The college dropout and: the dream life!

I have to crouch down to keep from being thrown to the back of the truck, through it's loosely locked doors, and into an death all too perfect and fitting, albeit untimely.

As I am interviewing a city councillor in hours, I sit on my scarf, and try to keep my mouth clean and my pants cleaner.

In this country, we say "folks" not "bitches."

We're careening through Vancouver's streets, up into glass towers to steal furniture from the media with the money, and bring it back, behind hastings, in a purple and orange alley, wedge our U Haul in and block the cars and rats from going past.

Once we get back into the alley, and wade past the dripping tarps and deflated baloons that fill the doorway, I tug down the gridded wood of the utiltiy elevator, and rise jerkily through oily wood and darkness to the second floor, where we grunt and throw solid oak bookshelves around like mere books.

The floor is painted, the ceilings high, the place is expansive. All my artificial memories of Warhols factoy and New York artist warehouse days come flooding through. I bite my tounge to keep from running around screaming.

This, is community media.

These are my people.

This, is my dream life.

A new twist in the land of lincoln, blinkin and blog.

Well Kidlets, here it is.

I've abandoned the ship of the ivory tower, and gone hurling into the uncharted deep, to make it on my own.

A very good decision, in my case, and on my part, if you were wondering.

While school has more than its place in this world and my life, I felt, and now know, that I was missing out on the opportunities and experiences of the "real world" filling out bogus stories and listening to how it was in the golden age of journalism.

And it's good, the opportunities are flooding down the drainpipe and providing me with the time to use such rediculous metaphors as "flooding down the drain pipe"

ahem.
so, such begins my journey into the world of a J-School Dropout.

Surfing the waves of elation and self defeat.

Such an incredible amount of poured concrete in post secondary institutions, and even as I sit in the incredible glass building that is the Langara library, complete with bamboo, breathing roofs and lake-like moats (even ducks! even ducks swim in them) I can't help but feel like the most lifeless file clerk this side of an office tower downtown (and they're actually doing what they want to be doing)

Yes, I ached for J school
Yes, I sweated and bled over my applications.

But here I am, choking down economic theories and remembering the days in the summer when I was actually living my shit, was actually PRACTICING journalism and BEING an independent journalist, instead of swallowing someone else's antiquated wisdom and filing information back in my brain to be regurgitated later.

It's probably a bitter moment, a mere bitter moment.

But all I feel like saying, is baby, I see through it.
The glass tower just ain't my bag.

Check back with me tommorrow... it's probably going to look like the other side of the coin.

Anatomy

The mouth, blackens itself to street meat
The flesh, lying, is thick with regret
The mind, denying, mimes defeat
And the heart beats itself apart.

The bones, cave with a sorrow that lets
The flesh grieve as it needs
and feed, this human debt.

The hands, bend back and yet
Undo nothing, the past indeed
Will not take breath, nor ressurect
It's heart that beat itself apart.

shiny and new.

A few things have changed in space and time since the spring, and now this wet hot center of summer afternoon finds me pulling a "never thought i would" stunt; the mass update.

I loathed, despised, and degraded mass updates for the majority of my adult life.

heavy duty, no? I hated the boring play by plays that had to be the descriptive equivalent of beige, because even though I, your trusted, guilty of the same acts as you, friend, was receiving the e-mail, so was your catholic grandma.

But, I'm feeling like there hasn't been nearly enough contact with nearly enough people, so I'm bringing everyone up to speed, and I'll try to include all the gory details I can fathom.


So, I left Victoria in mid May, and headed around the Gulf Islands with my longtime sisterfriend Heather, during which we climbed mountains, slept for free, lived off oats and lsd, bought a 1970's Volkswagen van named Pearl (Janis anyone?), sold a 1970s Volkswagen Van named Pearl, and looked at a lot of trees, very, very closely.

I am now the proud owner of a hat that says "eternal" on the brim, because that's what the rocks told me to write on it.
That alone should let those in the know, know, exactly how the trip was going.

We hung out in my favorite wartime house in East Vancouver for a week, drinking, sitting in wheel chairs, and playing pingpong, untill the troops were rounded up and we headed on a greyhound bus.

The Greyhound trip from Vancouver to Nashville was far too many things (mostly racist, homophobic, gun threatening things) to describe in a mass update, so I'll let this picture of myself do the talking. This was taken in Kansas, where I was taken over by a demon and slaughtered small families.



Dorthy was right, if you're from Kansas, there really is no place like home.Thank god. A world with two Kansas's
is too much of a hell to fathom.

Bonnaroo was amazing, I had no idea my friends and I had livers or stomachs that large. An incredible amount of meat, catfish and whiskey was consumed.

And, come to think of it, the rest of the rip went pretty much like that. Drink, Eat, Sweat, Repeat.

Caught up with friends from Europe, saw Talahasse Florida and real live frats and sororities! New Orleans was incredible, it's like Vegas for people who hate Vegas.

And now, I live in Vancouver. I'm sharing a loft in "Railtown" in a renovated wharehouse (talk about one of those "Is this actually my life?" moments) that has been, in its day, a fish packing plant, morgue and brothel, and despite these things is one of most energy-clean places I've ever lived.

There's a rooftop garden/gym/amazing room that over looks downtown Vancouver, there's a beach that's a three minute walk from my front door, and an amaizngly affordable chinese grocery store down the block (that controls all the soy production in Vancouver no less! Juicy)

I've been super fortunate to have loads of writing work (work as in free) and am ticking along on the publication formerly known as Wolf Woman.
That's right kids, Wolf Woman is no more. The royal we decided that we were only alienating half of our readership and pigeonholing ourselves into a market that won't grow with us, if we kept the title. And, I got tired of conversations like
"Yea, I know theres 'woman' in the title, but it's not feminist, well, not exclusively feminist"

So we need a new name, we're bouncing around ideas, but if anyone gets struck with brilliance, let me know. It'd be great to get the marketing back on a roll.

The aforementioned writing "work" that I'm drowning in, doesn't put soy milk on my granola, espresso in my system or a roof over my head, so I am drive pedi-cab. Like kabuki-kab. Like I cycle around all night pulling people in a rickshaw.

Like my ass is made of steel now, and I can eat as much as a logger. It gives me awesome flexibility to write and take lil' summer trips (budget, budget summer trips)
Speaking of which, I hope to make it back to the island to see all my homies as soon as I can.

So that's this. That's this up to now. Stay tuned kids, mamas takin' over.

city sketch rooftop. Vancouver. 6:51

Quick spit the city
Ten million mouths, the city
Ten million tounges, the city
I take no milk with it, thank you mam,
I take no milk at all, in fact
I take it so black, so black in fact
I remove the teet with my teeth
Every minute of my day is dawn.

East Georgia st.

I rest and I work, just on top of the tracks— Railtown now, with the winners and liars. I make sweaty little rides on a blue bicycle to the East side of the city, where I hold commune and peace with a cluster of astronauts and artists and I know who live there, in The House of Lingering Looks. The House of Lingering Looks is a war time shack, 1940s mostly, and the bread-board porch is a cracking back that, for god or for glory, refuses to relax and send us tumbling, though we are all long overdue for a fall.

The House of Lingering Looks finds my writers eyes faulted, as it makes me question my imagery, and in such, death. For when I am there I drink the most vital poison, and smoke the most coital, renewing ash. My old words rip themselves from the page, and I am left speechless, at least twice a week.

I remember now, there was an outbreak, in the days of The Lingering Looks, and I, among others, quarantined myself there, hanging up on that porch over such a small section of earth. The planet paled and shook, “DISEASE” in their masks, while we laughed.
“Communal living beats infection!” We’d clink our glasses and swill our spirits— as spit in untrained mouth; like us, then, untrained in fear (health) or distance (city), we smoked each others ash, swallowed each others last, and woke, again and again, each morning.