bedazzled!

i have had several dreams about the glenn highway- i'm always somewhere near fort richardson, walking through the woods. there is snow on the ground. the forest is birch and not too dense; the trail is wide and the snow's been compressed by skis and boots. there is a frozen lake through the trees. i feel peaceful. i pass people who i don't recognize; everyone smiles pleasantly. nothing climactic really happens; it's just... nice. i had the dream again last night.
*
on sunday i had my first true allergic reaction. i developed a hideously itchy red rash, complete with hives and swollen eyes, about 30 minutes after i ate my typical breakfast. i went to the er. the symptoms were already abating. "what did you eat today?" i catalogued my childish menu: peanuts and dry corn chex, some pita bread, and a shitload of salsa that i pretty much ate straight. "peanuts are highly allergenic" the doctor said sternly. "but i have peanuts every single day" i whined. and it's true. i do not recall a day within at least a year in which i have not included peanuts in my morning repast. "the salsa was new" i said reluctantly. i have had salsa countless times before- i love it so!- but not recently. "allergies can start spontaneously" the doctor said. i have eaten peanuts every morning since with no afteritch, but i have not touched salsa. perhaps it was just a bad batch. i hope for that. my dietary restrictions are annoying enough without eliminating something else i fucking adore.
they gave me prednisone.
i love prednisone.
*
'bela legosi's dead' plays.
*
i finally worked at bailey-boushay on monday. I LOVED IT. it affirmed what i want to do with my massage license. confidentiality clauses mean that i do not know what specific ailments my clients have; they're in hospice care, and it's primarily an AIDS home that's expanded to include terminal cancer patients, dementia, ALS. when the facility was founded in the early 90s it was entirely HIV/AIDS; the diversity now is due to the efficacy of retrovirals and increased lifespan. both clients were tremendously appreciative. client #1 was a pressure junkie- he lay on his bed, cooing "oh, that's perfect" while i ground my fists into his back. his radio was airing an interview with the author of "weekends at bellevue", about working the psychiatric ER at the eponymous hospital. we had the same conversation five times: he would ask what month it was, then say that he'd forgotten his birthday in september, then say "yay, cake!" my second client, a wraithlike woman of about 45, was watching 'dancing with the stars' while i did reflexology on her feet. we talked the entire time. she made snide comments about the dancers and said "all you need to do to be famous nowadays is have sex with a celebrity." at the end of the visit she complemented my tattoos and gave me a hug.
i felt fucking high when the evening ended. everything i've done for the last 15 months suddenly makes perfect sense.
*
structural integration continues. i had my psoas bilaterally released today- fists dug into my abdomen. it felt fucking awesome. i feel downright lithe now.
*
this evening has been spent in a benevolent float. i kind of ruined it by returning to the odious chain bookstore to continue reading "methland" (about 100 pages in one sitting). this book contains one of the most horrifying passages i've ever encountered: a longterm meth addict thinks he sees severed heads hanging from the trees outside his lab, and all the heads are looking into the windows, and he realizes, hallucinatorily, that they're spooks from the FDA and he's being cased, so he gets rid of all his equipment/flammable chemicals in the basement floor drain, then lights a cigarette. the place, which is actually his mother's home, goes up in flames, and the decades of ephemera his mother has stored in the basement are getting destroyed, so he frantically saves as much as he can- returning into the house repeatedly, trying to put the fire out with buckets of water from the upstairs sink, eventually tearing the sink out of the wall in frustration and throwing it into the flames because the faucet isn't filling things fast enough- and one of the times he runs back outside with an armful of stuff, he wonders how he got egg white on his arms, so he pulls it, but it's not egg white- it's his fucking body, which is boiling, and skin hangs off of him in burnt strips, so he starts pulling his skin off in the front yard, feet of it. by the time the police came he couldn't shout for help because his esophagus was completely charred. he lived. he still does meth. he had to retrain himself to hold the lighter with the nubs of his arms, because his fingers melted off. and he lost his nose. he still lives with his mother; she has a new house now.
i read that with my hand over my mouth. i think i audibly said "oh my god."
*
the book is based on oelwein, iowa... with sundry forays to other similarly depressed towns throughout the midwest. it should be read by everyone.
*
i learnt this weekend that i am one of 15% of the population who pees red after i eat beets! this freaked me out for most of saturday- i was at work and felt completely fine- but i was urinating magenta! what the fuck? it was so busy that i didn't have a chance to research the matter until about 1130pm, when i recalled something about beets. sure enough! if you google "beets", it scrolls down a list of popular subcategories. #2 was "beets + urine". i was so triumphant that i promptly told everyone at work. "i've been peeing pink all day and it's because of beets!" i said giddily. "this only happens to about 15% of people!" i got two high-fives and one "you were peeing pink all day?"
i am slightly embarrassed by how many people i have bragged about this to.
*
level two of east coast swing started tuesday. it's awesome. someday i may even be good at it.
*
earl and joe are drinking at a bar. joe gets very drunk and vomits all over his shirt. "my wife's gonna kill me" he slurs to earl. "she just bought me this shirt." earl says "tell her i puked on you" and stuffs a $20 bill in his front pocket. "and tell her the $20 is for a new shirt." joe goes home and his wife notices his shirt. "earl got sick" joe says "but he put $20 in my pocket for a new shirt." his wife pulls out the money. "but there's $40 here" she says. "yeah" says joe. "he shit in my pants too."

vibrations

the end of the term is panicking me. i have been stressed out and lonely and tense. i'm trolling options frantically- and hitting dead ends at every turn. do i really want to learn craniosacral therapy in canada, or do i just want a legitimate reason to live in vancouver for a few months?... the latter. i feel stupid, being so predictably clausterphobic of my very, very nice life. i have a great job. i know some good people. i saw barbara ehrenreich say surly things that she was not able to back up logically.

things that have happened over the last few days (the full spectrum):
-a homeless man told me i had a "nice ass"
-i read "the oil jar and other stories" by luigi pirandello, which is quite good.
-started reading "methland", which is just despairing. it completely captures the flat leafless coldness and the wood panelling and the stultifying hopelessness of middle america.
-the muscles from my sacrum to my greater trochanter were clumsily ground by an inexperienced elbow. i stared into space and waited for it to stop.
-more people told me to leave my hair long than to cut it, which is slightly depressing.
-a group of women at the next table just stared at me as the waitress delivered my drink. like i don't feel nerdy enough, thanks. i smiled back, stupidly. i think i even said "what?" but it was lost in the ambient din.
-i learnt that a one-way ticket to paris in march is $829, with 2 stops: london and warsaw. one stop tickets jump to $1250-something. i am just being ridiculous, but i cannot stop looking.
-i bought a $99 raincoat. ninety-nine dollar. raincoat. i feel obscene, but i will have it for years. and, pussy that i am, i don't like being sopping wet as much as i pretend to.
-i was told i have "good presence."
-started watching "the onion movie"- based on the fabulous publication. it is funny as shit and offends everybody, but i really should not be sober when viewing it. and so far, i have been. i needed to get my mind off 'paranormal activity', which i am embarassed to admit to. such is the onus of living alone.
-one of the enumclaw horsefuckers fucked some other horses in, i believe, tennessee (kentucky?). it was in the paper. this man was the owner of the farm that served
'purposes of bestiality' and that the one guy, whose name i sadly don't recall, perforated his colon and died at. this was big news in seattle a few years ago: washington, home of serial killers and horsefuckers...
horse penises are huge! they scarcely belong in a horse's vagina, much less in a human rectum!
that is all i've got to say about that.
*
a mouth is just another hand.

so the barbara ehrenreich lecture! i loved 'nickled and dimed'; i first read it whilst living in thurston county and gave my copy to a doctor i worked with who was obsessed with 'the daily show.' i have read some of her other books and found them less lustrous and more preachy. she was a cranky-mouthed wench tonight. the audience was overwhelmingly white, earnest, >50, and clap-happy. her new book is about eschewing the Optimism!!! that's forced upon american culture. she went through treatment for breast cancer a few years ago and was stricken by the condescending 'have a good attitude and you shall heal' expectation she was assaulted with. someone in the audience cited lance armstrong describing his cancer as 'the best thing' that had ever happened to him. "well, sir, you've had a sorry life" she said. "cancer is not a gift and you can take me off your christmas list."
*
so, of course, i thought about my attitude towards things- how if i'm not, ultimately, optimistic (or at least, not pessimistic) about things, i am dead. i whine and complain and stagnate in this fucking blog (how i loathe that term) but if i didn't have some modicum of tra!la! i wouldn't write. i still wonder if tomorrow will be the best fucking day ever... since it obviously won't be today, because today was pretty fucking middle of the road. tomorrow, god damn it. thus, i am an optimist.
i am also self-sabotagingly passive.
fall into my lap, joy! i shall spread my legs ever wider!

you know i love you.

bailey-boushay was cancelled AGAIN. we are 3 weeks into the term, with only 7 weeks left EVER, and there was apparently a problem with our class' paperwork. i blame my instructor, a frustrating flake who has yet to return our research papers and business plans from last term (though he has, inexplicably, graded them). m and i saw 'paranormal activity' instead. tickets were $10.50 apiece. "jesus, i remember when-" i started to say, then smiled sympathetically at the guy behind the counter. "you probably get that a lot." he smiled back and nodded.
'paranormal activity' was good. very tense. i love movies that don't show anything. the ending was not nearly as creepy as the end of 'blair witch', but it came very, very close.
*
i placed my first triple lumen central line in, of all things, a fucking basset hound yesterday. triple-lumens are just something i've never had the opportunity to do- i've done singles for years. washington state law just changed the laws for veterinary medicine, so now one must be a licensed tech to set up and deliver blood transfusions; to read and interpret cytologies and urinalyses; to inject medication IV into a non-catheterized vein; to induce and monitor anesthesia; and to place double- and triple-lumen catheters. done, done, and done. placing a triple lumen involves a cut-down of the skin near the jugular (so you're not tearing through leather), catheter placement, dilating the vein with a hard plastic thing, and feeding the 12" line down the vein. suture the thing in, take a lateral radiograph to make sure it's not tickling the heart, and sterily bandage. "yay!" i sang when all 3 ports flushed effectively. it was not as difficult as i'd always imagined. i love being reminded that i'm still not jaded at something i'm good at and used to.
*
i woke up from a dream...
i'm on a beach in australia. it's twilight- the sun has fully set and the sky has lost its redness. i am talking to a guy. he is obviously not local, but i don't want to ask if he's from new zealand because i don't want to offend him.
we're on a cross-country bus together. the aisle lights are on and the overall ambience is dim. we are making out voraciously, bodies entwined, murmuring our life stories to one another. it is after hours of this, in the dream, that i remember the rest of the passengers. they are mostly asleep. i have that familiar, giddy-yet-melancholy feeling of being nostalgic for my life even as it happens- knowing it will never be this open and rudderless again.
i awoke still tired. bleary. abstractly wistful.
*
i met a man one night in paris. we were both staying at the hostel and decided to walk around- he was leaving the next day. we went to the top of the eiffel tower. a scarf had been tied to one of the metal beams and was blowing sideways in the altitude. i remember thinking "this is how any place should be experienced." there is potential for incredible luster at any turn. i was, predictably, sad when he left, even though i'd known him for merely 12 hours. i walked him to the metro station in my overcoat and combat boots, unshowered. and when i left the metro station the sky was grey and the hour was early and i remember thinking "i am in fucking paris and i have nowhere to go."
i went back to the hostel, if i recall, and ate a baguette with bottled pesto, and then i probably walked around and felt self-indulgently morose, and spoke to people in french only to have them impatiently answer me in english.
*
i just went on craigslist paris to see about flats- i do that every few weeks. they are still expensive as shit and priced by the week.
*
montreal is a bit more reasonable.
*
the rubber band is about to snap, as usual. soundtrack: syd barrett "terrapin."
no edit

it is dark now and i am that face in the window

it has rained all day. it's beautiful and misty and when i arrived to the cafe where i am now typing this, frizzy and damp-sweatered, the woman behind the counter asked how it was outside, and when i laughingly said that "it's rather wet" and added that i've never owned an umbrella or a raincoat, she congratulated me on being a true seattleite.
i went to bailey-boushay today to have my forearm affirmed for my 2nd negative tb titer. i walked by 24th and union:

i wandered around the facility for a while. the place is fucking fantastic. everyone who works there seems incredibly cool. there is a 'meditation room' (because it's not affiliated with any churchy crap, thank god) where people, residents and staff, can go at any time to decompress:

this is part of the room's window.

i finished mackenzie phillip's autobiography today. it is not a fucking picker-upper. i suppose i am relieved to be so horrified by the reality of addiction- there are some things in the world i simply don't understand. i vowed when i was a teenager that i would never try cocaine, never try speed... the things i suspect would unravel me because i would fucking love them too much. and, to my credit, i never have.
for fuck's sake, i bought stuff from p two months ago and it remains in my kitchen cabinet, ignored, in a jar that once held "seattle mariners extra-fancy tartar sauce". this, however, i attribute more to the fact that he sold me the equivalent of fucking oregano and not because i have suddenly acquired self-restraint.
after finishing the book, my bailey-boushay beatificness devolved somewhat. being flaked on by d, again, hasn't really perked me up either.
to make myself feel happier, i took a picture of an antique vending machine:

yesterday i was slothing around the lair with the pusses. this photograph reminds me that, god damn it, i am one of Those People... people who own plural cats and take pictures of them.

and i love Those Kinds of People, but sometimes i do feel like i am obliviously foraging my own slow, purposeful path to bona fide spinsterhood.
the cats and i were listening to mumiy troll. i first listened to them a few years ago and didn't like them much... generic rock akin to, fuck, the archangels. but some of their songs are okay. and everything sounds much more exotic and sinister when sung in russian.

in the mood for a melody?

today i 'orientated', which is completely not a word, at the bailey-boushay house. after a 3 hour long, ass-cramping lecture by the director (a man who looks like he should be british), we lined up like cattle to get our flu vaccines and, in my case, my 2nd tb titer. i had never had a flu vaccine before today; i am generally opposed to such things. eight hours later, i am asymptomatic and not discovering a latent intolerance to eggs, so i can officially recommend it to everyone.
i really am jazzed about this. this is the sort of work i want to get into. time shall tell.
staff meeting (learning more about transfusion protocols and the wonders of plasma supernate), then driving home in blinding sun-after-rain whilst listening to kzok's "classic rawk a to z." they are in the i's... an excellent letter for music. i heard 'in the air tonight' before having my tire freed of an errant nail. returnal to the vehicle yielded 'in the evening', 'in the mood' (i LOVE this song, the surfy guitar/synthiness, the vargas print-coke-fueled-fucking vibe), and 'in the summertime.' i hate mungo jerry. thankfully, i bypassed the inevitable 'inna gadda da vida.'
the torrential downpour of this morning evolved quite lyrically into this, as seen from my street.

seattle is fucking picturesque. this is the prettiest place i have ever seen, except for perhaps paris, but that is cliche enough to vomit over.
i am an ardent fan of the cities that reveal their allure coquettishly, under petticoats of grit and impermeability, but often it's quite nice to have beauty handed to you... and watch its citizens look happy and bewildered in its glow.
the space needle, today, reflected.

this is a day when people smile back. sometimes they smile first. i love my world. you get what you give...

and even lana turner smiled

ballard, especially leary way, has been transformed into a glut of generica. this is a mammoth retirement community (for what, "60 years young!"?) that takes up an entire block. the architecture is fucking hideous (fake decks, shades of brown, no exterior variation- lazy, bullshit aesthetics) but the name of the building, or rather the signage, almost makes it okay:

am i the only one who sees that?
fall is glorious here. this is one block from the lower campus (the amazing brick annex) of my school.

yesterday i had crippling cramps and left class early. i took a bus to ballard (where i finally stopped to take the above picture), bought some ibuprofen and tea, and met some friends in north seattle. they had already been drinking for a few hours. we ended up at the mandarin gate, a scary-ass chinese restaurant in a strip mall off aurora, in their glaringly lit lounge, singing karaoke. i had not done that in years. i was comfortably buzzed but m, in particular, was trashed. why do gay men become heterosexually swarthy when they're drunk? he was rubbing his groin against my ass. "what are you doing?" i asked, laughing. ten minutes later he was vomiting inside someone else's car.
we sang "summer nights", then four of us sang "build me up buttercup", and when it was just her and i, i sang "fever." it had been a long time since i'd done karaoke... since alaska. apparently a man at the bar was snapping along. i had forgotten how much i enjoy it... especially in complete dives where the drinks are ridiculously strong and made with utter rotgut and i will never encounter any of the other patrons again... unless i go back.
*
today i finished my last swing 1 class; i start level 2 in two weeks. we learned the spin/jump move. "my baby just cares for me" plays. that is a hard song to dance to- the tempo is disarmingly slow- but it filled me with good memories. today has just been a great day. there is no reason for this, nothing spectacular that has occured; i'm just... good. i feel zesty and happy and engaged and alive. i feel like a competent human being, comfortable with my own company. I DON'T FEEL WISTFUL OR LIKE I'M MISSING OUT ON ANYTHING. that is surely a more adequate definition.
i shall appreciate its finiteness.

count me out

today evolved into a stellar fall day... the sharp edges and bright colors that make this my favorite season after spring. (winter loses the banal 'favorite season' battle, always.)

i took d to hump 5, the stranger's annual amateur pornfest, as his graduation present. there was nothing that really titillated me this year (see: orgasm denial, 2008), but several were quite good. i voted for the lesbian and gay man, slothing around and complaining how horny they were, and reluctantly deciding to try each other out. it was fucking awesome. what else... a woman in a filthy cell peeing through her underwear into her hand, then having her clothes torn off my gravel-covered hands. that was slightly disturbing. watching an old (65+) man get whipped, shocked, and burned with a cigar... also slightly disturbing (although i didn't actually cringe until the cigar ember went on the inside of his lower lip and she ashed into his mouth). the FUCKING TRAFFIC CONE going up the woman's ass disturbed me. the long metal hook going up her ass, twisting, and then being accompanied by a huge penis REALLY disturbed me. the wire whisk being inserted into her hairless vagina, then twirled, was also unsettling, but i blame that more on her hairlessness (seeing the sagging lips of an adult twat is never right- it's akin to bringing a bat into a brightly lit aerie) than the implement. the more 'lighthearted' stuff- the two girls making out, innocently, was very hot. the rap about "MUH BIG DICK", accompanied by crude cartoons of mayor nickels, ballgagged and getting whipped. one adorable stoner boy from portland ejaculating in very public portlandian venues 10 times in 24 hours... interspersed of him making, then fucking, a sand-wench on the beach "'cause this is what happens when your girlfriend's in rehab.'"
d and i parted ways soon after. a man on the street told me i had nice eyes. and then i passed robyn fucking hitchcock on the corner of 1st and bell. i am going to his show tonight- so i will see if it was, in fact, him. we made eye contact, that smirky tension before the smiling calm. "holy shit, that was robyn fucking hitchcock!" i thought as i walked past. i wonder if he will recognize me obnoxiously taking pictures... i am still wearing my colorful, memorable scarf.
*
4 days ago, lair, seattle washington. i am frizzy and sleepy and unwashed and forgot to unzoom after taking pictures of fucking plants or whatnot.

last night the internist was called in to remove a rock from a cat's trachea. we had taken radiographs to rule out asthma and- "patrick [the doctor], this cat's got a foreign body!" how the fuck does a cat suck a rock into its trachea? dogs, i can understand- dogs are incredibly stupid. but cats? his name was hugo. i monitored the anesthesia, which involved holding the cat's head upright and feeling him breathe against my arm and ignoring his cyanosis as the internist cursed and prodded with the bronchioscope. when it came out we all cheered. the cat's tongue and gums became pink immediately. "that's a $600 rock" the doctor said, dropping it onto the tray. he freaked out whilst waking up from the anesthesia. we had to give him midazolam so he would stop thrashing around in the cage.
*
i have still never had general anesthesia. i plan to keep it that way as long as possible.
*
when you're organizing a drawer, you're a 'drawerganizer.' i learned that last night at work. i laughed raucously. "brynn's the only one who'd appreciate that" someone said.

my god! what have i done?

we started 'structural bodywork' today. the school cannot call it 'structural integration' because we are not taught the 10 points of rolf integration. it looks pretty cool thus far. the teacher is actually focused and demanding of our efforts. we have, i believe, all lapsed into the 'whatever' mindset so integral to promoting the flaky-massage stereotype... it's laughably jarring to have an instructor who starts class on time, cuts off aimless questions, and expects us to have our shit together. i like it.
i am really, really going to miss being in school.
*
my neighbor let me know that someone had left a note on the windsheild of the VW (along with my front license plate, which was creepy, since they would have had to take tools and remove it). the fucking car has been parked at a 30 degree angle from the curb, unstartable, since i had to move it out of the driveway last week. my hood embodies the classic seattle cliche of earnest white people being fucking passive aggressive. i deserved the letter- i'd been waiting for it- but it was still fucking irritating to read a page-long missive, tidily scripted, about how "cars should be moved after 48 hours and i'd hate to have you towed" and "this space is meant for 4 cars" and "signed, a neighbor." i actually looked in the car for a pen so i could write something snotty on the back of it, or at least draw a sarcastic smiley face to reattach to my windsheild. instead i flagged two men in a volvo (of course, a volvo) to help me push sweet green into a more suitable curbside position.
i have had two calls about selling her. the second was from a friend of the aforementioned neighbor. i don't really want to sell her to someone i am in any way related to... 1. i don't want to see her being treated properly, because it will make me feel like shit, and 2. overall, she's kind of a death trap. better to inflict potential fuckery anonymously... and i'm a fucking asshole.
*
the other night, still feeling like ass, i surveyed my meager collection of dvds. i NEVER watch movies at my house... it's a two-three times a year kind of thing, and only if i'm ailing or completely fucking sulky. but i buy a lot of crap, and i have all these bizarre dvds from the dollar store, most of which i have yet to unwrap. one of them stars a young jodie foster and a hirsute john lithgow... i would date it early/mid 80s? it is called "mesmerized."
HOLY SHIT. IT IS AWFUL.
it wasn't even good-bad. it was surreal. i had never heard of it, and know i know why.
*
the cafe i am at is playing the talking heads. "people in seattle sure love the talking heads" one of the papers said recently (david byrne was in town for a reading; i was at work, fucking damn it) and it's true. one cannot go anyplace or turn on any commercial radio station without hearing "once in a lifetime." this is fine. the talking heads are to seattle what, say, bad company are to the anchorage of my memory.

it's candle season.

with a picture of a featherific james spader, how can one be glum?

the dullard

maybe i'm still ailing... but i am more inclined to blame my surly, apathetic fog on bullshit.
the sixth and final term of school started today. it was a random, haphazard class... to be composed into nine weeks of seminars focusing on our various interests. this could be amazing, it could be a flaky fuck-all. next week we revisit body mechanics, something i definitely need more help in. i was supposed to start my first evening at the bailey-boushay house tonight, working with people with AIDS, dementia, and other hospice-warranting ailments, but there was a scheduling conflict between them and the school. i don't start there, then, until the asscrack of dawn (well, 9am) on wednesday the 14th. i was really looking forward to this, but due to my mood, this delay is probably not a bad thing.
i briefly saw d after school. i felt disgust. perhaps my standards are too high for friends, and that is why i have very few. but really: be nice. acknowledge me to your friends. communicate. don't be fucking passive-aggressive and make me feel like everything is my fucking fault. last week really disturbed me- not only how he treated me, but seeing the sources of his behavior (his parents) and feeling almost crawly about their dysfunction. d is the sort of person who, if he doesn;t like the way a conversation is going, pretends he doesn't hear it. and i'm fucking tired of the mindfuck 'multiple personality' bullshit. i have neglected to get into this on this forum thus far, out of 'respect' for him and out of mortification for myself, but: FUCK THAT. fuck his namby-pamby inability to deal with reality, fuck his dragging other people (like gullible, or at least benefit-of-the-doubt-giving ME) into his fucked up vortex, fuck his manipulation, fuck his taking advantage of people's kindness, fuck his FUCKING BULLSHIT.
i feel like a fucking idiot to even type that, to publicly acknowledge how fucking pathetic i am to allow such bullshit into my life at all.
*
seattle: lots of winners here.
*
"we need to talk about hawaii" i said tonight, and then i left. my chronic peurility makes any gripe i have towards the other person fade in the glow of my own assholery. he had asked if i'd wanted to help him move boxes- like, right then. "no" i had said. "i have to go." i was still feeling cruddy, and pissed off, and- no.
*
today, my class... proof i'm not completely dysfunctional.

with pangs of sadness and "what a fucking loser i am", i put sweet green on craigslist today. i haven't gotten a single response yet. i must admit, i am pleased by this.
i will continue this later, perhaps.

wrung

i went to bed asymptomatic at 3am. i woke at 5 with hellacious food poisoning. i can only assume it's food poisoning because i don't have a fever. i was up for over an hour being horrified by how disgusting my body can be. i called in sick to work. went back to sleep. woke at 1130, still ill. and STARVING. i ate gingerly whilst reading the sunday paper. the day outside was brilliant and sunny, a perfect fall sunday. so i fell asleep on the couch until it was dark again.
i hate sleeping the day away. i am still bleary and residually nasty-feeling, but i blame that more on being completely detached from the rest of the world's day. the moon is full. it's very pretty.
i had a very vivid dream that i was spontaneously driving to reno. i stopped at a garage-sale thing en route; a preacher-sort was lecturing a group of people about the merits of phish. i purchased a phish windchime. (this is actually the sort of fucking crap i dream about.) as i was leaving a dog approached me. "he needs a home" the man said. a bedraggled female nearby said "oh! he loves you! you have to name him 'church!'" i agreed to take the dog. the man started packing him into a metal barrel, surrounding him with something akin to aquarium gravel. "will he be able to breathe?" i ask, horrified. "oh yeah" the man says offhandedly. "we pack all our dogs this way." the dog is staring at me, confused, as the man lowers the lid.
i am driving a red sports car. i start out across the desert. it is dark when i get to reno- in the dream, it is a blip of obnoxious lights surrounded by black ether. (i cannot recall how it looked when i was there to be married, other than many shades of brown.) i pull into a fancy hotel parking garage like i belong there; i deeply want to find a pool or sauna. the hotel, in the dream, is the one t and i stayed in when we were married. the halls are decked out in the most garish of 80s cliches: fake grey marble, light sconces in shades of magenta and teal- like a very tacky mall. i enter the 'health spa' room on a random floor with no trouble- the amenities consist of a 7' square sunken whirlpool and a potted fern. and then i remember the dog, encased in a barrel in the back of the car. i return to the car; he is unaffected. we walk down the dark alley behind the hotel, under the buzzing floodlight affixed to an adjacent warehouse. the stars are still visible; the air is soft and warm. and i'm feeling panicked- why the fuck did i adopt this dog? i want to go home. why the fuck am i in reno? how could i have ever come up with this idea, much less imagined it to be a good one?
*
when i woke i felt slightly frantic. the room was dim. i looked out the window, at the sunset reflecting off the windows of capitol hill. "fuck" i said aloud. i felt incredibly, scarily lonely at that moment.
*
on a happier note: my passport arrived yesterday. it is safely contained in a drawer in my kitchen... until my lair burns down, that is.
i have really bad feelings about going to hawaii. i don't want to. i don't want to go with him. i tell myself to relax- i can fly over there and do my own thing, stay by myself, we never have to see each other- this is an awesome opportunity regardless, right?
depression, if you will, has hit me hard in the last week. everything is suddenly dark and cold and routine. the things that i feel would 'fix' everything are beyond my control... and 'fixing' is its own fucking fallacy.

this has been heard before

perhaps i don't show my appreciation enough when it matters; i tweak my karma by taking things for granted and being lulled by the fancy of the mundane. my jubilance of earlier today has devolved to pissy moroseness. i just want to feel fucking special. maybe i missed the finite window of mattering in anyone else's world. i am continually reminded that kindness does not beget kindness, it just makes one feel like a fucking sap. people either value you or they don't; you either stand out or you don't; you take what you can get, no matter how shitty the scraps make you feel.
'you', of course, is 'me.' i feel fucking pathetic and used right now. i want to do self-loathing unwise things. i am tired of being my own fucking cheerleader and giving myself tinny-voiced pep talks: today might suck, self, but tomorrow may be the best fucking day of your life!
*
i went to olympia on wednesday. i am so fucking relieved to no longer live there. it was nice to visit it objectively, not feeling haunted by the past. the vagrants still stumble down state street; the older women still wear mall-bought caftans; the men of all ages still have scrubby beards and tangled locks. the "coexist" bumper sticker is very popular there. i walked by the places we used to go, none of which are still in business. 'the reef' was an excellent diner downtown... it's now boarded up. 'the ribeye' (a 24hr dive with tater tots and pulltabs- i never played, but liked knowing i had the option) has been renamed something generic, even though 'the ribeye' had been there for 40-something years. i never went 'out' in olympia. i drove around a LOT. i know all the ax-murderer-sheltering back roads of thurston county, whipping down the narrow lanes at 2am, alone with the high beams on, smoking, blaring music. i cannot even relate to that era- the facts, when recalled, frighten me with the extent of how fucking unhappy i was.
5th avenue, midday. the only thing that crossed my path, honest to christ, was an obese brown rat.

surely i can wrangle some positive memories of that era/area:
-walking from the grocer to my own place, the funky studio in downtown across from the library, where i lived for 2 months while there was a restraining order against t. irises, i think, were on sale. i am never one to buy cut flowers, but that day i did. i bought them totally for myself. the trees were beginning to blossom. i distinctly remember smiling as i walked.
-t and i driving around aimlessly one afternoon. we passed a mexican restaurant and he said "ohhh, OKAY" and abruptly pulled into the parking lot. we hadn't even talked about getting food. moments like that were, and will always be, the things that completely charmed me.
-the smell of the co-op. i would stop there before my overnight shift. they had the curry cashews before anyone else carried them (they are now available in the bulk section of fred meyer and somehow not nearly as delicious).
-wandering the flats of mud bay, alone, watching seagulls watch me. something about a beach makes me feel like a little kid. i tap my foot against the wet sand and admire its tensegrity. i always pick up and examine the crabs under rocks. i stomp on the kelp that we used to call "chicken feet." sometimes it squeaks. sometimes it just flattens with a sigh.
-the night the remastered, un-phil-spectered version of 'let it be' came out, KZOK played it uninterrupted in its entirety. i made t drive around for the 42 minutes of the album. "i think i actually might not hate this 'long and winding road'" i said.
-buying used (old, kitschy, culinarily unpalatable) cookbooks at the cooper's point goodwill. there are a lot of old compound-dwelling folks in those parts; hence, that goodwill is a pretty good one for books and ephemera.
-b picking grapes off the vine behind OPE. he actually did make wine from them but i never got to sample it.
-hearing 'the lamb lies down on broadway' on the college radio station.
-the creepy death-house i looked at when i needed to move. it was a saggy-roofed hovel in the middle of an overgrown field on a dead end street; it even had tarpaper over the windows. the interior ceiling was maybe 7' high. i was polite to the guy who showed me the space. i thought "well, i want to be alone, right? i could plant sunflowers or something." but the place made my skin crawl. bad, horrible things had happened there- i could feel it. i left and clearly remember reminding myself to trust my fucking instincts.
-the bulk aisle at the downtown metropolitan market.
-a's bombastic dahlias.
-the black houses of olympia.
-the railroad tracks underneath hwy 510.
*
there really isn't much else. every other memory has a patina of ugliness, loneliness, and hopelessness. and a triplicate of '-ness' words sounds extremely contrived and immaturely dramatic.
*
to the present: 'last dance with mary jane' plays, usurping 'check your head.'
when i was in oly on wednesday, i did see this, which thrilled me- that is, after the initial "oh NO... that's AWFUL" reaction.

i immediately got the fucking south park line about 'going to the plane'arium' in my head- so my trek through downtown olympia was backgrounded with that particular nugget.
*
i went to see my parents. i hadn't been to their lair since june. i returned home with a sackful of vegetables from their garden. i had never picked beans- fuck, i didn't even know one picked beans- until wednesday. my parents got drunk. they both held it well, but i watched how many times they refilled their glasses. my father was very pleased about the long-awaited installation of his tap (now he doesn't have to go to the garage to get more beer). my mother had 1.5 bottles of wine, then at least 2 pints of beer; i lost count with my father. they showed me their stunning pictures of yellowstone- the pools look amazing. "it's like polenta!" i said dumbly. we complained about the government and our kin for a while, during which time i asked them for some food to absorb the 2 glasses of wine i'd had ("oh! of course!" my mother replied, sounding startled), and then my father started bleating about their new television. they certainly do buy a lot of expensive shit now. "it's digital!" my father hissed rapturously. "have you ever seen how much makeup news anchors wear?" he flipped impatiently through their hundreds of stations and we passed 'raising arizona.' "ooh!" my mother and i said at the same time. thus: the first thing i have (knowingly) seen on a digital television is the last 30 minutes of 'raising arizona.' "you wantin' we should freeze, we can't rightly drop!" i recited along without realizing it.
i fucking love that movie. i love how 'dreams' are an idea that we can never honestly apply to ourselves.
*
writing makes me feel so much better.
*
today i went to d's graduation from cortiva. i met his parents for the first time. they made me very fucking sad- what uncommunicative, depressing dickheads. i said to another friend who was there for him: "i can't believe he grew up in that environment." "well, he is adopted" she replied. "but-" they reminded me of b's parents, but infinitely worse. i glanced back at them (they were across the room) right after he received his diploma. neither were looking at the stage. that made me fucking sad.
so i can understand him blowing me off afterwards- i can understand a lot of his prickish behavior more clearly now- but fucking goddamn it, what if i'm having a bad day too? i petulantly think that way. and that's stupid, and i need to soldier up and get over it, and nothing is that important.
*
you know what i want? i want to make love. i want to be with someone with whom i can lie beside all night, us holding each other, and i want to go out for a fucking diner breakfast in the morning. that is what i want to be able to take for granted- i don't want to settle, so why do i keep disrespecting myself into thinking that's my only option?
*
the graduation was cool. white people cannot clap a rhythm if their lives depended on it. i got teary a few times. i sensed great pride in some people in the audience and resigned obligation in others (as with d's folks). i sucked on 2 lozenges in 2hours. my favorite teachers are still my favorites, based on what they said today.
*
my grades for 5th term came yesterday: i have a 3.6 GPA. it took 15 years of fucking around to actually be competent in school... and, slackly so, 'competent' is still plenty good enough for me.
it's just fucking massage school. who gives a fuck? does anyone even notice when i leave the room? do i remember them?
the lights here just dimmed. miles davis hisses on the hi-fi.
the pendulum is very low. i feel like an annoying goddamn litle girl.
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