5pm 10/8 - 8am 10/9

-the monthly installment of my favorite house.
-they fix things like I would.
-shadowland.

yesterday I had another one of those dreams. the sun was shining and we made plans. I tried too hard to facilitate everything: offering to pick them up, pay... they were nonchalant from the start, but I wanted to be around them so badly that I accepted it. at the appointed time I arrived and they weren't there. they weren't there anyway. I woke up from that feeling like fucking shit.
happiness, validation, anything: it's not obtained externally. how constantly I forget that. silly little girl.

the clouds are divine today.

jingled, jangled.

it's been a long day. you know when you awaken at an ungodly hour to, say, catch a plane? and the entire day bends and folds upon itself in a trippy, timeless manner? and you wonder why you don't ALWAYS exist in a 30hr/day world, now that you have proof of how enriched your life can be if only you saturate your every moment to its full potential?
and then you realize how tired you are. not really sleepy, because you've drank enough coffee to sweat without heat. but you're snotty and impatient in a way that offends even you. sun shines sideways across empty parking lots, barely above the horizon. birds sing and squirrels frolic. and the only cafe open is a fucking Starbucks, and it's packed with earnest fresh-faced folk, and a tiny child body-slams your legs while you're over-sweetening your caffeinated beverage, and you blurt out "god damn it, what the fuck?" before you can stop yourself.
and the day continues from there. people are too kind and too patient. you make a mental dossier of everyone you need to thank for putting up with you. the air is warm. the sky gets dark. the bus driver smiles conspiratorially and doesn't notice your expired transfer. you walk home from downtown. people smile back. a guy chases you halfway down the block to hand you an Obama pin "if you promise to wear it." the lair doesn't even smell too catlike. you drink a glass of wine. you read about the shakers and how they'd eat segregated by gender, silently, quickly, praying before and after their meals. iTunes crashes on your shitty laptop and you don't care hardly at all. the phrase "fuck it, man" enters your head, and it's freeing as hell.

-the bus stop in West Seattle.
-the latest photo of the crispy miss.

"not only do we have money, but we live in Disneyland, where we spend large bagfuls of that money. we also enjoy good booze, lots of sex, we get to shoot everybody we don't like, we drive shiny cars really fast and occasionally jump them through burning buildings or over police barricades, we exercise on big machines that look like UFOs, and we love Jesus. we are proud of these facts, and we advertise them 24 hours a day, all over the world."
-Luis Alberto Urrea

Friday I'm grousing about how there are so many superior Cure songs.

herewith, the trajectory of the daylight hours. the photos, as always: non-chronological within said ~8hr period. what did YOU do today?

-the alley west of Broadway, on Pike. note the jar atop the nearest dumpster! in it is a lone pickle. pickles and ankhs and everything that is right with the world, condensed.
-Hansen's tangerine-lime soda, shitty vodka, ginger juice, bendy straw. roof deck. sunset. I sprawled on one of the inhospitable chaises and read more of "off the grid", fully aware of the irony, until it got chilly and a group of neighbors started commandeering the barbecue and talking about refinancing.
it has been, climatically, a fucking magical summer. I will try to remember this in January.
-11th and Pike. good thing none of this applies to me.
-October 5th. 530pm. 16th and Denny.
-on the dead grass at UW. drip coffee from Allegro. room for cream.
-11th and Pike. apparently it is a concentrated nexus of badassery.
-Pike Place Market. this used to be the Coney Dog stand across from the magazine place. I always loved its dissonance to the other, far more earnest, booths. did I buy anything from there, ever? fuck no. so I am, as are probably you, directly responsible for it no longer being here.
i assuaged my guilt by going to said magazine stand and grubbily glancing at this month's Proust questionnaire at the back of this month's Vanity Fair: Dolly Parton. you should read it. she is, as always, fucking magical.

"Boulder calls itself the greenest town in America. My visit convinced me that it is at least the smuggest town in America." -Nick Rosen, 'Off the Grid'

the Mecca

I first came here sometime around 2002, I think. and after I saw Lou Reed at Bumbershoot I had my first date with my future ex-husband here. I was here on my 30th birthday. more first dates. I may have once broken up with someone here also. i've definitely cried here, many times. you used to be able to smoke indoors; the ashtrays would get filled and emptied without my even noticing. they have amazing waffles and bring a bowl of individual creamers with your coffee. some guy on the bar side once put his hands over mine on the buttons to show me the proper way to play pinball, and i belligerently told him to not be so condescending. they have ACDC and Nina Simone and Journey on the jukebox, and booths with lurid interrogation-lighting, and I don't feel weird to sit by myself with a book. and they have some of the best fucking fries in Seattle.

-in the ladies' loo.
-crappy picture of one such interrogation light.
-looking west.
-last night's server.

spinsterella

okay, fuck, I KNOW: self-portraits with my cats add an automatic musty bleakness to my otherwise girlish vitality. it is boring, it is cliched, and nobody gives a shit but me.
it isn't galleryofzestycharisma. I wish it were. I wish I were.

sigh.

still reading? YES! cat chat! or le chat chat, iffin yer tryin' the cultivated continentally thing.

so today I took pictures with both ladies...
-tombs. someone who's known her for years but hasn't seen her since she started to sprout her unicorn horn came by the other night. "ugh" they said. I described the volume level of the white noise I use to drown out her mucoid tumor-rattle. "yeah" they said.
her head smells like death. but she's STILL, nearly a year later, doing frustratingly well. may I employ such an offensive adverb? SHE is FINE. I stagger through my days feeling bleary and loopy because the stinky little bitch keeps me up all night, but I adore her too much to do anything drastic. as long as she's happy, I will continue to complain dully. I mean, damn it. she's curled up against my hip right now and she still meows whenever I acknowledge her. and she just scarfed food like a teenage boy, then went to the litter box and took a dainty crap that she totally didn't bury. she's such a sassy asshole. she's a SASSHOLE! to know her is to be respectful yet repulsed by her, and that makes me very proud.
-entropy. revolted by hecatomb, scrupulously covering of her feces, shredder of paper, temperamental harlot. she is so fucking cool. and I love her expression in this photo. she's like "don't make me a prop in your sad-ass life."
-and a fountain in the u district that so eloquently captured this rapturous fall day!

I finished reading Davy Rothbert's "my heart is an idiot" tonight. I read the chapter "shade" twice.

1962, "Sunset Dinner Party Cookbook": insert a stuffed green olive into a cooked, pitted prune. wrap it in bacon. bake at 350 until bacon is crisp. serve with sparkling wit.

monochromatic with an acid hiccup.

the last 2 hours of my life:

-a gutted building near 12th and Pine. this is another teetering-in-an-alley, camera-above-head blind shot. it turned out well. secret places are often happy accidents.
there should be swingin' saloon doors and a few women saucily lolling about. this place vaguely reminds me of the Bush Company....
-the fuck-you walk.
-you've been here, even if you haven't been HERE. we watched football. the bears kicked the asses of "the fucking cowboys." I played with my phone like an asshole. people over the years have attempted to explain football to me. I love the potential of its intricacy. but that intricacy-grasping must be accompanied by a patient, dutiful mind- and this, of late, I lack.
and wood-paneled bars remind me of Alaska.
-instead of that fucking omnipresent bag, I need a sleek James Bond-y gun. and instead of those drooping jeans, I need a miniskirt and heeled boots. the background can stay.
-he's got me open like a 7-11... not really. it's just a lyric.
I have a playboy magazine from 1985 that has a "women of 7-11" centerfold. REAL (mostly white, mostly southern) women who worked at various 7-11s across the country submitted their strumpetry for approval! it is AWESOME. some are posing on the hoods of '83 Skylarks (or the equivalent), some are in tight, bodice-bursting 7-11 uniforms, looking coy. some look hardened and crispy and sad. I wonder where those women are now. they'd be in their 50s or 60s, probably.
anyway, 7-11. cheapest gas on the hill.
-trashy trash, Pine St.

"and, after another silence, she murmured something about my being 'a queer fellow.' 'and I daresay that's why I love you,' she added. 'but maybe that's why one day I'll come to hate you.'
to which I had nothing to say, so I said nothing."
-Camus

you can drown in 6 inches of water.

-pike street, Saturday, 130am.
-the 130am queue at Big Mario's pizza.
-from the forbidden edge of the roof. my alley. everything weirdly aligned and peaceful.
-I haven't hacked it off yet, but this is what it'd look like. the missus.
-72 degrees, very late September.
-Mercer St.

"when I got to my apartment it was
early morning
close to
5 am
I stripped down to my shorts and
opened the pint of scotch
took the first hit straight
out of the bottle, a generous
and magic hit.

then I had a drink to Fletcher and
then I had a drink to the
bitch
that bitch with the bad mouth and
the bad ass
and then I drank to the old man,
this old man,
who'd finally found out
how to be
kind to
himself."
-Bukowski