The coffee isn't even bitter...

So i said the drought was over and then another week goes by. Heeh heeh. A thought just occurred to me and interrupted me. I'm thinking about it because my wireless speakers are cutting in and out from the music i'm listening to over my laptop. It's annoying the hell out of me. Well so I'm getting to the point of wanting to plug the speakers directly into my laptop, so as to eradicate the skipping. But then, I realized that the speakers would be right in front of me. and what I enjoy, what I think sets the mood about listening to the music over the louder speakers is precisely that they are not by my laptop. They're in the other room. And music coming from another room sounds fantastic and great and I love that. And then I thought, why do we obsess over entertainment systems/houses that put speakers in every room? No. Put speakers in a few places but then let the music flow through the place and listen to it from another room. It's great.

Anyway, so it's been awhile and i'm guilty. But to be slightly fair to myself I came down with a viral infection (good sign) that knocked me out for the better part of a week (thursday to tuesday). Why is a viral infection a good sign might you ask? Well, I always get sick when I've let go in a vague general personal life sense. I'm sure other people are like this too, you get sick on holiday or right after school lets out or whatnot, it's the i'm stressed i'm stressed i'm stressed ok it's all over and now i'm sick. Well it was one of those things I think. And now finally, I'm getting over being sick. So hopefully this battered caterpillar is on his way to being on kick ass moth (do moths metamorphosize?) to use a heart warming and long cherished metaphor.

I think it's fun that this blog is over a year old. Because, it's fun to remember back, and read what I was posting today a year ago. So many changes in a year...so many. And even in the past 7 days a fair amounnt of change has occurred. Well maybe not visibly so. But I think it has.

So here, on this cold, blustery grey wet rainy summer day in Seattle, I've committed a year of my life. (i'm already close to six months in, but another 12 at least). I signed a lease to a wonderful studio apartment. It's something I'm unbelievably excited about. Hence the above photo. I'm sitting here staring out at the grey in a half-moved out apartment (doesn't living in a half moved out place suck? a friend of mine asked me yesterday). I hope that this marks a departure from my life of the past six months. Head in the sand would be an apt description of this past half year.

So I've received some virulent messages about my slacking on the blog and I appreciate it so much. because sometimes i need external motivation.

My new place is equidistant a stone's throw from a park and a liquor store. I don't think it could be more perfect. And hopefully I'll begin to write more. So I guess this post is more of an update post and not so much a whatever else i write here. But it's good to have some fresh air in one's life.

I read this new fantastic book recommended to me by a very well trusted source. So, I'm not surprised it was fanastic. It was the English translation of Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities. It's a series of short descriptions of various fictitious cities. it's one of those books where you got, "Oh! Damn!" because it's this brilliant book, that's written brilliantly, with brilliant ideas, but is also sort of ingenious where you go "Oh! Shit! I could've written this" well that's how I felt about Cities. It's fantastic check it out. Thanks Meg!

I wrote this on an altogether different summer day. And with full intention of continuing it, but perhaps I"ll post it here now. and write more on it later.

------------------------------------------------------------------

The music moves slowly. With the fan. And the air. Languidly on a summer night that stretched out lazily across the city. But I see none of it now. In a small room. With no windows and only one door. A small fan hums consistently, while I hum softly along in short bars to the crooning low female voice. The sweat slowly gluing my bare thighs to the down. Too heavy for this heat. The laptop adding its heat. But at this temperature, knowing the futility of hoping for coolness, I am careless about everything. I am looking through the silhouette of my toes at the candle across the room. It’s soft glow illuminating my make shift bookshelf (the floor) and spine after spine of countless (54) texts to be read another countless times. The soft scent from the candle reawakening it’s fallen brethren in my sheets, the clothes, the books and the walls.

The music pauses in between songs and the droning of the fan continues solo. My cellphone sits silently at my side. An odd Friday night to say the least. I haven’t had one like this in the longest time, which is a phrase people utter when they’re too lazy to search their memory. And on a night like this, I am certainly too lazy to search for a memory that probably doesn’t exist. I don’t have any food in the pantry to eat raw, and the thought of turning on a stove in this heat is enough to keep me put and my tummy lightly complaining. Funny though, how some memories come to you without any searching at all. I think I read that somewhere. (another phrase people use when they’re too lazy to recall). Watching the tiny flashes from the city’s spire across a surrealist Northwest sky at dusk, I couldn’t help but think of Murakami and his memory. Or at least his protagonist’s memories. He captures it so well, but then again, plane’s have always been great places to get a good view. The memory of leaving comes to me again. By leaving, of course, I mean a year ago almost to the date. When, as a 22 year old I left my mother for the first real time. I wrote about it, but as things tend to do in this digital age, it was lost to some misplaced article of dust or broken chip. Perhaps I should try to recount it. A lot has happened since then. Almost too much to tell. Never did I think, so much could fit into one tiny year, especially with the rate they go by these days.

Anyway, stories from another place for another time I suppose. But remind me to tell you about leaving my mother and her mother.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Happy Hump Day.

It's been more than a year

Isn't it funny, when one goes to get one's hair cut that we sit in front of a mirror? I was in a funk, along with the weather, on monday. It was my second day off in a row and after walking around Capitol Hill in a daze looking for the miracle apartment to fall into my lap, I decided I needed to get a haircut. Walking into an uber hip salon recommended to me, I had stylist who was also stuck in slow motion. Seated in the vinyl chair, staring at myself in the mirror and the yellowish orangish headed short woman slowly and meticulously moving from one side of my head to the other and back again, I thought I might be falling asleep. My expression looked blank. And my reflection stared at me, rudely, I might add. I couldn't do anything but stare back, locked in a dazed gaze trying to focus on anything. The stylist slowly drew another two fingers full of hair up to it's perfect snipping height and slowly clipped from fingertip to hand.

Ziggy Stardust played over the stereo.

I haven't blogged in a long long time. Like seriously blogged and that's a problem. But. Perhaps the end of my long drought is over. I have been unbelievably stressed out. Like more than ever. But now, it's raining and the darkness in my apartment now matches the darkness outside the windows. And perhaps now, things are more congruous. Nina is on the stereo and the peppermint tea is lukewarm. My favorite temperature for tea.

I spent a fantastic evening a few days ago, leaning halfway out my apartment windows at 4 in the morning watching lightning reverberate through the clouds. Reverberate. That's impossible. Lightning doesn't reverberate. It does something else. Gimme a second. Stutters. Stutters and Shutters. across the sky. silence. too. no thunder, just the shuddering shuttering faint light through thick clouds at the quietest time of the day. On my elbows (the sill is low) and kneeling on the floor, conversation floats out to the city. And with a smile stretching my tired cheeks, I remembered how much I liked and how much I missed, talking, writing and reading. Reading, talking and writing, writing reading and talking. I missed it.

i had sunday off and I went to the lake. standing at the edge of the high dive off the shore on the dock, I swayed with the dock up and down, side to side over wave and through trough. Standing precariously up above the water, I swayed. giggling somewhere silently inside, I felt life swaying, slowly, shaking me to pieces. Swaying on the precipice. I kicked the lolling board, made my body rigid and sliced the incoming crest. And it's about time too.

I'll write again tomorrow. But right now, my tea is gone and I'm still in my work clothes. Plus, the rain is demanding my attention.

i just finished another book. i need to write about it. but i have a soccer game to play. it's rainy and cold in seattle, in july, because why would I deserve a summer all year round?


i feel something coming. who knows what the next few months will bring.

Wow, Remember when I blacked out?!

Sorry for such a long hiatus. Things, have been well. I'm trying to recorral my creative life. Here was an exercise in "making mistakes" by which I mean, becoming comfortable with creating things regardless of whether they are "up to my standards" simply to get things moving. I watched a great video about creativity and schools. If you don't want to watch the video, my take away from it as it pertained to my personal life was the important message that fear of mistakes kills creativity. And, looking at myself, I knew this to be true. One of my main blocks in trying to write a lot of what I think would make great writing is a fear and doubt in my ability to accurately render great writing or great ideas. I'm so damn afraid of writing shit, and most of what I write I already think is shit, that I can never get my foot out the door. So, this charcoal sketch was the beginning step in creating something that I might not be happy with and letting that be okay. And gosh darn, it's working, I don't feel bad about this sketch at all. And I made it without fear. I also then wrote a six page personal essay that hopefully, will get printed in a literary journal operating out of Portland. I'll let them do the publishing, not me.

here's the sketch:

Pond Frogs.

Ruuhhh, ruuhhhh. the bullfrogs are still here. on the cape, across the pond. I can hear them clearly because we keep the windows open. It's very humid here out on the cape and after living in the desert, well, never mind, i've always reacted poorly to humidity. Tossing and turning barely letting the cloth sheet drape over one shin as token sleep cover. the humidity weighing more heavily on me than anything on my mind.

ruuhhh, ruuuhhh. I stifle a laugh because my cousin is sleeping across the room. i'm thinking about humans making that noise to attract one another. the sleezy guy leaning on the bar groaning, ruuhhhh, ruuuhhh at a elegant lady. stupid i know, but funny enough, combined with the thought that I thought about that at all. enough to stifle a laugh.

i feel like i've let a lot slip lately. it's been an interesting time these past few weeks. letting some things go, trying to pick up others. a sort of general reshuffling of affairs, values stances. interesting time indeed. spring cleaning, cliche. but still, i'm a sucker for cliches because every so often i'm struck (almost physically) by the genuineness of cliches. they do, at the outset, capture something profound. sometimes it's easy to forget all their baggage. sometimes i'm struck by cliches. and the past few weeks, or hell, maybe months, have felt like rummaging through boxes of old stuff. But oddly enough, none of it has had anything to do with the past. well, i suppose that's not entirely accurate. nothing to do with the past? what an absurd notion. anyway, that's another path. but this spring cleaning has such freshness to it. It's all new. it's just me that feels old. what's up with that?

Before hopping the bus up to the Cape (i had previously thought (being from the West Coast as I am) that boston, cape cod and the state that houses them were between New York and DC) I had been waltzing my way around New York by the lead of a friend from brooklyn. new york. i like it. large, dirty. a real city. and yet, so livable. i felt so alive amongst all those people. even though i felt as though i was a temporary sojourner floating by. lead around by a local i still was stray, not there, but there. feeling the people, the closeness. not relating, just feeling. and encapsulating and conceiving in cliches. i'm just feeling it man. yeah. groovy.

the frogs are still at it. endlessly ruuhhh, ruuuhhhing out into the darkness. hoping for someone to respond, someone to keep them company. there, in the pond. i have a tennis match in the morning with the family. a tennis match, on the cape. sucker for cliches. sometimes you live a story and sometimes you fill your blog with cliches.

but ah what the hey. i'll polish some of this someday. and who knows if it'll be any good. if I need any motivation, I only have to read more Dave Eggers. His novels read like my blog I feel like. It's like a Vonnegut style without much of the well thought out creativity.

well, tomorrow is here.

Some Like it Hot

Somehow I got nominated as spokesperson. it wasn't the best choice. good thing I had some help.

Summer Evening in Seattle

Dusk and Dawn are the best times for thinking.

the lights of the city slowly blinking on like the thoughts in my mind. here, there in no way connected save for the impending darkness.

the hill and sky blur with only the words "Olive Tower" remaining clear in their white and mustard yellow.

piano and violin unwind the contortion of the day.
3 lonely tea candles, clustering for light. profile me against the white wall.

The last sounds of thunder rolling quietly out to sea.