theta

2002-09-25T11:03:00.000-07:00

I am now at www.ofrenda.org/theta.

yup, i jumped on the bandwagon and made the switch to the much-vaunted MT.

but only cause she said so.

2002-09-23T13:47:00.000-07:00

Go stand up an egg.

jason and i went to lunch with nate and ken-ichi. nate described the Stumpy cat that woke him up and went down to sleep on his housemate's bed, and confirmed her identity with my color photographs.

what i want to know is, 1. did she just get lost, or purposely run away, and 2. how did she end up in my friend's house, of all places? maybe she remembered him from his visits to our house.

now i have to make some chocolate chip cookies for nate.

in non-pet-parenting news, i went out dancing and drinking till 5 am with my coworker and her friend, stayed up till 4 performing and drinking at an illegal after-hours club, hula hooped a whole bunch and saw the Ronald K. Brown troupe's "Evidence," which was utterly breathtaking African/modern dance performance. i especially enchanted by the female lead dancer, camille somebody or other, who was like a hurricane trapped inside glass.

2002-09-23T09:40:00.000-07:00

maybe elliott is like her momma and took off on a bike ride.

i spent yesterday despondently skating around my hood putting up signs on utility poles. one guy driving by stopped and asked about her and i described her as "fat, orangey/brown striped, no tail." he said he had thought he saw her in his yard on saturday, down by the park on 27th & clinton (about 12 blocks away). i excitedly gave him a sign and went down there to twice to call her name.

unfortunately as i wandered around near his house in the dark last night, i heard a meow from under some bushes and a fat, orangey/brown striped tortoiseshell manx with a low-hanging belly appeared who was definitely not my cat. i went home and laid in bed and felt sorry for myself.

update: nate lives at 28th and clinton. i was going to call him last night to ask to keep an eye out for her. he just IM'ed me and described elliott . . . fingers crossed. also, when/if she comes, i'm gonna whip that little bitch within an inch of her life.

2002-09-20T13:04:00.000-07:00

my kitty is missing.

2002-09-19T12:05:00.000-07:00

i think i'm looking for all kinds of answers. i get brief flashes of finding them. they come all disjointed.

1. watching "waking life." "Kierkegaard's last words were, 'Sweep me up!'"

2. dancing last night, under red lights and shimmering my body against drums and voices inside a speaker. justin paused in his floor-hogging wild breakin-it-down dance moves and grooved up next to me against the sounds. i whisper-shouted into his ear, "if you were the sound of an instrument, which would you want to be?" as our hips and feet and hands throbbed and threw and thrashed. "Tuba!" he shouted, opening his arms wide and sinking low into his ankles, emoting from the depths of his lungs "MMMMMMBBBPHHHHHHHH!" "for me. . .bass clarinet!" i told him, swivelling and shimmying my shoulders like that rich dark chocolate sound, "eric dolphy's 'god bless the child'!" i imagined my body all insidious cubist refractions, clustering around hands on drums and reverberating bass.

3. a face keeps appearing in my dreams, 5 nights in a row now and i can never quite remember what it was or why.

2002-09-18T15:32:00.000-07:00

yes. it is still by my house. i have no idea the hell why.

addendum: or, it was until like two days ago! i realized they're gone now. how sad.

2002-09-18T11:24:00.000-07:00

Itches that itch like no other itch:

the unexplainable boob itch
yeast infection itch
when you scratch that one little spot on your lower thigh and everytime you scrape your finger nails across it, you feel it somewhere up in your opposite arm. what IS that?!
mosquito bite on your foot arch itch
flea on the unreachable part of your back itch
dandruff itch
the way deep inside of your ear spot your finger and q-tips can't reach itch
wake up in the middle of the night and keep scratching in half-asleep frenzy and it doesn't subside for a seeming eternity itch

2002-09-17T10:21:00.000-07:00

Everyone is sick . . . including me

yesterday my coworker wheeled out of the office with the ominous comment that she was going to pick up some TheraFlu. i woke up achey and fuzzy headed and after being showered and dressed, looked down at jason lying in bed and thought, damn, i never shoulda got up and shoulda called in sick. but instead i took the bus and now i feel like carp and my co-secretary is out sick, so it's probably better i'm here.

maybe i'll do a shitload of work in the next hour and a half and then go home after lunch. and/or maybe tomorrow i will sleep in, sit at the window in stumptown and look at the rain and take a long time to drink my coffee while i do the crossword.

i am also laboring under the delusion that either 1. everybody dislikes me or 2. i'm at the very bottom of everyone's liked-people list, and i am feeling very sad, lonely and depressed and like not talking to anybody ever again. this is also the most boring blog ever in excistence. good bye now.

2002-09-16T10:45:00.000-07:00

go read the legendary Simon's-of-Eugene and my discussion of milkshakes, wherein i describe the perfect milkshake i had this weekend and simon bemoans eugene's lack of milkshake-lovin' ladies.

nim's website is perpetually under very pretty reconstruction. i am slated to chop off his yuppie-john-tesh-listening-esque ponytail tomorrow, in exchange for beer. this is the month of hair cutting.

three nights of many many dreams. recurring themes, images, people. two nights ago i had an astral dream visit with Ben, who passed away last winter. a van pulled up next to me on the street. ben jumped out, smoking pot out of a hammer he made into a pipe. (those boys were always making odd things into smoking implements.) i was so very absolutely sure that peter was the one who was dead, not ben, and i asked ben if he was doing OK. he said yeah!! of course! and his embrace felt exactly like a ben hug. it was absolutely real and warm all through. then he said, i gotta go, and rushed off like the last time i saw him. when i woke up i was so confused because then i remembered ben is dead.

i went to the basement last night and i haven't been there in the better part of a year (better meaning simple majority). J was working and he asked me how i was. last time i saw him there i was not doing so well and he picked me up and dusted me off. last night he clasped my hands warmly and said 'don't let it be six months till i see you again!' when i left. now i listen to the stone roses over and over again.

i don't need to sell my soul
he's already in me

i wanna be adored
i wanna be adored

2002-09-13T09:58:00.000-07:00

you know, most of the girls i know did perverted things with their barbie when they were little, so it's not like i'm all that weird.

except i'm older.

jar of costco pickles: $3.49
vermouth: $5.99
gin: $18

Pickle martini: priceless

2002-09-13T00:17:00.000-07:00

one of our clients came in with his parents today and his mother was angry, railing against the state for invasion of privacy. i recognized the anger in her eyes and all the roundabout lies she used to hide things, recognized all the things she was hiding and the way she hid her anger to hide her secrets. i watched one of our lawyers talk to her and the unwitting way he circumvented all her detours, innocently rendering her ideological arguments moot while she and i both desperately, silently tried to find another way to explain it all, she not knowing i was her unwilling abettor. all my old excuses and explanations rose up inside of me, my old feeling of being torn up inside and a bitterly reluctant participant in games within a family, games between families and everyone else in the world who brushes up against them.

i wanted to help her hide all of it from the world and all that her mistakes could bring upon herself, and at the same time, i stared at his back, wondering whose side i should take. i always expect decisions to be much harder than they are and that is why i have such a hard time making them.

to be completely honest i'm really severely depressed and i have been for a little while and i work really hard at fighting it and all my chi just sits in my stomach, still and dead. i don't really believe that i am in some way because i don't erally see myself as capable of committing even to sadness and my joie de vivre comes in little bursts. but i keep finding all these thoughts that fight to express themselves and literally, physically my mouth is silent and wordless. they grow bigger and bigger and everything my life seems to gather in my hands and grow larger and heavier till i drop it in a corner and all my corners are filling up and i don't really know where to begin starting at filing them away and they're closing in on me.

i keep looking for names, numbers, dates and things that mark cycles, like birthdays or places or reminders, that mark some kind of closure. i go somewhere i haven't been in six months, except in sun instead of rain, except alone instead of together, except cautious instead of willful, and i expect it to mean my shoelaces are tied and won't come undone. i thought i closed all these things ni my head and they come back because i thought i knew how to say, you haev no place here, but i can't remember how to start saying that.

i couldn't breathe through tears and jason held me and helped me put it away till tomorrow. but now my limbs are trembling and i can't sleep.

i guess i felt this way then and i still feel it now.
i should try to sleep.

Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout
would not take the garbage out
she'd scour the pots and scrape the pans
candy the yams and spice the hams
and though her daddy would scream and shout
she simply would not take the garbage out

and so it piled up the ceilings:
coffee grounds, potato peelings
brown bananas, rotten peas
chunks of sour cottage cheese
it filled the can, it covered the floor

it cracked the window and blocked the door

with bacon rinds and chicken bones
drippy ends of ice cream cones
prune pits, peach pits, orange peel
gloppy glumps of cold oatmeal
pizza crust and withered greens
soggy beans and tangerines
crusts of black burned buttered toast
gristly bits of beefy roasts

the garbage rolled on down the hall
it raised the roof
it broke the wall

greasy napkins, cookie crumbs
globs of gooey bubble gum
cellophane from green baloney
rubbery blubbery macaroni
peanut butter, caked and dry
curdled milk and crusts of pie
moldy melons, dried-up mustard
eggshells mixed with lemon custard
cold french fries and rancid meat
yellow lumps of Cream of Wheat

at last the garbage reached so high
that finally it touched the sky.
and all the neighbors moved away
none of her friends would come to play.

and finally Sarah Cynthia Stout said,
OK.
I'll take the garbage out.

but then, of course, it was too late
the garbage reached across the state
from New York to the Golden Gate

and there, in the garbage she did hate
poor Sarah met an awful fate,
that I cannot right now relate
because the hour is much too late.

but children, remember Sara Stout
and always take the garbage out

2002-09-12T11:05:00.000-07:00

My life may be amusing only to myself, but that's all that counts anyway.

Esther: Shut UP!
Kyle: No. . .YOU SHUT UP!
Esther: Jaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaason, kyle's making fun of meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
Kyle: Jason's hiding from you, HA HA HA!
Esther: Watch out. . . before you wake up with a cucumber up your butt!

i got a hair cut last night at Salon In Vogue. it is a below-chin length shaggy bob kind of thing (layered, thinned, straight-razor cut at different lengths, for those understand such kinds of terms). this means i get to use Products in my hair, as well as a Blow Dryer and they all make it look pretty and wavy/curly. my coworkers keep telling me it looks kind of 40's/50's. no one wins a prize for best Haircut suggestion, because the only ones i got were P telling me to get it "thinned and just trimmed" and Gwen telling me that I DO NOT LOOK LIKE PENELOPE CRUZ and to JUST ASK FOR 'A RACHEL.'

Rachels are SO '97.

I found out i'm not the only biker who races with the bus . . .evidently bike messengers call it "leapfrog" and there's a zine named after it. i had a good race this morning. it made me all sweaty and feeling good inside.

at least *four* people have told me to go to school, my sister and three of my favorite friends among them. but my parents did as well, which counts as a negative two points. my cute punk-indie hair stylist from minneapolis told me to go travelling. what to do?

2002-09-11T12:13:00.000-07:00

more pictures: my skilled puppetry, what can i say, we were drunk!, and it's more notable that we were draping ourselves over a potato cannon, sexy art and me in granny slip, and all the pretty colors!

2002-09-11T11:25:00.000-07:00

"My most recent figures show that between 3,125 and 3,620 Afghan civilians were killed between October 7 and July 31."

Bush said in a newspaper opinion piece that greeted New Yorkers Wednesday morning, "We have the best opportunity in generations to build a world where great powers cooperate in peace instead of continually prepare for war."

2002-09-10T15:53:00.000-07:00

chris conveys the only apt facial expression when faced with the combination of a drunken esther and an even more drunken jess b. meanwhile, jason wants to know how do i get in on some of *that*?

2002-09-09T19:36:00.000-07:00

still i want haircut pictures and lifetime advice.

[Sombrero Fallout, Richard Brautigan, pp. 135-136]

Lemonade

While he was driven to desperation over one strand of Japanese hair, an entire head of it, long and beautiful and so very black, lay sleeping in the Richmond District of San Francisco.
Thank heaven he did not have this thought.
He would have turned it into a razor sharp obsession. It would have heightened his feeling of despair over the ending of his affair with the Japanese woman.
Here I am changed into a madman looking for a single strand of Japanese hair when for two years I had access to a whole head of it.
That would have made him feel horrible.
The bottom would have fallen out of the bottom of his life.
Yes, it was very good that he did not have that thought as he scrambled around on the floor with his whole life flashing in front of him.
He was drowning in a strand of Japanese hair.
That strand of lost hair was the same as falling overboard in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. He struggled for breath while his life like an overexposed home movie flashed from scene to scene in the front room of his mind with all of his relatives and friends and lovers watching it on a hot summer evening with glasses of ice-cold lemonade in their hands, interested when they were on the screen and bored when they weren't, except for his lovers who were all interested in whom he was going to bed with.
There was only one person missing from the movie.
And she was asleep sixteen blocks away.
She had enough long black hair, Japanese hair, to keep on drowning him forever.

2002-09-09T14:03:00.000-07:00

After Reading the Following Two Blogs, Please send me pictures and/or advice.

i have another quandary besides the one below (speaking of which, person with the best answer gets prize of their choice. really! i mean it! within reason of course. this includes but is not limited to pints of organic ice cream, wet kisses with tongue, or scrubbing the toilet, and i *have* given a good toilet scrubbing as a birthday present before. this is a true story).

my new quandary is, i haven't had a professional haircut since 1997 and that maybe have been Supercuts so i'm not sure that even counts, and I have been cutting/growing on my own since, and now my hair roughly approximates a disaffected grunge-rock high schooler's circa 1995. the problem is i have extremely thick hair and so 'layering' is a dangerous proposition. i asked jason what kind of hair cut i should get and he said "it would help if you combed it when it dried." and i said, "but then it gets poofy." so please, please pick out a good hair cut for me that will work on big fat poofy semi-latina hair and will require no more than 5 minutes of attention once or twice a day, and send me a picture, and the best one will also get the prize of their choice.

i was thinking something like this:

except for i'm not as pretty. but usually my hair looks like this when down:

which would look fine if i was a beautiful made-up Spanish movie star who spent all day lolling about in skimpy lacy red negligees, but i'm actually a somewhat homely half-breed and once she flips her head up, trust me, she is gonna have some mass to contend with.

2002-09-09T11:29:00.000-07:00

i need the advice of alls you . . . so i sat down with pen, paper and PSU course book and i figured out that what with my various AP and part-time school credits, if i take *two* night classes every quarter this year, starting on the 30th of this month, i have only one year of full-time undergrad left. this would allow me to stay here at my office, work and take night classes out of pocket, then quit next summer and go to school full time and obtain my degree after 3 quarters, give or take a few classes here or there. of course, this is presumably on the path to my M.A.T. which will require another 2 years of school/practice teaching but let's not think about that right now. the idea of only having 1 year (instead of 2) of taking out more loans and getting by on financial aid, and inching that much closer to my B.A. and stable non-secretarial employment that allows me to take journeys and travels regardless, is highly appealing to me.

of course jason and i had also discussed going to Panama or Thailand late this winter and setting aside moneys for that purpose would preclude me from taking night classes this year, and would also most likely demand quitting of my job and further financial instability before going to school and/or finding of new job on return, etc. etc. but if there's one thing i've figured out it's that the most worthwhile things are also the most scary and precarious seeming adventures, and i know that if i went, i would be lush and replete with exuberance and joy on my return and regret nothing (and he is going to go regardless, so watching him board a plane and voyage to exotic destinations would be nothing short of excruciating and probably a lot more than excruciating).

what the hell should i do? please e-mail me the answer because i sure as heck can't come up with one myself.

* * *

i am on a mission to sticker portland with Nomadic Nutria Hunters propaganda. look for a sticker near you.

i had an extremely productive weekend. i got drunk on tequila with people i like, did yard work, met our new neighbors. i made two separate trips to the family-owned hardware store up the street, where i wink and flirt at the 12 year old redhead boys with wavering voices that alternate between glass-shattering and deeeep. i love that store because i come in with all kinds of odd requests and they graciously assist me without batting an eyelash, and offer all kinds of helpful advice. on saturday i was trying to find the right screw for my bike rack and the guy told me to bring my bike inside. he found the correct bolt size and washer, put them in, and then told me it would be "23 cents." he also helped me figure out the correct lighting fixtures i would need for these beautiful (if i do say so myself) batik-and-bamboo hanging lanterns i'm making for my house.

i also made espresso, got high and sewed cranberry red curtains.

2002-09-08T22:33:00.000-07:00

i always thought alchemizing wind into sun was my goal, my means and my meaning. hold out hands, feel heat fall into cupped palm, understand yearning.

i remember the look on her face the last time we met and though years later, i still sometimes know what she's thinking. distance manifests itself in kinetic lightning bolts stumbling between shoulders and spirits. i encourage you to think of all women's faces you've known, and imagine the angularity of bones and the flavor of lips and the expressions in eyes. i draw on that and i want to build lanterns to guide my family along the river, through the night.

he whispers "Franka Potente."

i am mildly unhinged by the overwhelming materiality of reality, because bones and lightning bolts sneak up on me and alchemize themselves into burdens.

2002-09-06T16:30:00.000-07:00

i love my boy because i fall asleep with a tall boy of dutch beer in my hand, in bed watching "will and grace" back to back reruns (pathetic. i know.), and he comes home and takes my hair clip out of my hair so my head won't hurt in the morning, and when he crawls into bed my cat steps oh so delicately into the space between my ankles and purrs.

i woke this morning and i showered and lotioned and now i smell like almonds and cherry and chamomile. i'm wearing turquoise blue pants that fit just tight enough to be cute and a turquoise necklace and aqua/green braids and the flirty kinko's boy told me i have 'crazy style,' pointing towards my locked silver bracelet and !/1 key ring. the air was cold and foggy and cold when i rode to work and my toes and fingers froze and i huffed to myself, resentful because i felt i've missed spring and i've missed summer and now before i'm ready it's fall.

fall is falling asleep in front of will and grace with tall boys in my hands and i know how much trouble falling asleep with tall boys in my hands gets me into. all i could think about was how angry and unready i am for fall but before i knew it i filled my cup with coffee and cream and these cold mornings make me think of scarves and school and i love the smell of coffee on mornings like this. before i could stop myself i was momentarily enchanted despite all my best intentions.

i talked a 19 year old whose parents are trying to force her to get her tubes tied so she couldn't have children, because she is mentally retarded. i talked to a man who was fired because part of his tourette's syndrome tic is to grab his crotch. i talked to a woman who resented me asking her ethnicity, and yelled that she didn't want to talk to ME, just a RECEPTIONIST, she wanted to talk to A REAL PERSON!

i am going home to barbecue and macerate limes under my knuckles and make them into margaritas.

2002-09-05T14:08:00.000-07:00

lots of irreverent and irrelevant details without really saying anything, yes.

people all got worried about me this summer because i appeared as if from rip van winkle's sleep and told everyone i had been a hermit. i think i still am. everyone who i spent most of my time with at this time last year has been gone and everyone just seems different from when everything seemed charmed. i keep waiting for all that charm to come back. this is not to say i am unhappy, because i'm not sure i've ever been happier, but it's like when you open a velvet lined box and find old silver flatware, all yellowed and dull, aged and warm. it almost looks prettier without the polishing. now i can construct things with my fingers and before i would have stopped, gone to drink a beer and call a friend; now i can keep at it while watching the hours tick by and wait for the others to come to me. i keep thinking i should be discontent and i'm not; and then i find myself feeling lonely when i least expect it. my life is pretty and behind curtains really; most everything is physical details and i'm not sure what they all really add up to anyway. i like shiny tough things that don't break like vise grips and drills and tillers and i like loud fast things that require precision like winding bobbins on sewing machines and sensuous colors and textures of the fabric store and the paper section at the art store, all shimmery japanese prints and warm indonesian silks. i like that feeling of humility when it comes into me cause i know everything and at the same time i don't know shit.

i would give anything to be humble.

the charm comes in fits and starts and from the most unlikely of places.

2002-09-04T09:20:00.000-07:00

all of this is true. The Story of the Nutria.

the nutria is a beaver-like aquatic rodent mammal with a rat tail. it has giant "dorito teeth" -- big buck teeth colored bright orange and often compared to dorito chips. the female has its teats along its back so that she may swim and her young may feed while swimming alongside. they are often killed for fur by vaginal or anal electrocution. also, they eat their own shit.

me and jess played ken's drum kit at 8 in the morning and made up a song about the nutria. it goes a little something like this.

Esther: (pounds drum kit with drumsticks, creating a cacophany of noise.)
Jessica: A-NAL! ELECTROCUTION! A-NAL! ELECTROCUTION! A-NAL! ELECTROCUTION!

2002-09-03T14:58:00.000-07:00

we drank iced coffees and ate the best sandwiches in portland (zupan's deli. . . if yer interested) and drove through the smoke of southern oregon. our rented van lacked tape and CD, and i entertained jason by reading poetry and making my nutria puppet (hereafter referred to as The Nutria) and my Christie barbie doll (hereafter referred to as Christie) have wild animal sex on the dashboard and smoke phatties at 4:20. (picture to be scanned later.) the sun set in the rearview mirror in klamath falls and night fell, the subdued white moon rose high in the east as we drove through the winding nevada desert. we pulled into Black Rock City, which was filled with the sound of howling wind and grinding drills and hammers and 1000 watt music and yells and people building, building, building. we drank some cheap dutch beer and had some wild sex in the van.

the pvc shade structure which took less than an hour to erect in our backyard took at least six in the quickly heating desert daytime. we drilled dozens of holes in PVC, pounded 15 3' rebar stakes into the ground, and screamed at each other when one imperative 22 degree PVC joint appeared to be missing. (jason later found it in his pocket.) the two of us struggled to pull a total of 828 square feet of heavy duty tarp over our structure frame in 30 mph winds and secure many feet of rope, and at the heat of the day, 3 pm, i rolled out our rugs and collapsed in the shade, panting heavily and whining. as night fell we set up jason's 1000 watt sound system and the genny, strung white rope lights, lit the oil lanterns and set up vases of fake flowers and dreamily drifting veils and curtains around our structure, and collapsed on the couch, drinking more dutch beer, marvelling at the opium den our shade structure had become. i ditched jason to visit wendy and the drift catalyst crew, who were making fun of each other in their gorgeous dome strung with beads and remnants of clothes and lights. eventually i drifted back to my camp, where we listened to music while sitting on the couch and gazing out on the playa and i dozed, snuggled into a blanket against the wind and the cold night.

suddenly i heard shrieks and before i even knew i was awake, jason and i were yelling and hugging g-dawg and jessica and jeff through the windows of their cars at midnight and the wind chimes were clamoring in the strong winds and we hung out and went to sleep and the next day the boyz arrived and we built more shade structures and tents and a kitchen and i put up my stained glass and jessica added the perfect pink flamingoes and windmills and a silver tree to our camp, and gareth created a priceless "nutria republic" flag.

to make a long story short, Christie and the Nutria fell in love and one night we lit all the candles on our altar and they got married and jessica even caught the bouquet. we took them for their ecstasy fueled honeymoon at center camp, where they made love under a palm tree and i wrote them a marriage certificate, and we took them around burning man, where they shadow danced, sat on a fake tombstone, rode on an art car behind a vodka-shot-drinking driver, went to raves, and various other things which shall be revealed at poprocks.com before long. gareth wished on the wishing tree that Christie and the Nutria would live happily ever after, and it came true when i tossed the both of them into the fire on saturday night after the man burned, and all of our camp except for mr. Penis Sock Monkey watched their plastic flesh and acrylic fur melt into one, and cheered, wiping tears of sad joy from our eyes. and so that we might remember their eternal love, we named the Little Dipper after them, so that whenever we look to the stars we see the many teats of the Nutria.

secrets revealed:

pickles and queso (the fake melty orange cheese) belong together. it tastes good. really.
so do pickle martinis.
gareth wished for a taco. not much later, jen told us that she saw many decorated penises that day, including one with a taco on it. gareth's wish had come true! nothing like a taco penis to feed that hunger deep inside.
if you play a drum kit at 8 in the morning, including soliciting jokes from passersby followed by the accompanying ba-DUM-chhhh, people might not say anything but they will silently hate you.
the moistest part of the nutria is the anus . . . nutria anus balm will be a hit with the hippies.
so much the hell went on i can't even begin to list it. i will say that jess does a mean sunrise impression of a cheap italian ho down on the waterfront circa 1954, complete with smeared lipstick, fake eyelashes and skewed beehive.
the butterscotch-schnapps-dispensing pirate *made* chris kiss me and jason at the same time.
we never did find either of the two roller coasters.

2002-09-03T09:52:00.000-07:00

what a fun fucking week.

what a bad fucking day.

can i just go back?

2002-08-23T16:56:00.000-07:00

yay! i'm off to a week, hopefully, of being my most alive. be safe and happy everybody. i-love-you-you-know-who-you-ares.

2002-08-23T15:49:00.000-07:00

Your tax dollars at work.

instead of doing the copious amounts of filing that would like to be done before september, scotty and i (lacking the presence of our higher-ups due to various vacations and conferences) have spent the last two hours IM'ing, listening to mad professor, talking about bongs and making paper airplanes. i recommend the PL-2 Gullwing. it's got a good flight trajectory.

sometimes i feel sad and there are things i wish i'd said differently in my life, but there are never things i wish i'd done differently. although if there's anything i know now, it's that speaking is doing--much as i've liked to deny it. i'm wearing stainless steel bolted fittings from wendy's bike odomoter on my wrist. i have writing on my hand. my toes are cold, my collarbones look boney today, and here i am, saying nothing cause nothing is all there is to do.

2002-08-23T14:00:00.000-07:00

I'm a few Big Reds short of kissing a little longer

i was reading the I Saw U's earlier and thinking how glad i was that i'm not a coffee girl or waitress, cause service industry people all get hit on constantly and while flattering, it must be kind of annoying and cheesy after awhile. not that i'm saying i would get hit on all that much. i don't think i'm really that approachable. but i get to indulge in my occasional flirtiness with the kinko's delivery boy or the occasional bike messenger or even the office depot man, who is married, shaved-headed and entirely sweet. also, the delivery girl for our bookkeeper wears her hair in pigtails and has tattoos and a leather jacket and she is fine. and our clientele avoid all traces of flirtiness because this is a Law Office. thank god. even if i did forget to wear a bra today.

a bike messenger just came in to pick something up, the cute one with the dimples, and he left and i went over to the mailboxes around the corner to distribute mail and started shouting to scotty, my 19-year old front desk co-conspirator, about how HOT that bike messenger was and he needs to come 'make a delivery,' mmmmm-HMMMM and of course i came back and he was still standing outside our front door, waiting for the tardy elevator and grinning at me. i just smiled and blinked innocently and answered the phones without looking at him.

2002-08-23T09:43:00.000-07:00

I'm a few implants short of a porn star

both of my parents called, separately, to ask "ARE YOU OKAY?! DID YOU GET PEPPERSPRAYED!?" i sighed. no, my block was closed off and the protests were the next block over, but the most i got involved was watching from the sidelines for about 2 minutes via my bike ride home. renee's dad also wrote her email to ask if she was at the protests. that's kind of cool it got so much coverage down in the gay area, where civil disobedience is nothing to bat an eyelash at. i did like the drummers, though.

jason and i are leaving in 24 hours from now. i have to have lunch with mary, print and laminate some informational brochures on nutria, dye my hair, buy food for 2 people for 9 days, burn a bunch of vinyl to CD (mostly hawaiian music and bossa nova), and a bunch of other crap too even boring to list here. my stomach's all in butterflies though.

2002-08-22T15:44:00.000-07:00

silence has become our only currency
you pay me and i'll be sure to pay you back

(you can't get blood from a stone.)

2002-08-22T11:25:00.000-07:00

I'm a few nigiri short of a sushi boat

a mother just told me her daughter is "nuttier than fruitcake."

2002-08-22T09:25:00.000-07:00

I'm a few burritos shy of a taqueria

so i confess, i had two doubles and then two beers, which adds up to a fair amount of alcohol for a lil lady like me. i want renee to be my new girlfriend. i had grandiose visions of going home, waxing, sewing, burning CDs, but it was the most i could do to put the needle on the record and pass out on the couch while watching Elimidate with Kyle. i woke up this morning and looked at the clock at 7:18. i laid there, drifting into consciousness to the point of being unable to return to sleep, and completely without a hangover, and suddenly Jason woke up too. "why is the clock not on?" he asked. in those two minutes we had both become fully awake and the power had gone out. i think the sudden lack of electrical currents running through our walls roused our consciousnesses or something.

i had a very productive bus ride listening to nine inch nails--out of nostalgia and a need for loud angry music--at the top volume on my headphones. i wanna say all those things that would be better unsaid now i sit here and worry about the fridge in our food spoiling.

(and yes, i paid the electric bill!)

2002-08-21T22:58:00.000-07:00

i got the Carpenters Singles '69-'73 vinyl at the bins the other day for a few pesos worth of american cents, and have been listening to "superstar" and "rainy days and mondays" obsessively.

"she looks horsey," kyle said as i pointed at the picture of karen and richard on the inside of the cover, thick long hair and baggy flowery shirts and glinting sunset in the background.. "all those ladies from the 70s look horsey!"

that's why i'm all 70s style, i said. i fit right in with the horsey look.

kyle laughed long and hard. i had a few bloody mary's worth of fun with renee after work, and was of course locked out of my building (and my bicycle) despite the security guard's assurances of his presence till ten pm. so i walked home and the soft air on my cheek and velvet water below the bridge were night's gift to me. i love august even when it's cold-for-august.

don't you remember you told me you loved me baby?
said you'd be coming back this way again, baby.
baby, baby, oh baby, i love you.

i really do.

sitting in my basement getting all goopy over the carpenters how silly can i get. i do fucking adore her voice, though.

2002-08-21T16:07:00.000-07:00

i was a comic geek. in 7th grade my two best friends and i fell in love with the x-men and feverishly collected all the Marvel we could get our hot little hands on. we sat in PE trading comics to read and talking about our favorite characters and trying to avoid having to do the stupid gymnastics on the balance beam and parallel bars (now i'm kind of glad i can do a parellel bars routine--yes, i can!--but i hated it then). carlos would come over and tease us, trying to piss off by saying "comics are for *boys*". we got a copy of the single X-men cartoon pilot from the 80s and watched the new X-men cartoon obsessively. we wrote stories about the characters and i made my dad teach me how to use the Internet, which was then just UNIX for us, so i could read rec.arts.comics.xbooks. i begged and harassed my mother to take me to the comic store next to Mod Lang on University in Berkeley and the one on Telegraph and i would weigh my meager few dollars on whether to spend them on more valuable comics, or ones i had heard had awesome stories, or start a new collection in another spin-off.

I read X-Men, The Uncanny X-Men, X-Factor, X-Force, Excalibur, the New Mutants and eventually worked my way into Alpha Flight, the Fantastic Four and Spiderman. I went through my dad's old comics from when he was a comic geek in college at caltech and i found X-Men's #5-10, 25-30, and various others up till #60, in fair to good condition, (that is worth a teeny bit of money) and even Giant Size #1, the one where Colossus, Storm, Wolverine and Nightcrawler were first introduced, in terrible moldy condition.

I was ambivalent towards the older characters--jean gray, cyclops, beast, ice man--and most interested in the characters from (what older fans would consider) the x-mens' heyday--storm, kitty pryde, nightcrawler, rogue. i identified with jubilee (then a brand new character) and adored rogue and had a secret crush on gambit. a comic book character fer chrissake. he was cajun and wore that sexy leather thingey around his face. bondage style before i ever got into nine inch nails and skinny puppy. i disliked the newer characters, like psylocke, who was clearly created in an effort to pander to fanboys.

i devoured the older comics because they were cheaper (well. . . sometimes) and more importantly, i loved the art and stories driven by humanism, emotion, motivation, confusion, ambivalence and human rage--unlike the newer comics which seemed to be driven by seemingly-invincible technologically advanced cyborg enemies, and gratuitous death and rebirth of every character. i loved the rough newsprint-like paper with bleeding olive greens and reds and browns from the 70's and early 80's, not the glossy slippery silver-purples of the new comics of the 90's.

i loved Excalibur and its wry British style and clean, brightly colored art and quasi-mythological storylines.

and New Mutants with its Native American mythos influence and well-written teenage characters and 80's style shamanistic, dark (almost Sandman-esque) coloring.

and Kitty Pryde's fairy tale (Uncanny X-Men #153) where the characters become swashbuckling pirates and genies and nightcrawler becomes an adorable mini-version of himself, the adorable Bamf.

and the Death of the Phoenix when Jean Grey sacrifices herself and it was the only time i loved Cyclops as i read and watched him watch his only love die before his eyes.

and all the battles against Magneto and his misguided sense of purpose born out of the same thing that leads anyone to extremist philanthropy or misanthropy or proselytization or cultism.

and Spiderman's legendary battles against Doc Oc and the Green Goblin and the Kingpin and his lonely maverick style.

now there's three boxes full of older comics in plastic sheets somewhere in my parents house. i miss my comics and i keep begging my parents to send or bring them to me when they visit and they never do. i wonder if i'll never see them again.

2002-08-21T12:05:00.000-07:00

i tried waxing my legs a few weeks ago and ended up with an overboiling pot of water (we don't have a microwave ok?!), wax all over the stove and sitting on the kitchen floor in my underwear practically weeping, with wax drizzled and little bits of newspaper all over my legs. jason and kyle laughed at me hysterically, as is to be expected.

wendy just gave me some advice and i am contemplating attempting the dreaded waxing again tonight. i want silky smooth legs for the desert. there is a giant box of gourmet brownies, coffee cake, cookies and tarts sitting in front of me because the person who was supposed to bring treats to the staff meeting forgot the meeting was next week instead of this week. he keeps walking by and saying disapprovingly that we're not finishing off the treats fast enough. i've already had one brownie and one coffee cake and i just might have to take matters into my own hands here.

2002-08-20T22:32:00.000-07:00

courtesy of kyle's scanner, some pictures:

I met Spiderman!! I *adore* him

I have my father's eyes. (that is, if my father were an ancient greek statue at the metropolitan museum of art.)

S & D did their entirely adorable wedding dance to Neil Diamond's "Walk on Water".

it started off slow, with dan looking lovingly into sabrina's eyes. "she walks on water, ain't it like her, she leads the children. . ."

what no one knew is that these kids spent lots of time, evidently, planning a choreographed dance--"light de light, we got morning, morning makes another day"--

and they sure got funky--"glory sight, got the dawning, lordy light the night away"--

and yet again proved themselves two magnificent individuals whose marriage will be filled with love and laughter. "ain't it right, ain't it right, ain't it right."

2002-08-20T10:38:00.000-07:00

i loved new york because you walk around and everyone is from somewhere else or else is used to seeing people from all over and you never a second glance and you feel like you live there when you sit down in a bar and order a drink. it's an all embracing city in its harshness.

on saturday morning we got up early (as in 6 am) to get to rural connecticut. this involved a taxi to penn station, a train to newark airport, the airport tram, and a bus to the car rental (as the fuckers neglected to tell us the "airport car rental" was not actually at the airport). finally ensconced in our red saturn, trance on the cd player, we sped through newark, attemping to find the garden state parkway up the river to the tappanzee, hoping to avoid New York traffic. unfortunately, bad maps forced us onto the SIX DOLLAR!!! george washington bridge, which was only partially worth it for the view of the smoggy skyline.

now, i remember people practically rioting when they raised the Golden Gate to $2 or $3 or whatever it is now, and people still get all huffy if they even talk about raising the Bay Bridge by $1. but those bridges in new york are up to $7 (the Verrazano narrows) and there may be even more expensive ones that we didn't take--so i don't see what yall are complaining about.

as we entered Manhattan, we kept seeing signs that our freeway was closed ahead, but no one seemed to be getting off the freeway and we had no idea where the hell we were so we kept going on it. the traffic in the opposite direction was stopped completely from the bridge for 6 or 7 miles. eventually we saw miles of stopped bumpers ahead of us, and a flashing sign that said "ALL LANES CLOSED DUE TO FIRE", listing the exit 3 ahead of us, and a complete absence of vehicles in the opposite direction. we managed to pull off, to find ourselves amidst the bronx projects. now, i had never seen projects before. i don't really know anything about them or what people who live in them think of it but i was really shocked that not only were people living in these run down brick towers that reached high into the sky, but that everything surrounding them was so ugly, run down, barren and encased in cement. people need nature and i think that's why even in manhattan, where you live for the sake of living In The City, people want to live near the park . . . you need somewhere to get away from industrialized life and into real space again.

so a very nice gentleman at a gas station gave me directions to another highway that would take us where we wanted to go and we drove through the bronx, and as we got onto the upstate connecticut parkway everything was suddenly green and lush and thick walls of evergreen leaves framed the clean, white, well-paved freeway. jason put the pedal to the floor as we were cutting it very close to the high noon wedding and we skedaddled into the hotel parking lot just as the shuttle bus (which was to allow people to not drive drunk from the reception) pulled away. i checked in and after showering, jason started watching ESPN while getting dressed verrrry slowwwwwly. 'What are you doing!' I shrieked, 'the wedding starts in 15 minutes and we're 12 miles away!'

'Uh-oh,' I heard him say. 'I guess i should have tried on this shirt before.' I should note here that his mom still buys him all his socks, underwear and dress shirts, and I had bought him a short-sleeved dress shirt back in Portland, so he wouldn't have to wear his wool suit jacket. Unfortunately, I didn't know anything about men's shirt sizes and a nice gentleman also buying a man's shirt attempted to explain the "50/33" business to me.

I came out of the bathroom and discovered Jason wearing an enormous shirt with short sleeves that ended somewhere halfway between his elbows and wrists, and fitted him somewhat like a parachute would. 'Look, you can see my nips,' he said, pointing through the rather thin cotton. Then he put on an undershirt. I advised him to tuck in the dress shirt, which trailed down his thighs. 'Uh-oh, I forgot my nice belt,' he said, strapping on the utilitarian hiking belt with the plastic buckle that he usually wears. I looked at him: my boyfriend, wearing a tie over a giant shirt tucked into pants held up with the blue plastic belt, and i shook my head and told him to put on the black shirt i had previously told him not to wear because 'you don't wear black to weddings.' At that point I didn't care if he cast bad luck upon Dan and Sabrina's marriage.

the wedding was amazing. those of you who know dan and sabrina know exactly how amazing it was. their parents greeted us warmly and enthusiastically, telling us how much it meant to them that we came all the way from the west coast, how often they talked about us, how excited they were to meet us, et cetera. the church was beautiful and the reception was at the lodge on the tree-surrounded lake where sabrina's dad lives. the bride and groom arrived on bicycles trailing cans and "JUST" "MARRIED" signs. dan's best friends and sabrina's close-knit family, which includes her immediate blood kin and two other families whose kids are the same ages, treated us like part of their family, and sabrina's mother, a sassy blond drunk with new jersey hair and a pink dress suit, had evidently heard lots of stories and would exclaim, deadpan and knowingly, ". . .*ESTHER*. and. . . .JASON!" everytime she bumped into me. i cried a little bit when we said goodbye to them.

2002-08-19T10:10:00.000-07:00

i hope that didn't sound mean because despite being frustrated because the boys refused to let me go alone into brooklyn late at night, i had an incredible time in nyc and jason is the best travel partner i've ever had. that is to say, i look at the maps and navigate and he drives, and we take turns with the CDs, and on planes we take turns lying on each other's laps to sleep and i hand him lip moisturizer and water and he buys magazines for us to read.

but i was kind of frustrated and annoyed, i admit, because i kept running into that same thing that scared me at reed and scares me when i encounter it in portland. that is to say, and i don't want to offend anybody here or make it seem like i look down upon anybody for their background or have some kind of knee-jerk reflexes (or, maybe i do, i don't know.), but i feel like too often the feelings of fear, danger, condescension and wariness are equated with people of different races or cultures. call it xenophobia maybe. to wit, jason's high school friends with whom we stayed and hung out with are all middle-to-upper-class white boys from milwaukee, wisconsin, day traders on the stock market and residents of midtown manhattan. i enjoyed the company of these men, even though they're into a different Scene (different bar scene, music, people)--i.e. people who wear blue shirts and ties and khakis and listen to dave matthews and work late and make at least six or eight times what i do (literally--the tiny two bedroom apartment we stayed in costs 1.5 what i make in a month and is occupied by one man who spends most nights at his girlfriend's). but conversation with them would be peppered with examination of how this or that used to be a 'bad' neighborhood and now it's a 'good' neighborhood, or. . . i don't know, i can't even describe it now, i'm too tired to remember the specifics, but it was just that they made worried comments about me going to brooklyn at night or how the puerto ricans aren't classy or this or that. that's why i was all frustrated.

and i guess part of it is that the first year i got to my 98 percent white, 40 percent of the student body doesn't need financial aid on the $25,000 a year tuition, 19 year olds who think they're all liberal and worldly college, i spent lots of time feeling foolish because my background was just Different and i couldn't quite put my finger on it and spent too much time trying to fit in and make myself into something i wasn't and be a part of that Culture (that was, i think, influenced in large part to east coast popular/rich kids who threw the best parties and wore super effortlessly stylish clothes). people there treasure(d) their own preciousness and culture and comfort and on the opposite end of the spectrum, valued those who are downtrodden and oppressed and Keepin It Real and i'm stuck somewhere in the middle i guess, with my dad who is a science computer geek from oregon who taught me to be a bookworm and a nerd and my mom who taught me how to make unnecessarily long conversations with every single person that comes into my life, from the cashier at the grocery store to the bus driver and talked over my head in the language she never taught me.

anyway, i was thinking about that because i always make an effort to hang out with people who don't talk like that but it's an unfortunate part of being ethnically hispanic and white, functionally white, i guess i just don't want to see that reflected in myself, the exclusion and condescension towards the unknown.

back to new york city. jason and i arrived and were thunderstruck by the 100 degree, 100 percent humidity outside penn station and saw the infamous times square. the heat of the day and the soot rising off the street and the tiny stores hawking $1 t-shirts and disposable cameras in that area reminded me very much of lima. we braved the subway, in which temperatures were at least 20 degrees even hotter, and arrived in midtown, where we saw gwen's beloved chrysler and lipstick buildings and i will just rattle off the interesting details without delving into rather pedestrian narrative form.

as we were walking through the east village at 5:30 in the morning, jason shrieked 'look, it's a NEW YORK CITY RAT!' and gave chase to the nibbling rodent. it ran under one of those metal doors shops pull down at night and jason kicked at it enthusiastically.
we had the best frickin pizza i've ever had at John's on Bleeker (courtesy of jennifer's suggestion) in Little Italy, and the best americanos that side of the mississippi in a little puerto rican coffee import shop nearby, and drooled over plenty of italian pastries and fine extra virgin olive oils in windows.
we went by the WTC site and it was-- interesting i guess, as neither of us had ever seen the two towers when they were standing and the hordes of tourists snapping pictures of their smiling wives with the big hole in the background made it seem a little less tragic. more like a macabre Grand Canyon.
will be finished later.

2002-08-16T21:39:00.000-07:00

so we got here and walked to central park with matt and it was ridiculously hot and i passed out in sheep's meadow because it was over 100 degrees and wetly humid. and then we took a nap and then we picked up hal and dirk and treena and ate good and expensive italian food and beer and watched firemen, the revered FDNY, do nothing in front of some slum. then jason and i went to see some psytrance in a bar filled with beautiful international exotic women and men and velvet curtains and this guy bought us 5 black russions each and we came home at 5:30 in the morning. the bartender did not know what black russians are and i had to explain it. i wanted to go see some guy who was making supposedly good breakbeat with some renowned awesome vocalist chick in brooklyn and jason did not want to go over there so we saw the psytrance and that was fine because we met the nice guy.

then we got up at noon and i tried to make jason get up so we could see Toots & the maytals, who were playing for *free* until 2 in brooklyn, and he slacked and we missed toots and had some pizza instead. and i drank no water because the water here tastes like pool and finally i got to the point where i felt like puking and we went to eat with the boyz and i almost puked in soho. we went to jennifer's art show and i talked to her for two minutes and there were a lot of rockers there and it was very portland and i felt better and wanted to go see some dub nearby but jason and matt wanted to go drink very tall steins of beer at a german bar so i sat there, unable to drink for two hours and then we went home and again slept until 11.

and then today i wanted to go to the whitney or moma and we went the met instead, and i never got to go up to the top of the empire state building, and i never saw a celebrity, and i wanted veyr much to go to halcyon in brooklyn and see the breakbeats but jason did not want to go over there so now we are sitting in hal's apartment nad i am stewing in my own juices and drinking cherry beer and ignoring them. because it is friday at 12:30 in new york city and i am checking my email and pissed off and hating being in a couple for all of its perks.

going to the wedding tomorrow. i liked the met, especially the musical instrument room and the islamic art.

2002-08-15T16:05:00.000-07:00

Esther called. She's never coming back.

2002-08-14T14:48:00.000-07:00

hee hee hee. i have taken over esther's blog! muahahahahaha! -g.

2002-08-13T16:06:00.000-07:00

well then. off we go to the city that never sleeps, and my newest online crush's art show, and good pizza, and all sorts of whatever it is that goes on in new york city, and the empire state building, and the museums, and, and, and. . .and a nice drive up the coast to what is sure to be the kickass wedding of the year: no, not theirs, but a dan and sabrina, sure nuff. and some sweltering in heat and humidity and hopefully some electric afternoon thunderstorms. see youze kids monday.

2002-08-13T09:57:00.000-07:00

2002-08-13T09:04:00.000-07:00

he left the girlfriend with red pigtails and freckles under the lone tree. "i'll be right back," he told her, and we walked away from her, onto the wide open grassy fields with the farmhouse in the distance. he laid down as if for a picnic, elbow on ground and chin in hand, and i laid next to him, back to his stomach, threaded my arm between his legs and wrapped my hand around his thigh, fitted myself into the concave curve of his torso and felt his arm snake across my chest to hold me closer.

"how are you?" he asked in the tone of sincere concern. the girl with red pigtails and freckles stared at us from hundreds of yards away and all i could do was smile up at him.

i woke up with jason's hand under my neck, sleepy thumb rubbing the nape of my hair and the bright heat already coming through the window at 7:30 am like white noise.

2002-08-11T10:23:00.000-07:00

my eyes are half lidded with glitter and my head is pounding. wendy and i wore shimmery red vamp dresses and wrapped our arms around each other, threw fire around each other's bodies. the keg tap was crooked and cold fizzy beer ran down my fingers. the boy from new york in a doctor's shirt and checkered shoes talked about how no one in portland likes to dance and i danced with him, equaled his on-the-floor b-boy moves, and he looked and talked like owen otto if owen was completely uninhibited. i set my beer on the ground and stood on my head against the leather-padded bar then somersaulted upright. if i want to kiss a boy jason says, ". . . i don't know if that's a very good idea," and if i want to kiss a girl jason says "what's taking you so long?!" so v. had told L. (his quasi-girlfriend) that i thought she was cute and she and i talked tomatoes and squash and lettuce and how v. doesn't pull her hair just right at those times and how boys never can quite seem to learn those things if they don't do them right in the first place and she held her hair out for me to pull and at last we kissed and i held her mouth with mine and my fingers in her hair, just right. jason took me home and we made out on the bathroom sink under the glittering lights at 5 in the morning and i read to him this passage i found yesterday and now even though i know the ending, i want to plunge myself into Ulysses.

. . . and the night we missed the boat at Algeciras the watchman going about serene with his lamp and O that awful deepdown torrent O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I say yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.

--James Joyce

2002-08-09T15:57:00.000-07:00

i'm glad that i'm the one who found you
that's why i'm always hangin round you
do i love you?
oh my, do i!
oh honey, 'deed i do

2002-08-09T13:04:00.000-07:00

ted and i were sitting out in the square and one of the typical biblethumpers was out there hollering at the lunch crowd about jesus and whatnot and finally i started heckling him and everyone in the crowd started snickering and getting excited.
bible thumper: . . .and there will be partaking of HOMOSEXUALITY--
esther: WOOOO!!
bible thumper: --and SEXUAL SIN--
esther: YEAH!!!
et cetera.

the best part was that it started this whole spontaneous group heckling experience and people started shouting at him at random. one guy came and stood there and shouted "WHAT!!" after every sentence and the bible thumper said, "Mockers try to conceal their souls from Jesus!" and the guy said, "YO, ME AND JESUS IS KEEPIN IT REAL!" then bible guy told a little allegory about jesus touching someone and ted shouted "where'd he touch him? i wanna know!!" and the old wrinkled hunched guy sitting near us cackled around his cigarette, "His private parts."

Now i am feeling kind of bad because really, who am i to make fun of people, even if he is doing it out of an inflated egotistical sense of philanthropy. but i figure it already came back to me in karma because a guy was handing out coupons for free gelato from torrefazione while i was busy heckling.

2002-08-09T11:36:00.000-07:00

my life is one long to do list. i have 8 days to do stuff before BM with a little bit o' new york and wedding hopping around in between.

last night i ate rigatoni in burntorange colored tomato-basil-cream sauce with juicy squash and flavorful mushrooms, accompanied with olive ciabatta and spinach, watermelon, feta and sunflower seed salad (with some salt'n'pepa atop). and a Pike IPA (my favorite beer). so all my potential food dreams were answered. i also made that watermelon granita though it's not in those cute little lime cups as limes are teeny and it would have taken an army of limes to feed my company.

hey, YOU! YEAH, YOU!!
i love you. go outside and enjoy the sun that life has given us. get out there & do and feel those wonderful things and i'm not going to say which things explicitly because i would sound dopey and cheesey but you know which things i'm talking about.

2002-08-08T16:06:00.000-07:00

so i just found out that not one, but two registered sex offenders live on my parents' street. i don't know whether to laugh or cry.

i just a serious case of OHMIGODI'MGOINGTOBURNINGMANIN16DAYS squealies. scotty had to tell me to calm down.

2002-08-08T10:05:00.000-07:00

i'm starving and here's what i'm thinking about:

i would like to eat a fresh baby spinach salad with crumbled feta and sliced strawberries and almonds.

i would also like some of that rigatoni with creamy tomato basil sauce with extra basil and sauted mushrooms, yellow bell pepper and yellow summer squash that we had for dinner last night.

i would not be averse to gorging myself on cold shrimp cocktails, or more mussels in cider-garlic-shallot-butter, or one of Montage's spicy mussel shooters.

for lunch i am contenting myself with organic greek olive and roasted garlic hummus on baby carrots and sesame pita bread (the carrots and pita bread not together).

as Head Secretary i've been slacking in my duty of bringing Treats to the front desk and so tonight I am going to make watermelon granita filled lime cups and bring them for a hot afternoon snack tomorrow for my coworkers. they'd better appreciate it. i will also take some to shelly and trevor, who always give me a big fresh squeezed lemonade for free and extra salsa of love on my burritos because they know how i love it so.

2002-08-07T16:46:00.000-07:00

this is what i spent the last couple hours doing. aren't you proud. yes, i agree it's ugly, but i just used the HTML from previous issues, which were designed in, YUCK, frontpage, for the sake of continuity. maybe i should have gone out on a limb and re-designed the whole thing but. . .oh well.

if your chain ever falls off your rear derailleur, you might check to see if the little metal guide has a screw in it that allows for easy removal (rather than taking the whole chain off and threading it in). both me and the cute girl at the bike shop didn't notice it till the greasy old guy took over.

now i am going search the web, praying weakly that dr. israel or some other similarly excellent musician is having a show while i'm in new york next week, before i go to ride up an extinct volcano a mile or two from my house

2002-08-07T10:41:00.000-07:00

i grabbed a sprig of orange mint and put it in my buttonhole, now i keep catching whiffs of it and they keep me awake.

i'm also wearing rose colored queen anne's lace in my hair.

i'm taking my bike into the shop, and a simple flip o' the chain tool should do it. jason tried to get me drunk last night by not feeding me dinner and continually shoving opened cold beers into my hands, and it worked after only two beers. we chatted with our Ultimate Deck neighbors, who built the Ultimate Deck out of plastic fake-wood and have an Ultimate Kitty named Genghis. Elliott hissed at Genghis and i tried to convince her to make friends, because he was fat and furry and probably has a huge cat cock. "go on, it'll feel goooood!" i told her. I think she's a lesbian, though.

the neighbors peered over the chain link fence and assorted weeds separating our backyards at the PVC and tarp 15'x22' shade structure Jason and I had erected and asked if we were trying to outdo them. kyle has been using my sewing machine to make a little policeman doll with a giant donut in its hands. he even made a miniature nightstick out of wood. I have been using my sewing machine to craft a ripped-up old fur coat from the Bins into "nutria" bikinis and shorts. little bits of fur are scattered all over the floors of our house and blow aloft in the slightest breeze, and cling to the bottoms of people's shoes.

2002-08-06T14:24:00.000-07:00

been reading about nuclear everything. here people are already mooing about September 11 memorials and i've been thinking all day about the

110,000 people

who died in hiroshima and nagasaki. why? because "atomic power can become a powerful and forceful influence towards the maintenance of world peace" (Harry S Truman).

There are currently about 31,000 nuclear warheads deployed or in reserve in the stockpiles of eight countries: China, France, India, Israel, Pakistan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States.

practically and sadly, not a hell of a lot i see any of us hoi polloi able to do about much of it 'cept reduce energy consumption. it's all about the big boys and their big toys and being afraid the bigger boy down the street is gonna throw glass bottles at you when you don't have any. as someone who had boys from down the street throw glass bottles at her, i guess i'd rather have them thrown at me then see one i'd thrown kill somebody.

and i apologize to anybody who rightly perceives that i'm ignorant or reductionist or narrow-minded. i try not to be judgmental about anything 'wrong' because i know there's always two sides to every story and we can't just go about discarding nuclear weapons willy nilly and blah blah blah. but. . .still. i guess i should go write to my senators again or something.

2002-08-06T12:00:00.000-07:00

a woman called who recently moved to oregon, has four children, and makes far less than i do . . . i was able to refer her to some services and help her out a little and she was profoundly verbally grateful. sometimes i like my job.

this weekend brian asked me if i'd read How to Be Good by Nick Hornby (author of High Fidelity) and then thrust it into my hands, demanding i read it, which i accomplished by sitting up in bed till all hours and reading obsessively in the grocery store. it begins as a thoughtful examination of a woman's psyche when she has an affair after becoming frustrated by her bitter/angry/unfulfilling marriage, and what happens after her husband meets a hippie spiritualist and changes his ways . . . mostly i was impressed by hornby's descriptions of emotional ambivalence and its practical effects, the kinds of concrete thoughts it puts in your head (concrete in weight, color); also impressed by his excellent portrayal of a female protagonist, as usually men writing as women are drastically inauthentic, enough to make me put the book down. a third of the way through it turns from marital drama to almost magical realist/theologic exploration, which turned me off initially, but after finishing it i loved the way he confronted sexual behavior and fear of the unknown as symptoms of a larger spiritual vacancy . . . and the way he described her soul as an engine that wants to turn over but won't, a dead ker-THUNK ker-THUNK ker-THUNK.

(an appropriate simile to read the day after spending several hours watching jennifer turn her car keys and Luna's engine clunk mightily.)

I have two questions:

1. somehow i managed to pull my bike chain off the sprockets of the rear derailleur and neither i nor jason could get it back on because it has to go under a little metal thingey that is over the rear sprocket, i presume to keep it from flying off. how do i fix it?
2. damn, i forgot. i'll write it later.

2002-08-04T21:06:00.000-07:00

yo y mi novio

lovely photo courtesy of Mr. Kyle the housemate.

weekend spent dredging up the formulas for the lengths of the legs of right angle triangles, corresponding angle-side ratios and spending too much money at home depot for the purpose of building an obscenely (ok, 18' x 28') large shade structure for burning man, picking through old sinks and underwear at re-building centers and goodwills, sewing fake fur bikinis, and eating mussels cooked in hard cider, garlic, shallots and butter. also spent in making fun of control freak fire dancers, collective drooling over xenia, hanging out with j-star, and drinking bass ale.

life is good.

2002-08-02T13:35:00.000-07:00

i love to share food with people because afterwards you can share kisses. "here's a lemonade kiss."

i am thinking about lots of pretty girls. xenia, who holds fire close to her collarbone and looks into it with a lover's eyes. carrie-ann moss and those green eyes in memento. victor's ex. jayme and her luscious figure.

it's friday and sunny and i'm hooooooooooooony.

2002-08-02T09:34:00.000-07:00

i like that chaos roller coaster picture because it makes me feel kind of dizzy and chaotic and ill just to look at it. it made me dream that i was in an amusement park with my family, a boy i had a crush on in college who was listening to a hiphop cd of mine and loving it, jess' new friends, and a bunch of little kids and we each paid 50 cents to ride this podunk little stomach-tumbler. then i crossed the street to buy food in a qwik-e-mart-turned-organic-co-op where i hungered for all the delicious organic treats, and everyone was talking in hushed tones about how the price of gas was rising per minute by dozens of cents or dollars and everyone was scared that the american economy was crashing and we were shortly en route to becoming a third world country. so i adopted a fat orange cat and he played with elliott and a visiting dog and then ran away, and a week later i woke up and found him, starving and barely alive and covered in flies, stuck in the small space between my headboard and the wall.

of course all this was cause jenny came and found me at work and we immersed ourselves in outdoor seating, sunshiney wind and drinks and all that good kind of girl gossip, and then we went home and took the boyz to dot's for cheezey fries and i experimented with the combination of rum and dr. pepper. we kept having all kinds of synchronicity, to wit: i shoved my bike in jen's car downtown and we drove to sweetwater's for drinks outside and it was exactly the same as that time last summer when i went to audition for an Extra for Benicio del Toro's movie here (except there were too many people auditioning so i decided not to and that is why my name isn't up in lights now!) then at dot's we talked about that time a cat followed jason to the bar, sat outside and waited for him, then followed him home; and as we left, a cat followed him most of the way home.

and then kyle skateboarded all over our hardwood floors and i said "NO SKATEBOARDING IN THE HOUSE!" and he said "SHUT UP MOM!" and then i started skateboarding in the house and it was kind of like that old song we all used to sing:

two little monkeys jumpin on the bed
one fell down and broke his head
momma called the doctor and the doctor said, "NO MORE MONKEYS JUMPIN ON THE BED!"
one little monkey jumpin on the bed
etc. ad nauseam. infer from that what you will. but today i have an interesting collection of scratches in bruises, some but not all from yesterday, including but not limited to: right hip bone, right upper arm, right elbow, right foot pinky-toe metatarsal region, left knee, left calf.

jennifer also asked that i regale kyle with tales of our . . . "interesting" former neighbors, and i noted that i would always see The Husband looking at porn on his computer in the middle of the night, because his computer was die-reckly across from our bedroom window, and kyle said "how did you know he was looking at porn?!" and i said "cause it would be 2 am, and the only referrers i get to my website between the hours of 10pm and 7am are searches for "i want to see a girl fingering herself pictures" and "free twin sister pussy picture"."

2002-08-01T16:46:00.000-07:00

2002-08-01T13:18:00.000-07:00

i was eating my lunch in the sun (as always) and suddenly i heard clapping from all the hundreds of people sitting around in the square. i looked around and spotted a gentleman on his knees, with a bouquet of red roses and his hand outstretched, and the woman before him holding her hands over her mouth, and i started clapping too almost automatically, then they were lost in an embrace and giddiness and he was putting a ring on her right hand. i totally cried.

2002-08-01T11:13:00.000-07:00

jason: I have to work friday night
esther: what hours?
jason: 4-11
esther: good . . . . cause jenn is visiting and were planning on getting drunk and causing trouble.
jason: [rolls his eyes and looks exasperated]

2002-07-31T13:26:00.000-07:00

took phaela's reheated spicy basil eggplant to eat in the sunny square while reading the chance meetings. "high noon tunes," generally crappy adult-contemporary rock bands, was this week a groovin salsa band and finally i got up to shimmy my hips in front of the stage to the tink!-tink!-tink! of the cowbell, along with the summer camp kids in matching Tees laughing hysterically and 'walking-like-egyptians,' mothers with little babies in sun hats, the old man staring into space while his feet shuffled back and forth, even the woman with the wheelchair in the leopard print dress, panama hat waving her cane in the air joyfully.

suddenly a guy with spiral earrings and a crystal necklace and long hair stepped way too close into my personal space and said, "you have a mystical aura i'd like to do your tarot reading" while handing me a card. "Oh," i said politely. "My band comes down and plays in Portland a lot so you should call me." "What did you say about my aura?" I asked, having lost the words in the noise of the band. "You are surrounded by a purple aura--mystical and transformative," he said. "Look, I'll prove it. Think of a number between one and ten."
"Okayy," I said (five!), smelling a trick.
"Now double that." (Ten.) "Add eight." (Eighteen.) "Divide by two." (Nine.) "Subtract the original number." (Four.) "Now turn that number into a letter--one is A, two is B and so forth." (D.) "Think of a country that begins with that letter." (Denmark.) "Think of an animal that begins with the letter after that letter." (Elephant.) "Now visualize them and I will tell you what they are," he said, clutching my hands earnestly. "an Elephant, and Denmark!" he erupted triumphantly.

"Oh come ON! that's an old trick," I said. "No," he argued, "You could have said Deutschland, or an Emu, or any number of others things." "Oh, okay," I said, lying through my teeth, "i'll give you a call." I knew it was time to come back to work because ([(2x + 8)/4] - x) will always equal four--when x is a positive integer of course--and most English speakers would think Denmark and Elephant, just like that stupid email everyone sent around a year ago where it was right at the end when it said you were thinking of a carrot.

2002-07-31T10:22:00.000-07:00

blahblahblahboringdetails: sunday i went clothes shopping with P. Titty and found a $3 embroidered vintage dress from which i am going to ruthlessly tear the sleeves because they are big and ugly. clothes are always too baggy for me, because i'm skinny, or too short, because i'm tall-ish.

jason and i went to a dope Burning Man Recompression party on a private estate overlooking the Columbia River usually reserved for weddings, filled with blooming flowers, more than i could name or count, with a pool, dozens of unique sculptures and art (think twisty welded metals, semiprecious stones, fountains, costume jewels blah blah blah), catered food, free bar, poolhouse, tall trees all wound up with lights, blah blah blah and of course the standard burning man costumes, performance art, head-spinning social interaction and live dj's by the pool. even though i was hungover and only got 5 hours of sleep and had to work the next morning, we stayed until after two. i was snagged by some performance artists to be part of the elements invocation (mostly cause of my blue/green hair i think) and ended up swimming around in blue skivvies with jewels all over me with three dudes in toques and shell necklaces and a chick in a sparkly mermaid costume she made in the middle of the night. ah burning man.

i don't know how i made it through monday work but afterwords i finished that thar dress you see on the far left, except without the ruffle on the bottom, in powder blue rayon with brown print. i am so pretty. i wore it to do karaoke with tha kidz, where kyle and his cojones got down with the INXS and Robert Palmer and i engaged the five people in the bar with my renditions of "Weak" (SWV), "Bump n Grind" (R. Kelly) -- accompanied by appropriate hip-swiveling dancing and i swear i actually saw some dude covering his ears while i was singing., and "Angel" (Madonna) which ended up being my favorite except for when i went really flat on the high notes because i got to stare deep into the audiences' collective eyes and sing meaningfully and lovingly. now i have dreams of being a rawk star. phaela diplomatically suggested "I definitely have *stage presence* and. . . I should take singing lessons" and jason diplomatically rated, "8 out of 10 on performance, 6 out of 10 on singing. . . 7 overall." they just liked the way i got down with the mic during bump n grind.

yesterday i sewed a dress for phaela that looks kind of like the one you see there on the right except with a lower, wider neckline, and darts running from under-boobies to hips, and slightly shorter (knee length). and it is shiny pink fabric with an orangey sheen because she's been carping about getting a cute pink sundress. i got to feel her up while tailoring for darts, YEAH BABY! the most important part is that i did not use a pattern and so while this resulted in a crooked sideseam, it gives me new encouragement to forage on with my freestyle. and jason and matt and i made fresh margaritas with yellow limes, do they really make those or were they lemons and jason was lying to me?

oh and that picture below is Euterpe (you-ter-PAY) (hence the greek script), the Muse of music and joy. just in case you were wondering.

2002-07-30T11:03:00.000-07:00

Euterph

2002-07-29T14:18:00.000-07:00

inside my head: i don't know why i didn't come. still feeling like a split open papaya. roar, i'm tired.

2002-07-29T11:28:00.000-07:00

you might not believe it but:

jason and i drove to hood river (60+ miles), stayed for 20 minutes, and drove back again at 1 in the morning
then we had drinks at a karaoke bar with everybody till 3:30
i played naked seamstress (lacking a dressmaker doll) and finished my dress while my roommates made furry sock puppets
dressed like a flamenco dancer, i scaled a cedar and with 6 or 7 people danced some odd combination of hip-hop, salsa and swing
my mother rang the phone exactly 18 times at 8:30 sunday morning
bejeweled and nude, i accompanied the mermaid queen across a glowing pool through mist and to a waterfall of jewels last night

honestly, sometimes i just want to sit around and translate Catullus.
da mi basia mille, deinde centum
dein mille altera dein secunda centum
deinde usque altera mille deinde centum

(that tufts latin engine rules but it makes me wonder how many high school or college latin students [if their dwindling numbers haven't shrunk to zero, that is] ab/use it for their homework. they'll never know what they're missing, slogging through optatives, and catching obscure references to the aeneid.)

2002-07-26T12:03:00.000-07:00

everything went according to plan, except when the hippies tried to lead a guided meditation and an opposing faction of hippies yelled and incited matted hippie dogs to loud barking over the meditation's guide description of a plasma-filled north-axis-aligned black and white octahedron in the center of the earth. that part i didn't like. damn hippies.

i got pretty drunk and my ride downtown was filled with magic, with the looming squat giants of checkered light downtown inviting me into the sunset. i got to gossip with a. and be tizzled by a spinning dream machine and delve into the boyz' smooth and groovy rawk muzik. and then before i knew it i was beyond drunk and sitting in the band hang out room, shrieking over W magazine's photo shoot of Tom Cruise and how haaaawwwwwwwt he is and i don't remember riding home except for my contact almost flying out and almost falling off my bike and jason repeatedly asking Was I OK? and he shook me up a little bit and i laid in bed and wept. the next morning, today i guess, i got up and discovered a pair of magic glasses and a picture of Tom stolen from the Crystal Ballroom's magazine collection both in my bag. i guess i am just reverting to my pre-pubescent days when i had a crush on Top Gun-era Tom and longed to be Kelly what's her name wearing his shirt and frenching him to the tune of "take my breath away."

god he's hot.

2002-07-25T16:38:00.000-07:00

sitting ill at my desk at the computer all day has put me into a particularly irascible mood. so i think i am going to:

bike home and get the blood flowing.
smoke em if i's got em.
eat leftover saffron-risotto with summer squash and mushrooms from higgins.
go see the frickin hippies' throbbing techno for FREE and groove in the park sunshine. possibly loll about in tree-surrounded idylls with my manfolk or tree-climbing or some such.
see my big orange boobies and maybe have a few drinks and try to get belligerent, because i feel like being heartless and angry and exuberant like last friday when i spent a walk home whacking my roommate with my 'studded purse.'
favorite summer activity: late night bike-racing myself home across the bridge with the moon high, chilled breeze blowing up my skizzirt and feeling sorry for all you out there for not having that moment of perfect deliciousness.

2002-07-25T11:58:00.000-07:00

questions for the general populace. please answer via Comments below.

the plunger ball in our toilet tank (or whatever part that is that opens and closes to let water into the bowl) is bent and we have to replace it. besides turning off the water supply do we need any special tools to remove the old one? [i can't tell how it is attached besides some mysterious plastic pins.]
should i go to that show tonight? [i'm not sure if i want to.]
what should i eat for lunch tomorrow? [it's friday, which means i can indulge.]
what do you think now of the person with whom you lost your virginity? [mine just got his second bachelor's with phi beta kappa honors, and i think he is silly.]
do you ever feel utterly dumb? do you believe it when strangers on the street tell you that you are beautiful? [yes and no.]

i wanna be a skater betty.

2002-07-24T20:17:00.000-07:00

it's summer and still i feel like it's sometime in january. i had it for so long and then i somehow lost it, without words or sound, indicting myself just through silent acquiescence, and my body is stiff and resistant to movement. the moon rises rich and orange over the red brick wall at the edge of the lawn and the moon recedes and shrinks, glaring white and its wordless thought means treasure me now, sink your shoulders into sweet light for all you can. i've cried six times in two months, all for one thing: only a throb in my head that grows by its very passivity, that by reception of my decisions reveals itself as stronger each time. relentless or unforgiving in the twilight, frustrated and angry at bedtime, caught and muffled after the other has fallen asleep, resigned and refreshed alone in bed in the warm morning, stoic tears slowly dripping onto the smeared ink text of the newspaper under the cream-colored coffee cup and the stupid tear-jerking article about the stupid dead people or stupid little sweet kids or stupid pets or whatever it was, and the lost heaving shuddered in oppressive wet heat.

many sentences throw themselves into my eyes, demand to be screamed or used as hammers and chisels to hack away meaning into my [his] [her] life, but i'm silent and resigned because any talk of love prostrates itself at the touch of our hands.

2002-07-24T15:17:00.000-07:00

oh my, like any good mommy jess has a million pictures of the sweetie dog bocce included with all her phoenix fest pitchers she just put up. there's also an adorable picture of the wicked but loveable stepdaughter scully (probably shortly before she took a huge chunk out of bocce's leg and they debated leaving the fest to go to the veterinarian). but i'm most fond of the pic of me and jess inside my ride--mainly because it reminds me of pre-teen years spent with my best friend sitting in her parents' car behind the wheel, pretending to be on road trips, picking up boyfriends and dodging exploding bombs.

2002-07-24T11:19:00.000-07:00

i don't know where to begin really, so i'll just tell a dirty joke story.

[Scene: Esther and D'arby clothes-shopping together.]
D'arby: Wanna hear a dirty joke.
Esther: Yeah!!
D'arby: Ok. it's called Johnny Inmore Inmore.
Esther: Inmore inmore?
D'arby: Yes. You'll get it after I tell the joke. Ok, so one day a teacher is in her class grading tests and her student is in the class with her and his name is Johnny Inmore Inmore. And he says to the teacher, "I have a crush on you." And she says, "OK!" and goes on grading the tests. [Here D'arby imitates a vapid and brightly smiling teacher.] And then he says, "Wanna do it with me?" and she says "Ok!" [She giggles slighly hysterically.] So he gets up on her desk and they start, like, doing it. [She pauses, reconsidering the ramifications of this.] But he's in college. So he's a college student, and she's like, a student teacher teaching the class.
Esther: [Considering social double standards regarding "may-december" relationships.] Uh. huh.
D'arby: So then Johnny's dad is the principal, Mr. Inmore Inmore.
Esther: But aren't they in college? So wouldn't he be, like, Chancellor or something?
D'arby: Yeah whatever. Mr. Inmore Inmore the principal or ch-whatever you call it, he realizes he has to tell Johnny something so he goes to Johnny's class. All the lights are off so he calls "Johnny Inmore Inmore?" and Johnny says, "I'm tryin, dad, I'm tryin!"

2002-07-19T10:37:00.000-07:00

occasionally communication is impossible. we talk at and at each other. i seem to be in a mode in which i can't communicate with anyone despite my best abilities, and intentions. i think i just need to sap everything out through one really good bout of drunkenness.

in other news, sometimes i look at my nipples and i'm like, what! they look like little buttons in an airplane cockpit. and other times i'm like, WHOA! DUDE! those motherfuckers are humongous!

sometimes i think that if were a christian, i would be the kind that delved in preoccupation of sin and doubted for the redemption of my soul.

2002-07-19T09:57:00.000-07:00

the window washer is perched across from me, legs splayed against the glass, routinely spraying and wiping 5 stories high. it's raining outside.

2002-07-18T16:26:00.000-07:00

my lips are moving
if you touch my face
did you hear my scream?
while we were sleeping
i tried to say
even in my dreams
my words get blown away

spent all week at work wishing i had certain CDs at work, and then forgetting them.

2002-07-18T15:09:00.000-07:00

you always hear stories about near-death experiences and either the subsequent complete overhaul of life and exhilerating activities (changing from old grumpy codger to sky-diving zest-for-life enthusiast who ditches tired and draining relationships in favor of fulfilling long-time dreams), or deepened commitment to sucking the juice from the marrows of every subtle detail of day-to-day-life and reevaluation of taken-for-granted-relationships.

i wandered down the street today, wondering what would happen if some distracted noontime driver twisted around the corner, caught my body against its bumper, and where i would put myself tomorrow.

2002-07-18T09:46:00.000-07:00

the still warm summer air has settled on everything like a thick coat of dust, fuzzy black bees the size of my thumb hover in blooms and see my hair as a flowered wreath, diveintomyzzzzzzzzzzzzzaquamarinehairzzzzzzzzz. the only places with more beautiful clouds than the motheringly embracing valley of portland are the pregnant skies of the desert, and when the sun sets here the sky shimmers pink and orange, reflecting water, through strata parted as though combed and fluffy peaked cumuli. jason and i taught d'arby how to ride a bike, he held onto the sparkling gold seat of the rusted violet purple bike while running and i snapped pictures for her mom. we ran alongside, laughed hysterically as the bike wobbled her voice, "WoOooaaAAhhH!"

d'arby and i made veggie sushi, ate sweet rice and seaweed and crunchy cucumbers and carrots and creamy avocado. jason, in de rigeur mockery of rock n roll for girls, threatened to start Techno camp for girls and then later took her downstairs and showed her how to mix CD's on his CD mixer while he scratched alongside. she and i sampled "da booty [if you got money you shakin it!]" and laughed hysterically. we took an after dinner walk around the neighborhood and d'arby admired cute little houses while i exclaimed over magical feats of gardening (black foliage next to yellow ground cover!) and jason stopped to pet every cat on the way. we picked up onyx, who was hanging out alone on her porch, en route and took her for a walk, a casual and treasured friend even if a dog.

jason bought the lonely planet guide to panama and we spend our evenings poring over travel agency ads, reading about the archipelago de San Blas and envisioning ourselves on a Caribbean white sand beach, eating coconuts and fishing and sleeping in hammocks, while dreary portland trudges away its february winter.

i expect each and every one of you to enjoy equally titillating and exhilerating moments consuming your life.

2002-07-17T14:50:00.000-07:00

woo! plan for tomorrow: take d'arby to camp. work for three hours. gwen & chad fly in and take our efficient light rail system downtown and meet me for a longish lunch. then they go meander around the rose and japanese gardens in the sunshine, hopefully smooching a lot and acting like tourists, whilst i pine away in our air-conditioned fluorescent-lighted office, and then meander back down the hillside to meet me to go surprise the little one. "MOMMY!!!! I THOUGHT YOU WEREN'T COMING!!"

2002-07-17T13:43:00.000-07:00

something pretty to look at

"beauty as a vestige of everything civilized and humane"

2002-07-17T12:12:00.000-07:00

my first dahlia bloomed yesterday. the corn is growing long tassels. the first gladiolus is bulging red buds. we are eating fresh butterhead lettuce and dragon tongue runner beans and brilliant wilted orange flowers are exploding on the prickly squash bush. the wormwood has grown 5 and a half feet tall and promises odiferous white flowerheads. hi, summer. why is it so cold today?

2002-07-16T09:07:00.000-07:00

we were strolling down the tree-lined street towards the bus at 7:45 this morning. "Oh, look at that cute kitty!!" D'arby exclaimed, pointing at a black and white calico cat seemingly sleeping in a box on the parking strip. Then we simultaneously realized its legs were outstretched and stiff and she asked, horrified, "Is it dead?" We stepped closer and saw its frozen face, then read the inscription, hastily written in Sharpie on a piece of cardboard: "Found this cat at 7:30 AM on Tuesday. It seems to have been hit by a car some time ago." We walked away, mourning the dead kitty. "Oh well, at least it's not as bad as that time I almost stepped on a dead cat when i was walking to school, and all its GUTS were coming out!" she pointed out brightly.

2002-07-15T15:55:00.000-07:00

I am so lucky! Nothing stimulates me like the anticipation of firmly sliding a wide cardboard tube with claw-like teeth and plastic-like laminate shiny coating into my vagina, then opening its dragon-like mouth and extending the teeth into my tender flesh by pushing its contents, consisting of compressed dry cotton which will instantly soak up any natural moisture in my internal organs and create an arid aching desert in my abdomen while slowly leeching its toxic bleach into my system!

But even better is its alternative, the maxi pad on a hot summer's day!! Nothing beats a diaper-like boat-shaped mass of petroleum-based layers of paper and a sticky underside trapping all sweat and residues between one's thighs! If I get really lucky, it comes unstuck from my underwear and affixes itself to my bikini line, creating that delicious hair-pulling sensation we love in places like that!!! Even better is when it gets smushed from sitting in my chair at my desk, and I get up and it bulges out the back of my skirt for all to see! And Ladies, can I just tell you how wonderful "Deodorized" brands are? Men just love that fresh blood-mingled-with-old-lady-douche-cover-up-floral-scent!

(I am too sorry if i just grossed every single person I know out. I am enduring too much agony at this point in time to care.)

2002-07-15T12:01:00.000-07:00

nouns.

friday: roses, picnic, brie, pilsner. sweat, shower, dance. night, heat, surprise, pool, hefeweizen, mary, heidi, daniel, john, acid. bicycle, silence, wind.

saturday: oven, heat, banana bread, manic panic. coffee, half-and-half, sun, antagonism, laughter. odor, dirt, soap, bathtub, clothesline, sun. sin and syntax, swinging bench, disgust: sandpaper, wood, dust. voices, laughter, leaps, torches, flames, arms. mouth, fire, hair, singe -- white wine. weariness, tears, concealment.

sunday: coffee, pursuits, grocery, salon, records, imports, sandwich. whipped cream?! broom, dust pan, soap, rag, sponge. measuring tape, sewing machine, curtains! freeway, tardiness, mountains, sunset, airport, running, relief. delight--pizza. pepperoni.

2002-07-14T12:06:00.000-07:00

oh dear. i will leave the sordid details to gwen, but the gist of it is my niece is flying, all by her lonesome tonight, and i am picking her up at the aeropuerto (meaning i get to be one of the priviledged few who traverse the security gates WITHOUT a ticket, to pick her up at the gate and i hope this doesn't mean they will be probing my arse for explosives, and jennifer: this means i get to partake of our favorite airport activity!) (and by that i meant people-watching departures and arrivals and making up stories-- not getting my arse probed.) and then maybe i will take her to the nickel arcade or just rent a movie but it will be fun to be the aunt who gets to hang out with the almost-12-year-old and let her do things her mom doesn't. Heheheheheheheheheheheheheheh.

(It also means i have to haul my ass out of bed at 7 in the morning every day this week to take her to camp . . . this would be one of the times i would regret not having my driver's license, except walking to the bus at 7:45 still sounds more appealing than leaving 15 minutes later and fighting through rush-hour traffic anyway.)

I'd better go clean, work on my sewing projects and buy tickets to take her to see Sleater-Kinney on wednesday. i've never ever seen those girlz and truth to tell, even though they run in the same circles as my beloved i'm not sure i've even heard their much-vaunted grrl rawk at all, so it should be fun.

2002-07-11T22:55:00.000-07:00

so i realized today that these people i know possess no less than six types of artificially synthesized illegal substances, three different psychedelic herbs and plants, and two controlled pharmaceuticals in their place of residence, plus one herb used for hallucinogenic liquor in their backyard . . . i don't know whether to be frightened, or excited.

2002-07-11T11:37:00.000-07:00

she reminded me of me and we reminded me of us. i watched them fall in love on celluloid, as if love was just a spectrum of exposure to light and scratches on plastic that amplifies into voice. sometimes sideways glances remind me, transform me into a saving grace, as if flowers spring from pavement behind my bare feet and my outstretched palms, beatific, offer refuge for everyone else but above all myself. every man i've ever loved creates a star filled cosmos in me, no man i've ever loved could midwife that light into being at every moment. i only fail at moments i forget that.

2002-07-10T16:06:00.000-07:00

sorry. i know everyone sent that fwd about two years ago. the irony of the "corporate responsibility" thang was just too much for me, though.

2002-07-09T13:22:00.000-07:00

it's all good except for the sex

I get so many letters about the sex not being good in long-term relationships that I'm sort of fed up. Why don't we just all stay in bed this Sunday and screw! We work too hard the rest of the week. On Saturday you rest, you recuperate, you recoup your vital juices. On Sunday you go at it like dogs. Why not? America, I challenge you to screw!

2002-07-09T11:53:00.000-07:00

last night, i dreamt that they had free karaoke set up in in the center downtown square. people sang the standard neil diamond or rock classics, much to the bemusement of businesspeople sunning themselves and eating lunch. finally i took my turn: stepped up to the mic, and crooned bump n' grind, while swiveling my hips around the mic stand.

2002-07-08T16:07:00.000-07:00

true to form, jess and i met our fair share of tricksters this weekend. it seems we are bound to run into them one way or another. at burning man, we met more than one trickster in the maze whose head kept appearing in different windows, taunting us with wrong directions to the center of the maze and its rooftop lounge, and once we reached the top appeared in a different hat, and later confessed to be a different person despite first nodding at our accusations that he was the same guy. at phoenix, we were invited by another trickster, who had been engaging in some live Lounge-style drum'n'bass at the Novatron lounge, to his teepee to jam with folk music instruments, take 'a hit and then the hot' (as in hot cocoa), and then led us to a non-operational trampoline. he had a giant dog named Sydney that was as big as jessica, and claimed to be going to see The Who. jessica accused me at one point of being a trickster myself . . . according to this quiz, i'm Ananse (the spider-trickster of ghana).

2002-07-08T14:31:00.000-07:00

i almost bought this car. it is the most fly vehicle ever in existence. the interior is brown plush velour and a giant backseat with plenty of legroom and six cup holders in a row, and the license plate frame reads, "Don't follow me, I'm lost." it even has a wheelie bar on back to pop wheelies. Merlin (its owner) suggested i "make an offer." i still kind of can't believe i didn't buy it. i guess the wasp's nest above the passenger seat was slightly problematic, though.

2002-07-03T10:31:00.000-07:00

once upon a time i was 13 and living with the other(evil)sister for the summer. she and her husband are big into d&d and they took me to Pacificon (a gaming convention). gads. i got to play Call of Cthulhu with dorky gamers who think they're smarter than everyone else, and even a "live" RPG. i informed jason of this once and he howled with laughter, so i figured i would get revealing it out of the way so that no blackmail is possible in future.

2002-07-02T12:21:00.000-07:00

tha kids are coming to visit this week. if it were anyone else, i would worry about them making a 10 hour roadtrip, frantically throwing camping gear in our two vehicles, then making the 10 hour roadtrip straight back after 3 days of baking sun and sleepless nights to return to a product launch the next day at one's place of employment. but they've done it before. besides, how could jess miss out on 'finding sparklies' with me? (as she put it in one of her less lucid moments; or maybe more lucid, depending on how you look at it) and how could i miss out on spending fourth of july with this kid?

2002-07-01T16:24:00.000-07:00

i'm going to cry, i'm so fucking excited.

2002-06-29T15:57:00.000-07:00

rain hurled itself towards in the ground in droves, interrupted by seeping into the well of my hair, running over my shoulders in rivulets, dripping onto my hips, splattering my ankles, my bare toes. chocolate coated my fingers and i would have taken a hand if it'd been there to hold, or an embrace if it were possible to give. sometimes you get so soaked, so drenched, that the only thing you can do is succumb. i watched bicyclists and pedestrians recede into the distance, and stepped onto the surprisingly empty bus where a little girl stared and smiled at me; and i knew exactly how she felt because when i was her age i stared and smiled (and still do stare and smile) at pretty grown-up ladies with rain-smeared makeup, rain-frizzed hair and rain-splattered skirts and heels. i put my damp headphones on, stared through the humid mist coating the bus windows, listened to swing out sister, four, five, six times over.

I'm the one you want and I'm the one you need
I'm the one you love and I'm the one you used to meet
Around the corner everyday
We would meet and slip away
But we were much too young
To love each other this way

2002-06-28T16:02:00.000-07:00

one more reason i should not be allowed to peruse the clearance rack at Ross unattended. only mine are suede, with none of that girly embroidery stuff. i'm getting so damn high maintenance lately, it makes me ill. i even did a facial mask the other night. ugh!

2002-06-28T09:22:00.000-07:00

i ran into an old friend from college who told me he saw "Y Tu Mama Tambien" and the woman in it looked like me. i feel very henry and june today . . . if you know what i mean. i'm wearing lily of the valley where i'm supposed to: in all the places i'd like to be kissed.

2002-06-26T11:30:00.000-07:00

i love the air when it's thick and hot like this, i thought, when the odor of every engorged flower and bursting tree hangs in the air. i was riding home, up quiet neighborhood streets between the distant swish of rush hour traffic and gardens filled with blooms, sticky with sweat and the still heat that suspends smells--grills, green growth, my own body. my headphones suffocated my ears with song and clamminess as i approached an uncontrolled intersection; i slowed only slightly as i cast my eyes left, then right, seeing no approaching cars. suddenly as i entered the intersection another bicyclist appeared, coming from my left, where he had been concealed by a van. we were at an exact 90 degree perpendicular angle to each other and i was afraid of hitting his body and center of gravity if i swerved left; afraid that if i swerved right, i wouldn't stop soon enough, or too soon, and he would hit my body and center of gravity; so instead i opted to stay straight on course for a front tire collision, and pull hard on my brakes, and shriek.

we both came to a sudden stop, still at an exact ninety degree angle, our tires only a foot or two apart. his foot dragged on the pavement, i stood on my pedals. i looked up. he looked into my eyes. "hey," i said breathlessly, flashing him one of my blindingly toothy winsome grins. he grinned back, opened his mouth as if to say something, noted my engulfingly loud headphones, and stopped. i'm positive (the way you just know things when you look in someone's eyes) we both were thinking we were in some movie, and that now was the part where we were supposed to fall in love, with our conspiratorial adrenaline. he brushed his curly blond hair off his forehead and put his foot back on the pedal, smiling his warm smile at me. i pushed my left foot down and swerved around behind him, continued on my way.

2002-06-25T11:02:00.000-07:00

Personal idioms

some times i have obsessive compulsive thoughts. some attentiveness towards meaningless minutiae urges me to greater heights of competition, even though i can't precisely follow a recipe or pattern or chop vegetables evenly. today i saw the bus far ahead of me on my way to work and my feet became ferris wheels on fast forward, in my silly game of racing (i finally past it downtown, by this time coated in sweat). when striding down the latticework of bricks of the downtown sidewalks, i purposefully place each step on the vertical bricks, avoiding the cracks of horizontal ones, occasionally stepping short or long to make up for differences in stride. as i pass parked cars, something in my head counts off each shadow submerging mine: tick, tick, tick.

there's little quotes in my head i never finish out loud, because they would make even less sense than everything else i say.

2002-06-24T15:39:00.000-07:00

i wanted to have a dance party. it didn't work, but i have a sudden insatiable need for good house/trance/drum and bass. i danced around the office, our basement, our kitchen, even in the bathroom. i've been bike-dancing and desk-dancing; the latter is somewhat like car-dancing, the former involves the ability to ride without your hands on the handlebars while you shakeit-shakeit-shakeit. my butt can't stop wiggling around. standing in line at the indian buffet today, i was dancing around to the raga which was almost d'n'b sounding. i think we will have a dance party this weekend.

simple pleasures, a la bazima's list of good things, cultivated over the last 96 hours:

cold fizzy drinks on hot days (sharply spicy ginger beer, "natural" root beer with its herbal bouquet, tangy grapefruit soda)
shelling a pea pod directly from the vine and dropping fresh green peas into my mouth
abrading wood with sandpaper under my fingers, running knuckles over the smooth naked fir planks
discovering two teenaged tomato plants growing in the compost bin, transplanting them to pray they live
watching men wrench apart moldy furniture abandoned by former roommates, burning its pieces in a bonfire
passing a joint
successfully converting an embroidered yellow linen cloth, salvaged from the bins, into a cute embroidered skirt
listening to my neighbors watching porn

2002-06-24T10:56:00.000-07:00

things i would never buy at the Bins [Bins: a Goodwill warehouse in which are housed thousands of square feet of waist-high bins (hence the name), piled shoulder-high with clothes, cloth, scraps, blankets, sheets, broken crap, books, records, crap, shoes, toys, crap, dishware, and crap, for which you pay the paltry sum of $1.29 a pound]:

underwear or undergarments of any sort
bathing suits
t-shirts (face it, you throw out your t-shirts when they get to that fuzzy limp stage and no one wants to wear those)
electronics of any kind

most amusing thing i saw at the bins recently: a giant fat woman inspecting a pair of lacy black thong underwear

2002-06-21T10:54:00.000-07:00

Discuss amongst yourselves.