the second dream

it's like I'm watching a movie- these are people and cultures and settings I am admittedly unfamiliar with. 

they are Japanese. it is established that his name is Kasuki but hers is unknown. she's in a wedding dress and searching for him, her husband-to-be; it's implied in the dream that they're not married yet, but this is the day. she finds him in a park, laying face-down in front of a bench. she playfully surprises him from behind by laying on top of him, tulle billowing. "I found you!" she laughs. he is obviously not happy. below him on the dirt is a life-size paper cutout of his true love. it is understood that she died suddenly while choking on a green grape (yeah), and he is still violently in love with her and holds himself somewhat responsible for her death. he has basically ran off from his bride-to-be to obsessively frotteur against this paper doll on the ground in a public place. 

the new woman doesn't notice the cutout. she's not even upset about his dickish behavior and surly attitude; she is giggly and girlish and naive. "we must go" she says. 

they return to a crowded high-ceilinged room and he begrudgingly asks if she wants coffee. she happily agrees. and this is when she becomes me. it is suddenly a first-person dream in which I am an active participant. all the dishes are dirty. he's silently washing a French press. "never use soap with coffee dishes!" I say cheerfully. he stalks off without saying anything else. 

I am still just as oblivious as the prior woman. I finish the dishes and pour the coffee and find him again, this time sitting on the floor and propped against a low-backed green sofa. I lean down to kiss him and he embraces me uncharacteristically forcefully- it's exciting and surprisingly sensual, but his mouth is cold and lazy. he pushes me roughly against the floor and my eyes flick open in surprise, and I see that his are wide open and disgusted and staring off into space like he's already dead. I am suddenly mortified in the dream and shut my eyes again. 

I am awakened by a catfight outside my window and my cat innocently wandering  into the room and meowing politely, like "what the fuck's going on out there?" 

*

the first thought that came to my mind when I started thinking about this- and I've been thinking about it all day, because it was so detailed and so evocative: why do I let people treat me like shit, especially when they have demonstrated that they can treat other people so much better? 

it was a dream about respect. earning it, keeping it, deserving it. but more than that: recognizing when it isn't there (for whatever reasons) and finally being able to wise up and walk the fuck away. 

*

I wandered extensively today but this is the only photo I took. I've always liked this building because the weird porches remind me of New Orleans. it's on a particularly flavorful corner of Pioneer Square. across the street a bedraggled guy hanging out at the bus stop was loudly singing "Up On the Roof" so gorgeously it gave me chills. it sounded like fucking gospel. 

"Never have you seen timid innocence

suddenly pass to extreme license."

-Jean Racine

experiences in learning

I finished "A Single Man" this afternoon. fuck. the story dithers around for the first half (I believe I dared to deem it "boring") and then he goes to his friend's house and gets drunk and suddenly holy shit. it is an excellent book. it reminds me of Camus' "The Stranger" in its pacing. 

as I was reading, a storm passed through and people in the cafe turned to look murmuringly out the window at the downpour, and the girl next to me was being treated to an Italian soda by her parents for passing her driver's test, and the older woman sitting alone shook her feet so distractingly that I had to reposition myself to remove her from my field of vision, and someone dropped a plate and it broke. 

I bought even yet still more plants today. 

*

Entropy. she also responds quite promptly to "hey, dumbass." 

Summit Ave.

my hood. 

slothfully experimenting with the "grunge" filter. 

the lovely lady lair. 

my parents' obese cat. note the wary glower.

beyond their backyard, looking into the undulating grey. this is the spot from where I shot my first BB gun a few years ago, which I enjoyed far more than even I expected. 

it was sunny in Seattle on the 25th, but the dank never left Thurston County. 

from once a Chinese lantern. artsy. 

western-facing steps on 16th. didja know? moss grows in every light exposure and on every continent! I thought I was stumbling onto a fortuitous botanical anomaly but I was incorrect. 

I had a misconception! a moss-conception, if you will. 

"don't cry for me. I'm already dead." I dunno, I inadvertently find myself taking a lot of turgid-teenage-journal photographs lately. 

the same block in Ballard. 

oy! again with my hood. the windshield reflection was a glorious accident. 

the most overpriced meat-stix I have ever seen, and I've been to fucking Reykjavik. 

"personally, I haven't gotten wise on anything. certainly, I've been through this and that; and when it happens again, I say to myself, Here it is again. but that doesn't seem to help me. In my opinion, I, personally, have gotten steadily sillier and sillier and sillier- and that's a fact."  -Christopher Isherwood 

sandpaper courtesan

squirrely-assed carrots. I think these were carrots.... they were surrounded by other carrots. 

on this one I added an overly reflective nickel for scale. I mean, good lord. root vegetables, man. you gotta have a sense of humor in the colder months, I guess. 

fremont. these blinds have been fucked up since I lived a block away from this house in 2003. it looks like someone was slammed up against the window. so over the years I've found myself imagining various scenarios. it was in the throes of passion, obviously. or it was due to a sweat-stained Muscat fury. or an army of inquisitive cats lives in the attic and relentlessly paws at the blind's edges, and occasionally it pisses off the huge dog who also lives there and he hurls himself at the glass to stop their batting. 

but I always default to the woman in, like, a stained vintage slip and blood-red lipstick, getting roughed up all David Lynch-like, with a grimy ceiling fan spinning lazily a few feet away. and there is predictably awful faded wallpaper, and possibly a bare swaying bulb with hip filament. 

the other day (rather, afternoon) I sat here alone and read most of "A Single Man" (it's kinda boring, I'm afraid, but I like the descriptions of the overgrown bohemian bungalowy-neighborhood. when I bought this, the lady at the UW bookstore was like "nnnngggh! you must see the movie!" and I will do that eventually.) and the waitress was awesome and sensitive-lad music played. I fucking love this place. the Uncanterbury is dead to me, but there's still fucking Hattie's. 

I put this through a more disturbing filter. 

Melrose Ave. the other day I counted 13 visible cranes from this vantage point. 

it's December 21st and 58 fucking degrees. 

I recently saw the old Twilight Zone where the world stops having night and the ambient temperature goes up to 110F and the few people remaining in this NYC apartment building are wilting in their modest nightgowns and rationing tins of juice and squinting at the endless sun. it's a very evocative episode. 

more unwanted mattresses. ever think about how weirdly personal these are? these are the surfaces people slept and dreamed and fucked and tossed and wept and slothed out upon! and now this. orphans! they were new once, shrink-wrapped and bouncy, optimistically tested out in the showroom, promising a good rest and a lasting relationship. now they're just moist forests of cells and disappointment and tragedy. 

discarded mattresses are the lepers of the furniture world. 

an alley in Fremont. 

the space on Pine and the cross street I can't remember the name of. it was a hippie-dippy import store for years, the place I bought little vials of fennel oil and incense from. and then it was an anarchist coffee shop with an agreeable throng of clove-smoking teenagers and their dogs perpetually blocking the sidewalk out front. 

and now it's vacant, and it's a fucking awesome storefront. it's a corner lot at the base of one of the few remaining and sensuously-moldering buildings on that godforsaken street and those are western-facing windows, for fuck's sake. 

I cringe at the horribly corporate potential. I hope I'm proven wrong.  

today, outside the Broadway post office. I like this photo a lot.  

a few tattoos in, I realized I can't surreptitiously commit many crimes. the fucking choices we have to live with. 

this is the same corner/building where the rad yellow sofa got ruined in weeks prior. lots of couches die here! the two very nice ceramic canisters atop the cushions were still containing a gluey white floury/cocainey substance. not pictured: the soggy black T-shirt next to it on the sidewalk. 

3.5 days until the 9 month reprieve from fucking Xmas music! 

also, happy solstice! 

lucid, valid, solid, rapid, intrepid?

Pike Place. 

I love walking through here after everything's closed. voices echo but few humans remain. some are cleaning, some are lurking, some are just fucking around. I always feel slightly self-conscious there. do I seem like a lost tourist? a cop? lonely? 

years ago I took a B&W photography course and used these light fixtures in one of my pieces. it was right after I moved back to Seattle in 2002 and I remember thinking "holy fuck! I get to be around all this cool shit all the time!" roaming this city restlessly, relentlessly, years later, I still feel pangs of that novelty, which is a goddamn relief. 

under the viaduct. there's a word you don't see often enough these days! remember that Lois Lowry book with the character named Enid, and how she violently hated her name because everything terrible ended with the letters ID? I think about that often. squalid, fetid, stupid, insipid, vapid, rancid. acrid. sordid! 

but at the end of the book she realizes her name also almost rhymes with "splendid." 

you know what's another fucking weird word? yarn.

I had a dream a couple nights ago that he found out where I lived. we ran into each other on the sidewalk in front of my building. I was carrying groceries and obviously about to enter. "I'll wait!" he said. I entered the building from the back and ran upstairs. I thought "he doesn't know which unit is mine." I watched him from the open window, careful to stand back and remain invisible. he never left. it started to get colder and darker but I didn't want to shut the windows or turn on the lights or otherwise draw attention to myself. but I was getting incredibly restless. and in the dream I suddenly, finally, got impatient with the drama. I thought "what the fuck? this is my home." and I woke up feeling quite rested and peaceful. it was actually a pretty good dream. I finally don't feel angry or skittish anymore. 

towards the north wing of the lair. 

facing west. 

part of the Lazy Morning Mundanity Series, Vol. XXVI. 

"being together, we harm nobody. being apart, we extinguish ourselves." Tabitha Suzuma 

"it does go well with the chicken!"

I've spent the last two days taking 3,000+ photos off my phone. visually rehashing everything of the past seven months has been rather emotionally draining. I must stop feigning sentimentality, because I just delete nearly everything anyway, eventually, and seeing a lot of it from the aspect of now just makes me sad, and wistful, and (perhaps most notably) annoyed. it's interesting to have a visual trajectory of oblivious -> enthusiastic -> surly -> disillusioned -> distracted! -> naïvely repeat. this can be said for everything I grace my frenetic focus upon.

it's also interesting to see how happy I seem. I don't take/save too many grouchy photos, because why the fuck would I?, so it gives the past a jauntily optimistic patina- which is, I suppose, as it should be. and this has been a really fascinating year. I mean, fuck, this time last year I was trying not to fall on my ass in icy-assed Alaska, and doing the Press crossword at Kaladi's and feeling pathetic and rudderless and alone, and drinking Fireball at fucking Darwin's while, I dunno, Charlie Daniels played. 

I deeply appreciate the contrast. 

I still saved enough pictures to glue the shards of 2014 together. and there's always this, detrimentally ensconced on the nefarious interwebs for raw, shameful eternity.  

photography lets you choose the memories you want to remember. 

*

Fremont. 

When I was a kid my mother used to call me her "li'l Kewpie", and I had a Kewpie doll velcro'd by its ass to the dash of my first car, so I shall always have a fondness for these godawful things. didja know? they were invented in Germany in 1912 and later became the mascot of a Flint, MI burger chain. 

Pike Place. I crossed the street for this picture. "your booth is so photogenic!" I told the lady. and then I left without buying anything as the sun set. 

and competition two stalls down. well done, Seattle, you foxy wench. 

making cheese! this attracted a delightfully diverse throng: a toddler in a stroller next to its tired parents next to a goth fellow with huge lobe-holes next to a Japanese tourist couple next to a preppy dude next to me. cheese brings people together, dammit.  

remember this? iffin yer old ya do! the doors still moo when you open them! 

oh jeez. how did I devolve from being this sort of person to bemusedly smirking at this sort of thing? I can already picture what the owner of this vehicle looks like. "black holes suck" is pretty good, though. 

"what is more tormenting than a meeting after a long time, when all the words fall to the ground like dead things, and the spirit that should animate them floats disembodied in the air? we both felt its presence." Iris Murdoch 

tightening up

I just realized it's 12/13/14. ugh. people are probably gonna get ooh, married and buy lottery tickets and shit. 

19th Ave. 

17th Ave. part of me finds this fanciful as fuck, the same way I admire moldering staircases and artful mold patterns: aesthetically intriguing by proxy, but the reality of living in such a situation would be a depressing pain in the ass. 

I wonder who lives there. a disgruntled student in their first apartment, the novelty dissapating as soon as the suicide-weather hits? a waxen crone who's lived there for forty years and hates everyone, and fuck you too? a slithery voyeur? 

yesterday was very meteorologically satisfying. 

clouds racing, racing!, over Capitol Hill. 

a wall of shite descending from the west in the U District.

15th NW. 

looking to the east over the U District bridge. 

fucking Holga filter. 

breaking the knife, breaking the knife. 

it's my sexy, mysterious bathroom. the blue-tongued skink has lived on the back of every toilet I've had since I acquired it in 1998. every toilet but one! the place in 1st Hill (2002) didn't have a tank; that toilet looked like one you'd see at an airport or something, with a handle you flush with your foot. so allow me to quantify: this thing has lived on 18 toilets in the past 16 years. oh the stories! the pathos! the tragedies! and yet it does not have a gender, nor a name. what would it be at this point, after so long? Skink Floyd? that's unworthy. 

"Sei doch nicht so kulturlos": "don't be such a philistine." ...in case you ever need to hiss loftily at someone in German, you see. 

smitten with the possibility of

woo-hoo is right! so much enthusiasm contained on one label! 

it was on the clearance table, next to its figgy-pasted brethren. 

georgetown. 

the lot beside the old Rainier brewery is now a ghastly nondescript beige thing. it's fucking dreadful. they didn't attempt to aesthetically ease into their surroundings whatsoever. 

planes flew low overhead and older white people browsed cluckingly through expensive antique stores and groups cackled in bars. fire barrels cast smoke over the rainy outdoor craft market, where one could buy bright resin magnets encasing letters spelling "POOP" and "GO AWAY." the record store continues to maintain an impressive (and expensive, but not Bop Street-expensive) collection of krautrock. the guy at Georgetown Liquor said "well hello there, my friendly friend" when he came to take my order. a dude on the bus alternately swooned in his seat and scratched vacantly at his entire body. 

Georgetown's gentle graffiti. 

and me, being missed. 

Reservoir Ducks. 

it was a sexy showoffy-mountain kinda day. I took this from the bus as it crossed I-5 on 45th. I saw other people admiring it also. no one said a word. 

well spaced. 

"you are nobody, and I might have been somebody, and the road to each of us is love." -John Fante