Day: May 2, 2017

It starts with an audition
Gone backwards
Start as a demon and up you go
As an angel

The angel is portrayed by a human

a mechanism
runs on money
to make the lines possible

But that’s not the important part
And we all know it

The story would want to be told, and will be told
Again and again
About family, love and forgiveness
Sacrifice
About where you keep your treasure
How your treasure is never made of gold

It stays within these lines
Within the limits of this culture

Had the story been born too early
these lines would be incomprehensible
Too late and nobody would care
All of its novelties spilled and broken
Into other forms

It stays within these lines
Within the magic you make with your yoke-mates

Within the lines of this frame
This armature of grace
There is a blurring
The angel and the human get to toy with the story
Crosshatch and infill to make this playful form

Speak the lines
They spill into the love the fans pour into drawings
Speak the lines
They break into infinite regresses of fractal meaning
Speak the lines
And we thank the director for lighting you properly
Speak the lines
And we imagine a love that can’t die
Speak the lines
And we want to hear your own voice in your true life
Speak the lines
And we rise up like eager fools and fight one more day

Catherine Crockett’s glorious nimbus of hair, as she rose from a chair to greet me at YYZ last night, was among the more welcome sights I can recollect in the last little while. She conveyed me, borne upon a lovely packet of antifa news, in comfort and safety – much, awesome, safety – to The Tower of Books, where I am enjoying Antonin Artaud and Radiohead and Eno and re-establishing with Dave, as old friends do, the profound bonds that allow us to see our lives in loving perspective. Or to put it another way, there was beer in the fridge when I got here and I slept like a newborn kitten. The cats here – Mookie and Pippin – are alternately bemused, skittery and curious; Pippin, as I’ve noted Siamese kitties tend to do, likes tapping you with a forepaw to get your attention. Mookie is pissed but silent.

The worst of the bureaucratic nightmare that is dealing with a partner’s death is mostly behind Dave. Now he’s trying to separate grief from cognitive decline (a feeling I’m all too familiar with, although not with this dreadful keenness and recency) and to establish a new normal, when nothing is. The cats help, of course. I managed to Make Dave Laugh Out Loud at least a couple of times, which was on my list of things to do.

Paul was not able to get me out of town on passes. I flew WestJet on my own dime (Dave’s making noises about a subsidy and I will not be foolish enough to cavil) and it was a better experience than I’m used to in steerage, that’s for sure. Haven’t booked passage home. In my current mood of expansive calm I don’t have to.

I should call people. I won’t be in town for long and while Dave’s getting his morning routine sorted is a perfect time to do that.

BrO informs me that we have a new (used) washer. Yay!