crying over you

it occured to me during the walk: i have no pictures of my lair from afar. queen anne high school, the hulking building atop the hill- look immediately below it for the large light blue apartment complex. two doors down to the left, i am the red roof.

we watched eileen court get devoured by bulldozers last week. the walls crumpled and dust filled the intersection. it was the one time in the last year that i did not have my fucking camera with me. the detritus is still piled; a block away i could already smell the mildewy wood.

we have been hanging out a lot. the more we do, the more i want. certain people make me feel very fucking greedy. i finally saw 'mulholland drive' last night. the theater scene was fucking brilliant. by the end of the movie only two of the sundry votive candles were still burning.
when i first saw this i exclaimed "wow, i have a styrofoam head too! but i put glasses on my cactus instead." he smiled politely.

i just found out that more people got laid off at work. i am panicky and excited and hyperactive and sad and really fucking agitated... my thoughts flipping between the cruel rigors of reality and the novelty of my lovely little fantasyland.
i honestly don't fucking know what's going to happen next. with anything. sometimes this doubt feels fantastic, but right now i'm scared as hell.

radio dreams and forgetting how to breathe

the first discarded television of the season! (2nd in an annual series)

i have been awake for five hours and it is 930am. it has been raining all morning; i simply watched the sky get lighter.

work and school are both screwy. the lead tech director got laid off yesterday. i am selfishly concerned about my own job stability; we were assured last week that no layoffs were happening, and she did have reasons to be 'let go', but it still makes me incredibly fucking nervous. and my last final of the term is today. it counts for 50% of my grade. they are reformatting the curriculum; if i fail i have to retake 2 terms of kinesiology. i would rather burn my eyes than relive the fucking anguish of these classes again. i am truly hoping i get the masseter for my comp check and not something complicated like the goddamn gluteus medius.
this evening will either find me in the throes of giddy relief or wrenching self-loathing. i suppose i should be studying more, rather than mindlessly prattling into the ether.
why the fuck would they even make a sign like this?

this is termed in veterinary medicine as a "peek 'n shriek"

case study: 9yr old great dane (61kg) with vomiting of 5 days duration, inappetance, slight jaundice. she transferred from her regular dvm for an ultrasound. the ultrasound showed pronounced gas dilation in the bowels (liver appeared normal). bloodwork: elevated ALT, ALKP, TBili. coags were normal. WBC count was also normal.
we took her to surgery. i was the anesthesiologist.
out came the guts...

and the big-ass lower intestine...

...that was torsed but not necrotic. it untwisted and immediately began pouring yoo-hoo diarrhea all over the floor- with force that misted everything in a five-foot radius. the doppler was saturated; rivulets seeped underneath the surgery table. "more towels, please!" i yelled into the treatment room.

we all ran to get our cameras. with the colon out of the abdominal cavity, we were better able to view the completely fucked liver. the dark purply orb is the gallbladder- also abnormal. gallbladders are typically a lurid green, as if they've been filled with antifreeze. sludgy and black, not good. the right and left lobes of the liver were completely adhesed. "this is one solid mass" the doctor said. "there is no normal tissue here."

i got the owners on the speaker phone. they processed the findings for about ten minutes. "oh god" the man said, his voice cracking. "this is so hard." they finally decided to euthanize on the table. i gave the injection. i am always struck by the poignancy of euthanizing while an animal is still attached to monitors; the doppler slows and muffles. the ECG turns into a silent, solid line. there is always that moment of peace before the alarms start beeping. that moment, i think, is what death really is... silent, complete, a serene exhalation.
"the liver should never look like a cluster of grapes" the doctor said as he sewed the body up.
throughout, 'saturday night fever', four hours of horribly entertaining disco music (every week 8p-midnight) played on the radio. we turned it off whilst talking to the owners.

her name was loki.

r.i.p. seattle pi 1863-2009

with a stylus, one may customize their world, from a bus stop at 16th and madison...

to the back of a seat on a 15 local.

i love this town.
and i love walking through it at night.


i feel like i'm living my present as if it's already the past- romanticized appreciation. does that even make sense?

the ides of march

i got home from work at 330am, was asleep by about 430, and woke at 730 to entropy pushing a ring around on the counter- a subtle yet supremely grating noise. i cannot wait until she is geriatric and lackadaisical.
but had this not happened, had i slept as a normal person might, i would have missed the motherfucking snow that was falling sloppily on the 15th day of march:

this winter has sapped my soul. i know it is finite; i see neighbors bleakly planting daffodils in the icy dirt. the stores are filled with unflattering clothes in pastel shades. one of my coworkers was even planning to run a marathon along hwy 99 today.
it has since turned to rain. rain, i can embrace.
i keep thinking of new orleans.
*
journalistic pap... my head is still in an unrealistic place.

i told him on tuesday to not contact me again. my habits are shameful and predictable. and as usual, i feel incredibly better now. my astonishment with how fucking easy things can be without just one nasty element is growing repetitive, i realize. life shouldn't ever be as fucking hard as i can make it for myself. and there is no reason why anyone should have to put up with crap. when i'm dying, am i going to wish i'd expended more energy in dealing with bullshit? no... but i will wish i was fucking nicer.
ultimately, there is only so much one person can do. if the other person in the situation isn't trying to make things pleasant, i feel quite justified in stepping away and living my own fucking life regardless.
i don't kick myself for embracing idealism. it's naive as fuck, but it's a nice way to live.
i am slowly restoring the lair to its former lustre.

immediately after valentine's day i forgot to stock up on discounted candy. the hearts, in particular, gave me panic- the thought of having to wait until what, boxing day to procure more seemed intolerable. so i have been scouring seattle for dregs. i found a shitload for 9 cents a box at a drugstore and stocked up. my inadvertant plan, which is working out very effectively, is to get so fucking sick of these horrible things that i never want to see or taste them again, holiday novelty be damned.
so now i have a cache. i expect it will grow stale and rather soft and the evolved, fouler texture will appeal to me anew.

i was reading about apomorphine, the veterinary emetic, at work the other day. apparently apomorphine is used widely in europe and parts of asia as an erectile-enhancement drug, akin to viagra. it is in the works to be approved for the same purpose in the us. "it causes significant nausea and vomiting in ~10% of its users, to the point where they discontinue use" the pdr said. i was looking up the drug to get a proper dosage for a dog that had eaten about 3# of unbaked pizza dough... watching him vomit yeasty slime with a miserable expression on his face... wondering if he's thinking about a stirring in his loins whilst doing so.
*
i should have perhaps phrased that last sentence a bit differently. that sounded really fucking gross.

silent but the purring

i am in a fucking good mood.
it is finally not unseasonably, sphincter-tighteningly cold. last week it snowed; today it is raining and my screen door is open. the apartment is quiet. incense is burning. i just made a cd. peacefulness is supremely underutilized.
yesterday i hung out with someone i've wanted to get to know for over three years. very few people have ever intrigued me for such a duration and for no concrete reason. actually hanging out felt positively liquid and very nice. opportunity strikes when i least expect it.
cliches exist for their truth. nevertheless i hate them.
a mural

walking at night

i love having my life back.
(when i'm not in such a blissy mindset, i will undoubtedly overscrutinize the fallacies of my character that lead me to 'give up' my life for other people in the first place.)

how other people live

my friend m moved into a new unit in his building in downtown seattle. the entire place is a habitrail of amazing art, both in the common areas and inside his apartment. he now has a loft with a glass ceiling ala 'barefoot in the park' that opens onto a private roof across the street from the seattle art museum.
i took many more pictures than this.





i could never be in this environment with t.
he moved everything out this saturday while i was at work. i came home to find the walls bare, the closets empty, geddy lee gone. it was sobering... and really fucking relaxing. i turned on the lights and took a long 3am shower with the door open, then read in bed for as long as i wanted. little things make me happy. it had been a long time since i'd done such things. sunday i cleaned and rearranged, incredibly content, pushing aside the worry that i'm probably going to be one of those old spinsters who always lives alone. but is it prefering solitude... or just choosing the wrong people to do it with?
he still does not know how to be honest, communicate, be accountable. he snivels and sulks and flakes around and tells the same fucking stories and says "i didn't mean to" and "i don't know why i do that" far too much. and i am still driven insane by these mannerisms, shrill to the point of violence, learning that i can actually bruise the palms of my hands by smacking the wall hard enough. "you're a fucking adult!" i would yell, the apex of maturity myself. "how can you not know how you're coming across or why you're doing something?"
he reacted horribly to some things i told him about our time apart- something that happened to me about a year and a half ago that only s knew about. t freaked out and... acted like a fucking bully, basically. and i told him then that this was not working and to get out of my home. i said "i refuse to live like this again."
he agreed to see a counselor. i am not holding my breath. we are still 'together', but that almost feels like default at this point. he does not know, for example, the extent to which i'm planning moving from seattle this winter. that's a conversation i have no fucking desire to get into. there are reasons, after all, why we're divorced.
but i still, naively, believe in eternal love. and i fucking forgive everybody. these traits tend to backfire.