breathe

snow-tipped air
sharp in a throat
sore
from born-again smoking

glide
through the raw
red
circular slide

race through the
fractal map
of my dying lungs
charge through to
my bleeding heart
surge up to
my flailing brain

a rush of cool
of perfect
of fulfillment
of everything
and then
so quickly
it races away
hot,
tainted
bumping
and grinding
its way out of the pink

and then again
and
again
innnnn
and
ah
o
ooout.

his & hers

so ok, maybe i'm getting old...

but i tell ya, i'm sick to death of the avant-garde/post-modern/pre-i-don't-know-what inspiring bar and restaurant owners. specifically, i'm tired of having to spend valuable peeing time deciphering clever, genderless photos or symbols on bathroom doors.

ok, i can appreciate everyone wants to be clever, and hooray for them. really. i fully and heartily encourage cleverness and artfulness and creativity. but there's a limit, isn't there?

the other day, my friend alana and i were both fooled by the very effeminate pilot on the door to a toronto bar's washroom. it was only the (blessedly empty) urinals upon entry that gave away that this was no chick's washroom.

i know it doesn't matter for single-occupancy rooms, but what dude wants some chick walking in while he's talking to a man about a horse? or, for that matter, if he does happen to want it: what chick wants to be in that situation?

can we please just go back to good ol' fashioned "his and hers" logos that stodgy old fogeys like me can interpret? please??

(grin)

undeliverable mail

so i just tried responding to a "fan's" email after too many months, and alas the email account no longer exists. i'm really sorry for the delay in response... so anyway, "audrey hepburn"/pretty_1975, if you're still reading my words, here's my reply:

> is that your real name?

yes, kaen is my real name. well, it's short for "kathleen." some people got kate or kathy, i got kaen. and i love it!

> I am afraid to tell you where I live, for the fear of 'turning' you off
> completelty - I live in 'toronto' sad, but true.

i was really shocked to read this. i know i was really happy to be back in vancouver, but i'm dismayed that experiencing joy to be back there somehow had to translate into my disliking toronto. sure, there may be things i don't love about toronto, but there are things i definitely don't love about vancouver either. and there are also things i love about each city. and i do, i love toronto. i love the buildings, the mass, the amount of things going on and on and on. i even love the silly tower!! i'm sorry you don't seem to really like this city, and i'm even sorrier you somehow interpreted that i also dislike it.

anyway, hope yer doin well,
k)

gravy capital of canada

so i spent my summer months in drumheller, alberta.

a few quick facts:
- drumheller is located in the awe-full badlands of alberta, about an hour northeast of calgary (get it, awe-full? bad? get it? please note my geeky attempt at humour is in no way meant to imply the badlands are awful - they are in fact beautiful. stunning.)
- it is the "dinosaur capital of the world," and home of the world-class Tyrell Museum (that i never actually made it to, funny how those things happen)
- it has about 8,000 residents, according to their municipal website (http://www.dinosaurvalley.com/) but i find that hard to believe. i suspect many of these residents are the neo-gypsy "rig pigs" who work the oil fields for several months at a time before movin' on. either that, or they're all hiding in sub-terranean dwellings. either that, or 8,000 is a lot smaller than i think it is...
- it is a hole. i don't mean that in the deragotary, colloquial way - i mean it literally. to get to drumheller, you must descend, descend, descend into a valley until you are what feels like miles below the surface of the planet. it is, as such, the perfect place to hide out from the big, bad world up above.

months later, i look back on my time in drumheller as... a bit of a blur really. and in some ways, it feels as though i wasn't really ever there.

but boy, was i. i strolled its streets, giggling at the cement dinosaurs that grace almost every street corner, sometimes creating whole stories and lives for them. my favourites were the dalmation-asaurus that lived outside the firehall and the nerd-asaurus (complete with buck teeth).

i savoured the culinary feasts and foibles of pretty much every restaurant in town. my favourite was a greek restaurant that surpassed even some of the restaurants i went to in athens. oh those long slow evenings of lamb and retsina. it was also one of the few restaurants that didn't have a majority of its menu items topped with gravy. i'm telling you - drumheller may call itself the dinosaur capital of the world, but i will always know it as the gravy capital of canada.

i (we) had a sushi party in our fabulous "penthouse." (you'd need to see it to understand the humour. yes, it was on the top floor. yes, it was bigger than any other "suite" in the place. but no, it was not the kind of hotel that has "a penthouse.") anyway, our sushi party: we had discovered a beautiful little cafe run by a very charming japanese lady. noticing a few sushi items on the menu, we got to talking. well, we had to order a week in advance, but let me tell you, we had quite the little feast that night! we even found bottles of sake at one of the... i counted it once, was it 8? local liquor stores. anyway, we found sake and found sushi and found willing participants. it was a blast.

i recited passionate poetry at a local gathering of wordsmiths. drumheller may be a small town, but don't be an ignorant urbanite: people are inspired to create, even when not overshadowed by a city's buildings. yes, city-slickers, it's true. and no, it's not all hoaky. i heard some wonderful words, and smilingly sailed some wavelengths with the gentle residents of this hushed valley.

i met an avid amateur archaeologist. we'd noticed him one evening at a local pub, and we marvelled at what was surely the skinniest man either of us had ever seen. he was a mop-man: stick-thin with a mad mess of grey hair. later that evening, we stumbled upon and gathered around a table spread with his day's findings: bones, teeth, petrified wood, crystallized bits. he eagerly told us every detail about his findings and methods. fascinating, all of it. he was a diligent amateur, zealously reporting important finds to the local pros. he even had a dinosaur species named after him!

i met a palm-reader, a soul-seer who told me december would be a time of great happiness. as i prepare to spend it with my lover, it's possible this is what she was talking about. or maybe she was just drunk. either way, she was a sweet, shiny person and i was glad that she felt a desire to try to see my soul.

i took my visiting nephew to the reptile museum. with large smiles and wide eyes, we watched a host of slithery beasts. we marvelled over the wild colours, wild shapes, wild ways of these wild beings. and i lovingly watched him cower from the boa constrictor a staff member offered to wrap around his shoulders. (the boa a younger, sweet-faced, angel-haired girl eagerly embraced in his stead. hooray for the destruction of gender roles!!)

i hosted a salon. sort of. see, i was returning from 3 weeks in newfoundland and calgary. back in drumheller, i had lost my social momentum and needed to do a bit of soul-searching anyway, so just hid in our hotel room, writing instead of going out and reconnecting with/reinviting the friends i had made before disappearing for almost a month. so rather than being a bustling salon, it was an intimate evening with a local music-making duo. i'm listening to one of their songs as i type. it was exquisite, and rather than feeling disappointed with the small turnout, i was instead treated to a private concert by two gentle troubadours. it was a great night.

i met a chameleon-haired pixie. a group of us went to see a band one night and her wild dancing and freakish sexiness inspired me to dream up a burlesque troupe. i had several local gals interested, but again the trip to newfoundland truncated the momentum and then i just left a few weeks after coming back from that. so the burlesque troupe remained an unrealized fantasy. but perhaps some day, i will return to see it fulfilled.

and i even joined its working class. near the end of my sojourn, i decided that while i do like being a kept woman, i like being independent even more. so i got a job! i hesitated over the options. like the rest of alberta, drumheller was (is still?) in the throes of a staffing crisis. not only could you be sure to find a help-wanted sign in almost every window in town, some stores even had to cut their hours due to the staff shortage.

i chose to serve cup after cup after cup of coffee. i first did this at Diana, a chinese/"canadian" cuisine establishment. it seemed always moderately busy with nice enough folk. but mostly, i was drawn to the orange booths and flowery aprons. i mean hell, if you're gonna sling hash in a small town, may as well do it proper-like, ya know? well, unfortunately the OCD owner bitch-slapped any possible fun out of that experience. at the end of my first week, i found myself in a competing restaurant having breakfast. a few shared words with the waitress found me some sympathy ("oh, you don't want to work there") and a job offer.

so i started serving at Yavis, a family restaurant/pub. it was certainly a better job, but i never did make it over to the coolio pub side. i was instead trapped in family restaurant hell. when i got what would be my final schedule, it promised a week of 7 am shifts. although it would mean leaving my lover (until a more propitious time and locale found us?), it was not a difficult decision to load my shit into my visiting family's car, and hitch a ride back to vancouver.

and so my summer in drumheller came to a rather sudden, but not at all bitter end. thanks for an interesting blur of a summer, gravy capital of canada.

sugar crash

what a sweet time i've been having. as mentioned a few posts back, shortly after arriving back in vancouver i found a really great job. if you go to this website: katkam.ca, you can see where i spent the last days of summer. just past the beautiful Burrard Bridge, to the upper right of the photo, you'll see Vanier Park. in that vast, sweeping green glory, up til last wednesday, stood the tents of the Bard on the Beach festival.

what a beautiful place to spend my days! how many times did my breath catch as i beheld the bright blue of the ocean framed by lush green grass and majestic mountains? i got to spend the last weeks of summer working in a park where people go to fly kites and share picnics.

for three weeks, i worked as production assistant. it was great work! essentially the site's “caretaker,” i strolled the gorgeous grounds and even got the use a skill saw on several occasions. yea, power tools!!! and of course, what a thrill to be earning my keep in theatre. shakespeare may be a stretch from the indie theatre i tend to call home, but it's still theatre! wigs, costumes and props. stages and lights. and that sense of family. stalwart stage managers, wise-quipping actors and techies who can talk for hours about the finer points of control boards. and ghosts, of course.

AND I WON AT POKER, outwitting and outbidding a dozen other texas hold'em hopefuls. it was glorious!! also noteworthy was the pitch in putt in stanley park, a “sport” i do not excel at.. but i had a ridiculous amount of fun and between the smiles and chat, i could not stop from gasping in admiring pleasure at vancouver's most majestic park's endless wonders.

as if that wasn't enough, each shift was bookended by a bike ride from commercial drive (where i'd been living) down to the seaside bike trail. weaving through sunday strollers and smartly dressed joggers, taking in all the sweeping beauty. i can't tell you how many times i caught myself breathing, almost reverentially: “it's so beautiful!!!!!”

when the run came to and end, i worked on the crew, pulling down tents and pulling up floors. as back in may with kids fest, i loved the work: chortling with the other crew members and feeling my limbs whirr and purr in action. unlike kids fest, i had spent almost two months instead of only two weeks in that world; it made it just that little bit harder to let go. each fallen tent was a mild torture, a reminder that this exquisite experience was finite. on the first day, one of the actresses came into the tent she'd been performing in. she gasped, seeing the seats all gone and the stage up in splinters. it already looked so barren, and i could feel her trying to grasp onto something intangible. something that now lived only, ever, in memories.

after three weeks, it was over. the last tent had fallen and finally, i had a day off. i was slow and lethargic, hardly moving, hardly thinking. just barely being. a drastic change from the activity of the last weeks. it felt kinda like a sugar crash. that sweet sickly feeling that leaves you bloated and sleepy.

but smiling. for oh, how sweet it was...

zing a ding ding

we all know those missed moments. those frustrating exchanges that leave us tossing and turning in bed, overcome with the too-late, too-perfect snappy responses. when we wish we could have said something, christ anything, before the moment slipped away. well tonight, i'd like to raise a glass and toast my uncle for avoiding such an unfortunate fate.

this uncle is tall, lanky and wonderful. great smile, great sense of humour, great soul. he is quiet, gentle and smart as a whip.

once upon a time, my parents used to have a business. and then one day, stuff happened and they no longer had a business. who knows, maybe they blew it. maybe they got screwed. maybe there was an orgy of miscommunication. maybe some guys were real fucking money-guzzling, anal-raping, sociopathesque (in that, you know, get-ahead-in-business kinda way) jerks. i wasn't there, i don't know.

but let's just say that years later (and not long ago), a certain money-guzzling, anal-raping sociopathesque (in that, you know, get-ahead-in-business kinda way) jerk strolls into my uncle's workplace (a scrapyard). the jerk wants to sell.. well, without giving away too many revelatory details (it's a rather specific item that few people would have), let's just say he wants to sell a big ol' metallic cylindrical thing. however, instead of being offered the large wad o' cash he had been dreaming of getting for his big ol' metallic cylindrical thing, he is told that not only will the scrapyard not buy it - they will in fact have to charge him a wad o' cash to dispose of it.

cursing and muttering, he storms away. on his way out, he passes my uncle.

"hey," my uncle's soft voice says. "i know what you can do with that big metallic cylindrical thing you're trying to get rid of."

the jerk pauses, failing to recognize the man he has met before (they had met through my folks' business). "oh yea, what's that?"

"well, you can take it and then shift it so it's oblong. then you can bend over and shove it up your ass."

and oh, what fun to grinningly imagine his face aghast as he flabberghastedly stammers, "wha... who... ermph..."


ok, so it wasn't oscar wilde. but i still would have liked to witness it. oh, that second just before the line, when the jerk thought he was being offered help; the way he must have been listening intently...

and so cheers! yay for you, sweet uncle! i'm sure you savoured the delicious moment for us all.

exiled expressionism

it's a funny thing, language.

just ask my "cunning linguist" (ba-dum-pum) friend miranda, and she'll tell you about the many intricate and joyful twists of the word.

and you know, i like words. (incase you hadn't guessed.)

sometimes, it's just the sound of the stacked syllables. an example of this quasi-fetish lies in my undying lust for a band called soul coughing. i won't digress too much, but i will say i saw them live at the now tragically defunct starfish room, and it remains one of the best shows i've ever seen or dreamed of ever. EVER.

soul coughing was fronted by a poet (and backed by brilliant and quirky musicians). these fellas liked to play. and oh my fuck, the lyrics... i could spend whole days wantonly wrapping my lips around their words: "quadrilateral i was, now i warp like a smile." "flipped an ash like a wild loose comma." "janine, i drink you up." "

aw fuck, i could dedicate a whole post exclusively to the words that sprang from their songs. but that would be UBER-digressing and so i must resist!

right then... so i remember once, miranda and i tried to invent our own slang. not like how young kids create their own personal language that the big uns won't understand. nope: we wanted to hear strangers uttering our expression in unknown bars in unknown cities. we were young (ahh, won't we always be, in some silly way?) and our attempt was so amateur, it kinda hurts a little to remember it. at that moment in time, "everyone" kept saying, about damned near everything: "that's crazy." (the line has since been replaced by some reference to smoking crack. it may have changed since, i must admit ignorance if it has.) well, we thought, wouldn't it be hiLAYrious if we started saying: "that's perfectly sane" instead.

yeah. it didn't catch on. but damn if we didn't think that was the cleverest thing this side of lordbyronia.

which brings me to the topic at hand.

my computer time of late has been more sketchy than a downtown eastsider's excuse for needing money. (a lost tourist? have a car broken down and need some 83-zone transit fare? puh-lease. i can respect need, but don't insult us.) but tonight i was granted the sacred gift of having just the right amount of energy to not flake out in front of a boob tube (living in borrowed homes has meant a lot more tv than i'm used to - damned that accursed afflicted addictive ridiculousness!!!!!!!), and just enough energy to plunder my soul for thoughts. and so i wrote a blog thingy. and then i reread it. and then i reread some of the posts that preceded it.

and i saw a trend. i'm not talking about the deep heavy inner cycle trend shit. yeah sure, i saw that too - as always (the gift and curse of keeping track). but i'm talking about something more frivolous, so chill the fuck out already!! the trend i refer to was a sad little turn of phrase i used in most of my last blog entries.

the formula: "this side of." a recent example: "isn't this just the loveliest day in the friendliest city this side of happy land?" another recent example: "the sweetest bus ride this side of the rainbow." and one more, just for kicks: "the best free music this side of the french quarter."

christ on a stick, repetitive much? and i had NO IDEA i was doing it. i bet each time i came up with the turn of phrase, i giggled at whatever i'd just written. but come the fuck on kaen (witness me slap my wrist): just because you're amused and you thought it was "clever with a capital K", it DOESN'T mean it's worth actually dressing up and sending out into the world! i mean shit girl, you're amused by smoking a bowl, sipping some wine and puttering around home blathering to your silly self. so: what the fuck do you know???"

but i have to warn me (and you, if you care): no end in sight. i already have a new expressional trend. the formula is: "since sliced..." (you know, from the expression "since sliced bread".) for example (the first impetuous utterance to inspire my new expressional craze): "oh my fuck, that is the cutest thing since sliced kitten."

well......... much like "perfectly sane", my attempted: "the stupidest thing since sliced Bush"," "the hottest thing since sliced Branjelina" and "the weirdest thing since sliced Raelians" just haven't caught on.

(either.)

bah. what the fuck do i know of trends...

simmer down, sista!!!

so let me tell you about the other day. it was a beautiful day. (again.) (my god this city is beautiful.) (but i digress.) i was starting my fabulous new job that beautiful afternoon. (yes, afternoon. for those of you who've figured out i'm a bit of a night owl, you can imagine how deleriously blissed out i was when i was told my training (for a theatre gig, did i mention that?) started at 3 pm...)

i kicked off the day with a slow, sumptuous tea-sippin morning in my fabulous friend's stunning home. (which she graciously found a way to get me the keys to when i suddenly appeared back in town while she was away; woohoo to her and yay for me!) and then i prepared to "dash off to work" - allowing myself a very luxurious hour to cycle down to my beautiful new "office" - a gorgeous park overlooking the gorgeous ocean, and oh so conveniently right off the gorgeous seaside bike trail.

did i mention it was a beautiful day? flecks of wedding dress cotton candy frolicked in an aegean sky. it was a hot summer day, but with none of that smog-heat-humidity-from-hell i'd grown to cower from back in the old homeland.

humming, smiling, admiring and riding, i plunged into my day. at one point, i found myself needing to cross a busy street. in my stupid-grinned cyclandering, i'd lingered too long one one bike trail and had strayed a half block too far to join up with the ritzy seaside trail. but ah, look! a half block back sat the brightly painted slash slash slash of white perpendicularising the busy street and connecting right to the blessed path i'd been seeking! a sign, to be sure, from the gods. (or bike trail engineers.)

so i moseyed on over to the crosswalk, leaned back in my bike's sadistic seat (well, it can't all be purrfect, can it!?) and waited for the cars to pass. now let me be clear: vancouver is a pedestrian's paradise. if i had *wanted* to cross at that very moment, i could have. the slightest gesture of intent would have inspired an immediate vehicular ceasefire.

as it was, it turned out all i needed to do was admire the beautiful sky. because as i was doing so, i heard a lull in the traffic hum: oh, my turn! but in fact, a kind man had stopped his charging car for lil ol' me! how gallant! i waved and smiled at him and made my way to the median that seperated the opposing directions. and i paused there, waiting for the lone oncoming car to pass.

and don't you just know it, once again the kind car had stopped for lil ol' me. "well golly gosh," i said to myself, "isn't this just the loveliest day in the friendliest city this side of happy land? shucks."

as i wheeled across that last side of the street, i lifted my head to wave at, and smile at the driver. la la la-la! and man, talk about a shock to the system when i looked up and witnessed a perhaps beautiful woman's face contort into tex averian animosity. i rode by in frozen horror, suddenly beholding the mad mug of beelzebub itself. i felt my face contort into confusion as her eyebrows fused into a jagged hedge, her eyes wide and rolling, her mouth contorted by hate.

"YOU'RE NOT A PEDESTRIAN!!!" she shouted, gesticulating madly.

(you don't say)

i couldn't even begin to imagine what the hell her problem was, so i hastily retraced our brief encounter's steps. well, i hadn't cut her off. i had paused patiently in the median, and she had willingly stopped for me. so perhaps her foam-lipped words held the clue. i'm not a pedestrian. right. well, perhaps the issue is that bicycles not allowed to use "pedestrian" crosswalks, and it's a cause that is very dear to her heart. well, if bikes can't use 'em, colour me ignorant and i'd love it if someone could clear that up for me. most especially because while it was perhaps not specifically indicated by signs in this case, quite often these city-planned paths *specifically* (i.e. as directed by white-on-green-signs) cross these sacred crosswalks. so if it's "illegal" or "wrong", someone should talk to the city, cuz that's a big problem...

so... would it have been better if i'd dismounted and walked across? i mean, it would have made me a "pedestrian." but would that not have slowed the process, potentially causing her head to literally explode? cuz i ain't joshin ya when i say she didn't look too far from it as it was...

still today i haven't the foggiest clue in hell what she needed me to do. and that was frustrating. but mostly, i just feel bad for her. she had done something nice - pausing her precious day to allow a smiling stranger to pass. (even though i would happily have waited the 0.8 seconds for her to drive by before crossing...) but instead of appreciating her moment of generosity, she decided it was actually a perfect moment to unleash the volcano of vitriole she'd been drowning in since/because of ...? who knows. maybe she'd had a fight with her asshole husband. maybe she had irritable bowel syndrome. maybe her daughter had died in a cycling accident while cycling across a crosswalk.

what do i know of it.

all i know is suddenly, i found myself flailing in her tidal wave of negativity, and my mellow was seriously harshed. well, certainly surprised. shocked a little. and so, what was i supposed to do with this fresh load of shit? ingest it as i ingest everything life tosses at me? and then what, get all irate? take it out on some other unsuspecting innocent? get pissed off at that first fella: "he should have just kept going so i could cross when there was a healthy lull and nobody would have been inconvenienced!!!" get pissed at this woman who might be having a rough moment/day/week/year and had decided to take that out on everyone who should stumble across her puerile path because she hadn't figured out how to cope with the real problem in her own fucking world?

well, i guess i could have done that. i'll admit, i contemplated it for a second. but then i just shrugged, smiled for the kind man who wanted to do something nice for a fellow human on the side of the road, sighed a little for that poor miserable woman who hated that same stranger and hoped she felt better soon, and cycled on my merry little way.

cheers!

today was a great day.

after a few sluggish days of outstretched attempt, i have found a home and work. a really cool home. a home in the core of my east side pride. and the trickiest part: a fabulous temporary home that will just see me through to nov, when i settle into my proper new home. a home in which i can unpack my bags and start so many tomorrows.

and work! really cool work! work with great people on a great festival on a great site in a beautiful city. work that will keep me moving in the big air. work that will take me in its warm fold and deliver me to october - right when other swirls of opportunity should be meeting in a delicious apex of yes. work that starts TOMORROW!!

and work with a boss so cool, i could grinningly say to him, when he offers me a position i'm all over like a puppy's tongue on spilled shmutz: "you realize this means i'm going to miss pete and erin's famous island party this weekend??" (on an island, not "island" themed...). a boss so cool, he figured out how to work it so i wouldn't miss it.

and so i raise my chin to smile upon, and raise a glass to toast the beneficient gods who always take such good care of me. thanks!

surrender, dorothy

since parting ways with my sexy beau in march, i have had the key to 10 places in which to lay my weary head, and unpack my worn bags. 10 beds in 5 months.

i have had to negotiate the smoking, liquor and recycling vagaries in 4 provinces.

and i'm now on my 4th phone number (3rd area code) of the year!!

...no wonder i sometimes feel so exhausted!!

but now the wind has blown west, and i find my feet landed on vancouver soil. this time, i even think it's for real: i'm actually looking for work and a home. the time to hide from reality has passed, and i'm ready to start living again!

i'm ready for ebulient banter with friends, old and new. i'm ready for festivals and art galleries. i'm ready for anonymity. ...and standing out from the crowd.

small time life was interesting. (for the two tiny months i experienced it!) some of it was GREAT, namely: i'm well started on a play i'm very excited about, and did some great work on my poems. even submitted some stuff! so that was very, very excellent. but i'm a city girl. i love the plethoraness of it all! i love the ceaseless din and whir of life. i love pubs with walls of exotic fish...

so then, there's one more month of summer, and i am alive in the city!

click. click. click.
there's no place like home.