crooked lunch

well well

2011-11-06T19:10:00.005-05:00

it has been approximately 246 hours since breaking up with s.

in that time, i have caught one cold, woken up in bed with my coat and shoes on twice, showered five times (this could be off), stared at the yellow pinwheel across the street twice, eaten honey and nut oatmeal crisp each day that i decided to eat breakfast....so...wait...um...yeah, probably seven times (with almond milk), and cried so much i caught said cold, once.

the pinwheel thing is weird, i know. but there's this yellow pinwheel on the balcony of the apartment directly across college street from us, and i don't really remember when i noticed it, but it was around the time i noticed my relationship was sinking too. and i took to staring at it with my morning coffee.

sometimes, it's purposeful. you can't always tell how cold it is, or how one should properly dress oneself by examining those on the street. some people are severely underdressed, and also- i find that i am generally prone to wear more layers than i actually need once i start trotting, because apartments tend to give a nudge towards being cozy. but the pinwheel, when windy, is a pretty good indicator.

love, etc.

2011-10-24T16:39:00.010-04:00

i got a question on my last post about 'dating with a disability', and i've been thinking about how to answer it. this may come out wrong, or poemy, but i will try nonetheless.

i used to live in a bell tower. like victor hugo wrote it, i was quasimodo and then some. enough messages around me at that age of sex, love, and sexuality questions, i had already started learning how to hide away and bang on them bells. there was a split between my forays into masturbation adventures and the social realm known as 'dating'. i didn't.

this isn't a sob story, trust me. i didn't cry myself to sleep every night (well, sometimes. but you've been a teenager, too). i had a comfy adolescence, though bridled with an overbearing father who was never wrong, and the complimentary self-loathing complex, a reprise of doubt and apologies, as a result.

but then, i went to university. i'd always loved school. in fact, i think it was the first thing i ever really believed in, apart from my parents. but my parents let me down. and so too did school. or the idea of school as a saviour. from within the institution i was paying to intend, i learned that the factors, or rather aspects of my 'identity' which had granted me entry were the same elements responsible for what i had come to know of the world, what had shaped my experience and learning, and what i would face the rest of my life.

post-colonial theory and post-modernism became alive to me when i was introduced to disability for the first time. not disability, but capital D disability. the rabbit hole moment. the matrix moment. whatever it is.

the thing i had played like a game since birth. the thing i had policed myself with, hurt myself for, tried to run from, used to my advantage when possible, lied about, denied, and drowned myself in.

i hadn't really dated before this point because i hadn't really been able to see myself as human. i mean, it's understandable, looking back. take a hunchback kid in love with love and give 'em a crippling neurotic complex and the metaphor is actually painful.

so it didn't start with love. it started with sex.* i was disabled which was connected to my body, which was connected to wanting but not having had sex, which was connected to discovering i was queer, which was connected to accessing community, which was connected to spaces of racism, which was connected to white privilege, which was connected to school, which was connected to class.

long story short(er), i started having sex. one day the curtain dropped, and the wizard sitting between me and the big bad 'O' was me. i had crushes and had sex and felt so alive and eventually, fell in love. i will correct that i never, during those days, fell in love with who i was sleeping with. i fell in love with close friends. best friends, even. the unattainable. the unrequited. i was still stuck in the bell tower.

*i am a survivor of sexual assault, rape, but this occurred after i had already been having positive, queer sexual experiences, grasping at my autonomy, and so thankfully it hasn't had too detrimental and formative an effect on my sexual self. but this is not the case for many. and this is certainly why i still struggle with an attraction to/relations with cis-men.

i will say, it was pretty bad. i was stuck there for quite some time, living in the cycle of my own abuse. if you read back in this blog, 'd' was her name. it fulfilled the relationship that had been seeded since my childhood - that i was not worthy of love. my father affirmed this very much. and d was in love with my affection, and i was in love with her.

three years of pain and anguish and terrible poetry later, i survived. i survived, and got a sweet job editing a newspaper. i dated but it never lasted really. i was never certain i loved them, but was contented with my string of affairs and sex and exciting parties. oh so rock and roll. i wrote cynical poetry, scoffed at love, did recreational drugs, hell, love was just a recreation too. it was all fine to me. i put on a sequin dress, went to this or that gallery opening, lived for the glory of reverb sways and dubstep beats, and sweet kisses in the wee and irresponsible hours. i was twenty-five, and that is reasonably young, and i was wiser to love and its tricks so let's just have fun, right?

and then, one fateful night at the end of january, on a night that i wasn't even really planning on going out, and still coming down off the drugs i did the night before in a hotel in toronto with a blissful batch of friends, i walked into that bar and found s.

i knew who i was that night. i was cool, confident. maybe not consistently happy, but that is less a fault of mine and more a reality of life, and momentary satisfaction and happiness seemed to visit and confuse me often enough so yes, i was cool, confident.

as she would later share in a poem, 'and then one of the greatest affairs began.'

it was poetry. it was so much poetry all the time. and somehow i handled it. i kept my insecurities at bay while still projecting the best bits of myself, bits so full of love and wonder. i fell in love with a real live person. and she fell in love with me too. at a time in my life when i had stopped apologizing. for my disability. for my body. for what i couldn't do. for these things were always irrational. and sex was the place i learned that first. bodies are not perfect. and sex exposes that like nothing else. bodies bump together in the night, making noises, leaving marks, giving sloppy offerings and it is humiliation that makes for the sweetest nectar that life has to offer.

and now it is almost november.

do i have a boyfriend? no. i have a girlfriend. sort of.

s and i, we're still together. and it's not always poetry but that is what i know to be true of dating, of relationships, of love and the awkwardness of human connection. i say 'sort of' because we both identify as genderqueer, and i will speak for myself when i say that it never felt quite right to call us 'girlfriends'.

not only do i see myself as gender-transgressing, and not feel an affiliation to my genitalia prescribed gender options; but i see a lot of greys. i like to flirt with gender the way i like to flirt with people. i don't believe in monogamy, not the kind that is propagated by hetereonormative, gender-policing, patriarchal capitalism. this same machine puts disability in a very limited, very dehumanized, very asexualized, very boring little box.

my thought on the subject is largely formed by my own experience. and my advice, would i give any, is to learn how to love yourself, and date yourself first, because it hurts far less unnecessarily.

october is

2011-10-13T16:05:00.002-04:00

i

sitting on your parents deck
watching you mow
the lawn
(not so much watching as )
being aromatically infiltrated
by blades-of-grass scent
shooting up from the churn
of the environmentally friendly
push (push) you gave at
eighteen, requiring a
donation of chore hours
lengthened
the year (now)
you've returned to your parents
basement.
i'm here for thanksgiving
and to tell you
the cut-offs are
hot

ii.

your dog sits on the new
trimmed lot,
basks in the warmth
of the october sun
and your cooing, cute
and sweet.
i sometimes think
you're talking to me
"sweetheart"
but i know those words are not
mine--love
rarely excuses pet names,
little puppy

2011-06-14T18:41:00.008-04:00

i don't know how to write you

here, in the crispness of the stanza

i fumbly comb the reaches of this

ardor only

to have it collapse enchanted around me

like the mattress

we've fallen from countless

times trying

to figure out whatitis

we mean to say

open and

openandclose

your laughing eye!

the sage walls drip with icarus

this and every night

as imagined wings spread

beyond the expanse

of the room

charred by candles

and the burning light of the auto repair across the street

a winter pyre

forgiven by february

hands on flesh

we speak in pancakes

and parenthesis

like careful creatures planting

flowers at midnight

quietly(

close)

close the bathroom door around me

close your legs around me

chase the never ending

line

off the toilet seat

down your body

until i can't feel

anything but the madness of you

red velvet

your open mouth

nursing raspberries from my arms like

branches above you-

a tree planted

on that couch, a narrow

opening in time

who should

put the coffee on?

an earnest

pot pouring

into cups like craters from months of remember

and into me

you're onto me

flash from skyeyes

open

and close

openandclose

and o

pen

how many more nights

i will call to icarus

again and again

crying out from the top

of the tree, or below

the toppling

the steady

steady

coming

dear blog

2010-11-17T19:40:00.002-05:00

i miss you.

goddammit.

editing a newspaper sorta sucks all of my creativity. not sucks. but, requires. i have neglected you AND my lovely pen pals.

but, as i get ready to catch another lovely tfs film screening, i will give you a little somethin somethin.

violence. there's been a lot of hate on the streets of peterborough lately. and i've been seriously challenging myself to talk about it more. its hard to explain, but it's different. in my brain, its just different. the hate i get when im alone. its most always connect to my disability. not my gender, not my queerness. but my face. and its hard to negotiate a way to reach out to friends, my community without...re-living hate that really can't be 'explained'.

my friends ask... 'what happened?!!'

and i'm...sorta at a loss. usually i laugh and say it doesn't matter. trivializing the actual event in know way 'deals with it' for me. but it avoids feeling vulnerable the way i usually do when it happens.

but...what happened?

i can't help but getting all kristieva on this one. i represent the abject, for a lot of people. one time, i was alone on an elevator in the charlotte towers (i hate that place.) and when the doors opened, the young man on the other side waiting for the elevator shrieked.

shrieked.

he immediately apologized and got flustered. i can't remember if he took the elevator with me or not. but i just wanted to run. and vomit. but mostly run.

that was an extreme case, but they're all kinda like that. yelling, gasping, or laughing. which is how we deal with trauma. its hard feeling like a trauma for humans.

and its hard telling you about it because i don't know how to explain it really. are these people assholes? i can't really say. because there's so many. and if you didn't know me, maybe you'd scream. maybe i would.

this might take my whole life to figure out. or maybe, it's self righteous to think i ever will.

breakdown, or- i guess making a newspaper is like being a dad.

2010-09-07T15:06:00.003-04:00

i need and want someone to take care of me too.

i think i hate that about my humanness. i can be a rock and a island and a mutant and an android. but not simultaneously human.

words like woah

2010-09-06T12:37:00.005-04:00

oh blog of mine. oh heart, i have not neglected you. intentionally.

what a summer. i have to say that because truly, it is not summer outside any longer. so much rain and so much bracing against the wind. and change change change. new rooommate. new job. new crush. you're not surprised, are you.

over the last month, my drunk alter ego has been named 'jeff'. the sardonic, antisocial jes that comes out when i'm feeling particularly anxious, and have been drinking. some evenings more charged than others, but really- its a little scary.

scary because things have been...relatively speaking...really okay.

i am i am i am. i am where i am not. lacan, learning, self reflection. whatever. d is going going gone, and i'm not just here left behind, but one sturdy left foot forward.

and i haven't had sex in months now. but i have had kisses. many lovely kisses. many lovely people. and one in particular, a long friend-acquaintence turned affectionate point of interest.

he's...we can call him wally. wally is bigger than me. we look like a funny big guy small guy hip hop group beside each other. he talks in low mumbles about philosophy and i talk in big hands and loud syllables about... what do i even talk about?

anyway. he's a good friend. he's far too deprecating, but i am too, so its familiar. and enough drunk hands finding tender holding has had me wondering recently about 'those feelings'.

caring about people, no matter the capacity, means you are vulnerable to them. i think thats where jeff came from in the first place. a deep subconscious reaction to caring about someone again. someone that i dunno-maybe-i-like could really-kinda-maybe-hurt-me.

but. i gotta breathe. because its not a bad thing. he's not a bad thing. feelings are not a bad thing. waiting, changing myself for someone new, self doubt- these, are maybe not so good things.

it's awkward. it's always fuckin awkward. it's supposed to be, i guess.

but sabatoging my own enjoyment of someone's company becausee they may not feel the same way (which is what, i still am not sure) is an old pattern that needs to be dropped off at the curb, if i actually want to care about that silly human notion of hope.

dates like kites

2010-07-26T20:32:00.002-04:00

eli clare's book of poetry 'the marrow's telling' spins in its interludes some beautiful imagery of kites.

i flew my kite for hours on end, spinning line out, red tail hawks keening on the updrafts, sun and wind reaching through me.

but its a tug of a kite beyond nostalgia. its an idea about stories and spaces. silences and echos. i've been on lots of lovely dates lately. and i've gradually stopped thinking of them as trials, of do or die. of make a move or look like a loser, because its all just noise. and isn't there already so much old music?

you are pressure to perform but i resist. performing. you make me just wanna be. and tell you my stories too fast. i liked it when we had to pause last saturday. and wait to say the next thing. wearing our own eager conversation out. but a running camcorder in an art gallery with park equipment indoors outfitted my mind just the same with our synchronized swinging and head thrown back laughing. you're elegant like not noticing the way tablecloth corners happen to neatly fall below soldier fork-knife-spoon. you take off thursday. and i think it doesn't matter like it would last year. you're not the hope of a hope. just a barstool til 2am beside me while friends danced nearby and we couldn't tear ourselves apart neatly, evenly. i'd finish your beer as you walked alone out the door that would soon be kicking my ass each time we watch our shaky footage.

spinning line out, i listened to the hills echo, keen, reverberate, cradling the red tail's lonely call.

i can barely get my groceries in the fridge fast enough to meet you parked outside my dark apartment. i came outside before even receiving your text, knowing somehow you'd never come in to get me. my throat was starting to ache with damp neglect and two nights under drunk stars-more-than-skies. but we drove. we drove as the wands of the gods crashed down around us. you were all business. ballcap concealing the back of a freshly buzzed head, you put on 'white sky' to duoro and explained weather conditions like a scientist making conversation. the sturdy backrest prevented any weak knee nonsense but the orchestra outside fogging windows surely made the steam inside the car quiver.

let story be that kite, wild blue of sky, tug and beckon, dialogue and demand.

will you

2010-07-15T10:51:00.003-04:00

they're on top of each other

those boys

wrestling in the coatroom

as i watched

(always had a thing for watching)

wesley and mikey

it was valentine's day

i had a crush on wesley

and spelled out my affection with a $2 hallmark and some

plastic gold letters

finally a face emerges

beat from the tousle

jessica loves you

are you gonna kiss?

mikey taunts

to a flustered other boy

no! i don't even think

she can kiss!

it was true

at 9

these lips puckered only

for lemon jelly and sour patch kids.

but its incredible

the things we learn

short leg strong

2010-07-15T00:05:00.012-04:00

i wake up late

stare at the cheesies on the floor

and the shoes still on my feet

and the sun through the

christ what time is it windows

of my bedroom

racing the coffee pot

with a before work shower

i make a pact with the old spice body wash

i bought on one of those

'this is a lot of body wash and smells like the sorts of boys who make my knees weak'

impulses,

to quit drinking

(note to self - this smell turns showering into

ahem. long showering)

maybe if i just switch to light beer?

don't get me wrong

i respect nondrinkers

and smoothies

and freshly squeezed organic juices

and livers just not into

that kind of thing

consent is sexy

but i

am the kinda guy

who learned quite young

that i'd rather say yes to a fight

a challenge

a shot and a bar to dance on top of

than no

i can't

i'm not like you

my body is small

and 87 pounds

and riddled with words like

arthrogryposis

scoliosis

and that one leg shorter than the other

swaggerotosis

so i push myself

i ignore the red flags

while i hoist the rainbow ones

i will dance til the morning

and still find flicker in my eyes to walk you home

and linger in your doorway-

give in my bones to

push past your layers

of skin

and sensibility-

burn in my muscles to

drive until dawn

until i can feel you

fall asleep

around me

a friend of mine told me not to let it go to my head

this american able stuff

this art star famous stuff

and i find that funny

somehow

because its not about vanity

or humility

but dichotomy

i don't need to be on the screens of the TTC

to have one more asshole

tell me

how inspiring i am

its a distraction

the disabled distraction

if you're a fucking hero

no one has to sort out their shit

we can just smile or cry

i heard that one of the people detained

during the G20

was beaten with his own prosthetic leg

he worked for Revenue Canada

and i gotta say

when i read that

i couldn't stop laughing

man

here i was

stuck in peterborough

wishing i could protest with my disabled comrades

from DAMN2025

having to read Anne's speech online instead

about the money spent on securing

the fate of those secure nation leaders

and the money cut

from the diets of the special, disabled and poor

by our nation's leader

and buddy is knocked out with his own leg

shit.

i couldn't have written a better metaphor

he's not a hero

he's just another person getting whacked by the phallus of capitalism

and god if only that was a sexier thing to watch

i was kicked out of the washroom at woody's once

because i wasn't in there alone

but when that scuzzy door swung open

the 6 foot bar man

looked at me so fast he needed

to tell you

that you could take me upstairs

for the key

to the accessible

stall-

his apologies

the choice

between tired

from banging my head on the same wall

or tired

from too many cocktails

and un-healthy decisions

makes me wonder

what health even means

feminist fighter

betty friedan once said

that if we take care of the day

the night will take care of itself

but i think

sometimes

you gotta take the night like a lover by the hand

walk with her up to the bar

and slam down the key to the accessible

washroom

after 45 minutes

NEED HELP.

2010-07-13T18:29:00.003-04:00

k guys.

im performing at ryerson on thursday night. and they want me to do like 10minutes of material. but, i havent written any new poetry in a while. and i like doing new & relevant stuff...

sooo i was thinking.

are there any blog posts you like that i could read as prosetry? bloggetry? ah?

ideally, since its an event called 'cripruption', it would have something to do with disability.

you're not coming home tonight

2010-07-07T17:59:00.004-04:00

i'm working on getting back into the poetry headspace so that i have nice bundle of new stuff to perform next week at cripruption- a disability event at ryerson i've been asked to perform at.

who was it that said
if we succeed in the day
the night will take care
of itself
was it friedman or
mcclung
or de beauvoir
or whatshername

as much as i like solid
arity
i don't know how true
a thing this is
for me

it has been my experience that the night doesn't take care of itself. and all this fighting for a cause makes for days tricking nights into knees weak from tripping.

i was supposed to love and trust the feminist women like i was supposed to love and trust the christians like i was supposed to love and trust the doctors because we're all human right?

but its the night that is more honest than the day. the nights like last, which found me in a sunroom smoking unnecessary cigarettes and sipping whiskey til the sky caved and begged for some.

you soft spoken indie hipster boy with beautiful round sides. and you called me kiddo, curled, face to face with boy to boy underwear. i leaned in to kiss you, not to fight morning but to find the extra whiskey and cigarettes. stubble and sweet i lay there and can think of the friends of mine swearing they'll never sleep beside men.

and i get it. but also, it reminds me of church. and her.

it is often the powerlessness in them hers that can sabotage the strength in me.

back pieces

2010-07-04T17:58:00.004-04:00

so...

all this tattoo talk and internet surfing and i've found another idea.

i've often though about the idea of getting a backpiece but my back has been my canvas in so many ways, so i've shied away from the daunting idea of 'coming up with' some sort of art to be worn there.

until now, that is.

amanda wachob is a tattoo artist based out of nyc. i found her stuff randomly on an image search, but browsing her portfolio, i stumbled across the idea of 'abstract' tattoo art.

can you imagine? strokes and pauses with a brush made all over my back. where scars are nestled. lines chosen, lines imposed, lines of stretched skin, lines of aged skin, and lines of bones beneath flesh.

i doubt i could make it to nyc before the fall... maybe end of summer... but i'd love to let this artist 'play' on my back.

"hopped a train and brother did we fly" - a postcard (and a misquoted townes van zandt)

2010-07-04T14:34:00.005-04:00

ruby asked me if i get lonely.

it was midnight and i was still in my office, for some reason. instead of writing a paper for stephen's take home exam, i wrote a play. and that day, that day was the mandolin's last day in peterborough before the yukon. and it was that day that his postcard arrived.

i tried to explain to ruby the difference in one day, of knowing i would miss someone, and actually experiencing that absence. we played an acoustic gig that evening and it wasn't there...the magical second row. and it stung... like a million tiny stings. the transition from something you loved without abandon, into something signifying loss.

yet. another. thing.

but loss isn't lonely.

lonely is different. last night, the palpable loneliness was incredible. i picked a fight with ruby (or partially...mostly in my mind) for leaving carelessly for toronto and the pride festivities. in made me nervous. about our grand plans for the following fall - pick a queer-friendly US city and start fresh. do graduate work.

i suddenly felt ...less secure. ruby is a variable all her own. she, like everyone else, is outside of me. in fact, according to lacan, i am outside of me, in part.

when one of my favourite couple friends decided to stay in, and with ruby away, meaghan travelling, c falling in love with i and ever so far away emotionally, d literally so far away- even though i've 'gotten over it'... i just... sobbed.

maybe because my life is quite contented right now. i have multiple jobs (two and a half?), ambitions, school (and praises), and am no less social and flirty like i've always been.

but i guess i've always been the kind of guy that doesn't cut their world right open, hoping for a partner to complete the unit. i wish i was sometimes. not to say, having a partner is always better than not. but, i'm not convinced i know how to want that. and it seems to be such a priority in many... all?... my friends lives. and its terrifying. at least with d around, i was able to live for years inside an unrequited, unhealthy, dramatic friendship that was ever-present in my life. strange thing to say? well...i mean, it kept me occupied.

last night was indeed loneliness. and age.

i'm 25. i think i was half disheartened that i wasn't wooed like ruby by a scene and a dancefloor that has won me over so many nights before. it felt like i had not only gotten over emotional love canyons like d, but also, and perhaps more, a younger self. or, an expired self.

the horror. the horror.

every summer...for the past 4 summers, i've talked about my dream of going sky diving. i fear large bodies of water, and air-rated lawns (don't ask). but the sky...falling... i love falling. my memories of hang gliding in peru still exhilerate me.

and as i was watching 'last holiday' (terrible movie) and trying to cheer myself up, i thought 'hell. i have the money now. this year, this year i should do it'.

and actually, i think its a poignant time. i've been wanting to do it for the thrill. the feeling. and okay, maybe the metaphor. but now, i'm starting to think i need to do it for the fear.

"Courage is the price that Life exacts for granting peace. The soul that knows it not, knows no release from little things." -AE

amelia. queen of the skies. i'm going to get an amelia bust tattooed on my right deltoid. i've been saving that real estate for something important and i think this all ties in quite nicely. i think that's the sort of person i am. my fear is most definitely in the little things. its the exhileration of the things so much bigger than me that fuel my journey.

perhaps i would do well to reflect on some of her words more often. in reality, these sorts of personal adventures are never wasted. nor do they claim me as separate from companionship. they just... make me poly lovers with the sky. and that is not something to underrate.

"The more one does and sees and feels, the more one is able to do, and the more genuine may be one's appreciation of fundamental things like home, and love, and understanding companionship." -AE

it takes more

2010-06-28T14:41:00.000-04:00

than fucking someone you don't know

to keep yourself warm

(frightened rabbit)

"the truth, george. always tell the truth. its the easiest thing to remember."

2010-06-28T13:27:00.005-04:00

drama drama drama.

so, i woke up sunday wearing a hangover, accomplishment, and hives.

in no particular order... hangover. why can't red wine and a flask of whiskey work for once without making me sleepy and pruning my brainbuds? whatever. the music was yummy and the crowd not-so-young and not-so-crowded.

edith happened to be there and asked me what i was up to this weekend... or perhaps if i was done school? to either question i replied that i still had work to submit to her dad. ha. never said that at a party before.

accomplishment? even if the response you get is 'i thought you were a lesbian', telling someone you have a crush on them is rewarding and laudable.

hives. all over my body. itchy and painful. ruby suggested rust paint as the culprit. which could be likely... had i been around any recently. so far, no sleep times 2.

my brain is trying to sort out what i need to say for stephen's assignments. his classes always leave me with so many welcome and unwelcome questions. and observations. none of which are ever simple. or direct.

story telling. salesmen. masculinity. american drama. the family. redemption. death. naivity. money. impotency. baronness. pipedream. cadiallac. shame. silence. public. private. pleasant.

the way we acknowledge and don't acknowledge harvey, gabriel, simon.

is the story authentic?

one day after class stephen went on about lyric poetry and plays- how, as reader or audience, it doesn't matter if the story is true, it's how it affects us. if the feeling it elicits is authentic, we take it home with us.

if it moves you, you're stuck.

like a sermon. like a sales pitch.

Moss: I lied. Alright? My end is my business. Your end's twenty-five. In or out. You tell me, you're out you take the consequences.

Aaronrow: And why is that?

Moss: Because you listened.

this snippet from act 1, scene 2 of glengarry glen ross (mamet) puts dialogue to stephen's sentiment.

like the self-sustaining story, 'the family' is not designed to reveal truth but keep it concealed - it would shatter otherwise.

the stories in this class are representations of families. or vice versa. the families in these plays are stories. will the story destroy itself by the end? with truth? or will it sustain/reinvent, because we don't want it to not be there?

the american hero. dignity, and salesmanship. dignity and salesmanship?
how far do you have to move life to transform it into theatre?

why you look so sad?

2010-06-19T15:11:00.003-04:00

playing cowbell in a 8 person band is less of a novelty than it may seem.

i stretch it too far, i think. i make 1 & 3 or 2 & 4 feel like rest after paradiddles with one stick and one hollow chunk of metal. it feels like tap dancing. but my favourite part of those lights and this band and that stage is standing beside you.

curled over your mandolin with fingers and fretless fortune, my percussive metal clang cutting through the guitar riffs with a metronomic whisk and stir, we laugh a lot because the frontman and his fiddler keep the magic of our you and me row concealed enough to feel like backstage.

i pretend to duel your underrated string stroking with jovial tambourine-to-foot action, but the laughing between us keeps me farther from the pull of the twelve bars that we'll both go home to.

slap stick percussion is the kind of pun i save for you, with eyes and earnest grin that begs your study. i don't know if last night was the last show, because you're leaving on canada day. but you gave me a lozenge like a parting gift. i shouldn't have had that beer because my throat was already swollen.

i guess i'm afraid of mornings like today, cooing at monarchs over breakfast with you. because once you say it, it can fly away. and i won't get to write the magic anymore. and i miss the magic when it flies away.

dogs with wheels

2010-05-21T09:36:00.004-04:00

i woke up today remembering your last week in peterborough. it wasn't a remarkable week. but as lasts are made to feel, i guess it was too.

i've resisted blogging for a while with all this american able buzz. because this is the space i've been using to 'just write' in that unfiltered way. surveillance is an interesting beast. feeling like you're walking some imaginary line between your honest to goodness self and the self you feel the need to be, now that you've earned a cyber-soapbox.

but fuck it.*

*(i enjoy how this phrase sounds like both 'but fuck it' aaaaand 'buttfuck it'. ahem. anyway. moving on.)

we were working on our last papers on the mushy couch of a mutual friend. the kind of casually kept friend that presents little drama but also not enough interest to see on a regular basis. the necessary layer in ones friendships, as the comings and goings and moods and makings of the 'close' pal (or undefined person) can be tough on a little heart.

nothing writes essays like youtube videos. particularly medleys of children falling. or miracle dogs. one dog had lost its hind legs. or perhaps never had functioning hind legs? i can't remember. but someone had engineered a little wheelie to help balance him out.

i giggled at the endearment. a quadraped with wheels doesn't need a sitting position, the way us bipeds have found. as my mind thought about wheelchairs and segways and neocentaur possibilities, you cut through the room with the percussion of repulsion. a 'see this is whats wrong with the world' and 'it should have died', and 'thats just not right'.

and i know its not quite the same as, you know, people and wheelchairs, my heart wiggled around a little bit, chafing inside a body with a casual relationship with prosthetics.

truth and illusion.

the fabric of my day to day is woven with so much hued fallacy it hums steadily like an engine. two canine legs and an axel is 'unjust' because you divide 'nature' from 'machine' like alpha and omega. like toast and eggs. like black and that other one.

my heart goes crunch with these realities and realizations. pop is $1.99 because flagging a 1 is easier than saying, actually this is gonna cost you 2 bucks. you okay with that? a dog on wheels is not natural. neither is this yogurt. or that floor cleaner. or this elocution.

when the rubrics fail to grade contradictions that shape the brilliance of the flawed, quirky, diseased, deformed that has never ceased to occur in our recorded inhabitance on this planet, on what plane do we to turn to for our ever-necessary evaluations?

you are disgusted by the dog with wheels. you cut your thumb in first year and called the appendage your gimp. you discuss procreation with the air of 'old-fashioned'. but hell, so did the missionaries.

but the space between noble and nobility is about as vast as life and death. as toast and eggs. as wheels and crawling. an existence despised. we look upon the creativity of this 'created' world with about as much tenderness and beholding as ... a chute with the word metaphor industifferently stamped across an ample direction.

woah.

2010-05-14T14:49:00.000-04:00

what language is this?

blogblogblog

news article.

2010-05-10T16:04:00.002-04:00

the star

i love the descriptions she kept. especially meagh's affectionate 'dice-rollin hand' pet name for my claw. hehe.

alSO

2010-05-06T13:08:00.003-04:00

my website, on zenfolio's free trial (suck it, bitches) for the time being.

crooked canvas

american able

2010-05-06T12:39:00.010-04:00

the series.

eat (your heart out)

the interview, the plugs, the haterz, the blogs.

gender across borders

2010-05-06T11:15:00.002-04:00

"Clearly, there is no problem too small in a first world country. Regardless, the effect is somewhat intriguing, visually-speaking. It’s as if Charney dropped acid one morning and rang up Diane Arbus to shoot his next ad campaign. Sachse’s body, decked out in AA-brand Reveal-o-Ware is simultaneously intimately familiar and arrestingly different. It’s hard to know what to think. The pictures are as uniquely fascinating as they are quietly discomfiting."

(more from Breslin)

sigh.

sometimes i love what i do. sometimes, i...i'm tired.

web.site.

2010-05-05T20:09:00.001-04:00

...suggests for hosts and stuff?

i used to use zenfolio, but then they censored by stuff. and i never renewed. and now i have no site on which to display my art.

was it me?

2010-04-26T19:34:00.001-04:00

was i always ready to make you a memory?

clairvoyance

2010-04-24T18:00:00.005-04:00

my hair was days of dirty the day you left town

tag-along to your goodbye brunch

you hugged your friends / exes

in succession before

and i slipped out the back to the bathroom

cried into the mirror

like a bad poem

my hair was days of dirty the day you left town

you never came to the bathroom

i emerged to pay and realized i had forgotten to order food

my hair was days of dirty the day you left town

like a bad poem

----------------------]

there's a gap in my existence now

it's a like a weekend that might force somebody into a recovery group

i knew my battle was no longer about finding the centre anymore

it had come to be about forgetting it

i was a landless nowhere

an ellipses too long to type

---- /magpie ulysses

man.

2010-04-18T15:35:00.002-04:00

sometimes i wish there was a place called 'get laid here'.

...

(i mean. fine fine. dating. romance. seduction. blah blah. but i have essays to write. errands to run. babies to kiss. ribbons to cut.)

fuck anarchofeminist utopic earth goddess communes. i want a sex portal.

floating down the otonabee

2010-03-27T22:27:00.006-04:00

so, i've flooded you with lots of poetry lately. mostly because it keeps interrupting my essay.

whine, whine.

but i've failed to give you much life context. ma bad.

its spring. i can feel it in my coffee snarfing, schoolboy giggling, stone skipping bones. i have crushes abound, and deadlines trying relentlessly to buckle my spirit (and failing beautifully).

the poem i wrote about manhood was inspired by a very swoon-worthy kiss moment at a gay dance a couple weeks back. it threw me for a few intersecting identity loops. a gay man and a gay jes and what i know about gender and what i know about me and old barriers crashing down with wet, sloppybeautiful lips, and a stubbled chin like a welcome mat instead of a weapon or a wile.

dumbstruck, dumbfounded, and all around disabledlanguage surprised by my own skin and sexy, i processed. and processed and processed.

oh, repining heart of mine. longfellow would smack me, i know. but the truth is, if it feels real, it is. solipcynicism aside, i think it can be fair to allow yourself to experience something without jumping ship in a rejection and self-loathing dingy.

so, i poemed it. as erotically and palpably as i felt it. and then i performed it at a poetry slam that i had not predicted he would be at. and whaddya know... he figured out it was about him, was cool and flattered about it, and messaged me the proverbial 'i'm a boy-only gay... i thought you were a girl-only gay too?'

i wanted to say everything. my 5 year journey in bones and boobs and gender and sex and 'well maybe men too, in an auden sorta way...' but sometimes a word count is a useful thing.

so i paused. i vented to a. who happened to be sitting behind me at natas - someone i trust, but who isn't directly connected to my day-to-day life. told her about my desires. about how it was okay that he was flattered and confused because i was too. told her about his 100% boy gay response. and how, i guess the gay boy in me likes the (100%) gay boy in him. in that erotic, sultry dark alley makeout men kind of way. and she said, you know, that's hot. you should tell him that.

and i thought, yeah. yeah why can't i?

she threw in a great line for me too about my mouth not having a vagina (if its any consolation), which felt sexy and flirty and confident like i'd like to be.

its not even about unrequited or pining or whatever sometimes. more like, creative autocartography. and this fear of being alone....god. i'm starting to think its a thinly veiled excuse not to trust myself.

co2

2010-03-24T12:43:00.001-04:00

she moved to this city too much in love

with places she'd been

her eyes, sparkling like the collections

of a magpie

saw me in different bars

(she can't remember where)

this city

was a heart

that she moved through

was a t shirt

she sweat through

during dishwasher shifts

that cracked her hands

like the binding

on some book of poetry

she is a memory-

like the one

where i'm in the basement of that Christian private school

in my gym clothes

six years old

wearing those velcro shoes i always fished out of

the lost and found

and i'm holding my prism

my friends, circled around me

they just thought it was a piece of glass

until i told them about refracted light

and then they all wanted to hold it

because it was special

was a gateway

made me important

but irene was bigger than me and maybe i wanted her

protection

a big sized kid ally

so i let her hold it

reluctantly

and her clumsy big sized kid hand

dropped it

and the concrete floor accomplice

severed that parallelogram in two

she apologized

i said it was okay

and the kids went to gym

but i stared at it on the ground and pouted

and i think

that was the day i learned about loss

because i put the pieces back in

its velvet pouch until i got home

and sobbed and told my daddy

and he bought me a new one

and i thanked him but

i didn't hold it the same way, i

think i figured

well, the world has buttloads of prisms

i guess

maybe in a silo somewhere

run by bill nye

you learn things at five

and four

and six

that surface later like a revelation

but

poetry slams and show and tell

poggs and poker chips

clip-on ties and trust issues

drinking problems and imaginary friends

poo jokes and well... poo jokes

its old news

and nothing hurts like the first time

she spoke to me

in my language

from 4, or 6, or 5

i know cuz she told me she

learned its meter

measured distance

to mouth

to pulse

to having me at hello

she had big kid sized confidence

and adjectives

and i figured maybe she could protect me

she told me once

oh, she told me a lot of things

but once in a poem

on a stage

she called me the destination

and i imagine

a road map

like the 23rd birthday card

she used to tell me i was her moon

her watch

her jam

sticky

practical

lunar

and so many miles away

from

you, child of the sun

i should have listened

should have remembered physics

and known lightyears and einstein

and

calculated two

weeks to open

and close me

by fifty-two ache like an eye

like a scared shoe

like a shitty patrick swayze inspired ceramic bowl

used as an ashtray

should have listened to your metaphors

instead of eating them

like jam

like punctuation

i am not on that map

not yours

or the new king james version

none of us are

even if maybe

okay

there's a sachse, texas

and i have the t shirt

thought i could keep

time

if i danced for you

like Cecilia

or Biggie

but you are palpitating

through this city

that i work for

Little artery

shuttling blood cells

with chemistry

oxygenating the tired--O, my love

i traded with you too

because that's what i do;

a little O and O -->

for your CO2 baby

may

always wish you had let me

[circulate:]inside you too

tasting your language

with the many tongues

of my

hemoglobin

but if its not tonight

well then

thats okay-

we are immortal

under a microscope

hey

remember how i took you here on our first

date

pretty sure i didn't know what a double of whisky was

or why i should drink one

before that night

you said it felt like you'd known me

prehistorically

and maybe thats the only place we'll ever balance

equilibrium, baby

remember how i took you home after and tried to make

osmosis with our lips

you and your impermeable membrane turned me down easy

as your algorithms

so i put on october sky

one of like 5 movies i had on vhs

and we fell asleep talking about lesbians or something

(little artery) (big spoon)

(little spoon) (big smile)

and then

face / to / face

occupying a fraction of a bed

that will always feel like a velvet pouch

in my palm

when its gone again

i don't think up comebacks anymore

2010-03-18T17:39:00.017-04:00

i guess

it was a somewhat endearing moment

not

like its new

the laughing chorus

you can clock me at

2-3 per week

times 52 reps a year

times 25 year career

hmmm

2600-3900

professionally speaking

it adds up

but in some ways

it's always my first

step

on the elevator with my father

they wait

the Goonies with juice-stained lips

and shorts their mother laid out for them

that morning

with chocolate milk and race car

tough guy dreams

still crying

over skinned knees

tattooed with bruises and

youth

like i remember my knees

hard-working

with the curve in my back

turned toward them

they are two

until

the lift stops at 2

levels

and another

floor

as more

file in

the box on pulley answering

to buttons

smeared with sticky soccer hands

i can't hear my father over

freckles and front teeth

still coming in

big and white

entitled front row spot

in smile

or cackle

or sneers

steered

from the company of ascot's little men afraid of what goes bump in the night

where their bell tower popcorn

etches my hump, in spite of the fact

that i don't always have my cloak of night shadow

armor

from these

not yet successful covert

operators still learning

to tie tight their

sneakers, snickers

behind me

telling me to answer my father louder

or ask a question

about the weather

or jesus

or his band

or his beard

greying hopefully

enough to muffle what he might not have observed

on this elevator

yet

doors open

stepping onto carpeted room with my father

and a trailed off conversation

encasing the several i've had

with children who squealed audibly scattered

amongst

adults who watch reality

t.v. telling

snot wiping sleeves to 'watch your mouth' and 'mind

your manners'

but the only one i trust

is slow step

slow step

hunched over

walker click

shifting hip

bones

in front of me

who saves his foul mouth

for the bedroom

like me

with my cock out.

2010-03-18T16:31:00.010-04:00

i think about touching his body

on the bus

on the couch

on the dancefloor

in a cafe

in my dreams

i think about his body pressed close to mine

(airtight seal)

i think about his rough

chin,holding his soft tongue

chasing mine

and tequila

i think about his manhood

and where i want it

to meet

my own,i think

about my body

and what it likes

and how it talks

if you listen

and then

i think

about how his body

has things to say

to me,maybe

like touch me

here

like this

like that

and baby

and oh

and then

him, looking at my

manhood

thinking about where

he wants it

to meet his own

burrows is probably going to change the juicy bits

2010-03-14T20:32:00.003-04:00

so ima post some of the original parts of my article this week. mostly cuz its gay and i like it.

---------

The Secret of the Midnight Shadow

Believe it or not, I was a boy scout. I'm sure its coed and stuff now, but back in the day (circa Jes at 13 - think keen times a trillion) it was boys-only boy scouts. The only non-penises were me and the scout leader's daughter. We tied knots, went camping in all four seasons, shoved each other, told ghost stories, ate smores...and played dodgeball a lot in the school gymnasium. Yes, tucked away with my decorated sash are fond memories of getting my 'culture' badge by making shnitzel for my troop, in honour of the mother(deutsch)land (believe it or not, Sachse is German and pronounced 'zook-sah' ).

But where was I? Hardy boys, Dick and Jane, boy scoutery; this imagery is the homoerotic rascal infantry of the pre-pubescent boychild. With his own sprinkle of life-sized Never Neverland magic, artist Daryl Vocat has created a world for us in full street view at Artspace.

With a coat of near-nighttime cerulean covering the four walls of the main space, Vocat takes us to the nigthmarish whimsy of these small cops, robbers, and twilight mischiefs. Creator of Edmonton-planted poster project 'Children Be Gay', depicting other characters of boyhood, this show encompasses a body of work at the core of Vocat's artist passion, which he has been moulding since 2006. Before its unveiling in our city, the show was shown in both Edmonton and Toronto. Intrigued by the detail of the background work, I inquired about Vocat's installation-labour. "I use projectors in order to map out the trees and background details. The show at Latitude 53 (in Edmonton) was much less minimalist than this show though. I just found the background to be too busy, and detracting from the figures," Vocat shares.

Introduced to the artist by Dahn, who's calf is now sporting a pair of Vocat's figures, I share his excitement for the spectacular 'finished' work. Of course, its not really finished. Over the next month it will be there for us to invite us into a rabbit hole realm of slingshots, shade and glances. The subtlety of the visual reference to the secrecy of gay male experiences, both growing up and in their adult lives (undercover bars, sneaky rendevous, hook ups in alleys and other sexy dark places...) is powerful and an important aspect of the work. The work reminds me greatly of Uxbridge painter Daniel Colby and his series 'Collegiate'. Pouting about the prospect of spending 6 months in my slow, hick, and twenty-something repellent hometown, I grumbled trailing behind my mother and her man pal as we went on the artist studio tour last October. Our first stop was a father and son duo - dad makes furniture, son paints pictures of houses. They were good paintings, but houses are boring to me.

After being interrupted from holding up the wall with my tough guy look when a woman asked cheerily 'are you the artist?' (what? cuz i'm covered in tattoos, look gay and out of place? probably more because i was grimacing for so long), I wander into a small back room. There, before my eyes, was not paintings of houses, but boys. Young and adolescent boys, posed with each other in such a strikingly covert way, many of the bustling country bumpkins didn't seem to pick up on the cues. One older woman sure did, and got out of that room pretty fast. But not me. I stayed and stared and stared. It got me through those months, lemme tell you.

Opening this past Friday, Dary Vocat's work, along with two other works will be exhibited until April 24th. A short film entitled 'Labyrinth' portrays a surrealist private eye afterlife tale employing stop animation through a retouched painting storyboard, a groovy film noir sound, and in decipherable mutter-dialogue.

In the Mudroom (the gallery's back space), Montreal-based artist Sayeh Sarfarez features a multi-media installation entitled 'Magic Never Ends: Iran of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Well coupled with the theme of Vocat's work, this exhibit tells a story of a war zone struggle and dissent through lego men, a helium balloon, chicken wire, and a looped soundtrack (a song of inspiration to Iranian resistors). The live-streaming video surveilled show-patrons interaction with the work, scrawled across the walls in at times purposefully micro-sized handwriting. The devastation of armed conflict is told in arrows, paragraphs and miniature playtoys.

Standing 4'9" and looming over the lego-daisy grave of a man whose experience and struggle is unfathomable to me, I can't help but feel the ineffability of his donut-size chicken coop graveyard seeping into my boots traypsing clumsily across the artist-marked concrete-landscape floor. And I suppose thats the point. I walked out of the room feeling less the superficial 'well, all this is so much bigger than me', and more the unknowing passport holder in solidarity with a struggle I can't understand any more in lego literature than press releases.

Between The Secret of the Midnight Shadow and the Magic Never [Ending], this childlike world created for grown-ups welcomes us with tender terror, into inverted worlds between words.

shawty's like a melody in ma head, that i can't keep out got me singin like

2010-03-11T18:24:00.005-05:00

essay essay essay.

rj visited me in my 'special booth' in the liesbrary. its not mine i guess but when i got here it was occupied and i didn't know what to do with myself. i wandered around the 3rd floor aimlessly, like a fucking little doe- 'yer not my mama' at every vacant study space.

but score! i'm here and ima pillage this essay and all its essay cousins.

i'm listening this song 'replay'... on replay. (veeeery creative jes).

last night i went to the trent film society screening of dakan. i cried during the love scene. it's this incredible film about this boy in guinea that loves this other boy. classic homo story told in a very beautiful and unique way. amazing shots- minimalist lighting.

and manga tries, through religious ceremony and for the love of his mother, tries to move beyond his feelings for sori, and falls in love with a woman. but when they start to make love, his mind goes to sori. and not just imaging oumou was sori, but going to moments the two men had together, kissing, falling down laughing. and my heart broke a little bit as i thought about the times i've had sex and been thinking about d; desiring a companion i wasn't in bed with, and the weight of the guilt of not being 'there' for the other person.

and then manga visits sori at the end and sori asks if manga would like to meet his son (new baby with new wife). and manga plays with the child with this piercing laughter and enthusiasm that made me overwhelmingly sad and happy at the same time. imagining holding d's baby, the baby of someone who you hold so much love for, in a being they created. but the wave of knowing this baby is a piece of the life you didn't have with someone you loved so strongly.

...

and rj and i are laughing in this booth and talking about criticisms we have of this queer community. masculinities privileged, whiteness prevailing. feedback unwelcome. stepping back from organizing has been a blessing. looking for new teachers, mentors, places to learn. i have been a teacher too, but the best leaders never stop making students out of themselves. this, i have learned.

rj is one of my teachers. so is nate. so is my father. my father who visited and told me he didn't see colour at the dub fest after telling me he didnt realize it was a black type of poetry. i was like 'of course you saw colour, dad. and its a good thing. peterborough doesn't often have artistic spaces wherein racialized people make up the majority of performers and attendees.'

people like my dad will get their back up and fight if you ask them to. 'asking them to' is disrespecting their voice. privileged or not, if you want someone to listen to what you have to say, you have speak with love. and sure, i'm no fool. i know that if we went around telling the ignorant we loved them, we'd open ourselves up to attack and abuse. but, discernment is key. and not just seizing opportunities but making them. and not just making them in the moment, but laying down the ground work.

and now, back to this essay...

don't speak too soon

2010-03-02T19:53:00.003-05:00

(they did it. they broke me. they broke in. with broadway and candles and chorus. they showed me a love undiluted and i said stop and they said no. the self loathing. its rooted in colonial mire. but i gotta find a new pond to swim in. clear clear water, filtering into my pores.)

birthdays

2010-03-01T17:18:00.003-05:00

oh man. twentyfive.

this has perhaps been the best birthday i've yet to experience.

it's sunday and i'm sitting alone in 'my booth' at the olde stone. saddled with a hefty pint of stout and my current overdue essay putputputtering out of me in seismic spurts of almost-academic-enough, and smirking with the satisfaction that sundays after-arthur article submission provides.

d is working in the back. i woke up at her house after another too-drunk to walk home party. dad and nate visited to give me birthday wishes and some of the best gifts i've ever gotten. dad bought me a pair of paratrooper goggles from an army surplus store, and matched with my same-shade leather coat, i look like a young amelia earhart. nate bought me a gorgeous pen. he says he made the would part of it...with aspen? i dont even know if thats a kind of wood...or tree.. but anyway, it's pine-y in colour and inlayed with gold and black. the weight of it in my hand is perfection. 'it's cuz you're a writer' nate says across our table at kubo, as he beams. his zest activates a part of my heart that only he is able to access.

i talked them into accompanying me to the remaining evening of the dub poetry festival. clifton joseph. lillian allen. klyde broox. afua cooper. ritalin. the line up was incredible. titans of the dub movement. word warriors. and my father.

my father, who listened to poem after poem hit syllable to microphone to air. affirming the neocolonial clutch that is cunningly grasping his privilege, in the parenthesis of his queer and only-daughter's life hitting its 25th year. i'm not about to say he drove back to uxbridge with any sort of revelation shackled to his hands, because it was nate that had to drive, courtesy of the gratuitous tequila shots.

but after a series of discussions that blew my mind every way that one's mind can be blown, save for a loaded gun, my birthday meal was literally and figuratively on my father's dime. generationally, i was gifted with time. this time. where queer won't cost my life. where disabled doesn't guarantee segregated, uneducated, immobile. where safety doesn't mean silence.

i exist in a space and time in a body and mind of my mother and father's making. the graces that nate and i have found are a direct result of the spirit and soul they allowed us to see in them. sure, my dad wants to be comfortable and provided for. sure my mom doesn't wave a rainbow flag for me. but they continue to love me here, now. and that speaks in ways that they don't.

i brought nate and dad with me to m and d's pisces party. we rolled with cigars, my dad giggling about how clifton joseph grabbed his hand and told him he'd been 'feeding off his vibe all night'. my dad stood in a circle with my friends shooting the shit, as i grinned and showed them my prezzies. outta of some unknown pocket nate produces a bottle of single malt scotch for me. as IF.

d slid into the booth with me after a shift of muck and grunt work. she orders us calamari to share, and we launch into an evening of conversation that keeps me perpetually smiling. about aging. about this queer community and power, used and misused. about our responsibilities. about of failures. about our future friendship.

we left and rolled into the only, not missing a beat. she read me the label of the chimmay her bartender macking skills afforded us, leaning in close, being sure to meet my cheek with hers. and as i let myself get romanced by her tender and careful intonation, i felt certain of my place in the world.

and i know that sorta thing, paired with the girl and the bar sounds so goddam trite, but it was a real moment. recalling it to you now makes me choke up, as i feel the terror of not having the ready access to d once she rockets from this city that wears her face in restaurant windows and street corners. i was fine before her and will be after but time is leaking a trail of tears behind me like hoda sputters in crackpot.

as much as i am over her, in the in-love sense, i'm still in love with the feeling of her around me. the way she insists on taking care of me. on steering our evening. on being the tempo to our intoxicated dancing. no one spins me like she does. ima miss that. in a way my reluctant heart isn't ready to speak.

and she gets quiet whenever i talk this way. about caring and loving. but i know she remembers me in the same sort of moments. and separation will mean less remembering. so i asked her to go to saskatchewan with me because i've never seen flatness and i've been dreaming of an imagined landscape and she readily-agrees in pipedream punctuation.

maybe this is what 25 means.

we are always mutable. we are always moving. up and away. and away from where we started. away from where our parents first planted our petite pies. its terrifying because its palpable, that distance from the couch to the coffee table. go.

pulling on my socks again

2010-02-17T08:17:00.000-05:00

where did the night go.

writing a book

2010-02-15T16:01:00.005-05:00

is this a ridiculous idea?

truthfully, i always assumed i would attempt to. but anyway. it's for neal's class. the creative writing one. we have to put together a portfolio. a pretty sizable one. i could (and perhaps should, as he is nudging) use it as an opportunity to get started on a book.

problem is, my writing so far ....

well okay. i've got a bumfull of poetry. and some prose-y chapters that sorta just read like a blog. a blog like this one. which is fine, but lacks...well, characters and development and all that shebang.

i could just keep doing the poem thing and submit a whack of them at the end of term. or i could push myself to start an actual story. semi-autobiographical, most likely. but yknow... a thing with chapters and direction. maybe some doodles in it too.

hmmm (would people read this thing?)

hmmm.

i tried to do handstands for you

2010-02-14T13:42:00.003-05:00

this video made my heart smile today

so it's valentine's day. and i have nothing cynical to say.

...

well okay. i've been at dana's since passing out here on friday night post-self love cabaret madness. and saturday slayed me with a killer hangover.

and now it's sunday. dana made me a breakfast sandwich and was chatting with her roommate as they cooked. 'my valentine is almost here', referring to a cross-province hitch hikin lover.

valentine. made me sorta squirmy. not dana having a sweetheart, but the word i guess. like putting scrambled eggs in your pocket.

this song makes me think of all the times before the let down. the 'i-think-i'm-crushing' but you're actually more than crushing and blushing and you can't admit it to yourself yet because once you do any little let down is like a tiny stinging dagger deflating the hope of something new. some new feeling. some new person. the gushy.

i catch myself these days. i do handstands for myself only. which is definitely not without its vim and whimsy. but remove the risk and its just jumping around in a field. i love jumping around in a field. but i'm missing the handstands a lil bitty.

and not because its valentine's day. but maybe because it's just the time of year i wanna chase shadows and feelings. and napkins and knowing glances. and floorboards just worn enough for dancing. and mood lighting. and crusty bartenders. and spills on new shirts. and sloppy goodbyes. and being young when i feel old.

today

2010-02-08T21:52:00.003-05:00

i didn't move.

it was frustrating because i really wanted to go to the library. tomorrow? tomorrow.

bleh.

dedicated

2010-02-07T17:28:00.007-05:00

to you, this self love week.

i just wanna be gay. like really gay. wanna be your burnin butch dyke. wanna be your leather daddy, sugar. just wanna operate you like a drill. wanna take you with my pills. wanna fuck you on your kitchen table. wanna hammer you to a wall. wanna rock you like queen between my flannel sheets. just wanna be your girl in the streets. wanna see you drip wet like summer on sand. just wanna be your unchartered land. just wanna hold your hand. wanna power-suit your lipstick lesbian. wanna let you toss my head of hair behind you. wanna stick-shift remind you. wanna feel your sili-cock between my thunder thighs. wanna be your lord of the flies.

wanna have you pin me against my fair trade fridge...or on top of the recycling bin...below the weight of your vegan-beefy bones. wanna hear your moans. just wanna buffy your apocalypse. wanna be the loose lips on your sinking ship. wanna be sub sub substitute teacher to your principal. wanna be on my knees, master. wanna go harder, faster. just wanna find me a queen to wine and dine and disco. wanna have them hear me in san francisco. just wanna rock out with my cock out to that thumpa-thumpa. just wanna be glitter on your body boy. wanna see you touch your body boy. wanna bend you over my knee and punish your begging bottom. just wanna knight rider your galloping steed. wanna make you bleed. wanna feel you so deep inside me there's no noise. wanna bring the noise, baby. just wanna be your juliet. wanna cleave to some little eggshell picket fences. wanna lose my senses. wanna let you tie me up and paint my nipples chartreuse. wanna play duck duck goose. just wanna soccer mom your dick and jane. wanna feel your pain. wanna pre-nup you in every orifice. wanna ready-rim you ambiguous. wanna pillage your money-spot religious. wanna have your hipster anti-o my hick salacious. wanna daisy drive {formerly you} ze fellatious. just wanna finger-phone-fuck you on-call. wanna have it all. cuz i can have it all.

dear readers

2010-02-04T20:18:00.004-05:00

should you exist.

i must let you know that i change this blog colour on a need-basis. this nauseating pink is courtesy of the pink sparkly heart shaped shortbread cookies i purchased for cara and i at natas today.

re: a note, it has been a turbo-bitch day. i feel my friends (not cara, who lives with me on the island of the non-whole-hearted), perplexed with my moody behaviour as of late. sometimes i think they forget i depressed and that will keep coming back inconveniently. maybe one day it won't. when i have a pony named karl.

but for the time being, its bumpy. the sparkly heart cookies didn't irk me the way valentine's normally does. almost cracked a smile, to be honest. i just don't know what to do with the heart cookies but devour the sparkly icing that my body's continence certainly doesn't know what to do with, squint really hard and hope it translates into something productive as a human citizen.

my posts lately seem sad, i think. or tragic. i don't necessarily feel sad. or tragic. maybe just separate from any sort of upward climb. nothing i do seems to really, add up to something the way we are made to feel actions should. i do things. i feel a feeling. and so it goes.

no matter how much i seem to learn the rules, there are no rules. so i suppose i've stopped caring? about rules? about what healthy is supposed to mean? about what happy is supposed to mean?

my creative writing prof told me my writing on wednesday was sarcastic and witty. he thinks i should be a comedian. he, and the subsequent chiming in of my classmates, are not the first people to tell me this.

i guess i could do that. the same prof told me once that he thought humour was a higher form of thinking. or expression. or something. sometimes there is no greater feeling for me than making people laugh. othertimes, the idea makes me feel more indifferent than anything else. its funny that way.

my aspirations at this point are few. as my birthday nears, i don't know if there is anything about 25 and who i am now that seems out of place.

right now, i'm still at natas, and i really wanna go into the bathroom and pull really hard on my hair, grabbing clumps of it - now long enough for a pony tail - in my fists. and stare at my face in the mirror. sometimes my motor self needs the release of visceral actions rather than these composted words.

a note

2010-02-04T20:02:00.002-05:00

to anyone in a relationship that is monogamous:

please do not give me bedroom eyes. flirt with me. give me your number. follow me to the only. invite me to go dancing with you at the trash. hold my hand when we get there. wait for me to make a move. tell me you have a girlfriend in ottawa you are deeply in love with.

i do not allocate time in my schedule to get played. you're wasting decent buffy watching hours.

most sincerely,

a die-hard loose lady of the evening.

when in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes

2010-02-04T19:20:00.005-05:00

i all alone beweep my outcast state
and trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries
and look upon myself and curse my fate,
wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
featured like him, like him with friends possess'd,
desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
with what i most enjoy contented least;
yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
haply i think on thee, and then my state,
like to the lark at break of day arising
from sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
for thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings
that then i scorn to change my state with kings

i love you

2010-02-02T21:30:00.006-05:00

just got back from montreal. i didn't have the money to go. but i never usually do.

it felt good to travel alone again. i mean, i wasn't entirely alone. my pals and i rented a car together. but, they all had their own plans. and i had to justify the trip with some sort of article for the paper.

i attended a conference on police brutality, which i enjoyed immensely. it reminded my sometimes unjustifiably disenchanted heart that the struggle continues. the struggles bleed into each other. and this quiet... just means i can't see it anymore. the reasons for caring at all. for mobilizing. when i feel too privileged to wave a flag about anything.

i got suspended from welfare again. i submitted my income form well on time, but they lost it it seems. and now my rent will bounce (again) and i will incur the cost. and i'll look like all the stereotypes of someone poor and dealing with mental health issues. and really, i don't need their help in that regard.

but why do i do that? feel shame? get overcome with fear? slink past my landlord's house, situated too close for my liking.

because i believe it too. i believe that crazy and poor are things i need to distance myself from in order to assure myself i am ...who i want to be. but like my prof molly once said to me in her kitchen, as my heart bled all over her table while we sipped our gin: 'you're not a fuck up, jes. you're just struggling. life is struggle'

and ain't it true.

nate sent me an email today entitled 'i love you'. all it said was:

"The person who loves their dream of community will destroy community even if their intentions are ever so honest. But the person who loves those around them will create community."

i guess thats what i'm starting to understand. the intelligence i am crafting with the academic mentors around me means very little in terms of any sort of utopic climax. the opportunity is always present to experience community. the politics are important but the love is the institutional memory.

maybe that's what stephen was getting at with our discussion of Richard III today. the role of the men in the play and that of the women. the women were constantly mourning. and losing. and flailing. and enduring. sure it ended with the gorey death of a king. but that was for entertainment. the real conclusion was this hunger for power could slaughter and force submission to innocence and life but never exist without the tenderness of the womb.

and its a great metaphor. we can harden ourselves. like richard, this self-loathing hunchback with bloodlust and a beautiful tongue. but we require love. and it kills us.

i'm not the one you want, babe

2010-01-23T18:13:00.002-05:00

new semester.

new poetry books. new resolutions. new problems.

old solutions. old(er) age. old habits.

old anthologies.

listening to a lot of dylan these days. producing some of the best writing i have in years. for arthur. for my academic self. for poetry. it feels good. but it also seems to drain me.

watched this great episode of grey's anatomy today. this opera singer has a cancerous tumour on his lung. he wants the doctors to spare his lung. he says he doesn't want to live without singing. he talks about the suppressing emotion in the real world. in a restaurant when his food is cooked too well done. how he says nothing.

because at night, on his stage, he can kill the waiter and dance on his grave.

he doesn't know how to be ordinary. he's mean. he's mean to his lover. the show posed the question of passion vs. love. your gift and talents - the essence of who you are and what you sing through. pitted against the person who sings through you.

i've gone out the last couple nights in a row. its a queer socialite world. its a gay scene. it's fun and vicious and exhausting. and i will probably cave and go out tonight.

but its hard to hide my disenchantment. and my sadness. i am mean. because my pursuit of love in this place is riddled with losses. not rejection of advances but rejection of romance. and words. beautiful words chosen from the branches and held out like berries. juices trickling through my fingers, which i can name anatomically. dripping down to my elbows like an invitation. written in an ancient language barely surfacing in allusive bobs of a body treading indifference in egg-beater legs.

sometimes i want to sleep forever. sometimes i get scared to leave my house.

my bedroom is beyond the picture of destruction. this usually indicates that i am avoiding dealing with something.

maybe i'm not allowed to be nice. or something. maybe the closer i claw towards my artistic articulations...maybe the quenching of my desert throat for more words. bigger worlds in intricate words. maybe it has a price.

i tightened the knobs on the drawers at her party. i was drunk and got triggered by all of it and so i crouched down and took all the knobs off and put them back on tighter. as tight as i could. and i cried quietly as they all got naked and made out in the kitchen. i don't know why. it seems silly. sex can be a handshake. i said that once, i think.

maybe i'm losing it.

for now, i'll just go lightly on the ground.

poo.

2010-01-04T17:08:00.002-05:00

so, i have just entered the realm of spite.

i woke up really angry today. angry at myself mostly, but i needed a target. i needed her to know how i was hurt. and so i lashed out in text.

and it felt good. but now it feels awful. we had never fought before. never said things like this. and now, they hang in the air like landmines incompletely detonated.

my brother is sometimes a bit of a loose cannon. or misunderstood. because he's eccentric and eager and stuff. but he is also one of the wisest people i know, and had this to say when i told him about the fight:

'if you see a brother in sin, talk to him in gentleness, considering yourself, lest you be tempted.'

and he's right. who am i to cast the first stone? i can let my mental health and neurosis wrap around me like one giant self-involved bubble sometimes.

people have told me that they are jealous of my creativity. and my eloquence. but its times like i wish i didnt know how to wield words so artfully. i cut her so deeply. because i know how. i went from never telling the truth to saying too much.

she's already hurting. but i just wanted her to hear me so badly.

zepplin

2009-12-30T03:56:00.007-05:00

so i've been at home for a week now. home as in uxbridge. the hometown. the parents. the brothers.

i told everyone i'd get in and get out. can't stand this town, i'll be back in a few days, don't worry.

but i'm still here. and its curious, to me.

my hair is getting long. i'm wearing pigtails right now. for some reason i feel like they make me look older in this dykey way. i like it.

its been 2 years since i first met the last person to seriously break my heart. and i finally feel like stella gettin her groove back. which is exciting. like deep inhalations. but also scary. like mourning the loss of a loss. or the loss of a focal point. or something.

i used her as a muse in a lot of my poetry and photography. she occupied this part of my mind that dipped into creativity, and sorta wrapped herself around major synapses in a way that made this amputation tedious and painstakingly slow.

i wondered how i would know i was over her. like actually know. you tell your friends (the ones who are sick of you mentioning her name to the point that you actually take a breath, or a sip of something, or mumble before her name) that 'no guys. this time. it's done. i'm over it.' but sometimes, lying is just easier.

but i know i'm there now. it's not spiteful. it's not premature. it's the imagining 'i'll never love anyone else like this' conclusion; when you reach a point where that doesn't bother you. that doesn't make you ache. doesn't conjure memories of touches, images of glances, remembrances of the smell of her clothes on you. her skin. her laugh.

it's when none of those things adds up to a smirk. or a sigh. or a second thought. it is in the past.

i have these two papers due for my advanced american lit class, which was phenomenal by the way. fuck, i'm going to miss it. it was a half year 4th yr credit, and it spanned work from auden, to Fraser, to West Side Story, Company, Manhattan, Patti Smith, blues songs, Cole Porter, Lost in Translation, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, and Tennessee Williams- all looking at the representation of love. romantic love.

the papers don't need to be more than 5-6 pages. but you know me. and love. i wanna say something that means something. and this semester, well thanks in part to this course, i've been reflecting about love and my place in it too much to actually get concrete ideas on paper. but in this last week, i feel more ready than i have in the last three months.

auden has this great fucking poem that reminds me of the hole i was stuck in (see above post-pinage). it's called the more loving one:

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well

That, for all they care, I can go to hell,

But on earth indifference is the least

We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn

With a passion for us we could not return?

If equal affection cannot be,

Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am

Of stars that do not give a damn,

I cannot, now I see them, say

I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,

I should learn to look at an empty sky

And feel its total dark sublime,

Though this might take me a little time.

but on earth indifference is the least i have to dread. that line. that fucking line. kills me. its that night in the alley when i was choking back tears as she ran after me, wrapping her arms around me and throwing her head back to laugh. silly jes. running away in the snow. finding a dead end. it's my petulance as a cheap ploy for attention as she is fawned over. its the poetry. its too much goddam poetry.

this poem is comforting somehow to me. not only realizing that i woulda found good scotch-sipping company in auden's faggy ass (we are such kindred spirits. sigh), but that he knows, objectively, the torture inflicted on his heart. and that it will pass one day. but for now he's in the thick of it and not ready to see the sublime of an empty sky, so he writes a verse. he writes a verse. he writes a verse.

the poetry is never wasted, even when the heart is.

oh my god, it's after 4am. i have been up late these days. i've missed being up this late, and not because i'm drunk somewhere. or just pouring myself into bed. or hooking up.

but just, being awake because my mind is going. and feeling okay. and maybe creating.

like this painting i've been working on. gosh, i haven't done a painting since summer. i started it a couple days ago. it's a 20x24. good size. peachy abstract background. patches of red and pale blue. very visceral. i plan to paint the structural drawings of the USS Akron, a zepplin circa 1931.

it feels good to be painting again.

i hate christmas parties.

2009-12-13T17:20:00.002-05:00

christmas. holiday biz. blurrr. burrr.

god, it got cold.

there's something comforting about the music i used to surround myself with during the holidays. i'm conflicted. relient k, this band from my high school days, is the sort of nostalgia i want sometimes.

but i mean, the god stuff? i dunno how i feel about it all at this point in my life.

its like hymns. that regina spektor song - human of the year - it crescendos like the hymns i grew up singing often did. and it makes me feel so emotional. same with rk songs like 'i celebrate the day' or the more secular, 'i hate christmas parties'.

but i feel like, there's still a space for enjoying this music. i feel like i'd be a hypocrite if i did it in secret. like the anti-porn people. i read somewhere the the red states in the US statistically consume the most porn. i mean, just own it.

but sometimes its not that simple i guess. we'd rather die for our supposed political convictions than admit folly.

i don't really know what this post is about. i just miss writing. excavating secrets feels right.

at this point in my life, things are going well. i love writing for arthur. i love this community. i love making things. i love writing poetry. and get this, i am in-like with school right now. all these things leave me feeling a generally satisfied.

but something in me chimes this sense of disquiet. like my heart is broken but i don't know why or how to go about mending it. or like i've forgotten something. or forgotten what i've forgotten. and my desire for intimacy flares in hot and cold. like i am this consistent dissonance.

hmmm. i have more to say but haasleton's is closing.

eggnog

2009-12-04T15:57:00.001-05:00

as i walk along aylmer toward macs

you

a pair of you

interrupt my first decisive steps of the evening with questions

of where are you going

are coming to the burning hell

i dance and i

i mull about cover

i mull about mood

and then i leave you with a maybe to mull under the surveillence of flourescant lights

about eggnog

IT'S ON SALE

do i want two for $6?

why doesn't it come in a reasonably priced 2 litre jug?

why two separate cartons

wait, one is only $2.89

can i even drink one?

i certainly don't need $6 worth, even if i am saving

i don't even know how much i'd be saving

okay i'll get one

and a pepsi

in case i don't feel like the taste of eggnog when i get home

i pay the cashier with exact change plus one cent

which i tell her to keep

because i actually hate pennies

full on loathing

they wage wars on my tiny pockets until i cannot bear the fury

any longer

and i grab them in fistfuls and fling them at the sidewalk

the sidewalk who thankfully hasn't pressed charges

yet

but i keep this to myself

and give the woman nothing but grins and salutations

that are over-compensating but she doesn't know me well enough

to know the difference

and i think maybe i've made her night

but maybe thats the kind of ego that she

writes angry 'i work at macs poems' about

and fuck,

i wouldn't blame her

and i'd probably hate me too

i bound down toward the intersection and i can already see my house

living 'right downtown' instills less the feeling of community

and more the feeling that the villa auto wash is my neighbour who

i should courtesiously have tea with rather than

begrudgingly walk by

the streets are damp and it reminds me of my favourite weather

i could say that it is my favourite weather

but with the city nudging us with holiday cheer

by blaring yule tide from the clocktower

-yes, today i found out where that bloody shit is coming from-

i find that i feel less nosthalgic and more

creeped out

even though i cave after 5 minutes in earshot

and hark the herald with the best of them

the signs are there

people have their twinkle lights up

we've simulated carolers

and my calender on my macbook desktop

says its almost december

but it feels

like spring

and i know its neither

i'd blame the impending apocalypse if i thought i could actually

handle one more friggin

2012-mayan-calendar mention

but i can't

its just

mild out

i get close to my door

and pause before the stairs

i don't even remember if i like eggnog

but for some reason

what i am sure is

that

it won't be last time i stagger toward my door

cradling a carton of it under my arm

i go to the kitchen and grab a glass

a plain glass that my mom says is cheap and the kind that breaks really easily

but i like it because it comes in jes sized narrowness that i can get my hand

around easily and still feel classic about

ain't no sippy cup

it's a glass

i bring the materials to my room even though my apartment is vacant

set things down on my vanity

and proceed to pour

full

and i bring the nog to my lips

staring back at me with each sip

we did this

its pretty good

might taste great with whisky in it

i text emily

hey. bought eggnog. it might taste great with whisky in it

sip

she texts back

i agreeeeeee. i love rum and nog. big D smiley face.

it's rum that you use with eggnog

right

hmm

i go back to watching

the best part of watching is my ring

my big ring

all the powerful people had to have worn big rings

king arthur

ghengis kahn

shaq

every thought and movement is punctuated by

the big ring

'yeah i'm going to that party'

puts hand on wall and glances over at big ring

'well when i was young'

cups goblet with big ring hand

'well thats an interesting thought, frances'

leans back and clasps hands

staring casually at big ring

i think i've come to rely on it these days

my interchangeable two big rings

this one

and the one that ruby said looked like the mayan...

nevermind

i used to wear this jade one but it broke at a show

i got it when i was 11

me and my brothers all the got the same one

i was the only one who still had it

anyway it broke and its sad but we all hang on to things

and the big rings let me decide on my gender

in my mirror

when i can

after a bit of lauryn hill

i decide i only need one glass of nog

and go into the living

room

my roommate, now home

asks if i was drinking a carton of milk in my room

no...

its eggnog

i would sue the city if i wasn't so tired.

2009-10-01T18:46:00.008-04:00

there was a lobster boy

with very lobster hands

should you look his way

you'd see the fabric of a man

he lived in any town

like all the rest

and smiled with his feelers

and laughed with the jest

but every night

before he went to sleep

in a boiling pot

of water, he would creep

to the edge

screaming out and

into the night

because lo--

this human world was not

is not

made for lobster boys

there were things we could've done

to welcome lobster hands

but we did not

do not-

despite our demands, and so

all of our wishes

of love for this boy,

our watching him

squirm about with joy--meant nothing

when night fell

(and it always fell)

because the screams

would go unreconciled

and his little lobster heart

which we told him to conceal

would shrivel like a prune

in spite of all his zeal

as he wrote his story

onto the air (of the night

not to inspire

or aide in the fight

but) to terrify

future lobster boys

as they lay awake

cascaded in noise-

the harpooned gasps

of a dying thing,

and a city looking

for another king.

blowjobs.

2009-09-29T14:23:00.008-04:00

i had a really interesting bar-hopping slew of conversations yesterday with a close friend. about sex. about things we craved, and things we were scared to want. and how - as much as we may deny it at times - you really can't fight chemistry.

and i mean, chemistry chemistry. lab coats and brains and stuff. like the energy of attraction being less about abercrombie and more about electrons.

cuteboy, as i will henceforth refer to him, was at the spoon today. startled me a little because he was the first person i saw as i came bounding up the stairs, and as soon as i saw him my heart skipped and i remembered dancing last saturday. and trying to explain to the close friend what i wanted, nay, craved these days: boys.

boy energy. loose around the gender part, but just this zing of sensation i feel around intimacy with individuals more masculine than myself. and yet, not all masculinity, because i have not yet been able to enjoy/desire (or even really pursue) sex with nontrans men.

speaking with this close friend...who needs a cool name too...ummm....teddy. talking with teddy, i learned that she too has a dilemmna involving maleness. teddy has feelings for a nontrans man. has never experienced such a situation. but her identity is very centred around being more or less a 'butch dyke'. what does that mean? she is afraid of entirely letting go with said person because what if she really connects? its scary, this gender thing. this identity thing.

i feel the implications of feeling attracted to trans men and not nontrans men. its not about crushing as soon as i know they are trans. but something in me senses some sort of gender awareness. it is perceivable in demeanor. in energy. it is for the same reason i am oh so attracted to genderqueers and gender variant people that embody that masculine energy that is different than my own.

and then. there's this girl. we shall call her, woolf. woolf is dating a queer nontrans boy. and is really into said person. but seems conflicted as to what that speaks of her queer relatively lesbian seeming identity.

and so. of three of us 'queers' there is this conflict around masculinity. and fair enough. masculinity is given power.

for me, it is not that i see remnents of female identity in trans men. hardly. i very see and feel a masculinity about them. one that i am often attracted to. but perhaps on a chemical level, i am not wired to desire nontrans masculinity, though i often entertain the idea of it and will likely attempt to pursue it again.

i respect woolf and teddy. and their desires. but understand how difficult these waters are to navigate. teddy running away with her beau could be interpretted by the queer community as a loss. and to the hetero world as a gain. and as only natural. and place her past queer history in a box of 'just a phase'. and so it is easy to understand why she would be scared of 'seeing what happens' with this boy.

woolf talking constantly about her queerness is understandable in the same vein. her parents are excitably asking questions about the 'boyfriend'. this can feel like a devaluing of one's queer identity, especially if greater excitement is displayed over a, generally speaking, hetero relationship.

'oh so you broke up with kristen. so are you back to men now?'

'i hear you're dating ben! does that mean you're done with girls?'

blah de blah.

i roll my eyes at myself, because i have written another blog post about sex. but i think its interesting - just like dissecting our human functions on a microbiotic level - that we want what we want. but we deny what we want too. for the sake of the movement. and our identities. and ourselves.

lately i have been dreaming about blowjobs. giving. but i have also desired receiving. i am thankful that i am more excited and less ambivalent about my fluidity.

even cows get the blues.

2009-09-28T15:55:00.007-04:00

i hate the employment centre lady. she incessantly harps on me for using the internet for anything other than job searching. what freakin ever. no one else is heeeere. it happpens to be thundering outsiiide. takkkee yourrr mandate and shoooove it.

ahem.

hate is a strong word. i have not been feeling quite so strong lately so using it feels good. artsweek is now over and i must go take my exhibit down and stash 8 large scale super hero self portraits of myself SOMEWHERE in my apartment. seeing as my roommate has decided to move back home with the parentals, leaving me high and dry, so i'm sure having my face all over the living room will aid me greatly in the new tennant shopping department.

win-win.

snarky is coming easy today. why? well...i'd been having reoccurring fantasies about sleeping with a close friend. and simultaneously i have been on-and-off reading this book about open relationships. it talks at great length about intimacy - explaining the topic in one of the most astute ways i have yet to read. and it gets to the topic of friends, and picks apart the notion of "dude. we can't sleep together. we're friends" in a rather smart fashion.

and really. okay. so...in order to sleep with someone, if i can't have no-strings sex with a friend i must:

a) court someone new until we reach date #three/five/nineteen (whatever your holding period is) and we're allowed to bone

b) pick up a random

c) pimp myself

d) pay for sex

c is of no use, as i am living in peterborough and wary of the sex worker scene. d, well, i'm broke. i already tried a this summer. and the romance and stuff was lovely, but immediately after the sex, i was told that they couldn't do the open/poly/thing and were more into someone else.

and so i'm left with b. again. and pick ups have their fun. and sexy. but sometimes, i crave a little more than that. a little more intimacy. like wendy points out in her book, intimacy can be a really connecting conversation. and sometimes sex can, well, be like a handshake. or doing laundry. or eating a sandwich.

anyway. now said friend is all upset at me for putting them in the place of having to reject me. and also thinks i value our friendship less for proposing sex. ugh.

it's fine. no really, its fiiiiiiiine.

in other news, i am off to guelph soon soon soon to give an anti ableism workshop. you can even register online (a fact that i discovered when googling my name. vain. yes.)

<>

i am excited but also nervous. i have given many a workshop at this point. but i mostly stick to sex (as a reoccurring theme). so i will undoubtedly bring up sex, and hope that is okay.

speaking of, my good friend iris (who now lives in guelph...which is happy/sad...i miss her...and if she is reading this, so does elliot, and we gushed about you at a bonfire party quite drunkenly...straight gin = direct transit to sloppy town....but happy also because it means i have fun people to visit when i come to do my workshop!) is doing a paper and needed a topic.

one of those, pick your own adventure kind. so she wants to discuss accessbility in a philosophy way (since that is her major) and i brought up blindness and porn.

sites like porn for the blind are indicative of what exists out there. mainstream hetero porn 'adapted' for the visually impaired. iris found the actual voiceover hilarious, but resultantly unsexy. and i talked to her about how its quite an accurate testiment to how we view 'dis-ability' in the first place.

i would like to keep going with this conversation, but the employment centre is closing soon, and bitch lady will probably tell me to leave because i am breaking the rules again. even though no one is in here. but me. as per usual.

next post. sound porn. and the question of whether or not i can get grant funding to create my empire. maybe if i file it under 'experimental art'. or even...um...'sexual health aid for the blind'

xoxo my darlings.

terracotta

2009-08-08T18:31:00.003-04:00

a friend posted a photo on my facebook wall the other day, of a woman named Florence Pickner, dated 1912. no face, back to the camera- just a picture of her back. scoliosis about as pronounced as mine.

and i don't know why but the picture made me uncomfortable.

perhaps it bore too much resemblance to some of my own work. or maybe it was because, in trying to find the original source, i googled 'scoliosis' only to find dozens of images of the same vein.

faceless. spines either intact with curve or wearing scars and correction with a sort of brazen-reversing pathos.

the search led me to flickr pools of scoliosis spines, scars, befores and afters, and comment upon comment praising God, other sources of beauty, and perseverance.

why am i angry?

i am hardly the only one here. maybe i'm sort of sick of humans sometimes. her scars but still rebellious spine in one picture. her 'unaffected' face in another.

"hunny, you're still a pretty face" (blogger)

right.

gahh. this girl...left a comment on her artsy self portrait. to the effect of:

Went to bed last night crying over everything scoliosis related. Being frustrated at the fact I can't lie flat on my back. Frustrated at the fact I still feel like a hunchback and my back feels heavy. It ached so bad, my spine felt like it was still twisting, despite being healed for just over 7 years now, and ripping out of my skin.

where's the room to be a hunchback and like it? where's the room to not cry yourself to sleep because your body is resisting the surgery you desperately wanted to correct the curve?

i am not trying to sweep over anyone else's experience here. yeah, pain. yeah, hurting. but what about the ways its not those things? what about the spaces for great?

and of course all of this got me thinking about sex and gender. how i embrace my trans friends desire to transition. how that surgery should be free. but how there is this part of me that squeaks and squirms from somewhere deep inside. for those who want to say that sometimes their body isn't home, but because of other people. how i'd like to be in between. in between the tiles.

and there's privilege there, granted. being okay with being perceived as girl because of my boobs, my height, my femininity.

i think about cultures that (before colonized with the white way of gender dichotomy) esteemed those who felt themselves to be two-spirited, pan-gendered, and differently gendered.

i get called a lesbian. i get told how i'm supposed to behave accordingly. by queers. by allies. its easier at times to interact with the 'ignorant hetero world' for this reason. because its like drag for me. i use the body i have and the garments and i play a role. it is a believable act and no one questions my authenticity. it is assumed.

but female drag in a queer event? swooning over gay boys? no no. you like pussy. you like lumberjack attire. wait- you're wearing plaid and going to go practice salsa? where is your dress. tsk tsk.

rambling again.

but back to backs.

my back is my back. i don't know it any other way. it curves a fuckload. and it tires me out sometime. but its mine. sure, i could try and 'correct it' too. but surgery is painful. and expensive. and it would change me. maybe i'd be happier. maybe i'd pass under the radar a little more. i'm no 'pretty face' so perhaps i could use the pretty normal points.

i've been asked when i'll move on from what i've been doing artistically. explore a different subject. and my response has always been 'when it feels finished' but i half worry that it never will in my lifetime.

i like the world at my angle.

its not inspirational. its not even that fascinating. but my back invites conversation, which sometimes inspires me and sometimes offends me. either way, my body is how i know the world, and how i've become able to assert the importance of my presence.

blah blah. so my art is provocative. its only half provocative because i'm showing people shit they don't want to see. or so they say. but they love looking. and seeing someone who isn't sad at all. its weird. its quirky. i'm fucking with you, and i know you realize that on some level.

can't a kid just being a hunchback?

i guess its tied to my appreciation for artists like Lady Gaga. sure she's just as vapid and blonde as the rest of the A-list celebs. but she likes wearing things and saying things that people feel weird about. and i like that.

today i am wearing red pants and a terracotta shirt. its yummy.

busted knee

2009-07-02T12:46:00.007-04:00

what a whirlwind.

thank god it's over. i love pride, but jeez - maybe its the small town in me, but the sea of thousands of faces gets exhausting. and courtesy of the woman who decided to plow her bike into my weak knee during the QUAIA contingent of the pride parade, i am still a little worse for wear.

good news found me when i returned, however. my proposal for artsweek was accepted!

here's the finalized summary for the guidebook:

The Justice League of Gawkamerica is an installation of several to-scale photographic foamcore superheros, assembled en masse throughout The Spill (414 George Street). The figures - each a self-representation of the artist - comprise a comic-style narrative about disabled imagery.

also, pride weekend wasn't without its highlights. including, but not limited to:

my lovely professor carla finding me sitting on wellesley at 1am smoking and drinking wine from a cup (classy broad).
marching in the FIRST fucking trans march. so many people. such awesomeness.
a fellow QUAIA marcher being punched in the face by a disgruntled man.
being kicked out of the washroom at woody's for being in a stall with someone else (teehee) only to have the staff member (upon seeing my, ahem, appearance) gratuitously apologize to my companion, and tell my companion that i could use the accessible washroom upstairs, for which we would need a key from the bar. well i got the key. and took a few liberties.
not spending more than $20!
wearing a mesh shirt, booty shorts, a leather vest, and a sailor's hat. together. in public.
dancing, dancing, and more dancing.
my brother's first pride! and having him march along the sidelines of the dyke march.

also also...in other pride-ish related news...

i went to my first pride bathhouse, courtesy of the lovely Women & Trans Bathhouse Committee organizers. unfortunately for anyone reading, i can't quite kiss and tell (confidentiality), however i will say that it was an unforgettable experience. a few steamy encounters, a few passionate conversations, a lot of tickling and tantalizing sights and sounds, and one little genderqueer raised in uxbridge left with a mindful of ideas and the anticipation of future exploration.

it wasn't entirely positive times for all, sadly. there was a fair bit of backlash from certain attendees regarding the transmale presence at the event. some bickering can be found on craigslist. read at your own discretion. transphobia and racism abound, these attitudes are troublesome, as a trans ally with a body nearly exclusively read as female, though i am far more gender variant.

the waging war over the sanctity of women-only spaces. ultimately, the event was advertised as trans-inclusive. ultimately, there are even FEWER spaces available to trans people to sport their sexiness than nontrans folk. and some of us came to the event PRECISELY because of its promise of being a gender cornucopia, so to speak.

everyone should have access to such a sexy space...and later run-ins...complete with a smile and a wink.

'yeahhhhh...we were hot in that stairwell, weren't we'

;)

strange disease

2009-06-11T02:11:00.005-04:00

i just watched 40 days and 40 nights.

god, that movie is terrible. minus the terribly hot flower scene and the lovely sasha mossman.

mmmm. anywaaaay, josh harnett's acting aside, it did get me thinking about the things we (ab)use in order to avoid dealing with our shit.

its been pretty tough lately, dealing with unemployment. its even stunting my creativity. though i was able to complete three paintings today. i definitely keep using alcohol to avoid over-thinking my life. but it doesn't quite work. and comes with the added bonus of never really being able to stop when i start. which leaves me hungover and lethargic the next day...and so it goes.

i'm sure i'd be using sex if i wasn't so in my head. or maybe if there were more a pool in this town.

sigh.

sometimes the hardest thing is to admit that you're still licking the wounds of your last heartbreak. nonetheless, i think today marks day one of my abstinence from alcohol. and if i get sad...i'll just....paint things?

in other news, i stopped by the CMHA building today and picked up some resources. turns out they have a help line for people with mood disorders where they will actually come and meet you in person if you need to. pretty cool, eh? and i nabbed a calendar of events. next tuesday there's a workshop on healthy relationships. bam!

things are lookin up.

the coffee's on

2009-06-03T09:55:00.002-04:00

i like days like today.

the sky is bluer than blue, the trees are tall and leafy, with foilage that seems to spread like fingers through hair, and i am up.

up early from bed, yes. surprising after spending an evening drinking scotch. but also up as in not down.

so i figured i would write myself a note on here for when this is not the case:

dear jes. chill the fuck out. let the world fall over you. love me.

film project

2009-05-31T12:03:00.004-04:00

my buddy kate and i are working on a film. it's going to be about 30-60mins and focus on disability, sex, queerness and smut through a narrative-docu lens. i'm super excited about the project but only now am i realizing how HUGE an undertaking these things are.

so we were sitting down for brunch with her pal who was giving us advice on how to write a budget, etc, and she said 'you know, you'll probably get asked why sex? isn't sex oppressive/dirty?'

and it's funny how the most obvious questions can be the most difficult to answer.

sex. its that thing that we all have in so many capacities. stolen. empowered. but it plays a role in defining us a people. personally it was the battleground on which i lost legitimacy in my humanness.

Can you even have sex? Can you even kiss? Did god make you to be celibate?

i'm a survivor, so its not as though i don't realize sex isn't always pleasure - isn't always empowering. But isn't validity something we all chase?

if i meet you under the sheets instead of on the street, the rules change. we're naked and fucking and it's forgiving and about getting off, rather than pretending we're normal. i can see every freckle, mole, stretch mark you hate. and my business is loving your body - if only momentarily.

it changes things. its the proof i need to demonstrate what my tired words never suffice. telling you i'm 'normal' is bs. telling you i'm just like you is also bs. telling you i wanna fuck and it'll be hot, is not.

sex is that place of infinite contradictions. you can fuck someone you hate. you can fuck to express love. you could fuck and rather be doing your laundry.

i'm sick of having to smile and play the part of some two dimensional helpless, white quasimodo girl just to get respect. respect doesn't get me laid, i'm sorry. and yeah, sex isn't everything. but goddamn it, i like a good fuck as much as the next guy.

so i look at porn and think - well yeah, this isn't me. no hunch backs. no facial differences. no clubbed feet. i can't go around telling you i'm 'just like' these porn stars, cuz i'm not. my body maps different curves. and jesus. i don't want every crip to have to go through as much therapy as i did to unpackage the ableism they're swimming in, just to realize 'hey - i'm fucking sexy' ten years and several thousand dollars later. disability should not be a scapegoat for self deprecation and masochism - an excuse to not let yourself be happy.

and sure, not everyone's gonna listen to me. we're a breed hell bent on destruction. but some of you will. and if that gets a few more sexy crips laid, then i'll die a satisfied queer.

i mean really. who wants to waste any time wondering if the sex they do have is just a series of pity fucks?

i'm worried too. i know that putting myself out there like this has risks. a lot of which are due to the fact that we are all on different pages when it comes to what acceptable behaviour when it comes to being naked for public viewing.

but when i stand in a doctor's office and let him touch and examine my body i do not feel ecstasy. nor when i stand in a naked in a gallery, on the walls. but one is expected of me. regularly. the other, rarely.

you're allowed to look at me in text books at the library and its science but in a magazine behind the counter its filthy? what is oppression, anyway?

it's control.

when i get naked for my lens, its mine. when i am depicted as sexual, its mine. when i force you to deal with my sexuality, gender, privilege, scars, your fetishes, your fear - its mine.

for kninja

2009-05-30T19:30:00.005-04:00

pick 5 words that describe you, that you hold dear to you. values you define yourself by. 5 of them. then write a stream of consciousness on each one. don't think. just write.

small. speak. soft. syllables. sara.

small seems a funny thing to pick as a self descriptor. too obvious? perhaps. but i like that. a woman at the gallery said to me last night that she sees me as very tall. because of my work? i don't know. its funny how people will try to compliment you by telling you you are things that you are not, as some sort of metaphor. i like being small. small as humble. small and crawly. some of my favourite photographs that i've taken have required my height. its point of view. its average in Lima. its little person territory in canada. like when my buddies and i were referred to as androgynous midgets. in that 'gasp! a plague!' sort of way. but man. small means small and climbing. tall means bending. my first girlfriend was very tall. and she would bend and i would climb and sometimes it was awkward but most of the time it was fun. no metaphor. just fun. have you ever climbed someone? mmmm.

speak was easy because i am such a chatterbox. but also, it makes me think of this fabulous poet named shane that i love and he has this one line where he says 'shut up and say something' and the notion isn't lost on me. we challenge ourselves to speak up and out and with purpose but rarely do we try to speak differently. just louder and louder. and i don't know how good i am at this yet but i like to try. speaking with silences. speaking by listening. speaking by answering questions with answers other than what was requested of me. not cuz i'm tryin to get all lezzy and rebel but because i think we sell ourselves short too often. i want to say whats on my mind with feelings or smells. i like modern poetry, gee can you tell? haha. this is me being a nutter.

soft is harder. because i try to hide the soft sometimes. or convince myself that soft is weak, when in fact i think it is opposite. i grew up mortering a wall around my heart to solidify the organ containing my passion. clearly i'm a softy. clearly i puss and puss. but i'm also really frickin relentless. depression is interesting because i can be so deprecating and sad and people worry but i am way too committed to those things and to living to ever actually leave. soft is what i work on. soft is being honest about my tender bits. soft is remembering to tell people how i love them.

syllables. its not really its own sentence but it is too. my life centers around saying things. i went to speech therapy when i was young. we got to play all these fun board games. i say we but it was just me and the lady who would make me say p and b and v and f before i got to roll the dice during mouse trap. and then i pretended to be a speech therapist with my bestfriend who would have only been 5 or 6. and her mom caught us and chuckled at me. i feel as though that story is perhaps irrelevant but so are a lot of things that reside persistently in our memory. i was scared of talking because of that. talking the way i did and not how i learned. it wasn't like bike riding. it never got easier to find p and b and v and f. it just made me hesitate before each one. and move my jaw around them in this awkward maneuver that you could liken to the way i approached the concept of hurtles in gym class. i wish there was a word with all four of those letters in it. i would say it over and over the way my mouth wants to say it. there probably is such a word. i should find it.

sara - okay, not a word. but a name i have liked ever since sara plain and tall. i don't think i ever read the book but i remember the cover. and the expression my teacher had when she read from it. and i like thinking about people who have impressioned me unknowingly. awkward people who are so much your opposite you become fascinated with their innerworkings. a person of few words who you mistakenly assume doesn't see you, hear you, care at all. but she does. they do. and they're warm inside their coldness and their cackle reminds you of how kissing chemistry can make you thirstier than gallons of desert. and you just want more and more until you're not sure what is what and how far up is up. and you, lover of memory, wish that you could forget so badly, and slowly you do. almost entirely. but you don't. and the other her is her who is more scared than you. a different she, who you'd almost swear was your reflection. with differences. but the same scared mapped out on another kitchen floor. and it makes you sad to see broken like you're broken. because it happens anyway. no matter what. you chose vitamins, she chose zanex. or zoloft. or zzzz. and doesn't know quite how to let go of this vision she's got of herself. and i'm probably the same. but i have faith. in time. in knowing that i'll laugh at me and me and it will echo heartily in my chest - rattling with age and smoking occasionally. i wonder what i'll look like then. after the years. if i'll be able to name my wrinkles. deprecation. anxiety. masochism. alcohol. worry. love. lover. i like the way skin feels. when it is old. it gets leathery and then it relaxes and billows. so badass.

joni mitchell

2009-05-30T18:57:00.002-04:00

okay so i owe you more than just a flouzy three liner. i guess i've been putting this off because SO much has happened that i don't even know where to start.

so. art shows! three openings in a week! i clearly over-commit myself. but all were splendid. well sort of. there was a bit of a negative response to the work up at CAYA. but i met with cory silverberg and we came up a neat way to address the 'questions'. and of course, i got my sass on.

----------------------

As soon as jes sachse’s show Alleviate went up as part of the 2009 Contact Festival we started getting comments, questions, and reviews from visitors and customers in the store. Some of the questions (asked below and answered by the artist) may seem rude or uncomfortable. In some cases they are both. But one thing that we noticed was that in most cases they weren’t asked rudely or with malice, but rather out of a genuine curiousity. For this reason, both jes and Come As You Are felt they were important to address because an honest question (which most of these were) deserves a direct answer.

Questions/Comments:

1. Why would you take naked pictures of yourself?

I will respond here to this question assuming it is referring to both the act of me taking the photos and then subsequently showing the work publicly. Initially, my infatuation with nude self portraits derived itself from a pressing desire to interrogate the gaze - by which I mean, the lens I am placed under by the outside world. What aspects of my identity are visible in a still image? There is definitely a noticeable progression in this work, as you see early shots with an obvious invitation of looking (self exhibitionism as an attempt to reclaim this position of the disabled subject being unautonomously gazed at) to more current work in which I am staring back at the viewer.

The nudity aspect is merely a removal of construction on my part. Without clothes, the viewer is forced to examine the subject without the cues of material. In this way, I am inviting a closer look at my gender, sex and race and the body as the site in which these things interact. Nakedness itself, depending on context, can be an invasion of the private space, or a resistance in the public space. Ultimately, my work is about littering images, particularly given that the of ways in which we are told to see physical disability in the maintstream sense is limited.

This has birthed in many ways, my inspiration for incorporating the medical with the sexual. Peeing standing up in sterile bathroom. A prescription bottle phallicly between my breasts. bandages binding my face, hands and chests as I orally fixate on a dice, or a set of matches. A patient-doctor seduction. A construction mask over my face and a pylon over my genitals. These are all medical and gendered signifiers placed in an erotic context - sometimes playfully, sometimes jarringly.

But getting back to the original question...why? Why this medium? Because I see it as an entirely effective means for achieving my goal, which is to have you, the viewer, approach the image from your own reality, and react accordingly. It has little to do with me at all, in fact. My body merely serves as catalyst, to provoke the very questions being asked.

2.That doesn’t look real. Is this work photoshoped?

Photoshop...no. I don't actually own much design software. Little enhancing has been done on my work. Save for cropping and playing with hues/saturation in some cases. It wouldn't be that congruent with my style, actually. I like the very candid feel. If this question refers specifically to parts of my body...such as my face or scars...you're getting the real deal here, folks.

3. Wow, she’s so brave!

Well, I suppose you could see it that way. In doing work that is provocative, one opens themselves up to a lot - critcism, hate, anger - and if the work is self-representative it means often that one personally takes the hit. I have accepted a lot of the risks, as an artist working in this medium, and hope to use the unsafe spaces I'm creating to meet people at their level. Not stooping, but probing. We tend to fear that more than retaliation. None of this is really about bravery and 'the movement' and saying something, but rahter it's about images - how they confine us, and how we confine others.

4. Why would anyone want to see that?

Hmm. You know? I'm really not sure. A naked person...mime fallacing a lego man...lathered in whipped cream...drenched with water...

When will the visual pollution end?!

5. A lot of customers ask questions wanting to know about your disability. I find this an interesting response on their part and wonder what you think of it?

I don't find this reaction to be a surprising response. I am presenting my body in a exhibit-like medium - an avenue which people are very familiar with approaching different bodies through.

I don't want to talk like an expert here. Or a torch bearer for the disability movement. So I will speak as an artist. I have provided all the information I intended for the viewer to have within the framing of each image. A need to further 'diagnose' on the part of the observer is not something to be ashamed of, but rather a reaction indicative of the way we approach 'disability' - and here I am referring specifically to a discernible physical difference. What IS a diagnosis other than a story?

Jump back a hundred years or so. Barnum and Bailey's. The Hottentot Venus. The Wild Men from Borneo. The Bearded Lady. The Super Small Man: from the faraway land of everything miniature, raised by wild dogs, this creature spent years trekking through forests and deserts, surviving only on leaves and cactus syrup.

More than the wow-factor of these circus pitches, you have a story. It doesn't matter if its factually accurate - as viewers we've been trained to request an explanation (and with evolution of technology, a very scientific one) for what we perceive as 'wild', 'odd', 'rare' or 'freakish'. Like the joined last names of two white coated dead guys.

But performing is in my blood, and I'm not one to disappoint, so come one, come all:

See jes sachse! Born into the loving yet unsuspecting clutches of a white, heterosexual Baptist couple, this gender variant humpback beast was raised by the exotic fields of Uxbridge - a Southern Ontario town known for it's Quaker heritage and possessed cattle. Never one to back down from a challenge, young jes befriended the methane flatulating oxen (after which the town was named), only to learn of their true gentle nature. But the village people felt threatened by their power, so they were exiled to the far reaches of the sleepy town, where this quasimodo developed a love for capturing their own form with point-and-shoot lens. Speaking only the language of shutters and apertures, young jes is here for you today for one time only

----------------

so there's that. oh and some press.

thank you NOW magazine. you get me.

ALSO. my lovely friend meagh and i were chatting today at this cafe in peterborough where she works, which is pretty much my second home. and makes me realize how internet and coffee dependent i am... anyhoo. so we were talking about neurosis and 'dry spells' yadda yadda and then she says 'we should make a zine called neurotica'. which is probably the most tragically hilarious and scrumptious creative project i've heard of. but it's gonna happen. sex and anxiety like you never seen it before.

also i totally need to get laid. 2 month itch. gahhhhHHhhhh.

i don't know if the aforementioned is internet appropriate. but whatever. i figure once you're a porn star, you can do whatever you want.

lately i've been feeling rather floaty. but what really makes me tickled is my new thing: making acrylic paintings in my room while listening to joni mitchell topless. you get paint all over your arms, and its just so quieting. i think i flux a lot. i haven't really written poetry in a while, which may just be indicative of needing less words and more abstraction. meh.

i also keep having very real and intense dreams. to the point where i wonder if i just need a new crush to get all neurotic over, instead of the fields of my past.

breathe breathe

2009-05-13T17:05:00.004-04:00

toronto.

city of dreams. metropolis of many. epicentre of urban centres.

taker of finances. giver of exhaustion.

silence the pianos and with muffled drum

2009-04-26T22:18:00.003-04:00

today was too much not done. sometimes, these days find me.

at first i was punishing myself for being sad and not knowing why...or guessing why and being disappointed that i really hadn't moved as far forward as i like to think i have on a good day.

but i think, it was just sadness.

female bodied person

2009-04-18T13:33:00.002-04:00

so

i'm moving soon. which is pretty awesome. to a quaint little 2 bedroom house with my beefy man friend, mason. we have some pretty exciting things planned. like monogrammed towels. and matching bed frames and duvet covers. and a walmart portrait.

this is what i count on mason for - someone i know who will get as excited about stupid little things as me. which is great if you're like me and have any sort of tendency to slip into periods of melancholy. ohhhh the tragedddy of human exxiissstence.

ahem.

anyway, other fun things are coming up. like...oh! yes. i just got an email saying i was accepted to be in the york disability studies grad conference art show. its juried, so i guess that means my merit shall be judged. ha. i should pick some really obscure pieces. they'll probably mumble under their moustaches 'mmmhmmm. avant-garde somethingsomething'

oh art.

also. i had a ridiculous night. i feel like i say that a lot. but its true.

friday night. me. mascara. uxbridge. blues band. unnnh.

nuf said?

no. so i go out with my mom and her friends and they're ordering fancy red wines and i'm sampling (and by sampling i mean drinkin to save my life) and this band goes up. and ohhh man.. they were good. especially the dude on keys. who is wailing it. and throwing his foot on the upper octaves every five seconds - which was a multi-fold of hilarity since my mom was a foot (ha) away and was fearing for her life with each gusted limb toss and careening loafer.

but said musician was also grinnnnning at me. hardcore. seriously. i had to start texting to avoid his eyes. anyway. after their set he invites me out for a smoke. well actually no - says he WOULD invite me out but something about a girlfriend blah blah - at which point i cut him and his ego off saying 'it's alright, homie. i'm into chicks.'

which really didn't quell his enthusiasm. but anyway, we're smoking and he's going on about how he used to play back up for all the old queens back in the day. and keeps referring to me as a female bodied person. and telling me i've got stars on me? around me?

if i had to describe this man i would say he resembled kramer, from seinfeld. only less funny. but then funny because of that.

weird as he was, boy could he lay it down.

falling farther than off the horse. and RANT.

2009-04-11T10:21:00.006-04:00

hello my lovelies. aka wesley - my number one (and dare i say only?) fan.

so yeah, i knew this would happen. start a blog. forget to post. anyway. i'm sorry. a million times over. but with a few months gone by, i've got loads to tell ya!

first off , upcoming things!

Spring into Action: A Discussion of Disability, Art and Advocacy

April 14, 12:30-2:15pm

York University, Accolade West Building

Room ACW 103

Featuring:

Lindsay Fisher and Jes Sachse - Envisioning New Meanings of Disability and Difference

Nancy Viva Davis Halifax - Critical Disability Studies, York University

Esther Ignagni - School of Disability Studies, Ryerson University

Cheryl Zinyk and Janet Monroe - SOL Express of L'Arche Community

also...

May 2nd - Junction BIA opening! 6pm Dundas West (more deets to come)

May 7th - Come As You Are opening! 7pm @ 701 Queen W

also...

i've done loads of new shoots and still have more to upload. so keep checkin my site for new stuff. put under the folder aptly named 'new stuff!!'. i'm so clever sometimes.

i think thats it for now...unless i'm forgetting something huge. oh! somethings that have happened that were awesome to be a part of would have to be the Hair Project opening (www.thehairproject.ca) and also Eli Clare's visit to Toronto. sharing a stage with one's hero is a bit like drinking a chocolate milkshake in the buff while being nuzzled by baby kitties. mmmmm. oh yes! www.eliclare.com (check out his testimonials page. i'm am most def 'anonymous reader' (...4 comments down). yeah, we're pretty much bff.

i promised you a rant, and i actually have a few.

the lovely people at contact (www.contactphoto.com) decided that what i wrote about my CAYA exhibit needed some re-vamping:

The gaze has long defined the depiction of physical disabilities, from Vaudeville to the medical text. Stereotypes exist as flattened notions molded by the viewer. Alleviate is a series of images— some playful, some provocative—that form an unapologetic narrative told from the viewpoint of the subject. Juxtaposing recognizable archetypes with self-representations, this series provides the observer with an invitation to take a fresh look.

a fresh look. reeeeeally. does it now? yes yes. disability like YOU'VE NEVER SEEN IT BEFORE. come one, come all.

that. is not. what i wrote. here's the original:

From the Vaudeville to the medical text to the telethon, the image of physical disability has long been defined by 'the gaze'. Race, sexuality, and gender expression all exist as flattened notions molded by the looker - interacting contradictorily with the truth that these ideas are never simple nor static. Alleviate is a series of images; some playful, some provocative; that form an unapologetic narrative told by the subjects. Through the juxtaposition of recognizable archetypes with self representations, this series pervades public and private spaces to provide the observer with an invitation: to look...

hmph. i know i went over the word limit, but come onnnnn now. oh toronto art scene, how i love thee. last year when i was interviewed by Eye Weekly, the bubbly reporter commented on how articulate i was. and how, and i quote, 'disability is so en vogue'. ummm. i WANTED to say: 'ohhh yeah. paralysis is totally the new black'. but i just stammered something about how it was nice to see disabled artists finally getting the attention they deserve...

bah. anyway, so my idea for contact is this: they want fresh? ima show them fresh... (new additions to what i already planned on showing are in the works. i encourage you to check out the show...)

other rant worthy things:

zenfolio has decided that some of my stuff has violated their terms of use. they stipulate as follows:

I. Prohibited Content
All pornographic material of any kind is prohibited from being displayed on this Web site. Images that contain nudity are allowed only if they exhibit artistic or other social value and are not pornographic as defined by the laws of California and the United States.

so...my 'doctor, doctor' series, and all my self portraits are porn. and do not exhibit artistic or social value. clearly. check it out! CENSORED.

which is a big thorn in my side. because my shows are coming up. and well feck, i've already paid for a year of hosting. and now what do i do? rub elbows with some porn honchos and find out where they get their hosting? perhaps. this sexual negativity shit is really getting annoying.

balls.

sigh. well i should end on a good note, i reckon. i, jes sachse, promise to keep on 'keepin it real'. its been a trying two weeks. lady drama (as always) and shoots and shows and good brew. thunderheist, weakerthans, mothermother, drag show, the vancouver poetry slam (!!), and just general merriment have made for a march (and now april) to remember.

now off i go to stick it to the man. errr...artistic elite.

conferences, cramps, and contact

2009-01-29T14:25:00.002-05:00

ah yes. my habit of starting projects and forgetting about them is alive and well.

sorry dear blog of mine.

updates!

i just got back from CUQSC, where i gave a presentation on race&gender&ability and 'the gaze'. from old freakshow documentation, to medical texts, to modern art, to erotica and porn. about 50 people came out. which is probably at least double what i expected.

but considering it was the debut of that workshop (entitled '(freaks) getting freaky'...hehe) some great dialogue was had and overall i think it was a success. and one of my lovely participants bought me a tequila shot later in the evening. nothing i love more than great dialogue, new friends, and hard liquor.

a panel discussion took place following the time of my workshop, that thankfully i was able to catch. the topic was queer organizing and the curriculum. one of the panelists was a teacher. and she spoke about current organizing. and the decision to 'come out' in the teaching profession.

i couldn't help but sit back in my chair and think back to my own messy adolescence. not being accomodated in gym class. skipping queer sex...or sex as pleasureful...or disabled people being sexual altogether. queer wasn't even on the menu. let alone the idea that i could be full of agency. and have a hot sex life. fuck the pity here, it's just a waste really. how we teach the perpetuately pussing wound of humanity just to bleed.

beth gives me a bit of hope though. i was happy to bump into her at the loud bar we all gathered in afterwards. scotch in hand, we toasted to the closets of high school and the opportunity to break down just one more barrier at a time.

thankfully i arrived home in one piece. guelph was an excellent host. next year the torch goes to UVic. oh how lovely that would be! however, i already have some traveling comin up soon. on monday i am off to mcmaster to show some of my art (yes...some Contact sneak peaks), and peform in the evening, alongside the lovely Julie Devaney - who i had the pleasure of performing with in July 2007. anyone in the area should definitely come catch the show! there are undoubtedly activities happening all the throughout the day, focused on disability and diversity.

so, as i am typing i am remembering all sorts of dates and such...coming up so soon, so maybe i'll just whip out some bullets...

much better!
feb 2nd - diversity day, mcmaster (hamilton): art show and evening performance
feb 9th - self love week, trent university (peterborough): erotic photography workshop ;)
feb 19 - envisioning new meanings video launch (will give more details soon), toronto
feb 26 - peterborough poetry slam: hosting!
mar 5 - contact fundraiser? (i got a mysterious email about this...no details yet...)
may 2nd - CONTACT: Junction BIA juried exhibit launch
may 7th - CONTACT: Come As You Are exhibit opening

man, lists make me realize how much i am actually doing. wowsa.

i will try to keep (at least) this list updated. but for now i think...i have covered everything. yes.

no! cramps. today marks the day i experienced the worst cramps of my life. we're talkin apocalyptic. i did not take pain killers, well because i was at work and had none and am not even menstruating so its not like i could really prepare anyway.

but talk about the war of 1812. in your crotch.

someone needs to declare a ceasefire STAT.

webcomic

2008-12-19T14:51:00.002-05:00

so i guess this is one of the biggest projects i'm working on right now. now that deadlines with CONTACT and CUQSC have died down a bit.

komickazie - OCAD's new comic club - intends to put together a project similar to flight

i've done a number of editorial cartoons for Arthur that i'm relatively pleased with. but i'd really like to start an on-going story. or theme at least?

now just for the inspiration part...

welcome?

2008-12-19T14:30:00.003-05:00

i guess this is where one typically writes a 'welcome to my blog' post. ermmm. but fuck the formalities. here it is, blah blah.

i'm going to use this as a place to do a few things:

update you on my current/upcoming projects
post and rant about random news articles i find interesting/outrageous
post some of my comics (one day i will update more regularly...webcomic? yes?)
blab about my day/things in my life that are of little consequence
any other shit i feel inspired to post

but for any of you reading/following, thanks for tuning in. i will try best to earn my keep.