The Last of the Cabbage




Walking Around Vancouver





In the Very Recent Dream,
I'd immersed myself in the culture of a small village, where I worked at the children's nursery and as a barmaid at night.

At the bar, I would blank out at times, but wake up in front of one or the other of two ex-girlfriends who looked identical but had different names. I was petrified that they would meet each other and feel slighted.

Soon after I arrived at the village, children started disappearing and a snowstorm made it difficult to maneuver my boat through the parking lot. Finally, after months of the children's nursery and the village throwing nature parties and more babies disappearing, I walked into a room where all the village elders were sitting looking at the door, waiting for me.

First, they told me to look out the window at the ocean, and I refused. They then had me follow this walkway where I kept listing to the right towards a row of covered pots lining my path. At the end of the walkway, I was nearly tipping over I was listing so badly; I felt drawn to the pots but repulsed at the same time, and the thought of touching them nauseated me. The village elders then asked me to look inside the pots... all were full of ocean water.

After staring at the pots for some minutes, I turned to the elders and they told me I was a mermaid, dependent and drawn back to the water, but that I had chosen to reject my nature.

They said the water would always call me, and when I asked them why they cared, they told me that I had been sleep-walking to the ocean every night, wading into the water, and changing into a hammerhead shark, which was the inevitable result of a mermaid who had rejected her nature. They showed me recent films of a monster half-shark, half-human covered in seaweed, and told me I was the one responsible for the disappearance of the children (I had been eating them as I sleepwalked), and that it was my duty to the village to return from where I came.

When I refused, they threw me out the fourth-story window into the bay.

But then the ocean rejected me, fought against me, threw waves across me, in pain of my betrayal. She covered me with seaweed, then all the shores, then she surged and covered the storefront and village elders and people with seaweed, piling it faster and faster on top of them. Finally, when everyone had suffocated, she relaxed, and accepted me back.

Chinatown, Vancouver B.C.







A Date

So, I went on a date. Fabulous unexpected music (harmonica, nice hats, mandolins, real but real talent, hypnotics). Intelligent conversation broken by fabulous music. Intermittent moments. Why am I half-skeptical, half-irritated, half-admiring, half-intimidated of/by self-confident boasting? I feel like I'm too defensive to date anymore. Like I keep expecting to be taken down and judged, like I can think of all the reasons myself, like I'm not worth the trouble, and yet am too fickle anyways. It's an odd mix of feeling like too much hassle for anyone else to deal with, and also too much awesomeness to settle for not just right. And in the space between, not much space at all.

However: fabulous music, a second date lined up.

NM Came to Visit, Belated but Welcome & Adored