i had another disturbing dream about sexually predatory half-wits and abstract malaise last night. i am unsure what this psychologically indicates.
the dream: i am walking "home" -it's my parent's house in anchorage, but a new place that i have never lived in. i am a visiting guest. they are out of town. i pass two teenage guys in the woods en route. they are loitering under a rain-dripping tree and holding knives. they start to follow me, trying to touch me, saying unsalubrious things. they look like extras from 'the hills have eyes.' i get to the house, all whitewashed walls and empty corridors, and find the room i am to stay in. they are apparently guests here too, in a room down the hall. i go to the bathroom (note: classic toilet dream) and hear them rummaging through my things in my absense. i find another room to stay in and lock the door. sleep. wake up to s, standing over me with concern. "are you feeling better?" she asks. i am unsure what she means. "you almost had to go to the hospital" she says. "you would not stop vomiting."
i wake up for real. entropy has discovered q-tips over the last week; she gets on the counter, ransacks the container, and scatters them all over the house. i blearily yelled at her, tossed my paperback copy of "living and working abroad" in her direction, and went back to sleep.
*
sweet green's tire is finally fixed. i ended up calling the guy who sold her to me. i spent all weekend feeling like a feeble jackass, completely ignorant to what i was doing. pried open bonnet with hammer and screwdriver. stared cluelessly at rusted jack. called 2 places and looked through cheery manual to figure out how to pry off hubcap (lacking the specific "loosening device" i settled for same screwdriver). bought new socket wrench and new "jack" at store. could not loosen lugnuts. in middle of street, visible to all neighbors, the epitome of helpless female. fucking mortifying. it is at times like this that i want a sign that says "honestly, i am rather knowledgable about other things."
c and his son showed up. "how far did you drive on this?" he asked. i proudly showed him my new jack (that did not make sense when i assembled it; it looked nothing like any jack i've seen). "that's the brace" he said. "where's the jack?" he deftly brandished the rusted jack that came with the car; it worked beautifully. "you didn't know how this works, do you" he said as a statement. "no" i replied. i stood by stupidly while he swapped the tire in under three minutes. for over three months i have been unable to do this basic task. he seemed quite amused.
i cannot put into words how fucking daft i feel.
perhaps i can: i feel fucking daft.
but the tire is fixed, and the sun is shining, and it is one less thing to worry about. and i have a brand-new brace and a shiny, unused socket wrench to, i don't know, make a sculpture with.
i even had the vile thought: "i need a man around to fix things." I ACTUALLY HAD THAT THOUGHT.
if i replaced "man" with "minion" it wouldn't sound so fucking horrible.
Monday, March 31, 2008
Thursday, March 27, 2008
'fidget' is an anagram of 'gifted'
yesterday i drove to the grey bowels of arlington to procure 4 tires from a farmer with gorgeous eyes. thank you once again, craigslist. they had been stripped from a 74 super beetle. they still sit in the hatch of my other car- awaiting my motivation. my landlord told me to move my bug by the end of the month. i got into the car yesterday and she started immediately, still smelling like all old volkswagens smell- gasoline and warm dust, even though it's been fucking freezing outside. the radio was playing 'sister golden hair', for chrissake. and i thought "i can't give her up."
went to an MS 'newly diagnosed' group last night. myself and 3 older men- late 40s up. it was therapeutic as fuck. life goes on, always. it was pouring rain when i left; it had snowed on capitol hill and parked cars were covered with snow. i went to bleu to read and was approached by a tweaker at the bar. he was loudly impressed with what i was reading ("babbitt" by sinclair lewis- which is a rather annoying book with hokey dialogue and superfluous detail, but it was 25 cents and is easy to stash in my bag) and we ended up talking for an hour or two. he was already slurry when he arrived and proceeded to grow more so. the things he said were transparently bullshit, but it was nice to talk to a new person. his credit card was declined as i was leaving. i had missed the last bus and walked home. cynicism set in almost immediately and once again i thought:
where do these fuckups come from? is it so fucking difficult to find a MAN who doesn't drink until they're an idiot, who has the self-esteem to not do a fucking line before stumbling through their day, who has a fucking JOB and self-reliance and confidence without arrogance, who lives by action rather than merely pontificating? this generation is getting more immature and ill-defined by the year. and the older people get, the more pathetic it becomes.
luckily i am fortunate to also know many people who have their shit together. and i am grateful and humbled. they remind me that i fall somewhere in the middle.
the new raconteurs album is fucking fantastic.
so is the movie "coming home." i now have a ridiculous crush on '70's-era jon voight.
my trampoline arrives next week. fuck practicality.
... i have successfully negated the strident righteousness of the prior paragraphs by my dorky hypocrisy.
the key to adulthood, perhaps, is to choose your unjustifiable inanities wisely...?
went to an MS 'newly diagnosed' group last night. myself and 3 older men- late 40s up. it was therapeutic as fuck. life goes on, always. it was pouring rain when i left; it had snowed on capitol hill and parked cars were covered with snow. i went to bleu to read and was approached by a tweaker at the bar. he was loudly impressed with what i was reading ("babbitt" by sinclair lewis- which is a rather annoying book with hokey dialogue and superfluous detail, but it was 25 cents and is easy to stash in my bag) and we ended up talking for an hour or two. he was already slurry when he arrived and proceeded to grow more so. the things he said were transparently bullshit, but it was nice to talk to a new person. his credit card was declined as i was leaving. i had missed the last bus and walked home. cynicism set in almost immediately and once again i thought:
where do these fuckups come from? is it so fucking difficult to find a MAN who doesn't drink until they're an idiot, who has the self-esteem to not do a fucking line before stumbling through their day, who has a fucking JOB and self-reliance and confidence without arrogance, who lives by action rather than merely pontificating? this generation is getting more immature and ill-defined by the year. and the older people get, the more pathetic it becomes.
luckily i am fortunate to also know many people who have their shit together. and i am grateful and humbled. they remind me that i fall somewhere in the middle.
the new raconteurs album is fucking fantastic.
so is the movie "coming home." i now have a ridiculous crush on '70's-era jon voight.
my trampoline arrives next week. fuck practicality.
... i have successfully negated the strident righteousness of the prior paragraphs by my dorky hypocrisy.
the key to adulthood, perhaps, is to choose your unjustifiable inanities wisely...?
Friday, March 14, 2008
Sunday, March 09, 2008
fix yourself first
i'm freaking out.
how i hate that term.
i am: sad, disappointed, annoyed, wistful, stuck in a perpetual chasm of a most unrewarding deja vu. i don't even know if i should be worried. my instincts say i should be. but, despite how sparingly we all demonstrate it, we are all adults here, and we all know exactly what we're doing.
though sometimes i wonder.
work was dead slow last night; by eight pm there was one hospitalized patient and i was organizing the syringes. i left early; i wasn't supposed to be off until 12:30am. "it's saturday night" the shift lead said encouragingly. "go have fun." but i was already resigned to working all evening and my mindset was consequently too staid for potential hellraising (hellraising which would have been, i don't know, drinking a G&T instead of tea?). i ended up rewatching 'sideways' until 2am- it's only a month overdue from the library.
my parents came to seattle yesterday. they brought some of the items i'd claimed from my grandmother's old house. i now have: a huge box of her old cookbooks (including "jewish cookery made easy" in which she'd inscribed on the inside cover: "a gift to myself and my heritage!"), a porcelain lamp of a female statue with a large lotus-blossom shade (that apparently everyone else in the family, whilst ransacking the spoils for treasures of their own, vocally abhorred), and a huge sunflower painting that i remember from when i was barely able to walk. "you really should go visit her" my parents reminded me. i feel like a fucking asshole- perfectly willing to take her shit, but not motivated to drive 30 miles and say hello. i must redeem myself this week.
we went to hale's brewery so my parents could indulge their love of their potato salad. it was a good time and i am reminded anew of how much i care about them. there was only one brief lecture about my blood sugar. we were surrounded by surly hungover couples gulping bloody marys. they had two beers apiece; i drank iced tea. the sun was shining. at one point a group of people blithely walked past the restaurant wearing costumes: a rice farmer, a monk, a jester. my mother found this especially hilarious.
soundtrack of the past 12 hours: otis redding "come to me" and black rebel motorcycle club "killing the light." the latter is one of the best fucking songs ever, as well as one of the fucking best songs ever.
how i hate that term.
i am: sad, disappointed, annoyed, wistful, stuck in a perpetual chasm of a most unrewarding deja vu. i don't even know if i should be worried. my instincts say i should be. but, despite how sparingly we all demonstrate it, we are all adults here, and we all know exactly what we're doing.
though sometimes i wonder.
work was dead slow last night; by eight pm there was one hospitalized patient and i was organizing the syringes. i left early; i wasn't supposed to be off until 12:30am. "it's saturday night" the shift lead said encouragingly. "go have fun." but i was already resigned to working all evening and my mindset was consequently too staid for potential hellraising (hellraising which would have been, i don't know, drinking a G&T instead of tea?). i ended up rewatching 'sideways' until 2am- it's only a month overdue from the library.
my parents came to seattle yesterday. they brought some of the items i'd claimed from my grandmother's old house. i now have: a huge box of her old cookbooks (including "jewish cookery made easy" in which she'd inscribed on the inside cover: "a gift to myself and my heritage!"), a porcelain lamp of a female statue with a large lotus-blossom shade (that apparently everyone else in the family, whilst ransacking the spoils for treasures of their own, vocally abhorred), and a huge sunflower painting that i remember from when i was barely able to walk. "you really should go visit her" my parents reminded me. i feel like a fucking asshole- perfectly willing to take her shit, but not motivated to drive 30 miles and say hello. i must redeem myself this week.
we went to hale's brewery so my parents could indulge their love of their potato salad. it was a good time and i am reminded anew of how much i care about them. there was only one brief lecture about my blood sugar. we were surrounded by surly hungover couples gulping bloody marys. they had two beers apiece; i drank iced tea. the sun was shining. at one point a group of people blithely walked past the restaurant wearing costumes: a rice farmer, a monk, a jester. my mother found this especially hilarious.
soundtrack of the past 12 hours: otis redding "come to me" and black rebel motorcycle club "killing the light." the latter is one of the best fucking songs ever, as well as one of the fucking best songs ever.
Friday, March 07, 2008
a friendly ghost
i just saw the magnetic fields!
immediately after i took this (WITHOUT a flash) stephin merritt reprimanded the audience for "those fucking cameras with the fucking blinking lights" and banned all further photography. he was a sullen poop throughout the show. the female singer, whose name i don't recall, shared stories of the "women coked out of their minds who were making out and not gay" at their recent LA shows. "threesome" is my new happy song.
being there made me feel floaty. the room was hot and crowded with earnest couples languidly fondling each others napes. i got to watch. the magnetic fields are perfect music for a rainy summer afternoon spent having sex.
on a less-sexy note, the "blighted corridor", as the press is wont to coin it, of pike street. i took this last night. when this pawn shop was in business, 1998, i bought a television here. seriously.
this afternoon on westlake avenue:
and further down, in a secret alley:
some days are just composed of the right things at the right time.
immediately after i took this (WITHOUT a flash) stephin merritt reprimanded the audience for "those fucking cameras with the fucking blinking lights" and banned all further photography. he was a sullen poop throughout the show. the female singer, whose name i don't recall, shared stories of the "women coked out of their minds who were making out and not gay" at their recent LA shows. "threesome" is my new happy song.
being there made me feel floaty. the room was hot and crowded with earnest couples languidly fondling each others napes. i got to watch. the magnetic fields are perfect music for a rainy summer afternoon spent having sex.
on a less-sexy note, the "blighted corridor", as the press is wont to coin it, of pike street. i took this last night. when this pawn shop was in business, 1998, i bought a television here. seriously.
this afternoon on westlake avenue:
and further down, in a secret alley:
some days are just composed of the right things at the right time.
another post about unicorns
you enter 300+ words of your writing, it tells you if you are male or female.
i entered the text from my last entry. informally: i am a 'weak male, possibly european.' formally: 'male.'
this makes me smug as fuck, actually.
http://www.hackerfactor.com/GenderGuesser.html#Analyze
i entered the text from my last entry. informally: i am a 'weak male, possibly european.' formally: 'male.'
this makes me smug as fuck, actually.
http://www.hackerfactor.com/GenderGuesser.html#Analyze
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
"goodfellas" was also a favorite movie of john wayne gacy
the swing shifts are marvelous and i am much happier, but it is taking a while to adjust to my newfound nocturne. after going to sleep around 4, i woke at 8 this morning; after sprawling on the sofa in the sunshine and reading about serial killers (more on that in a moment) i took a brief and deep nap, during which i had yet another fucked up dream:
i am pet-sitting a grey parrot named ike. (this is directly related to the amazon parrot named frank that came into work just as i was leaving last night. he ate a battery of unknown size whilst being cared for by a friend. he clawed the shit out of my arms.) i take ike with me to a home-depot-type store to procure plants. he is docile enough to ride on my shoulder. there is a huge reflecting pool in the middle of the greenhouse area, filled with koi. "look at the fish!" i am singsonging. he hops off my shoulder and starts to saunter off; i follow him out of the store, worried that he's going to fly away. we're suddenly on a rocky beach. it's a grey day; there is a patch of grasses and driftwood, then pebbles and water. my parents are walking nearby. "look at the bird!" my mother says, running over to him- he's wandering on the ground, ignoring my continued pleas to return to my shoulder. he's startled by her and moves further away. i'm frustrated and annoyed- "mom, leave him alone" i say.
she continues to harrass the bird- he's less agitated now and watching her curiously, still just out of reach but not moving, like a naughty child. i notice there is a red backpack and some rubbish on the shore. i investigate: the rubbish is seaweed wrapped around a tattered ballcap and a wet satchel. i unzip the dripping backpack and pull out a plastic bag. i look inside. it is a severed head.
i drop the bag and curse. my father runs over. i tell him what it is. "and you didn't use gloves to touch anything?" he asks. "you mean, you put your prints all over this?" he is furious. "you just destroyed all the evidence" he says disgustedly.
i start to shake, gasp "i'm sorry, i'm sorry, i didn't think", nearly hyperventilating. meanwhile my mother has gotten distracted from the bird and meanders over. she takes the head/skull out of the bag and starts rinsing it off in the water. "what are you doing?" i scream. "it's dirty" she says nonchalantly. "but you're washing off all the evidence! maybe it was dumped here! they could have traced it from the blood and dirt on it!" i am yelling at her in the dream, even more hysterical, begging her to stop, while she calmly ignores me, while ike the bird saunters on the periphery.
i wake up panting, tiresias still in the crook of my knees, lines from the cushion embedded into my face. only twenty minutes had passed.
analyze that one.
i have a few ideas. "that which you most hate in others" comes to mind.
i had been reading about gacy at the time, so it's not as out-of-the-clear-blue as some of my reveries. ever have a completely specific and bizarre word introduced to your vocabulary, only to suddenly have it be EVERYWHERE? for 29 years i have never heard, considered, or needed the term "adicopere" (sp?). but now, twice in the last week, there it is. gacy's crawlspace, for example, was "filled with an icy sludge of mud and adicopere."
adiocipere? i know which letters compose the word, just not the order in which they go.
i love the english language. it covers all the bases of real and imagined nastiness.
*
this afternoon i drove in the glorious sunshine to "my" abandoned dairy compound near olympia. it had been awhile since i'd visited. today i concentrated on the house only; some of the window coverings had been pried off by ne'er-do-wells. i had never seen the inside before. i did not go in, because the place is a rotting death trap, i was right next to the road (my turquoise car parked jauntily in front of the 'no trespassing' gate), and there were two kids already trespassing in the barns, invisible but audible. i did not want to be a further bad influence on their virginal minds.
the house:
the basement, visible from a knocked-out window. i expected to see a corpse floating in the corner- why the fuck did i read that shit earlier? this area is part of the floodplain and was inundated during december's torrents.
the living room ceiling, the attic, and the sky:
and the cozy porch:
the kids were walking towards the gate as i was leaving. two boys, maybe junior high. "you live around here?" i asked. "what's the story with this place?" they were very polite. one said that the dairy went bankrupt and the land was turned into a wildlife preserve by the state. "there's usually, like, 25 elk wandering around" he said. i asked if they ever got bugged for going on the property. "no, nobody's ever said anything." i thanked them and wished them a "cool day", then drove off, wincing at my feeble phraseology.
when i was their age, had i had such a place, i would have stumbled out reeking of shoplifted cigarettes, fresh hickeys on my neck. just saying.
i am pet-sitting a grey parrot named ike. (this is directly related to the amazon parrot named frank that came into work just as i was leaving last night. he ate a battery of unknown size whilst being cared for by a friend. he clawed the shit out of my arms.) i take ike with me to a home-depot-type store to procure plants. he is docile enough to ride on my shoulder. there is a huge reflecting pool in the middle of the greenhouse area, filled with koi. "look at the fish!" i am singsonging. he hops off my shoulder and starts to saunter off; i follow him out of the store, worried that he's going to fly away. we're suddenly on a rocky beach. it's a grey day; there is a patch of grasses and driftwood, then pebbles and water. my parents are walking nearby. "look at the bird!" my mother says, running over to him- he's wandering on the ground, ignoring my continued pleas to return to my shoulder. he's startled by her and moves further away. i'm frustrated and annoyed- "mom, leave him alone" i say.
she continues to harrass the bird- he's less agitated now and watching her curiously, still just out of reach but not moving, like a naughty child. i notice there is a red backpack and some rubbish on the shore. i investigate: the rubbish is seaweed wrapped around a tattered ballcap and a wet satchel. i unzip the dripping backpack and pull out a plastic bag. i look inside. it is a severed head.
i drop the bag and curse. my father runs over. i tell him what it is. "and you didn't use gloves to touch anything?" he asks. "you mean, you put your prints all over this?" he is furious. "you just destroyed all the evidence" he says disgustedly.
i start to shake, gasp "i'm sorry, i'm sorry, i didn't think", nearly hyperventilating. meanwhile my mother has gotten distracted from the bird and meanders over. she takes the head/skull out of the bag and starts rinsing it off in the water. "what are you doing?" i scream. "it's dirty" she says nonchalantly. "but you're washing off all the evidence! maybe it was dumped here! they could have traced it from the blood and dirt on it!" i am yelling at her in the dream, even more hysterical, begging her to stop, while she calmly ignores me, while ike the bird saunters on the periphery.
i wake up panting, tiresias still in the crook of my knees, lines from the cushion embedded into my face. only twenty minutes had passed.
analyze that one.
i have a few ideas. "that which you most hate in others" comes to mind.
i had been reading about gacy at the time, so it's not as out-of-the-clear-blue as some of my reveries. ever have a completely specific and bizarre word introduced to your vocabulary, only to suddenly have it be EVERYWHERE? for 29 years i have never heard, considered, or needed the term "adicopere" (sp?). but now, twice in the last week, there it is. gacy's crawlspace, for example, was "filled with an icy sludge of mud and adicopere."
adiocipere? i know which letters compose the word, just not the order in which they go.
i love the english language. it covers all the bases of real and imagined nastiness.
*
this afternoon i drove in the glorious sunshine to "my" abandoned dairy compound near olympia. it had been awhile since i'd visited. today i concentrated on the house only; some of the window coverings had been pried off by ne'er-do-wells. i had never seen the inside before. i did not go in, because the place is a rotting death trap, i was right next to the road (my turquoise car parked jauntily in front of the 'no trespassing' gate), and there were two kids already trespassing in the barns, invisible but audible. i did not want to be a further bad influence on their virginal minds.
the house:
the basement, visible from a knocked-out window. i expected to see a corpse floating in the corner- why the fuck did i read that shit earlier? this area is part of the floodplain and was inundated during december's torrents.
the living room ceiling, the attic, and the sky:
and the cozy porch:
the kids were walking towards the gate as i was leaving. two boys, maybe junior high. "you live around here?" i asked. "what's the story with this place?" they were very polite. one said that the dairy went bankrupt and the land was turned into a wildlife preserve by the state. "there's usually, like, 25 elk wandering around" he said. i asked if they ever got bugged for going on the property. "no, nobody's ever said anything." i thanked them and wished them a "cool day", then drove off, wincing at my feeble phraseology.
when i was their age, had i had such a place, i would have stumbled out reeking of shoplifted cigarettes, fresh hickeys on my neck. just saying.
Sunday, March 02, 2008
one last kiss, sunset, time being carded
three of my favorite things: shiny tacky shit, a thriving dracena, and my left hand.
tiresias mid-lick:
work has been much, much better. i start swing shifts tomorrow. today was my last morning of waking at 5am to a black sky, waiting for the paper to be delivered, feeling blurred. 5am should be an hour one sees only if one is still awake from yesterday.
fucked case of the week, thus far: the gastric-esophogeal intussusception. a year-old dog presented with acute hematemesis. xrays revealed what looked like a collosal second heart in the thorax. the stomach was INSIDE THE FUCKING ESOPHAGUS. surgery was done on friday night. the doctor had to crack the ribs to manually milk the stomach back to its proper place. the stomach wall was then tacked to the abdominal wall and a weighted feeding tube was threaded to the jejunum. yesterday the dog was looped on fentanyl but raised her head when spoken to, and politely stood outside her cage to defecate. today: she still looks drained but wags her tail and walks outdoors. animals are fucking amazing. would any human be so impressively resilient? not i, i fear.
but this, in the parking garage of the grocer near my lair, is absolutely the best thing i have seen all day:
tiresias mid-lick:
work has been much, much better. i start swing shifts tomorrow. today was my last morning of waking at 5am to a black sky, waiting for the paper to be delivered, feeling blurred. 5am should be an hour one sees only if one is still awake from yesterday.
fucked case of the week, thus far: the gastric-esophogeal intussusception. a year-old dog presented with acute hematemesis. xrays revealed what looked like a collosal second heart in the thorax. the stomach was INSIDE THE FUCKING ESOPHAGUS. surgery was done on friday night. the doctor had to crack the ribs to manually milk the stomach back to its proper place. the stomach wall was then tacked to the abdominal wall and a weighted feeding tube was threaded to the jejunum. yesterday the dog was looped on fentanyl but raised her head when spoken to, and politely stood outside her cage to defecate. today: she still looks drained but wags her tail and walks outdoors. animals are fucking amazing. would any human be so impressively resilient? not i, i fear.
but this, in the parking garage of the grocer near my lair, is absolutely the best thing i have seen all day:
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