formative years: the zeroes
recipe approx. 33% music videos
where'd you have ended up
without mopers on jangly guitars
probs a place without generation suicide jokes
who are these children
that never got a chance to murder their heroes
because the heroes had already killed themselves instead?

i'm not sure if this is the domino
the planet hardly ever shakes out like that
pues, john darnelle must own a french press by now
pues, he's on twitter
pues, has anyone heard from E this year?
pues, kurt cobain worship has moved to tumblr
pues, what are those stories about jeff mangum working in a bank?
oh "yeah, dude, i saw jeff mangum this week...at my bank"
pues, jeff mangum is back on tour too

post-"life is hard and so am i",
i suppose i'm asking,
is it any wonder at all that
being in on the joke is the joke

we've put our arms out car windows to this
teetering on the joints of salt box houses' roofing
hands flung out
were we dropping seed bombs of glib the whole time?
in the other room, a dead eliott smith still talks to me
and sure it shakes
but does stephen merritt really want to be taken seriously?

grass-stuffed stab wounds!
this subculture's bleeding out quick!
where does the drain go?
and how far to the community garden?

riding this bell curve into the treeses

today my heart and my bones are a little heavy--
it's a rainy sunday-long morning-eggs and toast and damp kinda day.
writing speed, distance, long steps and rotating wheels and flying heads,
displacement of thought, new forms of intimacy,
i'm breaking up with the world so we can figure out some other way to relate.
wait, nevermind.
i haven't been writing much so i'm a little scattered in my head; i've been thinking a lot about the past couple years, what i've become, the worlds i've brushed up against and chosen, transitioning into myself, the length and strength of relationships i'm starting to miss hard.
it's good to miss. it's good to miss. it's good to miss....
this new world is rich with food that grows on trees, grass like shag carpet and art hiding in the woods. everyone is harvester and cook and eater and sleeper alike, and we are all not so different than the marmots and the prairie dogs that dig their homes to curl up in each others' warmth.
it's funny being in a new Region, the pacific northwest, adjusting to these trees and the sea and the not-flat-ness that feels homey but also not quite like my home yet. i don't know what klickitat will be like. a new community of people that will be mine for a little while and then i'll move along, waiting for something else to snag me. pulling away from all the people and places that have snagged me in chicago, in the past, has left little holes in my sweater so i hope it doesn't get too cold here or i'll have to sew buttons back onto t.rex's flannel.
and summer...? summer? my feet are getting soft and white wearing socks all the time and as my biceps grow my arms get pale--what a tradeoff. i've been wearing the same three layers for the past three days. i've changed my skin a couple times though.

move-out week at the bäo (a thought in verbs)

sweeping painting moving smoking hoping poking hugging lugging missing packing sweating readying tracing pacing feeling singing washing reddening confusing checking double-checking dismantling renewing finding dreaming cleaning listening looking waiting waiting wanting wanting wondering

I've been having dreams about Canada. I know nothing about Canada and I always have a sense that the whole country is exactly like Portland - which is unequivocally wrong. I've been thinking about going to Canada and finding myself there exactly as I was before, totally unchanged. I've been thinking about going to Canada and finding myself there exactly as I was before and moving there only to discover it is just Chicago or just Stamford or just New York or just Iowa City/Sioux Falls/Cedar Rapids or JUST BOISE. I think, "What's the difference between Toronto and Montreal?"

And my attention slips.

I'm interested in chewing on my fingers - as an academic discipline. Naming differences between tastes of certain fingers, textures of certain nails, cataloging hangers-on or little pockets of pus. Taxonomy of tearing at my cuticles. Families and subtypes. Breaking it down to a very specific science - how many categories could I think of in all? Hundreds on an okay day filled with sleepy eyes and thousands if I pushed it. Of other people's fingers I cannot muster the courage to ask.

I'm bored. And boring. I tire of my own sentences half-way through (imagine for a minute how many words I have already deleted). I just want to hear other people talk and ask questions that lead them to rambling monologues. I want to wear a shirt that says, "Ask me no more questions, tell me no more lies." Is it acceptable in this day and age to hold off on talking for a little while? Try a day or two days, see how it goes, if it saves me any trouble in the waiting out of whatever this is.

Dear-oh-dear, as my grandmother might say. Go have a cigarette.

can't sleep with the man who dims my shine

so last saturday justin and i left port angeles to begin a 6-day adventure into and around olympic national park
and while i was there, and after i've come back, i've wondered how to write about it here
because as certainly as i am a cephalopod,
this was an adventure.

here is a map and some lists. they suffice to tell the story.

purple star is where i live, red is bus, yellow is hitchhiked, blue is hiked

things i saw (copied from my notebook-- i made these lists every night except the first and last):
sun 30 aug at the beach in lapush
-mushrooms: alcohol inky caps, mycena amicta, wine-colored agaricus
-bald eagle atop a rocky outcropping with a seagull diving at it
-a living, washed up shark, about 3 feet in length
-wily chipmunks
-surfers
-grizzled gulls
-my breath
-pelican party
-the town of forks, taken over by twilight-readers/watchers
-trees and rocks that look like caspar david friedrich paintings, only west coast so no oaks-- spruces instead

mon 31 aug in the hoh river valley (948 ft elev)
-lots of mushrooms! including chicken of the woods and baby oysters, pleated pluteus, tawny almond waxy cap, yellow pholiotus
-a skeletal mountainside, graves of trees, white from a fire 30 years ago
-my broken camera
-the hoh river, bluey grey with rock and trees, classic pacific northwest image
-big big tree with a whole ecosystem at its base so tall and thick
-moss on phone booth roof at visitor center

tues 1 sept at hoh lake, (4500 ft elev)
-mushrooms! orange, purple, red, brown, white, scaly vase chanterelle
-the clouds from above (and in them, and below them)
-BIG BIG BIG cedars, spruce, fir
-a composting toilet with spectacular mountain views
-right now, these ridiculous trees covered in moss.dripping from everywhere, a light, sickly green, like something dr seuss or meghan would draw
-the meadows which smelled like delicious baking
-a doe and her 2 fawns
-a black bear bumbling on the hillside opposite our camp
-these mountains mountains snow and glaciers (mount olympus and all its peaks)
-tadpole parade
-submerged logs in hoh lake, slumber slumber
-trout babes and jumping fish

2 sept at appleton pass (5000 feet elev)
-that black bear, but close up
-an owl at bogachiel peak
-ravens at heart lake
-a goat outside our tent, nibbling and sniffing and terrifying
-blueberries blueberries blueberries staining my fingers and lips
-two small scummy nasty ponds

and there's no more written in my journal for the trip anymore, though the next day we went to the hot springs on our way out of the park so i got all this sludgey slime on me and smelled like eggs and nakedly asked strangers for directions. and saw a beautiful forest along boulder creek... the descent from appleton pass, though it was rainy, may have been my favourite part of the trip (???)

my mental soundtrack (songs that got stuck in my head on those long silent days of walking):
'leaving today!' christina aguilera
'i like it rough' lady gaga
'i am a wizard' harry and the potters
'genius next door' regina spektor
'man, i feel like a woman' (who sings this??)
'be our guest' beauty and the beast
'felix felicis' harry and the potters
'can you feel the love tonight' lion king (the parts where timon and pumbaa are talking)
'welcome' christina
'paparazzi' gaga
'elbow room' schoolhouse rock

and i can't remember anymore! i tried hard to remember my mind's playlist.

in other news i am trying to remember hindi and it is really sad. and to do reading for my civ class which starts in 3 weeks BLECH

also blech that this farm is boring and i can't imagine being here until the 19th... i have arranged a rideshare out of seattle on the 20th. there's really nothing to do here; i think all i do is weed and harvest. by the time i leave i will have accomplished nothing! weeds grow back and so do veggies. maybe i'll run away somewhere earlier or something. suggestions?
gee this blog has gotten active and i like it. hello good work i like your brains
.zee

A Poem For the Summer

So the tide goes in and out
dishes, laundry, and magazines washing up on the shore
and sometimes they wash out again

Imagine our little collection of rooms
many-frame captured
so we can watch the piles go up and down
books hopping
from couch to table to bed

to bed again we go
but not solely so we can get up in the morning

each night we dream the walls of our house bigger
dreaming so hard that they bulge and spread
until everyone we know and don't know is in our house
sharing the blankets
paisley, checked, striped,
plaid, and cartoon-covered

everything smells of skin warmed by being outside for too long
a slightly charred offering
a prayer for time to slow down a little
and let us dream a while longer
in our little collection of rooms

In a bronze chamber, faced with the silent handkerchief of a strangler, hope has been faithful to me;

yeah to speak from my tentacles, i'm a little sad that it seems all of the squidbloggers but nautilus & i have fled from the south side enclave. (rollypolly left today for the western coast and mr. malic was compelled by irresistable opportunity to a fairyland of fun in michigan.) but so many adventures! i knew this would be a blog of adventurers and i've been inspired to find my own adventures this summer as well as to recognize how amazing the people who enter and leave my life are. you are among these rare squidkindred.

last night i dreamt i was rolling spliffs and driving west in a red car full of people i didn't know. ah ah!

unrelatedly, i would like to direct your attention to the ancient book of sex and science where the makers of monsters, inc. have turned their attention to weighty matters.

today i was singled out from the masses for a job interview at istria cafe, which has yet to occur but when it does will hopefully result in a deluge of coffee beans, tips, new buddies, life sustained by minimal wages, and sprinklings of consumerist delight.