Benjibopper

We're headed back to tdot tomorrow am. Much to say about wedding but no time now; in short: success! Pic's worth thousand words:

Labels: photography

My co-worker and friend Martyn has this cool website, which is in my links section, called Gallow Glass, on which he mainly posts photoglyphs, digitally altered photographs. These images are inspired to the words people suggest to him (also done electronically).

I sent him a phrase that he's gone ahead and used, and you'll recognize the phrase from my last entry: Illusion of Permanence. [Click on that link to see Martyn's image.]

It was originally Woody Allen who claimed that tradition is the illusion of permanence. My dad quoted this to me the other day and it struck a chord, as M and I struggle with what traditions to keep and which ones to scrap as we plan our wedding (2 days to go!). Maybe all these traditions, from getting done up at the hairdressers to white gowns to china patterns, are all just part of a big effort to maintain an illusion that we are permanent, that we come from eternity and will remain part of it. But the reality is that very few human traditions go back very far, we're a blip on evolution's charts, and our best case scenario involves being incinerated by the sun in a few million years as the universe rages on. I don't mean to be depressing; these things don't depress me at all. On the contrary, here is the opportunity, the free license if you will, for M and I to do whatever the fuck we feel like, tradition be damned!

Anyhoo, I really like what Martyn did with the phrase, it's rather brilliant actually.

--Bopper

We made it to Nova Scotia and even survived the 'stag and doe', which was just a fun party at Dooley's, a local pool hall chain. My best man type guy Jeff rented us a room there and filled it with old buddies I hadn't seen in a cod's age. We drank Schooner and Oland's and talked old times, caught up a bit on who's married and who's expecting, and who's expecting to be a doctor and whatnot. The only other doe besides M was this young woman caught in a love triangle (and apparently loving it) between two of Jeff's friends.

We also had a nice dinner with the grandparents, who brought news of relatives confused by our communications (or communique's, or lack thereof), surrounding this whole wedding deal. Our slight diversion from tradition (the illusion of permanence) has confounded everyone for miles around the global village. Even one of M's best friends, her voice parlayed through someone else's telephone allusions, has taken offense, but to what exactly we don't know.

All we're trying to do is markate a brand new Love, celebrate it with our friends, family, and broader community, and have fun. Outta be easy, outta be simple enough (when a man meets a woman and they, fall in love). But wherever family is involved nothing is simple. And that illusion of permanence just adds more complications, complications goin' down.

But aside from these asides, we are being given overwhelming support from aunts and brothers and longtime friends emerging from memory shadows, and co-workers and strangers and mercantiles, all to give us one glorious day, what we hope will be the send-off on a longtime journey.

--Bopper

Labels: 2005, non-fiction, nova scotia, philosophy

The Ongoing Rendez-Vous With a Nymphoneous Angel


I. Nymphoneous Angel

With the Power
of Your glory
With Christ on your side
Who am I?
To be so welcome inside?

In my matchstick hovel
rags strewn across the floor
eyes intensely gazing
at my hot mail's bores
commercial intrusions
masquerading as information
then you came knocking
at my door
With your do it for hims
and your do it for hers
Your flock of boys
and Your downtrodden girls
all of them have been touched
by your love
in my tomb of introversion
my joy at rare calm
the unexpected explosion of my heart
was destined all along
for one with such power such passion
that to ignore it completely
would be mortal sin
to not open myself
and let your wisdom in
would be betrayal
of God
and of the angels

You who tell me
you are an old woman
You who dances
like tomorrow
You who ask me
'who am I to judge?'
You who'd rather give than borrow

With the Power
of Your glory
with Christ on your side
Who am I ?
to be so welcome inside?

With sunlight laughter
in a dark dance cave
who was he to think he could touch you?
Yet still somehow
you let his impression be made
another in a stream of twilight stories
of humans in the valley
living lives made just for them
each special each lucky to be alive

On the long drive home
there was a small man's rant
how foolish you did prove him
with his Descartes and his Kant
he was a lost citizen
in need of sorrow
was there confusion
surrounding the fortune that I fled?
forgive me if the ego
was yours that I bled
but my quota for joy
was reached until the morrow

And besides
With the Power
of Your Glory
With Christ on your side
who was I?
to be welcomed inside?

In my business man's stance
I shift stiffly in bravado
it's my uniform my costume
my young fool's intifado
at your glance at your grin
it fades and recedes
like the remnants
of some politician's motto
the records remain
but who consults them anyway?
to even get an inquisition
somebody big gotta pay
and even then
the details converge in a murky blur
and you're all that's left of my day

so my colleagues can cry
when my partition falls down
or they can hang their jealous heads
when I'm no longer around
I guess I'll be with you
cleaning the underside of your wing
proudly relinquishing my sins
And all those useless little jewels
to which we used to cling
will fall into the hands
of the minions still within
While we fall into deep slumber

but with the Power
of Your Glory
with Christ on your Side
who am I?
to be so welcome inside?

In the midst of allegations
you danced to sweet liberty
from boredom you protected me
but what could I
an infidel in chains
ever do to protect you?
from your gunpowder past
the hands that hurt you
and fed you
And how could he
make sin of his own flesh and blood?
and how could anyone
think they could control you?

With the Power
of your glory
With Christ on your side
who am I?
to be so welcome inside?

Of course there's a past
we all must bear
a gentrified horror
too painful to share
but you
put the truth
out on trial
in the face
of your mirror
there was no room
for my denial

You like a bird
far from the flock
With your baseboard guitar
and your homemade frock
who was I?
to deny
your presents?

It is said that time
will erode all things
but passion once gone
shall return like sins
each new moment each new touch
brings deeper awe
but as these things age
awe becomes wonder

What fool could think he would capitalize
from you?
When each of your lessons is about giving
And why should we say
till death do us part
after you taught me
that life is for living?
freedom is fleeting
like dollar bills
And conclusions
are merely Hollywood fill
in a world
made of illusions

With your earnest words
your eyes of sky
With your Inuit nose
your swim in skin
you brought summer
one step closer
to eternity
Your sea of laughter
flooded me then
your philosophical nymph
invited me in
and it no longer mattered
that I felt silly
my relaxation
my unclenched jaw
was finally there

For this moment
and the fall that follows now
I'll stay with you
for this time this ongoing rendez-vous
I know and I feel happy

With your power Your Glory
Your righteous eyes
Thank you
for letting me inside



II. Symphonious Elevation

In a late summer’s
desperate night
A broken-winged raven
on the loose with heart ragin’
Who was I to think I could hold her?

A path of desecrated clowns
who stood in her way
but only an equally intense woman’s
worry could stray
into the night and calm her

Myself and my servant sitting shirtless
in sweat
Two clunking buffoons naïve
and wet
One cheers the other with ignorant spools
meandering lost plots on the tongues of fools

And I I fret with worry
As if I control the outcome
of beautiful bucking beasts
As if my anxiety mattered in the least
in the face of your history

But just when I presumed
all hope was lost
A cracking at my window
and the raven has returned
Who am I?
to be the one to hold her?

But it’s true it’s me she wants
in her hours of need
her outrageous anger
at a grown man’s greed
It’s me she clings to
and sanctifies with her trust
And thanks to her
I’m reborn

But slow-witted is my mind
and like an old goat I
cannot learn
And you cry hot tears
while I offer empty words
and I try to replace one cage
with another

My offer itself is innocent enough
it's immaterial and yet laden with stuff
it’s a bribe
it’s a risk we all know
it’s throwing away all the times
you forgave me
for making you think I was guilty
of something someone else had done

The cage I offered was brightly lit
And in it could be committed
no crime
But it was just another product
in an insecure world
where freedom is phony and costly
and control is even more false

So together we cried
while I realigned your spine
and our bodies fit perfectly
the perfect non-crime
All night
All night I held you

Who was I? Who was I
to hold you?

How fortunate we were
after your zigzag flight
that another world of lunatics
was locked in for a fight
and two rooms in their asylum
were freed

The way you took to the task
stripped to your waste
stripped the floor down
stripped me of false proud virtue
exposed to the world in hotbox sunlight
this was your domain
and the place you’d make a home

Who was I? Who was I
to hold you there?

What a fool I must have seemed
to invade your moonlit dreams
when I arrived among boxes
at your door
As I beckoned and commanded
in eight different languages
my cast and crew of twelve

Yet the whole team of us
with assistance from the stars
never really got that far
My possessions and habits
were left at your door
and my life was unlike
what it had ever been before

It was you
It was you who held me in
inside your door
It was you
who held me
inside our door


III. Serendipitous Journey through Solitude

In that early stage
of falling in Love
when tunnel vision
leads to the brightest light
Who were we to think we were alone?

We were so invincible
against the distance
strewn with the corpses
of other other’s love affairs
that no journey
seemed too harsh
no distance too far
and no obstacle too large
for us to barge through or skip around

The flight we chose
covered the fewest miles
into the darkest terrain
of memory
and psychoanalytic cat-food
a 20,000 league excursion
into the womb
of a small town the genesis of the man
whose parents hold the mirror
and the truth of me revealed
and we both faced
our greatest fears
about the other
about Love itself
as we celebrated
other young lovers rurally
with Latin dance songs
and beach walks where suddenly
the ancient age of ancestry was upon us
All those corpses zombified and we
experienced the birth
of love give birth
to god and space and time
and even to the surprise
of our own great egos
we aged with the ease of an old couple
seen through young eyes
blind to the bloody battles
of a lifetime of bitter compromise
Who were we to think we were alone?

There we waltzed and kissed
with great familiarity
the lone survivors
and compatriots
of a generation lost in time
But who were we to think we were alone?

When I held your head
and you purged your lifetime’s poisons
where were those more experienced?
Consummating what had just begun
yet still was older than our combined naivety
when we decided
you can dream reality
and dared
to speak of eternity
in the presence of the ocean
which cursed us with misunderstandings
The translocation of cultural norms
and expectations
the mysterious sealed doors
of emotional scar tissue
barring exuberant outreach
from the passion of the angelic nymph
Who were we to think we were alone?


We returned primarily confused
at first
and fused to my console I quipped
that first-time lovers need leave
for the first foray
when the obsession’s profundity
obscures grander objectives
and I could objectify only you

Summer lovin’ expedited winter
and I wondered
whether the rendez-vous
could survive frigid lock-down
The obsession proved consumptive
eating through my frozen dinner
leaving fresh organic produce
delivered by bicycle
You applauded vigorously
Your frenzied feathers
taking you higher above me
for me to see
the physics-defying enormity
of the pureness of your intention
and I begged you to cover me
in a blanket of unfettered snow
You obliged and we skated
melted ourselves in birch flames
accompanied by masochistic branch therapy
prism dives through ice-cube-holes
and buckets and buckets of beer
brewed by seraphic forest organisms
working symbiosis
like a national ballet
how could we stay separate
in circumstances like these?
Bondage the only answer
as the lake advised us
to ignore
the pessimistic warnings of the ocean
Who were we to think we were alone?

The elation of
fantastical French celebrations
toasting the connector
whose inspiration glued us
could not assuage oceanic uncertainty
Were we or weren’t we?
was the bondage for real?
Could we really be the first
among all those re-pats
to find refuge in a blizzard?
Who were we to think we were alone?

How could we have forgotten
the tundra traversed before us?
The fortitude of the Finns
forging ancient symbolism
into illicit contraband
(made right here at home
in the hailstorm
of the 5-year frost
frozen under Russian fire)
the ring that binds us
blissfully
making true my silly words
sermonized mounting on our bed
You be my Queen
I your King
We dance through winter
swim through ice
hibernate the summer
traverse toward some unknown
on all manner of roads
pathways and parabolas
drifting through branches of trees
and families inseparable
from each other’s smiles
stronger for knowing all routes
have been forged before us
Who were we to think we were alone?

Labels: 2003, love junk, Poetry, Toronto

Labels: photography

Michaelle Jean, Canada's next Governor General, had this to say about her appointment: "Having a person like me as governor general of Canada will mean a lot, not only to Canadians, but all abroad. I think it will mean a lot for humanity." Wow, what an ego! Isn't this, like, a position with almost no real responsibility or authority?

Nice to see the Liberal government continuing its trend of appointing visible minorities (with dorky intellectual white husbands) to meaningless positions. As you can see, a very cute family:

Labels: 2005, non-fiction, politics, Toronto

After a beautiful weekend in a boathouse near Fenelon Falls, doing the Finnish saunasmimsaunaswimsaunaswimbeer thing, we went and ruined it by seeing 'Palindromes'. [fun Finnish factoid #37: the longest palindrome known to humans is a Finnish word - natch.}

We made the decision in a Harveys, decided to take a chance on a movie we ain't never heard of before. Bad move. If I'd known it was a Todd Solondz (joint isn't the word) depressant, I'd have spent the night hotboxed in our bedroom instead. What the fuck is wrong with that guy?

Why hasn't he killed himself yet? I wish he would, or at least, as Jay Antani puts it, "shack up alone in the woods, scribbling misanthropic manifestoes on strips of celluloid the rest of his life," and stop torturing me with his films. More prescient a question is: why do other people think his movies are worth producing? Why can't they see they are crap? Ubercrap.

Somehow I've managed to see no less than 3 of them now, and they were all really good at making me feel icky. They've also managed to be both disturbing AND boring (not an easy combination to achieve).

Please, Todd, for the sake of humanity, stop it!

Sincerely,
The Bopper