Riding A Ghost of the Queen

The re-emergence of madrona trees...
Madrona--arbutus--peeling trees
Their roots reach across the inlet and delve into my mind.
It has probably been a decade since I have seen them...but it has probably been a decade since I have seen a lot of things.

I am on the ferry, and it passes a beach, creating waves that disrupt the quiet shoreline.
With its great mass, it is unfathomable as to how a ferry could be lost to the sea, as one was a year before.
Seagulls scream at passengers, and the cove creates its own echo of silence.
Scattered homes face the water along the ferry's route, prompting to wonder why we all can't live like that.

Why couldn't we have stayed in little huts by the sea, and let the land be?

Spring

Without spring, one would forget how glorious the cold of Winter really is.

LK

Short Story Review

Sleeping with the Dead by Kaitlin Fontana: Unfortunately Not Necrophilia Erotica
A Short Reflection By Laura Kelsey


Death is always a traumatic event for anyone, at any stage in life; but trauma also makes for excellent story fodder, and in Sleeping with the Dead, Kaitlin Fontana has taken her father’s publicly discussed fatal accident and examined her own mixed reaction to her family’s loss. But Kaitlin cannot seem to decide whether she is to grieve, or fear, the death of her father, and she comes across as a paranoid wreck throughout most of the story.

This personal narrative tale, set in first person-present tense, gets off to a jumpy start. The author’s uneasiness is conveyed through the sketchy use of short, to the point, sentences when she describes an experience with her doctor. “He doesn’t ask questions, just prescribes pills.” “He knows.” “He doesn’t write it down.” Her paranoia is stated frequently in the first paragraph, beginning with the second sentence. “…I have told him that my father is dead and I can’t sleep at night for fear his ghost will come and try and talk to me.” Again in the paragraph she recognizes her paranoia, now regarding her health, by stating to her doctor that she “seem(s) like a hypochondriac.”

Her paranoia continues as the story, which begins to come across as a set of jumpy snapshots into her jumbled life, changes setting from her doctor’s office to her mother’s home. She states again that she is not sleeping, and that she is frightened easily at some moving bushes in her mother’s back yard. Before, she feared her father’s ghost, but now some of her paranoia is transferred to worries of a “crazy native man” that is sneaking into unlocked homes.

But then the story gets confusing. The next paragraph has her in English class. There is a break in between the paragraphs, so I am expecting a different time or setting, but the new setting is given without any explanation, and this confuses the reader. The author states that she is in a class, but does not mention whether she is a student or teacher. This causes the reader to wonder about her age, and distracts from the story.

The next paragraph sees the story jump again, but backtracks to her mother’s home, and includes a meditation on her father’s publicly broadcasted demise. This passage had me momentarily feeling rising guilt, since I remember reading about the goring of this hunter and laughing over the irony of his passing. But this is the only part of the story that had me feeling anything besides confusion, and it is only a fleeting pang before my bewilderment resumes.

The author again abruptly departs to another setting, but this time we go back in time an unknown number of years to her childhood. She describes a moment when her father brings a bear carcass into her family’s kitchen and guts it, right on the tiles in front of her. It seems obvious that she is not looking for any pity for her dead father after describing his actions with the bear, but I did begin to feel as though she is grasping for sympathy for herself from the reader.

The story then catapults back to the present with no warning. The author is back at the doctor, and then the reader is treated to a pointless paragraph about her sister staying with her in Vancouver. As a reader, I am completely oblivious as to the time frame of the exchange between the siblings. But I do not get a lot of time to think about it, because the story jumps again to a new setting and time.

The story continues like an episode of Quantum Leap throughout its duration, and disrupts any feelings that the author is trying to evoke from the reader. Even if I did want to feel sympathy for the writer and her situation, my compassion gets lost in the confusion of the ever-changing settings and times. But I think the confusion brought out through the story is a reflection of her own uncertainty toward her father’s death. She also succeeds at tarnishing any good image that her father had left by admitting that he had “…cut his knuckle open on (her) mother’s face.” (That line made me want to shake that water buffalo’s hoof.)

The author obviously had a rocky and distant relationship with her father, but this story did not make me care about it at all. It actually made me feel a slight disdain for the author, as she came across as a spoiled girl who blamed all her problems on her father. Could this story be her post-mortem revenge on him? Well if it is, it is hard to tell, because the tale is too confusing.

The Ring!

...okay....this may even be scarier than The Ring!

Ocean

Logo

Past the Pane

I left the window open again…



…and snow blew through its wooden-framed void.
It brought with it whispers
on icy winds of times long past.
This was white wind that seemed to sense that my ears had been ringing with audible memories.
“What do you think I did?”
I invaded the whispers with my harsh tone.
“You expect nothing of me, and yet you hope for everything!”
The wind continued to invite its way in, with no hint of its flustering intention.
Then all at once the snow became thicker,
hurdling through the gap at a greater speed.

And all I had to do was close the window.

But I stood frozen, not from the cold flurries that teased around me, and nor was it fear that ceased my steps.
The wind continued to push through the open window, past the pane, causing the walls to shudder.
It continued,

because I let it.

It was a simple fix.
Closing the window would stop the ice, the wind and the whispers,
but if I closed it, then I would be stricken with silence.
“Give me the companionship of an element without the frozen pain it whispers through my window.”
The ice did not subside, and the wish was lost to the wind.
“Then why does it burn when you embrace my body with your frozen fingers? The ice should numb me, not cause me further torment.”
Frozen flakes upon frozen flesh
should no longer burn.
Ice upon ice should not scald.
I stood facing the window, embracing the wind’s might,
yet still pelted with unfettered stings,
each alternately arousing desire, then pain.
“Torturous torrent of frosted gust, I have power against you…and yet I do not use it.”
Whispers slid through my earlobes,
lapping with their icy tongues.
The wind forced air into me,
my lungs raped so forcefully that breath soon became laboured,
bordering impossible.
I took a step towards the window.

The wind lessened, its white glare softening to sheen and glow.
Breathing became pleasant, and the whispers had soft mouths now.
Although the harsh gale could return at any time…
I would close the window another day.

The Fish!!

The only thing that stops God from sending another flood is that the first one was useless. Nicolas de Chamfort

Can I Play with Magnus?

I Sing

...and show off my crotch...!!

Reflection Down by the River

I always feel more alive
when running in the forest.
It helps me
to think; it helps me not to think.

Jogging down by the river, through the forest,
is the most refreshing
-ly beautiful place.
Down the crumbling path, off the path—
each step an invasion—
if not for the parting of the foliage upon my arrival.
I regard the cedar discards on the forest floor,
a welcome mat of sweet smelling decay,
an invitation to run amongst the armoured soldiers of trees.
My eyes thirst to take in as much of this
scenery
as possible.
Every inch of the woods is probed by my vision.
I yearn to have the ability
to take a photo with my eyesight,
and keep the beauty with me.

Who knows when it will be the last time
I will see the glory of the forest?
Just as how darkness is a nothingness that yields so much more,
the woods hold a danger that I have yet to encounter.
The river I love
has held women’s bodies,
living, swimming
and floating, bloating…and dead.
The abstract fractals of the branching trees
have been witness to darker things
than the night…

…yet warnings have not kept me away.

Because even when I lay drowning
in a pool of my own blood,
as I intake breath into my gurgling lungs,
it will somehow be beautiful
and even then, I will be more alive

because I will be dying in the forest.

Raccoon and Stripper

I was driving off of the highway when I saw the ball of fur thrashing about on the street before me. I swerved, and my heart sank. I could make out the ringed-tail and the black legs of a large raccoon.
I wanted to pull over, but there were cars coming up fast behind me. I expressed my sympathy for the maimed raccoon to my passengers, who were not as soft-hearted as I. Behind us a vehicle managed to pull over, and I assumed they were going to offer the poor creature some aid...
We continued on our drive. Dropping my passengers off at a pub, I left them to move onto another, much more entertaining venue: a strip club.

....I smiled at the sparkles on my nipple as the raccoon took his last breath.

Drama

Being drawn into a dramatic fallout is like being sucked into someone else's shit-whirlwind; it is not my fault, but because I am caught up in it, I am guilty by association.

Last Night...

...my band, AGAINST RESTRAINT, played a show with GOLGOTHA at the COBALT...

Fight

I don’t even say good-bye; I just leave.

I start the vehicle that I have loaded with my belongings, and I drive down the Barnet Highway. Even in the dark, the beautiful views from the road momentarily distract me from my anger. But the anger comes raging back once I catch sight of my new apartment, as I am exhausted, and I know that it will still be awhile before I can sleep.

I pull into my new parking spot, and sort through my new keys. It is late, and I have a lot of unpacking to do. If I leave my possessions in the car, someone may steal them. I have six boxes and a rabbit cage to carry through the door, and it takes me two hours of struggling. When I am done, I look down at the bare wooden floor that I will be sleeping on. The anger surges within me, but I swallow it. I will have to awaken early, and if I allow the anger to swamp my mind, then I will be up all night mucking through a brain of bullshit. Slowly, the grip of anger begins to subside, and it releases me into the waiting arms of slumber.



Weeks have gone by and we still have not spoken. Our stubborn heads have butted, and neither father nor daughter wants to show any weakness. My back aches from the hard floor, but it does nothing to mask my inner resentment when you stop by one day to drop off my mattress. Our eyes do not meet, and I take the mattress in without a word.

I am working hard for minimum wage, but I have my freedom, so I feign contentment. I eat pizza every day, and go out whenever I want. Acquaintances come by to visit, and I enjoy the company—an escape from my solitude—sometimes a little too much. My sweater begins to smell of another woman’s husband.

I am having fun with my freedom.

My mind has been switched off since I moved out, but reality is starting to worm its way into my apartment of gluttony, and my common sense stirs. Freedom may be fun, but life needs a purpose. I realize that although being free for its own sake is highly valued, not using my newfound freedom positively is pointless. It is like I have turned from a forest path and wandered off into the woods to get lost on purpose, and I am fucking random bush-people along the way.

This is a positive realization; it will fuel me to aim higher. But it comes too late.

I get up one morning-and I fall back down. My foot is swollen. I call into work; I tell them that I must have broken my toe.

The next day is the same. I am in pain, so I go to the hospital. The doctors shrug me off as a stubbed toe. I call you, finally. You are surprisingly supportive. I tell you that I will try to continue to work through this pain. You call me a fool.

I wake up the next morning and remove the blankets from over my weakening body. I test my swollen foot on the wooden floor. Pain. I get on all fours and crawl down the hall to the bathroom. I run the faucet, and tears fall from my eyes as the water hits my flesh. I wipe my face and my tears are swept down the drain. I shower sitting in the bathtub because I can barely stand. I dress, and limp to work.

My pain has forced reconciliation between us, but my freedom has been taken away again. You are there to support me, and I am grateful for it, for although you were the one hindering me before, you are now the only one helping me.

I lose my job and become as useless as my swollen toes. The doctors tell me that I have arthritis, and that it is spreading rapidly throughout my joints. I stop eating pizza, and no one comes to visit anymore. You invite me back home, but I refuse, just as you refuse to believe that a young woman can become stricken with an old man’s disease. We are stubborn again. You are angry with me; but I am convinced that moving back home would make me a failure.

I am out of work for a month and a half when I decide to regain my independence. I have borrowed enough money from you, and I must go on living. I will not accept this pain; I will fight it for as long as I can. If there is anything I have inherited from you, it is your stubborn will.

You come over one day to check on me. My apartment is in shambles. With my artillery of excuses I attempt to explain the state of my home, explain why there are mice and bugs and broken windows, and that I am still fully capable of looking after myself. You are unconvinced and offer me more money. I decline, and I state how well I am doing financially. Waitressing isn’t actually that hard when you can’t walk; it just hurts like hell. I repeat that I am working through the pain and that I am going to beat this debilitation. I put on my sweater that smells like rabbit litter.

You still can’t accept that your twenty-something daughter has arthritis. I have accepted the condition, but not its consequences. I go to a rheumatologist, and he pats me on the shoulder; he urges me to accept my fate. I shrug off of his hand and continue to decline anti-inflammatories. I meet his pitied gaze with determination.

I become desperate. I am obsessed with the cause of my continually spreading pain. Perhaps it is my diet. I stop eating; I gorge myself. I am anorexic; I am obese. No matter my weight you always tell me that I am too thin, even when I believe I am at my biggest. You say that men like women with meat on their bones; I go for another day without food. Men have nothing to do with this. It has everything to do with my health, my life.

Two years pass—two years of swelling and subsiding, pain and anger—and then, one day, I awake as usual, and test my now knarled, twisted feet on the cold, hardwood floor. No pain. I am confused, but thankful. That morning, there are more tears in the shower; but not tears of pain, tears of relief. I stand and shower. I swear to embrace my newfound freedom. I call you and ask you if I can move back home and go to college. You are relieved as well.



I drive down the Barnet Highway, my vehicle loaded with my things. I gaze out in awe over the inlet, and smile. I pull up to your house and park in my old parking spot. You are waiting for me, along with my mother and brother. I get help unloading my car, my rabbit cage and my mattress.

That night I drift off almost immediately. My last thought before I am welcomed by slumber is about the fight between us that caused me to leave in the first place; for the life of me, I can’t recall what is was about.

Ancestry

Ever wonder about your long-dead relatives?

What would a man who lived in 1693 be to me?
My great-great-great-great-great grandfather?

http://www.uwo.ca/english/canadianpoetry/eng%20274e/kelsey.htm

http://canadawiki.org/index.php/1690_-_Henry_Kelsey's_Trip_to_the_Prairies

Henry Kelsey was an explorer who wrote about all of his adventures in poetry-form. c1667-1724

...that's all I really know at this time...but it's pretty damn interesting...!!

Blog-Sloth

How often are you supposed to post in a blog?
I can't tell whether I am being lazy or not...have I adopted one of the seven deadly blog sins?
What else would there be...

Well, if I were any better at writing, or wrote more often, I may develop Blog-Pride, and brag about my measly spot on the vast worldwide web of meaningless words.
I guess Blog-Greed would be my next step, which would be the addition of advertisements along the borders of my blog.
Blog-Envy would soon follow, as I would begin to monitor the progress of other blogs, and burn with the jealous realization that other blogspot sites receive more traffic than mine...
Naturally, I would seek some sort of digitized-vengeance, and I would soon be overcome with Blog-Wrath, attempting to flood the comments sections of the more popular web journals with obscenities.
After that, I may begin sleeping with people to convince them to check out my blog, and, consequently, Blog-Lust would overtake my cyber-blackened-soul.

But don't forget Blog-Gluttony! I've got that already...I have recently begun two other blogs!



Heheh...not blog sins, but this site told me my deadly sin-count...(I'm not trying to advertise for them, I swear!)

Greed:	High
Gluttony:	Medium
Wrath:	Very High
Sloth:	Low
Envy:	Very Low
Lust:	Very High
Pride:	Low

Discover Your Sins - Click Here


.......

In Unrelated Laura News:

Life has been very busy lately, and not just with meaningless busywork...life has been busy with purpose.

Music and the written word-that is what my life is about right now-it feels great.

....

In an exit interview, a class instructor stated that I was very transparent...I wish I had asked him to elaborate, because now I am curious as what he meant by that.

Am I
-easily seen through, recognized, or detected or
-open; frank; candid
?


Alright, and so ends my tired personal reflection bullshit for the evening...or should I say, personal transparency?

A Firefly Lights Up Kamloops

I aimed the disposable camera at Heather.
“Take a photo, quick! We could be dead at any moment, and it will be the last photo of me, EVER!!”
I clicked the button down, and the camera recorded her terrified face for posterity. Of course, she could have just slowed down.
It was late March, and we were barrelling down the snowy Coquihalla at 120 km/hr. Heather was driving a ’89 Pontiac Firefly that had balding summer tires, and I was holding onto the shuddering door handle in the front passenger seat. Every few kilometres she would urge me to take a photo of her, and I would comply, as I too believed that any one of these screeching moments could be our last.

We had awoken that morning with a keen sense of adventure.
“Let’s just get in the car and drive.” Heather was always a spontaneous kind of gal.
“Sure. I’m not driving, though!” I had replied. I had to reminded Heather that I had just turned 16, and did not yet have my driver’s license; I would not be able to share in any of the driving responsibilities. She was fine with this, as she had been driving for two years now.
Being young, and cool, we did not believe in packing supplies before we set out on our journey onto roads not yet travelled by us. Heather and I just hopped in the car and made our way onto the highway.
We headed towards Langley, and then past Abbotsford. Blasting Madonna and Janis Joplin, we merrily sang at the top of our lungs, and completely disregarded the signs that flew by us along the road. About two hours into our trip, the roads began to get increasingly icier. The winds howled, and the tiny vehicle began to swerve with the strong gusts of air.
All was somewhat fine until snowdrifts began to burst, in frozen explosions, across the road’s shoulder and onto the windshield. For the next two hours after that, any car that passed the Firefly would have heard the worried cries of two teenaged girls. Flurries had decided to grace us with their unwelcome presence as well, and the road lines were soon indecipherable. Heather thought that if we drove as fast as possible, it would get us to a town sooner. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I squinted through the wall of white, waiting for sign of a town.
“Kamloops, 20 km ahead!” I cried out. I was relieved that we would soon be safe and out of the Firefly. I was also relieved that I could soon stop taking photos of Heather….

We reached Kamloops. Like a sign from a welcoming god, the snow ceased and the clouds broke open above the town as we rolled into it. We had the privilege of seeing the last few minutes of sunshine left in the day, and it had a calming effect on my harrowed nerves. We reached the first, and only, hotel that we could see.
After booking a room with two beds, we began to explore the town by car. It turned out that there was not much to explore. As we were both under 19, we were further limited for entertainment options that evening than most, and settled on stopping by the town’s pool hall. We were there only half an hour before we realized how awful we were at the game of pool, so we decided to go out hunting for excitement.
Hoping to attract some male interest, we cruised down the main strip of Kamloops in the Firefly. But men were not clamouring all over the car to get to us; there was scarcely even a soul in sight. We resigned to head back to the hotel after giving the town one last tour.
That’s when we spotted a carload of rowdy testosterone, and knew that our night was saved.
Pulling up to the guys at a stoplight, we motioned for them to pull over, got out and began conducting meaningless conversation. They were drunk; we were bored.
Suddenly, a car came careening around a corner, and crashing into an auto parts store across the street from where we were standing. The passenger door opened, and a woman emerged…with a gun! The driver side door opened as well, and another hand gripping a gun appeared. I blinked. Heather screamed and jumped into the awaiting arms of a drunken loser. I’m surprised she hadn’t asked me to take a picture….
The gun-handling couple didn’t even give us teens a second glance as they took off on foot around a corner and out of sight. It all happened in a matter of seconds, but the Kamloop natives’ that we were conversing with were quick to claim that what we had just witnessed was the most exciting thing to ever happen in their town.
The RCMP were quick on the scene, and real photographers also swarmed the site within minutes. I walked over to the car to be sure that I would be in the photos, as I wanted my image in the newspaper.
Now, whether it was from all the excitement of the moment, or just plain craziness, Heather asked the six older males if they would care to accompany us back to our hotel for drinks.
This did not impress me.
But, I did not have much of a say in the matter as I had neither driven to, nor paid for the hotel, so I had to go along with Heather’s possibly dangerous request. In our hotel room, we spent the remainder of the evening drinking beer, and watching wrestling and porno…a guy’s night for sure.
I kicked the drunken guys out of our room soon after Heather passed out, grateful that no one had had any wrong ideas about us, and fell asleep to the sound of the WWF announcers.

The first thing that we did the next day was to go to the local store and check for our photo in the local paper. If last night’s vehicular craziness had been the most exciting thing that had ever happened in Kamloops, then surely it would be on the front page. But Kamloops, being a smaller municipality, did not have a daily paper that we could find at the time, so we left the town never knowing if my photo had made its way into the paper. But I did know that I had a whole camera full of photos of Heather screaming, and the scene repeated itself on the ride back to Vancouver.

Horses and Hot Tubs

I have not hung out with horses a lot in my life.
Saturday, out in Abbotsford at a farm, I spent the day feeding horses and talking to friends. The 70+ horses were behind stalls and fences, so all I really saw were their big-snouted faces.

When the time came to go back to the hostess's home, we had to trudge through a field of muck to reach the far gate. As I was focusing on not losing my boots in the mud, I fell behind from the group and did not notice a horse wander up until it was behind me. I was unaware that there were even horses in that field, so the curious beast that began to nudge my back was a complete suprise. I turned around in time to see 5 more horses began to trot over from the barn. It had the feel of a horror movie...Zombie Horses....or something of that sort...
They edged closer...I had never been alone with so many horses before...well, at least not standing besides them in a field. Usually they were behind a stall...I had forgotten that they had bodies...

An excellent day of horses, wine and hot tubs...