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

may 16th-17th 2012

"what is sorrow but old, worn-out joy?" -jon raymond

since I can't caption each photo, and since they upload all willy-nilly, chronology be damned, it's up to you to map out the 24 hrs that created these.
i have a pretty fucking cool life.

76 degrees

"never, ever try to impress anybody. be the person you are right now, alone, reading this.
and then meet people.
and hold out until you meet someone who is utterly impressed.
because then? you will not have impressed them. they will have been impressed by you."
-Augusten Burroughs

"'Michael the Magnet has a magnetic personality. just watch how Sammy Steel and Ira Iron come running when Michael says hello.'
'say, Sammy and Ira. what do you say we make a connection? a MAGNETIC connection, that is.'
'sounds MAGnificent, Michael.'"
-Joshua Braff

48 hrs, 4 books, comical sunburn, a walk on the beach, wheat thins dragged through Greek yogurt, being looked up and down in startlingly un-Seattle-like directness, witnessing a lengthy verbal brawl across 4 lanes of aurora ave, listening to "dirty water" on my headphones in 70 degree darkness, night air soft against bare skin, leaves shadowed under yellow streetlights.
among other things.
this is going to be a fucking awesome summer.

greenwood

"it was, in a way that I found almost intoxicating- the way slamming a trunk lid on your hand or missing a step as you climb a stairway in the dark can be intoxicating- a great mistake."
-michael chabon

that quote has nothing to do with these photos, taken ~6-8pm on a soft warm sunny may Monday. I just like the phrasing. it's evocative.

24hrs, may 6-7

I feel happily invisible and anonymous in seattle. but I suspect I'm really not.

wheel spinnin'

anagrams of my name:
-nearby intenser perm
-my barren serpentine
-represent brainy men
*
I'm finally reading "word freak", about the world of competitive scrabble. it is exhilarating! anagrams are a huge part of scrabble acumen, apparently. all this time I thought I'd been doing well because I 1. almost always kick everyone's ass at scrabble, and 2. know about "qat" and "qi." there is SO MUCH more to learn! I love language. I love how our minds require specificity and, at the same time, aesthetic palatability. I love our need to explain and describe.
*
pardon my floridity.
*
an anagram for Eric Clapton
-narcoleptic!
move back to Alaska?
-soak. balk. vacate. om.
why seattle?
-hates wetly OR steely thaw
Yoko Ono: no results found.
holy crap!
-roach ply
lost weekend?
-knows delete.
*
the photos: entropy holding on, books already read, culturally insensitive puppet in kitchen.

what the hell am I doing here? seattle's pretty, and familiar, and I have my comfortable rivulets. but that's never enough. that's only proof that you can make it anywhere, and congratulations.