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 

full moon fevah

Ballard. pardon me while I leer. 

I give this upholstery place another 6 months, maximum. it's been on Ballard Ave for decades, with an essentially unchanged caliber of tidiness. I've taken pictures through the windows here before. I always thought that if you were to push through all the faded pleather and fluorescent-lit detritus, you'd find a hidden red-glowing back room of short skirts and illicit card games and dirty blues. 

5th and Virginia? 

random litter in my neighborhood. there are still delightful scraps of how it used to be. you just gotta look for them. 

I've had some fucked-up pustulence residing in my lungs for the past 3 days. entropy hung out in my knee-pit yesterday whilst I slothed around pathetically. 

with the proper filter, anything can become a crime scene. 

"take your pants off before you fight."

-Yoko Ono 

Nektar on the 49

the other night I walked 7 blocks, or 0.6 miles (I mapped it) on the same side of the street, cataloging all the free crap I passed: 

-sofa (see below)

-2 drawer black filing cabinet

-microwave 

-computer monitor

-2 pairs of female knee-high boots

-large area rug

-suitcase

-glass-topped table

-nightstand 

there was also a stack of large, Saran-wrapped pies outside the back door of a church. 

I ended up at Elliott Bay, and by sheer happenstance started reading a book about hoarding (lured in by a mention of Grey Gardens, one of my favorite fucking movies ever), and I learned about Diogenes syndrome, which was named after a Greek dude (a cynic, even!) in ~400 BC who was totally content to live in a state that most would deem filthy and socially dubious. this is not to be confused with syllogomania, the hoarding of shite. 

the boots were still there today. 

*

this aforementioned sofa first appeared about 2 weeks ago. I coveted it. one day it even had three throw pillows jauntily arranged on it. and then it rained. and then it snowed. it's still there and now it's ruined and every time I walk past it I feel shitty for not adopting it sooner. 

note the unmolested quality of the snow. 

didja know? Slinky (TM) makes spinny things! I dunno... what did you call them? is there a proper name for these? I always referred to them as "the whirly spinny yard-things", accompanied by vaguely flamboyant hand gestures.  

so I just looked it up. this is called a motherfucking whirligig, y'all. I want to click my heels or something now.  

I love this stall at the Broadway farmers market. they cut every potato varietal in half and have delightful descriptions for each one.

I never buy anything- let's get that clear; I just like to read about them. 

this is the photograph I was taking when I walked into the traffic cone. yeah, I was that asshole. but the light! the way everything glowed! the sharp edges and lurid nuances! it was hypnotizing as fuck. 

but then I cropped it and filtered it all sinister-like, and I like this much more. 

the lair. god, this is so much fucking nicer than my last place. the circumstances that led me here sucked, a lot, but the outcome, this: HELL FUCKING YES. 

to everyone who visited my last shithole, hereafter known as Fuck That Place (FTP), and politely "ohh, well, it's got character"d me: you are too kind. please come here sometime and let me bake you something in my functional oven, or whatever normal adults do.  

the spit-scented beast. 

yet another sunset of bombast. it is very difficult to get proper views on Capitol Hill these days, what with all the vista-obliterating fucking condos. this is from Thomas & 14th, I think? I filtered this a little. 

and then I used the wrist-slittin' fuck-all-y'all filter (also known as B&W Warmer).

*

I found an awesome book at the UW bookstore tonight of every transit map in the world. what a fucking calming book! Stockholm has an especially relaxing metro layout. and Hamburg's is all angles, no curves. Moscow's looks like a fucking dissonant nightmare... it was very fascinating, but I've always been weirdly into maps and linear patterns 'n shit. So I was looking up the stops I stayed at in the cities I'd been to, feeling that fucking familiar inconvenient antsiness, and a guy walked up while I was on Paris. "Paris!" he said. then he drifted over to the religion section, which I was standing across from. "if you ever need to know any of the good books on Buddhism, I'm your guy" he said. and then he wandered away. 

afterwards I thought: I automatically dealt with that as a negligible, disposable moment. but what if I hadn't? 

*

....and really, who does? 

the rock that skips

cats are assholes. see? 

I revised the B&W from the Facebook thing a couple weeks ago. the dark foreground bothered the fuck out of me. this has been "fill light"-ed by about 300%, which is why it now has a rather pleasant curdled texture. 

scene from a sleazy 70s miniseries. 

sorta-unsatisfying holiday attempt at mulled wine. this was the first Thanksgiving I spent completely, purposely, blissfully alone. there was no frantic ER shift, no depressing birthday falling on the same date, no expectations. if I had a car I'd probably have gone to the family gathering in Tacoma, but I don't. 

holidays are weird. I've spent my entire life purposely avoiding or at least downplaying them. I loved working those days. I loved taking myself out of the obligation equation. 

mulled wine, the way I ending up making it, was barely-okay. Trader Joes shit-wine, the peel off a shriveled clementine, cloves, a free spice packet one of the workers at TJs nonchalantly ripped off a bottle of mead for me ("don't worry about it" he said cheerfully). I didn't add the cinnamon sticks or the honey I'd bought. I thought "why waste awesome ingredients on something that's inherently not very delicious?" 

it's kind of a social beverage. so I just had a mugful. but the lair smelled festive. 

that all sounded a bit more pathetic than I intended. 

the pen-testing section at the UW bookstore. PUPLE. 

sneaux! 

Alaska it ain't. but fuck, the cold air feels divine. and snow smells the same no matter where you are. 

15th NE. 

and right now. 

ever reread your old journals and realize that everything you were miserable and confused and bitching about has been resolved? it's a fucking delightful feeling. I feel practically jaunty right now.

36, day one

...you know how the traits you hate in others are the traits you hate in yourself? 

I think about all the people who aren't in my life any more. I lost touch with a lot of friends over the past year; occasionally it was mutual and, on however depressing a level, organic, but more often it was for various non-reasons that never really mattered in the first place. I would eventually "react" by letting the relationships die on the vine, figuring that if they gave a shit, they'd fight back. fight for my amazing companionship! and no one really did. 

I can awkwardly try to "pro-me" rationalize a lot of it: I put forth more effort into keeping our friendship alive than they did, and when I stopped, they never started. or: we were already clandestine and it was in everyone's best interest for me to just vanish entirely. or: they had families and obligations that I simply couldn't relate to, no matter how mature I pretended to be. or: they were exes, half-heartedly resurrected because I was too self-sabotaging to make the effort to find anything better. 

however, I am the common denominator, and a few grotesque truths became impossible to ignore: 

-I have a hideous temper. I react to everything with blind emotion and disproportionate anger. as fiercely as I feel elation and excitement, I am enraged and rude and cruel. it is an extremely immature way to behave. I used to have the fucking audacity to consider myself more honest than most; if nothing else, those around me always knew what mood I was in, if not necessarily the reason why. but that's not honesty or emotional purity or whatever other bullshit euphemisms I dream up in order to validate myself. it's just me being a shitty, incredibly childish asshole. 

-I get bored far too easily, and by "bored" I mean LAZY. there is never any fucking reason in this astonishing universe to be bored, but there are infinite ways to justify stepping away from reality and hiding behind useless props. I think of all the vapid evenings I've spent arguing about unmemorable nonsense at bars, or wandering the city without really noticing or caring, or the way I hide behind headphones or a notebook or my fucking goddamn phone. bettering myself does not come naturally to me at all, but fucking myself over certainly does. it is easier to fall back into a cocoon than to face the world raw. I despise that in others. I consider it weak and flinchy and sad. and yet. and how. 

-I am at my best, and I am the person I like and respect the most, when I am sober and moving my body and feeling competent at what I'm doing. I feel good when I am at work, and I fucking love what I do. I feel good when I sing along, and when I write, and when I listen. I feel good when I learn something new. I feel good when I am outside and the world is roiling ceaselessly around me. I feel good when I forget to feel self-conscious. 

yesterday was my birthday, which started out fine but ended up being one of the crappier days of my life. and I woke up around 3 this morning to sideways rain hitting the windows and relentless sirens, many of them, circling the neighborhood. I sat in the dark and stared outside. ambulances and cop cars were speeding down the main road a block away, getting louder, vague red and blue reflections from their lights visible off the buildings across the street. this new apartment is exponentially nicer. the cat curled up by my knee. and I thought about how I've spent far too much time and effort and energy throughout my life fucking around and being unproductive and taking the universe for granted and acting like a fucking brat.

I'm going to try being sober for a while. it's an easy and simple and positive thing to do. I like the world much better when the edges are sharp, and I've gotten too complacent with blurriness. plus, I don't want any extra excuses or doubts for when I act like an asshole. I need to feel fully present and accountable. maybe this will allow me the two-second reaction-delay I've been craving. 

my other teabag-tag today said: "live through consciousness, not through emotion." I had already made my mind up about the changes I needed to make, but that was a very timely token of extra "damn...." 

this world, man. 

to those who are still in my life, I thank you and I love you and I hope you will let me be there for you too. 

that's why I'm easy.

the sunsets lately, oh my god. this is from the parking lot at 15th & Madison- y'know, the one with yet another "proposed land use action" sign covered with sulky tags. 

other people stopped to admire the view also. 

through the window into a vacant restaurant in Queen Anne. I liked the accidental juxtaposition of the building across the street. 

see, this is what passes for graffiti on the Hill. 

fleeting shot of another sexy, mysterious sunset from the 44 approaching Ballard. 

unfiltered, apart from the Vignette border: the last photo before I moved all my shit out of the hellpit-lair. 

I must be reasonable.... it could be a fun space. I had some very nice times there. it was where my life pleasantly unfurled from the disaster-knot that was Anchorage. and on lazy sunny mornings it was fucking beautiful. 

but it felt so fucking good to leave. 

my newest baby upon adoption. she sat through two cold bus rides like a lil trouper. 

entropy-pants fucking loves the new place. 

4pm today at 2nd & Pike. 

shouldn't pessimism be called "stoptimism"?