dead leaves and the dirty ground

so that cigarette you thought you wanted
and eventually got in a pure act of sneakitude
didn't fix that headache
and now you're not sure what's wrong with you
or if you'll ever be un-tired again

but

now we don't put much stock in the poets
in their iambs and so on
but oh
oh
oh
oooooooh
have i told you about the sky out here at night?

f u c k i t i s n ' t o r a n g e
saw every single constellation you could think of last night
pinhead clear and sparkling
the swan and both dippers
orion and the bear
all up there twinkling
like twinkling is still a thing you can do in this day and age

so much that if john donne or even that idiot wordsworth
were to sneak up behind me
and whisper something about the majesty of nature
i would hear it
and
possibly believe it

the veins of twigs and branches
the slashes of trunks across the sky
thrown up against the convex lens above us
AND THE WIND
the lone voice in the silent woods
roaring down the backroads with something to say
shouting

hey! hey! hey!

be afraid, be very afraid

there's something coming out of the trees

put that cigarette out behind a rock to hide the evidence
kick your boots off at the door
wrap yourself up tight in that blanket
and watch the creeping woods
til you can watch no more

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

time

hello fellow adventurersss

it's been ten days since i first arrived in seattle in a green turd and began to paint that town red. it's been a week days since justin's and bianca's first experience with nettles. it's been 2 days since mine (the trick is saliva-- it neutralizes it). it's been three nights sleeping on the couch with gixxer (and on yesterday was 8 years since he was born), and three days of crushing on david and russell, possibly because it's been about thirteen days since i've been touched. eight days since my first acid trip. one day since i climbed up into a cloud with trees coated in moss, screaming and singing and running and laughing. and losing justin. he came back, though i wasn't sure he would. it's also been three days since i bought twilight, and justin bianca and i have been reading it to each other but since it's such a piece of junk we've skipped most parts. the town i live outside of, port angeles, is mentioned several times in the book because it takes place in forks, about an hour west of here... so this whole area is getting lots of tourists (16,000 in forks in july) and there's twilight stuff everywhere!

it doesn't rain here in the summer, except saturday sunday and today. it's cold! ali sent me an email about sweat-- is it hot where you are? i'm wearing a sweater i bought at goodwill in town and my fingers and toes are so cold.

just watched shortbus while cleaning garlic, which caro and ali have mentioned to me a few times. i'm basically hoping que(e)ry will be like that. glitter sex fame glamour money drugs power dirt, and so on.
bye guys,
i'm lovin' reading this, keep it up
.zee

we will bare our toes for the revolution

great post, nautilus--i like imagining myself hanging from the inside of your eyelid, too.

i returned yesterday from a michigonian woodlands adventure--a mobilizing weekend hosted by the transformative justice law project talking about prison abolition and transformative justice as well as workshops on privilege, trans prisoners, the prison-industrial complex, great squid hotspots in the midwest...

most of those things, though. (+ a horse and some geese and a cat named carlisle.)

imagine these words squirted by a great great squid: improving prisons is not enough! down with the prison-industrial complex! no more corrupt judges and money-driven manipulation of truth! the state does not have the right to pass out arbitrary and cruel punishments! prisons are poisonous loci of social control and abuse! and then that squid divides into a thousand tiny squids and they crawl through ideological cracks and seep ink and fight the arm of bioluminescent crabs that crawl and oppress....

i did a lot of thinking about class privilege (how to be "poor" and a student and in hyde park and all of these things) and how relative privilege is--for instance, i think being female-born makes it easier for me to dress genderfluidly than if i had been born a man. and for the identities that are not granted privileged access in/to the mainstream (like trans people to safe bathrooms), there are often amazing communities of support that form--like queer community, which operates on a plane of privilege itself. or voguing....mmm mmm.

so my brain did some flips, learned some shit, and mostly i met these 10 people who are doing cool shit in the midwest and many of them have love affairs with chicago, which was intriguing. and also i did not wear shoes all weekend. that was a plus.

upon my return i showered (oh did i shower) and mixed up some sea salt and a little olive oil and lavender oil and rubbed it all over myself and now i think i will shower all the time because it was so so good.

and when i come it will be on your face (book)

fellows, friends, fish,

my first post has been long in coming.

some of us are -- the point is that coming is not the point.

so here i am. long and unstructured.

i will begin with a few disasters, since that seems an appropriately low starting point from which to soar, tentacles flying and jelly shivering:

a few days ago the noble 5491 residents (five bodies with about 1818 tentacles apiece, give or take) awoke from greener pastures to realize that gabriel had been MIA for several days. our distress was manyfold, as gabriel was not well-equipped for his adventures. rolly and i mournfully inquired at open produce and steven, sleepless by mysterious mewing, referred us to his apartment complex where a lone cat mewed for nights. gabriel has now been located in a holding chamber full of cats at someone's mom's house. his re-arrival is greatly anticipated.

earlier this week i went to homewood to breathe the suburban air but my reverie was interrupted by the firecrackered burning of four cars in the vicinity of z's house. what oddities do not make it to the news! a family van, a much-loved corvette, a garaged car...haphazard destruction that did not have the trappings of heartfelt ecoterrorism. many people were sad and confused.

a few other miscellaneous small tragedies include the crippling of innocent bicycles (a streak of unluck that has plagued both rolly and i, winknight) and several small dead animals on the road. also, many bug bites.

but bug bites are the marks of more pleasing things and as i itch the clusters of angry bugkisses behind my ears, i am reminded of rolly & nautilus & my epic venture into the indiana dunes national park, a headlong tripping into a very boggy middle earth. we snuck easily into the park and refused to submit to a confusing system of marked paths until we found ourselves deep in an orc-ridden area and subject to millions of unwanted advances by amorous insects. then with unexpected significance nautilus said, and i quoth, "i wish we had a flying car" and within moments, a small cart zoomed down the path toward us. we begged and pleaded and plunked in the bed of the cart-car and accompanied the confused (and stoned?) park garbage-collectors on their adventurous route. we found ourselves at the opposite end of the park with dusk (the fateful hour of car-towing) fast approaching. hitching was mostly unsuccessful and saddening but then our cart-driving friend picked us up laughing at our absurdity (hikers who've hiked too adventurously! strange maps! middle earth is not for humans!) and the homeward trek was most satisfying.

i decided to spend this summer in chicago, hoping my grumbling disaffection for the city would flower and transform itself. i have had many adventures thusfar, most of them not of my own making--that is, i grew into the impression that i had to create projects and adventures and objects for my passion. but this summer has been explorations of new scenes (burning man, anarchist, wicker park, kinky) and tentacular beings, experiences had and wormholes into greater adventures. i have not fallen in love with chicago, but that is not for lack of potential adventures. and i am tired tired of wicker park, though the person at quimby's winks at me sometimes.

a few other brief notes that are determining (though not overdetermining) my current existence.

yesterday i created the prototype for my new, d.i.y., multi-step, gorgeous dildofriend. it has a star on it. as i stroked the clay to remove my fingerprints, i wondered what to put in the core of my wand. any ideas? what would you put in the core of your wand?

on tuesday z & justin are heading westward to shock their lives into living and in pursuit of the enigmatic spiritual answers available only (in limited quantity) in india and mexico (and peru). they will be missed.

i went to the next generation "kink munch" at ambrosia cafe in lincoln park. apparently the kink scene is a) entirely in lincoln park b) full of tentative and math-loving uchicagoans c) bougie/expensive/overpriced/capitalism-entrenched as can be. i learned about fireplay and fire floggers and fire cupping and was intrigued.

last night from the front porch i yelled a revolutionary cry seeping with passion and loneliness, love and despair, confusion and straightforward insistence:

BAO

BAOBAO

BAO?

BAO BAO BAO BAO BAO.

BAoooooooooooo!