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.