vesper's escape

Dazzlingly Freaky

*Moon* image by Alex Cherry at Virtual Hitman Design.

A fun multiple choice question:

Look at the image above by virtual artist, Alex Cherry.  If you click on the image, you'll see a larger version.  Which of the following best describes your take on this print??

The word that best describes this print is:

a) nasty: nauseating; offensive; objectionable; unpleasant or disagreeable; morally filthy; obscene; indecent.
b) freaky: conspicuously or grossly unconventional or unusual; weird; strange; of or pertaining to freaks. 
c) ominous: portending evil or harm; foreboding; threatening; inauspicious.
d) gorgeous: splendid or sumptuous in appearance, coloring, etc.; magnificent; dazzlingly beautiful.
e) hilarious: arousing great merriment; extremely funny; marked by or causing boisterous merriment or convulsive laughter.

OR

Come up with your own adjective.  Hit it.

I personally think it's gorgeous and it's currently set as my desktop background.  And this apparently makes me "freaky."  Of or pertaining to freaks.  Grossly unconventional and weird. 

***

According to my insanely nerdy "reading journal," I read about 20-25 books a year (not counting the books I pick up and read a few chapters from -- like my Freud Bible, the Jung Collections, and Nietzsche Archives), about 35-40 magazines a year (Harper's, Hobo, Vanity Fair, Vogue, National Geographic, etc.), and about 10-15 literary journals a year (grain, Brick, Conjunctions, etc.).  I'm angry that I don't read more books, although I should calm down, because the average is apparently 2 or 3 a year.  And that's just dumb.  My opinion only, but me and reading go way back.  My reading actually goes up slightly when I'm not in school, and this is likely because I'm not writing essays during those times.

The B and the GF and I hung out in White Rock for most of the day yesterday.  It was awesome.  The weather was fabulous, the sun was bright -- which means B and I now have our freckles on.  It's the first place I lived when I moved to Canada, so it always, partially, feels like home.  I still feel like "An American in Canada" for whatever reason, but White Rock comes as close to home as I can get without venturing back to freaky North Dakota.  I'm not dissing North Dakota or North Dakotans, but the conservative nature of the state does scare me.  My brother says that more people are moving into the big cities from out-of-state, and thus diversifying the place, but it still scares me.  I'm scared to think how I might have ended up if I'd stayed there.  I'd like to think that I would've gotten out, tattoos and all, but it would've taken longer, and the hurdles would have been far more challenging and recalcitrant.  I think I'm using "recalcitrant" because it makes me think of "calcify" -- to harden or become rigid -- like calcium deposits on bone.  Rigid is a very good word for the people of small town ND.  There's rigid people everywhere, but I can no longer breathe around droves of them.   

***

I've added all there is to add from my old archives....so you'll find the posts I like over to your right.  -->  Some have new images, which may be worth your while to see. 

Moth Redux

*Moth (I Don't Fly Around Your Fire Anymore)* image by Alex Cherry at Virtual Hitman Design.

a wise man cries why
into the night
as a moth launches
herself into flames.

her pure suicide
weighs on his why
flutters at his where,
        his breathless how.

Morning Dust Redux

*Dust Storm* image from Cruset of Ideas.

Morning dust
ignites the triple-charged
feeling of being awake.
I sigh into the wind,
adding my own breath
to the cancellation
of music upon the night.

Uncanny Redux

*Crow Fight* image from (de)focused geeks.

i gather ideas of us

scattered and uncanny

like the uneven piles of crow's feathers

collecting on the lawn.

we don't know how they get there

love fights amongst birds

or strange midnight rituals.

either way

the effects are disconcerting.

Lily White Lie Redux

*window* image from a flickr account.

desire can't be killed. it's a stubborn little prick in the back-side of purity. a wife to lordly majesty, but whatever be lordly today is lowly tomorrow. this being the way of the opposites.

have you ever wondered how terrible, but oh so possible it would be to pluck out your own eyes? this is just a passing daytime nightmare, a little lordly plague-of-a-thought to screw with wifely fidelity. as if the wives were ever and always so truly true or as straight as you'd like them! they are simply more stealthy.

stealthy lovers finding true love in the ways of the wicked. get your facts straight. the wives are good at dodging and ducking, just like you when you keep out those eye-plucking thoughts by muscling through your good works, your good deeds of the day. slave away now, to keep out the horror, you good person, with your straight mind, straight as an arrow, and white like a lily.

white like the whites of your eyes.

Vertigo

*vertigo* image from James Stewart Annex.

I can't eat.  I can't sleep.  I listen to lots of music, watch movies, fold clothes, read difficult treatises.  My stomach has the spins.  Dizzy from revolutions, but what I can't decide is which direction the revolutions are turning.  In or out, east or west, hot or cold.  Perhaps both at the same time, and hence the vertigo.  What an amazing word, that vertigo.  Vertigo vertigo vertigo.  You are getting sleeeeeeepy....  Some words give me butterflies, and vertigo is one of them.  I want to eat it.

***

It has to end
Living in your head
Without anything to numb you
Living on the edge
Without anything to numb you

It has to end to begin

Began an end today
Gave and got given
You made a friend today
Kindred soul cracked spirit

It has to end to begin

Living in your head
Without anything to numb you
Living on the edge
Without anything to numb you

It had to end to begin

-Sia, from *Numb*

***

How many people really get you?  They are few and far between.  The rare birds.  Connections to the core feel right as rain when you make them.  Their rarity makes them that much more intoxicating.  Spellbound. 

There's a conversation on Six Feet Under between Brenda and her brother -- something to the effect that as you get older, the group of people who you can actually connect with gets smaller and smaller.  You can have a multitude around you, crashing in and proliferating expansively, and yet there may only be one, just one, who melts you.  Truly.  This is lonely to some degree, but also pretty damn beautiful. 

***

Acting agent yesterday.  Poetry submissions today.  My hands are in knots from all this crossing of fingers.  For fuck sakes. 

In Both Hand and Heart

Having found a true confidant
in Broken Sword
if I die, I am content with my life [...]
It's just dawned on me!
This scroll of Broken Sword's
isn't about sword technique
but about swordsmanship's ultimate ideal
Swordsmanship's first achievement
is the unity of man and sword
Once this unity is attained
even a blade of grass can be a weapon
The second achievement is when
the sword exists in one's heart
when absent from one's hand
One can strike an enemy at ten paces
even with bare hands
Swordsmanship's ultimate achievement
is the absence of the sword
in both hand and heart
The swordsman is at peace
with the rest of the world
He vows not to kill
and to bring peace to mankind.
-part of the script from *Hero* from Scriptorama.

Beautiful Human

image of Sarah Bettens from her MySpace site.  Sarah Bettens is formerly from K's Choice, and is now a solo artist.  She was in Vancouver recently, now I'm killing myself for not MAKING time to see her.  Fuck fuck fuck.  Next time.  She's the epitome of gorgeous and amazing.   

Walls, The Lives of Others, Other Things, Other Longings

image from The Berlin Wall.

How appropriate that I would be reading Jeanette Winterson today.  How appropriate that I would take up this talk of walls, of letting go, of venturing outside...into difference and difficulty, only to get shot down.  I was too eager about the theme.  Graaaaarrrrrrr.   

There have been a few major moments in my life when I swallowed the demon, tore down the wall or went beyond it, clear into new terrain.  Sometimes a certain dance would follow, the awkward dance of back-and-forth over the crossed line.  Now you see me, now you don't.      
Step outside the wall, or walk the clear path.  Love difference, or punish yourself for it.  Love differently, or not at all. 

I love Winterson's wall talk.  For me, it has been about foundations.  Foundations that cage you in, but also foundations that hold you up, that support you, and often falsely.  I talk about the foundations giving out from underneath your feet, crumbling to bits and blowing away with the wind.  Fierce winds are best, though they are the most brutal.  Shall we compare wind-scars. 

***

image from Cinematic Intelligence Agency.

I saw an excellent movie today called *Das Leben Der Anderen* (The Lives of Others).  Brilliant, brilliant movie.  Brilliant.  Beautiful.  The best ones leave me without much of anything to say.

Grade: A+

***

On the banks of the Euphrates find a secret garden cunningly walled.  There is an entrance, but the entrance is guarded.  There is no way in for you.  Inside you will find every plant that grows growing circular-wise like a target.  Close to the heart is a sundial and at the heart an orange tree.  This fruit had tripped up athletes while others have healed their wounds.  All true quests end in this garden, where the split fruit pours forth blood and the halved fruit is a full bowl for travellers and pilgrims.  To eat of the fruit means to leave the garden because the fruit speaks of other things, other longings.  So at dusk you say goodbye to the place you love, not knowing if you can ever return, knowing you can never return by the same way as this.  It may be, some other day, that you will open a gate by chance, and find yourself again on the other side of the wall.
-Jeanette Winterson, *Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit*

Bra B

The Super Monkey came out of the washroom today with one of my bras on.  Happy Weekend!!!