"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