Weekends, in general, are eventful and this one has been no exception.
From Saturday night's discovery that I'm just not gawth anymore, seven years to the week since I discovered at Rick's party that there are other people with a monochrome obsession with death and romantic poetry and imposing architecture rife with gargoyles and princess towers. Seven years of the scene, knowing the musicians, the poets, organizing the live-roleplaying vampire game and I'm still running into people from then. One of them was at David's surprise party.
Now, though, seven years later, the faces I loved are moved on, the bars closed and reopened and closed again so many times since The Gallery and La Nos�e and The Loft Sundays, Tuesdays, Thursdays. I missed Purple Haze when I was in France, returned in time for the opening of Ezra where I found a bar that felt even more like home than Foufounnes Electriques. From the angst couch to Fatima the happiest goth bartender and DJ Black (yet another Peter) who'd play Leonard Cohen's "Take This Waltz" and the dance floor would clear and John and I would dance the most vigourous, graceful waltz that either of us had ever mustered. Sometimes Peter or even Ollie would play Bahaus' "King Volcano" or "Terror Couple Kill Kernel" and I would curl up in a corner of the floor and weave my velvet and satin-y way to comfortable memories of one lover moved back to France, and another unrequited.
I managed to keep up with VNV Nation, Wolfsheim, Chris and Axis helped me with that, but I couldn't hold on. I made it through the techno-industrial phase but I'm lost in this year's ethereal wonders...
They're still wonderful but they're just not for me. Not the faces, the dresses, the too-dark lighting that has begun to affect my eyes. I sit at a table, far back by the DJ booth and hug helloes to other faces that have been around for too long too, faces that I've watched grow up from baby-goth-first-hair-dye-experience to the hardcore freaks they are now. My hugs are becoming superficial, and my mind is bored. Maybe the club is too small, maybe the Montreal scene is just dead right now, but I have no urge to purge myself at the next Convergence gathering and I talked to Marc about it and it's true, it's time to say goodbye.
I once sat down with Lou and we talked occult cycles and seven years seems to be mine. Seven years ago I overdosed on acid, met some of the kindest, most intelligent people that I'd ever dreamed of knowing, and embarked on a journey.
Most of those people have gone corporate now, some simply turned to other things.
Maybe I just need some time, maybe I just need someplace that plays occasional punk music, or maybe I'm enjoying discussing poetry with beat fans more than the victorian generation.
I'm planning to keep a few gawth friends, though.
Sunday all goodbyes were forgotten in the mad dash to get my hair trimmed, meet the boys for breakfast, head up to the Mountain for the tam-tam jam. I bought Chloe a rainbow beaded necklace made of bones from one of the vendors and proceeded to test out all the juggling equipment on sale around the stone statue of the angel, timing my flailing and careful gyrating to the reverberating thump-thump-thumping of thousands of handrums, and a good handful of expertly thrumming didgeridoos.
I can't count how many beautiful women in cheerfully vibrant flowing skirts wandered past, paused to admire the brightness of the new tattoo or the Diabolo that I was attempting to learn to use.
Dan and Nancy showed up with Vincent, and this time when he got fussy Marc took over and played SPIDERMAAAAAN with him, swinging him by his arms as though he were swinging from flung spiderwebs. That kid is going to have loooong arms, lemmetellya.
Right about when Chloe's bladder was bursting, we took off for some over-airconditioned movie theatre and watched "Shrek" and I seriously hadn't expected so many clever references or uproriously funny jokes. Not only was it a delightful fairy tale, but I'm not sure I stopped laughing aloud through the entire thing.
Except the sad bit where I buried my head in Eric's shoulder and wished for the hundredth time that day that David was around, but that was a good thing, not a terribly sad one.
Dinner on a terrace, seafood and beer and Chloe happily sampling from my plate, Marc and Eric and I talked for the first time in a while and I got home by midnight, sun-drenched, exhausted, and blissfully happy.
I wished cf a happy birthday in my head and pledged to call him in the morning.
I woke up to the sunrise with a desperate urge to clean my room.
I spent today getting my car checked out (it's fine), biking around my neighbourhood, dropping off film to be developped, doing groceries, and buying handkerchiefs like the one that Marc had loaned me to wear in my hear to keep the sun from knocking me out on the mountain. I wrote one of the articles that I had to, about Caf� Santropol (that any visitor to Montreal will DEFINITELY experience) and started the french technical article about the OpenSSH protocol.
I spent time in the bath reading about the zen of sex and learned something that in all my promiscuous adventures I had sorely missed:
Sex is sacred.So far so good.
I read the first few chapters of my book on the japanese Tea-cult (the history and philosophies revolving around the tea ceremony) and brewed a pot of jasmine tea from leaves so cleverly pakcaged that they still had a few flowers in them. The author took forty pages to explain that the seemingly rigorous and uptight ceremony is all about a haven of serenity amidst the harshness of mundanities.
I am enjoying my tea as though it were liquid magic, the sunset painting the air in here and I can taste the incense from the other room and I've finished my little arts-and-crafts compilation of the photos from David's surprise party. Every day I notice things that my parents taught me that I appreciate. Arts and crafts gifts would be one of them. Not the Martha-Stewart style lavender-scented throw pillows, but things that ring personal with people that mean more than money ever could exemplify. I buy my mom presents now, rice steamers and handy house stuff that I know she'll use but would never figure out where to buy, but for people I cherish more than the world I make something. A poem in a card or a photo scrapbook, or I go out and find something horrendously personal. Hey, even gift certificates for music count, just don't expect me to explain why.
I guess it depends. I just want there to be meaning in it, and maybe a little part of me.