commencing pattern avoidance

the cavernous Rhino Room. it feels like a senior center rec room in which all the tables have been pushed aside to celebrate Edgar's 85th birthday. but the countertops and windows are lovely. 

this used to be a bike shop. I bought my first bike here in 1997. it was later stolen from the front yard of the yellow house in Anchorage. 

dipping my finger in a stranger's paws. 

fantasy vs reality. 

Malden & Harrison. 

the view on my way to work. 

see that squirrel? his mouth is completely full of grass. he seemed embarrassed. 

fucking gluttonous beasts, part 2: the two-peanut crow. 

how nice; they now make a "visibly exhausted" filter. 

she figured out the ladder this week. 

I'm currently laying in 80 degree sunshine, listening to neighbors cook through their open windows. I live directly beneath the N-S jet path to Sea-Tac, so planes fly over about every 10 minutes during the day. so there's that sound too, and it's very relaxing. Seattle is a stupidly beautiful city from the sky. I always imagine passengers staring out the windows and feeling hopeful. and 10,000 feet below, I'm watching bees pollinate. 

wanton appreciation

3rd & Pine. 

the fennel trail in Fremont. 

a random house in my hood. 

I mean, for fuck's sake. 

these are on Summit, I think. I love them. seriously! they are fucking ugly and olive green and manage to appear both stolid and jangly. 

this, on the other hand, is hideous as fuck. 

I read a feature recently about the awful brutalist/cementist government buildings in DC. they were ghastly but vaguely appealing- there's something gleefully nihilistic about knowing that they were designed that way on purpose. this is why I also like, say, the various structures at North Seattle Community College. I call it "fuck-you architecture."

*

this was at the foot of a florid maple on 17th. I exercised adult restraint and took nothing. (I left nothing either. I carry no youth-appropriate accoutrements.)

the husk of the former Bauhaus.

a misty hell-night from the compound. 

I'm seriously thinking of hacking all my fucking hair off. again, still. this is what I would look like, shit-eating grin optional. 

and seamstress skillz. 

way to symbolically pose with the eyeball picture, ye dopey cyclops whom I love more than the sun. 

scenes from a night. 

soundtrack for the last 72 hours: Spoon "Inside Out." 

scenes from a pendulum

I've been feeling rather manic lately. the pretty notes are growing shriller. 

the uncanterbury. 

this is the first place I stayed in seattle when I initially moved here in 1997. i slept on the floor of my friend's room with my husband on the night we got married. one of the other roommates heard that we'd eloped and bought us a bottle of cheap champagne. I toasted pita bread stuffed with mozzarella and used stolen jack-in-the-box napkins instead of toilet paper. a week later we rented our own place, a squalid basement studio on Denny. there were bars on the window and no doorknob to the bathroom. I am astonished and jealous by how fucking naive and optimistic I was about everything then. 

I think this house used to be painted blue. it's a lot nicer now. 

contrasts off 13th. time marches on. 

off broadway. 

*

the conservatory: 

this was nearly impossible to focus. I wanted a neutral background and ended up having to squat and balance to take this. it still didn't turn out quite like I wanted. 

this flower was pink and purple and girly and fabulous, so I sterilized it. 

moist! 

*

the cropped version, Capitol Hill. 

Roy Street. 

*

and then North Bend happened. 

train frippery. 

this was near a North Bend garage sale run by a belligerent toothless woman, a daughter who complimented my "spirals", and what appeared to be the dregs of a bottle of rosé. 

streetlight wires were encased with burls. 

and there was even a fucking kangaroo at a random-ass petting zoo at some street carnival punctuated by a cover band braying John Cougar Mellencamp. 

the clouds were sinuous. 

and then, back to the neighborhood. 

and to the humility of reality. 

my mind is all around you

satan seduced the compound the other night. it was a jaw-dropping, mood-elevating, stand-outside-in-your-underwear kinda sunset. 

this gargantuan motherfucker was flapping around the laundry room. I am rather anti-moth. I hate their erratic movements and the sound they make. this guy was about 2" across. 

cal anderson park. 

day dawns innocently upon a weave-brawl aftermath. 

abstract of visibly irritated shit-cat as very temporary leg-rest.

seattle, you are a gorgeous snarky bitch, the most captivating and most infuriating sort of girlfriend, and I helplessly adore you. 

I fucking love this house. I love its decrepit Klopek-iness, and how it sounds like pigeons when you walk past, and the turret, oh my god.

the walking distance from my work to the Safeway near my lair is exactly one Sigur Ros "agaetis byrjun" or whatever it's called. 

sweater? I hardly knew her!

...stop, unfunny wench. 

I promised myself long ago, decades ago, that I would never bitch about the heat; I shall continue to do my damnedest to uphold that vow. 

the city smells of porch barbecues and marijuana and lavender and rotting garbage and the beginnings of blackberries. it's lulling and marvelous and I feel like I'm moving through liquid.

*

weeds against the church near my house. 

13th Ave? 

looking northwest on the sinister, secretive Duwamish. 

and a 180 degree turn with no bedraggled dust bowl patina. 

I must be getting old and more unremorsefully dickish, because my first reaction when I saw this was a rather surly and vulgar one. 

I rarely take photos from the loft. trying to sleep in a loft on a hot night is as exotically tropical as you might expect! this is why I am completely awake and unexcitingly sober at nearly 2 am. and I saw the shit-cat (who has done nothing but sloth around for the past 48 hours) and thought "unfiltered entropy!" and it reminded me of "unpainted huffheims", and I wish I could just fucking quell my inanity sometimes. 

the moon's extra sexy tonight. 

*

the next day...

today, as it were. 

I accomplished very little. 

what did I do? I bought soap. I drank coffee. I ate crackers with ricotta. I washed dishes. I day-drank on a covered patio while Iggy Pop played. i danced alone in my hot apartment. I went on another long walk and saw an epic monkey tree. 

and a hydrangea so lurid I nearly winced. 

and the western sun reflected off the apartments across the street and ricocheted into my sultry lair. 

then entropy put her ass in my face. 

why should life be made endurable?

-Iris Murdoch