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Midwinter.
The other night I saw the Big Mess Cabaret at the Trocodaro, the former burlesque house and the only nineteenth century theatre still in operation in the country. Drag queens! Dancing girls! Strip teases! Adaptations of biblical texts! A drunken orchestra! The auctioning off of articles of clothing! There were vaudevillian performers who snuck into ( Read more... ) -
I was wearing corduroy breeches, digging ditches, pulling switches, dodging pitches.
I've been scrubbing, rearranging, stripping, and purging. I want to be rid of everything that is unnecessary, plastic, ugly, cheap, and in the way. Is one meant to hoard in the winter? Ought I to be getting fat? I refuse. I want clean surfaces, severed ties, everything put in its place. I want to be able to get down to the business of this season ( Read more... ) -
December.
I've not been eating much. When I do I force myself, because it seems that I ought. I do get hungry, I suppose, but nothing is quite what I want. I do want to drink, however. Coffee, or black or detoxifying or calming tea, my father's brand of whiskey, good Scotch, strangely floral gin and tonics. Fuelling the machine is tedious. I want to push ( Read more... ) -
Detritus.
Hello ( Read more... ) -
Whiskey! Glitter! Run Away!
I've been afraid of bicycles since I was young. I was never good at riding them, and nearly all of my experiences with the machines involved my falling down, bleeding, and being yelled at for my failure by the friends who forced me onto it in the first place. Before long the suggestion that I ride one inspired a chemical drip in the brain, ( Read more... ) -
I'm a dinosaur. Somebody's digging my bones.
My floor is covered in tools and sawdust and compost. This is usually a sign that things are going well. Today my amazing friends Penny and Mark borrowed their friend Glen's truck and tools and trekked to South Philadelphia.
They collected me, and we ventured forth to the Philadelphia Organic Recycling Center in Fairmount Park. This place, even ( Read more... ) -
Haberdashery!
In the past couple of days I've been lucky enough to receive two amazing gifts. First there was the wonderful handmade knitted hat adorned with some exciting buttons given to me by chronographia and kindly delivered to me by brni. A picture of it perched atop some remarkably attractive furniture can be found here. And just now I checked my mailbox and found a ( Read more... ) -
Wrestling.
The contents of my bedroom floor are as follows: a cast off mask and leather belt, three beeswax candles, a small bowl filled with blood, a cup now empty of whiskey, two stones, a bottle full of snail shells collected in the Netherlands and Iceland, an open French pocket knife, a bowl full of crow feathers and porcupine quills, a book, and moss ( Read more... ) -
Dios pyros.
Persimmons are my favourite fruit. They're pretty little things: shaped variously like small tomatoes or pointed like gigantic strawberries, and an appropriately autumnal burnt orange in colour that I've always admired. Their season is brief enough that, being a fickle creature, I sometimes manage to forget them entirely. I'm often as surprised as ( Read more... ) -
Bones.
Today I saw x-rays of my friend's arm, the bone below his shoulder bifurcated like a young buck's antlers. I read what he'd written at the time, years ago now, about the crash, the time that he very nearly died. He was lifted by helicopter to the hospital, then left to wind his way back home alone. It was difficult for me to read it. I was in ( Read more... )