earlier wednesday i sat on the floor of the UW bookstore and reread 'less than zero.' it is still a novel with absolutely no redeeming qualities. i unconsciously seek out very grim books in the winter; it was about 8 years ago that i first went through my bret easton ellis stage, killing time at the anchorage barnes & noble before working my graveyard shift- not seeing daylight for days at a time, mean outside temperature -5 degrees, reading fucking 'american psycho' and wondering why i was depressed.
thursday morning, the non-view outside my window:
the fog has been a clingy mistress of late. i love fog. it makes everything immediate and dreamlike, sexy and haunting. the other day it never lifted at all.
normally my view is a bit more detailed. it is nice to have the perspective fucked with every now and again.
*
about 5 years ago i found this bottle opener in a ramshackle antique shoppe outside olympia:
the guy who owned the store couldn't tell me much about it. "from the thirties?" he guessed. it is heavy, possibly iron. it reminds me of a fucked-up toy that you'd receive at a carnival midway during the great depression. i use it, obviously, as an incense holder. it has left rust spots on the counter.
then, last june, i was in new orleans, skulking around another antique store, and found this... his lover!
(the bottle was sold separately.)
this other purveyor didn't know the history either. "she looks pretty drunk though!" he said, then laughed at his own joke.
i have (briefly) looked online for where the fuck these things came from. were they merely novelty goods, akin to troll dolls or slap bracelets or kit-kat clocks? just schlock that defined a brief gleaming era of americana?
*
a few weeks ago, during one of my nocturnal strolls through the seamy undercurrent, i saw this view through a restaurant window:
i try to picture what it must look like when brightly lit and bustling, when workers are bumping into each other and laughing and conversing loudly over the din- and what those workers do when they leave, if their clothes reek of spices (it's a thai restaurant), if their hands are sore, if they got burned or spilt upon, if they're completely fucking sick of thai food and curl up with a bowl of cereal instead. i showed this picture to someone. "that's creepy" they said. "why'd you take that? that place looks gross."
i see: a dim rec room in someone's parent's house. they're out for the night and you've just finished having furtive teenage sex. your clothes are everywhere, unfindable, and you are scrambling in the dark trying to locate them. your reality is completely altered, but in an environment so chokingly familiar you want to run away. but once out of the house, with the cold air and the silence and the sound of your own breath, LEFT ALONE WITH YOUSELF, you marvel at the possibilities of life-changing moments in every inch of everyday minutae.
the possibilities are the important part. the outcome is all but irrelevant.
or: i see the interior of a grimy restaurant, photographed from the sidewalk... while the city sleeps.
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