happy belated birthday to me

[celebrate]

It was my birthday last Friday! It was a quiet birthday, just dinner with Y, sunshine and Brucebruce at the old standby, John's Italian Cafe. Unlike previous years, I was not sick. But unlike previous years, Y was very busy and went off to Ottawa for a few days for work, so he didn't get a chance to get me and K-chan (who's birthday was also on Saturday) a birthday cake. K-chan and beingboring (who's birthday was on the previous Tuesday) couldn't make it to the impromptu dinner on Friday, too.

But it was a lovely birthday, low key and quiet. Just like the blog, the past few months.

Now where to begin? Or not? There have been some changes since my love may be invisible. And it has been invisible, my love for the blog. I needed a break, since it seemed then that things needed to change.

I'm at a new job, away from the old craziness, having started on Dec. 31, which I explained to one of the managers that it was both the end and the beginning. I miss my old team terribly, but not the people who made me realize that they were never going to support me in the way I wanted to be supported. My old teammates and other workmates, however, were the most supportive people I've met. It's like leaving a family, and that, that I feel sad about.

But now, I'm off on a new journey, not just work, but a whole new journey. It may not seem like much for people looking in, they might just see me, and see not much change at all. But there is. My senses are still afire, and I feel like my spirit is soaring some days. I look forward to moving forward. And I look forward to sharing that all with you.

My birthday weekend was the best birthday in the longest time. I got the best birthday present ever. I hope there are more celebrations to come.

my love may be invisible

[readings]

It has been an odd week, where so many paths converged. They're imaginary paths, tangible paths, paths planned and dreamt. They have been swirling in my head, pushing at the edges of my thoughts, revealing old paths etched in dreams and vividly reanimating faint memories buried in sleep. I can taste them, touch them, and some make me cry while I sleep.

I've been on vacation since Thanksgiving. Coach(e)girl and 7-11 from work came over last weekend for pre-Thanksgiving dinner with Y, K-chan and I. For many months, I've been jokingly prodding 7-11 to take Coach(e)girl out to dinner, and then suddenly, without anyone knowing, they are together. At work, I never see them any more close than they are with me or other colleagues. But that evening, seeing them together on our couch, I saw two futures come together, maybe not forever, but together happily and it made me smile, touching off a week of oddness.

-s- is back, threateningly for a short time, to attend to family. (see past post here and here, about -s- who stole my heart for just one small, temporary moment.) He is so exuberant, just as I remembered him 3 years ago, but looks better, a bit of that sadness has faded from his eyes.

We had coffee at Moonbean and he talked about his friends in remote countries, meeting his friends in Cairo, London, Seoul, Nepal, Kyrgyzstan, and many more... There was a story about bundles of new crisp $50 bills, sequentially numbered, stuffed down his underwear, bribes to a 12 year old looking border guard with a giant Russian fur hat and machine gun bigger than him, a gay bar in some remote part of Asia where patrons danced with themselves in the mirrors that lined the walls. “Gay men are narcissists everywhere,” he says.

He is still running and will leave again and I am reminded how much I wish it were I who could run, fly across the ocean, across mountains, chasing a dream, running away from phantoms. It seems like my spirit has been asleep these years since I last saw -s-.

Last Tuesday, I had my Tarot cards read or attempted to be read by a new found friend, Phael. I had them read before years ago, but avoided Tarot cards for many years after, for fear of knowing too much, for fear of asking for too much from spirits that wanted something in return. He made me ask him for a reading, he never reads without being specifically asked. I read his palm and in return I asked for my cards read.

I don't normally like people asking me to read their palms. Once people know, inevitably, it spreads, and people ask to have their palms read. When I offer, it's because there is something I want to know about their lives, something about them that strikes my curiosity, and if I can share something with them I would. (Or he is incredibly hot, and I want to touch his hands.) I don't know if Tarot cards evoke the same response.

As the cards were revealed, I felt them telling me something, almost like mad images screaming to me from the table. Phael said he felt these cards were not meant for him to read, and a part of me realized that, half way through. I don't really believe enough of this stuff, my rational side explaining away the symbols, the story wove together to tell of a future, unrealized. And yet these stories seem so true, that I awoke the next morning with an epiphany that helped me piece together the images, the symbols, to bring some meaning to me, about myself that I had consciously ignored. Perhaps the cards were for me to read.

It's all intertwined, my love, my spirit, my writing, my future, and I saw that I have to disentangle these separate things, in order to move forward and to let go. There are other things, other paths, other happenings, I've not mentioned here. I am not who I was, and now, I feel that I can become me again. This week all these things converged, my senses afire, I am not sure which paths to take, but I do wish that now my spirit awakes again from the deep slumber where I left it.

-s- will fly again and I want to follow him. But it could mean to chase phantoms and run away from dreams.

When he smiles, I will remember him telling me about leaving New Zealand and watching the mountains recede in the rear window of the car. He never looks back, always running forward, but that day he cried at the beauty, the ethereal serenity he was leaving behind.

I am tempted, to throw my senses in

[paradise found]

It was beautiful, the south of France. We stayed in Marvivo, a little community south of Toulon. I didn't want to return.

beingboring has more photos, but here are two for now. We hiked and climbed the hills, and braved the Mistral, led by Y's family friends. We got to see a magnificent view, ate wonderful sandwiches stuffed with a Nicoise-like salad, and practised my French.

joe stops to ponder Les Deux Frères (the two rocks in the sea). G & Y hike ahead.

We hiked from near the top of this photo to get to this view, and we still had further to climb.

More photos to come, and an actual post too!

je vous aimes... de Paris!

[hiatus]

well, after this unexpected hiatus, I will be blogging again... right after I get back from France!

Yep, icy joe is going to France tonight, arriving in Paris tomorrow morning, and then onward to Toulon, and specifically to Marvivo, where beingboring, Y and I will be basking in the French sun on the beach, hanging around locals. We'll be staying at Y's family friend Mme J's place while she's here staying at ours.

We'll also be in Paris for 5 days and then back to Canada!

I won't miss the work (it's been super busy and crazy these few weeks) but I will miss meeting Matty from SF (his blog rocks!) who's in TO while I'm gone, and Gerry, who is here from Germany, but won't be meeting us in Paris like we did last time.

beingboring is taking photos, and I will endeavour to blog. :)

lots of love to you all!

icyblog will return.

on beauty

[distracted]

It was a glorious day, cool and sunny. It was a perfect day to watch people, when everyone comes out from wintery shadows to bask in the sun. I stopped by Starbucks, a pause on my way to drop off a DVD at the video store, a break from being sick at home. Upstairs at a table overlooking all who enters and leaves, I saw a beautiful profile, across the sofa, against the wall. Closely shaved head and beard, and with a tan-coloured face that blends in contrast to the boring beige walls, I watched him type on his laptop. When he got up, I saw yellow birds on his t-shirt flew by, breaking his profile with the imperfection of his brow. I watched him passing the student, who sat in another corner with a large black binder, furiously scribbling, with a blue highlighter in his ear. His nervous shaking leg made me look at him, and admire the casual neglect of his body, imperfect but driven by a naive immortality of youth. His t-shirt screamed out red letters, “save your soul”, and I was reminded how young he is. My gaze dropped to the floor below, and I saw tousled, unconcerned hair, the slim silver rim of sunglasses wrapped around a head, around the wires protruding from his ears, playing music to his soul. A large knapsack rested upon his broad shoulders and wide chest. He looked like he could carry me and I wondered what he looked like, face to face.

I don't always know what moves me, and sometimes it seems like nothing does. In the past months, Y has been acquiring art, pieces that move him in a way I don't always understand. From scouring websites, I see photos of artwork I am not quite sure I like. And then they arrive, and then I see that simple Yoshitomo Nara drawing is actually exquisite and note that the Barry McGee piece separated from its original cluster is screaming orange at me. They are beautiful in a way I cannot explain, and I didn't see looking at the website. They speak to Y in an incomprehensible language, which I only vaguely understand when my eyes look at our walls contemplating what the artists may be thinking.

Since we've painted the living and dining rooms, we have been searching for art to cover the barren walls. Y has been pretty decisive about what he wants, whereas I know what I could like, but cannot find something worth acquiring. It's pretty hard for me to commit to something that seems both permanent and ephemeral to me, a piece of art that I want to see all the time, to live with, to spend my time on, to not grow bored of. I could fill the walls like Heipel, who's home is like a brilliant salon of paintings and drawings that captured his interest. I realize his walls tell me more about him than his caustic wit and barbs. I feel just a little bit closer to him when I admire what he has put together and collected. I don't know how to fill my walls (or at least my sections of the walls). Perhaps I am afraid to tell the world who I can be, perhaps I am afraid that I won't have enough space to show all the pieces I'd get, or perhaps I just simply don't know who I am and so cannot find something that moves me. But if that was the case, then I wouldn't have thought Rodolfo's aria in the second act of Luisa Miller was sung so touchingly, beautifully, the other night at the opera or the last shot of Tony Leung in Happy Together on the train in HK was so achingly beautiful in its nostalgia or how coldly beautiful it was, skiing dangerously across a frozen lake on a bright sunny winter day. And certainly wouldn't have thought how hot that Chinese guy in Accounting looks in his tight dress pants, riding with me in the elevator one Friday afternoon. (Yes, I have a new crush at work.)

Of the paintings I have been admiring lately, the $2.5 million Rioplle abstract makes me want to be a millionaire, or be married to one. For those things in reach, I am not moved enough to buy the pieces, the beauty escapes me, while the prices do not. How do you invest in art, in the beauty of a canvas, in someone else's imagination? My gaze won't stop moving in a different direction, seeing a different profile, being distracted by a subtle movement, obscured by a different angle. Nothing moves me, everything moves me. I can't have it all, but I want to.

air for life

[silence, hope]

When he awoke, he felt her back pressed against him, warm and smooth against his chest. He kissed her neck and then reached under it and around her, and placed his hands gently, almost caressing, on her firm breasts. His finger tips danced on the nipples, lightly gliding over the points and he whispered into her ears her name, over and over again. But she didn’t move, her breath calm and rhythmic in tight beats, and her body was stiff, and then tense, when he nudged her buttocks with his hardness.

Sighing, he moved away from her, and lay on his back, looking at the low ceiling, tracing with his eyes, the brittle peeling white curls. He felt her move closer to the wall and the sheets pulled and wrapped more tightly around her, and then angrily, the wet stain of his limpness, pushed coldly against his groin.

He peeled back the sheets and rolled off the bed. Naked and cold, he walked to the only window in their room to close it, but didn’t and stood there, listening to the hard static of the mid-October rain, falling sharply on the sidewalk. Outside, the wind blew through the half-bare maples and the leaves fell, spiraling down to carpet the street in a mosaic of reds and yellows and browns. He could almost taste the cool fresh scent of wet leaves, as the rain sliced into the room. The cold numbed him.

She felt the chill as the winds picked up, and she wrapped the sheets round even tighter. She swore to herself and felt the anger rise up in her. She wanted to scream at him to shut the window, but she couldn’t even make a noise. She felt too empty, too cold in the bed, so she pressed herself against the wall, almost trying to hug it, squeezing herself with her arms. She could smell the coarseness of old paint and she could feel the smooth coldness of the wall with her face. On impulse, her tongue shot out and licked it, tasting the bitter, blandness.

I wrote this a long time ago for a class. It's the opening of a story about a Chinese/English Canadian couple who was going to be married and move away from their respective families. This beginning is nothing like the rest of the story, which focuses on two 10 course Thanksgiving meals and stilted dialogue. I fondly remember this bit as the beginning of a style that a classmate/friend (and now my lawyer) called joe's hyper-realism. I was trying to describe as closely as possible the things and feelings in the scene, without layers of interpretation suffocating it. I don't think I succeeded, really, but it was the beginning of a change to how I approached writing fiction.

I am reminded of this piece a few evenings ago with mark. As usual, we ended up talking about fiction and writing (even though neither of us had written much of anything lately). This time we talked about the genuineness of writing, or to write from one's heart and not from one's head. mark will clarify if I'm mistaken or wrong, but we weren't drinking, so I assume this is an accurate recollection.

I often find it easier to write something with set parameters, an exercise of some kind, rather than trying to write about what I want to say, free form without any boundaries. What I mean to say is that it's easier to be told what to write and then write, than it is to write something that reveals something, that's from the heart or from passion, led by no one but your mind. I've struggled with this notion for a very long time, staring at blank screens and wondering if it's just that I can't write at all because I have nothing to say, nor passion to say anything. So, I haven't written in awhile, and I don't consider myself a writer anymore.

I think I understand what mark is saying, although I'm not sure if I can feel it now. I know there's that moment when you create something from a deep passion, that what you produce, be it a painting, a dance, a piece of music, or a poem, becomes this new life, and the emotion that spills forth is elating, ecstatic. I know that because I felt it when I wrote before. Now, I just don't know anymore. In order for something to be genuinely good, it needs to be genuine, from the heart. Without this, it is like reading/watching/listening technically good artists, pieces without soul, works that are cold. All day at work, I write technically good documents, communication, memos, diplomatic entreaties, deflective announcements, blameless PR. I don't write from passion anymore. I wonder now if it's because I don't have passion, and not because I have nothing to say. Y thinks I've got no passion, that I'm this calm, phlegmatic, “amorph”. He thinks I've always been this way. There's some truth in that, I know.

When I re-read this bit of an old short story I wrote, I think that it does capture that cold, passion-suppressed disconnect between two people who can't be together for whatever reasons. At that time in my life, I was naive and the world was just an open book, waiting to be filled. I wrote those characters, describing them in my mind from people I had known in my youth, yet I don't think I really knew those two people. But now, I really know what it is to hold back passion, and lose yourself in a cold, small room. I am afraid I won't be able to find that passion again and remain mute, silent in the noise of day-to-day living, the mundane, the minor grind of life.

And yet, my short story does end happily.

The window was opened, the night wind blew in gently. The rains had ended, but the cold was sharper. Outside, the street was quiet, the moonlight casting dark shadows over the string of cars beneath their window. She could feel the heat from his body. His back was to her, and she could see in the dimness his long smooth back and the ridges of his spine. She kissed his back and then slid her arm around him, hugging him closely. She could feel his breathing, slow and deep and she knew he hadn’t fallen asleep yet. She slipped her leg between his, and stroked his stomach lightly.

He turned around and smiled. He pressed up against her and then tickled her back. She whispered into his ear his Chinese name over and over again, laughing.

I think there is always hope, nothing stays the same, nothing that should stop you from hoping for more, for better.

out of the blue

[reunion]

A few weeks ago, M. surprised me and emailed to say that he could visit. After a few emails later, I found myself excited to see him, memories flooding back into my mind. But quite coincidentally, I had also thought of him too, though not particularly about him, just my mind touching a memory that I had thought I'd lost over the years. beingboring had mentioned Ann Arbor (I forget why), and I was reminded of M. mentioning that he had wanted to go there.

I haven't seen M. in just over 11 years. The last time I saw him was in March of 1996, when I had went to visit Sammi's mom (my cousin) and dad in San Francisco. It was before I met Y, before I became this icy joe. We hung out a couple of times and I saw a side of SF that forever made me fond of the city. We kept in touch, sometimes actively, most times sporadically, but I tried never to let him go out of my life.

M. would be flying standby, so there wasn't a guarantee that I would be seeing him that weekend. Even so, Y and I cleaned house quickly in preparations for his visit. On Friday night, he called to say he was heading onto the plane and I had begun to feel a little nervous, wondering if we'd change enough that we'd forget who we were 11 years ago. There was still some more tidying to do, and so about an hour before he'd be downtown at our doorstep, I was in the bathroom swiffering. I accidentally tapped the doorknob with my elbow, gently hitting the door, which closed with an odd click, like a button snapped into place. I tried to open the door, but it wouldn't open, and so suddenly I found myself locked in the bathroom. I cried for help and Y came bounding over.

“It won't open!” I yelled.

“Try turning it some more. Try moving it from side to side.” Y advised.

“It's not doing anything.” Y began trying to force the door open. “Stop! All you're doing is pushing the door frame!”

“Is there anything in there you can use? Something to take apart the doorknob?”

I looked around and found some tiny screwdrivers, nail clippers, a small pair of safety scissors and tweezers. I tried to unscrew the doorknob apart. “Don't you have any screws on your side?”

“Nope. You'll have to do it on your side.”

“Fuck.” The phone rang.

“The phone is ringing!” Y yelled. "The phone is ringing!"

“Answer it!”

“Hi! It's Y. Joe locked himself in the bathroom.”

M. was going to be over in 30 minutes. I was beginning to sweat and feel claustrophobic. Nothing was working. I even tried the phone card Y slipped under the door, like they do in the movies. (I guess my life isn't like the movies.) Y even managed to pass a screw bit under the door with the right shape. It was useless, because I couldn't use a 1.5 cm screw bit to unscrew the doorknob. It's impossible.

Minutes ticked away, the bathroom still unswept, and then bang! Y smashed the doorknob with his geology hammer. I escaped! (and we're left with a nice hole in the door.) and then M. was here, at another door. He looked a little older, a little wiser, but practically the same as I remembered him... except I forgot how tall he was.

After the initial misadventure, the rest of his stay was wonderful. It was really weird to see someone you haven't seen in such a long time, and it was really comforting to find how easy it was to spend time with him, almost like it was 11 years ago again, except maybe I had more of his attention. We had breakfast at Le Petit Dejeunner, went to see the Emily Carr exhibit at the AGO, coffee at Moonbeam in Kensington Market and dinner at Café la Gaffe. It was sweet to hold his hand again.

By the next morning we awoke, thinking he had a little time for breakfast before trying to catch the 2 PM standby flight out of Toronto. And then it hit me that daylight saving time began, and I had forgotten to turn the clocks forward. We packed, we cleaned up and we got him out to a taxi to the airport. Relieved that he made it out on time, I went back inside and relaxed a little, waiting for Y and K-chan to get ready for coffee with brucebruce and the gang. An hour later, we were all at the door, and ready to go. I looked over to the kitchen counter and saw M.'s cellphone and car and house keys. Shit.

After trying to find a live person on his airline's automated client service system, and then being put on hold for 10 minutes, I realized that it wasn't likely that I could get some phone centre drone to either transfer my call to the airport or get the telephone number of the lounge where M. was possibly waiting for his flight home. I ran out the door and flagged down a taxi. I didn't know exactly what I was going to do at the airport, but I thought there might be a chance to get his cell and keys to him.

The taxi drove pretty fast for a bright and sunny Sunday afternoon. I got to the airport just an hour before his flight. I ran up to the first class check-in and asked the woman with the funny eastern european accent if M. had already passed through customs and immigration. Of course, I figured he had. I explained the situation and she shook her head. For security reasons, I could not (of course!) expect them to pass anything over to him. I asked if I could pass a message to the boarding gate. She looked at me and then picked up the phone and asked for M. to be paged.

M. was surprised that I was at the airport. He had just realized a few minutes before that he had forgotten his cell and keys. Since he wasn't able to come back out, we agreed to have things shipped. I was so close, yet so far. I wished him a good flight and then hung up. The airline worker kindly said that the flight was full, and M. might not be able to board on standby. I should wait for an hour to see if he might be coming back out.

30 minutes later or so, he called, I missed his call, we left messages and then he came back out. (He had another work cellphone on him, which could've come in handy if I had known.) I wanted to run up and hug him, but instead walked over relieved. Before we forget again, I handed him his cell and keys. We then made our way to Terminal 1 where he got another flight out with Air Canada. After a coffee and a doughnut, and another hug and goodbye, I sent him on his way through customs and immigration. It's always hard to see someone leave at the airport, there's something so finite and permanent about watching people go off to giant airplanes.

I took the bus home and pondered what a crazy day it was. I fell asleep wondering if M. was ever going to come visit again after this silliness.

joe wonders how red the lips, while M. smiles on.

In the evening, M. called. “You're home!” I said happily.

“You won't believe this, but I'm still in Toronto,” M. said almost laughing, but also annoyed.

“No way!”

“Yeah, we were up in the air for about an hour and then the pilot came on and said that some of us passengers might have noticed we took a big turn around back to Toronto. Some mechanical problem.”

“Get of here! You're pulling my leg!” I said incredulously.

“Nope, you can't get rid of me.”

I laughed, sort of, and out of frustration said, “Well, I guess I didn't have to rush to the airport to find you. You're still here!!”

They put him up in a pretty terrible hotel, and eventually M. got home the following day in the afternoon. It was one of the oddest weekends ever.

Despite the unexpected adventures, it was fun and funny. It was good to see someone I had fallen in love with so many years ago, to see how things have changed and if I felt a little of what I had felt before. I wasn't sure what to expect, and I was surprised instead to see how rational I felt about him. I could easily fall crazily in love with him again, let that iciness drop for a moment, but instead, I felt this complex bond with him, like something that is a little close to being crazily in love again, but not at all irrational nor blindingly impossible. I love him for what he was then 11 years ago, and I love him now for what he could be. The last memory I have of him from so many years ago, is me, sitting in the plane, looking out the window and seeing the tarmac, suddenly sensing his scent, feeling as if he was sitting next to me on the plane. I had fallen in love with his scent, and for a brief few seconds, didn't want to let him go. It's strange what you remember of someone, what you take away, what he might have left behind.

There is only one other person for whom I had felt his scent, while being somewhere else. He's someone I met recently, almost out of the blue. He, too, is so close literally, yet so far in every other way. I don't know if I can reach out to him, to touch his heart. Perhaps I'm not the one who can do that. Perhaps it's just me, emotional, irrational, feeling all the things that makes me what to be icy, so that I won't hurt, be hurt. I'm in love with his scent, and I hope I won't have to wait 11 years before seeing him again.