so, in lieu of that, welcome to (an unintentionally nausea-inducing portrayal of) beautiful downtown snohomish!
*ADDENDUM 05/24/08*
i waited for 3 HOURS last night for the fucking video to upload. i had to leave when the wifi place closed. in doing so i lost the entire thing. incredibly fucking frustrating- though, in retrospect, it was kind of a dumb video with little value beyond the cool song playing in the background. i am leaving the rest of the mindless commentary to... capture a moment that wasn't. whatever.
it also explains the lack of proper paragraphs, which bothered me tremendously.
*
snohomish is about 35 miles NE of seattle- it's about 10 miles outside of everett on hwy 2. it was farmland until about 20 years ago; since then it has become a thriving suburb, whilst retaining its charming smalltown vibe(TM)! one good thing about this town: they don't have, to my knowledge, any hideous 'big box' stores- no wal-marts or crap like that. that honor has been bestowed, in spades, on monroe, about 5 miles further east.
monroe is a shithole.
it is only negligably captured on the video, but around the 2:10 mark (look for the church on the left) you can barely see the guy standing at the crosswalk who waved his arms at me indignantly when i didn't stop for him. in real time it was much more blatant and subsequently mortifying. sorry, sir, i was trying to shoot video whilst driving 40mph through traffic.
there are many antique stores in 'olde towne' snohomish. i have only walked these streets once before, with s (the asshole s)- that, i am sad to say, was a really fun day. today the place seemed ghostly. the only people around were ancient and miserable-looking. i kept thinking "well, it is a holiday weekend; most people are off to brighter pastures." nevertheless, i couldn't help deciding that growing up in a place like snohomish would be rather brutal.
but then! among the many purveyors of boring dishes and trundle beds and psuedo-victorian claptrap, i found THIS.
i about shat. if i had a spare $3,000 i would be quite tempted to buy it. it was for sale in a peculiar grotto, next to other pinball machines that were nowhere near as spectacular. the guy who ran the place was loudly debating the army with another old guy. "looking for anything special, young lady?" he greeted me.
at another place (the establishment from which i purchased a 50 cent pin of yoko ono) i saw this:
this is such a brilliant idea. why don't such things exist any more?
the guy at this store was a bit mellower. and he was wearing a led zeppelin t-shirt.
*
yesterday i had to go into work for a DiSC training meeting. DiSC is a 'personality profile' used to enhance productivity and coworker communication. we took a questionnaire that determined our particular strengths and weaknesses. and i am rather chagrined to admit: it fucking nailed me. i am a 'specialist'- sensitive, conceding, content with the group-think, wanting to just do my job, have someone say 'thank you', and get the hell out. the answers i gave on the questionnaire were mainly in regards to how i 'work'- i really don't give a shit, i try not to make waves, i prefer friendly coworkers over a palatable profession- but it rather astutely reflects how i exist overall. i don't fucking argue the way i think i used to. i assume that if someone else really wants something, they probably have better reasons for getting it than i do... this is passive, and self-deprecating, and certainly contributes to my current (and prolonged) habit of living in a prosaic ether. i am an inward seether, if anything.
ether seether! ha! that was completely unintentional.
i suppose that my criteria for caring enough to make the effort is: am i passionate about it? REALLY? what have i been so fucking engaged in that i made it actually happen?
-my personal freedom
-keeping s in my life
-travelling
-my fucking cats
-taking the time to write, to the point of scheduling my day around it (which i do daily)
-photography
notably NOT on this list: my marriages and other sundry relationships; my family; furthering my veterinary knowledge; keeping my carpet free of cat vomit and my bathroom free of silverfish...
believe me, i know. i know. i regret a lot of things.
*
silverfish are a humid phenomenon. i first encountered them in my vile fremont apartment. they look like tiny plecostomi- about 1/4-1/2" long, skittering across (usually) the bathroom floor. they were everywhere in my downtown olympia lair. and now they are in my queen anne abode- one here, one there- i see perhaps two a week. i went online to find out what the fuck they were. one site likened them to cockroaches. apparently they thrive in pipes and other damp areas.
there are urban fables of seattle denizens being greeted with rats in their loos. the paper did a big story about this about a year ago. apparently in the neighborhoods with older plumbing the rodents have access and just... crawl up... hi... "keep your toilet lids down" the paper instructed. "don't attempt to flush them" as that can cause, i guess, further pipe havoc.
when i was married to b i found our white mouse floating in the toilet. b had already left for work. the other mouse was securely locked in his cage. i freaked out. called him shrieking. "i don;t understand how he could have gotten out, ran across the room, and jumped into the toilet!" i yelled, or something similar. i demanded he come home right away to deal with it. at the time i knew, but didn't want to know- didn't want to acknowledge that the person i slept naked beside every night could do such a thing- but he did. there was no other explanation. he killed a kitten once just to see what it was like- very 'sailor who fell from grace with the sea'- that was before i ever knew him, but he described it so nonchalantly that i was horrified. so at the time i took this mouse-incident as one of those weird, wacky things that happen with no proper explanation. it was a survival mechanism. and i was a fucking moron.
*
...the (bar) i am at played 'children of the revolution'- the violent femmes' version. i will always think of driving around anchorage, circa 1995, in the winter... juxtaposed with waiting for the light at 38th in tacoma, muggy summer of 2007, en route to work. it is nice to have a time capsule in a song: when you can specifically think about "wonder what i'll be doing in 10-15-20-50 years" whilst listening to it for the first time.
*
i cannot help but think, in that respect, that i have let myself down in multiple ways.
*
it's time for another chipper find, this one also from today, on a corner in downtown seattle:
the hugger was nowhere to be found.
No comments:
Post a Comment