I was pretty Miserable During my Stay in Edmonton Over christmas in Edmonton between Tofino and Mexico. Here's a bunch of Diary selections. I had the Diary with me, and Transcribed a bunch of shit to the Computer to post, just in case my stuff all gets stolen- which could very easily happen.
Dreamed this:
Michael Hall, using stolen passports, had smuggled myself, himself, and a small camera crew through a series of turnstyles into the embassy of a very dangerous and volatile north Asian country, where we were nervously welcomed as diplomatic guests upon their soil.
Within the building , we were escorted to a red room in which a delicate buffet of exotic foods from their land was being offered. This was a very strict and secretive nation; underfed guards with communist era rifles stood fast on either side of every entranceway, and Kim Jong Il type politicians and ambassadors wandered priest like through the ornate halls in long, stiffly constructed, and intricately decorated silk robes. They peered at us from behind thick lensed glasses with incriminating eyes.
When Michael and I approached the buffet, to see what it really was, we were horrified: Human beings had been frozen, and embedded in slabs of ice. The Slabs had then been split laterally by what must have been a very powerful and sharp saw. The two halves, when opened, revealed the intricate innards of human bodies, like life size, edible versions of the board game ‘Operation’, except faceless and grotesque. Spoons had been provided and a section of a persons arm and part of their intestines had already been scooped out by some of the bureaucrats and dignitaries in attendance.
We were invited to have a taste, but I steadfastly refused- willing to risk insulting a ruthless and cruel despot.
Tasteful, postal service like music played softly over a high quality ambient sound system. It’s soothing tones contrasted sharply with the cannibalistic delicacy and it’s attendant garnishings.
Paul Skrypchnko caught my eye from across the room. He grinned through round spectacles at me and crossed the floor in a blue and white silk robe with hand embroidered gold arabesque. Paul too, was somehow an employee at this embassy. Glancing over at the food, I felt close to being sick. I awoke with a song in my head unto which the tune was forgotton but these lyrics were retained:
You know that she won’t turn
Unless you realize
The sweetness of her smile
And bring her about…
* * *
You seek the truth in Places beyond but you find it within, and it’s not a fixed thing but instead a haggard orphanage of aimless beings churning in a Maelstrom, that, somehow, in their harmonic juxtaposition off one another bring a chaotic sensibility to the jumble of forces acting upon them. The truth will leave you, so that it can again return and greet you warmly or harshly. That’s my poor savvy- is knowing that, and why. But I’m laid out flat, and my tippy toes right now are only skimming the grey-brown slushpiles of this industrial city’s wet winter streets, but if I feel like I’m trying to hard to get to the bottom of this I’ll pull back from the fallsand wait for the next wave to come in while the valves open and vent the salty steam from my clammy flesh.
Tomorrow I’ll look for ways to try again, and hopefully fail spectacularly because how else can you know how far you’ve climbed except by falling. That pain will be real, and I will not shrink from it…
… Translucent snakes, ones of Obsidian, shimmering and ticklish, wiggle across these urban Himalayas, sweating out a buttery trail and the occasional tube of papery windblown exfoliant.
Powerful, law abiding monsters; savage beasts staring helpless with black marble eyes from under their overgrown hides, matted like fallow straw in a drought stricken November farmfield.
Banished from my memory and my mind these monsters remain alive. Clawing, formless, scavenging worms always in the corner of my eye.
Demons, maybe. Charging, disillusioned, sad, but cursed with an unbreakable willpower; these sleepless apes pace their cages relentlessly, disingenuous, and gnashing their invisible teeth. A drug addicts eyes, and quivering, glue slathered lips, waiting greedily for me to turn my back so he can gesture crudely with his broken cock at my principles and my fear- two pillars of faith from which he has long ago been robbed.
The seizure stricken neon lights hang off the stone walls of West Hastings like shivering prostitutes patiently soliciting for their fix. My blood flashes through the crannies and allies abandoned by god, flushing out the needles and puke stains, and cleansing the old starving habits, that once, as conspiratorial cronies, shook hands before conducting the Orchestra that sounded my demise. My near deaths, illnesses, and famines of the soul.
The Drought has returned, but not forever, and I promise not to slip from my traverse along this polished and beautiful line I find myself balancing along. Until these grey clouds come to pass I am remaining fixated upon that golden ribbon tracing across the hoary winter horizon, waiting for that matrix of water to come alive and again cleanse me with its careless violence.
I’ll do my damndest to die the old fashioned way, with teeth grit and bloody knuckles. The ground is below me now, and again solid. Already the aching of weary phantom limbs has begun gnawing. There are fires burning. It’s cool. Open your oven up and put your muffins in.
* * *
In France, in the early days of Aviation, a teacher and his students grew a gourd, and stretched it to papery thin but gigantic proportions. Under the gourd hung a basket of Zoo animals, and the methane of their farts was collected to provide lift for their balloon. In Gods hands they toured all over France, riding the winds over Paris, and Fontainbleu, the Verdon river gorge, and Ceuse. The exiled King of France gave them all medals, but over the course of the summer, the gourd weakened from thousands of tiny abrasions, so the teacher decided it would be best to retire the gourd before an accident occurred. It was the best summer ever, though, for those kids.
* * *
…Last minute, end of the line, forty minutes until closing time on a cold night, downtown, in Mid December. The concert was bad, and we sat ragged, haggard and untenable in the bar at Kelly’s surveying the dude pavilion for what little it was worth, sipping uneventful beers and tapping our toes while we waited for the text message to come in and change our evening for the better. Drooling faces, sweating people of indistinct nationality. The crowd is wound up so tight you could wrap a pull chord around their waists, yank, and hear the sounds of farm animals…
* * *
Too much woman pain in this darkened diaspora. Way too much Booze and Loneliness. This city, and the nest of labrynthine ducts and crannies in which I inhabit, is much more tolerable in passing- as a fleeting gesture with a limited time only sticker hastily tagged on. I can be in this place knowing it’s desperate melodrama and feverish insanity is fleeting. The music has been loud, and the faces distorted and pixellated.
You voice becomes aerosol, you choke on its fumes and other as fuzzily painted gestures crisscross over one another until the original symphony is addled by the pollockesque, nightmare of babble. Meaningful utterances are fired sporadically and with venom like paintballs from an airgun, and after their pop, and smack, they too are left bleeding and cracked on the floor.
Everybody’s skin gets bad this time of year. The baddest during these cold snaps when the humidity is at the lowest possible, the dust and pollen wriggling its way into you through puckered pores. Everbody winds up with a few red bumpbs on our faces so we look at each others crotches while we talk and throw back whatever hardened liquor that girl has been pouring into this cyclical argument.
Every night is a roman candle that spews a few glowing balls but fizzles out with a whimper. The gestures simply aren’t as heartfelt as they once were, though through repetition those vacant gestures become oddly stylized and revealing, if not disynchronous. With the practiced doubletalks of others. I find myself in the dark, crawling blindly, feeling for a punchline.
I’m not fishing for compliments, but lately that’s what’s been getting caught up in the net.
The rooms I navigate, and their connectors, lifted from their surroundings, and seen from a distance, begin to resemble the fractal pattern of disintegrating decision trees tacked onto a much broader logarithm that, like a torn and abandoned fishnet floating free, its twists occasionally doubling back on itself.
From beyond the aether we coo into the others passing ears, and beat on leather drums, winking, and thrusting our groins out at one another.
Our tired rituals melting down into a magma less crystalline, distorting into halfhearted, curmudgeonly mumbles. Bored and afraid, delicate and abused.
Pepper Grinder: little black corns pass through a handheld crusher and spread, broken, to the food below. Adding flavour to scrambled eggs, and soup.
I don’t slide easy into the spirit of giving: Most people need to have their obscura taken away. That makes me a demon, I suppose, My will is relentless, and I supply the unwitting with the pain of departure, as their illusions depart them, so they may strut or cry in the resplendent garb of an unclothed emperor.
* * *
Desmoines Iowa. Working out of a vacuum here. I’m brething the lung sucking vacant vapours of emptiness and exhaling all the same shit. I’m foul from the mouth to the gut, and the tendons in my toes are recoiling in stop motion horror. My face is blotched and pink like the hide of a strawberry cow. I’m a nuisance to all those around me. I’m not hardcore, I’m hardlycore.
* * *
The Obiamewe peninsula, a remote and fascinating region teeming with extraordinary marine life. We chose it’s mysterious waters as the Bellafontes next destination. In preparation for our voyage the members of team Zissou gathered in my oceanographic observatory here in Hejaspotaiowa. This was to be our most ambitious adventure to date, but ultimately a tragic one.
* * *
Mindblowingly tedious scenarios in January in Edmonton
Edmonastic Edmonstunned Admin.Town. Crudemonton Ownedmonton Edwonton Edwartorn Edwasstung Hazmaton Edmoundtown Mustardton Moreoverton Poloticon Pluckmonton Go Fuckmonton Edmotion Redbumton
Searchanddestroymonton Robotparalysismonton Notgonnaretireheremonton
Benmoontown Badmington Couldahadmonton Crustmonton Edmongrinned Dristanmonton Homesteadmonton Edstelmach1town Klondikedyke Castledowns syndrome BrownFrowndowntown Luke Luck likes temporary labourers Edmoantime Edalontime Youstolemyrugmonton Rexallplace
This is the day that the lord has made. I’m thinking Anorexics get a bad rap. I’m thinking we should put on a fundraiser for them. We’ll gather them up and allow them to perform a fashion show, so they can demonstrate to the world that they aren’t ashamed of our emaciated bodies.
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