well well

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.

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

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

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

close

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

of

NEED HELP.

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

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

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)

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

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."

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?

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

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.

what language is this?

blogblogblog

news article.

the star

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