Posts (page 2)

When my daughter was an infant, I would drive her in the car if I was unable to get her to sleep. We would head out in the car at 4AM in the soaking November rain of Vancouver and I would usually drive to Spanish Banks, the best beach in Vancouver and the furthest west on the peninsula. She was so tiny and so loud with her jarring cries. But usually she would fall asleep by the time I got here. I was so tired and overwhelmed and scared I would often park at the beach and cry. I would look at the waves and the big ships and the lights of the city and I felt so alone. The water looked alluring. Now when I think of Spanish Banks, I think of birth and death intertwined. And I think of the rain that started three days after my daughter was born and lasted for 50 days. And I think about the reason I did not listen to the voice that told me to walk into the water until I couldn't breathe anymore. It is an instinct and a love that is unlike anything else. It is being in love all the time and fiercely and there is nothing like it. It's like something in the blood and body that comes alive and now that is who I am first.

a strange form of life
kicking through windows
rolling on yards

heading in loved ones' triggering eyes
a strange one

and a hard way to come into a cabin
into the weather
into a path
walking together
a hard one

and the softest lips ever
25 years of waiting to kiss them
smiling and waiting
to bend down and kiss twice
the softest lips

in a dark little room
across the nation
you found myself racing
forgetting the strange and the hard
and the soft kiss
in the dark room

and a strange form of life
kicking through windows
rolling on yards

heading in loved ones' triggering eyes
a strange one

I just sent glitter nail polish and the stem of a sword fern in the mail. 

Last night's dream, from what I can remember now:

Context: I was at some sort of commencement activity for high school. However, I left high school early and abruptly to attend college. However, sometimes I have these crazy dreams that I'm an adult and I have to go back and finish high school anyway. I also left my high school boyfriend abruptly when I took off for Simon's Rock.

Dream:
So, I was at this commencement activity and one could drink if from the bottle, be it beer or wine or liquor. If you poured it in a cup, it was illegal. I was alone and feeling like I shouldn't be there, since I wasn't celebrating my graduation or whatever. I saw my friend, Leslie, who had moved to Germany. I sort of glommed onto her so I could not feel alone and drink and not feel like a solo-drinking freak. I was waiting and waiting for the possibility of seeing a boy I had a relationship with in college. But I realized the real party was private and I did not know where to go for that shin-dig unnanounced from Massachusetts.

So I reluctantly hung around this thing at the school and I looked outside and saw skater-punks doing tricks in the parking lot. All my drop-out friends! It was Scott and Darren and others. And then I saw my high-school boyfriend, Josh, skating around too. But instead of being a punk, he was clean cut, wearing blue jeans and a button-down shirt. I wanted to talk to him but I kept getting distracted by the mundane conversation at the school. When I finally broke away, the skater punks were playing soccer. I sat down behind the goalie and Josh was kicking the ball into the net. I tried to make eye contact. I had to talk to him.

Then I woke up.

Sammi Smith

Here Comes the Rain, Baby

The Best of Sammi Smith

here's where I'd take you:

1. First stop: Chutney Villa for dosas and mysterious dips
2. Main Street to look for old boots
3. The Brickhouse, of course, to meet Leo the bartender and drink something he made for you
   
4. Joe’s Café to shoot pool, have an espresso and talk to the old Italian men who drink espresso and shoot pool and watch soccer all day
5. Bike around the park to First Beach because it’s pretty and maybe see a seal or two and some big freighter ships and then go look at the strange heron nests in the trees
6. Chinatown to go to Pnom Penh for garlic squid and BBQ duck
7. The DnD store with the serious swords
   
8. The Cobalt, a dirty rock bar by night, strip club by day
9. The Templeton diner where they have jukeboxes at each booth with David Lee Roth and Motley Crue on them, and alcoholic milkshakes (!)
   
10. Shiro’s for homestyle sushi made by Shiro, who unfortunately likes to golf
11. Magpie to look through obscure magazines and buy cheap books
12. Red Cat to look for old records that aren't $30
    
13. The Buchan Hotel to play "a secret holiday in France"
    
14. The photo booth in the train station
15. The Museum of Anthropology to browse the creepy collection drawers in the dark back room
16. East Hastings Street to feel sad for the junkies and prostitutes

17. The frites place that only serves frites for a basket of poutine

The end

I was pleased with the sleep I acquired and took the bus to my favorite diner which is tucked between two porno stores in the seedy part of town. On the bus, I met a homeless man when he asked me, “Have you made it to Manhattan yet?” and I was thinking about a trip I took to New York at that very same moment. He told me about all the places he had traveled and he how he once wrote poems and stories and once lived in the Village when he was young and that made him smile and then he said he would not go back to because it made him sad. He seemed like an old soul and was smiling with his eyes. I felt blessed.

I met my friend at this tiny diner tucked between two porno shops and ate eggs benedict. We listened to Journey at our booth and she talked about her idols and her cover band. I listened.

We walked down the street and tried on new sweaters made out of parts of old sweaters.

I went to the train station. I talked my way through the stolen passport problem and said “Yes, sir” a lot.

I ate more meat on the train medium-rare and wrote this silly letter. I started the story about the train and the photo booth. I thought about a gift I should send someone. I fell asleep listening to Richard Buckner sing the poems from Spoon River Anthology.

I took a nice nap but did not dream.

I met another friend who took me out for a four-course meal at a restaurant near my hotel because Equity would cover it. It was wild mushroom and game night. I drank an Italian Job and ate the following meats: quail, rabbit, venison,

pork, foie gras (you heard that right!) and some good mushrooms too, cooked in “meat juice”. We talked about our lives and things that are hard and then I indulged and bought a bottle of very good and expensive French wine and the waiter told us this bottle was a “sexy choice.” We laughed and blushed and started talking about good things instead of bad things and the wine was delicious.

I went to my friend’s play she directed at the university for grad school and admired her vision. I took her out for cocktails. I listened to her talk about theatre and remembered why I left it. I talked about "Einstein on the Beach" and how much I love it.

I reluctantly agreed to attend her cast party at a very beautiful apartment with a bay window, a clawfoot tub and a lovely balcony that I thought should not be in the hands of a group of college kids. These were mere babies and I felt like I was “Sophie” in Howl’s , who has a spell cast on her and she becomes and old woman. I drank a screwdriver--and I hate screwdrivers--on the balcony and

looked at the fog. When one kid lit an ungodly Cuban cigar, I split and I walked to my hotel and wondered why I’m a so contrary and was so tired I just stripped off my cigar-shitty clothes and slept in my underwear instead of finding my soft and old and secure Metallica shirt.

(This is the next installment of the essay, "What I did on my lost weekend")

Chapter 2: Illegal fruit

I did not panic. I smiled at the customs agent and prayed he would not swipe the passport. I thought about big dogs and interrogation and hours under buzzing fluorescent lights.

I smiled at the guy again. I remembered Macavity The Mystery Cat and then it made sense. Of course, Macavity got the wrong passport for his birthday potlatch.

I put on lipstick and smiled at the Customs guy again. I passed go and I collected my get out of jail free card.

I met my friend near the photo booth in the train station and walked to to eat garlic-pepper squid and rare beef salad among large Cambodian families. She admired my cowboy boots.

I walked around and looked at lots of meat and even a dried lizard on a stick and charm bracelets and I bought a mango steen—a fruit that is illegal in the US—It’s kind of ugly on the outside, but when you break it open you find something that looks like a bulb of garlic inside but the cloves taste like custard. According to a definition of the fruit I found on the web, “New York Times' food critic R.W. "Johnny" Apple describes its flavor the way D.H. Lawrence described sex: as "moist, fragrant, snow-white segments of ambrosial flesh" tasting "so delicate that it melts in the mouth like ice cream."

I dropped a clove on the street and cursed.

I walked through the seedy part of town and looked for old records and learned that old heavy metal albums are going for $30 these days. I admired an abandoned optometry shop.

I walked to my hotel. It was quiet and reminded me of a nice memory of Paris. Then I thought it would be nice for two people to have a love affair here in this room because it was simple and the light shining through the curtains was pretty and it was quiet at 4pm and I liked the wash basin near the bed and it was near the park on a pretty street with benches and flowers and old people holding hands.I don't know who those two people are yet, though.

Then I thought that it would be something special for these two as-yet-unknown people to have a love affair on the train too.  Or in the photo booth after the curtains close. Or in the among the creepy collection drawers in the dark back room of the Museum of Anthropology. Then I thought that maybe I should write a magical realism story about a love affair that starts in a photo booth and ends in the museum back room. Or that starts on the train and ends at the Buchan Hotel. Who are these two people? Hmmm …

Last night, I had two nightmares about 
1. my favorite nephew, who was some sort of revolutionary and being executed and
2. my daughter, who we allowed to play outside alone and never came home.

That's all I want to say about those dreams