Thursday, August 20, 2015

Pisces rising

this is one of my favorite new buildings in Seattle: its undulating lusciousness, the slivers of orange, the perpetual Blue Study potential. it's a structure mid-earthquake, reflecting the dissonance of its surroundings. 
my former lair, 1997-1998. we lived on the top floor, facing Lake Union. it was built ~1910 and had long ramps instead of stairs. back then Dexter Ave was industrial and barren. this was the place where we would cook lentils tarka and get drunk and blare Blur (me) and Henry Cow (him). we would fight so ferociously that the neighbors used to bang on our walls. this was the place where we'd smoke pot and I'd lazily watch him play Quake for hours. I had to call the landlord once because I was in the habit of flushing Q-Tips and was home alone one day and the months of Q-Tips finally clogged the toilet and I'd never used a plunger before, and he patiently talked me through the procedure from his swanky office in Bellevue. we lived with two cats (Belial and Hecatomb), Düsterkeit the kingsnake, and various pet rodents. the place was always abhorrently filthy and probably reeked of pee and incense. 
*
...in my meek defense, I was 18 years old. he was older and should have known better. oh fuck it: we both should have known better. 
I notice I think that a lot, still, about nearly everything. what the fuck is wrong with me? I know better. 
*
I walked by there a few days ago and noticed the fence; it's coming down. all the blinds are drawn. it stings more than I expected; for one insane chapter in my life, this was where my axis originated. 
I forget where this was. 
8' sunflower through the Pinhole filter. 
hipster trajectory on E John. 
Discovery Park via Roger Dean. 
I never saw "Tremors." fuck that shit. I was more of an "Overboard" kinda gal. 
there's something so comforting about wires. the straight lines? the connection with civilization? the idea that if there are wires, there must be people and lights and warmth and information? the tangles and how they slash the sky? I felt the eeriness of not seeing them when I was back in Alaska- there are still many (vast!) places where you are totally off the fucking grid. and I would always think how will anyone know if I die? 
Thunder in her window. 
liberation for women, that's what I'm preaching. 
"the essence of life is to be found in the frustrations of established order. the universe refuses the deadening influence of complete conformity." John Gardner

Monday, August 10, 2015

dulling the brightest colors

current mood: wary, hyper happiness. lately I feel like I just found twenty dollars on an empty street and get to look around giddily like really? may I, then?  
*
herewith, in erratic non-chronological order:

Orient Express, though I still call it Andy's Diner. fuck, everything about this place:  the dark labyrinthine sin-pittery, the smells of damp carpet and old cigarettes and off-brand disinfectants and bad decisions, the bartender who laughed over how strong she made my drink. "I have a heavy hand" she said. 
two of the four stalls in the women's loo had Out Of Order signs on the doors. 
*
but under different guises, the rooms become almost classy. 
before:
and after:
and post-hedonistically stumbling back into the hot high sunshine. 
Andy's Orient Diner Express reminds me of Timothy Leary's description of the Acid  Room that was purposely tucked away within the rambling mansion he and a few other researchers rented for a summer in the 1960s. they made the room accessible only via trapdoors and ladders and otherwise disorienting means, and the interior was decorated with tapestries and pillows and other contrasts to the exterior austerity. it was meant to be a mindfuckable space. 
*
Seattle is so fucking attractive that I keep having to turn away and look down, lest I stare too clumsily. 
views like this, I take first and contemplate later. my first impression when I take a photo is always one of pure, banal aesthetics, shapes and colors and shadows. for this one, I love the lazy snakiness of the freeway. I love how the Group Health building hunkers down over Beacon Hill like a sinister castle. usually Mt Rainier is visible from this angle, but not yesterday. it's a less-common vantage point, looking away from the skyline, the prologue to the city. 
*
later impressions: each of those vehicles contained stories and music and arguments and destinations, hands on laps and empty wrappers and singing along and ignoring each other and falling in love and almost home and finally leaving and possibly seeing downtown Seattle for the first time ever. yet everyone remained politely within their lanes, somehow still paying attention. how unnervingly civilized we are on a macrocosmic level. 
Washington plates notwithstanding, this vehicle belongs in a Spenard alley, not on Yesler Way. it's always strangely comforting to encounter a balls-out Alaskan truck, down to the fucked-up taillight and bed full of crap. 
my new favorite building. 
and more dissonant attempts at parallelity. 
geoducks will always be rather embarrassing. don't pretend it's not true. 
monochromatic tyvekian splendor. perhaps it should be called skyvek. 
another graveyard of bad decisions. 
her tail looks like an apostrophe, so does this make it a catasstrophe? 
what! on the light rail. I was walking off as I took this, hence the blur. 
"there comes a stage when the touch of reality becomes so sharp that one is no longer an individual harassed by circumstances, but a living being cut into slices... in such moments all things are made clear- the meaning of dreams, the wisdom that precedes birth, the survival of faith, the stupidity of being a god, etc., etc." Henry Miller

Thursday, August 6, 2015

PDX

gentrification isn't about the artisanal doughnut shoppes and organic pet-food stores; it's about people with more money than the longtime residents moving in and taking over and jacking up the cost of living and pushing the poorer people out. the alienatingly darling aftershocks are an odious symptom, not the impetus. I get that. but goddamn it, why must gentrification always end up being so FUCKING twee? 

it reminds me of that SNL skit about the new Brooklyn; the dude's on the corner with his hat and parka and toughly talking to someone on the phone about his posse of bitches, and the camera pans out to his fancily groomed dogs on leashes. 

Portland, Oregon: I know the cliches. the whiteness. the earnestness. the NIMBYness. the flowing skirts and tattoos and ironic facial hair and pet ferrets and kids named Caulfield and organics and sustainability and expensiveness and ever so smugness. it's like Seattle, but more grotesque, right? but I hadn't been there in years until today. 
it's pretty. it's got a cool layout, lacerated by bridges and relatively low-slung. there's some older buildings downtown that remind me of the Midwest. external fire escapes, water tanks on rooftops, old billboards and great neon; narrow leafy streets and blocks of food trucks and obviously superior public transit. 
and lots of homeless people. lots of drugs. I saw a woman with legs as big around as my wrist stagger in front of me and swipe an aerosol can that was laying beside a dude who was passed out on the curb. this trait of the city is no different than my neighborhood: glassy-eyed people sitting a block away from brand-new million-dollar fucking condos. I actually passed a fucking "popcorn boutique" today; how nice for their city, but what sort of infrastructure is going towards helping the actual people who live there? 
"gentrification" is just a multisyllabic synonym for "band-aidy bullshit." 

so many filters! taken from the sidewalk over a freeway.
detritus-radar activated! 
as I was taking this a dude reeled beside me and told me I had "nice skin." 
food trucks! I bought nothing, but I love knowing they're there. Seattle is woefully behind in this regard. 
fancy new condos. 
and more fancy new condos. 
it occurred to me once I arrived that I'd never been to Portland alone. it was weird to walk by places I'd been with other people- Hung Far Low, the Lotus Room, the Goodwill on Burnside. and nothing had really changed after all. 

Monday, August 3, 2015

pervasive pyrexia

grammar prigs are alive and well in the unzoned hinterlands of Ballard. 
sexy, mysterious Madrona. 
unsodden sod. 
day drinkers at Shorty's. 
15th & Mercer. 
the Tampon Tree, Ballard. once there was a tree, and she loved a little girl- forgive me, never mind. 
I recently mocked the whole Chardonnay-with-ice thing, but it's been so goddamn hot that I finally relented; when spigoted directly out of the classy refrigerated Trader Joes Boxed Wine bag it was simply not refreshing enough! and with ice it's fucking delicious! fruitless sangria, I call it. 
we are all hot lazy mammals here.
"if your dog is constipated, why screw up a good thing?" David Letterman