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

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

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. 

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 

with no flying or aliens

two nights ago I had one of those dwindly restless dreams that I repeatedly woke up and fell back asleep to; it was a gentle unrushed wander through the lesser-acknowledged entrails of my neuroses, I guess. I was still fucking tired in the morning.

I was at his extended family's house. it was my first time meeting any of them. the house was huge and old and rural. it was a hot day and the wood-paneled walls were almost damp. everyone was sitting around in shorts and tank tops, sweaty and sunburned and cheerily drinking. he had vanished and I was awkwardly sitting on the end of one of the grubby sofas, smiling when I was able to make eye contact with others but still not included in any conversation. they were talking about people I didn't know and memories I wasn't involved in, getting drunker and more boisterous. "does anyone know where ____ is?" I finally ask politely. a girl about my age says "you mean you don't even know?" and everyone starts to laugh; it's the first time I have anyone's attention at all. "ha ha, she lost him!" one guy announces. all I can think to do is smile politely because I'm fucking mortified and not sure why, not sure what joke I missed but painfully aware that I'm on the wrong end of it.  

so I get up, "ha ha, thanks," trying to be jovial, and start walking around the house to find him. and I realize that it's my old building, the shithole with the Airstream- how weird that I hadn't noticed this before! I remember how much my landlord and I butted heads and I think "ohh, he'd hate it so much if he knew I was back." this cheers me. and then I'm standing in front of my old window, looking in. 

I see a few of my pieces of art on the wall. I hadn't realized I'd left them there: oh THERE they are! my Faust painting, the science poster from UW; it was one of those eerily accurate moments in a dream when everything is exactly as it actually is. and on the far wall is this, which doesn't exist in (my waking) reality: a huge subway poster advertising Tetris. Tetris! it looked like this: 

in the dream, this, too, was mine. how could I have left this stuff behind? I think. and I realize I still have my key to the apartment, so I go inside and take it all down. 

I work quickly. and once I am back in the yard (crunchy yellow grass, hot sunny day) with a pile of bulky art, it becomes clear that even though this shit was mine once, I totally just broke into what is now someone else's space and stole shit that I no longer have rights to. I'm suddenly deeply ashamed. I don't want to go back into the apartment and replace everything, because that'd be even creepier, so I'm standing there wondering what the fuck I'm going to do when i blessedly wake up. 

I never did find the guy in the dream. I got distracted, as I tend to be with most things. 

I do like the poster concept, though. if it doesn't exist, perhaps it should. 

dreams that vivid always trip me out. I always frantically check my mouth when I wake up from disintegrating-teeth dreams, or check my covers when I've been holding tightly onto a weapon in a nightmare. so when I got up from this one I immediately went out to my living room to check on the other art. 

here's Faust: 

and here's the sciencey one. 

perhaps I simply needed a reminder that life isn't the colossal mindfuck my subconscious likes to pretend it is. that's all a dream really is, right? it's easier than you think. go back to sleep. 

happier than I seem

I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but years ago I read something about how in densely populated, large-familied places like India, people never know what it's like to not hear someone sleeping. kids share beds, families share rooms. you grow up with their breathing in the background, a perpetual presence. being physically alone, for a vast majority of the world's population, is culturally harrowing and fucked up. and I first read this when I was living in my loft in Queen Anne, way too much space occupied entirely by me, heat cranked to 80 year-round, 20 minute showers and never-closed bathroom doors and lengthy animated conversations executed alone. as I was reading i was laying diagonally in bed. and I remember thinking my life is really weird and grotesque, isn't it? there is so much I simply will never know how to handle. 

*

entropy and the cat skull. this abstractly reminds me of the time I fed chickens leftover scrambled eggs. 

Cascade, I mean South Lake Union. I really dig this building. it's a building I would design, with wobbly lines and impatiently proportioned windows and a shaky patina of "you get the idea, right? okay." 

my new battery-operated Document Shredder! suck it, bills sent by standard mail! you'll get my money when I, um, eventually give it to you! 

ain't no heaven. 

this was my self-date night. I was under trees on a lovely sidewalk and reading and drinking something expensive that involved gin and byrrh and a fucking grapefruit peel and trying to be jaunty and decadent despite having had a really fucking shitty week, actually. I thought good for you, you fucking neurotic loner, taking yourself out like you always used to. but when I was about halfway through my drink a group of four loud happy people surrounded me and asked me to move, "because there's more of us coming, is that okay? oh thanks!" and I felt childishly awkward all over again. I may as well have been drinking Chardonnay with ice for as fucking un-awesome and by myself as I felt at that moment. so I said something about "uh yeah, no problem, excuse me" and went inside and finished my drink and went home and had a snively conversation with the cat.... I guess it's a funny story now that I'm not premenstrual and weepy. anyway, here's the drink when the Glass Was Full. 

one cool thing about this week was that yesterday, for the first time since the Shearing Debacle of October '14, I was able to pull the entirety of my hair into a bun using a single scrunchy and no pins. that's a big deal for any vain fool desperately growing out their strangely satisfying mistakes. 

*preserves sad moment of vanity* 

it finally fucking rained. everyone looks sleepy and seems tense. it feels like seattle again. 

the ides of July

I am fond of my world. 

I don't think about it often- smug git, why would I?- but I still abstractly remember how fucking miserable I was 10 years ago. Summer of 2005 I was clattering through a horrible marriage in a godawful isolated dead-grassed place and feeling like I had no options and didn't deserve any if I did. I contemplate that era as though it happened to someone else, a thuddingly dreary story I'm merely familiar with. 

my "appreciation" of the seemingly inane may come across as, well, seemingly inane, but it is well-fucking-clawed for. 

so like this, today. this is how I live now. 

space-age artichokes! 

anomalies on yet another houseplant. I forget what this is, but it seems quite content here. 

"fries with eyes." the menu's wit, not mine. what else could they be? smelt who felt? fish in a dish, if you wish?

abstractly lit at Revolver. 

another filter of the toilet-portal. the Schneider-perv who fixed the seal was cheerily brusque about the whole thing. "ah, it's just a toilet!" he said several times. I bleached the fuck out of my bathtub after he left.

another filter, 16th & Olive. twice I have lived within one block of this corner.

the belligerence over the "gentrifuckation" of this fine berg was one of my catalysts for fleeing to Alaska- which is many things, but not (though I felt like it, at times and in places, really kinda wanted to be) particularly gentrified. but now, and I've undoubtedly pontificated about it before, I'm like fucking lighten up and just deal with it, ya twerps. this is a great sign, though. 

also, I can say all these things because I inexplicably have a great deal on a great place and I live the ideal Urban Life, and I know it. 

in proof: the Ideal Urban Life, 13:22 PST 15 July 2015. have you had an ass in your face today? 

"it seemed strange to be out. it seemed strange to be able to walk in any direction I pleased." Bukowski