Amorphous Matter

Friends?...Sisters?...Lovers?...Or...

Monster???
Everyone gawked and taunted. What was it? The ambiguous creature was frightening to behold: it resembled two girls, but no one could tell where one ended and the other one began. They were inseparable; a grotesque, amorphous figure; womanly but offensive. Something needed to be done...

The First Omen: A Bird in the Sink

The bird in the kitchen sink is an omen, I think.
The house is sealed against the humid summer heat: the window frames are swollen and stuck; blinds and drapes are drawn defensively against sunlight.
I don't know how it got inside.
Uninterested, the cat is a puddle on the cool kitchen tile.
Overall, the household is undisturbed.
I dig out a pair of mittens from the hall closet and carry the bird outside, onto the front lawn. It doesn't flinch. A few bully crows gang up and encircle the small bird, who is motionless and unaware as they close in. I save the unfortunate creature and put it in a box in the garage .

Twilight stirs me from the sofa, where I have been dozing all afternoon. Night spreads upward from the horizon like an indigo stain, dousing the burning sky.
The house is tense, so I open the windows easily and they exhale the stale breath it has been holding in. I open my lungs to the warm, fresh air and go outside to check on the bird.
It is where I left it, but something is changed. The box is transformed into a coffin.
The moon is unblinking. The air is static, and unaffected.

Soundtrack To My Demise (or What I've Been Listening To Lately)

1 CLOCKCLEANER - AUF WIEDERSEHEN

"I am just a dreamer, and you are all my dreams...None of this was real, except when it was..."

I was hooked up to this record, on repeat, for several hours on Sunday while I pulled an all-nighter. The four tracks on this album - pulsing, melancholy, dark and dreamy deathmarches - matched my state of mind (despaired, destructive and delirious) dead-on. I am currently hooked up for another dose - as rusty and ominous as intravenous iron but WAY BETTER. It gives me the strength to grit my teeth and trudge on, to get through another long, uneasy night...

"It's okay, it's the same, something's always on her brain...

It's okay, I am fine, this will all just end in time...she will always be insane...cause something's always on her mind..."

My neuroses are novelties, bruises that bloom into psychoses. The maniac laugh; the woeful, doleful sideways glance; the half-smirk; wise-crack; wiseass remark.

I can't keep a straight face. Can't form a sentence that isn't punctuated with a scoff - a once-quirky affectation gone haywire.
I am on a loop, looping, loopy.

I can't quit [spinning]...won't stop [skipping].

To others I am a mere curiosity. The death on my breath brings them to the brink with me. It's a thrill that I know well: the headrush, heady brush with what's next. The closer, the better.

I have no remorse, no resentment, no ill-will.

In fact, I have nothing at all.

"The sadness at your parties was my fault...When I say this is over, you will not exist...

Would you please be quiet? Would you just shut up? I'm sorry...I'm trying to say goodbye..."

*All lyrics in quotations by Clockcleaner

Shipwrecked

A wreck, adrift,

Sink or jump ship...

I'll drown my thoughts,

if it suits me,

I'll cry mutiny.

All of my relationships set sail,
hit the rocks,
hit rock bottom.
I'll let the wind fill my lungs
if I can't.
I'll let my whims fill with wind
if I want.

A Little Ditty on "Love", Loathing, and Denial

Self-sabotage is a clever and unfulfilling device for me. Instead of letting myself be vulnerable, honest and open, I distance myself by "swallowing" my emotions. I act heartless, unaffected, unfeeling and, ultimately, inhuman. The following is a short poem that I wrote on the subject:

I haven't even got half-a-heart to tell you that

I haven't even got half-a-heart.

Selfishly, I ate it.

Ghost Story: Part Two

Darkness pours from the sky. It swirls and eddies around me, cold and cajoling. It is thrilling and frightening, the way my body responds to the cruel night air. How easily my flesh excites. How my own darkness reflexively leaps to the surface. The little life remaining in me barely keeps me inflated. I exhale and watch it come out in a puff of smoke. Then disappear.

 

Lost

Ghost Story: Part One

An apparition in black silk and lace. The shift dress hovers around her form like a spell.
The gust of wind that brought her was exhilarating and terrifying. You can tell a spirit by the way the wind moves her. It enters her orifices and bends and shakes her limbs like a sapling.

The slurp and hiss of a bottle of soda being opened - that's what it sounds like when my head pops off. It's one of my favorite sounds. Last evening I uncorked myself and let my soul out to roam. It wandered the whole night looking for a new vessel.
I awoke in a fetal position covered with bruises. It has been a brutal rebirth. Upright, my vision turns to static. Slowly I regain reception and stumble into a scalding shower to thaw. I wash my new body with soapy hands and marvel at how dangerous the soft, downy skin feels stretched taut around such sharp bones.
This body has a weak grip on me, so close to death as it is...

Fortune Cookie

This is a short story that I had good intentions to submit for a writing contest I saw on geist.ca. I believe that the premise had to have something to do with a fortune cookie. Of course I didn't finish the story in time for the deadline. Here's what I have pieced together from my attempts:

Florescent street lamps chill the November air. We trudge home from Champions Canadian/Chinese Restaurant across its small, cratered parking lot, vacant of cars but full of slush and salt. This will all be frosted over by morning, but for now my canvas sneakers sop up the wet mess to my ankles.
As we walk it starts to snow.
At home, Sam changes into dry clothes and lends me boxer shorts and an old soccer t-shirt that says THE HONEYBEES on the chest and 13 across the back. The house is empty. We hunker down in the basement to watch one of three fuzzy channels on the old TV set, and pick at cold tofu and broccoli out of its Styrofoam container. The basement is damp and the air smells earthy. The carpet is light-brown shag; there is a grungy yellow foam mattress in a corner, a tweed couch and a small television on a built-in shelf in one pine-paneled wall. High school parties always took place in basements like this, and there is something cunt-like and sexy about it that makes me self-conscious, exposed.
Anxiety builds up in my mind, flake by flake.
I don't know.
Later, Sam shows me her new record player and SLR - gifts from her grandparents. She doesn't own a single record. I'm the one who took photography classes in high school.
During a rerun of SCTV we crack our fortune cookies.
My slip of paper is blank. I show it to Sam.
"Ooooooooh, spooky!" she says, "Do you think that means you have no future?"
I wad up the paper and toss it at her head. "Fuck you. What does yours say?"
"It says: 'You will soon have an important decision to make.' Duh! Bo-ring!"
While she eats both of our cookies, I break off a piece of Styrofoam and crumble it into tiny white pieces on the rug. "Maybe one day we'll go to a Chinese food place that actually uses those little folded-up Chinese food boxes..."
"Ha! First you have to get the hell out of this hick-town!"
I already know this. So long as I am stuck here, my future is a blank.
The wind blows a drift of snow against the high, narrow basement window.
I think, 'What did I want my cookie to predict?'There are times when something comes out of her mouth and I swear it came from my own head. And it thrills me, makes something leap in me that I didn
Now I think about it and I am scared to death that I don
I resolve to keep close tabs on my ideas at all times so that they don
"Since when do you take pictures?" I say.
She shrugs. "Max is gonna show me. And there's a darkroom downtown that's cheap to use."
The last time we hung out alone, I took a picture of Sam in a spiralling yellow stairwell at the university. When I saw it developed, it was black and white and embarrassing. I was amateur and uncertain with my camera, and all of the prints were out of focus. Sam was blatantly bored and restless, her expression drugged. Her black-rimmed eyes were ghastly, ghostly streaks. But that is not why it makes me wince.
What is most revealing about the photo is the obvious vulnerability of the photographer.
I hadn’t know was there, and I'm either going to be sick or scream or cry or explode.’t have a single original thought in my head. ’t escape. ’t seen Sam in a few weeks and she had chopped off all of her hair and dyed it black. Her face was shocking - she had had bangs and long hair since we had first met years ago. Max had cut it for her the previous night, and afterwards she had dropped acid with him for the first time...

Daydreaming

"Apparitions No. 4 (Daydreaming)" - mixed media, photo transfer, acrylic on canvas/cardboard

This piece actually started as a simple experiment in photo transfer and other techniques I learned in a "Built Surface" continuing studies art class. It has been tucked away in my portfolio for three or four years, untouched until a friend complimented me on it and asked me to finish it for her. It may have started as a humble, technical exercise, but I think that the final product may actually be my favorite piece to date.