the unexpected gift. how fucking fabulous!
.

cat parliament

so i visited our nation's glorious capital city this weekend, and oh what lovely fun it was. under a cloudless sky, i visited a new friend/old soul. and i took in some sites. well... one site. unless you count the market, purveyor of fine stinky cheese and sumptuous wine. well at least, that's what i bought there. but i don't count the market. so i visited one true-blue tourist site, and what a site it was.

ok wait - two if you count the parliament. but to be honest, the parliament was an unavoidable distraction, standing between my hotel and my true destination: cat parliament.

just outside the fence, around back of our fine parliamentary hen house is cat parliament. i'm not even kidding: we asked fellow strollers where it was, and they were like "oh, cat parliament! just keep going that way!" cat parliament is a small ramshackle lean-to made to look like the parliament (though to be honest, i failed to see any meaningful resemblance), and it's populated by a mess of stray cats and one weathered old man.

on this beautiful afternoon, surrounded by tourists and saturday strollers, i watched them watch. i was particularly stricken by the toddlers, wild with glee as they peered curiously. although on the outside, the cat and caretaker looked caged, and the onlookers gawked.

"look mom, a CAT!!!!!" the kids screamed.

and i wondered... is this what our morally-pure zooless culture has bred? children frenzied over stray cats and a bored old man?

bring on the freak show, they are ripe.

silly reminiscence

Alana was remembering her first job at a chinese buffet. on birthdays, she recalled, a handful of the waitresses (pardon me, servers) would head over to the dessert table and concoct some sweet monstrosity for the unfortunate celebrant.

she shakes her head at the memory, soft honeyed brown hair swishing on the waves of her laughter.

"you couldn't imagine some of the things we put in front of those poor people."

and for a second, my mind raced into a parallel universe, where some artist is drinking wine and celebrating the opening of a show: installation pieces of heaped masses of buffet desserts. it's a massive hit.

carpe omnia

i'm not a pothead!
...i only smoke pot on special occasions.

but see, i'm a loyal devotée of the school of carpe diem (or as the drunken poets society i spent afternoons with back in guelph oh so many years ago would say, "carpe omnia" - seize everything). as such, every day must be hailed as important, to be savoured and celebrated. even the quiet is celebrated. the boisterious, the new, the calm, the old - all cry out for love and i benevolently dote on them all.

i'm not a pothead.
i just celebrate a lot.

adieu ikea

wow, that title has a lot of vowels... right, let us begin. today's offering is a very silly, drunken rambling, scrawled just last night: mere hours ago!!

i was flipping through an ikea catalogue (not shopping but rather, making art - découpage, dahling.) and it suddenly occurred to me that they are no longer marketing to me. the first clue was the 5-page section on orthopedic beds. well… i didn’t read the literature to get their qualifications, but they sure looked healthy. like those beds from those commercials during Three’s Company, with the silvered lady and her polydent smile, holding a remote control that eased her into pleasing contortions.

but it appears that i am officially no longer the kind of folk ikea like to associate with. this is startling! i mean - who am i if not an ikea consumer?? while it’s true that i never graduated past ikea-neophyte status, with the odd plant or bookcase, and the occasionally enjoyed underpriced foodstuffs tenuously garanteeing my membership. but at least i was a part of it! sucked by its undertow to a place of belonging.

i saw it coming of course. it started back when they began focusing so much of their floorspace to the breeders. while still generationally simpatico, already i was beginning to be excluded from the dream of ikea. but the tea lights and chrome light fixtures kept me hoping, drawn in, drooling in the storefronts of their ready-made chic – as playful and contrived as “right out of bed” hair product.

but now i am a child alone, no ikea to fall back on, no storefront to call my home.

meh.
(she shrugs, laughs, takes another sip of beer.)

i love my neighborhood!

i love my neighborhood, for it gave me saturday: the jewel of my "weekend of the impromptu."

but first, a quick nod to an also splendid friday. after over a month's absence, i finally made it to that poetry gathering thing i've been known to frequent on friday nights. and i was even able to read some of my new poetry, which went over well, very excellent. afterwards, one of the fellers (lovely guy who introduced me to a beautiful free greenhouse/conservatory earlier this year) was having a party that i gleefully crashed (although, since he gleefully hosted me i guess it doesn't count as crashing!?) fun part of the night was discovering that nancy isn't married to michael after all, but to that other fella. in fact, michael's not married at all! michael's one of the poets i noticed with a raised eyebrow on my first night, but then dismissed after assuming he was married. well, the discovery was well worth some playful flirtation and a few giggly kisses. but alas, he is not only a poet, he is piscean. very very piscean. so not going there again.

and then saturday, ah saturday! i was supposed to attend a writers' symposium but when the alarm rang at 7:30 am, i was not feeling the love. after a good half hour of pro- and conning it, i curled back up and slept a few more gorgeous hours. waking up ravenous, i decided to ride up queen until i found a new greasy spoon to investigate. and oh, i picked a great one this time that i will definitely need to revisit. no urban hipsters in here, but filled instead with bukowskis and random sordid locals who added spice to the grease, bless 'em. got some great writing done too.

after that, i emerged back into the blazing sun and pondered my next steps. i'd done all the writing i needed to do on the play i'd brought with me, so i definitely needed to go home to gather other stuff if i was to keep writing. but then it occured to me that i didn't even have enough money to have *one* teensy wee beer that would allow me to sit on a patio and write, as my heart was wishing it could. so i shrugged sadly and decided to just go to the beer store, grab a bit of brain-soother, and head home to write. i know i know, indoors on the best day of the year (so far)? insane. i sighed, wishing i at least had a deck to work on...

and then, my prayers were answered! stuffing my beer into my bike's flowered basket, a couple of fellas said "hey, why don't you grab that bohemian and bring it over to '123 street' - we're having a bbq." no need to ask twice. i showed up to their surprise and delight and savoured beer and fun in the sun with bob (of the fabulous, deep, hearty laugh and excellent music collection: zappa, yay!), mike ("i'm not young - i'll be 30 next year!!" who loves to cook and spent most of the day preparing culinary treasures for us), abbey (who sadly didn't join us until later in the evening, having spent the day running running running around getting shit done) and "the dude" (who to my gulped surprise looks an awful lot like david thewlis underneath the scruff (old-time blog fans might remember my obsession with the actor), and who rolled a t-shaped joint that was truly a thing of awe and beauty to behold. i've never smoked anything like it!).

so yay to my neighborhood and hey, now you know: if you see me rambling about and feel the inspiration, why not ask me to join you? odds are i'll say yes. although, i guess i wasn't quite so open-hearted with the white-trash-suburban-homeboys who greeted me with a boisterious "how you doin, girl!" at the grocery store.
...not so much.

last week

i've been rotten, and i'm sorry. between living my typical rock star life and writing my little heart out on too many projects, new and old, both you and my scribble book have been sorely neglected.

(deal with it.)

so here are the few scratchy scribbles from my last night in the shop. there weren't many though: too much time spent talking shit with people i have already seen again, people i hope to see again, and people i will never see again.

***

her shoulders are squared and yet her torso is craning ever so subtly into him. they are having a passionate discussion that i can't hear over the guitars and crooning. but make no mistake: it is most certainly passionate. there are waves of animated voices, frenetically gesticulated hands, and eyes that have not swayed from each others' fey focus for 2 whole songs.
___

the table tonight is a mosaic: 50, Stella, Keiths, Carlsberg, Guiness.. they rub up against each other in a stained glass dance. sacred in their asymmetry, they mimic this gathered crowd of mismatched souls.
___

maybe what i love so much about the shop is its impermanence. these fleeting moments of loveliness that are gorgeous or fun, but only for that moment. there is nothing tangible, not even in the email or phone numbers i foist onto people who make hollow promises for tomorrows that will never happen. i even pointed that out tonight, talking to some fella i didn't even bother offering coordinates to: "well, i guess i'll never see you again!" "oh, sure you will," he enthused. i laughed gently, "no we won't, but whatever man - it was nice meeting you."

maybe i've just closed the curtains of my heart already. or maybe after tapping into some of that deep-down soul-connection stuff with people who do make things happen and can inspire or involve me, i'm bored with all this drunken banality that only i seem to find possibility in. floating from chair to bench, from conversation to conversation, i was discouraged by the superficiality of it all.

fare thee well, hollow talk and drunken fun. it appears i won't mourn you after all.

evil

so let me get this straight.

they called it evil. eve-il. the worst possible kind of energy, the worst thing ever. they named all that is bad after her. and they will sometimes even suggest the blood and cramps are the eternal curse and punishment for her atrocious aberration. she, who sought wisdom. perfect knowledge. shouldn't perfect knowledge bring us closer to a perfect god? why should a yearning for truth and knowing lead to eternal punishment?

and what then of that second sinner, whose name alone i bear. what of man's first aberration, when he raised a hateful hand against his own brother? why not cain-il?

and what of this: that both were actually taunted by a twisted god who loved to punish.

ah fuck it.
i'm just so content with my decision that the quest to seek and know such unknowable gods is perversely futile, and robs me of time to contemplate those few other less futile things. like love, and the potential for generosity, gorgeosity, and humanity. i choose instead to savour rather than seek - savour and connect with souls, songs and all manner of real and intense and intensely real moments...

shop night!!

i'm standing at the streetcar stop, feeling a little prematurely nostalgic.

a month ago, i would have sold my rings for spring. yet i stood today marvelling at how a light dusting of snow can transform the world into magic, framing a lake that looks impossibly metallic. (oh no wait, it is lake ontario.. it's probably just the mercury.) i realized this is one of the last times this season i'll be granted this glorious sight, and my heart felt strangely tight.

it's a time of transition. may is usually my new year ushered in by something grandiose. last year weighed in heavily with the loss or transformation of 2 lives, 2 loves, one job and a neighborhood. though not nearly so spectacular, this year it's march that is leaving me with that bittersweet aftertaste. (how much of my life must i sacrifice to the liminal? and yet surely there is a subconscious yearning there, ever propelling me into new.)

i'm also thinking about the shop (you know, where i've dedicated my thursday nights to since last autumn). i remember in january talking with andrew and bill about how i'd worried about losing the shop. at the time, i thought that horror show of a non-relationship would be the culprit, and silly motherfucker: it almost was. (thankfully he got over himself.) they protested boisterously: "the shop is for everyone! the shop will always be!"

i smiled and quietly sipped my beer.
sure boys.

i really loved their attempt, their enthusiasm. and perhaps even their sweet naiveté.
but they don't know.
they've never lost a shop before.

i have.

that smaller shop in vancouver. so fondly do i still long sometimes for those endless nights of drinking apocalyptic hooch and dreaming big with the boys. the Herb Alpert room. the tech lounge, shut down by the sultan of no-fun. so many of us scattered to the wind after that... i came to toronto.

i'm thinking about all this as i wait for the streetcar, admiring the snow-feathered branches, keeping my heart light and my spirit bright, and trying not to think about how they're shutting the shop down on march 31.

only 2 more nights...

you MUST!

i've been very remiss in not posting something about this earlier. last week, i saw a show that impressed the fuck out of me. this week, i'm seeing it again. yea: it's that good. perhaps i'll elaborate on some later date when i'm not racing from here to there, but trust me: go and see this show (and don't delay: it ends end on sunday. tragic, but true.)

Suicide Site-Guide to the City, by Mammalian Diving Reflex (Darren O'Donnell, who's been generously stroking my synapses for years, bless his crazy diamond soul).


..enjoy!

international women's day

at last, at long last, after a week of desolate and unplanned exile, my scribble book has come home to me. at last - since that fateful hour 9 mornings ago, when i awoke in her perfumed bed, covered in bite marks and pussy - and very, very late for work. an important meeting. professionalism-is-us, oh yea.

fun to find those last scribbles, fun to retrace and rediscover that beautiful, foggy night: international women's night.
indeed.

so last night i sat listening to friends make music, good grindy funk, and i read the random snippets of talking: "it's very difficult to have a conversation when you don't know who Starr Jones is!!"

and i read the random scrawled words: cuneiform (because despite the plethora of attempted pronunciations, she only got it when she saw it. "oh yea, that.")

and i read that bit of smooth too, oh slick me. i remember it now...
"what are you writing?" she enquired. we were sitting around the table impossibly late at night, empty bottles of wine littering our periphery. i'd taken a second from the game of euchre we were masterfully playing (and eventually winning, of course) with cards we'd fashioned out of that thick paper that them artists like to scribble on. (that alone made the night perfect, in my books. i hope they keep the cards, sad though they were.) i glanced up from the page, hesitated an instant, then slid the book over:

"it will be a slow easy night when finally i lean in so raucously and suck on that delicious bottom lip of yours. and it will be gorgeous. and you'll laugh and say something sarcastic, something right. and i'll just giggle and nod and lean in again, anyway, and lick that lip of yours. and my fingertips will graze your skin and we will know that we are alive: flesh and passion. and we will be happy."

smooth hunh. when that first kiss did actually happen, it was deep and hungry. i could almost feel the growling sliding out from our parted lips. it was fiendish and voracious and inspired and ambrosial. how can someone be so tight, so rough and so soft all at once? impossible physics that melt me.

mmmm, funnest international women's day ever.
(grin)

on a day pass in ritzville

i'm sitting on the edge of the luxury fountain. there's a group of octogenarians behind me, sharing the refreshed filtered air and the cool smooth marble. and then the strangest thing: a new one arrives and once she picks her perch, she doesn't say excuse me, or hey you. she doesn't even clear her throat. she just starts to aim her fat ass at my kidneys, somehow expecting me to instinctively sense the group's new girth as i sit, scribbling, with my back and mind turned from them.

well thankfully, somehow, i do sense her and dodge the buxom buttocks.

why are people so afraid to talk to each other?
maybe because i'm wearing all black, and in her day only roy orbison could get away with that.
or maybe she's just a stupid rich old cunt too coiled in her self-obsession to remember how to interact.

heh, this from the girl with her head hunched over her little red notebook.

we're all diseased

cleverness is the disease we succumbed to after being brain-fed too many sitcoms in our youth. so much cheap wit, so much instant gratification. easier than even a sunday morning, we sink into our tidy cleverness and fill the world with one-line-wonders and cheap half-laughs. why the fuck does everybody want to sound like jack tripper, or ellen, or ross? and if a tree falls in the forest, do they hear the canned laughter?

and yet - why begrudge the cleverness? should i not celebrate the ability to caricaturize life? is that not an excerpt from my own definition of a writer's - nay, an artist's responsibility? to savour it all and then spread that flu with a kiss?

i mean, not all cleverness is trite. not all instant gratification is useless, or terrible.

by request

yea yea, another fucking poem. i wrote this one because someone asked me to. so i did.

___

his pupils are bristly
on a bed of boredom.
getting a little top-heavy,
i explain.
sweltering in an
island of desperation
decay
deliberate apathy.
(unyielded)

his gaze is low and smooth,
soaked in bourbon.
though -
the neon green buds grasp yet,
i muse.
clawing the sky,
tickling giggles out of thin air.
(unrelenting)

his insight is wrong and true
and bold.
it's a metaphor,
he murmurs.
for that shadow gig
you're chasing.
(ad,amant)

we are weaving a story
of soil, toil.
fruits of our labours
our loins
or looms.
a story woven of
licentious savvy
and raucous sarcasm.
(unavoided)

made the list

this past saturday made the all-time top 20 experiences list.

quick side note before i tell you about it.. now, i don't actually have an all-time top 20 list, although it might be fun to try sit and come up with one (consider it added to my to-do list). the "label" occured to me early sunday afternoon. one of the girls gushed that she'd had the best night ever. i mmmm'd in consent, but hesitated to give it so lofty a designation. i mean, i've lived some pretty fan-fucking-tastic experiences in my 31 years. so i wondered.. my mind instantly thought "all-time top 5," thanks to having watched high fidelity about a dozen times in the last few months. well, top 5 still seemed a little naive (so many cities, so many nights, so many people, so many laughs...) but 20, i felt like that was a number that i could stand behind.

so then. first stop after the mandatory 7-10 pm nap was my favouritest toronto jazz bar. have you been paying attention? then you know where i mean... a few drinks with the new colleagues, a few laughs, and a whole lot of anticipation for the post-work hang in sorrowful honour of ted's imminent departure to join his lady love far, far away: a 3 am pyjama party, hosted by the luscious angela. as the hours floated by, our giddiness became so tangible you could sink your teeth into it. on a side note, i spent some of that time chatting with a fella, nice guy. i don't know if i'm intimidating or what, but it was pretty sweet: strolling away from the bartenders, i grabbed a seat at the long counter-type table, incidentally beside some fella. not wanting him to feel pressured into entertaining me, i smiled (as i'm wont to do), but looked casually away.. a few such glances and he leaned in, "excuse me, may i speak with you?" impossible not to giggle.

finally: 3 am. angela's entire living room floor had become a large luxurious bed, covered in air mattresses, sofa cushions, blankets, and pillows pillows pillows. and beautiful people clad in flanel and satin. gawd bless pyjamas. gawd bless angela. the hours glided by, filled with over-contented sighs, warm smiles and affable tenderness. the freshest-scented lotion, and foot & hand massages. platters of fresh fruit, and grapes hanging from the ceiling. long soft pieces of fabric strung up mid-way through the night, creating an effect that lay somewhere between a fort and a harem. a tub filled with cushions and, at times, smiling souls. friends, new and old, crawled around creating new pillow props to rest on as they discovered a new smile, a new story.

so. so. beautiful.

i slowly drifted to sleep somewhere around 10 am and awoke sporadically but comfortably, always to a joint passing by (yay for those spidey senses!). i awoke refreshed and ecstatic, still, early sunday afternoon, to be greeted by a feast of breakfast goodness.

yep - top 20 for sure.

what can it all mean!?

so the other day someone was telling me about all the weddings they had to suffer through last summer, and their fear of the approaching season and its imminent and inexorable torture. and it occurred to me that i have never, and i mean ever, been to a friend's wedding. in fact, i've hardly been to any weddings at all. to the best of my memory (don't laugh!), i have only been to 3 weddings in my life, all family: my uncle gary's (when i was about 8; i was in fact the flower girl, how precious) and my uncle real's (i believe his third) and my sister's. and hm.... yep, i think that's it. well, i went to mine of course, way way back when i was in my early 20s, but let's not go there...

so then it occurred to me that all my friends are bachelors. some dedicated, some cursed, but throughout our short or long acquaintanceship, the staggering majority of people i know and love have been primarily single.

so what is it? are we too picky? do we have bad judgment? are we looking for the wrong thing? or are we just looking for something other than love altogether?

i'd like to say the latter, but among a majority of us bachelor-types, there are still the flailing attempts scarred by disappointment or broken hearts. it seems that even when we aren't looking for a romantic liaison, it hunts us down and when it knocks, most of us will answer - however cautiously or gleefully...

so, i wonder... is there something about us that draws us to each other? is it the same thing that repels us from romantic attachment? some sort of scent we give off that we just can't get enough of, but that non-fucked-up/asshole/moutarded love-potentials are utterly repelled by? a stench of aloofness accentuated yet with a pinch of unabashed hunger. or maybe it's a look in our eye, part disinterested, part flirtatious-curious, with an underlying texture of hopefulness, yet, beneath the unavoidable repulsion.

hm.

poets

the other night, for no apparent reason (though surely the plethora of drinks i'd inhaled played their part) i actually introduced myself to someone asking the painful "what do you do" question, as a poet. by the time it escaped from my lips, i decided it was too late and what the hell, to just go along with it. so i spoke in the tortured lilt and assumed that mood, that stance, askance, that lately anyway i've been dwelling in. identical to my definition of a poet. that certain way of being, perceiving...

i tried to explain that to a poet a few nights later, but he wasn't buying it. leaning back in his chair, piercingly ingesting my words, he was listening but not investing. this fella, who'd spent most of the night analyzing and interpreting me from having read - astonishingly and impressively - my whole blog just a few days before. he infused sarcasm into everything i said, overlooking even my sincerity. and i inflicted tortured depth on him. i think we were both just so fucking megalomaniacally insular that we were inflicting our egos onto each other...

and on that note, i'm off to a poetry reading. i hope the madness ends, or the fates will surely curse me by inflicting a poet on me.
egads!!
but sitting in that unfinished room in that rat-infested dive of a place, hearing words so skillfully strung together, and then sitting around, drinking, thinking, talking shit with these people, these poets... it's such a lovely, mellow way to spend a friday night (read: post-thursday-night-at-the-shop).

have a de-gorgeous weekend dahlings.

happiness

a few glimpses at the last week, from the infamous scribble book of course.

my gaze is lost in the maze of empty cans - 3.7 per person strumming or humming or singing or just gorgeously being, congregated around the big black block of wood masquerading as a table. i'm in the deluxo luxury chair. and the girl leaning on the arm has just come back with a fresh beer and beaming smile. and the girl leaning on the back of the chair is singing an enthustiastic harmony. clocks be damned. tomorrow be damned. right now makes all this life stuff make sense. worth the gruelling effort.

***
right now is a good moment. i look good (never mind the 14 outfit attempts before finding the delicately perfect outfit for going to a Chopin recital, a wine and cheese that will include some colleagues, and potential (likely) late-night debauchery with the kids, while remaining stylishly sexy, in an understated way of course). i feel good. i've enjoyed a few scattered mini-conversations with handsome strangers. free cover, free beer, hugs and hugs and yet still, also, the space to be alone in my bubble to write all these pages i've written tonight. perfection.

***
it's nice here.
i feel right here.
i'm at what i think is my best,
others, maybe, my worst:
drunk
disorientated
pure.

[ironically, the word drunk, above, was written as something that looks like "dirunek" on a page made ripply by spilled beer. hee hee.]

dude, don't harsh my mellow

i flow on the waves of my brain this morning. eyes wander here, thoughts wander there...suddenly i'm focused on my headphones: filter is singing to me about feeling like a newborn. my eyes glide to the pages of my book, at the top of the page is the title: metamorphoses. the moment's synergy does not escape me, and i pause to wonder if my brain or the world is trying to tell me something.

float, float, out the streetcar window onto the velvety winter landscape.
smile...
muse...

and then my eyes are brought back to the page, so i read. it's the tale of Apollo separating the satyr Marsyas from his skin. "it was all one raw wound. blood flowed everywhere, his nerves were exposed (...) it was possible to count the throbbing organs."

jebus.
just a half-page of gore, randomly snuck in to horrify me on this quiet, lazy morning. mood killer, man - harshing my matinal mellow. and i sure as shit hope there was no hidden message from the universe in that!!

and my eyes drift again, flying from the page to ride the receding rails as i look out the subway's back window and plunge forth, forth into the day. (borne ceaselessly into the future? something like that.)

highly disconcerting

the weirdest thing has been happening to me lately.
let me start with a bit of context...

i have always been a rather excessive fan of smooches. indeed, this passion has made me responsible for international kissing games, late-night rooftop spin the bottle sessions, and oh so many countless kisses. one of the fellas i dated last year was first kissed by me mid-sentence, shortly after we met. "sorry," i bashfully exclaimed, "couldn't help myself..."

hell, there was a time when i used to make it a point to share at least one deep-down, full-on smooch with all my closest. for example, when ken first decided he would be my flatmate, we were in a bar and i reached across the table to pull him into a sweltering smooch. it was just... something i did. maybe i figured 'hell, we're gonna be roommates, now this is out of the way.' or something like that. even my queer (guy) friends didn't escape my lascivious lips.

well lately, the sight of people smooching or even the thought of it kinda... well... repulses me. and it's not just my cynicism! i've certainly found myself floundering in the anti-love-vibe before, but i have never, ever been even remotely anti-smooch. but watching movies or on the subway, or wherever i see lips joined in a passionate embrace, i kinda hear my brain going "ew."

i've had a somewhat similar transition from adoration to disgust before, with cigarette smoking. just randomly one morning (or in some cases, gradually over a week or two), the thought of smoking will just turn my stomach, and so i'll give it up until months or years later, when it appeals to me again. well, could this be happening with the smooch? could a fate of being a non-smoocher await me??

the horror! the horror!

on a hopeful note, as i was twirled around my apartment last night by an imaginary partner to acker bilk's 'stranger on the shore,' i was swept away by thoughts of gentle kisses on my temple, as fingertips brushed my hair away. so perhaps all is not lost...

thank heaven for little girls

heh, what a great weekend.

one teensy wee snippet from the jam-packed-with-flavourful-goodness-weekend:

we're sitting in angela's living room, sipping wine and talking about deep, important things like neil young and hair. you know, deliciously insignificant and highly entertaining post-bar/5 am talk. (my favourite kind.)

angela asks kelly: "are you cold? cuz you're not wearing much." the rest of us explode in laughter as angela explains, "no no no, it's just that i know i keep the apartment cold..."
yea, we get it.
but we've also been admiring that short skirt of kelly's all night...

earlier that night, kelly had come to me to seek solace from the naughty, grinning bartenders. "they keep trying to get me to bend over!" she playfully pouted. hm, i replied with seeming sympathy as my fingers reached for a nearby flyer and swept it to the floor, laughing sardonically. the bartenders were watching intently, laughing in that deeply familiar way bar colleagues have with each other. a snug, smiling incestuous family.

lately, i really miss working in bars...

strolling through the subway cars

(bear with me, i'm re-exploring poetry land - though i'll be the first to admit my greater strength lies in prose. but hey, it's good to experiment, right?)

strolling through the subway cars,
one car
second car
each boasting its own slumbering musician,
cradling their cases and exhaustion
as i tenderly smile at them.

i imagine them,
harbingers of melody
inflicting their smoky revelations
and deep down jazz
on french girls who swallow the end of the world.

la fin du monde -
at least until 8 am
when sleepless and stumbling
they are loaded onto trains
that wheel them back to anglo land,
where they can sleep,
sleep at last.

and then it's my stop,
so i step off and a quiet army of blank faces
races past me into the tunnel.
whoosh.

look at all the people i don't know.

shut up, kaen

too much
too hard
too loud too often
too much
too misled
too wrong too often

shh
shh
breathe
and shut up
and listen.

___
my brain's been racing,
indie 500 in my skull.

talking so much shit,
doing so much shit,
thinking so much shit:
what to do
how have i done it
how am i doing it
how should i be doing it
over and over and over
and over again
oi.
no wonder i'm popping
aspernol like a fiend.

shh brain, shh
take a breath,
shh brain
take a breath
and it can all go away
to become the universe,
clean
real
and quiet.

a word on words

when did language get so complicated? did a word ever just mean a word? was it always layered in subtext, context? was it always peppered with riddle?

maybe what happened is several hundred or thousand years ago, we really peaked and understood our words so well that we had to add all the neurosis and innuendo just to keep it stimulating.

perhaps we are on the evolutionary cusp of speaking telepathically. and so as a transition, we do so much thinking about words and infuse so many conscious and subconscious layers into them, just so our brains and all our psychic intuitive bits are already engaged. warming up.

perhaps.

but i'm actually pretty sure it was always complicated, this interaction business.

from the weekend's scrawls

so i invited a friend to the poetry reading i was attending tonight, though i know that most people would rather slit their wrists than listen to poets talking about wanting to slit their wrists. you can't blame 'em, really...

***

last night was fun - shinny with Alana, Jason and most of the Tabarruk crew and others. i was even an ok defence chick, once i stopped being scared of the big bundled bodies hurtling toward me. or the puck. or the ice. heh. by next year, i hope to learn how to stop on skates (now that i have the forward propulsion part of skating down). then we'll win, you wait and see.

***

she's telling me how she doesn't like her husband's "Prokofiev version of Exodus" (yea, the bob marley song), and i have to smirk appreciatively: i love how sophisticated my also very fun friends are!

***

so i watched superman this morning (recent gift from a friend who's turned her back on VHS - oh how pathetic are we, the few remaining VHS-watching losers). already by this evening i'm a tinge obsessed: shit that christopher reeve was a handsome fella. i joke with alana that i've worn the heavy eye make-up as a subconscious way of mimicking lois lane and finding my own superman. some laughter and slinging clevers and then i say i've decided i'm going to leap off a building so that as i fall, fall, superman can come and catch me and fall in love with me. but then i realize i've limited myself, and i could never off myself that way - because she'd remember laughing at this conversation, and somehow it would haunt her.

***

skating on sunday in nathan phillips square - a gorgeous way to round off my "Tabarruk weekend!" see, there's a stage set up at one end of the rink, and bands (like Tabarruk) played the weekend away. yea, neat idea hunh. like a roller skating rink (remember those!?), only cooler (pardon the unavoidable pun).

oh the conundrum!

i have memories of my mom urging me, even in my earliest adolescence, to don moisturizer and battle those pesky signs of aging. i remember my haughty disdain for the animal-tested ridiculousness of it all. "i hope," i remember saying, "that by the time i start to wrinkle, i'll have long gone beyond all that superficial bullshit."

and oh - i still believe this. whole-heartedly. and for the most part, i really don't give a fuck.

but...

the other night i looked down at my dry hands and realized they are most definitely in their earliest proto-phases of becoming my grandfather's hands. i don't remember very much about my grandfather, but i remember we didn't really get along. and i remember this one discussion we had when i was about 12. we were talking about vigilantes, and he began to rant. he was in general a very pompous man, and this was never more obvious then when he rode his moral high horse. i spoke of social inequity, and how the police did not, in fact, serve all equally. (how did i know that already?) and though i didn't have the words to identify it, i rebelled against his right-wing blindness. he spoke upper-middle faith, and i just spoke out.

and, well... i do not want this man's hands.

oh the conundrum!

the nature of nature

in a discussion, someone gushed "nature is beautiful!" ignoring the desire to critique the girlish naiveté and cliché-ness of it all, my mind was instead instantly flooded with inumerable images of carnage. nature isn't beautiful, it's honest. it's brutal.

and the slideshow of horror played itself out in my brain; yet i contemplated the millions of images and examples i'd been spared.

the best sleep

so i had one of those nights. you know those nights where you occasionally catch yourself being mostly conscious, and wonder if you'd actually slept at all, or been lying there in a half-fog for hours? yea, one of those. although i know i did sleep, because the dreams were vivid. i'd watched last night er.. last night, which if you don't know is a brilliant movie. especially given when it came out, it was like the canadian response to armageddon. see, in last night, there's no bruce willis or big ol' holly jolly american government to save the world. there's just the end of the world (left undefined and vague for those late night, wine-soaked musings), and how people are coping with it. a little off-beat, and featuring my all-time favourite canadian actor. (if you have to be told it's callum keith rennie, you really haven't been paying attention, have you!? heh.)

my dreams... wow. a lot of tears and discussed fears. and sun. and a giant kite that i trailed behind me as i rode my bike with my nephew jake - until it threatened to get tangled in the electrical wires, and i just let it fly off. and oh the wonderdawg came for a brief visit too, and i rubbed his belly and chin and held him so tight. he was dirty, as though he'd been playing in the dirt on dog hill in high park... and my family - they were all there too. we spent a fair bit of time driving around for some reason. and at this one point, i was in the car with my mom waiting for my sister, and i was in the back seat but curled around into the front seat in a most peculiar angle. and perhaps i looked like i was curled up and napping cuz a fella ran by, tapped the window and cried out "don't sleep now, it's the last day of the world!"

maybe my family would feel special to know that in my dreams anyway, i'd spend the last day on earth with them? though given that one lives in montreal, one in toronto, and the rest on vancouver island, and we don't get along so fabulously well - maybe that one's best saved for the dreams.

and then a little over an hour before my alarm was going to nudge me into my daily grind, i found myself 100% alert. breathe, i told myself. breathe and try your little "99 bottles of beer on the wall" trick and if you do it just right and fall asleep in the next 5 minutes, you'll get a full rem cycle in.

no dice.

no dice until probably 20 minutes before my alarm went off. meaning the deepest, cosiest, best sleep i enjoyed all night was in the 20 minutes before the alarm went off, and in the several 10-minutes-of-SNOOZE i treated myself to afterwards.

bleurgh.

well, they asked...

well, i've gotten 2 of these in the recent last bit, so i guess they're all the rage again. oh goody. so before you send me yours, desperate to know all about me, here it all is for your dining pleasure. (oh, and incase you're wondering why the numbers are wonky, i deleted the n/a (who's most likely to respond...) and fused the two.)

1. First name: kaen
2. Were you named after anyone?: my great-grandmother kathleen (who incidentally was not irish, but first nations)
3. Do you wish on stars?: all the time
4. When did you last cry?: about 20 minutes ago
5. Do you like your handwriting:? yes - especially when i'm drunk, when it's at its most honest and confused (like me)
6. What is your favorite lunch meat? (shrug)
7. What is your birth date:? may 6 (zip it you...)
8. What is your most embarrassing CD: this would be so much more embarrassing if it was about my tapes! cd? hm... i guess the grease soundtrack.
9. If you were another person, would YOU be friends with you: yep
10. Are you a daredevil: not with bikes or what have you, just with my heart
11. Have you ever told a secret you swore not to tell:? not that i can remember, and it doesn't seem like something i'd do
12. Do looks matter:? you should see some of the guys i've dated or crushed on!! an ex was actually doubting his good looks, upon seeing pics of some of the people i've dated - silly monkey
13. How do you release anger:? i start by raging in my head (which sometimes gets transferred to paper or screen), then i cry, then i hide
14. Where is your second home: where's my first home?
15. Do you trust others too easily?: yep
16. What was your favourite toy as a child:? wow, i can't remember. i know i had fashion plates and loved them. i have a picture of me lovingly cradling a chewbacca doll, and i continue to have a special fondness for wookies. but you know, it was probably my pillow. my pillow was my favouritest of all inanimate things and it diverted me much as a "toy" would...
17. What class in high school do you think was totally useless: interesting question... i guess i could answer with the one i've not really used, math, but i think even a basic introduction to the one language all humans can speak is very very valuable, even if we're too stupid to appreciate math for all its power and beauty
18. Do you have a journal:? sort of
19. Do you use sarcasm a lot ? no, *never*
20. Favourite movie(s)? you're out of your tree if you think i can answer this question - just look at the mess i made of it in my profile...
21. What are your (acceptable) nicknames: never really had any, but a friend called me "shug" for a while - cleverly playing up the "sugar cane" thing as well as "meshugenah" which means crazy. i loved it...
22. Would you bungee jump:? if you gave me a good back (and the cash to pay for it), i'd definitely try it
23. Do you untie your shoes when you take them off: i wear garrison boots - it'd be impossible not to. when i do occasionally wear sneakers, i don't untie them when i take them off, which irritates me, cuz i like them snug, meaning i always have to untie them before putting them back on. surely one of many reasons why i don't wear them much.
24. Do you think that you are strong:? as in body? yea, pretty much. as in soul? only sometimes.
25. What is your favourite ice cream flavour: don't really like ice cream, but when i do it's classic vanilla (i know, whoda thunk it)
26. Shoe size:? 7-8ish, and why the fuck would you care? gawd some of these questions...
27. What are your favourite colours:? thought it was blue once when i spent time contemplating such things, and maybe it was, but i tend to see a lot of red in my wardrobe. and hair. and accessories. that and black of course, though yea yea, it's not a colour.
28. What is your least favourite thing about yourself: my teeny weeny self-esteem
32. What are you listening to right now: my fingers tapping away, my colleagues working over their lunch breaks, the ventilation system pumping us with recycled life bits
33. Last thing you ate:? free lunch, yea baby. sammiches and salad, simple but effective.
34. If you were a crayon what colour would you be?: christ, you sound like my fucking therapist (just kidding - i can't actually afford a therapist, though lately i suspect i could make very good use of one)
35. What is the weather like right now:? snowing and blistering - ahh winter.
36. Last person you talked to on the phone:? it's scary that i can't remember this...
37. The first thing you notice about the opposite sex:? opposite sex? heterocentric much?? boys or girls, men or women, i'm a sucker for lips.
38. Do you like the person who sent this to you? yep - otherwise i woulda deleted it!
40. Favourite Drink: booze - these days, in the form of lager
41. Favourite sport: i remember once liking tennis, and i was a puck bunny back in the day, but have not specifically or dedicatedly watched any given sport in a very long time. oh, but i *do* love british football announcers, they crack me up.
42. Hair Colour:? at the tips: faded black with red streaks, at the (now very long) roots, dark brown with a fabulous family of greys near the crown that i love very much. which is why i still haven't re-dyed my hair.
43. Eye Color?: dark brown
44. Do you wear contacts:? nope
45. Favourite Food?: greasy and bad for me - probably french fries
46. Last Movie:? donnie darko
47. Favourite Day of the Year: don't have one. birthday i guess, both solstices tend to be fun, stat holidays are often very enjoyable, new year's eve was fan-fucking-tastic. fuck i dunno...
48. Scary Movies or Happy Endings:? they're both bullshit
49. Summer or winter:? winter, but fall's my favourite
50. Hugs or kisses:? i'm a sucker for smooching. a great line from trout stanley: "i believe in kissing for days." mmmm, smooching.
51. What is Your Favourite Dessert: ? creme brulee
54. Where Would You Want to Go on your Next Vacation: brazil for carnival (you know, in case i trip on a large bag of loot in the next few days...)
55. What Books are you Reading?: bones, by elaine dewar - about the peopling of the americas
56. What's on your mouse pad: tiger print (it was fuzzy 5 years ago when i bought it - a little ragged now though)
57. What did you Watch Last Night on TV: don't have a tv, wasn't home
58. Favourite Smells:? wow, interesting question... the ocean i guess. oh no no no - duh! pot. definitely pot.
59. Rolling Stones or Beatles? the beatles, when they got all trippy
60. Do you believe in Evolution or Creationism:? evolution
61. What's the furthest you've been away from home?: athens - when i was in vancouver, but i guess now that i'm in toronto, it would be tokyo? oh the semantics...
4. Mother's name? Nicole (Nikki)
5. Number of candles on your last birthday cake? i don't think there were any - were there? oh no wait, i think there was one. well, i was with friends in vancouver and celebrated my birthday early, which is number 31.
6. Date that you regularly blow them out? heh, you said blow
7. Pets? only in memory, with a solemn and loving nod to the Wonderdawg...
9 (a) Tattoos? yup (4, 5 if you count the one that's been redesigned and covered up)
(b) Body piercing? yup (9 - 12 was the most i ever sported at once)
10. How much do you love your job - scale of 1 to 10? these days? minus 3.
11. Birthplace? montreal
12. Favourite vacation spot? not glamorous (or wealthy) enough to have "a favourite"
13. Ever been to Africa? nope, but i'd like to...
14. Stolen any traffic signs? what a random question! and i actually have to say yes! remember, miranda? shit that was funny...
16. Croutons or Bacon bits? are you sick of the retarded questions yet?
17. 2 Door or 4 Door car? bicycle or the "32-window limo" baybee
18. Red Wine or White Wine: red
19. Favourite Pie: beaver
20. Favourite Number? dunno really... 22 i guess, mostly cuz someone once said it was important in numerology, and it keeps popping up lately...
23. Favourite Holiday? solstice
25. Favourite day of the week? lately, it's been "shop thursdays" but i guess saturdays, cuz i can sleep in *and* stay up late with no repercussions
26. Favourite brand of clothing? brand? hahahahahahahahahahaha
28. Favourite Music artist? oof, as with the movie question, just look at the sad job i did of that in my profile...
29. Most recently read book? love is a dog from hell, charles bukowski
30. Perfume/Cologne? when i have it, i wear it. chanel #5 - a classic for good reason
32. What do you do to relax? see #58 (above)
34. When was your last hospital visit? may 20, 2004
35. How do you see yourself in 10 years? a vital and exciting playwright who entertains and challenges the ideologies of international audiences.
36. What do you do when you are bored? bored? what's that!?
37. What presents do you enjoy receiving? i can't think of any that i haven't loved getting.