Ave maris stella

And with the ebb of the tide she was gone,
receding into the pearly grey,
borne away on whitecapped waves.
The gulls, knowing her name as they do,
mourn her in whirling wingflight,
cries cliff-caught and returned on the wind.

Stella maris. Star of the sea.

Stella Thorne died as she lived - with grace, courage, beauty and faith. Her legacy of loving kindness is a bright star by which we might each chart our own course.

God speed you on your journey home, Nanny.

You will be sorely missed.

still

your hands are still now
skin thin like parchment and rings on fingers
curling inward
holding nothing but themselves.

(you used to hold my hand when I was little)

your eyes are blank now
lashless lids over a paler blue than I remember
looking outward and seeing nothing
or inward and everything.

(you used to wear glasses)

your hair is white now
grey gone the way of memory but still
falling in girlish waves washed
by strangers.

(you used to wind my curls around your finger)

your voice is silent now
hushed by the rush of air through the tubes
in your face and the race of the drugs through
the needed needles in your leg. every two hours.

(you used to tell me stories)

go
go now
go and be free
you are loved
you are
still

Spesh K live @ Zaphod's (Byward Market, Ottawa) TONIGHT!

Bust out your bling, fluff that fade and get your ass out to Zaphod Beeblebrox TONIGHT(Friday, June 16 2006) to check out Spesh K, the hottest underground MC to come out of Halifax since Classified and Canada's answer to Gorillaz.

Joined onstage by:
Jugga (from the Boogaloo Trybe and the What's the 411 Tour)
John Akpata (2004 CBC Slam Poetry Face OFF Champion)
Ritallin (poet/MC and author of Cerebral Stimulation)
DJ Alive (CKCU FM Word Life Show)

Hosted by: Nathan Bishop (Celtae, Nathan Bishop Band)

Venue: Zaphod Beeblebrox, 27 York St. Ottawa
Cost: $8.00
Doors: 8pm
Age: 19+

Go West, young man

This past weekend, N and I spent several hours at WESTFEST flyering the masses for a hip-hop show he's promoting (shameless pimp post to follow). We took in some great spoken word performances and a couple of fun local bands. There was a nip in the air, but that didn't stop the fun-lovin', hemp-clad Westboro hippie set from taking to the streets in droves...with their dogs. There were pooches partout. We saw approximately a bazillion dogs, from the prancin'-est of pugs to the beefiest of bulldogs. It was less WESTFEST than it was ButtSniffFest. Despite the canine cornucopia, however, the prevalence of poop was virtually nil. Kudos to the stoopers.

I didn't bother taking any pictures - being far too busy gorging on hotdogs and cotton candy - until we stopped by a used instrument shop for a quick gawk at the merch. It turns out that guitar shops = photo ops...



Hanging guitars



Hummingbird detail



More hanging guitars



N puttin' down his rock star thang


Gee whiz...I hope I don't get in trouble for posting that last one...

*blocks a nose flick & prepares to leap*

Good times.

Window shopping

Looky what I found during a recent evening stroll in my neighbourhood:

Now affectionately known as "the evil nurse window" (Cartier @ McLaren), it looks even better when backlit at night...

...comme ça. It's very Darryl Hannah à la Kill Bill Volume 2.

And then there is this apartment building on McLaren. It's really quite cool.

Get out for a stroll in your 'hood. It'll cure what ails ya.

Streety graffiti

No To War on Elgin St. (outside British High Commission)



Fast Food Zombie (à la Swoon) on Wellington St. (in front of Métropolitain Brasserie)



Sleepy Sheep on the side of Boushey's on Elgin St.



Lion on Wellington St. (near the Chateau Laurier)


Ottawa is definitely not what you'd call a Mecca for graffiti artists; that being said, one can still find little nuggets of street art goodness around town. You just have to look.

These captures are from some of my recent rovings. I'll post more as I find them.

Kingston, ON...yet more pictures.

Night garden - detail of cherub




Night garden - cherub




"Kiddush" urn


Yeah. I went a bit nuts with the pictures in Kingston. These were taken at night, on the way back to the hotel after N's gigs at the Tir. I have a thing for twilight/night photography. Again, resolution is a factor...speaking of resolution, I should probably make one to get me a digital camera.

(Aside: I have never, ever enjoyed a walk more than I have with N. Hand-holding, critter-watching, tree-smelling goodness. He stops and waits for me while I take pictures. Love him.)

Hum. I think this is turning into a photoblog.

The Hotel Belvedere - a pic"tour"ial

These captures are from a recent trip to Kingston, ON (see "Road trippin'"). The resolution is dicey - a phone cam will only get you so far.


Welcome





Architectural detail





Bumbershoots





Lobby reflection / Stairway to Heaven ?





Lobby chandelier





Check-in (through stair railing)





Marble bust - drawing room





Pensive woman - drawing room





Wrought iron detail - drawing room





Radiator - drawing room





Lamp detail - drawing room





Door to terrace - drawing room




More door





Secret garden - terrace





Urn and ivy detail - terrace





Cherub - terrace

Road trippin'

Road trips are fun. There are people who shudder at the thought of piling into a wheeled conveyance crammed full of people and their stuff for hours at a time. I am not one of those people. Having been raised in a road trippin' family, I am more than content to perch in the back of a car amongst the luggage and watch the world outside roll past.

A couple of weekends ago, I took a little road trip to Kingston (ON) with N and one of his bandmates - they were playing at the Tir Nan Og. I was playing roadie. We made the journey on a muggy Friday evening in a tank of a Jeep that was packed to the roll bars with bags and musical instruments. I sat in the back, curling myself around N's guitar. It was a comfortable fit. Then, after gassing up and negotiating the ubiquitous Queensway traffic, we were on the highway.

Is it wrong to say that I loved the drive? Aside from the gorgeous, bruised violet/pewter light (humid summer evenings are pretty like that), I think it had a lot to do with the smell of wet green. It was heady, fecund. I could smell it through N's passenger-side window, even at 100 kmph. That smell. It's so....Ontario. It's not at all like home, where it never gets warm enough and the vegetation is decidedly un-deciduous. You need plowed fields and broad-leaved foliage and juicy undergrowth to distill this distinctly Upper Canadian essence.

At any rate - that smell, that verdant stench, does things to me. Combined with the dusky light and the rise and fall of conversation over the rush of wheels beneath me, I was in heaven. Sensory bliss. Being within arms' reach of N in all of his deliciousness was the relish on the kosher hot dog of goodness that was the drive to K-town.

- - Tangent: There is something decadent about that subtle stickiness of the skin that happens on a muggy evening. It's a feeling that makes me stretch slowly, loving the heavy warmth, the barometric pressure that means summer and greenery and ripe cherries and less clothes. It's luxurious. Erotic. Like strolling shoeless and white sundresses with staps that insist on sliding down over bare shoulders. It makes me want to fondle the produce at outdoor market stalls and play hooky from work to go fishing. I want to eat peaches and run through sprinklers and drink sangria and make out on a balcony at night. Ah, summer. - -

I digress. The trip to Kingston was fantastic. N & Co. rocked the Tir both nights. I attended my first Saturday services at a very welcoming Orthodox shul (separate post forthcoming). The highlight of the weekend, however, had to be the gem of a hotel at which we stayed - the Hotel Belvedere. "Love nest" is putting it mildly. Our room was a haven of peace and comfort, fully furnished with beautiful antiques. The bed was so good, I can't even tell you. Breakfast - a light nosh of English muffins and preserves/cheese, fresh juice and coffee - was served either in-room, downstairs in the drawing room or outside on the adjoining terrace. We did breakfast on the terrace on Saturday morning, right after shul - it was lovely, a veritable bower. Cherubs, ivy and birdsong. The whole works. The drawing room was the french-doored picture of gentility, perfect for coffee sipping and chatting in the p.m. Delightful.

I could go on, but my next post (all pics) will say it better. Stay tuned.

Shabbat

She is beautiful. She comes to me draped in fine linens, glowing in candlelight. She is there in the wooden match I hold. She is there behind my closed lids, behind hands held over eyes. She is there in the words I speak softly, the light I gather to me. She is there in the flames.

She is reflected in the delicate curves of the kiddush cup, mirrored wine-dark, rich with the promise of repletion. I see her in bread held aloft, broken and shared. She is the guest of honour at our bountiful table. She is the prayer, the song. She is the thought spoken aloud. She is the silence.

It is almost Friday. I can't wait.

On Government Cheese

Look outside at the bruised sky and tell me
that you don't wish you were out there in the
almost-storm.

Feel the carpet on your walls and look around at
the detritus of a day squared. Water bottles. Laptops.
Long briefings and brief longings.

(for freedom)

Sunday drive

wheels rushing over pavement
stop in two languages
at the house on the high hill
in a wood awakening
from wintersleep

take the river road
cross the steel once, twice
see how the real ice has melted
from the banks where the red and white
treasure is kept

gather the loaves and the small fruits of the vine
hoard the smiles sold to lovers linked by hand
bench-perched
backs to the sun
lithe shadows cast long before them
and the water as their witness

past the the pastures where
iron horses graze by moonlight
beyond the red bridge covered
by the small magic of children
lies a house where music could live
in sun-soaked staccato bursts

(you can jump)
(it's deep enough)
(but you have to swim against the current)

and now the music of traded glances
sung across a crowded table
voices weave like cats through legs
nimble fingers strum strings
sleekly, sweetly like iced cream
savoured slowly in the dark

wheels rushing over pavement
winding westward with
twilight in gentle pursuit
happiness is hand-fed
on the road home.

Me, myself and pie

The solo, late-night pie excursion is imbued with an undeniable charm. I derive a great deal of satisfaction from occupying a whole booth by myself, spreading out my things in a decadent sprawl, a feudal lord presiding over a green vinyl fiefdom. I am separated from the rest of the room from the bridge of the nose down. It is perfect. The baby seal shirt will not offend and only I will know that I am not wearing socks.

My fortress walls are permeable, though, to snatched snippets of strangers' talk. High-pitched, frantic profanity and fervent, well-meant but misinterpreted advice mingle, penetrating my porous shell. Lives are happening out there, lives bathed in neon, stiff with product, barely covered by short skirts. Pastel polos, popped collars and two eggs over easy with two versions of the same meat. White bread. Wristbands. I bite my lower lip and caress my phone and consider pie.

And so I write, while pied lives condense, coalesce and trickle down the walls of my plastic paradise. It's bound to puddle beneath my seat, pool below my drawn-up legs. I'll walk through it on my way out and I'll feel it swirl around my ankles, watch it rise in curlicue clouds with each step I take toward the door, a dense fog parting and re-forming in my solitary wake.

(I had pecan pie. They didn't have strawberry-rhubarb or apple and they had never heard of cloudberry. The decaf was effete but I drank it anyway.)

I miss him. The cadence of his slumber, his sweet sleep smell. His hand, curled heavy on the curve of my hip. I would be there with him now, in the spare room, in the too-short bed. I would walk with him through the fog of others and our wake would be significant, as the wake of two tends to be.

I expect that I shall love him one hundred times over by the time he returns.

streetsy

sittin' up here in my big office chair i stare
in my mirror you know i got that crazy bedroom hair from
wrestling in the a.m. and not playin' fair
fuck bein' in on time, even if i could
i wouldn't trade this shit in, it's all good
'cause we be sippin' java beneath the sheets
we be lockin' legs and droppin' beats
we got that precious hour if you wanna play me/delay me
i know you got the necessary will and power
to rock me straight up on one leg in the shower
you all that and a bag of fritos
a cool dude in a loose mood like chester cheeto
rollin' like a rock with a rhyme and a reason
changin' my world like a karma chameleon
got my camo tank 'cause you know it's turkey season
and i know you love it when i be teasin' you
with my wide grey eyes between your spread thighs
and my sighs while your fingers do the walking
you got me talkin', speaking in tongues
twisted, talented and various like Babylon
hittin' all my spots, spittin' white hot shots across
olive skin that's smooth like buttah
i'm lovin' it like McDonald's, don't want no other
check that clock - damn, i'm late for that reunion i'd sooner
sit here and groove but i gotta find the cheddar,
'cause i'm a public mouse in a brown brick house
across a frozen river, gotta give 'er
'til my liver shivers

peace

Joy

I am in love. Heart-thumpingly, Cheshire-grinningly, head-over-heels in love.

He told me without words. I heard him speak as clearly as if he had whispered in my ear. I answered in kind, the words that had been clamouring inside me travelling soundlessly, electrically from grey to blue and back again.

Epiphany. Ecstasy.

I am home.

You had me at "fishcakes"...

Last night was special. Crystal and china glowed and Cole Porter kept time. There were snowy linens and full place settings of cutlery. There was garnish.

He cooked me dinner, fed me morsels from fingers redolent of southern France and the sea. He moved crimson and unencumbered through the fragrant steam, hands gentle on tender greenery. The hot oil spoke and he listened. I was the knife he held, the bubbling pot he stirred. I was unprepared for him to have everything we needed.

Honeyed lips were licked while Louis growled in the other room. The last of the wine was golden and sweet and I was drunk on candlelight. He told me that I am beautiful. I didn't tell him that my heart is his if he wants it.

Is it time? Only Louis knows.

Wakey wakey

You know you're in Newfoundland when, while in the process of rummaging through a fridge in search of breakfast items, you come across a cooked turkey neck.

"A cooked turkey neck?" Yes. I can see how some would raise a sardonic eyebrow or purse their lips in distaste. You see, where I come from, we cook and eat turkey fairly often. It's kind of a staple. This could be due to the fact that a large turkey feeds many hungry people, which is great when a normal Sunday dinner with the family is comprised of no less than 15 participants. It could also be argued that the turkey serves as a convenient vehicle for all the tasty stuff that goes along with it - pease pudding, greens (turnip, mustard, dandelion and various other permutations), salt beef, boiled vegetables (potatoes, cabbage, carrots, turnip, parsnip, etc.) Or, it could be just because turkey is frigging delicious, full stop.

I won't go into a lengthy dissertation of how one actually eats a turkey neck - it's an ugly, ungainly process. There are vertebrae. There's also a spinal cord in there, which will vary in length/thickness/revoltingness according to the size of the bird from whence it came. You basically just haul the cooked neck out of the roasting pan (the neck always cooks faster than the rest of the turkey), scoop a ladlefull of dressing out of the exposed arse of the bird, throw the two into a bowl and eat it in one of two ways: standing over the stove like some sort of starving convict a la "Great Expectations", or, sitting down at the table in a darkened, fragrant kitchen and sharing the pickings with somone you love who also loves the neck. It has been my experience that neck folks are usually excellent people. My mother and her sister are neck people, as was my late grandmother O'Neill. Lovely ladies to a one.

Why do we love the neck so much? I have a couple of theories. One stems from the fact that we are not a wasteful folk. We share an inherent frugality that stems from a heritage built on large families from outport communities who lived off what the sea and land provided on a seasonal basis. Not much went to waste back in the day - there were no supermarkets in these tiny, isolated outports. Refrigeration was a bit on the sketchy side as well. So, if you turned up your nose at a nice bit of meat from whatever animal was on the menu, odds are you'd go hungry. Eating the neck just made sense.

A far less noble/romantic hypothesis can be attributed to man's basic survival instincts. The human race has been housebound for quite some time now, but if you strip away the iPods and trendy shoes, we're basically just a bunch of animals milling around waiting for the meat. What does a lion do when faced with the plump carcass of a freshly-killed ruminant? The lion feeds. It doesn't push aside what isn't boneless or skinless or grain-fed for its enjoyment. No, the lion gorges on the ambrosial organ meats, the rich, dark viscera. Bones are crunched and salty marrow is slurped and savoured. Tender stalks of necks are mouthed and mascerated by bigger animals with bigger teeth. That is, I think, a big part of what the turkey neck means to me. It's primal. The turkey neck is my right as the animal at the top of the food chain.

Animal though I am, I cannot overlook the social aspect of the neck. I mentioned previously that my mother is a neck person, as was her mother. The neck constitutes "a moment" amongst women in my family, shared amidst the ordered pandemonium of clanging pots and rising steam of dinner preparation. I was raised in warm houses filled with the laughter of grandparents and parents, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, untold cousins and their significant others. We grew up around the communal table. We laughed and sang, told stories and danced to music scraped from fiddles and squeezed from accordians. It was a never-ending cycle of food preparation and consumption as a family unit.

I learned so much from being with my mother and my grandmother in the kitchen at our various houses. I learned more than how to prepare the food that we would share - I learned about life, about being a woman. I learned what it would mean to be a matriarch presiding with love, pride and and aching sort of joy over a boisterous, brilliant family. The joy that I took from sharing tender, salty bits of meat with these women in a kitchen filled with the smell of their love of family is indescribable. I still have that with my mother. It is precious and beautiful and delicious.

Home

There are too many good things about being home with my parents in St. John's (NF) to list in one post, so I'll just go with the top ten:

• The air smells and tastes better here
• It's cold, but not Ottawa cold
• Flannel sheets
• Fishcakes for breakfast (yummers!)
• The smell of my grandfather's Brylcreem
• My brother and sister, who are both crazy like me
• The ocean
• The streets, lanes and terraces of Old St. John's
• Normal drivers who stop to let you cross
• My parents. The best people in the world.

My next few posts will no doubt be flavoured heavily by all of the above. Be ready.

a.m.

Warm, tangled limbs. Hair tousled over eyes closed.
Lashes luscious smudges on pale cheeks. Peony
lips parted in chai-scented dreams.

Mmmmmm.
What time is it, baby?

Our long lines run parallel in repose.
Mouths find hollows of throats, necks as hands skim
skin in quivering glissandi. Breath is liquid
in the shell delicacy of an ear.

Just ten more minutes,
baby.

Dinner for two

I am having dinner tonight with a man who makes me positively weak in the knees.

He makes me laugh. Uproariously. It's not everyone who can make me laugh like that.

It also bears mentioning that he is highly intelligent, extremely articulate and more worldly than most.

This is a dangerously heady combination.

Hmmm.