Surrey/Where I Belong

Surrey. Car theft capital of North America 2002.

Surrey. Fuckin’ brown people.

Not you Indu, you’re cool, I mean, you’re practically white.

Surrey. Natasha.

Seven years since we parted ways and every day, in every face I see, something reminds me of you.

Surrey. Must be Latin for things fall apart here.

Love falls apart here. Families fall apart here.

Family.

“A’s, you should be getting A+’s”
“She wants to be an actor. Sitting around all the time watching movies.”

“You’re what? Valedictorian? I don’t know what that is, I don’t care”

Surrey. Leave Surrey.

University. University. Must be Latin for impersonal academic objectivity shoved so far up your ass you choke. I can’t even say art anymore. Nevermind theatre.
So I forgot how. I forgot.

Until... Theatre at UBC Presents Billy Bishop Goes to War. That show was like seeing the face of God. It was so undeniably real. And I think to myself, I wanna do that. I hold onto this feeling. This feeling, this feeling, I hold on when there’s nothing else to hold onto. I hold on until three years of rejection letters pay off. Until someone finally says, hey, we want you. Until I remember where I belong. Where I belong. Where I belong.

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Voice Poem 2

I have a hunger in me.

A deep, ripping, hunger in me.

I feed it silence, to soothe the aches and the cramps.

Silence. It tastes like… neglect.

                                               

I have a hunger in me…and yet I have lost my appetite.

I have gorged myself with silence and I won’t ever need to feed again.

Silence has numbed me.

Payschu yariku venum?

But suddenly a pang, but suddenly a convulsion deep inside

I have fed myself silence and now I am sick.

I am sick. I AM SICK. I am sick and silence has come to taste like blood.

I try to cleanse my numb, disfigured body with a touch of sound but it burns my skin and I choke on the fumes.

I have a hunger in me and I fear I will starve.

I crumple down to the earth and weep, but as tears fall into my open mouth

I taste truth.  

I taste myself. My soul. I hear my heartbeat and the silence is broken. And I, I am hungry

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Travels.

Still in the works.
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Way up there in an old sky where I used to go
With clumsy dreams and messy feelings, boys and girls telling jokes. 
There was a place in another time, where love was no crime, and ideas took people across oceans 
Like boats. 
I drank the water of such an ocean and the taste overflowed,
I drank the wine of another time and became too heavy to float. 
My bloods journey smells of sand and gangrene
My mothers eyes are red and white like  old flesh that gently bleeds. 
There are no more birds in the sky and the wine is drank up,
I am a kind woman with a bitter mind, choking as my story erupts. 


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Ride

The February post titled "take me home" is the evolved product of this draft. 
________________

I felt as lonely then as I do now,

As I have felt for years. The comfort is hard to forget,

A warm morning bed ripe with perfectly grown crevasses and ripples.

Why do I think sadness will take me home?

Sadness, though full of memories and longing will not take me to those old places.

Sadness is not a train to my home station, to the platform where my journey began.

Sadness is the whistle, reminding me where I am,

Reminding me what this journey is, and that I have chosen it.


A warm morning bed ripe with perfectly grown crevasses and ripples,

A carriage of a greater machine,

Unable to stop though the cord has been pulled.


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Extension of the Gut

This is a statement I wrote in April 2011 as per the requirements of George Brown's Audition. I like it.  I thought I would share.

For many, theatre is the name of a space with a stage and seating, black curtains and Fresnel’s, and hopefully, good acoustics. Some people call theatre an art, an aesthetic medium for exploring the questions that define our struggles as human beings. I say that theatre is an extension of the gut which when left unfed will ulcerate and corrode the carrier from inside. I say that theatre is not a choice but a visceral need for those who discover it calling from inside of them. Theatre is the only place outside of the womb where true creation takes place, and a return to the womb is what we as humanity need, because we’re dying. We need a rebirth.

A Little Wild

An unfinished first draft of something I may come back to. Or maybe not.

---------------------------

Leaky portal dripping dreams,

 Thirsty mouths with eyes that don't see

 Falling asleep in time's lap



Running in circles until they collapse.


I am wild woman, running from truth,


I am dark skinned and barebreasted, a huntress,


Bearing the weight of centuries whips and pains,


Hunting for food that doesn't taste like children.

Potential Penpals

I should write to parliament every day. I should write to Stephen Harper every day telling him what I think of what he's doing. I could send comical yet scathing letters about the state of our education system and the treatment of First Nations. I could condemn his conversative views while poking fun at them in a jolly mocking way. Something Wildean. Mr. Harper, your privatization initiative is poppycock! He'll think I'm an old English woman, and listen to my wisdom. That's a lot of money on stamps and stationary. I could use recycled stationary with owl stickers. Maybe subconsciously create a sense of caring for the environment via owls. Owls are the answer for our future. Owl stickers to be precise. I will send him videos of myself lipsyching to Right Back To Where We Started From by Maxine Nightingale for when he is sad. Why would I take such care to tickle a man whose views I so greatly despise? Because you catch more flies with honey, that's why! I will drown him in honey, drown his closeminded soul with honey, sweet tender liberal honey from the loins of feminism! Exactly! I will also write to Rob Ford, using a large font and bright colours to peak his interesting, and explain to him why bicycles are good, and why books are good. I will draw detailed pictures, in crayon, and explain the history of Asian-Canadians, and why they've had to work so damn hard. (He said they work like dogs. Here's a link talking about it: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/toronto/rob-ford-and-a-decade-of-controversy/article1678543/

Canadian politics is at a golden age of warm, glowing bullshit.

Recently, in federal communcations, instead of using the heading Government of Canada, Harper Government has started to be used.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2011/03/04/pol-harper-govt-brand.html

"It's not Stephen Harper's government, it's the goverment of all Canadians," Liberal MP Dominic LeBlanc told CBC News. "You'd expect this kind of directive to be issued by the ministry of information in North Korea."

I agree with Mr. LeBlanc on this point. What next, Harper Government issued school curriculums, textbooks, Harper Government certified homes- fully equipped with 24 survellience and chains for women, people of colour, and gays, so they don't infiltrate the workforce?

If I mysteriously go missing, you all know why. It's because I can PREDICT THE FUTURE*.

*I cannot actually PREDICT THE FUTURE, uppercase or otherwise.

Various Delectables

What is happening to me? And is it worthy to even wonder what, or why? There are only more questions. If anything I've learned that. That there are only questions and pain, questions and pain. Questions cause pain, and questions can comfort pain. They can comfort pain because questions provide hope, somewhere to go, a journey which has promise. 

Answers are solid and immobile. What to do with an answer? A heavy moldy answer filled with years of shit and decay. Answers are always heavy. But can answers change? If the question changes does the answer change? Can perception change? Sure, perception can change, but can truth change? Can situations change? If truth is not a fixed thing, if truth is also perception... how to find another perception, another perspective? How to find a nicer rock to sit on? That's all it is, comfort, trying to find comfort. But comfort is boring. Ay, there's the rub. I am sad and angry, but is it all futile. Living without expressing is futile and useless and a waste of time. Everything is an expression. Non-expression is an expression. 

Twitter, Facebook, blogs, it's all about expression. People crave expression, people need expression, but we're all so fucking bad at it. Isn't that strange? One of the most essential desires for human kind and we suck at it. Well, we don't suck per se, but we're inefficient. Twitter is a useful tool no doubt, (revolution!) but it is a pathetic substitute for REAL COMMUNICATION, whether that be through conversation, visual or performing arts, crafts or trades, fashion, or otherwise. 

Fashion. Fashion. Fashion is useful for expression but so quickly turns into a status issue, a signifier of so many things except authentic personality. People love haut-couteur because it's crazy and wild and reveals something about it's designers-even if we're not sure what that actually is.

I have a hunger but it’s not for food. Not sure what it is. Am I just lonely? Is it that simple? It usually is. No, that’s not true. It’s 20 years of weird complications that can’t be fixed. Or is it just boredom. I don’t think I can believe that anything is ever simple.

I don’t know how to edit this. I’ll just heave it out into the world and see what happens. I want to be brave and hide nothing but I also fear seeming careless. 

Sleep Dissonance.

How is it that in a single moment I can go from the verge of sleep, the very edge of sleep, from whence if I fall  it will take me to a sweet and glorious slumber, to being wide awake? Wide awake, but still tired mind you, 1000 miles away from the very border of rest which I was only a moment ago, so close to. What happens in these moments, what happens to the neurons in my brain, what do they say to each other to create these extra hours of restlessness for me? Is it a sign? Have I truly not completed my days work? And why so many thoughts- where do all these thoughts come from? The moment my head touches my pillow-THOUGHTSTHOUGHTSTHOUGHTSTHOUGHTS. A lethargic and dreary mind turns into a hyperactive mess of every single event, anecdote, fantasy, or displeasure it could possibly create. 


Is it merely that I am an artist? Is it merely that I have stirred my creative juices to the point of continual motion? Did I eat sugar too close to bedtime? Am I overweight? Is this payback for all my rudeness and coldness towards my family? Is there a child dying somewhere in the world who is praying for help, whose prayer isn't reaching God and is interfering with my dream channel? Can that happen? Does God exist? Dogs exist for sure. I have seen many in my time. Small dogs, big dogs, smelly dogs, hairy dogs, hairless dogs, fun dogs, boring dogs, skinny dogs, fat dogs, loving dogs, unhappy dogs- I have seen all of these dogs in my own dog actually. Except the hairless part- oh no wait, they shaved his leg for his surgery, I've seen all of them. Much as I've seen many sides of humanity in each person I've ever encountered, if only in small glimpses. In some people, I've seen the greatest shows of opposites. Ying and yang. Love and indifference. Love and hate. Caring and cruelty. I've seen these in myself as well. And will continue to. 


Goodnight. 

The Reckoning Song- Asaf Avidan

Asaf Avidan, a Jerusalem based singer/songwriter, is currently navigating the channels of my aural soul, and rocking it. He is one of the bravest singers I've encountered in a long time, allowing his voice full reign, creating a world which each crackling word, crackling in the heat of his inner fire. His voice reverberates alongside the twanging of his guitar, creaking and jumping up in ways I didn't know a voice could do. A child dangerously playing with a tight elastic band, close to his eye. But for the greater part of his songs, he sings in a soft, very feminine sounding voice, and only brings out his trapeze-esque sound for the crucial parts of his choruses.  There is however, always a quality of sand in his voice, a graininess, perhaps a reflection of the deserts of his country and the surrounding landscape. 

His lyrics live up to the demands of his emotion sculpting voice. There's a melancholic desire, a melancholic truth to each song. 

"Weak, weak, tell me I'm weak, tell me these promises are not mine to keep"

"I know I said that I was sure, but rich men can't imagine poor. One day, baby, we'll be old, oh baby, we'll be old, and think of all the stories that we could have told"

All the stories that we could have told... what stories would we have told, and to whom? About what? 


I'll never know, but at least Asaf doesn't know either.

Lingering Sentiments

"Old friend, why're you so shy/ Ain't like you to hold back/ Or hide from the light" loops over and over in my mind. 

Reminds me of my dog, now deceased. I feel my family and I wore him out with our catatonic lethargy, with our dull anger and soft cynicism. He could taste it in the air, he felt in our bodies as we brushed him, showing him the love we couldn't show each other. Treating him to the same rejections we gave each other, the same faded hopes for a meaningful end. It seems silly somehow- could a dog really see all of this? He never howled in pain or hurt, although the rest of us did. But on second thought, he did. He did make a lot of noise. We all made a lot of noise, but never learned to listen. So we became silent, within and outside of ourselves. This is such a quiet house. A quiet place does not equate peace. I think here it equates pieces, pieces of what was once whole, sticking to whatever they can hold on to, in hopes of one day graphing on. Burnt skin over fresh flesh, though, not the other way around.