Saturday, November 22, 2008

some things

we agreed that last friday's dinner was multi-dimensional in the mouth. and it was really fun eating in bellevue in irony. i dare say, i fancy you. and our midnight walk through ballard confirmed its pull on my periphery. the camel-colored brick apartment buildings from the 60s, the spinning lights inside the chai house, the cobblestones; they opened themselves to me. the importance that place plays in my life continues to marvel me. aesthetics has always my favorite field of philosophy. i'll always choose lace over logic. later, as we walked through the halls of our high school in the dark, we fogged up windows, cupping hands to eyes as we pointed out forgotten lockers and scoffed at the posters for tolo. when i was sixteen, i thought we would all become nautropaths or architects, or at least x-ray technicians. but some of us became tmobile managers at the mall, and some of us moved to wenatchee. it made me really happy though when you told me you ran into our high school's quintenential jock at the airport and that he was nice and kind and attending a bible college in california.

eventually, we dismissed ourselves and got back into the car for a drive through shoreline. oh, and thanks for giving me your mittens when my hands got cold—nice touch.

here are my answers to the proust questionnaire (proust-like, i omitted the questions i found less-intruiguing):

your favorite virtue: wittiness.

your favorite charicteristics in a man: able to make/fix things with his hands, generous, honest, dreadlocked.

favorite qualities in a woman: homemaking.

your favorite occupation: happenstancing.

your idea of happiness: falling asleep to the sound of wind beating canvas inside a candlelit yurt.

your idea of misery: finding meaning in the idea of a career.

your favorite flower: the peony

if not yourself, who would you be?: a well taken care of housecat with an attitute problem.

where would you like to live?: on a farm with chickens, llamas, goats and garlic.

your favorite prose authors: leif enger, tom hodgkinson, anne lamott, rob brezny.

your favorite poets: kim addonizio, richard siken, joshua marie wilkinson, mary cornish, erica jong, linda rogers.

favorite painters and composers: henry darger and audrey flack.

your favorite heroes in real life: nicole brown, faythe levine and modern homesteaders everywhere.

your favorite food and drink: my mom's macaroni and cheese with a side of broccoli and a big tall glass of ice water.

your favorite names: edison for a girl. easton for a boy.

your pet aversion: people freaked out by "the economic crisis."

what is your present state of mind?: it's in the midst of deprogramming itself from 15+ years of public education (indoctrination).

for what fault have you most toleration?: people who refuse to be practical. in the words of oriah mountain dreamer, "i want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human."


your favorite motto: all is well.

Thursday, November 20, 2008

my simple little self

i have been swept up by the dominant current of struggle that's floating inside the souls of almost everyone i know. and my vibrations are fucked from factoring in other people's thoughts about this individual life of mine. it's nobody's fault but my own. sometimes in my repressed desire to be part of something, i enthusiastically add my boxcar to the first train passing by. but i need to stop weaving randomly through this life, mistaking other people's tracks for my own. urban homesteading, anarchism, the law of attractionthese are the things that frost my cupcake. and lately i've been a little down because they do not easily fit into the marketplace. it would be so much easier if i wanted one of those jobs they crow about on sesame street, the ones that reek of a baby-capitalist's idea respectability. in an innocent, elmo-like voice, i wish i could say:

when i grow up i want to be a teacher.
when i grow up i want to be firefighter.
when i grow up i want to be an architect.

or least want to be something that easily fits into the equation of education + certification = job. and those are the thoughts that make me believe i shouldn't leave bellingham. i tried seattle, and to me it felt like a stale version of inspiration. like it's still living off of the residual fumes of 1992. so why my sights are gravitating down south is beyond me.

i know better than to think that life is an action-oriented journey. but sometimes i fool myself into thinking, if i do X, i'll no longer be lonely. which brings to mind last year's folklife festival. everywhere i looked, there was a person. the grass was trampled flat by the sheer number of feet tromping around the area. people, people everywhere. it looked like one of those japanese beaches. but i ended up in the bathroom crying because i felt so very alone.

and i would hate to feel that way again. because although bellingham is much smaller, it doesn't have the
struggle, sacrifice, hard work, complex of like the larger cities and their puritanically brainwashed citizens have. it's content being its simple self. kind of like i'm in the process of learning to be content with my simple self.

Friday, November 14, 2008

oh capitol hill, i thought you killed my emerald city spirit with your drunken hipsterness, with your anti-fashion, with your skinny jeans and skinnier cigarettes. but i'm in seattle this week, and although i was dreading its anonymous chaos, i've actually been comforted. it feels good to be close to the familiar : 1st avenue, rachel's celebrity gossip magazines, the overtly capitalistic department store displays that somehow still inspire an inner-giddiness. and i can't help but flirt with the idea of moving back. i wonder if ballard could be my bellingham, if i could just block out the rest of the city and pretend it didn't exist. i imagine myself working in a french cafe, chatting with businessmen with a pot of coffee in one hand and the other hand on my hip. maybe i'd become a regular at the tractor tavern, tapping my feet to bluegrass while drinking portland pale ale. but i always internalize landscape, and i fear the small-town characteristics of myself would once again fall off like a bracelet, or be silenced by the constant sound of cars on pavement, cars on pavement, cars on pavement.

what i don't remember

i don’t remember coming into this world.

i don’t remember wearing the white booties on my bookshelf.

i don’t remember if i was in the orca group or the rabbit group in kindergarten.

i don’t remember what animals were on my glittery purple lunchbox.

i don’t remember the kind of sandwich my freckle-faced friend threw up at lunch.

i don’t remember the eyes of the bearded man who showed me his penis in the toy section of k-mart.

i don’t remember asking for my face to be printed on the dollar bill.

i don’t remember the look on my mother’s face as she said, this is your father.

i don’t remember saying goodbye.

i don’t remember which door was which.

i don’t remember how everyone found out our classmate was a foster child.

i don’t remember the words they said to crush her.

i don’t remember how many insects were impaled on pins in the fifth grade.

i don’t remember how many days that bee hung in there.

i don’t remember the ending to the mixed-up files of mrs. basil e. frankweiler.

i don’t remember how long after i got my period i waited to tell my mother.

i don’t remember in which department store we bought my first bra.

i don’t remember the circumstances in which i said i hate jesus.

i don’t remember what letters he punched into the calculator to make it say LOOSE.

i don’t remember the name of the substitute teacher who made me hate group work.

i don’t remember why i thought i was dying.

i don’t remember the music artist who sang, it’s like romeo and juliet, hot sex on a platter just to get you wet.

i don’t remember the first time i had sex.

i don’t remember what shoes i wore at my high school graduation.

i don’t remember how many times i changed my major.

i don't remember how many times i jumped off the dock at midnight.

i don’t remember how many dreadlocks he had.

i don’t remember how many drinks i have bought that i didn’t really want.

i don't remember what it was i said about spreadsheets.

i don’t remember the name of the boy who said i had hips like zsa zsa gabor.

i don’t remember the price of the pears i bought yesterday.

Thursday, November 13, 2008

stripped

(an old college poem)

i want to lay in front

of your mack truck tongue
like a child who runs
into traffic laughing.

and when we crash

i want to lay naked
in the crook of your arm
as exposed and swollen
as a bruise.

and when i mend

i want to wear high heels
and strut in the front door damp
with cursive words dripping
down my cheeks.

and when you slip
i want to crouch down low,
cup your head in my hands,
and feed you phrases
of my confession.

and when you choke

i will be your nurse and
stroke your gold throat
coaxing down the nouns
and verbs.

Thursday, November 6, 2008

every morning i wake up with a cold nose and ears from sleeping with my face turned towards the open window. it's consistently cold in here now. it is november sixth, two days after the election. i always think i don't believe in—or at least care about—politics. and i kind of felt like a fickle fan that showed up to cheer in the last game of the world series but was nowhere to be found when things were less sensational. but that was only an afterthought. during the hours when all eyes were the cast in the direction of the television sets, the unity in our little bellingham bar felt good and i pressed the night to my face like fleece.

i'm in my second week of being unemployed, or as i've started calling it : being employment-free. weekdays always remind me of being ten and waking up in a dark room to see telltale dim and pinkish light pouring in from behind the blinds that signaled a heavy snow had fallen overnight. i no longer run through the house on little legs shouting with glee, but the freedom of an empty, unscheduled day always feels the same.

i have no idea where these feet will land when they come back from mexico. but here's some advice i'm lapping up from a saucer like a thirsty cat:

make a career out of living a happy life rather than trying to find work that will produce enough income that you can do things with your money that will then make you happy.

because otherwise i can't do this. otherwise i'm out.
if it's possible to scream my way out of undesirable destinies, i did it the last month of working at the law firm. there are some things i will never understand. and it's taken me 25 years to consider the possibility that maybe i can let these things exist, look the other way, and go on to having a happy life. i just don't want to spend anymore energy wishing i could shake the programming from the heads of business lawyers, corporate restaurant managers and other arbitrary-rule-enforcers. because i think eric hoffer just might be right in that when people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.

in other news, what the fuck is up with love?

p.s. tim, i wish you could have been with us on election night. it would've been nice to have a third person in the room to catch the sam cooke references in obama's victory speech.