A List of Things I like (not all inclusive)

thinking about things I like, sitting in the spring sun.

-fingernails clink on fired ceramic
-bookcases and bookends
-reflections in lukewarm coffee
-a well-tailored pant
-yellow lamp light
-succulents
-water in wine bottles
-bitterness and sweetness (dark chocolate, coffee with berries, campari and cake)
-tile
-a nice heavy combed wool blanket
-a good tan
and an unexpected phone call.









spring is coming.

so it's been a while again. its amazing how time passes by. I still feel like it's May. Seattle got slammed with snow leading up to Christmas and it would be difficult to confuse December with May now, but for some reason I never moved past May.

The months slip by and I can't really see anything that would upset this process, time that is. I had always thought of the phrase "Time is on my side" as simply an artful way of saying you've got loads of free time, but I understand it in a new light when i feel as though Time is so adversarial and not in a battle to accomplish errands, but Time as a personal attack. An oppression of monotony and immovable force. Even something as "momentous" as the holidays, rolled over and past me with little effect.

Across my street a team of 3 utitlity workers with the aid of a large truck are putting up a new ?telephone? (i suppose there are multiple technologies beside telephone these days) pole. It makes me think of society at large, but that's nothing new. Sometimes I think Henry Ford and Industry are some of the worst things in the world. I just don't like how specialized everything's become. Ohp, there's 4, one was operating the truck. i think you can pull off cities without industry.

i have nothing more. i'm not in the mood.

No no no!

I don't want to be done. I just suck at discipline right now.

A good friend of mine made a comment the other day that stuck with me as another one of those "ah ha" moments of struggling with new found adulthood. I had been doing what I often do: ranting and complaining about things I just never really do anything about. The realization was that many of the issues of the past year that we've been struggling with, things we've felt to be personal crises are really just things that normally occur all the time. Which is perhaps relieving? but also really scary. How unprepared are we? I know that's all very vague but I didn't want to get to into it.

What I did want to write about was this scene that recently struck me. I had the opportunity to spend an extended weekend in Laguna Beach. And so I did.



The late winter sun threw long rays against the sky and the hills even though it remained high and proud in the sky. and I sat in my chair. The young eucalyptus outside the window tossed it's thin locks of leaves from one side to the other like a young woman behaving with planned carelessness. and I rocked in my chair. The edges of the window, trees, sky and my face blushed with a light pink. The sun slowly sank, inching it's way behind the house in front of me. The wind continued to blow it's cool breath on the warm hills. The air was dry. Winter in the south. I hugged my knees tighter. My face creased into a smile as the young eucalyptus with a flippant toss of it's highest branches began to shudder and shake with indignation. The Sun was slowly leaving her and the scene was turning dark. I sat in my chair. I caressed the tree with my water tinged eyes, I loved the tree. But calm didn't come to those beautiful branches. The light pink that had once graced our group now turned to a darker angrier red. i couldn't help but laugh at the poor eucalyptus' futility. The tantrum slowly ceased and became rhythmic dancing sobs. The thin long leaves brushing across large swaths of reddish purple sky. And before I knew it, my beautiful tree became nothing but a silent beautiful silhouette. And when I heard my name called, my attention broke and I got out of my chair.

i enjoy harvest moons.

i also enjoy campari.

yes. i'm still here. barely. but i've been feeling more motivated lately. so perhaps one of these days I'll actually post something.

i'm amazed. living alone, at the amount of mess a single person can make. but at the same time. making pancakes at 3 in the afternoon on a Thursday is precisely the reason i live alone. Not that one couldn't do that with roommates. but it makes more sense alone.

but then there're the nights when i sit and stare at the wall, the ice cubes slowly melting in my jar, and i wish it would just talk to me. that'd be nice. i suppose that's why they invented TV.

autumn. it's a good time. too short, as a customer pointed out the other day. yes, i said, winter always comes too quickly and lingers too long.

a random couplet i wrote

yes. exactly indeed it's true
just distractedly misconstrue

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.

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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.

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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.