frolic

i am going to be a fucking photo addict. after the initial clusterfuckery involving the demon in my 20# laptop, i am finally getting this to work, two photographs at a time.
herein lies entropy, the newest kitten. you cannot see the cyclopian absense of her right eye. she is a little shit.

and this is tiresias, yawning ferociously.

i cannot capture a flattering picture of the tombs. she is obese, flecked with dandruff, and absolutely surly when i approach her.
two cats, one eye! woo-hoo! they are like twitterpated teenagers, rolling around, licking one another. it is nauseating.

i am not that crazy cat lady. i am not.

in alaska

for every



there's a

"america's villians of the 20th century were frank lloyd wright for romanticizing the suburbs & henry ford for making the suburban dream accessible."

so sayeth one paco underhill, whose book 'call of the mall' must be read by anyone appalled/fascinated/bewildered by american culture. for example: makeup counters are always adjacent to the shoe department, so the ladies have something to occupy themselves whilst waiting for the minion to return with the size they requested. or: the layout of supermarkets invariably house the dairy products in the back, since most people always buy milk and they have to slog through everything else to get there, but consumers have grown annoyed by the inefficiency of that, and convenience stores have capitalized on milk-selling, so some supermarkets now have 'common buy' sections right near the entrance, as well as the full-throttle bowels-o-the-beast dairy area, or as i have just coined, the dairea.
fucking interesting to me, anyhow. i like knowing how i am unconsciously manipulated on a constant basis. i read 110 pages in one sitting, drinking 48oz of progressively watered-down tea from one wilting bag. i can be miserly even as i peruse tales of excess.
it is good to be back in warshington, even though i miss s and her clan like fuck. i worked 13 hrs apiece on sunday and monday, 12 on tuesday, 9.5 yesterday. today is freezing cold and very mellow. i made some delicious stuffing and burned the shit out of my mouth. this is, to my shame, the first time i have actually cooked something for myself in months. i typically feel culinarily witty if i add spices to a can of soup (that i then proceed to eat cold, from the can, with a fork since i don't like spoons. cold canned soup is actually very tasty- as long as it is not the condensed variety, obviously.)
alaska, though. i procured a digital camera whilst there and tomorrow i will try to post some photographs. the anecdotes will have to wait until then.
since being back:
-listened to ween's 'captain fantasy' over and over. this was my soundtrack when i was about 13, sitting in the nb hall at service high, sulking with my headphones. it is juvenile as fuck but still pretty great. i have not heard anything of ween's after 'the mollusk.' it is odd, how one can love the shit out of a band but never pursue them further.
-learned that heating up one of the 1L fluid bags/hot water bottles from work and keeping it in my lap on the drive home from work helps me freeze a tiny bit less. "don't you have a heater?" one of the other techs, a guy who once owned a bug, asked. "yeah, but it's not hooked up" i said. "why?" "because it's been too cold to mess with it" i said. yeah, funny. i am a shitty bug owner. but damned if they don't teach you how to improvise.
-had my employee review. "excellent across the board" they said. this is at my tacoma job (i don't start in seattle until next week). twice a year everyone reviews everyone. it is a stressful experience, made especially bullshittish by the fact that we must put our names at the top. i was reminded of the evil slam books of my youth. i will fucking miss that place. i will still be on call for relief shifts. "do i get to keep my locker?" i asked, half-joking. "of course" they replied. good, since i have a stupid rosie the riveter sticker permanently adhered to it, and i feel rather guilty.
-cases at work: angus, the GDV with thrombocytopenia (discovered after already in surgery) that bled out post-op, from every orifice, mainly his ass. another GDV surgery (jessie) last night that i was monitoring, neccessitating a gastrotomy because the stomach tube wouldn't pass, proceeding to spill a huge mass of stomach contents, including spaghetti, into the abdominal cavity; the stray cat with hideous flea dermatitis who i fell in love with, despite his pendulous gonads; everything else is a fucking blur, by choice. lots of DKA, lots of wounds (including a yorkie who was shot through her kidney), lots of strays. i am rather exhausted still.
*
suburbia be damned; i do love frank lloyd wright. my pulse slows just looking at his buildings.

and what shall

i am happy and i feel good about everything.
or: it is all handle-able. there is nothing that cannot be dealt with.
i needed this.
more later.

what was

nothing changes here. this is cockle-warming and depressing at once. the only real difference: my world is somewhere else now.
i arrived in anchorage as the sun was setting. tis a damned homely place. i was grinning uncontrollably as i got off the plane. everything was tinted golden: the scant snow, the puny trees, the filthy pickup trucks on the road. being back prompts an eerie "well, of course" feeling- it's home in a very seamless and clausterphobic way, like the smell of a former lover's neck- you know it far too well and it's both wonderful and "get the fuck away from me"... anchorage is a former lover's neck. i should make bumper stickers.
my insomnia has followed me here. i do not recall the last time i slept more than 5 hours in a night. but here it is six-thirty a.m. and will be pitch black outside for hours, and i only just remembered whilst sitting here (in a dark room) that oh yeah, it's my birthday too. and thanksgiving. and the 44th anniversary of JFK's assassination. and one of the babies in an adjacent room just woke up crying.
*
we went to darwin's last night. of course. i saw so many people i knew, people i knew FROM THERE... people who were STILL THERE, nearly six years later, looking a bit aged... it was really fucking good to see some people, very stultifying to see others- most of the latter were s's friends anyhow, people i smiled politely at in passing, people who called me "bree". ike and tina on the hi-fi. the smell of popcorn. the remodeled bathroom where the position of the toilet forces my knees against the wall. a crushed can somersaulting down the alley in the wind. IT IS WARMER HERE THAN IN SEATTLE. i was complimented on my firm handshake. the very good thing about s having kids and therefore a curfew: we leave early and lucidly. responsibility? self-pride? the people i remembered who were there when we arrived were possibly still there when we left.
anchorage is a dirty, pathetic little town. i fucking left for many, many reasons. but i do love this place. i love the blue lights in the town square, the neighborhood by elderberry park, the murals behind the panhandler bar, the alaska zoo charity-things hanging all over the gas station i will always know as a mapco, the fucking amazing fries at peggy's with the stacks of pie boxes on the u-shaped bar, the sloppy back roads and the cars parked in yards and people's inherent effusiveness, that giddy feeling that i could possibly run into someone i know at any time, the proof of a past.

shitterpated

i got the job at the local ER. for the first time in almost five years, i will be working in the city where i live. i am very pleased about this.
raining like hell. no place sells rain-x. my car is a death trap. the classic rock station is doing their entire catalog a-z as a holiday precursor. the disc jockey said "isn't this just one of those beautiful pacific northwest days that you dream about?" as i hydroplaned blindly. "it's a good day" said he, "to slog through the ARRRs." 'roundabout' was the last one i heard before i exited my vehicle, still repeating 'arrrr' to myself, swaggering around puddles.
a child is wailing in the library. it is echoing off the high ceiling. the other people at the computers were all looking disgustedly towards the source. "i was doing that earlier this week" one of the guys said. i laughed out loud, an obvious eavesdropper.
s will be in texas while i am in alaska. he grew up in college station. he has a barely perceptable accent. it is charming as fuck, actually. last night i hung out in his lair, alternately drawing and looking at his banksy book while he went through a huge bag of junk mail. he found a box of cellulose packing peanuts. "i don't want to just throw them away" he said. i suggested he flush them. twenty minutes later they were still there, even after being mushed up by the toilet brush. "you should leave it for your roommates" i said. and he did. we were standing in the bathroom, cackling in front of a toilet that looked as if someone had just had a hellacious caseous shit, and i thought "i really adore this guy." he has been a very fucking good friend.
'dandelion', the rolling stones, 1967: backing vocals by john lennon and paul mccartney. recommended.

gary and melissa loved to make love

i met with the neurologist today. i am so tired of fucking students trailing the doctors- some privacy, please? or at least some modicum of a pleasant bedside manner? she was an unsmiling cunt. i hope she fails medical school.
the doctor showed me my latest MRI in comparison with the one taken 17 months ago. the initial splotches of inflammation are still there, joined by some other pea-sized random blips across my brain. it is like looking at cells at work, seeing what is normal and what is not, how even the abnormal is strikingly beautiful because it indicates proof. he didn't seem too concerned with any of it. he did, as i anticipated, urge me to start medication. "it's your brain, after all" he said. he described the weekly injection i would give myself, an "immuno-modifier", and how it could cause "flu-like" symptoms that "normally go away in a few months", and i said "i don't want to resign myself to that and admit that i have an issue that needs continuous treatment," all the while thinking that, miserable as the relapses are, 2 in a year and a half is not that horrid a frequency, and at least i know that what i experience now is ME, not some fucking pharmaceutical side-effect. i wish he'd offer me medical marijuana instead.
my third and final steroid infusion was today. i had my own room, a television with a remote, and two hours flipping between 'roseanne' and the food network. i had forgotten how fucking vapid the food network is. i was thinking especially rude things about sandra lee.
afterwards: i found out i got the fucking job at the local ER. i had my working interview there on friday, the day my symptoms began in earnest, and i was not on the proverbial ball whatsoever. i hit the veins, did everything well, but mentally i was not as... lively as i could have been. but apparently i made a good enough impression. "everyone really liked you and think you'd be a great addition to our team" the HR woman wrote me in an email. that fucking made my day. the caveatL the schedule sucks. but it is open to fluctuation- this is an incredibly mecurial field. she is allowing me a few days to mull it over.
it is nice to know i don't suck too badly.
it is even nicer to know that i can muster competence even with my brain covered with plaque.
and i can move a bit more of my face today.
the little things matter the most. i actually feel really fucking optimistic right now- and it may be the 'roids talking, but i also feel a hell of a lot less vulnerable than i did a few days ago.
i have always hated the soft-porn tittiness of that giada chick from the aforementioned food network, but she made something today that sounded pretty damn good, and those who can eat dairy should try this to, i don't know, impress the ladies.
i leave you with:
saute some diced onions and carrots and, i don't know, celery, in olive oil. add a package of frozen-defrosted-drained spinach and some sliced roma tomatoes. (i'm thinking mushrooms too. everything is better with mushrooms.) mix. it is pretty. in another bowl mix a container (whatever size- 8 oz?) of marscapone cheese, 1/4c grated parmiagno-reggiano, salt, pepper, and i can't remember if there was anything else, but methinks some toasted pine nuts would kick fucking ass. mix the cheese-gloop and add half the sauteed vegetable olio to it. then! you have this cute stack of pancakes- i think that would sort of suck, why not tortillas? like, ooh, those spinach or sundried tomato or rosemary ones? oh my god that would be fucking delicious! so screw the pancakes, do the tortillas. put a bit of the filling in each tortilla, or tortilla-scrap, top with mozarella, and roll them up. place them in a buttered baking dish. puree the rest of the vegetable medley and pour over the top. smother with more parmesan. add more mozzarella too. would smoked gouda be too much here? perhaps in lieu of the mozarella? fuck, i miss cheese. apparently.
bake at 350 or so for 35 minutes? or 25 minutes? i was probably flipping back to roseanne at that point. anyway, keep an eye on it.
vicarious cheese. i am sick.

what matters?

more MS.
just in time for alaska.
i have an IV catheter taped in place, hidden under my sweater on my right forearm. my elbow veins are shot from the multiple prods i recieved yesterday. "don't go shootin' up!" the male nurse said jovially as he, against hospital orders, sent me home with the IV in. "i'll do my best" i replied drily.
yesterday: i called my neurologist to describe the paralysis besetting the right side of my face. it is funny now, but it most fucking certainly wasn't when i first noticed it friday night. i had actually noticed something weird as far back as wednesday, i realize now: i was putting on chapstick and found it very difficult to rub my lips together. the cool (and i mean this unironically) thing about MS: i sm hyper-aware of every tiny vacillation in my body, anything that is at all unusual. scary thing is, i'm always fucking right.
he recommended i go to the ER. mentioned stroke, bell's palsy. shit, thought i, i have something ELSE? something NEW? i wasn't concerned about stroke, but the bell's palsy thing was new... i remembered reading about it in a fully illustrated medical book years ago- along with grave;s disease, and all those other unnattractive neuro syndromes that make for unsightly photographs.
took the bus to the ER. got a private room with a television. watched the last half of 'psycho' on the in-room television. ("i helped pick out the dress she was buried in. periwinkle blue.") had ~20mls (i asked; "you'll remake it by dinnertime") of blood drawn. went up to the MRI. they gave me headphones, set too blaringly to, per my request, the classic rock station, which was playing 3-song sets for the weekend, so i was immobile and helpless in the MRI for about 50 minutes, stuck with fucking ZZ top and van halen and several of my other least fucking favorite bands, in triplicate, thinking halfway through "what if i have a fucking brain tumor?" feeling tears go down my cheeks, itching, unable to wipe them away.
back to the room with the telly, now turned to fucking entertainment tonight, the doctor confirming MS resurgence, tethering me to the bed with an IV pump for an elephant-felling infusion of solu-medrol, stuck with the terrible television because the hospital had its remotes habitually stolen.
('such great heights' is playing at the cafe right now. this is a fucking great song. i wonder how many dewy-eyed couples lost their virginity to this.)
after i left the ER, six hours later, i burst into near-hysterical tears, yelled "FUCK" into the darkness, and kicked the shit out of the side of some building. i felt better after that.
met with s. i need more that what he can give, at least this week. but he was good for a few hours, anyway. he listened to me rand and didn't flee in revulsion while i repeatedly cried and blew my nose in public. we had tea and coffee. i am glad i did not have any alcohol last night. it would not have been wise.
today: calmer. know your enemy, then get on with it. the terror and helplessness that plagued me for the last few (incredibly draining) days has given way to... mellow. i can even find humor in it. how is it possible, for example, that i can flare my fucking nostrils but not raise my right eyebrow? i know. i've practiced. went back to the ER for a second hour-long steroid bolus. the room today was far crappier, seperated by a curtain from a 52-year-old man with rectal bleeding. i heard it all: his boyfriend bringing him food, the heart monitor beeping nonstop for about 5 minutes due to his tachycardia, the doctor giving him a rectal exam and vocalizing what he found. i stayed on my side, reading a book about how fat was always considered the aesthetic ideal until recently, and how the pendulum should swing back soon, and at one point i fell asleep, in the fetal position, knee-length hospital gown over my jeans and t-shirt.
they're playing fucking billy bragg! "a new england" is one of the best songs ever! fuck. life is sometimes poignant enough to make me cry. i think i cried everything i could yesterday. now i am left quietly, wholeheartedly appreciating.
no edit.

the deeper the cushion

this has been a fucking frustrating week. and there is really nothing i can push all the blame onto, which handily exacerbates my surliness.
some of the worst moments of my life are directly related to sex.
*
i took entropy to work with me yesterday with hopes of having her jaw-wire, and ideally her uterus, removed. i was feeling like shit already. the doctors flaked around until about 10pm, when the doctor i'd asked hours before to help me- the owner of the clinic- tried to pry the fucking wire out without any anesthesia. i was holding her, she was crying, and a group of technicians was standing around, all watching with the same horrified "why the fuck isn't the doctor using sedation" expressions. i had to ask several times before entropy was fully sedated. and this fucking pissed me off. why do i pretend to have loyalty to a job that treats its employees and their animals so disrespectfully? i would be furious if i was a client and my pet was handled that way. i have not had much loyalty to the place since my decision to stay in seattle, i admit; i am going through the motions, fairly blatantly. the fact that this week has been otherwise fucked up has not helped my attitude much. i left last night with an unspayed cat and a desperate need for a cigarette.
things will change soon.
the teapot that i've had for years -admittedly hideous with tulips on the side- burned through its base today. i did not know that could actually happen. i was heating water for tea and absently listening to the perpetual hiss of water hitting the electric burner; it wasn't until dribbling scalding water all over the counter that i properly investigated. i must make more tea than i realize. this is one of those crappy items that has travelled with me since 1997, to every place i have ever lived; i bought it at some thrift store for a pittance. it is a small accomplishment to wear an object completely the fuck out.
it has occurred to me as i have packed, then unpacked, my world o' shit over the last month, how i tend to hold onto things. i have books from when i was a kid, plants from 6 years ago, things on my refrigerator that i remember from the refrigerators in anchorage. it is comforting to maintain a sense of 'place', no matter where- like when i was backpacking by myself, and i would empty out my bag and look at everything, how seeing my clothes and the shit stuffed into my wallet was somehow validating, gave me proof that i existed outside of this precise instant.
how very first-world, i think disgustedly upon rereading that last paragraph.
*
i am about halfway through 'no shame in our game', yet another what's-wrong-with-america tome; i also recommend 'the working poor' for a similar theme.
...left to my own at-home devices, i guiltily find myself rereading the chapters of 'valley of the dolls' involving the clusterfuckery of neely o'hara. i try to justify my vices with a semblance of balance, however skewed.

yeah, uh-huh, sweet

today!:
-i finally changed the sheets on my bed and slept in naked bliss
-i interviewed with a local ER and it went insanely well and everyone was incredibly nice and i have a paid working interview there next week
-i heard back from the other job i wanted, the one where my resume was forwarded to the director of the department with the notation that they were "very impressed" by a prior interview i'd had (for a job i did not get... i must have been too impressive)
-i passed many ghouls and enormous men in flamboyant drag
-i also passed a small boy dressed as a wedge of cheese, a hairless young man wearing only a dress shirt and shoes, and a man wearing a sandwich board that said "NEW CONDOS"
-i was flaked on by s, who cancelled our plans 1 hr prior because he'd "just lost his lunch in the john"
-i booked my flight to anchorage

yes! i will spend my, good god, 29th birthday in cold, cozy anchorage, as a gift to myself- proof of where i've been. life is fucking cool.
life is what is made of it.
the last two weeks have been exceptionally rife with life.
happy halloween.

26 october 07

the sun was shining when i called the movers two hours prior to their scheduled arrival and cancelled the move. my lair was flooded with light and packed boxes when i called my almost-landlord in tacoma and told him i wasn't going to take the place after all. and i went outside, had a cigarette, and felt giddier, flakier, and calmer than i had in quite a while.
it feels so fucking right to stay. unquestionably. what was i thinking? i am a fucking pleasure-seeking doof and it is incredibly erroneous to pretend otherwise. be happy. do whatever it takes. la la la.
...and for the second time this week, i woke up in the alcove of s's room, under a feather blanket, the dawn through the skylight grey and quiet, his arms reaching for me while he slept. i had forgotten how much i needed that, how much i'd missed having someone around.
everything in my life, no matter how fucked up, somehow coalesced into this last 24 hr period, so i must have done something right after all.

the traits you most hate in others are the traits you hate about yourself

...and i know this.
any place fucking sucks without someone to share it with. i am grieving how much i fucked up this go-around in seattle- home to so many amazing things, but rendered so depressing by how little i connected with people here. as always, there is much, very much, i could have done differently.
'mad world' is an absolutely fantastic song. the crowded house version is playing. when gary jules' was ubiquitous, i was living very briefly in olympia, springtime, rainy, fluctuating frenetically between the elation of my brief restraining-order-against-the-ex-prompted freedom and a crushing loneliness. this song makes me want to hold someone.
my intolerance for asshat behavior has soured yet another s memory. how can i dig someone who treats me like crap? how, indeed. (i have been repeating myself for the last 15 years.) horrid rebuttals are riccocheting through my head as i walk by myself, because i am hurt. i am fucking hurt again, feeling fucking stupid, feeling shameful for trusting the good moments without remembering the annoying whole. the older people get the more self-absorbed and obliviously caustic they become. and obviously, this bothers me because i am the same fucking way.
moving will not change much. i am seeing it as an excercise in masochism. but i do have friends there. and the hood is pretty cool. and the street is lined with enormous maple trees. and the novelty, however finite, is fucking neccessary.
*
i have been infatuated with fergus henderson since i read him wax florid on a meal that he prepares in his london restaurant St John, a meal that i and my non-meated mouth salivated over: roasted marrow smeared on toast with parsley and capers, purportedly quite the orgasm. the way he speaks and writes makes me want to tear a baby lamb apart with my fucking teeth. said he in something i read today: "your spleen swells when you're in love! how can you resist an organ that does that?"
*
food is love. thus i found myself at the uppity grocer's at 11 on a friday night, buying baba ganouj and goldfish crackers for a most anticipated breakfast, feeling like less of a FUCKING LOSER when i noticed the man behind me ("ladies first!" he'd said gallantly when we were in queue) buying something crackery and something dippy also. i noticed too late. i smiled as i walked to the parking lot, not only at the happy synchronicity with a stranger, but at how i was embodying a classic, perfect example of how effortlessly i piss away every conceivable random opportunity that comes my way.

makin' lemonade!

last thursday, 24 hrs after posting self-pitying drivel, i found the place that i will be moving into by the end of the month. life is suddenly much easier. i am suddenly much happier.
and last night with s has left me spacy and smiley.
and the north mississippi all-stars are fucking amazing live.
and entropy and tiresias are in love.
and the trees are incredibly happy colors.
this optimism, too, shall pass.

fried and frayed

seattle is a gorgeous woman who will not look at you, much less have sex with you.
*
i came to that conclusion this evening, walking in a north wind with spitlike rain, making eye contact with people who merely glared. the weather fucking sucks and is certainly contributing to my mindset. there was a thunderstorm earlier today that i listened to under the safety of my deck awning, watching the inertia of vehicles on the freeway, the lake inky and flat. i felt wistful of the moment as it was happening, like kissing someone goodbye when you know it's the last time- too painful to get much else out of the experience.
i have been a fucking mess this past week, for i am irreversibly within the quagmire of my own doing, and something must change. i cannot have my life in multiple places. it took me three hours to commute to and from work on sunday, in a deluge, with wipers that don't work. i have a wonderful job that i feel even more obligated to since i adopted the fucking kitten (who is being... a kitten. that is to say, i love her, but she's incredibly annoying and into everything, and decrying her natural lovable kittenness makes me sound like an evil asshole), and one of the neuro doctors fixed my wipers on monday, and everyone there, for the most part, gets along very well.
i never am at the lair that i love, i have never found a semblence of community in the city i'm supposed to glean all the answers from, and i can no longer justify paying out my ass to live among fucking condos and unsmiling strangers and Wine Bars and bmws and i feel especially horrible when i think of times when things in this town were good, when i was able to share them with someone, anyone, and how infrequent those times were, how i have always, on some level, felt like a visitor here.
i feel like a visitor everywhere.
i had a panic attack the other night. it had been awhile. i was laying in bed, 3am, stuck with my mind, remembering every negative thing i've ever done, unable to breathe. and there was nothing i could do but ride it out and talk myself down. and the concept of that made me feel even worse. how fucking lonely is that?

private in public

i spent the day cleaning out my grandparents' house in puyallup. since my grandfather died, my oma was moved to a nursing home against her vehement protests; apparently she didn't unpack anything for the first week she was there, so convinced that she was not going to stay. i can only imagine the horrible wilting when she realized that this was now her life, no turning back. i am terrified of growing old- actually, growing old (and hopefully belatedly developing some shard of credibility) is a tantalizing prospect. it is helplessness that scares the fuck out of me. i have tasted it. and it is, in my opinion, death while still being alive.
my parents, my uncle and i scoured the home, everything, and i got the first real glimpse of what my grandparents' lives were like. in doing so i saw firsthand, appalling evidence of how Not Right things had been for awhile. there were boxes of food that expired in 1999, three open packages of the exact same products, science experiments in the refrigerator (including a completely green slab of bacon). there was the birch marinade my mother excitedly sent them for xmas years ago (at least 11, for i still lived at home), never opened. "bitch" my mother said, tossing the bottle in the garbage. piles of packets of honey, rock-hard, leaching into the cabinets. what i had been specifically looking for, thankfully, was still there, and i took them all: the ancient spices that used to live on the plastic lazy susan on their counter in wauna. when i was as young as four, i would sit at the counter while my grandmother washed dishes (always by hand- they never, ever used their dishwasher) and smell each spice, spinning the thing for hours. it was always there, every year, the same dusty selection. the containers i have now are ancient and flavorless, old enough to not have bar codes, metal perforated slide-tops instead of the stupid thick plastic ones of today.
they hoarded toothpaste. i counted ten empty tubes in the hall bathroom, in the drawer with the piles of heavily used q-tips and about ten generic, straight-bristled toothbrushes. i found my grandfather's shaving brush, the folded paper menu of the chinese zodiac with my grandmother's handwriting indicating the years of her family members (i am a horse, passionate and inquisitive). stacks upon stacks of fine china next to opened packages of hideous thanksgiving paper napkins. a sadistic potato ricer. a set of encyclopedias from 1925 (i put my name on those), hiding inside the chinese cabinet of a magnavox record player. they had a paperback copy of 'm*a*s*h' next to 'racism: the world's problem', next to several years of 'architectural digest'. the pumice soap in the shower was covered with curly black hairs. there was a wrist-strap blood pressure monitor; we all took a break to check our vitals. (myself, apparently rather mellow: HR 50, BP 98/63, energy drink in hand.)
my mother was tense and flitting manically. my father was getting impatient to leave. at his request, i brought them a 12-pack of beer ("not crap" said my father.) afterwards my parents and i ended up at a very loud and generic brewpub in the sphincter of puyallup- a slice of the world where, everywhere you look, every store is a chain, pavement usurps flora, people drive minivans with magnetic ribbons, asses are large and baseball caps are not removed indoors. "you and your brother were acting like they were both already dead" my father pointed out. "it kind of feels that way" my mother replied.
i ranted to them about how frustrated i am with my current scattershot lot in life. "every component of my world is in a different place" i said. they gave good advice, essentially the same advice that s gave me last night: calm down, things will happen when they should. and i know this. i'm just fucking miserable in the interim.
(side note: i have derided s quite a lot, but he's a damn good friend.)
my father just returned from working in spokane, where he was inspecting public housing. he came upon the first residence that he flatly refused to go into, and ordered his first eviction. apparently there was cat shit everywhere, smeared on the walls, the litter box -"you couldn't even see litter. it was mounded with shit. it was a big fucking box of shit"- "i've been in homes where you can't see the dishes in the sink for all the mold on them" he said, "but this person was literally living in a cat box." i feel a bit better about my grimy lair now.
and now: classical music, yerba mate, a cafe that i haven't been to in a while but really fucking love, the street slick and shiny, always on some sort of precipice.

crayons in an audience, not crayons in a row

saw steven pinker discuss his newest book tonight. the man is pure pleasure to listen to. linguistics and cultural commonalities make me warm. and it is always fulfilling to hear your everyday abstract thoughts condensed and vocalized, and vocalized succinctly.
...and it reminded me how much i fucking hate euphemisms. hate them! they are condescending, chickenshitted namby-pamby. he likens their usage to an unwillingness to disrupt the 'relationships' of interactions. thus, you say (as was his example) "come up and look at my etchings" to your date at the end of the evening, not "come up to my lair so that we can fuck." if she (assuming that this is a heterosexual pair, and the man is taking on the role of... etcher) demurs, it doesn't neccessarily jeapordize the current or future relationship, but if she says "no, i will not be fucking you tonight", it lends an air of unshakable awkwardness.
and i was reminded of 2 immediate personal correlations:
1. s has an unctuous habit of sleazing his way inside when he drops me off. he tries, anyhow. one night it was "would you mind if i came inside for some water?" WATER? what the fuck are you thinking? another night it was a request to use the loo. both times i said a cheery "no, sorry!" and jumped out of his car with a smile. once i did remind him that he lived all of five minutes away. he backpedalled rather amateurly. but i suppose, in retrospect, his lame attempts do save us both a little face. he gets to drive off looking like a parched man with a need to micturate, and i get to look like an unhospitable naif. sometimes, i admit, it is amusing to play dumb just to see what the other person will do.
2. once, years ago, a client at work was asked by the doctor if she wanted to put her cat to sleep. the woman said yes and became hysterical when her animal was euthanized. that was utterly fucking horrible, and i never, ever use that term because of it.
*
oh, and i HAVE A NEW KITTEN! right when i type this, 'karn evil 9' starts playing. thus i am automatically typing faster!
i wasn't planning on a new beast. i was very content with the 2 useless cats i have. but she was a stray that was brought into work on sunday, her jaw broken, her right eye proptosed, smelling like pus, covered in fleas, purring and kneading... and when i came into the room where she'd just arrived, one of the other techs was literally holding the euthanasia solution to her vein. "is that for her?" i said, running over. "unless you save her" h said. "look, she needs you." i touched her gross head and it was done. i am a fucking sucker. she is about 8 wks old, tortie, and after having her eye removed and her jaw wired, is living in my bathroom and eating like a fucking maniac, impaling the canned food on her exposed wire. i have briefly introduced her to the other guys. she is a complete asshole, hissing and spitting and fearless. hecatomb hissed back at her, then retreated to the corner of the room and eyed her with revulsion. tiresias freaked out and peed on the rug. i am sure that once he realizes that he is four times her size and can knock her ass down, he will be better.
her name is entropy.
i now have 3 eyes between 3 cats.
i really, truly will not be adopting any more pathetic cyclopsian train wrecks any time soon, if only because i don't want to be one of Those Women.

soulless

thursday night: i was sitting in a 1/3 full bus at night, feeling oddly content to watch the goings-on of the fellow commuters. people were bantering with the bus driver, lugging packages, smiling. a scrawny, strung-out guy sat next to me. he started talking. asked me out for a drink. i smiled and said no. he asked about dinner. i declined. "you're stunning" he said. "you're like a goddess to me." i started to laugh. "do i know you from somewhere?" i asked. he suggested the rainbow gatherings. "that changed my life" he told me. he was creepy and i could smell alcohol, so i got off the bus, but not before telling him my name after he asked. i heard "brynn" behind me once i was on the sidewalk. he had gotten off too. we started talking, him about a foot away from my face, me unconsciously backing up until i was almost in the street. he was ranting- about loneliness, about his 'really good job' and his 'really nice place' and 'if we can't be lovers, we should at least be friends.' never did i feel threatened, just like i was being put on. people don't just seek me out of a crowd and tell me i'm beautiful- most people just want to bum a cigarette, or ask for change. i mentioned that to him when he said "well, you're still talking to me." "this is very bizarre" i replied. "this is one of those experiences that never has and will never happen again." something about the entire weird exchange, sadly, drew me in. i was almost hypnotized as to what socially untoward, sleazy, psuedo-hippie-bullshit thing he'd say next. and always, while all of this was transpiring, i couldn't help thinking "fuck, i must really be lonely."
after about 5 minutes of this sidewalk backing-up dance, i said i really did have to go. he asked for a hug. i gave him one. and we held onto each other for about 30 seconds. this overtly fucked up guy (how old was he? 20? 30?), i noticed, was tall, and his watery bloodshot eyes never left mine, and... apparently that was all i fucking needed. and i had nowhere to go, nowhere to be... but i'm glad i left when i did. and as i walked away, the peculiarity of what had just transpired not quite hitting me, i realized that it had really turned me on.

WHAT THE FUCK?

yesterday i got my tattoo redone, again. the falling leaves encircling the star on my right shoulder are darker now. when i left the studio it was dusk and rain was falling. summer is officially over here. i walked up the hill to s's house, where he was slothfully commandeering the porch, pipe in hand. we smoked, he grew even more apathetic, and we drove around aimlessly, not talking, until i said "this just isn't working tonight" and we parted ways in ballard. i walked for a long while, passing couples with arms entwined, relieved at being by myself.
marijuana tends to make me chatty and hyperactive- i want to go out and see new things, discuss inventions, listen to music, make out. it can also make me very irritated, because most people i smoke with just become slovenly and dull. when i was 19 i briefly saw a psychologist who asked me about my smoking habits. he specifically questioned if marijuana "made me horny." (I FUCKING HATE THAT TERM. 'HORNY' DESCRIBES AN ELK, OR A TOAD, OR A HONKING CAR.) i said yes, and he nodded smugly. "a small percentage of people with certain mood disorders have that reaction" he said. he never did explain, but i have always wondered.

it's not luminous, it's LAMEinous!

http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/games/bloxorz
this is fucking crack, y'all.

yes! it's yet another self-absorbed pity party!

the cafe is playing billy joel's 'angry young man' song, which i had not heard in a while (despite owning and loving the lp)- billy joel used to be fucking great (until the blasphemy of 'we didn't start the fire'), and i am not ashamed to admit it.
i have been in a melancholy state today. last night i talked with s about the foul ending of saturday. on one hour of sleep, we spent the day together, both bleary and useless, and i got unexpectedly, quickly, nastily drunk on wine. black-outy and belligerent, as i have a tendency to do, but which i hadn;t allowed myself to become in a very long while. i vaguely remember arguing with, or rather at, him, and walking home alone from capitol hill, and finding freshly purchased groceries in my cupboards the next morning- a morning in which i was not hung over, but eerily suspicious that i had behaved hideously.
what i said, according to him, was: i was offended that he repeatedly referred to his ex-wife as 'psychotic', that he was negating his own half of the responsibility, that it was disrespectful and rude to talk about someone he once loved that way, especially without her around to defend herself, that it was arrogant and demeaning to make her get on meds. i smiled as he related this. "i am regretful of my delivery, but i agree with everything i said" i told him. "you were very aggressive and combative" he said. "i have been told that before" i replied. "i gravitate towards conflict. it makes me feel that my own actions are justified." he was looking at me with a bewildered, pitying, disgusted expression, which i don't fault him for: obviously this all speaks volumes about my sadistic, masochistic inability to be in a relationship, to be properly respectful, to act like a fucking adult instead of continually reliving the fucked-up patterns that have heretofore defined my interactions with every guy i've been at all close to.
...but, and i am fucking ashamed to admit this: i am attracted to the emotion. i like the passion, even when, possibly even especially when, it is contemptuous and cruel and unstable. this is seriously fucking sick. i don't know how to maintain a level of respect towards them, or have them maintain a level of respect towards me, and thus i have a slag-heap of fucked opportunities and scorn in my wake.
i can remind myself that i was not very attracted to him, which i wasn't, or that i wasn't ready to share any extra scrap of my life with anyone, which i'm not, or that there were all sorts of insignificant pseudo-'flaws' that i could amplify and make into deal-breakers, but it all comes down to: i am too fucked up to be with anyone but my own stupid arse.
*
why the fuck do i write this shit on a public forum? penance for my acidity?
*
so, today- melancholy, lonely, regretful, but not wanting to be around anybody, i drove to bellingham in an odd amalgam of bright sunlight and persistant haze- as if fog had never quite burned off, leaving everything coldly blanched. sweet green made it flawlessly. downtown bellingham was deserted, apart from the swarthy crowd of pierced teens smoking outside the horseshoe cafe- it was only six pm, but most of the shops were closed. the drugstore where i bought a soda filled with empty shelves. the unsmiling checker berated a child for grabbing things off a display; the mother mumbled something ineffectual. i bought incense from a head shop and an octopus sticker from an 'import' store; i took a photograph of the antique bank clock with the completely dischordant time displays; i wandered numbly through the music store; i felt like a fucking ghost. the architecture in bellingham is very frilly and victorian, the streets of the nicer areas lined with weeping willows and children on bikes; i was, as usual, an observer, even though i was singing along to elton john's 'grey seal' and trying to force self-merriment.
what am i expecting to 'find' in seattle? what have i been, for all intents and purposes, WAITING FOR? i have a cool lair that i pay out the ass for, a good job that is 35 miles away, a family that i never see, and no friends apart from the trolls i meet on fucking craigslist. tonight, as i wandered through the dark, i thought about how the longer i remain in this bizarre self-imposed isolation morass, the harder it is to be 'that person'- the one i hoped my divorce and move back would automatically manifest: with a gaggle of witty, ascerbic friends, skillful yet not overly clingy lovers, a stack of brilliant drawings, a philanthropic flair. at least my plants are doing well. and the cats are great, thanks.
...also on the walk here: i passed two guys talking on the sidewalk. the only part of their conversation i heard was "and then he goes, 'fuck you, fag!'" immediately i recalled the punchline to a forgotten joke: "fuck you, clown!" it was something i heard a very long time ago- i remember it making me laugh, but i cannot remember the setup. so for several blocks i had that phrase stuck in my head: fuck you, clown! fuck YOU, clown!
and that made me feel better.
i'm not going to proofread this.

la vie allet

the other night at work, during a rare lull, i found myself in the 'staff lounge' with two coworkers. we were all slightly glassy-eyed and drained from the day; it was about midnight and the television blared inanely in the corner. we had just recieved the news that one of the other technician's sister had just been killed in a car accident. this tech, who is salty and wonderful but whom i never get to work with (she only works wednesdays) is also about seven months pregnant. we sat there soberly, none of us really saying much, until i blurted "and did you hear about t's brother?" one of the assistant's brother had been randomly jumped whilst riding his bike in seattle- some drunk fucks had thrown a bottle at him, knocking him to the ground, and proceeded to beat the shit out of him- breaking both cheekbones, six ribs, probably more- he had surgery yesterday. has this been anywhere in any newspaper? of fucking course not.
"what is in the water here?" one of the techs i was sitting with asked. and we started listing the litany of horrid instances that has beset the clinic of late. one of the doctors was in the hospital for several days. two techs were taken to the ER for seperate, non-work-related ailments. someone's grandfather died. hell, my grandfather died (and my great-aunt died on saturday, i learned- i was never close to her at all, but it's still another name on the list- fucking mortality). there were other tragedies brought up, i'm sure. we ended up quietly filing out of the room, back to the treatment floor, where animals with intractable diarrhea and opiate stupors and weak wags awaited.
and on the way home that night (i think it was sunday) i turned up the music very loudly, and i sang along on the empty 2am interstate.
and yesterday, one of my other pregnant coworkers had her baby. his middle name is 'navin', hindu for new beginnings. there are 'yahoo!' signs all over work. that made me happy.
in more annoying news: the white stripes cancelled their ENTIRE FUCKING TOUR. i am really, really saddened by this. i found out last night (like a proper nerd, i am on their mailing list) and grimly removed their cd from my car for the drive home, replacing it with "alterna-daze: the best of the '80's." this cd contains the 12" version of 'tainted love', which is quite apropos in the blear of night.
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today seattle smells of blackberries, lavender, and garlic, though not all at once.