Long live and live long

I love lists. I hold grudges. I write them down.

My list of the top ten comments I wish I had said in 2009:

10. You are among the worst people I have ever met and had I not been horny and lonely when we first met, I would've never become friends with you. You are an untalented, unfunny, ungrateful loser and I feel sick to my stomach for giving you the time of day. It was a momentary lapse in character on my part and it will never happen again.

9. I don't understand why you insisted on becoming something so artificial. I call it 'artificial' not out of malice, but because your transformation hurts me and leaves me with one less person to trust. I love you regardless.

8. You are cool. Your significant other is not.

7. There is no reason for me to disbelieve you when you say you are happy, except that I feel in my gut that you are not. Stop insisting that happiness is easy. If it were, then you and I wouldn't be the people we are, and I kind of like who we are, but only when we're genuine.

6. How can I measure how grateful I am to you? I can't. Thank you.

5. Shut up. Stop talking.

4. I want you to leave her alone, to be present and to notice how much of her you've let slip through your fingers. You're repeating the same mistakes you made with me and you're too fucking ignorant to see it. I hardly love you anymore.

3. Your helplessness and your lack of responsibility pisses me off. Why is it that you're only a good friend when you're drunk? I don't trust you one bit.

2. I stopped talking to you because I stopped talking to a lot of people this past year. Also, you're boring.

1. You mean a lot to me and the only thing I fear is that I'll grow to resent you as I have so many other people that I love. You were the best thing about 2009. I'll never tell you this because I'm afraid this will scare you.


Yours,

I


How can we expect a harvest of thought who have not had a seed time of character?
-H.D. Thoreau

Filmmaker

It scratches the skin on my face... my neck... the palm of my hand and the tips of my fingers. I love holding my hand around your head and resting my cheek against your ear and feeling the pinch; you never shave this time of year. The time when you're caught in your thoughts. Caught in your imagination... brainstorming every shot, playing with every spoken word, and framing and reframing shapes and colors and sounds and silences. Leg and chest. Arm and shoulder. Right there. That curve of the neck....down to the back... the chest. You love how my hair looks when its up. The pearl of my earring. The touch of my ear.

A mattebox around the eye of your mind and I'm in front of the lens whether I like it or not. The all seeing, all hearing lens.
What am I wearing now? In this minute, this moment? I wanna wear that dress with the lace and the seqince... It reflects in the light. The same light sparkling in my eyes. I've always been obsessed with eyelight and you know this. I know you know this.

Your hand is warm on my waist. Take off your Wayfarer glasses and look at me. Kiss my eyelashes with your fingertips not your lips dammit.

Is the moment before not sacred anymore? What happened to courting? What happened to feelings? Real feelings? It's all masked by adrenaline and your blood.

Grab me a goddam typewriter and let me spill my desparation for romance on the page. I hate you. I love you. I don't believe you. I don't even know you. Shoot me. Shoot me on 8 mm. Let the emulsion burn my cigarette. Let the smoke spiral in swirls from my pouty lips through the air. And be violent. I'm violent. Passion is violent. And violence is violet. Ultaviolet.

I see my father in your eyes. When you raise your voice and threaten with your hand. I think it's your skinny ties and silly 60s hair. And it's sexy.

I take off your tie and leave on your undershirt. It's ribbed. And I feel you breathing underneath. Grand deep desparate breaths.

Shut off the lights and smoke in bed.
I could fall asleep to that sound. The chk chk chk and clk clk clk of the roll of the camera. It's a fetish thing I suppose - chiseled in my dna. everything sexual starts young whether we recognize it or not. these ideas are innate. internal. birthed. as thick, as thin as blood.
Let it bleed.

Chk chk chk. Clk clk clk. you hear it. I hear it. Close your eyes now.
We'll drown it out with the sound of the scene... I've always been a screamer.

Lo

It's Christmas time....in the ghetto....

We're in the car, my father and I, driving along Kennedy Rd. and listening to a bouncy, reggae version of 'Silver Bells'. My dad has been listening to a CD filled with similarly-interpreted versions of Christmas songs (Jingle Bells with island swing, a Rastafarian Silent Night) and I kind of take it in stride because while he doesn't know Bob Marley from a doorknob, this is exactly the kind of music he would be listening to the day before Christmas Eve.

"Do you like this music?" he asks me after one of our many long silences.

"Uh...it's funny," I say.

"I got it from the black guy at the store. He sells them. I think he is the one singing."

"The black guy?" (Note: my dad works at an Asian supermarket in Brampt on that has a large Jamaican clientele and, so far as I know, an all-Asian workforce, so I'm wondering if there is either one specific black guy who works there, or else my dad is showcasing a Vietnamese knack for confusing his definite articles. I'm not even going to acknowledge any racist implications because I know there aren't any. Anyway...)

My dad says: "He set up a stand in the store and sells his music. He gave me a bunch of these CDs."

Long pause. Now we're a block away from our house.

"He gave you a bunch of THIS specific CD? Why?"

My dad shrugs. "I don't know. He's a nice guy."

In the span of about an hour, this and maybe another two minutes worth of material is all that we say to each other. If you find that sad, don't. There is nothing else to say. All the pertinent details are already known. I know that he will listen to this CD on his drive to work even after Christmas without thinking about it. One day he will get fed up with it (probably right after New Year's), turn it off and switch to 680 News or else some random song on the FM. He will probably give a few of those CDs away at our Christmas party raffle on Friday and if my cousin K gets one, she'll want to listen to it right away and laugh that braying, hysterical laugh of hers that's always more funny than anything she's laughing at. The CD will end up under car seats, in junk drawers, in basement crawl spaces gathering dust and cardboard shavings. There will be a copy kept at the supermarket (on the management office's communal CD rack, probably between Paris by Night 17 and God knows) to be played every holiday season until it is lost or too scratched or replaced with something else. And the black guy who gave it to my dad will take down his booth at the end of the holiday season and every time he comes in or passes by, he will say hi to my dad and be extra friendly to him because that's the kind of response my dad inspires in strangers.

Now I don't know if these things will happen exactly as I describe them, but I imagine that the actual events will be darn close. I guess I'm telling you all of this so that I don't take this kind of instinct for granted, just to reassure myself that although I often find my family mysterious and cruel, there are some details that are imprinted in my mental database that will always be there. Just like how the texture of snow is embedded in my skin and the smell of butter in a hot skill recalled by my nose, these are things that you just know. It kind of seems like a minor victory, but when we're swimming in so much that is unknowable, isn't it kind of great, kind of comforting, to feel like we own certain facts to such a degree that we can get at them without working at all? I think so.

Anyway, Merry Christmas.


Yours,

I


Mistletoe berries are poisonous.

A conversation.

It’s 8:30 pm on a Tuesday. It’s a different kind of Tuesday - and I say that because it’s the Tuesday before Christmas Eve suddenly making this day not feel like every other mundane weekday, but one that’s infused with emotion. Hyper. Almost tense but in a good way.

The bar at the Rex is astir. A local favourite among Welland’s watering holes and pizza ovens, conceived from sweet love in the 1960s.

I’m sitting at the bar on one of those tall stools, with a leather cushion and brass buttons. My eyes are heavy and I feel warm inside. Insulated by the numbing buzz of Frangelico. “Frangelico, I love you,” I whisper to myself. I hold up my tumbler and whisper again, “Frangelico... I love you” puckering my lips and kissing the rim, as if we’re the only lonely in the room. Me and my liqueur in good company.

And we are in good company. Just waiting.

Finally he’s out of the bathroom and I see him from across the way, emerging from the hall. Look at him, so sharp in that button-down, in those jeans. He stops and says hi to an old friend. I can’t quite hear what he’s saying, but I bet it has something to do with the ponies on TV. About Blind Magic and Lucky Number Nine. “Beautiful breeds. I gotta dime and a half on this race,” I imagine him saying with that accent of his. That working class accent that makes me feel as warm as the Frangelico.

I love seeing him smile. I love the corners of his eyes, and how the lowlights above the bar glint in the center of his pupil. A twinkle. And then another. I can drown in those sad blue eyes.

Side by side, our arms brush against each other. Our elbows resting on the bar. Manners are not an issue with my man, and that’s only the base of the iceberg when it comes to why I love him. It’s actually below the base... it’s that deathly frozen part submerged miles deep within the sea. The sea, like the color of his eyes. You can just trust a person's eyes.

Bella Donna is playing on the juke box and all I’m wondering is when he’s finally going to talk to me about what he wanted to talk to me about. ANd what did he want to talk to me about? This is not usually how it goes. Usually I talk. He listens. I talk. He dreams. I talk. And he remembers.

But quiet he remains. Until...

“Eh, one more,” he says to the bartender, and nods to something 40 %. He never really knows when I’m drunk, but I’m drunk. And at this point I just like sitting with him. Feeling the warmth radiate from his skin, smelling the tobacco and the whiskey seeping from every pore on his five oclock shadow. If there was one scent that reminds me of him it’s tobacco and whiskey... And olive oil. Three scents.

And in that moment I become overwhelmingly sad at the realization that I might not be able to sit next to him like this again. No. That one day there will be a time where we won’t be able to sit together like this and just exist together. Breathing the same breath, feeling the same warmth, sharing the same drink. Same blood. Same body.

And then he turns to me and sees my tears. Sees my tears streaming down my cheeks, which are swelling up from the salt, and I look like a kid again. Mascara watering from my bottom eyelashes, melting away any attempt I made at womanhood.

He’s sad because I’m sad. And he knows why I’m sad without even asking, I can tell. Because I’m always sad about this. Since we both lost someone, we carry around this overwhelming fear that another person we love the most will leave too and never come back. We carry it in our heart - a ball and chain wrapped around the organ weighting us down. Our very own internal jail cell holding us captive, punishing past decisions.

“Dad,” I say, “You’re my best friend.”

And then he turns to me. He nods.

“You should go,” he says. “I think you should go.”

And that’s it. He holds up his glass as if to say, don’t beat yourself up kid. I clink mine with his and take a drink. A little pours down from the corner of my mouth, but I’m numb to the burn. The next time I drink I’ll be alone in New York.

xoLo

Christmas tradition: Violent films.

Deadbeat Cookery - Spicy Face Pasta

For all of you herbal enthusiasts, this is a tasty, savoury way to enjoy your herbal-infused butter. Herbal.

INGREDIENTS:

pasta, frozen california mix, hot sauce, powdered cheese mix (optional), canned whole tomatoes (I like the No-Name brand stewed tomatoes, but any kind will do), salted butter, herb-infused butter, oregano, salt and pepper to taste.

Notice how there are no measurements? That's because you can put in as much of anything as you damn well want.

WHAT TO DO IN WHAT ORDER:

1. Bring pot of salted water to boil. Add pasta. I recommend using only just enough water to cover the pasta...this way you will avoid the tedious draining part before you can add the flavouring.

Nifty tip: Vegetable fusilli has the benefit of being both nutritious and colourful! You will definitely come to appreciate the second part.

2. Once pasta is done to your liking (i.e. al dente or mushymushy), add the frozen california mix.

(You can of course use any frozen vegetable you want, but ABSOLUTELY DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE use FRESH vegetables of ANY kind. This completely changes the chemistry of the recipe if you do, so God fucking help you if you do. You can use frozen peas or frozen green beans or frozen corn or even canned corn if you want to, I don't care, but if you even so much as CONSIDER throwing in a couple of fresh veggies, you might as well just stick your head in the oven because THAT'S how much it will change the recipe, I swear to God. I'm serious. This is not just some arbitrary rule I made up.)

3. Add hot sauce.

4. Add cheese sauce and/or oregano and/or salt and/or pepper.

5. Add butters. Mix well so that they melt, unless you pre-melted them in which case Good for You, Mr. or Miss Foresight! Here's a shiny fucking gold star to stick up your ass.

No, seriously, if you pre-melt the butters, that's quite impressive. Good job.

6. Simmer everything and add tomatoes. Simmer MORE!

7. Mix mix mix.

8. Pour into bowl and mangia, mangia!



There! Wasn't that easy? If you want to take it a step FURTHER and make this banquet-hall certifiable, you can throw it into a loaf pan, cover with bread crumbs or cheese or bacon or more FROZEN vegetables and bung it in the over at 350 until it's GOLDEN BROWN or DARK BLACK, whichever you prefer. That would be a good time to disable the smoke alarm.


Yours, as always,

I


Taste test all the solar flares available.

How to knit.

There we were standing in the Dollar Emporium. In an isle that sells flashlights on one side and pregnancy tests on the other.

He was in a white tshirt, Fruit of the Loom with holes in the seems. And only a scarf flung around his neck to keep him warm. I was wearing my Zia Marie's petticoat. It was a size too big, but furry on the inside. It was winter afterall.

My eyes were focused on that scarf. So many little frays, so many bubbling loops where the needle strayed from pattern one too many times. Who made it, I wondered...

I couldn't take my eyes off of it. And not because it was beautiful, even though it was. It was because I couldn't raise my eyes. I couldn't meet his. A physical ethereal force wanted me to look up...and I was trying. He was going on about a time he bought prophylactics from an A&P and his mother found the receipt in the trash. So she snooped around his room, and behold, found the condoms in the first drawer she looked in.

"In a sock drawer at thirteen? How much of a cliche are you?" That's all I thought for a fleeting moment, but didn't dare say a word. I wanted the topic as far from anything that would make him think of my vagina. Or what I would look like without clothes on. Smell like... feel like...Oh Mother Mary help me.

He grabbed a yo-yo off the shelf. And finally we rounded the corner and there were the christmas decorations. I went on ahead, straight to the little glittery ornaments. I really did have a task.

Everything was made in Taiwan. But it was all I could afford. Plastic reindeer. Little horns. A holly green, or two. I had ten dollars that I took from the pocket of my father's Levi's earlier that morning.

I couldn't decide.

Finally, he came up beside me and put his hand on my shoulder, which I felt everywhere but.

He pointed over to the side, and picked up an ornament. A cherub.

Ha, cherubs. My mom used to pronounce them "cherUBE." I let out a giggle and put 5 in my basket. These would do.

"Who do you identify most with? Ebenezer Scrooge or Tiny Tim?"

It was out of nowhere, you see, but I just said it. The first thing that popped into my head.

He turns to me and says, “I’d consider myself a healthy balance of both.”

And then I knew.

And then he took me home.

But not my actual home.

xoLo

Whether it's my body, brain, or my craft, exercise makes me feel really good...

Alien

I'm very happy.

:)

Lo.

The first step to recovery is to admit that you have not failed anyone

There's a part of me who wants to beg forgiveness for my ungenerous moments. That part of me is a pussy. Fuck generosity.

My problem is that what I mistake for generosity is actually a laying down of arms, of putting down the Magnum, lying on the sidewalk and being trampled by dirty soccer cleats. The world is full of ungenerous people, but the world is equally full of people who can't tell a good deed from a soft back, a moment of empathy from a fear of being yourself. I feel (and this is just a feeling, an uneducated opinion) that, in a way, Hilary Clinton was right: young people are lazy. Not in that they don't work hard at school or at their jobs. On the contrary, quite a few of us are almost pathologically ambitious, but it's not that kind of laziness that plagues us. It is an inner laziness, a spiritual laziness, an abject refusal to dig deep and question where our ideologies of self come from. Why do we feel the way we do? Why do we hate ourselves? Why is the ground beneath us made of such fine, crumbling sand?

There are often times where I watch people and I wonder if they see themselves for how they really are. This is presumptive of me, because of course who am I to judge someone's authenticity? But a lack of authenticity stinks of fear so strong you can feel it burn in your chest with pity or impatience depending on your mood. This is the kind of fear that leads us to be self-indulgent when it comes to the attention of others, that leads to indecision, inconsideration, incomplete answers to the question "Well, what do you want?" What do YOU want? Do you want status, a full Rolodex, a big loft and used condoms littering your walk-in closet? Well, I'll tell you, you can have them. No sweat. Well, a little sweat. And some time. But you will have them, if you want them. And there is no one in the world who is allowed to tell you that those are petty desires. But just because you've satisfied a desire does mean that you have filled yourself in any way.

Because there is a difference between Wanting and wanting. The difference is that the one kind slips into your veins so sneakily you might as well be breathing it; and the other is real. You Want that job, those tits, that man, whatever. But what you want is deeper, something you desire so badly that it becomes sacred and you don't say it because in a way it is obvious and in another way it doesn't need to be said. It is this desire that makes us human and relatable, but for whatever reason we've buried this want and adorned its casket with useless shit. We've distanced ourselves from our true heart's desire, and we are dying in loneliness because of it. The only real solution is to dig for it, not to placate ourselves, but to suffer in the name of discovering our name.

Make no mistake: this is hard work, it will not come easy, but when it does (or so I am promised) you will feel a peace that comes with true freedom. Someone out there is going to say "I know what I want. I want to be happy." That's barely scratching the surface. This is not a cry for treatises, it is a cry for introspection, not a cry for destinations but for journeys. And silent ones at that. Your want is silent, it is a feeling and I imagine you will know it when you know it. I will end with a thought I stole (and shall now paraphrase) off a chalkboard in front of a yoga studio:

Who would I be without this recurring thought?


Ungenerously yours,

I


If I were jar, I would be filled with...golfishes. The live ones, not the crackers.

NightBITCH before XMAS

What's it like to look like you're from Nightmare Before Christmas everyday of your life? Stockings and bows and smokey charcoal eyeliner. The expensive kind. What do you look like under there?

What do you look like when you have sex? Doesn't your caked on makeup smear? What does your cum face look like? I'd be scared. Wouldn't you be scared having that raccoon bobbing over you... (or under you... whichever position you so incline...) Oh man, what do you look like in the morning? Remind me to replace my pillow cases if we ever find ourselves having sex in my bedroom. I imagine the dry cleaning costs are atrocious. Do you excuse yourself to wash your face? I'm not being mean. I'm just curious.

What's with these fetishes for grown up broads playing the little, lonely girl?

I stick a finger in my mouth and gag. GAG at the thought. Valenti's Purity Myth at example.

And why is everyone in such a hurry to shack up and play house? We're TWENTY TWO. We should be playing the field yo. We should be... we should be just starting our lives. Not settling down. Maybe some of us are more ambitious than others.

Maybe you're happy with your 9 to 5 and your stand up chap, polo wearing boyfriend and all of his pretty stacks of money. And your your lavish, indulgent, healthy parents and your bags and purses and smelly bath soaps you buy over the boarder and charge on credit. You like your life in the Niagara Falls don't you?

I'm being a bitch. I can be that sometimes. It's good to recognize one's own flaws. It's healthy.

I'm also hyper aware of everyone elses.

Lola.

B is for Birth of Christ, I is for Icicle, T is for Tinsel, C is for Candy Cane, H is for Holly

I am Daniel Day Lewis

Don't believe me? That's cool. I'll just cut you out of my life then. It's easy. I do it a lot.

We're in a world made of sand. Zillions of particles. Breakable. Fragile. Impermanent.

Come together when they're wet, fall apart when the well's run dry.

I'm happiest when I'm submersed in a project. When I'm writing something and exploring the world and everything that's fucked about it, whether it be a blog, a children's story, a script or a friggin greeting card for my boss's jewish niece. "On your Batt Mitzvah. Blessings to you and a lifetime of happiness. Mazel Tov!"

I love writing.

And it's not the way some people love it. I mean, I'm writing something and loving that something as a true artist. Not writing a spec. Not writing for personal gain...For status.... For employment.

I'm talking about writing as a form of therapy. And don't stick your nose in the air when I say writing is an artform because it is. You know what i'm talking about. Why must we all commodify and capitalize on our hearts? Some of us are just more introspective then others. Some of us are homemade juice blends fresh from the backyard apricot tree, and some of us are Tang. Diet Tang. I don't trust Tang. Tang is always confused. Always a deer in headlights. Always such a scatterbrain. Always looking for more and more ways of proving themselves as a legit refreshment. Tang talks at people, not with them. Tang doesn't realize the world does not revolve around them. Tang, you piss me off when you're not even around.

Maybe Tang really doesn't want to quench thirsts? It's surely incapable of providing healthy teeth and bones. No matter how fancy the packaging, the stuff inside is still gross. I would not recommend Tang to any of my friends, family or coworkers. Go pure or go home.

Sophie's Choice is fucking me up. I've stopped making sense. I'm pretty sure I'm ranting about Tang, all because i'm becoming soemotionally charged by watching this film. Sophie is an insane character. So well written. SO well played.

Meryl Streep is a goddess. She is ethereal. She is divine. A master of the craft. THe Art.

I wish I had some sort of divinity like she has. Some sort of prodigious air. A Daniel Day Lewis degree of insurmountable awe-inspiring ways and wonders and talent. You can't fuck someone's talent. You can only fuck someone's desperation for talent.

If I could go to the cinema and watch films by myself everyday and then think about them afterwards over an Americano, while I scribble notes in my notebook and people-watch and dwell in my self-pity... Oh how lovely the afternoons would be.

I woke up extremely thrown off this morning. My father called me in the evening and I explain to him my woes. All he has to say is the simplest of words and they put my entire being back into perspective. I trust my father. I relate to him the most in this world because he is the only person I know who is in a similar position as I am, in a weird, difficult to describe in words kind of way.

One of my greatest fears is shattered glass. Glass breaking in my palm causing the skin on my hand to bleed in tiny little pieces all over. And if we're all just particles of sand, does that mean I'm afraid of the deterioration of togetherness? The breakage of something I hold close? I've been having these vivid dreams lately. Some are your everyday Salvador Dali surreal juxtapositions. And some are real. So real that I forget when I wake up that she is gone and when I remember she is not there, the wind is knocked out of me so literally. So real that it feels like yesterday I was eight years old and collecting the loose hairs from your neck. So real that I felt the black of your bruises, the scar on your chest against my ear, the smell of your breath on my eyes and the way your body looked collapsed in the shower, again in the doorway on the linoleum, and then in the kitchen on the floor, on the pavement of the drive. The way you look when they carried you away. The glaze of your eyes looking back at me like whatever snapped inside of you took away all of your memories and your knowledge. I was no one that you knew. It came to a point that everyone around you disappeared. Your eyes filled your little face and you blinked very slowly. Yellow building in every corner. Jaundice. Fuck jaundice. And all you felt now was this overwhelming desire to die. "Please God take me away. Take me away." You prayed to die. You were dying to die. And you know what, I prayed for you to die too.

There's this moment in Sophie's Choice where Stingo reflects on his mother's death when he was an adolescent. He says he didn't love her enough. Sophie says he probably did. But you can just tell that he didn't. When you're an adolescent you waste too much time on stupid silly stupid things and stupid people made of Tang. Distracted away from what's real and what's going on right before your eyes. And then one day you wake up and it's too late. She's looking right through you and right on into the other side wishing God or the Devil or whatever the fuck is out there would take her away.

The only thing I can do now is pretend I'm Daniel Day Lewis. But I'm not going to pretend because I know I am. Or at least that's what Im going to keep telling myself. So one day others will see Daniel in me too... And maybe even she'll see it. Because for some reason, we want so badly to live life to an unbelievable degree to honor those who are no longer with us.

Signed,

Lo (DDL)

(Im Italian and highly emotional to the point of self indulgence. Forgive me, kiss me, pray for me.)

Yellow label

I love the No-Name brand
Because its labels lack nonsense
If the can says
GINGER ALE
(or, alternately,
soda au
GINGEMBRE)
then there is no question that what you'll get is
tssss!
ginger ale.
The same goes with
COLA,
Three-fruit
MARMALADE,
and, my favourite,
PANCAKE MIX.

No gimmicks or mascots
No talking toucans or ravenous rabbits or
enormously homosexual elves
To. The. Point.
No-Name
Without-a-name
Nameless.

If I had a No-Name Name
my label would read:

FEMALE, HUMAN
Contains one (1) serving
Ingredients: Water, bone, blood, muscle, fat, tissue, natural flavours
Nutritional Facts: Probably not as healthy as she could be, but you can do worse. Not a significant source of Vitamin A or Iron.
Product of Canada (with parts pre-assembled in Vietnam)
May contain traces of nuts.

On my back: everything above
only in French.

I only shoot at magic hour

The dust at dusk
Is speckled-egg blue
Like the dirt that dusts
The face of the moon

You touch the blue dust
You've drawn on your hand
Blue lines. Solid? Fiction
It's a million-dot depiction
Like a Primavera made
From hourglass sand

Sun-starved little breaths!
Worry rots the soul
Of this sunset, this cerulean
Mid-moment air
The lights starts to die out
Mid-blazing
Mid-flare
Mid-thought I stop
My wonderings, I stare
At the sky, so large so I parse
Section by section
Breath taken, knees buckled
At such dusty perfection.

-I