Denver day 2

I haven't taken a lot of photos on this trip. the main reason: the cold saps my battery instantly, and cafes (with outlets) are somewhat rare to find. zoning in this city is puzzling. everything sprawls and if you don't know where you're specifically going to, you can end up very far from much, which is what happened to me several times today.

The place I'm staying at is part of a hulking condo complex; from a distance they almost resemble East Coast housing projects. but they're nice. there's piped-in music in the lobby and when I got back tonight "And She Was" was playing. 

looking south from the 10th floor this morning, filtered and without. 

I like the sinister one more. 

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and the sun, my god. i feel like a fucking troglodyte here. I spent most of today utterly blinded by the brightness, switching sides of the street to utilize more awnings. but I'm in a great mood now. and most everyone I've encountered, on sidewalks and in shops, seems generally content. I was talking about that tonight with a friend I hadn't seen in 23 years (!!)- that some places just possess an inherent happiness, and Denver appears to be such a locale. 

it is unfortunately impossible to include Seattle in this category. 

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a State Capitol Squirrel. i love neurotic animals. 

these things are sharper'n fuck. 

one of the cats I get to live with. Winston? 

and the other one. this guy's a plastic bag licker and Winston tried to eat my cashews. 

Santa Fe Drive. at night the streetlamps are blue. 

and a close-up. 

the world's most useless awning. 

and fucking German. 

happiness is a new zip code

yesterday seems like a long time ago. 

the sun was shining and it was almost warm. 

65th & 15th NE: this photograph is not filtered whatsoever. 

once these stairs were newly built and people navigated them with arms full of groceries, and there were probably trick-or-treaters and goodbye kisses and an angrily slammed door and an atonal windchime and the smell of blackberry bushes. 

the wires of 12th & Denny.

even the inanimate objects on Broadway seem kinda methy. 

tree's like "fuck all y'all."

Belltown. 

Entropy joining the view from my Lazy Place. 

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today I flew several miles above the earth and landed in Denver. 

my bag was searched at the security gate and again at the departure gate. the second TSA agent was particularly unpleasant. I assumed it was because they were satisfying some beaurocratic quota / looking for weed, and it wasn't until afterwards that I realized I'd completely forgotten about my canister of mace that neither search detected.

The outskirts of Denver are flat and dead-grassy with patchy snow and a beige horizon. the bus from the airport to downtown took about half an hour, through a muted medley of industrial parks and subdivisions and prairies and huge filthy pickup trucks. there's something very comforting and Alaskan about this terrain, though overall it is far cleaner here. the landscape invokes folksy thoughts of, like, breaking the ice on the surface of a pail of water. 

once I got deposited at Union Station (which is also the exact site of the longitudinal line for the Mountain Time Zone! it's exciting to me, anyway) and started walking, this was the only photograph I could get before my battery died. 

my airbnb host recommended the Molecule Effect for coffee near his place. I bought a "really awesome!" vegan and gluten-free cookie, I know but it was the only cookie they had, and studied German while the cafe played Alt-J and Bonobo and alluring bearded people stared at laptops. in other words, it was blissfully familiar, except that here people seem much more disarmingly nice. 

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when I left it was dark and snowing. 

I strolled briefly this evening; will do much more tomorrow. this has been a long fucking day.

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their Broadway. 

a little free library. for fuck's sake. astrology, Chuck Paghghhjjk, the Bhagavad Gita, how am I not still in Seattle? 

the fanciest of all the Sports Authorities. 

and my lair. I totally have my own bathroom, which was not mentioned on the website, so everything is even better than I expected. it is on the 10th floor of a very nice condo complex and the people on the other side of the wall are having very enthusiastic audible sex as I write this. 

I have now been to Colorado. 

celebrate with me

yesterday I went to my thrice-yearly neuro appointment. for the first time in ten years, my doctor decreased future visits to every six months because I'm "doing so well." 

it's always awkward to go in, to be reminded that I have a disease and that it can re-manifest itself at any time. the MS Center at Swedish has been expanded to an entire wing of the hospital. two people in the lobby were in wheelchairs; I came bouncing in after a two-mile walk from my lair. I never feel like I belong there, even as I feel numbness in my hands and twitches in my face, even as I inject medication every week that makes me feverish and maudlin. it's still difficult to reconcile a diagnosis with my self-perception. but I guess that's true for everything. 

afterwards I walked downtown in the pissing rain and passed one of my favorite buildings: 

the King County Administration Building was built in 1971 and has been voted the ugliest government building in the country! I love its hostile edifice, and that creepy skybridge, and the fact that it looks like noplace else. 

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empty signage on 2nd Ave. 

the loo at Café Ladro on Capitol Hill. 

daisy gravity. no part of the mug is touching anything except the windowsill. 

today is my 100th day without alcohol so I just took this impromptu (unwashed, bedheaded) self-portrait to commemorate my new and titillating lifestyle. 

"once again he stood in the world empty, naked, and stupid. but he was unable to feel sorrow over it; no, he felt a great urge to laugh, to laugh at himself, to laugh at this strange, foolish world." 

-Siddhartha 

'sall good

I recently read that there are two ways to determine likability in a person: are they trustworthy, and are they competent?

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...a lot of incredibly provocative bon mots have been sashaying into my awareness lately. ever feel like you have all the ingredients lined up before you, and all that's left to do is make something fucking delicious? it's kinda like that. 

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on hold with my health insurance. 

I bought this fur-covered magnet when I was in Copenhagen. it was meant to be a gift. instead I stuck it on the metal stairs outside my door. nearly two months later, it's still there.  

the view from my Lazy Place. 

and the view from below my fucking IKEA shelves. 

and the plastic covering the school grounds at 16th & Union. it was raining lightly but sounded poetically torrential. what else does rain sound like? really loud rice cereal. kindling igniting. dying bubbles. 

after I finished the Danish duolingo program I thought "hvad næst?" and then decided "Deutsch ist nächste!" so I've been (re)learning German. it's so fucking refreshing to study a language that sounds like it looks. and it has phlegmy melodramatic words like Krankenwagen and Schildkröte.  

27... if 6 were 9... 69

this week, I tell ya. oh January. 

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Beethoven's wearing carrot-pants! 

the squatter lairs on 12th & John. 

the dying schefflera. the Internet offers conflicting causes: too much/not enough light, too much/not enough water. it's not root rot, at least. after I took this I plucked all the yellow leaves whilst telling it positive things about its planty self, so hopefully it'll start fucking thriving again, the jerk. 

at my workplace. this makes me really happy. 

the 'Pants. 

today was sunny. I rented a zipcar for a celebratory houseplant run and listened to the radio for the first time in years. I know, U2 = minivan-uncool, but "with or without you"  came on and there's something about that song, driving alone on a sunny day and already distracted by all sorts of poignant weird thoughts, that's just like nnnngggghh. I sang along, loud as fuck.  it's a song I always forget I know every single moment of. 

after that I got stuck in construction traffic to "you spin me right round." 

the shit

January is always difficult. after so many years working swing shifts under artificial lights, spending my evenings surrounded by people and activity and feeling useful, it's still clumsy for me to navigate prolonged darkness on my own. January, for me, is about feeling amorphously lonely, able to speculate about my weird life in a detached, practically apathetic way, but still not wanting anyone else around. sometimes I think of my introversion as just another addiction, and by indulging it I potentially cause greater harm. 

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I get really relieved when it's rainy and grey; I am removed from any sort of obligation to be boisterous and cheerful. I get to cut myself some fucking slack. it's a frustrating fucking trait, but it's also why I like Seattle (and winter in general?) so much: we all do this. everyone here kinda hangs on by a thread until late February, it's just that some threads are far more tenuous than others.

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16th & Denny.

Boren & Stewart (?). this was a former auto dealer. 

and the old Valû Villaž on Capitol Hill. 

Mt Rainier via the Broadway post office. 

and last night's sunset in monochrome. 

just now: true love masquerading as bored narcissism. 

another massive contributor to today's mood: David Bowie, man. I am fucking gutted by this. this feeling is another thing we all have in common, I suppose; there is strange comfort to be found in that. life is fucking short. so what are you going to do now? 

whispering pragmatic nothings

ever thought about how all kitchen appliances can be feminized? refrigeratrix? toastress? percolatrix may be my favorite thus far.

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behold, the first impulse buy of 2016:

we had a pineapple plant when I was growing up in Alaska, ooh! friends would come over and I'd giddily show off the plant, and then regale them with our vile 10" plecostamus. pineapple plants kinda just sit there and look exotic and hostile, admirable qualities in any living thing! 

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perhaps GOSH rules the south end, and G-WILLIKERZ has taken over Magnolia. 

Stairwell Bloody Stairwell. 

brick walls look really cool with a Holga filter. 

New Years Day: frozen reservoir at Cal Anderson. artsy. 

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"for even as love crowns you, so shall he crucify you." Kahlil Gibran