la belle nuit

downtown:

on my street, near seattle center:

capitol hill:

inside a partially demolished apartment building on first hill:

tiresias v. the stairs:


words shall soon follow.

oxidizing

here are j and i, waiting in line (and getting carded!) at the amateur porn screening yesterday morning, on the stranger's blog. my hair is still wet from the shower. as a whole, everyone in line looks fairly miserable for being on the threshold of much tantalizing copulation. it was, after all, only 11:30am.
http://slog.thestranger.com/2008/10/early_morning_humping
the videos were great. my favorite was 'edged.' orgasm denial is fucking hot.
*
outside the central market:
yesterday en route to work, along green lake: (yes, i was driving at the time)

and a big ol' plate o' happy at the 5 point cafe! this place has always been great. the bartender gave me a tampon because the machine was broken; as i was entering the women's loo a drunk old man came stumbling out. how can i justify eating food in an establishment where i am forced to hover over the toilet seat? because it is delicious. and near my lair. and they have shit like uriah heep on the jukebox.

today i had a fortune cookie that said "you will soon vacation in a cooler climate."...

a different kind of blue

yesterday four of us gathered for a massage-o-thon. we are to give 25 and receive 12 by the beginning of december. it is a hard life. at said -thon was someone i worked on near the beginning of school. "you are so much better now!" she said. "this is amazing." my strokes feel right. i am much more confident now... and i fucking LOVE myofascial work. someone last week called me "the friction queen." that shall be the title of my next pornographic feature.
i am home, purposely skipping a meeting at work, watching rain slam sideways into the window. things are going well. i like where my life is drifting.
iconic, seen through the window of the night bus. circa 9pm the streets of downtown seattle turn seedy. i love it. the overhead light of office workers and tourists gives way to the dank kitchen denizens of the night. wet sidewalks help.

last week m and i wandered around like tourists. the moon was full. later that evening i went blues dancing for the first time. it was fun... despite not knowing any steps. a knowledgable partner is paramount.
urban wildlife atop the arches at pacific science center:

he had never been to the sculpture park. so we went. this piece is from 1967. i love reflective pieces- the sculpture becomes a medium for the REAL art of the SURROUNDINGS, or something. like the bean in chicago- that fucking blows my mind- it is a liquid medium in solid form.

inside the smaller spray is a sculpture of a boy with his arms stretched out. this sculpture breaks my heart.

mediocre open-mic...

i have been listening to mitch hedberg in my vehicle. he discusses popular songs that lose their intended message when utilized in certain situations. he starts singing 'we are the world' and says something like "you remember that song? when i fucked you in the pet cemetery?" i keep recalling this at horribly inopportune times. i was at the store and started laughing in the middle of the cat-food aisle.

there is only one thing missing

...and without it nothing else really fucking matters.

the undercurrent

i took a stroll through the indian summer.
a window along airport way:

an abandoned building. the foliage along the sides was inundated with wood spiders dangling at eye level. there was a setup amid the shrubbery for a cat- a box surrounded by food tins and a water dish. i was touched by that. it reminded me of the medinas of tunis.

the underpass of airport way:

inside the rainier cold storage building, through the window. this has always been one of my favorite structures in seattle. there are 'proposed land use' signs all over it- soon to be demolished. this is another scene i shall fantasize about- someone set that chair there and what- stared out at the sunshine? read a book? was straddled? wept?

rainier cold storage from the street. the original rainier brewery was fully demolished this summer- i have pictures on here somewhere from when it was first bulldozed and people left flowers in the fence in mourning. progress... i took a crumbly stone from the dusty remnants yesterday- to put beside my warped crowbar from the kingdome.

the vacuum/bible purveyor on 4th south:

cleanliness is next to g- never fucking mind.

class

in pioneer square, i was stared at by several elderly tourists whilst taking this picture.

next to the railroad tracks in ballard:

the (partial) spoils of a coworker's going-away party:

*
my very first boss was a screamingly Pseudo-Sensitive teva-wearer at AkPIRG. he had long luscious hair and a tattoo on his foot. his catchphrase was "so sayeth the shepherd..." whereupon we, the employees, would reply "so sayeth the flock." it was all very sarcastic. i was only fifteen and didn't find it especially amusing. but it is a phrase that, years later, gets stuck in my head ALL THE TIME, at least a few times a week... and it is here now... entirely inconsequential but i am sharing it anyhow.

fate has a funny way

i passed my first-term finals.
i saw dr dog.
my bank collapsed.
*
i am mortified to be from alaska... rather, i am ashamed that such ignorance, such arrogant bush-minus-penis BULLSHIT is being rendered synonymous with the land that reared me. between palin's fucking idiocy and ted stevens' bastardly glower, you'd think everyone from alaska is a chaw-chewin', gun-wrangling, meth-cookin' bible-thumping hick. i mean, fuck- replace the rifles with pistols and you may as well be describing 95% of washington too. although in washington you get surly looks if you don't recycle...
this was downtown, wednesday... a little gathering of earnestness. there was even a news crew there, which seemed silly.

i don't have a television, so i watched the ubiquitous katie couric foreign-policy interview on the library computers. i couldn't help thinking "jesus, that sounds like something i would say when i have no fucking idea what i'm talking about." i almot feel sorry for her, which immediately reminds me: if she was a he, would i have that (admittedly VERY WEAK) glimmer of empathy? no, absolutely not. i am a sexist asshole like everyone else.
on a related note, i love david letterman a little more after this week.
*
dr dog... OH MY GOD. they were so very, very good. it was a wholly glorious night. i had been waiting a long time to see them. delta spirit and hacienda opened. i have lengthy (and almost unwatchably jostly) video of most of it, again rendered untransferable due to my pithy connection.
we were squashed in the back. this is a horribly unfocused picture of half the band.

and the lead singer, the growly one, gettin hisself all sweaty.

on the sidewalk of my street:

and another art window on broadway:

i have a week off from school. next term: kinesthiology and myofascial work. i may take the train to portland, or not. fall is always my favorite season...

...so he wiped his ass with the rabbit

blogger and videos do not coexist. this is an extremely frustrating and time-consuming lesson. my poorly edited videolas, therefore, shall remain for my eyes only.
the lead singer of spiritualized, who did not address the audience at all. nor did he take off his sunglasses. blurriness is his comeuppance.

several blocks of businesses along broadway are vacant (including the hostel/doss house i stayed at when first arriving in seattle in 1996), awaiting demolishment for the new light-rail station. they have become a series of rotating art exhibits in the meantime. it is fucking awesome. some are inside the storefronts. this is attached to the old jack in the box.

vincent bugliosi, looking very fucking old.

walking home. this is at the top of itchykoo park/toker's paradise (the actual municipal moniker is "bhy krake park", honestly) next to my lair. it is a happy place. the vantage point makes me feel like i've done something right...

the first term of school ends next wednesday. i am startled at how much i know- and horrified by how little i still retain.
listened to 'renaissance' on lp this morning. the sky has been a hazy orange hue today- forest-fire gold and muggy as fuck. it was almost 80 degrees earlier: people in summer garb, sillouhetes against the sidewalk. 'twas a waking dream.

he's a mormon. we're all drunks.

j and i saw 'burn after reading' yesterday. it was mediocre. brad pitt was fucking great, and i am cringing at having typed that sentence.
afterwards i saw spiritualized. i was slappin'-distance of the lead guitarist's ass- and oddly, as it occured to me whilst walking home, i never saw his face. he wears ill-fitting black levi's and work boots, though, and the stage lights made a halo around his dark hair.
they were great until what i imagine was their final song- it disintegrated into a self-indulgent dirge- rather, an IRRITATING FUCKING CACOPHONY- that went on for at least six minutes. i was pushed against the stage- actually, not pushed, for it was a decidedly docile crowd- and watched the audience go from listless bouncing (all one can really hope for in seattle; i am guilty of it too) to bemused atony. it was fucking painful to continue standing there, watching them suddenly suck so badly. and i had a bus to catch. so i left. they opened the show with my favorite song, the song that i listened to OVER AND OVER right after leaving t (see dec-jan 2006, or don't- actually, please don't), and i have very nice video of it that perhaps i will someday post.
but overall: yay! i needed that! yay!
*
s called today. she is coming to seattle for my birthday. the whole goddamn weekend! i am so fucking excited. in fact, i am smiling foolishly at this very moment...
*
massage school: the first term ends next week. i massage a friend, not a classmate, tomorrow. he is a licensed masseur. i am a bit nervous, for several reasons. and today i had the epiphany in class that the instructors warned us about the first week, the epiphany that i scoffed at. i thought: "i do not want to be fucking touched today. at all." my partner was the class's only smoker and she was practicing on my arms and chest. her breath was terrible and i was feeling clausterphobic. and guilty. the first few weeks of school were full of giddy "wow that feels AMAZING" pap; now we all know how the sequences go, what feels right and what doesn't, and we're all a lot more critical and impatient. perhaps massaging someone new will be better after all...? i still love to give massages. i feel like i've gotten my flow down. i am relaxed enough to sense what they, as an individual, need, rather than just focus on how to do the strokes- because everyone is so fucking different. i appreciate the human body even more now. how people's skin feels, where they palpably carry tension, how they breathe, what their expressions convey- we are amazing animals.
i am using my student id to procure a free hour at this here cafe; i am here all the time. the guy at the counter just said "i am always needing a free massage and i know you need the hours." i am already flushed with my one glass of (prissy, but it's hot in here) chardonnay, but this pleases me.
*
at instances like this i must reflect on the nuances of my life and think "overall, fuck yeah."
*
... so 'leisureville'? the book about the vast retirement community ("55 years young!") in florida, with the slutty pathos and artifice galore? i doubted its existence. so i found it online. the site is horrifying, complete with a ghastly theme song. i sent away for information (according to 'the villages', the name of the community, i am "evelyn peterson") and it arrived last week. several packets of their various home layouts (complete with screened lanais for 'at home entertaining') AND a dvd that i have yet to watch... i showed the paraphenalia to j. he made a smartass and very accurate comment about the 'racial representation' on the cover of the pamphlet- representation which, i know from the book, to be inaccurate- there were perhaps 6 couples in the sprawling morass of 'the villages' who were not blindingly caucasian, as well as a transsexual who felt extremely out of place.
'leisureville'- it is good and should be read by many people, if only to determine how you DON'T want to age.
*
as i age: i just want to be in control of my faculties, both physical and mental, and surrounded by love and thriving plants and good smells. greedily, i think it would take all of that to keep me truly happy.

wearing my love like heaven

in my ethics class at massage school, a large amount of time has been devoted to 'owning our emotions.' "no one else has the ability to make you feel anything" says the teacher. "you decide how to react to a situation." this concept is being stressed as primarily a 'defense' against future clientele who may be needy/unsalubrious/draining- we need to have the ability to 'shake off' their energy so we don't make it ours. and touch is an excellent conduit for feeling like we understand and relate to another person more than we actually do...
it has made the last few days of extracurricular shite a lot more seamlessly dealt with. after feeling like a bruised fucking flower it occured to me: do i want to be happy or sad? who is this person to me, anyhow? how are they worth one fig of my time? and the sun literally came through the clouds, i breezily said aloud "fuck it", and jumped on my trampoline to led zeppelin.
*
life is far more manageable when viewed as an intriguing novel that i am a comical character in. as long as this novel makes me want to keep reading it, i'm golden.
*
that was awfully fucking treacly.
*
i would have been married for 5 years on thursday. i remembered halfway through the day. this also helped my mood shift to the better. i thought "i'm so much fucking better off." i still, obviously, get angry. and sad. and i feel really fucking cheated sometimes. and occasionally i miss the shit out of him. once loved, always loved, even if i never want to see or hear from him again. it makes me wonder what the fucking point is: accumulation of memories? is that what life is essentially about?
*
i had a dream last night that i was having to perform various gymnastic/range-of-motion shoulder sequences for two of my coworkers. they were standing on either side of me, looking solemn. i was supine on my bed and my hair was falling out in handfuls. they were impassively watching me get more and more flustered. i woke to two of the cats flanking me instead, staring me down. they were out of food. it is nice to feel needed.

willie!

he sounded fantastic. our seats- the blanket on the grass- were on the extreme periphery and the stage was obscured by speakers. but towards the end of the show the security guards relaxed a bit- i took this about 15' from him, surrounded by jostling folk clapping their hands arythmically.
he played 'georgia.' and 'crazy'. and 'blue eyes crying in the rain.' and, of course, 'whiskey river.' he did not play 'time of the preacher', but i can forgive that.
the venue sells beer and wine, 2 drink limit per counter visit. thus, buying 2 glasses of wine gets you a plastic pint glass filled with wine. and that is what i did. "all i need is a fucking straw" i said. j was busy manhandling 2 sloshy cups of ipa.
it was one of the best nights i've had in a while. at least a week.
*
the (dying) pet skunk at work. descented, they are fucking adorable.

lick-happy
(these morning pictures just gush with authenticity)

i was walking home about 2 weeks ago, circa 1am, and passed this window. this picture was taken from the sidewalk and though the blinds. i find myself making up stories about it.

and your typical seattle window... just, just heard about palin being mccain's vp nomination. fucking fuck. that was an annoyingly savvy move. he's going for the vagina vote.

she said my pressure was perfect

it has rained approximately 3 inches over the last few days. in august, this is peculiar. it has lent a melancholic pensive air to everything- not bad, just a distinct change in atmosphere- i feel like i feel in november, but with flowers blooming, if that makes sense.
listening to a very, very nostagic album today added to the patina. again, not bad- simply put me squarely back into another era, to the point that i am impressed at how much i retain from the seemingly mundane without being conscious of it at the time.
see: fremont lair, devoid of furniture, cold as fuck, cat hair skittering in clumps across the wood floor. i am kneeling in front of the stereo playing this album, this fuck-me-to-this-album album that someone was kind enough to burn for me. i am playing it for someone new. he is indifferent, which devolves into contempt and scurrility once he realizes its source. a fight ensues. it was probably one of the many nights i left that apartment -my home, not his- to get away from it. i walked fremont at two, three in the morning many, many times that winter. if it wasn't actively raining, at least everything was still wet. the world was lit from within. and like a fucking fool, i felt like the most complicated person alive.
*
i had forgotten how good the album actually is.
it provided a very nice soundtrack today.
*
school: front-of-leg massage today, back-of-leg tomorrow. i have not yet properly studied for the exam on the skeletal system. the human body amazes me. everything makes sense. we are lyrical beasts. thus i am rewarding my lyricism with a glass of red wine...
after class i went to a reptile CE at work. whilst there a client brought in her pet skunk. i had never before seen a skunk up close. and they are adorable, even when near death as this one was. their hair is long and coarse, cavy-like. i took blurry pictures. his leg was too edematous for me to effectively catheterize.
"take take take" is playing. i fucking love this song. it is extremely fun to sing along with, loudly, my voice purposely cracking. the frantic, irrational obsessiveness of it has always turned me on. and the dissonant cadence helps.
*
my heart is in my mouth
*
i am so fucking excited for whatever happens next.

happy i am

i am really fucking pleased with my life!
it has been years since i can say that with alacrity!
hence the fragmented sentences and superfluous exclamation points!

!!!!!!!!!!!

it fucking poured today. the air was warm and the rain was visible as it careened through the sky. and the smells of the city brought me back. i am awakened. i can feel my pupils dilate. something really fucking cool is already happening. this is the new era.
i stayed after class to give another massage. i am completely flustered with the chest sequence. i am very confident about the back. the sun broke through the clouds during petrissage.
'leisureville' is an incredibly disturbing tome- not only for the crux of its content but for the blind joy that its habitants express over its existence. it should be read by all who plan on aging. i read it whilst hunched on the floor of the UW bookstore until they closed. then i traipsed to bleu to discuss religion with a stranger at the bar. now: the ambience is warm, i am enjoying hot green tea, and i got to hear the cure's 'a forest' for the first time in years. that is a completely perfect song.
*
i took an impromptu jaunt to thurston county last night to assuage some of the familial dissonance with my delightful mother. we had a very good talk, laughed until we cried, and watched the olympics. and i cried some more. when shawn johnson's parents embraced in the stands i completely lost it. i am snivelingly susceptible to other people's emotions. i felt great love for the world as i sat in my mother's armchair, on my ass, watching athletic feats.
i drove home in torrential rain. i very nearly fell asleep. my car kept waking me up as it drifted over the rumble strips. i nearly hit an articulated bus. i inexplicably got a second wind around sea-tac, window fully rolled down, arm getting wet, blaring 'got to get you into my life' under blurry orange clouds. when i safely reached my lair i kissed the steering wheel.
*

so i built an ark/ but no rain came

things have been good. school is doubtlessly one of the most positive things i've done for my life in years. i have not had a cigarette since 4 july 2008. the days have been warm and filled with dr dog, peanuts 'n' dry kamut cereal, laser-pointering the cats, keeping my nails short and torso aligned. the one black spot on the last several weeks: family dynamics. i keep hoping things are better with my relationship with my parents. but then they aren't. last week my father admitted that my mother is a 'functioning alcoholic' (which was quite a relief to hear aloud- thank god someone else acknowledged this) (she was not present at the time) and then proceeded to tell me that my various autoimmune inconveniences are a product of my own weak will, that i 'let things' happen to me. "you were healthy as a kid" he said. "i don't understand why you suddenly think you have all these problems"... among other nasty, unprovoked, jaw-droppingly passive-aggressive things, stated with weird glittering hateful eyes that i did not fucking recognize. i had been inanely, cheerfully babbling about something random (the cute ketchup bottle? the buildings he'd inspected that day?) and was abruptly floored with his disgust and resentment- i thought "he fucking blames me, he hates me, he is such an unhappy person"- i cannot state it articulately at all, but it was a feeling of "whoa- holy shit- what just happened?" my dad has always had the ability to scare the fucking shit out of me. i tried to repeatedly nullify the situation- "we had such a good time last week, let's just relax"- "can we change the subject please?"- "i'm sorry i misunderstood you."- until finally i said "dad, i love you, and i'm really sorry, but i have to go now." and i walked out of the restaurant.
when i got to the sidewalk i did a couple unattractive huffy-breaths but, weirdly, i did not cry. i just started walking. for a moment i felt like that fucking sixteen-year-old with a fat lip and nowhere to go, but then i remembered that i have my own life now... and lots of places to go.
i don't even want to write about it because it makes me very fucking sad. and embarrassed. and furious. and i feel like an ungrateful, ignorant fucking asshole, but i am so fucking tired of his behavior towards me and my mother and everyone else that i am about ready to call it a fucking draw.
a family is one you choose- people whom you love because they are lovable and they love you back.
and an interjection: i am fine. i am healthy and happy and have the bloodwork and tanned arms and annoying laugh to prove it. and i can repeat that incessantly to my father, i can physically SHOW him, but he has a loop of self-invented libel in his head to drown reality out. always has. and anything i say or do is irrelevent- it interferes with his negative agenda. in lieu of arguing pointlessly, i acquiesce like a little bitch.
i've known a surprising number of men like this, actually.
on a brighter, far brighter note, i just discovered a new and delicious form of crack! thanks, thestranger.com!
http://www.parallelfilmguide.com/index.php?title=Main_Page
further length and brevity shall ensue sooner.
that, i realize as i type, would be a beast of a sentence to diagram.

ye ebb & flow

according to the cuss-o-meter (whose site i will not link to because it contains their 'dating site', and i have obviously lofty standards):

Around 31.3% of the pages on your website contain cussing.
This is 213% MORE than other websites who took this test.

...to which i say, that is fucking right.

today, day 2 of massage school, i undressed under a sheet held in a respectful tent by my polite, male partner. there were 26 of us in the room- 12 'drapers', 12 'drapees', 2 instructors. i learned: one should not wear cordoroys when trying to undress under and between cotton sheets. nor should one ribaldly rip off one's shirt and render it inside-out when trying to redress under same sheets.
and everyone, everyone, is self-conscious. i think. i know that, once faced with the rest of the world's scrutiny, i am. my 'survival' mechanism: i am happy in my home (my body, my skin) unto myself. your judgments only reflect on you. i am far too classy a broad to nitpick your anatomy, so leave me the fuck alone.
overall i was totally, weirdly cool with it.
but i broke out in a silly sweat when having to drape him. i didn't want to fuck up. i feel the same way when i have to speak in public. he was very nice. he has had many massages and calmly instructed me on what to do. we are to "hold the leg as if it's a baguette." we were also told to "not hold the leg as if it's a flailing anaconda." the instructors are great. it is simply the giddy childish waves of "i really want to learn this and be good at it NOW and fuck, i don't know ANYTHING yet"- scary, the rug pulled out, as though i am five years old again. someday this will all be automatic and i will LAUGH and LAUGH over how deer-in-headlights i once was. but that 'was' is still now.
i hope i can do this. i hope my fucking body doesn't fuck with me.
i am on the full dose of avonex. no one knows i have anything aberrant...
this is both a source of inflated pride and further isolation.
whenever i (frequently) feel neurotic and damaged, i think "no one around me has any idea. how would i even say something? and why should i? they're living their own lives and certainly don't wish to be burdened by someone else's weird abstract shit. no, i'll just soldier on, alone, because i'm so, like, good at that, and so well-adjusted and shit." or similar.
i am far more frightened of what i may or may not do to sabotage something really fucking cool, than by anything reality could possibly toss at me.

well, that passed

i am such a fucking embarrassment to myself sometimes. i cannot even relate to what i was prattling on about in posts prior.
just watched 'stop-loss.' i had lofty hopes, having been floored by 'boys don't cry', but i was decidedly unimpressed by this one. j was similarly disgruntled. we tend to be on the same page cinematically. for a proper war movie, 'jarhead' and 'coming home' are far better.
i visited my parents yesterday. it was all right. i love them but christ- the way my father berates my mother is so fucking difficult to be witness to. i have mentioned this to them before. i have said "i understand that this is your dynamic and that nothing is going to change- but it can be very hard to be around." and that is all i can do. my father is an odd duck. he is deprecatingly self-aware but gallingly oblivious to his actions as he actually performs them. or: his hindsight is 20/15 but his present is disablingly myopic. i can see how i resemble that. and it horrifies me.
my mom told me of her clearest memory of her grandmother, who died when she was about ten. she and her mother had taken her grandmother on an outing from her nursing home- "one of the only times i remember my mom being patient" she said- and the three of them went to wapato park in tacoma. my mother and her grandmother were watching the birds on the lake when her grandmother started laughing "and she had a great laugh" said my mom, "very rollicking." "look at the duck butts!" her grandmother exclaimed. she found the sight of multiple ducks with their heads underwater hysterical. my mother was laughing too, telling this story. "i always think of her when i see ducks in the water" she said. i have lived this long and never knew this about her. and from now on, whenever i see ducks, i will think of her telling me this, and how her expression was happy and sad at once. i adore my mother.
so on the drive back to seattle, in the dark with no cigarettes, trying to sing with gravelly gravitas, i was getting increasingly pissed off about how my father treats such a cool woman so crappily- and how she is not only fucking used to it, but amused and indulgent of it. perhaps i am just far more fucking intolerant of such things now. anyhow, they've been married for nearly 35 years and i have two divorces and... several cats. even as their daughter, i will never fully know their relationship. something about it works.
'american x' (track 12) by black rebel motorcycle club is a fucking fantastic song.

introversion breeds irrationality

i have been in a fucking fog since early saturday morning, when i got off the phone and bawled like a little kid in the soft darkness of my bed. sometimes it is impossible to remember anything but the good times. and it compounded, to a scary fault, how fucking lonely i am.
i keep hoping things will get better, that something magical and fantastic will spontaneously occur, that i will be lifted along on an utterly unforeseen journey. i want to be able to trust someone again.
i have spent the last 48 hrs listening to the soft boys "insanely jealous" over and over. and over. very loudly. whilst sweating in the 90 degree sunshine. it is a very cathartic song. and i have effectively saturated all further listening of it to forever remind me of this weekend.
*
unintentionally.
but i suppose it will provide amusement and nostalgia someday.
*
i took the full dose for the first time today. it is all easier from here, i suppose. i am bitchy and my body hurts and i cannot focus properly, but i am not taking sufficient analgesics to make myself feel better- i like to FEEL what i am doing to my body, how it's reacting to the invasion- it is comforting somehow, to follow a textbook expectation of symptoms. the ironic fuckery of the medication being so much more predictable than the disease is not lost on me- as a matter of fact, it pisses me the fuck off, but there's really nothing i can do about that.
*
a large part of me wishes i hadn't committed to school. the tether is agitating. but the last two days at work were so engorged with actual and mental bullshit that it was nice to remind myself "soon i will have another skill that will allow me to do something better." i stuffed two dead chickens in a cremation bag. was misted with urine from an especially horrid and obstreporous dog. hauled a 42kg dog, also dead, into a room to visit with its owners post-mortem, and had to smile with professional sympathy in the faces of two grown men sobbing- and turn away abruptly so they don't see me starting to cry too.
and now i am typing this into the anonymous ether, as if to prove that anything happens at all.
i would love to actually talk to someone, face to face, instead.

on the other side of the world

i checked two books out of the library yesterday and had read them both by the time i got home later that evening. the first i read whilst sprawled in the grass at UW (my new favorite haunt, and just about the only lawn in seattle i trust to lay upon). it described ways people have dealt with modern cultural annoyances- the honku, spray-painting un-picked-up dog shit gold, stuffing meters (the anchorage parking fairies were mentioned).
the second, a book of contrasting linguistic quirks, i read over a very strong gin & tonic at the mecca. several languages have no terms for specific colors (the shona of zimbabwe have no terms for 'blue' or 'green'); others define all colors as either black or white (for example, 'green' is considered 'black' and red is 'white' for the dani of indonesia). the author surmised lithuanian as the most difficult language to comprehend; after seeing other examples, i would be tempted to nominate navajo.
the lights at the mecca pool upon the tables, interrogation-style. i have a lot of past with that place. it still smelled horrible, the waitress called me 'darlin', and the jukebox blared judas priest and tool.
and then the raucous crowds diminished a bit and i was the only one on the diner-side of the bar, me and my book on a sultry friday night, stabbing the lime absently, and this was the soundtrack:
"remember when i moved in you and every breath we drew was 'hallelujah'?"

RIP george carlin

...i will always remember his hygiene adage from the show i saw in anchorage circa 2000: "armpits assholes crotch and teeth." keep those clean and you won't have any problems. it is sound advice.
*
i am on a crowded bus that is showing movies. i am with someone i know very well. he is sitting in front of me. i am tired and leaning against the window. he turns around and smiles at me- the back of the seat disappears and his arm is around me. i lean my head on his shoulder and hold his hand without thinking about it. he does not pull away. kisses me on the cheek. and then kisses me full-on. and it is good. it is hungry and breathy and bitey and i am straddling him and he is ordering me to "keep moving" and i can feel his erection through our clothing. and i realize that we are blocking the view of everyone behind us. we get off the bus, both smiling too much, that "why the fuck did we wait so long?" elation of a same world made new. we are in a residential neighborhood near madrona and the sun is slanting low. i am walking ahead. i lose my sunglasses in a dumpster. i reach in to grab them and accidentally crush them in my hand, but i do not bleed. a little kid is walking with him. the kid leads us to a park where much merriment and shrieking cuts through the soft air. we go into a house where the kid lives- it is understood that he and this kid are related somehow, and that this is some sort of impromptu family gathering. my mother is there, sitting in a chair in the living room. i introduce him. she gives me a "well done" commisserative smile. his hand is on my back, indicating ownership- an unspeakably pleasant outward gesture of newfound unity. twenty minutes ago we were friends and now we are more. and it feels so goddamn natural, as if when we leave here we'll be going to a home we've shared for years, make love innately, already share the same inside jokes.
my grandmother is there too. she is coherent and cheerful and tells me about her new home in the main building of the senior facility. she is tanned and standing taller than i remember. she is praising me to him. "she's been through such a rough time but she's finally coming back" i hear her say.
it is then that i remember i have to be at work. i have been wearing scrubs this entire time. he says that he has plans to meet some friends that evening. we prepare to leave. i check my reflection in the hall mirror, beam giddily at the glorious turn of events, and notice that half my face is paralyzed again. i cannot smile, i cannot blink. and the fear shuts out all the surrounding noise, turns the sunshine black, reminds me of everything i'd finally been able to forget.
*
and i woke up breathless.
that was about three hours ago.
i went on the deck and had a cigarette. my hands were shaking. the sky was grey. and i was still residually aroused. and my mouth, my face, everything still works perfectly.
but some dreams are a lot more clinging than others. i suspect this one will stay with me for a long while. it tidily touched on everything.
someday when i'm drunk enough i may even tell him about it, and we'll laugh casually, as friends do.

life should not be warholian

i came here, to this cafe with its placid classical music, to upload more photographs of new orleans. blogger, however, is not complying.
the only one i could get: two boys busking in the french quarter. the boy on the right was tap dancing. and he was really fucking good. i gave him money.

but further images shall have to wait, and in the interim i will forget, and it will become a mere memory, and who cares?
how poignant and prescient things seem as they happen... and how depressingly ephemeral they prove themselves to be in retrospect. that can be applied to pretty much everything.
*
i never have sundays off. i wandered today with the naivete of a foreigner. everything was shockingly mellow. people were peacefully walking their dogs, mowing lawns, sauntering hand-in-hand towards a sun-drenched dinner al fresco. it was delightful and eerie to witness- i couldn't help but think "what the fuck? seriously, this is how it normally is?"
i went to the fremont sunday market. because i could. i bought fossilized bamboo for a dollar. a surly young girl was blocking my ability to get free samples at theo chocolate, so i left without trying anything. i walked up the street i used to live on. i remember the '72 monte carlo parked out front, how obnoxious that must have seemed- how fucking miserable i was when i lived there. the sidewalk in front of my old building was wet with hose-water from the downstairs bar. the dumpsters reeked. and i couldn't help but wish i had a brief chance to do it all again, differently.
but fremont is different now. the red apple is gone. the record store is gone. fremont is a sea of white faces behind the wheels of priuses with obama stickers. when one thinks of the liberal seattle cliches, fremont is the stock image. perhaps it was always like that and i am simply a bigger asshole now.
i met j and watched 'the shining' on mute whilst listening to elliot smith's 'from a basement on a hill.' that is a disconcerting pairing. i made a dumb comment about 'the dark side of the shining' but since pink floyd wasn't involved it wasn't amusing whatsoever.