and the other 24hrs

blogger has a mobile app. the problem: I can't/don't know how to intersperse writing with photos. maybe it's better in one glob at the bottom. more realistic.
however, the herb Alpert thing bears special mention, because it's such an... interesting rendition. it's off the golden oldies building on 45th. it's almost as "oh!" as that manic George Washington on the bus shelter on sand point and 93rd.
*
you ever feel a maudlin, affectionate nostalgia for your life as it's actually happening?

ethics

I have always been adamant about a few things when I take photos.
1. no unsolicited pictures of people. I don't want to intrude in their lives. images of people are, by far, my favorite to look at; but unto myself, I'm too fucking chickenshit and self-conscious. IT'S NOT MY BUSINESS.
2. no cropping. I try to be very scrupulous when framing shots. the iPhone experiment (aka this blog, in which all photos are taken with one) has posed many challenges. it doesn't have zoom, for example, so I've taken many pictures with dead space that drive me fucking nuts. as a rule, though, I need to lighten the fuck up, so I'm keeping them.
the photo below is the first one I've ever cropped.
*
I saw her when I was getting off the bus downtown. I got to the end of the block and thought "fuck, I HAVE to." so I very quickly took this from about 60 feet away. and I feel gross about it. i took it because it's extremely visceral and immediate. it's how someone lives. and it pulled my goddamn fortunate, often oblivious head out of my ass a little bit.
*
but... I feel gross about it.
*
a few years ago the (odious) seattle weekly did a piece on homelessness downtown. the cover was a full-frontal, full-color photo of a homeless woman sleeping on a bench. it was a fucking great photo. and I was FUCKING FURIOUS. thinking about that cover this much later still pisses me off to the point of shaking. how FUCKING condescending and INTRUSIVE! how DARE they? in her SLEEP, defenseless, unauthorized: and she was everywhere for 7 days, un-hide-from-able, a reminder of her life. I fucking HATE the weekly for that.
...but it was a great photo. I still remember it. it affected me. it was a fucking slap. I wish there wasn't an actual human being with feelings and sensitivity and dreams and a past attached to it, that's all. and, really, that's everything.
I wasn't the only person appalled- the following week they posted some whiny defensive thing about freedom of the press and how photos taken in public are, well, public. so they didn't need to, and therefore DIDN'T, wake the sleeping woman up to get a model release. it's a free paper. it's a free world. fuck it, right? she's probably too fucked up to even notice anyway, right?
*
so I'm conflicted as fuck. I would love some feedback and opinions about this. please know that I take how I represent things very seriously, even if it doesn't always seem that way...
*

all i've got's this sunny afternoon

today! in the secret crevasses of ballard.

designing universal logos for terrible, gruesome things would be a very satisfying job. how would YOU depict decapitation by propellor, for example? would you include cartoony splatters? would the mouth be gaping in agony, or would it have a stoic lego smile?

HAVE your dreams come true? no?

i picture a gaggle of shrill little boys scrambling around to tag this. "large weiner gang?" "NO, dumbass! BIG DICK POSSE!"

seattle was being a sexy strumpet again today.

representation of every weird architectural trend of the last 50 years. i learned today that the westin towers (the cylinders, most famously immortalized on the excellent modest mouse album "the lonesome crowded west", shut up brynn) were built in 1968 (?) and were known at the time of completion as the "corn cob towers." that's like the shiny new bit of the seattle art museum being known as "the goiter." i like knowing mundane shit about places. it makes them more familiar and fond, like listening to a relative tell the same story again.

this car has someone's hedonistic secrets to keep.

my new hood.

i now live behind the madison market co-op, close enough that i can see their employees skulking around the loading dock with their american spirit cigarettes. so, by proxy and much to my belligerent chagrin, i now shop there (they're open later than trader joe's). the people who work there are uniformly hyper!!! it's sometimes a bit too much!! the guy tonight rang up my shit and said "how do you feel about a total of $7?" (or whatever it was) he said it with a "well hellooooo there" kind of voice. and i blinked impatiently. "obligated?" i said. i didn't mean to sound as wenchy as i did. so i laughed, and he laughed, and i now like that stupid hippie-scented place a lot more because they put up with my crap. * i close with a hideouly blurry photo of fingtacles!

no edit

so it goes...

we are BACK ON THE GRID. 10 weeks without sufficient catharsis! it was humbling to realize how many photos i took over the last 2 months didn't stand up to the critical eye of retrospect. this was actually quite educational. without the luxury of spontaneity, i am a hypercritical hag, as it turns out. * I AM SO SO HAPPY TO HAVE A FUNCTIONAL (shitty netbook, $300 4 years ago, operating on fucking windows) COMPUTER AGAIN! *broadway. maybe someone got disillusioned.

entropy, me, and a hair tie.

never. ever.

taken from the window of the 54 where the west seattle bridge merges onto 99 northbound. it was a spit-rainy day. this was the day i found ionesco's "the hermit" at the used bookstore. i ended up at the canterbury, where i finished it in one sitting.

filter experimentation, thank you for making the mundane oddly novel.

restlessness.

moving to capitol hill. the bedframe, waiting.

the cemetery on NE 55th. SO MANY GODDAMN GNAT-THINGS! and this was only a few weeks ago; it's been too consistently cold to warrant a bombastic breeding season. it was so bad that i couldn't walk around; breathing involved inhalation of insects. it was kinda amityville horrorlike, really. even sitting in my car with the windows down wasn;t working; these gangly little fuckers (leggier than mosquitoes, funkier than flies) were buzzing around my car. once i reached the asphalt of the adjacent residential street they vanished. creepy. or biologically telling?

the radio towers of capitol hill, across the street from my new lair and visible from my bed if i sleep with the blinds open. hell, they're visible from everywhere. next time you see the cap hill towers, think of me and my incubating brain tumor. i fucking love them.

this is a fantastic example of "why the fuck was i so eager to share my pictures with all y'all?" i mean, god. solitude + narcissism = i bet you own cats, don't you. but i am including it because one can never have enough blackmail fodder.

entropy, hell yes.

georgetown.

tombs at the new lair.

before dance class on monday.

"twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than the things you did." mark twain. \

shabop shalom

the computer is less-dead but not fully sentient.
*
"using a fork and knife to eat is like making love with a translator." I read that today in my "foods of the world: the middle east." the foods of the world series (circa 1968-1973) is SO GOOD! so LUSTY!
I was also eating food with my hands whilst reading it, so I felt more smug and less feral.
*
photos a bientot.

Friday ze 13th!

the replacement disk for my computer is en route. it's been 2 months since I've been able to post photographs! it's been annoying... especially since it was my fault in the first place...
*
I can be kind of impulsive sometimes. sort of.
*
but I have been TAKING pictures, and the climate has been stellar, and everything that was making me miserable in march is no longer applicable, and I'm typing this (on my phone) whilst languishing in a RAY OF SUNSHINE, and life is good. it's not until spring that I'm annually startled anew by how much winters here fuck with my head...
*
last night I read "Oliver Twink", a short story by Dennis Cooper. it's a dialogue between a manipulative enabler and a heroin addict. they talk about self loathing, admit their 'love' for one another, tell each other to fuck off... it totally freaked me out. it reminded me of the real reason why I decided not to move back to Alaska- I didn't want to be haunted by what people I cared deeply about had done to themselves. I didn't want to worry about them, or run into them and see that they looked like shit, or hear stories, or have to filter everything they said and did through the miasma of their addiction. I am ashamed that this is the ultimate reason, and I haven't really talked or written about it AT ALL; and conveniently, anchorage is still under record-breaking April snow and I can justify my decision to stagnate in seattle based simply on the weather. but now you all know: it's not the weather, it's because I don't want to be around THAT.
"Oliver Twink" was very well-written. just... ugh. it had that seedy 'American Psycho' hangover feeling: did I need that? is my brain better off for being exposed to that?
*
that's a good litmus test for just about anything, really.
*
i can't read what I've already written, so I'm just going to publish this and hope that it doesn't seethe with bland incoherence. THERE WILL BE PHOTOGRAPHS AND CHIPPER CAPTIONS SOON, if only just for my own assuagement.
*
GOD: I will come to you, freeze you, break you.
THE OCEAN: I will spread myself like wings. I am a billion tiny feathers. you have no idea what's happened to me.
-dave eggers