weirdness

I just found a brochure from Seattle Atheists folded inside my copy of Nicholson Baker's "Vox."

...it's nice to find tangible evidence that you are exactly as you perceive yourself to be. for good or bad, really.

photo-wise, tonight: forgive my lack of content; it was a long fucking day. but hecatomb is being more amorous than usual, the harlot. the wearer of the classy t shirt, me.

i was eating Moroccan food in Seattle 15 years ago this weekend, b'stilla and couscous and too much wine 'cause I wasn't carded, while a belly dancer flipped knives over her torso; the restaurant's not there any more, the guy's not in my life any more, some of the relatives aren't alive any more. it's odd to know EXACTLY WHEN cataclysmic events happen, even as they're happening for the first time. is that why I always choose holidays to make life-changing changes? perhaps. they become easier to remember and the dates are much more poignant.
*
I love still being able to relate to that heady idealism, to physically feel it, to be able to pretend that my various dippy crap is a viable concept. I still have fantasies of camping on beaches and frolicking under waterfalls and earnestly winning over the locals in, say, Cappadocia.... as, like, my permanent lifestyle. instead I have a clarified timeline that demonstrates how, fifteen years later, I (still) have my first-world shit together, albeit in a (still) blue-collar way. and I'm still in a town I love and am surprised and impressed by, but also fervently frustrated with and ego-fucked by...

from the atheist brochure:
"man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions."
-Oliver Wendell Holmes

one of the things I like about "Vox" is their discussion of the stereo receiver and its colored bars that glow more fiercely as the room light dims. i also like their description of the reflection of street lights through venetian blinds, any town, anywhere. who hasn't looked at light shining through blinds and imagined themselves a character in their own movie, thinking their exotic thoughts, bodies slashed with shadows?

or not!

day off, 27 may 12

folklife. 15th W. a copper vodka still, handcrafted in Germany. rattus rattus, W Mercer. the limbless missus. 15th W- I've wanted to take pictures of this window for YEARS. Moore Theatre. the mill. copious satay, baby. there are indeed birds overhead. glass globes in Ballard. 2nd and Stewart. swaying chain mail. something weird.

the wind's kicked up and the light is constantly changing.

the campfire rule...

...yeah.

this is when everything changes. the signs are all there. things are in motion. in the meantime, I have been very efficient at realizing what I DON'T want. it is annoying and embarrassing and disgust-inducing now, but it'll serve me well later.
in the meantime... I'm going back to new orleans in 7.5 days, so fuck it.

"sophisticated cissy", the meters: a really good song! fitting for those nights of hot intrigue and languorous pontificating. you are welcome.

seattle skyline, entropy tongue action, snake bite, closer and later.

but not hiding! 23 may 12

a cool thing about living in an apartment building, one with communal hallways and other people's palpable rhythms: my lair smelled of awesome marinara tonight WITHOUT ANY EFFORT ON MY PART. it smelled of a neighbor's marinara and my sandalwood incense and summer rain hitting dust and 90-year-old wood. it made me happy when I walked in the door.
the photos of my lair remind me of 'Barton Fink.'... the faucet picture's from the hulking iron washtub in the basement laundry room... and the tombs, who was sitting right there. the more weight she loses, the bigger her eyes look- she's becoming even more fucking adorable, like some morbid anime. how much less perpetually-tense am I going to feel after she's gone? how much of a fucking monster am I to think things like that?
as I'm slothing on the sofa writing this, she darted off to noisily eat more food. she is a fucking amazing cat. hell, she'll probably outlive me.
the concept of not having her in my life makes me feel sad in an abstractly horrible way. like imagining my best friends or my former loves or my family gone... I just can't. I don't allow myself. it will happen- it HAS happened- and I will be fine, and they will be gone, and it'll be okay. it's the WAITING, the awareness of the inevitability, that's so goddamn daunting.
"the atmosphere is saturated with disaster, frustration, futility. scratch and scratch- until there's no skin left. however, the effect upon me is exhilarating. instead of being discouraged, or depressed, I enjoy it. I am crying for more and more disasters, for bigger calamities, for grander failures. I want the whole world to be out of whack; I want everyone to scratch himself to death." -Henry Miller

21(may)12. like a rush album.

I was walking up pine at 1 this morning. it was windy. I had my hands in my pockets, smiling inanely. I was reminded anew how the life I've created for myself would have been IMPOSSIBLE 7 years ago. I still feel so fucking lucky. I am so grateful to have the ability to live freely and happily.

yesterday rained like hell.

koi and pleco in the floorquarium. from the 1st S bridge. lower queen anne, mid-torrent. oh, marv! the benbow room. your tag matches your trim. white center. into the reflections lately.

I woke up this morning with the jayhawks' "blue" in my head. it's a great song... bodes well.

20 may: pioneer square and the id

the clouds felt really nice.

tallness (safeco plaza, 1969). the id. chop suey & dancing! inside a $995K open house. more buildings within buildings. suspended lights. south main st. internment storefront. the nasty room. inside a seemingly abandoned building. I forget where. bananas.

that'd be a cool poem, too.

952am-1035pm, 5/19/12

bus-reliance is pretty satisfying, at least in the morning. "early" (before 10am) forays into the outside world always surprise me- such shiny functional layers to the universe! people scrubbed and ponytailed and, like, JOGGING. the buses don't have that funky end-of-day patina; their windows aren't cauled with the headprints from nappers, there's no weird crunchy shit on the floor, people haven't been AWAKE long enough to get grimy and flawed. the morning is a fucking beautiful, optimistic thing.

...and then work...

ten hours later. Saturday night. the street fair in the very hood I have to change buses in. inebriated CHILDREN from another decade, another climate... I was wearing a sweater and fucking gloves, and they were in midriff tips and shorts, laughing silently to my headphones' soundtrack. I think blur was involved.
my new neighborhood always, ALWAYS has pedestrians. people alone and in groups, riffling through trash cans and smoking cigarettes and trying to walk in heels and holding hands and buying fruit and about to work the night shifts and sitting on benches. at this hour, in the close proximity of the sidewalk, most of them say hi back.
the pictures (random order, not my fault): 65th & 15th, at the 15th & 43rd bus stop (headphones!), the towers I live under, strawberries make your fingers smell awesome, the tombs, the kitchen that's so small it should be called a ktchn.
read the other day: "weird enough to be called weird by the weird."

outtakes, 5/16-18

it took an hour and a half to get home from work on the bus tonight. interesting crowd. people with matted hair and filthy clothes. pasty colleigates with headphones and polo shirts. girls with too-short skirts and uncomfortable expressions. a man in honest-to-fuck KNICKERS. and people like me, just getting off work, just another day. repeat in mere hours.
I got home and listened to pandora while I watered the plants. buddy holly, the Beatles, van der graaf. Xmas lights. green shiny leaves despite my negligence....
I am fiercely prideful of my seeming frivolity.

"...in a world of apples and kisses and shoes
he wasted his wishes on wishing."
Shel Silverstein