ain't no sunshine

according to the lost poster, this cat "bites and swipes!" but his "momma loves him."

today, in the butcher's hill section of baltimore, an ~10year old boy yelled "fuck you, white girl!" at me. he was hanging from his knees on a jungle gym at the time, as kids do. my first reaction was to laugh, to admire his precocious opinions. but the fact that it was the second time in as many hours that i'd had that phrase, virtually verbatim, hollered in my general direction, made it a bit weirder.

i go through life with the naive idea that people are good. people are kind. when rudeness occurs, i blame myself for misinterpreting inocuous moments. when i feel annoyed, i consider it a personal flaw.

people are not always good or kind. people are fucking human. we are flawed, tactless, easily hurt, unwittingly caustic, deliberately cruel. and i shouldn't let it get to me. i should know better.

the sunset tonight was beautiful.

travelling=getting to watch 'goodfellas' on TV at 3am whilst laying atop copious hotel pillows

i woke in my small, less-luxe-than-anticipated room at the fucking sheraton, bleary and jet-lagged, thinking that the cats were screwing around with something. but the source of the noise, at 9am EDT on a saturday morning, 16 floors above the ground, was this:

a fucking window washer! and i hadn't closed my curtains! i hadn't felt it was neccessary... i'm on the 16th floor, god damn it! that, coupled with the noisy shenanigans outside my door at 3am and the placard in the lobby welcoming some fucking fraternity-sorority shindig (whose members were lounging around in hordes, falsely tanned and ballcapped), has made me rather disillusioned. bitch, bitch. i will complain about anything with enough sleeplessness.
i went to the conference today. several of the classes were awesome; one was awesomely dull. it was about 85 and sunny. i decided to leave before the last session and take a stroll. edgar allan poe's grave, at westminster chapel, is about 6 blocks from my hotel. people have put pennies along every ledge of his tombstone. i had no pennies, so i put a nickel in the R.

there is something odd about seeing your shadow cast over a gravesite.

parts of baltimore are gorgeous... like, "i could live here if x, y, and z were different." in other words, i don't know if i ever would live here, but it's lovely. the architecture is ancient and the trees are blooming. front steps abut the sidewalks. it feels like an actual fucking city, unlike the prissy placidity of seattle. and men are pleasantly lascivious here. i have been hit on more times in the past 12 hours than in the 7 years i have lived in the northwest. as a demographic sidenote: they were all non-caucasian, cheerily polite, and smiled widely. and i, dumb girl, smiled back. it is nice to be told i am beautiful and that "i should let my husband know someone thinks his girl is FINE."
little italy is especially picturesque. the streets were deserted, though. the only things open were restaurants with bored workers staring out the windows. and a lot of property is vacant here. a LOT.

it reminds me, almost, of new orleans.

empathetic soothsayer or gullible shit-magnet?

people have inherent radar. addicts find one another; the weak are drawn to the strong. i beckon jobless, unmotivated, overly intelligent flakes with mental issues. i always have. ever since high school, my mother used to call the men i was interested in "my little strays."
*
it's funny but painful. the more coherent and altogether i feel, the more fucked-up the situations i get myself into. i cannot settle for a mundane balance. if there is not preexisting drama i find ways to invent it. i like to take care of people, distract myself from my own bullshit, and not be bored. this is fucked up. i think i deserve better, but not always.
pipes along denny way, shining in the rare 70 degree sun:

the female loo at the five point. i finally got to see the men's toilet, with its space needle periscope- i almost stood in the trough-urinal. the women's facilities are, unfortunately, subpar. the quaint b&w tint belies the lurid green wall tile.

acid mothers temple are fucking good. they are 21st century can.

my parents found this photograph. my mother had these boots since the '70s. i always hoped i'd eventually be able to fit them; she wears a 9 or 10. i wear size 7. i have no recollection of ths picture being taken, but i used to dress up a lot.

true happiness comes from not giving a shit. but giving a shit proves you're alive...

honestly: i like him a hell of a lot. i don't even fucking care what happens, if it's reciprocal, if it's sensible... i am simply loving the feeling of wanting to know more. i love feeling 120% alive.

only women bleed

the last 24 hrs have been stressful.
layoffs at work. starting my period with a teeth-gritting vengeance. fretting over how i'm handling things with d, who i'm not sure i want to be more than friends with. he keeps dropping these facts about himself that are incredibly intriguing and yet definite deal-breakers. i still want the gentle tra-la hippie boy with good hygeine and excellent taste in music, who goes so slowly that i'm frantic, who wants to lay in a fucking field and talk about the goddamn clouds... not pontificate about some incoherent sci-fi storyline until i can feel my pupils glaze over and i am forced to smilingly say "you lost me a while ago."
i really don't need to be in a relationship. i have too much other shit to focus on- like school, like staying employed, like walking around and doing whatever pretentious introverted crap i please.
by writing this, i am trying to convince myself that i am not full of shit.
after the vocational shit-fannery, i drove north. north has always been my route of purgatory, but i find it more boring now that i don't smoke. i got off on hwy 312 (?), thinking "i've never been to lake stevens", and ended up in suburban hell, on anonymous roads lined with huge fences hiding enormous foreclosed subdivisions, past subways and mcdonald's and petSmarts and generic churches. i was listening to "un histoire de melody nelson" in its entirety. the hotel scene, where he's fucking her and she's emitting rather ugly, jarring squeals, is both hilarious and disturbing- she's a doe-eyed redheaded teenager and he's serge gainsbourg, the homeliest man that france ever spawned. i have been obsessed with him for awhile; i've had a picture of him and jane birkin on my fridge for years- and always imagine how foul his breath must be.
back in seattle, i went to the waterfront and pioneer square to take pictures. it was fucking cold. this winter has been a fucking misery. at this moment, for example, it is raining slush sideways against my window. were it not for the inoperational, brightly-hued construction cranes hovering over various bankrupt projects, i would feel that i'm living in an entirely black-and-white movie.
on one of the more colorful corners of downtown i took this picture. the woman walking with the cane-holding man- she was twirling, actually- saw me take this. "you just take my picture?" she asked. she was cheerful about it. "did i break your camera?" i laughed. "oh no, now she's laughing" she said, stumbling away. people were unusually nice yesterday- perhaps i was an emitting a "please be kind to me" vibe. it was noticed and appreciated, in any event.

...yerba mate and tony curtis' autobiography. started another book about the golden age of the american family road trip circa 1946-1974- the sociological and economic shifts that this trend created. the route 5 to greenwood, where i got stranded in the freezing cold darkness for about half an hour. he and i talked on the phone as i climbed home. i turned on the xmas lights in my lair and felt warm for the first time in hours. trip-hop played in the background. i had a nip of absinthe and watched the cars along the freeway.
lucidly, i always KNOW to just let things go. nothing is worth being panicked about. overanalysis shall be the death of me, should i let it be so. sometimes it is much easier to just step away and let the world flow around me. it might even lead to a rather satisfying outcome.
at four pm today there is an informal meeting at work for everyone to discuss the state of the business. at the very least, i have some clarity to look forward to.