crying over you

it occured to me during the walk: i have no pictures of my lair from afar. queen anne high school, the hulking building atop the hill- look immediately below it for the large light blue apartment complex. two doors down to the left, i am the red roof.

we watched eileen court get devoured by bulldozers last week. the walls crumpled and dust filled the intersection. it was the one time in the last year that i did not have my fucking camera with me. the detritus is still piled; a block away i could already smell the mildewy wood.

we have been hanging out a lot. the more we do, the more i want. certain people make me feel very fucking greedy. i finally saw 'mulholland drive' last night. the theater scene was fucking brilliant. by the end of the movie only two of the sundry votive candles were still burning.
when i first saw this i exclaimed "wow, i have a styrofoam head too! but i put glasses on my cactus instead." he smiled politely.

i just found out that more people got laid off at work. i am panicky and excited and hyperactive and sad and really fucking agitated... my thoughts flipping between the cruel rigors of reality and the novelty of my lovely little fantasyland.
i honestly don't fucking know what's going to happen next. with anything. sometimes this doubt feels fantastic, but right now i'm scared as hell.

radio dreams and forgetting how to breathe

the first discarded television of the season! (2nd in an annual series)

i have been awake for five hours and it is 930am. it has been raining all morning; i simply watched the sky get lighter.

work and school are both screwy. the lead tech director got laid off yesterday. i am selfishly concerned about my own job stability; we were assured last week that no layoffs were happening, and she did have reasons to be 'let go', but it still makes me incredibly fucking nervous. and my last final of the term is today. it counts for 50% of my grade. they are reformatting the curriculum; if i fail i have to retake 2 terms of kinesiology. i would rather burn my eyes than relive the fucking anguish of these classes again. i am truly hoping i get the masseter for my comp check and not something complicated like the goddamn gluteus medius.
this evening will either find me in the throes of giddy relief or wrenching self-loathing. i suppose i should be studying more, rather than mindlessly prattling into the ether.
why the fuck would they even make a sign like this?

this is termed in veterinary medicine as a "peek 'n shriek"

case study: 9yr old great dane (61kg) with vomiting of 5 days duration, inappetance, slight jaundice. she transferred from her regular dvm for an ultrasound. the ultrasound showed pronounced gas dilation in the bowels (liver appeared normal). bloodwork: elevated ALT, ALKP, TBili. coags were normal. WBC count was also normal.
we took her to surgery. i was the anesthesiologist.
out came the guts...

and the big-ass lower intestine...

...that was torsed but not necrotic. it untwisted and immediately began pouring yoo-hoo diarrhea all over the floor- with force that misted everything in a five-foot radius. the doppler was saturated; rivulets seeped underneath the surgery table. "more towels, please!" i yelled into the treatment room.

we all ran to get our cameras. with the colon out of the abdominal cavity, we were better able to view the completely fucked liver. the dark purply orb is the gallbladder- also abnormal. gallbladders are typically a lurid green, as if they've been filled with antifreeze. sludgy and black, not good. the right and left lobes of the liver were completely adhesed. "this is one solid mass" the doctor said. "there is no normal tissue here."

i got the owners on the speaker phone. they processed the findings for about ten minutes. "oh god" the man said, his voice cracking. "this is so hard." they finally decided to euthanize on the table. i gave the injection. i am always struck by the poignancy of euthanizing while an animal is still attached to monitors; the doppler slows and muffles. the ECG turns into a silent, solid line. there is always that moment of peace before the alarms start beeping. that moment, i think, is what death really is... silent, complete, a serene exhalation.
"the liver should never look like a cluster of grapes" the doctor said as he sewed the body up.
throughout, 'saturday night fever', four hours of horribly entertaining disco music (every week 8p-midnight) played on the radio. we turned it off whilst talking to the owners.

her name was loki.

r.i.p. seattle pi 1863-2009

with a stylus, one may customize their world, from a bus stop at 16th and madison...

to the back of a seat on a 15 local.

i love this town.
and i love walking through it at night.


i feel like i'm living my present as if it's already the past- romanticized appreciation. does that even make sense?

the ides of march

i got home from work at 330am, was asleep by about 430, and woke at 730 to entropy pushing a ring around on the counter- a subtle yet supremely grating noise. i cannot wait until she is geriatric and lackadaisical.
but had this not happened, had i slept as a normal person might, i would have missed the motherfucking snow that was falling sloppily on the 15th day of march:

this winter has sapped my soul. i know it is finite; i see neighbors bleakly planting daffodils in the icy dirt. the stores are filled with unflattering clothes in pastel shades. one of my coworkers was even planning to run a marathon along hwy 99 today.
it has since turned to rain. rain, i can embrace.
i keep thinking of new orleans.
*
journalistic pap... my head is still in an unrealistic place.

i told him on tuesday to not contact me again. my habits are shameful and predictable. and as usual, i feel incredibly better now. my astonishment with how fucking easy things can be without just one nasty element is growing repetitive, i realize. life shouldn't ever be as fucking hard as i can make it for myself. and there is no reason why anyone should have to put up with crap. when i'm dying, am i going to wish i'd expended more energy in dealing with bullshit? no... but i will wish i was fucking nicer.
ultimately, there is only so much one person can do. if the other person in the situation isn't trying to make things pleasant, i feel quite justified in stepping away and living my own fucking life regardless.
i don't kick myself for embracing idealism. it's naive as fuck, but it's a nice way to live.
i am slowly restoring the lair to its former lustre.

immediately after valentine's day i forgot to stock up on discounted candy. the hearts, in particular, gave me panic- the thought of having to wait until what, boxing day to procure more seemed intolerable. so i have been scouring seattle for dregs. i found a shitload for 9 cents a box at a drugstore and stocked up. my inadvertant plan, which is working out very effectively, is to get so fucking sick of these horrible things that i never want to see or taste them again, holiday novelty be damned.
so now i have a cache. i expect it will grow stale and rather soft and the evolved, fouler texture will appeal to me anew.

i was reading about apomorphine, the veterinary emetic, at work the other day. apparently apomorphine is used widely in europe and parts of asia as an erectile-enhancement drug, akin to viagra. it is in the works to be approved for the same purpose in the us. "it causes significant nausea and vomiting in ~10% of its users, to the point where they discontinue use" the pdr said. i was looking up the drug to get a proper dosage for a dog that had eaten about 3# of unbaked pizza dough... watching him vomit yeasty slime with a miserable expression on his face... wondering if he's thinking about a stirring in his loins whilst doing so.
*
i should have perhaps phrased that last sentence a bit differently. that sounded really fucking gross.

silent but the purring

i am in a fucking good mood.
it is finally not unseasonably, sphincter-tighteningly cold. last week it snowed; today it is raining and my screen door is open. the apartment is quiet. incense is burning. i just made a cd. peacefulness is supremely underutilized.
yesterday i hung out with someone i've wanted to get to know for over three years. very few people have ever intrigued me for such a duration and for no concrete reason. actually hanging out felt positively liquid and very nice. opportunity strikes when i least expect it.
cliches exist for their truth. nevertheless i hate them.
a mural

walking at night

i love having my life back.
(when i'm not in such a blissy mindset, i will undoubtedly overscrutinize the fallacies of my character that lead me to 'give up' my life for other people in the first place.)

how other people live

my friend m moved into a new unit in his building in downtown seattle. the entire place is a habitrail of amazing art, both in the common areas and inside his apartment. he now has a loft with a glass ceiling ala 'barefoot in the park' that opens onto a private roof across the street from the seattle art museum.
i took many more pictures than this.





i could never be in this environment with t.
he moved everything out this saturday while i was at work. i came home to find the walls bare, the closets empty, geddy lee gone. it was sobering... and really fucking relaxing. i turned on the lights and took a long 3am shower with the door open, then read in bed for as long as i wanted. little things make me happy. it had been a long time since i'd done such things. sunday i cleaned and rearranged, incredibly content, pushing aside the worry that i'm probably going to be one of those old spinsters who always lives alone. but is it prefering solitude... or just choosing the wrong people to do it with?
he still does not know how to be honest, communicate, be accountable. he snivels and sulks and flakes around and tells the same fucking stories and says "i didn't mean to" and "i don't know why i do that" far too much. and i am still driven insane by these mannerisms, shrill to the point of violence, learning that i can actually bruise the palms of my hands by smacking the wall hard enough. "you're a fucking adult!" i would yell, the apex of maturity myself. "how can you not know how you're coming across or why you're doing something?"
he reacted horribly to some things i told him about our time apart- something that happened to me about a year and a half ago that only s knew about. t freaked out and... acted like a fucking bully, basically. and i told him then that this was not working and to get out of my home. i said "i refuse to live like this again."
he agreed to see a counselor. i am not holding my breath. we are still 'together', but that almost feels like default at this point. he does not know, for example, the extent to which i'm planning moving from seattle this winter. that's a conversation i have no fucking desire to get into. there are reasons, after all, why we're divorced.
but i still, naively, believe in eternal love. and i fucking forgive everybody. these traits tend to backfire.

stir-crazy

domesticity is a new thing for me. it holds my attention for about two hours, then i get very antsy. "i'll probably always have this tendency" i said to t the other night... it's been this way for the last 7 years. he looked at me wearily.
i get bored too easily. i am trying to settle down a bit, but it's more arduous than i'd imagined.
geddy lee:

the old oven, RIP:

i have been cooking copious amounts of food over the last 36 hrs. carmelized onions and sauteed gnocchi; havarti melted over garlic bread; white-chocolate-coated mixed nuts. at this exact moment i am dehydrating apple slices. this manic phase shall too pass, but i do like pretending i am capable of nurturing.

pallid domesticity

all the different teachers at school, presumably unbeknownst to each other, call their classroom skeletons "Slim." "let's demonstrate on Slim here" they'll say jovially. things are less amusing when they become cliched.

geddy lee has been back in my life for nearly a week. i love the little shit, but i'd forgotten over the last three (!) years how fucking obnoxious he really is. he weighs about 20 pounds, howls throughout the night, hisses at the other cats, swats at us with claws extended. he also opens cabinets despite their safety locks. i am objectively impressed by his resourcefulness- his catness- but he makes for a rather vexing roommate.
he is, however, terribly photogenic. and i can justify his malcontent by remembering that i personally, with my own two hands, removed his right testicle when he was five months old.

entropy fucking hates him.

the lair is in a half-assed state of unpacked disarray. we have temporarily given up with the nesting and are stacking boxes neatly against the walls. our schedules are still fairly dissonant, though i am officially down to 3 days a week at work (to better focus on school). when we have free time together, the last thing either of us wants to do is unload crap.
t hung the lps above the window.

happy 71st birthday, judy blume... and charles darwin...

every time i see this, hear this, imitate this: i laugh. no matter what.

life can be so unnervingly simple.

i get 'red skies at night' in my head at least once a day

clickin' = enlargin'. this is in front of my school.

i am gaspingly unmotivated. all i want to do is be with him. everything else is a time-consuming, thuddingly dull distraction.
*
i have spent this rare sunny friday doing laundry. three loads on one washer/dryer. the downstairs neighbor is playing his music loudly. i skipped class yesterday (to my credit, i was feeling like shit; it wasn't completely due to lackadasia) and finished "you'll never nanny in this town again" whilst sprawled on the floor of the odious chain bookstore. i needed to give my brain a rest (even though i've already read "sTORItelling" and "tatum o'neal: a paper life" in the shamefully recent past). it is lurid and name-droppy- quite fascinating, really. i have newfound respect for danny devito and rhea perlman.
*
my coworker's daughter showed off her preemie daughter at work last night- 9 days old, 7 weeks early, out of the hospital after a week of being tube fed and attached to a ventilator. we could only look, not touch. i had never seen such a small human before. as of yesterday she weighed 4lbs 6oz. her head was the size of a navel orange. we all cooed politely, as wenches do, until her daughter and the baby left and my coworker said "i call her 'the grub'."
the tv was on in the break room at work last night, showing the late-night news. i was tuning it out, reading the springsteen article in rolling stone. but when i heard "president obama" i looked up at the screen and immediately grinned.

saturated. saturated, baby.

these pictures were taken over the weekend in a roughly 30 mile diameter from seattle.







amid the moistness, on a nondescript rural road north of snohomish, i happened upon a tree of shoes.

time will tell. but i'm the most impatient person i know.

my car is currently 10' off the ground, having a new muffler installed. the (free, siphoned) internet connection at my lair is defunct. it has been pouring rain and windy as hell. and... him. i am in a state of perpetual nervousness- giddiness manically augmented with trepidation, sensibility, worry about what the rest of the world will think. i trust too easily- and yet i don't trust at all. i was rereading some old journals last night (notebooks are still where i write the truly abasing twaddle), trying to retain some perspective. i don't want to lose myself again. i just want to be happy and love and be loved and savor my fucking life. the crushing doubt only surfaces when i'm left alone with my own logic and some really awful memories.
this has happened so many times. i cannot rely on anyone else to listen to me, to feign sympathy, to be supportive. welcoming him back into my life in any form means that i automatically isolate myself from the rest of my world- and that's incredibly fucked up. what would i do if it was someone i cared about, telling me a similar scenario? i would wince. i would be supportive but voice my concerns. and i wouldn't be able to fully stifle my misgivings, no matter how carefully i concealed them. watching people make the same fucking stupid mistakes is one of the most frustrating things i can imagine- waiting for the inevitable wreckage, their squeals of bewilderment, their "how could i have let this happen again?"s. knowing that, how can i not be utterly annoyed with myself?
because it still feels right. it feels natural as hell. because we both needed that time to figure out who and what the fuck we are. because we have seen each other at our absolute hateful worst. because i can finally appreciate him as him, not as an extension of me. because love in any form is a fucking rare thing, and to turn away from it in any form is the most lifeless action anyone can possibly do.
we both have to prove ourselves. my standards are much higher now. and i can honestly say that we'll both be fine regardless of what happens. the last two years have definitely taught us that.
i have to go rescue my car from its lofty perch.

a week in contrasts

garbage pickup was about 2 weeks behind after the snowstorm. this is downtown.

a greyhound at work with what was believed to be necrotizing fasciitis, aka 'alabama rot'- a breed-specific condition (first discovered in alabama, hence the name). a culture showed severe streptococcus instead.

my fucked-up tire, mid-fix:

and what he brought when we saw each other:

the honeymoon is over

another goddamn motherfucking deluge hit yesterday. snow was collecting on the hammering man.

...the sunday before xmas and everything was shut down by 7pm... except for bars.
i missed my 3rd day of work. the city is paralyzed. the undeniable beauty of everything is only marginally helpful in keeping my outlook optimistic.
queen anne avenue was a nexus of frolic.


...and my street, 5th N- still closed, still pristinely unsanded or unplowed.

the buses are nonexistant. i had to cancel going to see my family for the holidays. if this weather maintains (as it is supposed to for the next week), and the city continues to be COMPLETELY FUCKING INEFFECTUAL, i will also be unable to get to work, again. there is a very real possibility that i will be spending xmas completely alone. and that, despite my bleating about nonsentimental atheistic sensibility, is really fucking sad.
sweet green is holding down the fort.