Knitting Ferocious Spiders

to shake at the page, the blank world, it is not because I am empty. My hands are always full of something, but when the hammers and pins are lost numb fingers can still be very clever. I have been at the buckles today, the straight jackets done up, white like empty worlds; and I have been knitting ferocious spiders to spin their webs across the ceiling. I have tickled the belly of the three headed dog, and now I'm working at picking out this knot: a tangle of failures as smooth as oiled secrets, as tight as a garotte around the throat of an angel, balanced on the head of a pin; there are other dangers just as sudden that can spring from my curious fingers; and while I am working at undoing this potential for savage reunion with the world, which is as empty as it was in the beginning, puzzle this: my dreams were never violent, but they promised that all things will come.

Knitting Ferocious Spiders has wound a nice ball. It's been a diary of confusion and mistakes, assertions and affirmations, but now, it's time to tie it up, and leave it as it is. There's a certain symmetry to a year. This was never the intention: I was set to fire it off under this format for quite some time, but it's been a little more than 12 months of massive change: a lot of learning, and tangles tugged out as best I could muster. I have a better idea now of what I want, and of how I see my life progressing, in the near future. Even more, I've learned about the world of blog, and what kind of a form I would like to pursue in its arena. This direction has become a little too undirected. The Spider, however, will keep spinning. Check back for the new link. My next attempt at a quotidian project should be a little more so than this one, I should think.

For the past several weeks at the present restaurant job in Auckland (present only because I hope that in the near future it will be the stuff of anecdotes and legend) I have been making a grievous error. I have been making Lemon-Lime and Bitters the wrong way . Apparently, in New Zealand, as well as in other British and colonial locals, Lemonade is more what I might call "Sprite", or (if under duress) "7-Up"; so the "Lemon" in "Lemon-Lime and Bitters" stands for aforesaid fizzy drink, not lemon cordial, as I have been using, and soda water is evidently not an acceptable surrogate bubble-maker. I learned this after the woman who pointed out my error almost twisted the ears off my head for the inaccuracy. God I've missed waiting on tables.

Nothing has really topped Morrissey's How Soon Is Now as the epic anthem of solitude in a crowd; and my iPod conspiratorially conjured it as I lie here in the early afternoon, the Sunday following, just as I'm in the midst of that song's sentiment. A little melancholyncholy, perhaps feeling the first strains of homesickness. I'm not willing to accept those heart strings being played. Let's blame the booze. Booze, darling? My first boyfriend, Adam, the first man, the first naked stretch of learning (not on a curve, but flat out), came to visit me during the summer I was on the farm. I was out of the city because I couldn't afford to stay while school wasn't in session, and he had gone back to his family in Montreal. Out of the blue, he announced over the phone that he was coming. His visit was disastrous. Over those few days I think we both started to realize that we had bitten off more than we could chew, respectively; but I was elated when he drove up th...

Contrary to even my own observations, I have been writing blog entries, or at least parts of entries. I just haven't been posting them. I don't know why, exactly. As much as I absolutely adore my laptop, I'm still getting the wonderful machine in order, and only recently installed Microsoft Office, which allows me to explore text in the sublime environment of Word, the frankly intuitive word processor, rather than the mucilaginous purgatory of AppleWorks, what I have been wrestling with up until now. God, I hated that program; and because of that, I had been writing all of my entries directly into the blogger platform, sometimes with dire consequences. Let's have a moment of silence for all of those sentences lost before they could be read. Getting my house in order here has been piecemeal, but we're getting to it eventually, my motivations and me. Out of good faith towards the spirit of my intentions, and some sort of temporal integrity, I was going to post the ba...

At the supermarket, coming home from work (you can buy wine at the grocery. I love the civilized world.) after a ten hour shift, the girl stopped me. “I need to see ID.” I looked at her. “I can’t sell it to you otherwise.” “I’m 28. Born 1977.” The glare I got back was not encouraging. “You look younger than 25.” “I’ll be 29 next month.” Nothing. Luckily, I did, in fact, have my wallet on me. “I have a photo Health Card.” “I can’t accept this.” “An old driver’s licence?” Scrutinized. “This one time,” she finally announced. After a moment, my chicken and sauvignon blanc going into krinkly plastic bags, it came to me: the retort. “I’m you’re senior .” The man behind me laughed.

Seems like every blogger I read or know has stalled. Including myself. I'm pulling it together. Promise.

In a vain effort to make up for the characters I have lost between locations and digital outputs, here; relatively unedited, from 11th of Feb, 2006: Stop talking, I've run out of aspirin. says: Ha! Found an insecure wireless network. Hong Kong rocks! violet headache says: ah. cool. Stop talking, I've run out of aspirin says: had the loudest American family of five sitting behind me on the plane. three children. didn't stop noising all 18 hours. violet headache: what have you seen? Stop talking, I've run out of aspirin says: it's morning in the city, I'm just waiting at the starbucks for my room to be ready. was lucky to find an free internet signal. violet headache says: (10:35:06 PM) cool violet headache says: (10:35:24 PM) what's around you? Stop talking, I've run out of aspirin. says: (10:35:41 PM) the fashion district. It's going to be hard not to shop. violet headache says: (10:35:51 PM) yep Stop talking, I've run out of aspirin. says:...

Mustardseed and I went for a walk in Hong Kong, late at night, and I discovered what my new phone was capable of:

"What about serial rapists? What should be done about them?" "Oh! I've got that one all tied up." "What's the solution?" "We're talking serial rapists, right?" "Right." "Surgically remove their opposable thumbs." "..." "It would work. You could even let them roam free afterwards." "That's brilliant. Horrifying, but brilliant." "And picture them trying to open a door with a knob."

From China to New Zealand, above the sea. Above, even, the clouds. Aircrafts aren't so special anymore. Even when they serve you decent food. The magic is gone; now so pedestrian. How many tons does this thing weigh? Flight is magical enough, I'd say; it occupies so many of my dreams. This is what we might call kamakzi blogging: renting time from the Auckland Central Library on a sunny day, a sunny summers day, on a mission. Let's hope I crash into the right target. Here. 6 days and counting. Moved hostels, walked the grassy crater of a sleeping volcano, bought "jandels", tried to rest, found an apartment. It's the latter that's making it sink in. The outlay of funds for a habitat, the outlay of funds which precludes my ability to get home on my own. I live here now, and it's now that I need a job. So I've done my resume up. Which was harder than it sounds when you have to rent your computer time, and more so when you realize that their standard o...

There is a point, almost a location in and of itself, that is between two places. Transitional and uncommitted. Where you feel vulnerable to disaster, and not yet fully dedicated to a direction. Something's going to go wrong. I'm going to be pulled back. Made to stay. But there is nothing to stay in. The apartment has already moved on without you. A stranger is living in it. Your possessions exist zipped up; on wheels. You have no space, no home. I was in that point for at least three days, if not a week. It is an awful one to be in, and all I could do was fret, about nothing. Nothing; nothing. All decisions had been made, all bills paid, all money made. Just wait. Wait , they say. The powers that be. The angels of time. They would point at that clock . You're counting down. Down. Down . I finally flew from that point yesterday. Into the future, on Cathay Pacific Airlines. Through 20 hours of darkness, we fled the dawn above the clouds. Now I'm in Hong Kong, and the day...

And 30 seconds. I'm numb with excitement. Oh, and fear. Did I mention fear?

Not an escape hatch. And there is also this, which I feel is somehow apropos. Goodnight street. Goodnight murals. Goodnight overpriced corner shop. Goodnight hair salon. Goodnight apartment. Goodnight door. Goodnight room. Goodnight moon.

In 2003, when the power grid was burned out, this city became somewhere else. With the light pollution stopped, the summer sky was as alive as it can be, and the skyscrapers were silhouetted against the blinking sea. This is a mural in what is now my old neighborhood. I stood on the viaduct bridge over the Don Valley Parkway, and watched motorcycles race the motorway in the dark, far below. It was the most magical Toronto has ever been for me.

My father arrived the morning of the 22nd promptly. Early, actually. He's always early. I had been at Brown Owl's the night before for a fantastic dinner, a long overdue visit, and the breaking out of the single malt. Which, in retrospect, was what made that Sunday morning not necessarily painful, but, ahem, still rather drunk; and smelling of spirits. To high heaven. It's 9am. "Hi, Dad." But I was functional; and surprisingly organized. We got all my belongings loaded, stacked and snug in the back of the trailer: the bed, the books, the shelves, the sofa and the table; all in about half an hour. Tarped it. Tied it. Off we went. On the 401, a corner of the tarp in the trailer started to flap up in the wind. "Oh, look. I wonder if that's going to be a--" My father went dead silent, and quickly pulled over to the shoulder of the highway. The wind had got under the covering, and then presumably under the dining room table, which then took it like a sail...

As I wound down my career as a registered burlesque entertainer, I gave pause to consider what I learned from my time in that dim corridor. 1. The combination of prodigious amounts of steroids and equally prodigious amounts of cocaine, do not a charming fellow make. Intimidating, but not charming. 2. Socks are expendable. 3. Whatever is said while you are undressed, turgid and frottaged against a stranger, is generally more amusing if you imagine it being said by a character in a sitcom. Your choice. 4. No matter what you look like, someone thinks you're the hottest thing they've ever seen. Patron and performer included. 5. Flirtation can be a weapon. 6. Laughter can be permission. 7. Silence is deadly. 8. Money is the dirtiest word of all. Nudity, and lewdity , are permissive; it's monetary greed that's the most offensive, especially if it invades a fantasy. Stripping is fantasy, and when there is disquiet, when there is a PROBLEM, the imaginary quality dissolves, and ...

It's started. Last night at the club, there were not one, but two men sporting cowboy hats indoors. I didn't try and count the number of snappy, snapping cowboy shirts. You have to wonder if there is an inherent flaw in the gay male brain, one that thinks the physical appropriation of an element of style actually translates us into the object of our desire; or better, into the object of everyone else's . Urbanites who have never seen a cow should not, NOT, try to look like they just got off the ranch. Especially fellows who are liable to flee at the site of manure.

So, lost, angry, and scared , Quorum came down to Parvenu, for the first time since he had lost Celeste. He looked around, and made his inquiries. He took a back room off from the baroque labyrinth of parlours and corridors. He lay down.... Many, many nights later, it was ‘lu himself who battered his way through the heavy curtains of the Salon’s smoke filled rooms to sit down beside him. He waited patiently for Quorum’s sight to come into focus, and coolly regarded the youth’s confusion with heavy-lidded eyes before reaching out to put the pipe aside. “Do not,” he spoke precisely, “confuse curiosity with concern... but these past few days you have not been so much chasing, as fleeing. You’ve not been one of my solitary guests before now. Something has changed.” Quorum struggled with the receding fugue, grappled with the tangle of emotion that was knotting itself back into his chest. A ragged sigh shuddered him. “I want out. I don’t want to be stuck in this hellhole anymore.” “Tha...

Querken. Pribble. Viripotent. Rannygazoo. Vitrescent. Rutilant. Periplum.