4/18: The ownership of the waterfront here still surprises me. The beach is empty save for a single man on a cell phone. We don't go three feet before seeing the first sign: Private Beach. Private. Private. No Trespassing. Everywhere we try to go, the water is being owned.
4/19: We're an hour early for the ferry, so G. plays on a run-down playground on the reservation. We watch kids fly a kite in the yard of a discount fireworks store.
4/20: The Canadian radio loves this day.
4/21: I talk to my sister about her upcoming trip to Sudan, and when I ask if she's scared, she says, "I used to be." She wants a recommendation for a funny book, and I can think of none. When I ask what, exactly, she'll be doing there, she says, "Researching stuff." I laugh but don't pry. All the NGOs have been sent out of Sudan, but here is my sister, heading in.
4/22: My mom threatens to fake cancer to keep my sister home.
4/23: My baby sister leaves today for Sudan for six weeks. She loses her cell phone just before she goes.
4/24: Today, when I wake, I wonder where she is.
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4/18: Cleanliness is a kind of mental sickness—a perverse obsession. Once I’ve vacuumed the bedroom I feel obligated to clean up the living room floor, just to balance things out, and now the bookshelves and the windowsill look dusty, and the kitchen—everything in sight a little too untidy. I feel like a little kid again at Disney World, wanting to get on all the rides, but too impatient to wait in line.
ReplyDelete4/19: The noise from those headphones must be hitting the man’s ears at about 130 decibels—the sound of gunfire, jack hammers and rocket explosions. He must be standing on the aural threshold of pain. From twenty feet away the guitar riffs and cymbals sound like a truck dragging another truck’s bumper down the road.
4/20: Something small and dead must have found its way into Miller Market this morning.
4/21: Once a week or so I look in the windows of parked cars on my way to class. There’s a quite a lot to discover back there: art projects, coat hangers, candy bars, Tupperware, shoes, discarded clothes, and something that looks like a pink and purple skull, but I suspect it’s really just a folded seat cover.
4/22: Someone’s driving backwards down High Street at 15 to 20 miles per hour.
4/23: For an hour or so, without a good reason, it rains with the ferocity of a good Midwest thunderstorm, and for a while afterward the college smells like wet bricks, and pine resin, and mulch, and the sidewalk smells faintly of dog.
4/24: It’s a long drive to Washington Park to watch plants having sex.
4/20/08
ReplyDeleteThere is a lonely chair in my classroom. It is upholstered in cracked cream leather with smooth ebony-painted legs and arms. In the center of our crescent-moon desks, it seems like a not-so-subtle metaphor, or a joke I’m not in on.
4/21/08
A cherry tree sheds on the shiny car, covering it in veined, concave dandruff.
4/22/08
We’ve decided to invent a contraption that allows humans to feed using photosynthesis. M. says we can be like those college kids in Africa who invented a plastic water bike.
I guess it’s on YouTube.
4/23/08
On the way to school, I notice a Volvo completely wrapped in tin-foil. In place of a hood ornament, a multifaceted, metal penis is molded.
4/24/08
At the party one building over, at least ten people are wearing headlamps. Drunk spelunking seems like a bad idea.
4/25/08
Canby raspberry plants aren’t thorny, just fuzzy. You may scoff, but I think it will be a good Mother’s Day present.
Week 4
ReplyDelete4/19: Downtown Mount Vernon feels a little like parts of Renton, only quainter.
4/20: Fat bees hover around the slightly open windows and make me very very nervous.
4/21: Small indications in body language indicate which way an oncoming person is going to go—to the left or right of you. When those indications get mixed up, collision happens.
4/22: Due to misreading a question on an online job survey, my prospective employer will now believe that I think it’s okay to steal from my boss. Good bye job opportunity.
4/23: While I was at the check-in desk at the library a guy walked by me, singing not so quietly along with his ipod. I’m pretty sure it was the same guy who’d been in red square about two weeks ago, singing about his florescent orange sneakers.
4/24: When the Professor doesn’t come to class on a sunny, Friday afternoon (due to extenuating circumstances I’m sure), people really resent having to sit through a student led workshop. Unfortunately, I’m the student leading the workshop.
4/25: “Communication is a must!”
“Otherwise we’ll end up in a twisted pile of metal.”
4/20-Pantylines everywhere. I want to make a picture book of severed asses. This book would be very distracting.
ReplyDelete4/21-I wonder if any of us are good enough to make it. I don't think we've seen enough.
4/22-I can smell the soda making scent memories.
4/23-I saw a doctor for the first time since I was a child. I like her. She agrees with me that Natural Way Chiropractic is money-hungry and likes to tell their clients how severe their trauma is and that they'll surely need 50+ appointments at 50 dollars a pop. She also agrees with me that the throat specialist is insensitive and that pimples are depressing and that tattoos are cool. And then she said, "I don't want to have some girl out there get a rusty metal hanger shoved up her vagina," and this made me like her more, my vulgar new doctor.
4/24-I ran the steeplechase and saw in me a child again. I jumped the water barrier and landed with two feet like I was trying to get a splash out of it. It was the only way to do it. When I jumped correctly, or most efficiently, I felt unnatural.
4/25-I will work for 16 hours today. The only things that will keep my mind off of the ridiculousness of this, is Proust's "Sodom and Gomorrah," and writing and eating a lot of weiners at the hot dog stand.
4/21 I’m just making all this up. I completely spaced.
ReplyDelete4/22 I wish I could regain my liking of school but everything just feels sucky.
4/23 Um…I’ve 30 pounds in five months.
4/24 This is just random.
4/25 My feet hurt.
4/20: I got to go the the doctor with my sister-in-law for her first ultra-sound. I wondered if people thought that she and I were together, because up here that's a perfectly ok option...
ReplyDelete4/21: classes start again and I become overwhelmed with the amount of homework i need to do.
4/22: I am forced into a mac computer lab, and then into a PC computer lab to do my journalism homework... i go show my teacher like a first grader with her art project. she smiles sweetly before tearing it apart.
4/23: I just found out that this company has been taking out $10 dollars from my account since 2007. I feel stupid, cheated and mad and now I can't sleep.
4/24: a guy hits on me at the dog park while I act like my brother's dog is my own, "Oh it was so muddy the last time I came here," I say with a smile. he doesn't ask for my number, but whatever my dog was so much cooler than his.
4/25: My SCD club goes to the earth day celebration on campus to perform... who ever asked us to come..didn't tell anyone else that we were coming. We had to awkwardly dance on lumpy grass to extremely loud music, but I think the hippies appreciated it. I hope
4/26: my co-worker (at the church i work at) tells me that she thinks my theology is better than our pastor's, (i'm the youth leader) and that I will do fine teaching the kids at conformation class. I then find out that the pastor taught the kids about prostitution the week that I was gone. I'm starting to agree with her...
4/20: (note: after reading this over I realized that it sounded offensive which was not what I meant at all) what I really meant to say was: I got to go the the doctor with my sister-in-law for her first ultra-sound. As I sat in the waiting room with her, I secretly wondered if other people assumed we were together. It made me smile because where I grew up that is something people wouldn't even assume. Up here it can be assumed and what's better is that people are ok with assuming it. I like open minds and I like Bellingham.
ReplyDelete4/20 Somewhere close to seagulls having a party, a train blares its presence.
ReplyDelete4/21 My bass must boom through the thin walls. But I ain’t heard no complaints, so I aint’t gon stop.
4/22 Warm today and everyone has got to have a smoothie.
4/23 Comfort and worry: I was in a bad mood all day and two beers cured it.
4/24 Some douche from my high school eyed me and smirked today. Whatever, he walks around actin like his shoulders are wider than they are.
4/25 I didn’t put on real pants all day.
4/26 I bounced a pitch directly into the umpire’s crotch. Wasn’t my fault, right?
4/20 - Glue is a wacky substance.
ReplyDelete4/21 - While finding a place to sit outside for class, Kelly bends down to the grass to see if it's damp, which reminds me of the leader of a hunting party tracking their prey. On another note, sitting in the direct sun sans sunscreen will get you burnt.
4/22 - Earth Day. I didn't feel like I did much to help the earth; well, more-so than I normally do.
4/23 - It's amazing how much power can be lost when a car drives into a power pole.
4/24 - Christmas lights can keep you up at night.
4/25 - Ants are funny little things.
4/26 - Some people just don't know when to pull up their pants -- didn't she feel that her skin was exposed...?
4/20 - Just shut up and do the fucking drug.
ReplyDelete4/21 - First sunburn of the year. Good.
4/22 - I do not feel that I should be looked down upon for always being the slowest eater.
4/23 - Sleeping doesn’t work.
4/24 - The computers here hate poetry.
4/25 - Oh Humboldt Street, the things that happen in you.
4/26 - It’s too sunny for school.
4/21: I write in my journal every day, but I can't seem to manage to keep track of this.
ReplyDelete4/22: I've started to use my 35mm again. All I can think of when I load the film is the way he gave us chocolate every day.
4/23: Shutter. Mirror. Aperture. Click.
4/24: "You used to take such lovely photos."
4/26: I sit on your couch, knees drawn up to my chest, and I realize that what I miss most when I'm gone is how I fit perfectly between the two of you.
4/27: I drive back and listen to you talk about Muslimity and how the world is being ruined by illiterates. I bite my tongue and refuse to tell you that you mean to say Islam and that you're the one pushing it all downhill in a hand basket.
4/21/09: The asshole (or “douche bag” as their commonly referred to) does not recognize the limitations of a category or type. They can come from anywhere and everywhere and most often do.
ReplyDelete4/22/09: TAPS—the funeral of my pen is scheduled for this afternoon. Like all loyal utensils it did its duty right up to the bitter end, irregardless of its short life span, like all the rest. It is truly a sober day for the Uni-Ball company (don’t snicker, I heard that! That’s right, I know what you were thinking! Lance Armstrong would be ashamed of you! Tsk tsk tsk! Harrumph! Pshaw…)
4/23/09: The waves on the beach looking close to light caught on a rippling slab of obsidian
4/24/09: Verbatim—That Russian dumpling place—Hobo: “What came first? Chicken or the egg?” Drunk friend: “Neither. Dinosaurs. Jesus made dinosaurs, the end.”
4/25/09: Sandwiches, and I mean good sandwiches, are always something you have to take with a grain of salt. Not literally of course but I mean since its almost always a love/hate dynamic. Especially when you have one of those overflowing ones, where all the ingredients don’t feel like cooperating, when the sauce, tomatoes, cheeses and spices are a bit uppity, as they slip between your fingers as you juggle the two slices of bread…damn I like sandwiches…
4/26/09: He takes up the lighter easily and flips his thumb on the wheel, scraping the flint. After a few sparks he gets it, gently hanging onto that flame as he brings it to bear on the frayed strands poking from the edge of his sleeve, zapping each one off one by one.
4/19-I keep putting jalapenos on sandwiches.
ReplyDelete4/20-I am a pack rat. Sentiment must have its limits and I have to throw some stuff away.
4/21-Hmmm...I haven't consulted Linda Goodman in a while.
4/22-The little jar with a duck face still sits on my desk after all these years.
4/23-I havent listened to my Grateful Dead CDs in about 10 years. But they are still there.
4/24-I get dizzy at the very end of an elevator ride when it stops. So I guess I won't be an astronaut after all...
4/25-Watched a film in Sociology class today that made me realize how blessed I really am. Sometimes I forget.
4/18: Once again, we are perplexed by the lack of food in the house.
ReplyDelete4/19: I hold the phone lightly to my ear as my father lists "options" for their impending visit. He says he's "just going to throw some things against the wall and see if they stick." Austin laughs at me throughout the 20-minute conversation because he can hear most of it. He only stops afterward, when I inform them that they will be here for seven days.
4/20: The happy hour regulars are exhausting. One of "the lawyers" brings in cases of his own popcorn for us to pop because popcorn is not on the menu. The new guy with the pork-pie hat tells Karly to "keep it comin'."
4/21: The librarian is so nice, so genuinely kind when she asks how I am. She recognizes me from work. I don't tell her that once, before her time, her partner humiliated me, shouting, "I don't want YOU talking to ME," forcing me to wait on her in silence like a servant. I don't tell her that it was the only time I didn't walk away from a customer's rude behavior laughing. That I shook. I want to grab the librarian's shoulders and say, "You're with a monster...you deserve better!" but I don't, because maybe the other woman has changed.
4/22: Love is cleaning the gray scum out of the inside of someone's electric toothbrush, because that someone will get lightheaded if they do it themselves.
4/23: During a visit home after four years of living abroad, Phil's mother encouraged him to get a check-up from their family doctor. He described himself as mostly healthy, though somewhat fatigued as of late. The doctor discovered 16 different parasites in Phil's gut, and nodded vigorously, as in "uh huh, yep" when Phil told him his favorite food is sushi and he walks around barefoot a lot.
4/24: One of my sister's second-graders is so allergic to everything that she has had to rid her classroom of items like glue sticks and markers. Today he had a reaction to an Indian child sitting next to him, because he smelled like curry.
4/20 - My 2 year anniversary, what a day...
ReplyDelete4/21 - Made sure to call my sister before work, her birthday.
4/22 - My girlfriend and I talked about what would happen with marriage, I suggested that if we get married, it should be on a holiday so we have a very good chance of having it off.
4/23 - Gotta pack tonight, driving down to Vancouver WA.
4/24 - Oh Seattle Friday nice-day rush-hour I-5 traffic how I hate you ><.
4/25 - I come down to Vancouver once a month, and my brother can't even come visit?
4/26 - And nope... Possibility of car trouble too, life sucks sometimes.