Thursday, August 26, 2010

gouge my eyes with platitudes of sentiment

Togetherness was strange the way it always is, those raw feelings that occasionally surface without warning or reason and my everlasting inability to say what I mean. My mother asks me questions as though she is not my mother, as though we are acquainted well enough to make weird personal inquiries but not well enough to be invested in the answers.

A coroner phoned me last night, also with weird personal questions though it was easier to discern the relevance of these. He is trying to determine a cause of death. The toxicology report reveals which drugs were at lethal doses but his question is about her intentions. He did not ask me anything I had not already asked myself but it was strange to be discussing these thoughts with a disembodied voice.

I went to a second funeral for a high school friend while home on the prairies. The fact I chose to attend this funeral may be indicative of how desperately I needed some time away from Togetherness, but going was good in a number of ways... More practice with goodbye, more ways to say I'm sorry.


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A text message from Jesse today:

" I went back to that sushi place and had the same platter we shared all to myself. Took an IQ test right after and scored way high. Took it again three hours later and I'm an idiot again."

I took Jesse for sushi for lunch on Wednesday. He hasn't had much exposure to sushi in Smalltown, Winter Prairie and I need someone who will eat it with me. Apparently he likes it and thinks it gives him (temporary) super powers. Perfect.


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Monday, August 16, 2010

prairies pulling at the pant leg of your bad disguise

Two days until the Togetherness begins again. We're flying out to the winter prairies on Wednesday afternoon. Togetherness wilts me and thinking about it takes away my words. There is no way not to attend your sister's memorial, there is no way not to be Together when everyone else wants to be Together. It does not matter what I want, which is to be alone with it, because this is how we do death. We do it Together.



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Monday, August 09, 2010

This is how you tell me apart from a model...

This picture was taken when I was working as an actress/comedienne at a summer festival about five years ago. The two gorgeous people on either side of me were part of another show that was running at the venue next to mine. They were models. Shawn laughed so hard at this picture I almost had to move out.










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Saturday, August 07, 2010

the outline to a complicated dream









How I don't know what I should do with my hands when I talk to you
How you don't know where you should look, so you look at my hands

.........................................................................................(J. Samson)





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Wednesday, August 04, 2010

Once I start I cannot stop myself.

Without a doubt I like massage. I could fall in love with the massage therapist just the same way I fell in love with the man who did my first tattoo and it was all about endorphins and had nothing to do with his ratty little beard and broken teeth. I was a little apprehensive but after talking to the massage therapist for a few minutes I felt reassured. Almost like I'd had a couple of drinks I was suddenly ready to get naked and feel good. And it was so so good. She told me that my hips were resting unevenly; after a little questioning she said it was probably because of the fact that I spend a lot of time sitting cross-legged on the floor. The right leg always goes on top because that's how I bend. But she said I should try reversing the sit to make my other hip stretch the same way. Not to worry, she told me, because with a little manipulation my hips were back in even alignment. I thought this was nice... left to my own devices I tend to get a little askew, but with a bit of decisive coaxing I can be brought back in line. And I guess I like being brought back in line.



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Tuesday, August 03, 2010

in which I meander aimlessly

My mother has pointed out that all my "values" (she said the quotes) are rooted in not doing things. Like not watering the lawn even though it's very dry and brown because I do not want to waste water. Or not bagging the grass when I mow and instead letting it cycle back into the earth. She has something here and the point is that it is easier not to do things and my "values" may be all about choosing the path of least resistance rather than about doing the right thing.

There is a new bylaw in my city about using weed killers like Roundup and those ones that cause living things to shrivel on contact. We can't buy these things anymore. Of course I didn't notice this because that's not how I do weeds. I just pull them, or better yet whack them with big powerful gas powered gardening tools that pollute the air with noise and the environment with carbon.

But there is a zombie weed on my driveway that grows in the crack between the two largest paving stones. I have killed it dozens of times and it keeps coming back, its zombie arms reaching for my throat as it emerges. It scares me. I pulled it, I poured vinegar on it, I poured salt on it. It keeps coming back. I asked the internet what to do and it told me to pour boiling water on it. But I keep picturing all the earthworms who live underneath the paving stones... and imagining them boiling to death makes me writhe. I can't do that. So I'm going back to doing nothing.


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