Thursday, September 13, 2012
Monday, August 20, 2012
You are that scarf I left in my friend's car in London; one thing, sewn together.
You were something I loved, lost and shouldn't have, left behind without noticing. I knew exactly where I'd put you, but I couldn't be bothered to write and have you sent home.
Have you ever had one of those moments where your future visits you so clearly?
Monday, July 30, 2012
Black Sheep, A Novel Excerpt
I leave quickly and my father doesn’t follow. I don’t make a scene. I roll my eyes at him and grab my mickey from the floor. I take a long swig and throw it in the shiny silver garbage. I flatten my dress against my thighs and leave. I press my fingertips against a tattoo that sits happily on my forearm.
Desiderium is written in black Franklin Gothic font. It is the alphabet my father stared at every day for forty years during his career as a newspaperman, the typeface that accepted him, the one set of symbols on earth that loved him as he was.
I walk down the stairs and on my descent I slip back and forth in my high heels. I am drunker than I thought, than I expected to be. I take off my shoes and hold them in my left hand, the banister in my right. From this elevated perspective, I see my mother. I drop my shoes, they crash on the wooden stairs and I yell out to her.
“Mom! Mom! I was looking for you.”
She turns. She doesn’t notice that I am shoeless and braless.
Desiderium; “A yearning desire for something that you once had and now lost.”
Sunday, June 17, 2012
Black Sheep, A Novel Excerpt
The day John F. Kennedy died, Frank was painting his mother’s window. He had just moved back in with her, having left Montreal, having left Patty, having left everything. In his mother’s old age, he’d wanted to keep her company. He also didn’t want to be alone.
It was November and it was cold. He pulled his windbreaker closer to his chest. He had just cropped his hair close to his skull. The colours had gone and so had the ability to see what ailed people. The leading feelings remained but he ignored them with a willful conviction.
Go away.
What replaced them was an empty, angry sensation that spilled through his organs and lived in his stomach.
He put his brush in the white paint. The ballgame was interrupted by the following message.
“John Kennedy has died.”
“Fucking Protestants,” he said. He took the brush and put it against the window frame without missing a single stroke.
In following years, although he was fascinated by conspiracies of his death, he wondered why he was not surprised that the President has been assassinated. Why he never felt surprised about anything, not for a moment. He wondered if even though the leading feelings were hidden, hung in shame, it didn’t mean they that they weren’t somewhere.
Maybe somewhere they were living in full bloom.
Even though he'd never admit it, that was a hopeful thought.
Monday, June 11, 2012
Black Sheep, A Novel Excerpt
We make small talk about nothing for another twenty minutes. As I’m leaving, he asks, “How’s Andrew doing? You know, if he’s ever…unhappy with his management, send him to me.”
I nod. “I will.” I gather my purse.
Andrew was a dedicated student of the Meisner technique in Toronto. The teacher, the guru of his class, was like his second father. Actors sit in chairs and repeat single sentences to each other, sometimes only words.
“Fuck.” “Fuck.”
“You’re wearing a black shirt.” “I’m wearing a black shirt,” and so on. I never understood the benefit. I always thought it was a cult.
“Doesn’t it get old?” I’d ask him.
But now, having the word “Andrew” said to me countless times a day, I understand. My repeating it back elicits strange reactions that even I couldn’t predict. Pride. Jealousy. Sadness. Heart palpitations.
But strangest of all, is that after saying it a hundred times, it began to feel true.
My reality is now a Meisner exercise of my boyfriend’s name.
“Maybe you should get a tan,” my manager tells my back as I’m walking out of his office.
I ask the cab to drive the long way to my meeting.
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
Pictures of You Pt. 2
I woke up the next morning and pretending not to be hung over, I told my mom about it.
"So, we still love each other."
"You do?"
"Yeah."
"So what's going to happen? Are you back together?"
"I don't know. Maybe. Maybe we will be. I think so."
She smiled and then we ate breakfast together. She always thought Peter and I were meant to be and that we'd end up together.
I sent him a Facebook message later that day:
“I'm just writing because I want to tell you that you should be honest. I think we both have to be honest. I know it's hard, but we both have to do it because what do we have, if not the truth? I will love you until my heart stops.”
In retrospect, it's a ironic and hypocritical that I would encourage someone else to be honest, when my modus operandi was to lie about my feelings to everyone, especially myself. But maybe, my subconscious was wiser than I gave it credit for. Even though I addressed that letter to him, I was writing to me.
I spent the next few days going back and forth between feeling elated because we were still in love and on the verge of tears because we were still in love.
Pictures of You
You'll think this is crazy, but I did then, and for a long time after, believe that somewhere, in some alternate universe, that Kate, and the Peter that loved her, the ones that didn't live on earth anymore, not in the flesh anyway, just in their slowly fading memories, were together and would love each other, with a force and profundity for the rest of their days.
But I was young then, so much younger than I am now.
I didn't know that something could be untrue even if you really believed it.
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