Journal Archives

2006 Journal Entries

The Swimmer's Wake

I am a desert-bound,
deserted, deserter.
look at me, knee-deep in the dune.

I hear the flood coming,
the rain growing inside the clouds.

I have tools, shining weapons
and therefore, no hesitation.

There are molecules of my saliva
in a foreign man's mouth.
His words go by them
but there I am, living inside,
ever insistent.

There are chemicals of me-ness
alive in foreign neurons,
indivisible tadpoles of a matterless she.

However much has been bled
I am somewhere, always swimming.

Do you then doubt that I am a time-traveler?
What else could be everywhere,
so semantically pure?

Go into her coffee cup
my tear is there, dancing,
scientifically true
as it ever could be.

How come I can fly?

because as hope drooped,
put on his shirt
and left
I was digging - see the blood under my nails? -

this means though I am filthy,
I can feed on everything.


Swimmers, we are each the agent that sullies the river
we are each name-changers, full poisons, wide zeros, the contingent propositions of gated infinity. We make, we break. All of us, knights, baffling laws of nature. I know such odd things to be true, though no one on a park bench would want to hear about it. I know such things to be true when I dream of swords that refuse to be put down. I know that 2007 will be full of birth. We make what heart-holes beg for. We call all lonesome wolves to the fire. So much everything and nothingness burn within you. It is larger than your ability to capture in thought. So let us speak in tongues, and call to each other, across the desert. "Yes, I remember the river!"

Hope to see you on the road....only a short tour this time for I must commence the next opus. Something for voice and string orchestra...

respectfully
S

La Reine du Paris

L'Hotel du Vieux Marais,
all options exhausted,
a deflated balloon next to
bulldog Leelou.

I send her a wish
but we can't hear eachother's thoughts yet
and not even the season
will go easy on me.

No matter how grey and homeless
the February day,
there is always fresh light
in this room
for sagging flowers.

Then high notes twirl, rise,
and stop in my ear
like a coin spinning
and coming to rest.

From a miniature door flies
the short-haired magician,
wearing glasses
and shoes for the job.

In the thick of a mission
she swarms Reception
with gumption,
hands-on-hips.

Madame Rumiel
sings vowels I cannot
while scolding and fussing and
trilling "Salut!"

I am familiar.

"Sarah! Ca va?"
they say, all of them,
her legion, her army, of
wingless oddities.

Arbitrarily it seems
she has aimed her sweet arrow,
and punctured my jacket,
too thin for the weather.

this matron of maids -
this General in combat alongside her own -
(see her hands,
they know beds,
bleach, and breakfast)
picks me.

a new sail billows for the once hardened captain,
her rare smile opens and claims me as kin.

All her few inches are
now marching through Paris
as my mouth tries to form
an appropriate sentence

and soon there are numbers,
arms full of addresses,
I struggle to keep up,
triumphantly home

to the smug only-son of immaculate dress,
the Greek multilingual doorman
the fabulous gay and his fold-able bike,
and the Queen,
Leelou in her chair.

Royal Leelou,
La Reine du Paris,
Monarch unravelled
by shrieks of French affection,

keep the throne warm for Madame Rumiel.

Now placed in the universe
with bed, phone and kettle,
I know one more thing

daughterless women
can love like gods.

S

there you have it. hopefully you can see her in your mind. she is better than fiction.
http://www.paris-hotel-vieux-marais.com/index.html
Highly recommended.
Leelou is only seven, so you've got about 7 or so more years to meet her. She's a bulldog of
extraordinary intelligence and charm.

xo

crescendo and liftoff

crescendo and liftoff
the surrounding silence is a bright white lie.

the air should crackle
for my internal organs churn aloud
and the song sings hard on distant frozen lakes,
racing from end to end
like a caged animal

black pipes smouldering in their mouths.
all my teachers watch expectantly,
nervously.
I have never seen the masters fidget.
It is unsettling.

They wonder if my ticket
goes to the same cold house
where photographs lie
beside old drained bottles
and my lost skins stain the wood.

they wonder if,
like dead birds,
some things on the floor
only move when kicked.

I confess to them, wordlessly
that I don't know

and glide faster through the chill
until my feet go bloodless.

Now they can't be blamed,
and only wings will do.

S


Days away from my upturning. Days away from great change.
The familiar heads of resistance rear. I am stroking them to sleep. I can sing their perfect lullaby.
I can cry them out in a little room and softly close the door. They won't wake up again.

There is a rabbit in the house I am staying in. It lives in a very small cage. I watch it clean its paws and get comfortable in a pile of wood shavings. Such a short list of needs. "What a different organzation of cells than mine," I marvel.
Turn that perspective around and see how miracluous these versatile hands are. They will pass the ticket to the flight attendant and take a seat among the brave.

xo
S

Broken phoenix

"Ma tete dans les etoiles, les nuages" on dit.

J'ai tombe dans la rue.
(pardon les accents.)

I was giddy,
humming a new tune,
with a plastic bag full of "Monoprix" treasures,

an apple,
a bottle of cold water,
cream for my old hands.

I had jogged in Parc Monceau
enjoying dirty air by the lungful.
O ancient, glorious soot
of Paris. No pollution tastes as fine.
Stronger and lighter I skipped past the crowds,
eager to dress and greet the day, perfected,

only to trip and crack my head like an egg
on the sidewalk.

...moaning and rolling instinctively,
like an animal - with
all semblance of human poise
evapourating into traffic.
They came at me,
like wailing widows,
touching and reaching,
ca va? ca va? ma petite ! Oh la la!

Into the Pharmacie I was carried,
trembling like a poplar
in thin winter wind.

Then it bloomed inside me,
this ghost who always returns.
No name, I just call her
"The Woman Who Loves Hospitals".

she crumbles in front of compassion
like a pilgrim who's traveled through famine and
black dust
all the way to the Answer,
at last.

I'm moved by these eyes
that see blood flow
and yearn to stop it.
Gently she dabbed my deep hole, without a trace of fear or disgust.

"Je vais vous accompagner!!"

Or something like that,
and taking my arm, the stranger walked with me,
shattered and bleeding,
all the way to my little hotel.

The telephone rattled on my ear.
"Sophie,
s'il vous plait......" crying.

Johnny from the label drives me to the doctor
with the twisted expression of a new father.
His worry wraps me up
like the softest sweater.
Mustn't bleed on his sleek German car.

Fiddling with the phone,
pacing , writing cheques,
speaking musical English with a
accent divine,
he professionally assures me,
but I hear
"We love you, we do."

The kind doctor is careful.
The nurse makes me laugh.
It hurts to laugh.
"Quit being so funny" I say.

They stay late to sew me up.
"Prend mon main, prend mon main..."
I squeeze it as the needles go in... Numbness crawls into my face
and he tugs, like a tailor
at my flesh.
...tiny little stitches in a graceful line across my forehead.
"What a pretty bone" il a dit.
Queasy.... Queasy..

My eyes are dripping.
Dripping in rivers.
It is not sadness
or fear,
it is blinding gratitude.
It is sheer awe....
they have no idea who I am,
what I've done,
what I deserve,
and yet they care for me,
as if I am their very own.
as if
I am precious.

She wipes my tears.
It brings more.

The medical lamps, like flowers.
The gown, a new skin they give
without question.

And so beautifully,
Science doesn't hurt
it heals.

S

Mount Raven

I am hurtling through Canada’s ice-cold night, zipping past thin grey clouds and sparkling stars. I am full of goodbye. I exhale goodbye into a wet circle on the plane window. I pee goodbye into the tiny silver toilet. Goodbye beeps when I walk through security. I acknowledge with glee that each of these must be a simultaneous hello.

The Rocky Mountains held me in its arms for 12 nights in a row. I could hear winter whistling outside my room and preparing new cold for the morning. Each day, as I walked to my studio down silent snowy paths, all the pines stood still to watch me. Deer slept and munched, munched and slept, and occasionally met my marveling eye.

Has Slean gone to a shack for good? Switzerland? No no no.
In fact, it was Canada’s own Banff Centre. I applied for a residency to write, paint and be near my two favourite things, a piano, and trees. To my delight they accepted. Being the proud owner of a semi-permanent address I could then buy groceries, wash dishes and fall asleep on a pillow that smelled like me, it was glorious. I stayed in the school’s “Leighton Colony”, a private district of cabins for solitary artistic pursuits that can last anywhere from a week to many months. Inside mine a Blüthner German grand lay deliciously in wait. We sang sad songs together into the navy night. The moon blinked her ivory eye in solidarity. With great pleasure and relief, I came back to ‘now’.

Often ‘now’ gets guzzled in the same breath as an email, a phone call, or a worrisome thought. The calendar squares become tyrants. But they couldn’t touch in my mini-abode, enjoying warm soapy water on my worker-bee hands. Daily chores, the never-ending ones - great joy can be found there. I just love doing laundry. Here is one of my top ten favourite poems called “White Towels” by Richard Jones:

"White Towels" by Richard Jones

I have been studying the difference
between solitude and loneliness,
telling the story of my life
to the clean white towels taken warm from the dryer.
I carry them through the house
as though they were my children
asleep in my arms.

It both speaks to my heart and breaks it all at once. I too have studied this difference. It’s a balance beam, indeed.

On my last day there I hiked to the summit of Tunnel Mountain. The sun was out and restless mist was circling in the valleys. Magnificent peaks gleamed in the light. Sweat trickled down my back. Stopping to catch my breath I heard a bustling in the tree ahead. A lone, gigantic black bird was rearranging himself. He bit his back feathers, looked right at me and looked away. CAW CAW CAW! – a raven, no doubt, because they are so much larger than crows. The wind stopped stirring and it felt like time slowed to a crawl. I marveled at his gleaming blackness. Everything, - eyes, feet, beak, tongue - all black. He unfurled and beat the air twice with full wingspan. Then he was lifted by a current of air and sent soaring above the vast mountains, the whole city of Banff, the white-capped forests and my little body. I was awestruck.

Something passes between humans and these birds. I can feel it.

I can live this way, hotel to hotel, skating on the surface of time if I permit myself to one dream. It is that one day I’ll own an organic farm in some open stretch of land where the soil will yield, animals will live peacefully and the crazy black birds will visit now and then. Of course I’ll have you over for dinner. Bring wine, some memorized verse and home-made something-or-other. Guaranteed admission.

I went to see a noon-hour concert in one of my rare moments of social courage. A Russian woman played Chopin mazurkas with a flawless grace. The Inder String Quartet blew my mind with the folk-inspired melodies of a Swedish composer who, like Bartok, drew extensively from the cultural riches of his homeland. They played seamlessly like one organism, watching each other and practically dancing in their chairs with synchronized fluidity… Music. It’s bigger than all of us, non?

Speaking of the homeland…I fear for Canada’s political climate. I am afraid that we will lose those things that define our country – diplomacy, peaceful negotiation, humility, reflection, and wisdom. I am waiting with bated breath for a leader who actually gives a *** on a moral and philosophical level. In my lifetime, please, oh great country of ours. Please.

Enough on that.
Montreal, glorious Montreal called out to me. Its beauty is vigilant. I touched down oh so briefly in the Toronto airport and then flew off to the land of bad beer, fantastic culture and freezing rain. The task at hand – a Pink Floyd tribute record. Stay tuned.

A note on some computer etiquette conundrums that haunt me…

I do not correspond through email to strangers, so if you’re getting emails from “me”, it’s not me. I don’t go to chat rooms. The myspace page that is apparently out there in cyber land is also not my doing and the official site, due up shortly, will be moderated by a volunteer and fellow artist who is really great. While I appreciate people using their skills to get my music to others, I do not appreciate terrible, outdated photos, personal information, incorrect lyrics or misquotations. Also, I do not, at least to my knowledge, have a song called “I Will Love You”. So there!

That is all for now. I’m in Paris again. Off to Park Monceau before I play my showcase at Tryptique. This will be my new home soon… Holy baguette I need to practice my French. Sleep well soldiers. X S