"in short, we look back nostalgically on everything, which proves without question that it was beautiful."

yesterday, the 4th of july, was disarmingly hot and sunny. i rearranged furniture and wandered about. every time i see nsb i feel like an idiot. have i ever been so attracted to a person? i feel like i am thirteen and obsessively writing our names together in a notebook, not that i would have ever done such a thing. i still know nothing about him, 1. because i am a chickenshit, and 2. because to know anything would tidily fuck up the little fantasyland i guiltily enjoy. it is nice, i guess, to have a face to attach to my heretofore abstract lust.
i found one of my favorite, and out of print, books at the used store: 'the hermit' by ionesco. i bought my first copy at twice sold tales roughly ten years ago; i read it on the bus through a dark miserable january towards my dark miserable job at the construction-insurance place in bellevue- the job with the foul-smelling, visibly nippled, leering boss; the secretary whom i'd assisted when i was an abortion counselor; the guy who embezzled several thousand dollars from some of the clients; and the carpenter who wandered to my desk one day and said "wow, i haven't heard this in a while" upon hearing my cassette of 'magic and loss.' god, that job sucked. anyhow, ionesco: i had given away my copy once back in AK, and had thought of it many times since. it is one of the most clausterphobic and depressing novels i've ever read: the character is a neurotic unlikeable pathetic drunk who pisses his life away amid a blurry litany of justification, procrastination, and cowardice. and it is disturbingly easy to relate to, on however minute a level. so i esconsed myself in a corner of an upstairs bar, in dimness as the sun blazed outside, and read the first half of it whilst drinking vodka. i was the only one there. and it was quite enjoyable, albeit eerily akin to reading about salmonella whilst eating steak tartare.
afterwards j came by my lair to watch the fireworks. he text-messaged his girlfriend the entire time, often checking his phone while i was actually talking. the rudeness of that didn't fully hit me until after he left and i went on a midnight stroll around my neighborhood. another analogy: it was like a new mother babbling relentlessly to her childless friends about her new baby. that's great, happy for you, but fuck. he brought his panicked dog with him. the dog and my cats did surprisingly well together. thus, intermingled with my mild text-irritation, i found myself happily considering getting a dog. "it would go everywhere with me" i thought. "we would have adventures." it is still a nice idea, but i'm sober now.
*
today: drove to fucking marysville and bought a jello cookbook (yet another one- there are as many jello recipes as there are stars in the heavens, m'lord) at the thrift store. icq'd with b for most of the day. he always prompts a sense of yearning wanderlust, whether he intends to or not. this surely had a detrimental effect on our marriage- i never was able to just BE with him, to just live in the moment, and worse yet, i didn't really want to. no, i take that back. there were plenty of times when the world began and ended with him, with the space we shared, when i was oblivious and indifferent to everything outside of our little bubble. in a sick way, that's what made the good times really fucking gorgeous... and the bad times so incredibly awful. it was a very manic relationship. that was a long fucking time ago. i feel an automatic sense of detachment from that entire era now: another scene from a movie i've only watched dozens of times.
sometimes i still miss it.
life is an odd duck.
whatever the fuck that means. i am mad-libbing my brain.
i went to the seattle art museum for the first time since its reopening. the place is amazing. i only made it through the first floor. highlights: rothko, my favorite (red on ochre is my favorite of the favorites, which is not the one they have). "gold and blue and a short skirt", one of the most jaw-droppingly erotic things i have ever seen. my reflection inside the dog-tag gown- this piece is huge, scary, and horribly persuasive. the photo of the scrawny woman and her baby pet monkey- like something out of david lynch. the shadows of the asian woman's false eyelashes against her cheek, her areola barely exposed. the curved white on black possibly being the full moon contrasting against the dark universe. warhol's rorschach- two stereotypical chinamen, backs to each other, facing rearing ponies? i could go on. i will go back instead.
it is glorious to be in PROXIMITY to such cool things. wanderlust will always be there; i have resigned myself to it being one of my most annoying qualities- but don't think i don't appreciate what i've got. even if i had to leave the museum not because i was bored with the art but because my eyes were starting to cross and my face felt numb (i think i am an advil addict. placebo or not, it seems to 'help' my ms-related weirdnesses. thus i will be inconvenienced with inevitable liver failure instead.) i still had the privelege of stepping outside into 80 degree cloudlessness, conversations in all languages transpiring around me, and really cool buildings overhead. and further uptown i walked along a sidewalk lined with '40's bungalows and cars with liberal bumper stickers, sidestepping zealous blooms of lavender.