Thursday, May 15, 2008

happy birthday, mike oldfield AND brian eno!

my dream from last night: i am in the lair i have lived in for the last two years, but i am living with s. her occupancy is contingent on my keeping the place. she blithely informs me that she is returning to AK, but "i'll be fine." half the dream is spent trying to sell and organize my shit, and the other half is infused with dread over returning to anchorage- since it logically follows, in the dream, that this is my only choice- i am scanning classifieds, ruminating over non-options, realizing that i never want to fucking reside there ever again, more than i consciously comprehended. i awoke in a tense, agitated state. when i understood that it was merely a dream (the recollection of the dream didn't happen until several hours later) i was relieved, then weirdly sad: eschewing anchorage is equivalent to eshewing a huge chunk of my past, and what does that mean?
*
how does a chick get randomly laid, without being percieved as a desperate slut? without disengaging her futile intellect and moderate standards? and disengaging her propensity to not wish to just, you know, FUCK, and like, MAKE LOVE, and have them give a shit and stuff- how can that be turned off?
hypothetically speaking.
*
i am finally revisting 'babbitt' and it is getting better. the book mercilessly skewers capitalist pretense-laden culture. it is a difficult read simply because everyone in the book is so fucking unlikable- the women are one-dimensional harpies, the men are boorish noncommunicative louts. this is why i tend to stay away from fiction- i dislike broad characatures (that is not spelled properly). but 'babbitt' does provide the occasional worthy soundbite: "waving the aurora borealis around", for instance, or "listen to what the Hep Bird twitters"- both of which i am delighted with and wish i had phrased first.
i drove to north bend (30miles E of seattle proper) earlier today with a vision of doing my happy route down hwy 2 (i do enjoy the twee bucolia). went for petrol in north bend and realized i did not have my wallet. i had no debit card, no cash, no identification. i immediately could see where i'd left it: at my house, peaceful, useless. i put 45 cents, the only money i had, in the tank and started the drive back to seattle, coasting when i could, doing 50 in a 70mph zone. i ran out of gas on the I-90 bridge, the absolute worst place to do so. as i started across i thought "i am not going to make it to the other side." and it was eerie because i was right. i sat stupidly in my car for all of four minutes before a WSDOT truck pulled up behind me. the guy was incredibly nice and gave me a free gallon of gas. "this is what your taxes pay for" he said. i thanked him profusely. he even pushed me until my compression engaged. i waved goodbye, giddily.
...during this incident: picture a 14yr old vw golf with a 'read a fucking book' bumper sticker, a rubber octopus on the dash, and a grimy girl driver wearing a 'spank me i'm irish' t-shirt, stupidly running out of gas and with no fucking identification. he should have been much, much ruder. but he was nice as hell, and i will happily sing the virtues of the washington government forevermore.
*
everyone is lonely and yearning for something else. these are the byproducts of a priveleged culture.

No comments: