There's another one of me out there writing po3try. This happened once between blues musicians. One beat the shit out of the other and the name forever belonged to the aggressor.
Tomorrow I get to go around and say Why do you work here fuckhead? to people.
Piano solo. Such potential. Waiting on news. Another piano solo.
My instincts, or "spidey-sense(s)" have been acting up lately. David, the CSIS agent is elusive, though I think the reason for his appearance is deeper than any convoluted exploration of the self. For instance, David is a very formal name, and he's from an institution, or something rather established. . . getting down to the reason behind this paragraph -- there is something official gazing at me, and I couldn't care less. I could be paranoid, but as I've been saying for a long time, paranoia does not exist. Perhaps there are elements of paranoia in someone's judgment, but to think that something is after a human being is far from paranoia. Most likely, the hunter is yet to be identified. Deer are skittery for a reason.
Blergh. I have two more feature assignments to write before I can never write another one again in my entire life. The prospect is literal. One more thing to get over. . . I came to Victoria to dip my hands into as many pots as possible, and when I move, I'm going to burn feature writing in the fire pits of my adolescence. Though many things I will keep. Many lessons, many directions and doors that don't need to be opened will remain closed. Or how about relating it to food; the next time I wander through this buffet, I'll skip the salads and head straight to the ice cream machine.
What year was it?
1998
What were your favorite bands?
Metallica, REM, Corrosion of Conformity, Tom Waits
What was your favorite outfit?
Jeans, a loud shirt, rings, tons of necklaces, hats.
What was up with your hair?
It was down to my nipples and had been dyed a half-dozen times -- a mixture between my natural blonde roots with brown, black, and red segments throughout.
Who were your best friends?
Eric, Clay, Tara, Nikola, Bryan, Colby, Dan, Ryan
What did you do after school?
I walked around thinking about music, staring into the clouds.
Did you take the bus?
No, I either got a ride to school or I walked. It was about a 20 minute walk.
Who did you have a crush on?
Nikola. . . and everyone else.
Did you fight with your parents?
Yup. I'm quite different from them.
Who did you have a CELEBRITY crush on?
Natalie Imbruglia
Did you smoke cigarettes?
No.
Did you lug all of your books around in your backpack all day because you were too nervous to find your locker?
Not one or the other.
Did you have a 'clique'?
No, cliques are dumb.
Did you have "The Max" like Zach, Kelly, and Slater?
I used to hang out in the woods at lunch with the boys, and we light wells, plastic bags, garbage, school work, report cards on fire, or throw sticks at each other. . . we'd litter.
Who did you want to be just like?
Mr. James Hetfield
What did you want to be when you grew up?
An English and History teacher. Hah! Currently I'm a poet, a musician, which is grand, but I'm also wandering around with the awful, horrible, morally bleak pretences of being a freelance magazine writer.
Where did you think you'd be at the age you are now?
I didn't know. . . I thought I'd be teaching or something. Which I've done. . . all the things I've set out to do I'm done, although not as well as I could've.
What classes did you take?
Band, chorus, socials, that sort of thing. classes have never been important to me.
is a used up tragedy
a child salvaging
garbage from a landfill
in Jakarta
it is not
a man with a bin
filled with cans
or an aging somebody
behind a desk
if yer able to rent
a video or buy wine
yer probably shitty
but doing all right
___
the savage
lecherous breath
is most often measured
by the plug of a narcotic
or the metaphysical act
of recreating the self
into Job
for to breath an unopened air
is a way of keeping
the dragon in check!
because boots peel
books burn and the spinning wheel
travels west
and time recreates through
memory, and is precious only
to those who have no nose!
Patrick Lane was in workshop this morning. Some good stuff went around. I liked his "honest" approach -- to say it like it is. I am finding workshops terribly dreary these days though. "I think that the characters should be more fleshed out. I think that there are too many adjectives. I think that there should be a reason for this poem. I think that the last part of the poem should be the first."
Shit. Something I fought against all odds to get into, and now I'm like, "shit, dog. Where's the money you big ugly buffoon?" And the buffoon goes, "You're the buffoon. I don't even exist. You're the one getting a writing degree." "That's right. I needed an alter ego to remind myself that my alter ego isn't a buffoon. How could I have misplaced my pancakes?"
Pancakes. PANCAKES?
I need to write a three page film essay on "Nowhere in Africa." I'm going to try and tackle the feminization of Blacks in Hollywood style narratives; how Blacks are only allowed into the household if they take up feminine roles, such as cooking, or culturally becoming a woman to the white man. I got a Malcolm X speech called, "I am a field negro," where he talks about the house negro, or house nigger, as loving the master more than the master loves himself. A lot of the speech doesn't apply to Nowhere in Africa, and if it does, it's a bit of a stretch, as Malcolm is going on about Blacks in America, and "Nowhere in Africa" is a German film about Germans in Africa. However, the film is very Hollywood and modern. It even won an Oscar, so there's some echoeing going around. I just got to find out what the echo is bouncing off of.
Huzzah!
I think I got a new poem. Elliott Smith reached out of my headphones and shocked my ears. Almost literally. It really hurt my ears. I had to get the pizza girl to throw them (the headphones, not the ears) away for me. The other pizza girl suggested that I write to the headphone company and get sweet headphones. I didn't feel like telling her it was Elliott Smith who had shocked me, and that he was dead.
all the higher clergy (especially Bishops) had monstruous installation feasts in the later middle ages. When the Prior of Canterbury was installed in 1309, there were 6,000 guests, who consumed 53 quarters of wheat, 58 of malt, 11 tuns of wine, 36 oxen, 100 hogs, 200 piglets, 200 sheep, 1,000 geese, 793 capons, hens and pullets, 24 swans, 600 rabbits, 16 shields of brawn, 9,600 eggs, and so on, at a cost of 287 pounds.
"I'm gonna do what I want and I'm gonna get paid."
I woke up this morning and did the usual stuff -- showered, put on clothes, turned on the the computer, scribbled.
I've been aware of a CSIS presence in my life of late: pizza vans across the street, helicopter dreams, snatches of static as a walkie talkie turns on (or off?). Today it was confirmed when after my scribbling. I saw the agent on my patio. He was in a Navy Blue suit with the CSIS insignia on his lapel. His hair was close cropped, brown, and parted to the side, cheek bones set, jaw a little loose around the edges. His hair and suit drifted evenly in the slight breeze. He squinted at the sun's reflection of the glass panes of the door motioned me to open the door for him. I slid it open.
"You can call me 'Dave'," he said as he made the bunny ear quotation marks signal beside his head. "You may be needing this." He handed me a revolver.
"This bitch is pretty old," I said. "Don't you have something a little more. . . automatic?"
"Victoria is a port city," Dave said. "Remember that in our time of terror. It looks like that time."
I turned to look at the clock, and it was that time. When I turned back, Dave was gone. In his place was a box of shells. I quickly loaded my new gun and slipped it behind the hole in the wall near the bed.
After that I surfed the net for a while and contemplated last evening. R, B, and I rehearsed for the first time. It went pretty damn well. At first I thought we'd be booted out of the Battle of the Bands in the first round, but I have a feeling (I have a feeling!) that we can make it to round two. We're a country band, so some Sum 41 knockoff piece of crap punk o' rama non-punk trio will blast us all away with a song about breaking up with a girl at a house party. The girls will vote.
On a final note, I need to read a really, really good-looking short story collection. Surprise me, you fucks.
As a few friends and I registered to compete in UVic's Battle of the Bands, we knew we'd be performing. What we didn't expect was a performance on Monday, February 21st. We were scheduled to play on the 28th. This shouldn't be a big deal, but we've never rehearsed and we go on in five days. So yeah, shit, dog. So tonight we're rehearsing. And tomorrow. And the day after that. I'm game. Cowards are for suckers. I may have been born yesterday, but that doesn't make me a yellow bellied cowboy without a gun.
I have a passport application. It costs 82 bucks! Fuck'n noise, that. Joy and I went downtown to pick up the applications. Then we split; she going towards the heart of downtown, and me going to Dallas Beach. The Washington mountains looming over Raymond Carver's death bed. Very bright sun, a mixture of sweat and cold made me zip my hoodies continuously. The rocks were the usual fun, but my street shoes hurt my feet whenever I jumped, and you know me: I like to jump. I do quite like gripping my hands along a small crevice and pushing myself along with my feet. Dogs everywhere.
In Cook St. Village I stopped for a coffee at the Moka House and drank it on the patio. People watching. Then a few video rentals from Pic A Flic. It's very strange to be a regular at a place that I was once fired from. I dig it. I never rent shite.
My selections
Love on the Run - dir. François Truffaut (1979, French New Wave, B&W)
Closely Watched Trains - dir. Jiri Menzel (1966, Czech New Wave, B&W)
Stardust Memories - dir. Woody Allen (1980, B&W)
I should mention that the first two movies listed are from the Criterion Collection. They seem to be on the up and up of releasing slightly obscure experimental films from before DVD's time.
"Get thee glass eyes
and like a scurvy politican, seem
To see the things thou dost not."
-King Lear (also used as an epigram to Irving Layton's "The Shattered Plinths".)
Woke up to find a box of chocolates and a mini-mickey of Crown Royal in front of my keyboard this morning. Had a bit of both for breakfast.
I drink coffee and play guitar. Guitar chops are hard to keep up, especially when finger picking comes into play. The progressions that I invented a few months ago are more slippery now then before. This is what happens: the melody develops itself in my head, I struggle to find out what it really sounds like, and once I do I need to learn what I played. When I learn it, I put it away and return to it with more difficulty. Coffee helps.
Living: The way time is measured by the growth of other people's children.
I have to kill about seven hours before I take Joy out to this thing I've planned. A surefire hit, no doubt. But before that, I dunno what to do. And I still have to plan something for after, for the "I know what."
But I don't know yet. More guitar. More coffee. Oooh. I just remembered a bit of gossip about me.
I had the spiciest moment of my life last night. I was eating pasta, as usual, when I suddenly bit into a massive snarl of habenero peppers and spicy red peppers. It took about 20 minutes for me to calm down. I breathed in the cat's face and she looked at me for a few minutes as if I had "Devil's Breath." It was as if she were amazed I had such potential. What a proud cat she was!
There's an electrician at the jamspace. I need to go there and open the door for him. There's a debate: what sort of electrician works on a Sunday? Potential answer: one that's going to be paid off. The company who owns our jamspace doesn't have a name, or rather, the name is a long series of numbers that I won't list here in case it's owned by the Hell's Angels.
Although apparantly it's not inapropos for an electrician to work on a Sunday.
After that it's skating at the Oak Bay Rec Center. Now I'm not much of a skater. But I'm going. I'm going to do it. I'm going to skate.
Here's a Haiku taken from quotes from a bottle collector.
not all work
a bit of a loner
he explores
watches the water
More than a thousand students turned out to vote to put out a possible reform to the University of Victoria Students Society's (UVSS) mandate. The UVSS has a pro-choice stance. Some people don't like that. They feel marginalized. Which makes sense -- people have their beliefs. However, the idea failed when thousands of students waved their hands in the air to vote against the change.
Ealier in the day I walked through the floodplain. After I walked to the beach and nearly fell into a small chasm. The tide was high and a section of the beach that I had to access was closed off by steep rocks surrounded by water. Needless to say I slipped and had to get muddy to avoid falling to a mild non-doom. Once on the other side, I made my way to the rocks I like to sit on and read the newspaper in the sun listening to alternative tango music on the mp3 player.
I handed in my article that was due today. I like it. It's active, sort of confusing. I wanted to breath a little of Goddard's "Breathless" into the writing. Bottlers tend to lead a fragmented, rushed lives. If you've seen "Breathless" you know what I'm getting at.
All in all my summer vacation was fun and I learned a lot.
One of my favourite bands is the Pixies. Let's get it straight -- everyone agree. I don't give a shit who you are, disagree in your own living room.
I tend to misjudge. I wonder how many I've misjudged and written off. I know that I wrote-off one of my current profs a few years ago, and even gave her a bad review at rateyourprofessor.com. When I had her a few years later, I found her to be great at what she does, not only that, but thankful not only for the comments she offered, but felt akin to the way in which they were written. So yeah. One few too many, as they say. It's an old saying from the Stoney region of Alberta, brought down from a mixture of sayings from Hutterites gone astray and Métis wannabe-outcasts. Seriously though, it's good to be proven wrong when I think I'm posivitively right, especially in regards to a whorl of static electricity. That being the brain. The brain of what. I don't know what to say. I need a melody.
I blew one of my ears out. My back hurts. I have a splitting headache. I think this happens whenever I try to get things done. Everything works out when I'm a lazy grubber, but as soon as I get up to do anything constructive. . .
Joy unexpectedly got on the bus today. A surprise as pure as the sun itself.
Hobo Pursuit is almost over and done with! I interviewed a 73-year-old can collector. Moe ("Just Moe, thanks.") was a very elusive person. He didn't like answering questions about his past, and he complained about the things old men complain about - the economy, students, drunkards. "Homeless men don't impress me, to tell you the truth," he said. The skin underneath his grey beard jiggled as he darted through traffic with his shopping cart, muttering things like, "this would be a bad day for collecting if it weren't for the businesess [that leave bottles]."
Empty chairs and an absolute lack of customers adorn the comic book shop. The pudgy owner with a moustache looks at me and Moe says, "I think he's from the university. He's seeing what a can collector does."
"Hi," the worker said.
"Hey," another said.
Moe went to the recycle bins at the back of the narrow, fluorescent-lit store and picked up a few dozen empty pop cans in Dr. Pepper and Coca-Cola cases.
Other than that, I'm thinking of going down to the beach tomorrow, AND I'm EQUALLY split on Valentine's Day plans. Go to EVENT A or EVENT B? They could both be either mediocre OR cool. But I think I have my mind set on a change from the original plan. Who knows. I sure as hell don't. Or do I?
I think the headache stems from a lack of caffeine. The sore back can only be explained by something that isn't me. The ear thing may be a combination of drumming without headgear and an oncoming sickness, or it may be some karma thing. Or it could be a cruel god pushing some sort of quasi-smite button.
I do have an urgency to work of late. I ran into a philosophy major the other day who was taking a course for the third time and failing it. It was about 2 p.m. and he had a 10 page thing due at four that he hadn't started. I've been there before. I don't feel like going back. That's a lot of effort et al to toss at philosophy.
Feeling sick again, and the world has its usual bleak overcovering.
I DON'T want to go around and interview people today. I have to if I want to graduate. Maybe I'll drop out and work in the tourism industry. "Yes sir. No sir. No ma'am. Yes ma'am." Doesn't sound too hard.
In ten years --> I could've been something. Why did I ever drop out of college?
shortly after --> The accidental plan. The accidental dictator.
Maybe I should be a projectionist. I've always wanted to do that. I am a bit of a nighthawk.
There's a heaviness. A lashing. Cuts and bruises that seperate. Pull apart. Pull out to avoid getting prego. Though babies have nothing to do with it.
My throat aches. Yesterday I went through serious caffeine withdrawls. I was very cold and very tired. Then I got a fever. The previous day I had like nine cups of coffee with breakfast. Mondays. . . "Looks like someone's got a case of the Mondays."
I rehearse on Sunday nights, school from 9 am to 7:30 pm on Monday. Coupled with caffeine withdrawls and a lack of nutrition.
Tuesday is a day off. Though what that really means is that I can work on my homework. There is no such thing as yourself. The things you do become you. The body and mind adapt to their exteriors. Purity is what you find, not what you are. University has about five fingers sunk into my brain. Each finger a vial filled with University.
The days are like weeks in the final stretch.
Lucky bar hosted a few musicians last night, which was okay. I actually don't like live shows at Lucky Bar. It's very scenester-oriented, and there's rarely anyone there before 1 a.m., and since the live music ends at about 10:30, it's sort of languid. The two dozen people in the place sort of bob up and down until the music's over. Very strange. And as soon as the musicians are done the bouncers are there tearing off all the posters, getting ready for the real event -- DJs!
Oh well. Can't blame a business for trying to make a buck. I can do anything except make money. I should dye my hair gray, put on a gray suit, get a massive other chin and buy a few condos. A different life for every room. A different wife for every womb. Hahah.
My guitar techniques need massive amounts of improvement. I'm getting into the rut, where it's always the same chords no matter what I'm feeling. I also need to get on to my latest poem, currently titled "Blood Trucks". Getting better at music is a very strange thing. I write the music in my head, then try to transpose it to guitar, with some changes along the way. But my fingers need to keep up with my head, and when they finally catch up, my head can forget and my fingers can remember. The body remembers the scars it inheirits, and music is the most suffocating scar that the head can write. On an unrelated note, I'm wondering why my relationship is turning up all over the net.