tape. tapetapetape.

and sometimes it's like i try too hard to find answers
and other times it's like i ask for help before i try too hard.


i often have to remind myself that life doesn't work like a math problem- that each action does not necessarily result in a calculated reaction... and i remind myself...but..... i still wish everything could be calculated... planned out... you know.... but it never is
it hardly is.
but i try to figure it out
and i feel

i feel like i'm trying to open my eyes before i'm finished counting out a long game of hide and seek.
but my eyes are already opened.
and math is not a life problem
(or, rather, life is not a math problem).


i don't know.

and i told her 'i'm just making this more complicated"

i though i saw a rainbow today.
i thought i saw it when i was looking the other way.
i thought i saw it out of the corner of my eye, and i saw it dancing out of the grey clouds down a hill behind the trees where a boy told me he used to think a green monster lived. i could feel it, too, but when i looked it in the eye it disappeared before i could count the colors or the moments of its existence. i felt something more beautiful and more alive than anything i could imagine or reach out to or touch. i felt it, though, and i couldn't have been mistaken because a rainbow is more perfect than you and me, and as innocent as a baby or a sweet and silent dream.
it isn't just as much as it is.
the minutes passed in thoughts and words before time and structure left me standing alone on the pavement with nothing but my feet to move me away from what i saw, but even still i i thought i saw a rainbow today.... and long after i left and sat down again, the rainbow followed me home. and it followed me more certainly than anything i could make up: more vivid than a dream and more present than myself. i think i was the only one, but i saw a rainbow today and i was not alone.

play it loud

i put this playlist together like.... two and a half years ago and i still listen to it all the time.
because
well
most of the songs talk about drinking coffee (okay, right, and a few are about smoking cigarettes, but i've been hanging around enough coffee shops to understand the two seem to go hand in hand).

"coffee shop soundtrack" - all time low
"lemurs, man, lemurs" - minus the bear
"soco amaretto lime" - brand new
"kevin is gay" - giant drag
"coffee & tv" - blur
"coffee shop" - red hot chili peppers
"the feel good drag" - amberlin
"aneurysm" - weezer (nirvana cover)
"my little japanese cigarette case" - spoon
"nights of the living dead" - tilly and the wall
"motorcycle drive by" - third eye blind
"cigarettes and chocolate milk" - rufus wainright
"cigarettes and alcohol" - oasis
"coffee break" - forever the sickest kids
"smelling cigarettes" - the fiery furnaces

"black coffee" - glassjaw.

i think you misinformed yourself, but i've been the one misguiding you, too.

i have no idea what day it is.

worked at sodo again.
went to arizona and back.
i've been horribly unproductive in the writing department
but i've been dancing.
there's an audition coming up for a ballet performance
and i basically have to whip my ass into shape to show
everyone
who's anyone
that i can dance
the shit out of my bones
when i get there.
lord know
i'm not
naturally flexible.
but i'm a hell of a dancer.
so i've been dancing more than writing.
and painting more than writing.
and trying to live again.

sunny came home

i really like

singing really loud in my car.

i might even go so far as to say i have a pretty alright voice.

i think i just needed a change of pace...a change from the thisandthat of my driving to and from seattle. i'm really loving puyallup, and it's a bit further from sumner, a bit further from seattle, but hell, what's another three miles if it makes me content? a few hundred square feet to rent out as my own every month.

i'm sitting at a starbucks in portland (now i really just go to starbucks because once i flash my employee card people understand that i, too, share a dweeby fascination with the steaming of milk and what not.....i think i'm really liking talking to random strangers...anyway...ha. i'm such a dweeb...). i just dropped off one of my best friends in the whole wide world. i haven't seen her in a while, and just seeing her tall lanky frame and her smiling face looking waaaay down at me....i'm a few years older than her but that never made a difference....we've always clicked really well and i adore her with all my life.
i almost wept when i saw her.

sometimes i forget how much i can love another person until too much time has passed in between. and i can't take back the lost time, but i swear i'll be making up for it.


it's night time. i'll be taking out my 35mm soon.

good: no sales tax, free street parking
bad: not a lot of free parking (but i am now a well seasoned parallel parker)
ugly: i will never have enough time

slow motion

i've had no desire to write much lately.
it's funny.
from the inside looking out, i find myself horribly boring and not worth being around, but after sinking into a filthy stew of not caring, i find i walk down the street or go to one of my (many) regular coffee shops and strike up conversations with random people...because, really, why would it matter if i did any more than if i didn't? i like listening to people talk. and so....i've been talking to a lot of random strangers over the last few months.
i've made a fair amount of new people to hang out with, most of them baristas, and all of whom have begun introducing me as their 'new friend holly'.
i swear to god this is the oddest thing because i'm usually such an introvert.
but here i am
talking to every person i meet.
and from the outside looking in...everyone comes around to saying i'm quiet at first, but usually end up having worthwhile things to say or stories to share (i've got stories that seem to knock socks off every now and then..hmm...)
and i do, really, i do care about them. i've met some truly wonderful people these last few months. it's just stemming from a whole slew of no longer caring about myself.
and i was getting into it.
and one of my regulars down at my starbucks died. i called him 'high-octane mike' because he liked his coffee black and 'high-octane'. he was found dead in his apartment and i talked to him enough that i have a really big hunch he killed himself...or he gave himself a heart attack. i don't know. but it's almost too much to handle except when i remember
it's not about me, so i don't need to handle it anymore, i just need to...let it be.
but god.
why did he have to go?
he was a beautiful person.

so i'm taking a road trip down to portland tomorrow after work. i'm seeing one of my oldest and most wonderful friends i've known since high school (i've only kept two or three friends from high school, so she's kind of a big deal), and i'm spending some time exploring a new city. i hear there's free parking and no sales tax down there. i might even go to a concert.
i'll document all of it with my big old 32mm... and maybe i'll develop my photos when i'm down there, too (no sales tax again!).


life can be pretty fucking depressing sometimes, but it's a beautiful thing, i'll tell you.
it really is.

macy's thanksgiving day parade

secretly (or maybe not so secretly), i would love to grow up and be a radio city rockette. unfortunately, there's a minimum height requirement of about five-foot-six...and i fall about six inches short.

oh well, i can still be a rock star :)
happy thanksgiving, everyone.

sodo lobby, round two and ten

today was one of those days where i uttered the words 'oh' and 'fuck' so slowly together under my breath every time someone bought into the consumerism ogranism growing beneath the siren's eyes down south of where the dome used to stand. 'oh, fuck' i thought as i watched four hundred and something paper cups get thrown into the trash bins, getting changed and turned and taken away to a dumpster somewhere to rot the planet a little more. i listened to the words roll slowly off my lips and hit the floor with a silent bang, and i watched the planet get buried a little bit more knowing i was helping a great deal. we make it all to go, and it's easier to trash that way. 'shit' i'd mutter a little louder watching the litter line the linoleum floor: leftovers of uneaten lunch and so on pushing the limits of the can liners.

i cannot do this enough to get out, and i cannot do this any longer.

foxy.

probably around their first year as a real band, i started watching sub-motive after i saw them perform jimi hendrix's 'foxy lady' at the old club adrian venue. i remember the show pretty well- it was truce's first show with a name they finally settled on, and i fell in love with burke thomas' side project, pris, that night too. i was, of course, there for the headlining band, go ahead... but i remember buying my first real band tee after i saw josiah whip his bass around in the middle of the song. it was later that night that i found out who jimi hendrix was, and managed to catch them a few times a year ever since.
they're pretty damn talented.
i couldn't find a video from last night, but not a ton of people were there. neumo's is a small venue... you know, the kind you can walk into and feel the music playing before you hear it.

it's a few years old, but this is a pretty sweet video of sub-motive playing foxy lady. again. the guitarist just kills it, right?

makes me feel like i'm fifteen and sneaking off to shows all over again.

rock me amadeus

playlist of the day because i can't get these songs out of my head:

'zombie' - the cranberries
'infra-red' - placebo
'low place like home' - sneaker pimps
'crimes' - the blood brothers
'dawn of the dead' - schoolyard heroes
'night of the living dead' - tilly and the wall
'call the doctor' - sleater-kinney
'teen heat' - the blood brothers
'deadwing' - porcupine tree
'i miss you' - blink 182
'cecilia' - the blood brothers
'shankill butchers' - the decemberists
'rock & roll and the teenage desperation' - loudermilk
'long haired child' - devendra banhart
'hit the mirror' - king elementary
'otherside' - red hot chili peppers
'my first kiss and the public execution' - the blood brothers
'phenomena' - yeah yeah yeahs
'karma police' - radiohead
'booksmart devil' - silversun pickups
'i wanna be your joey ramone' - sleater-kinney
'pink bullets' - the shins
'pink noise' - beck
'money' - pink floyd
'lady madonna' - the beatles
'naomi' - neutral milk hotel
'6 underground' - sneaker pimps
'international velvet' - catatonia
'gold lion' - yeah yeah yeahs

pull me long shots.

...and he walked toward my table like he knew before strolled in that he was going to sit in the empty chair facing me. quickly, and out of old habit, i flipped over the book i was reading, because in the last nine hours i'd remembered why i'd been hesitant to read books by ordinary radicals who believed in a god. and like any smooth talker he sized me up and asked me not what i was reading, but why i'd tried to hide it. i've never been one to be a smooth liar. i've almost given it up. so i tried to explain it, and with a confused look, he asked why i'd ever let anyone make me feel like i shouldn't do what i loved. and i've never given anyone my reasoning in its entirety, because i'm much better at distracting and changing the subject and focusing it on you. and he played the game as well as i did, and he pressed and pressed. but i'm a seasoned athlete in the sport of subject changing, and every smooth talker is a little bit arrogant because the good ones know they bat their lashes well. and i told him it didn't make sense. maybe some other time. because most people, i've learned, only meet me once. and he told me more about himself. and then i found out we're attending the same small university and, hell, we even have the same job...

hey megalomaniac: you're no jesus.

i wish i knew offhand who sang that song...
anyway.
starbucks is going into overload for the holiday season per usual. the only difference this year is that i'm on the giving end instead of the receiving. yay starbucks?
setting up for huge event at headquarters.
and
of course,
looking for the cord that connects my camera to my computer.

nothing interesting is going on at present (and of course, the noteworthy things are not things to discuss on blogs).
;alskdjf;alskjf
thanks, to slightlynorth's photo stream.
totes jacked the photo because i loved it.
i think today i'm going to take photos of downtown seattle...

engine heart.

so i'm taking my first ballet class in... years.

i doubt i've mentioned it, but i did ballet for twelve years... it's still more than half my life, and it's odd to wrap my head around sometimes. i quit when i was sixteen because my eating disorder got really bad. by textbook standards, someone needs to be self-inducing their vomiting at least three times a week to be bulimic, and i was at about three to five times a day (every day). it was so much a part of my life, and i can't really explain why or when it finally stopped, but.... i'm better now so it's okay. but it was a long road, and i'd be lying if i said ballet had nothing to do with it. i started taking more than one class a week when i was nine, and i became bulimic when i was ten. after that.... by the time i was sixteen i was in classes and rehearsal taking company classes around thirty hours a week. that plus school... my grades were horrible and i was pretty tiny. i wasn't skinny skinny skinny.... so it wasn't incredibly noticeable, plus i'm only five feet tall... but it was all so long ago.
i quit ballet when i was sixteen because it was taking a toll on every part of my life. i'd never really looked back since. i always miss it, but i never danced that much again. i think the last time i took a drop-in class for ballet... it was over three years ago. part of me is always a little hesitant to take a class again because of how into it all i was.
but my body misses dancing more than anything.
i haven't taken a dance class in over a year... and that is the most unusual feeling. don't get me wrong, i still get exercise. i run... but it's not dancing.

so today
in three hours
i'll be in a ballet class. oddly enough, it's a drop-in class in one of the extra classrooms of my old ballet school where i was an apprentice company dancer. it's going to be in the classroom where i began my partnering classes and where i taught five-year olds when i couldn't pay for all of my classes.
but a physical return isn't necessarily an emotional return.
and so... here i go.

"good stuff" she said.

arizona without photos.

so it's settled.
i've never been the sort of person that organizes her day. yup. i've been thinking back over the last six months, mostly waay back to spring quarter last year when my aunt decided she was putting herself in the hospital again for suicidal tendencies, and then ryan up and took his life a few weeks after. oh. yes. and my best friend took it all downright awful because she was the closest thing to him and i basically shut down.
ha.
i write it like it's no big deal, but honestly? everyone said i was fortunate to have only experienced the death of one family member, but let's face it THE WOMAN HATED ME, so it wasn't like our relationship changed after her death (i swear to god i'm a decent catholic, but there was no doubt this woman hated me. it's a fact. i dealt with it once i understood it all in the ninth grade). so i've gone most of my life not knowing anyone who's passed away and then BAM. there they go. it feels like dominoes in my heart when i think about all the death this year. these last six months. one of my wrestlers on the team i managed in high school passed away a few weeks ago.
dominoes in my heart.
my stomach crawls back into my throat.
eyes roll around in my head trying to figure it all out.
and i couldn't. it's been a bit of time now since the first death, and i still can't figure it out.
i guess nobody can.
and i crawled into a bit of a depression trying to answer it all on my own.
and i guess i still can't.
scratch that.
i know i can't. and i know i'm clever enough to have found an answer by now.


so.
here we go again.
standing at the edge of the grand canyon set my heart in the right place. for once in a really long time, it stopped beating in an inverted manner and began to function properly... or as properly as it had been. i was so small next to it. i couldn't see where it began or where it ended. i could see the other side, but the other side was more than that: it was a beautifully etched rainbow of shades of red. it was full of crevices and wrinkles and cliffs. my breath was literally taken away. i think this is the point where my heart began to tick and beat and thump and move properly again.
because
i guess
i'm incredibly insignificant against it all. and maybe everything doesn't happen for a reason, maybe it does, i don't know. but i do know now, or at the very least i am incredibly certain that even if nothing at all happens for a reason, if i give it a reason to have happened in my life... all of a sudden, it all becomes a significant something to me. and then the insignificance becomes rich with meaning to me... and i have a hunch that matters quite a bit.

i got a date with the night

i went to arizona and back.
and am basically re-evaluating how i go about the day.

definitely didn't miss opening shop at five in the morning..... back to that tomorrow.
womp womp.
more later.

i'm listening to the spice girls.

because i'm sick.

of course, i had a panic attack two days ago because i thought i had the swine flu, but no such luck.
just hit really bad with a virus.
oh and a sinus infection.

must.
find.
camera.

and because i realized the majority of my last posts have been youtube videos, i'll refrain from including the 'say you will be there' video, and just encourage all reading to look it up themselves while thinking back to a time when they were in third grade and dressed up as the spice girls with their best friends.
during recess.

yup.
so i'm home alone.
blasting spice girls.

you bet i'm dancing around in my sick pj's being bored to death trying to dance all this sick out.
yaaaaaaaaay for being a third grader again.

let me tell you what i did last night

i saw fucking BRAND NEW again:

can you hear me screaming?
here's lyrics if you need to sing along.

i ache.
i have an unidentifiable scar on my leg.
my hair is still gross from last night.
i miss living for things like this.

wide open spaces

do you remember that song? i think it was the dixie chick's first big hit: "wide open spaces"... and it went on "....room to make her big mistakes. she needs new places. she knows the highest stakes..." god. i think that was one of the first songs i remember falling in love with. and my love for the dixie chicks runs a lot deeper than i'd ever imagined.

i'm sitting at a starbucks in sumner sipping on a lukewarm americano (pulled from the mastrena machines they're putting in... and it's not bad for an automatic... i'll spare the details of the extraction of the espresso..). and i can see myself moving here. i know i know i know i take a long time to make a final decision, and i know this is what ultimately pulled me away from jumping into a cheaper living situation with some friends who were moving into a house on the hill in seattle.
and i will always love seattle, too. the kitchy way the chacha is set up, and how that bar never makes excellent drinks... and how all the kids dress like they're something different... so much so that they all look the same i guess. but i think when i finally move again (and i know it will be soon enough).... i think... i think i might end up moving to sumner. it's a good thirty-something miles away from seattle, but it's close to the 167 and close enough to the interstate... it has a train station with plenty of quick stops to seattle and enough bus routes to get me where i need to go if i need to get far.

but here.... the buildings aren't surrounding my view. i don't have to just look up to see the sky, either. i can see all the trees you're supposed to see when you land yourself in washington, and the town has something like an old navy all american feel to it with its local high school and itty-bitty downtown....shopping center...farms...it's cute.

i stick out like a sore thumb with my tattoos and this dumb sweater i've had since i was sixteen.

but i feel real again. i feel closer to the sky when i'm here, and i'm sitting in the middle of the valley.
i feel the wide and the open and all the spaces i need to grow up a little bit, but i'm nowhere near trapped form eveyrthing i need when i suspect i will need it.
home isn't too far away either.

but i guess everywehre i've been landing lately is turning a little bit more into a makeshift home..and my soul is striving to believe in something again, because i know i'm starting to wake up to work...and all that's doing is making me work to wake up.
i remember waking up to live, and i know these days are getting harder than i'll ever admit.

i can breathe here.
i'm closer to the sky.
i have a desire to desire to dream again like i did when i didn't think about what would stop me.
i can dream here.
and i think i can really live to dream again.
i think i'm swinging back into the hollow of love that i fell out of.

goosegirl

i had a boyfriend who used to call me 'goosegirl' because of the tattoo on the side of my neck.


this picture is super old...probably right after i got it when i was eighteen...but it's one of the only ones i've taken.
but i took a short nap today and dreamt about geese. for some reason, people have been asking me more about my tattoo lately. since the reason i decided to get it was extremely personal, i usually just tell everyone i'm rather fond of geese. some people tell me i'm mistaken and have a duck on my neck... but trust me, it's a gosling (and isn't gosling one of the most beautiful words in the english language, anyhow?).
and i dreamt about geese. i dreamt i found one at the end of a dirty pond at my grandmother's cottage at the end of the world. everything was all so... futuristic with giant robots and spaceships.. and then there was a tiny gosling sitting at the end of a dirty pond. the bottom of it's beak was missing and it made a strange noise. and i loved it. i cleaned it and kept it in my car with me as i drove around trying to save the planet and all the people i knew. the goose was a great watchdog, and it stayed with me. my old roommate sara told me i had to let it go back with the other geese, and i was terrified it wouldn't be able to go back because weeks turned into years and it was still with me...but miles and miles passed and i was back at the other side of my grandmother's cottage again.
and i let it go.

coffee days

if there was a pie-chart made about the things i think about, well first of all it'd be about nine million colors because i can't keep myself on just one thing... but if there was a pie-chart made about the things i think about, there'd be a significant portion of pie in a dark musty brown color devoted to coffee.
it's ridiculous.
i know.
i've learned more about coffee than i've learned in any of my history classes. i've probably mentioned it a time or ten throughout this blog, but i love, no, i just about DIE in front of those semi-automatic la san marcos. they're just so SLICK, you know? and they run like DREAMS. really bad nightmares if you don't know what you're doing.......
one time i saw an entirely manual push-cart espresso machine for sale in renton and i just about gave up my life savings to buy it, it was so beautiful- encased in a rusty rose/faded red cart... oh lord have mercy. i was with my boyfriend that day, too, and for a good twenty-minute span of time he lost me to an ancient piece of machinery.
yup.
i love it.
it might be my biggest addiction.

so there are a handful of coffee shops i go to where i can depend on the coffee always tasting good. two are in federal way, one is in edgewood, and the rest are in seattle. sure.. i mean i'll get a cup of coffee anywhere (pretty much..) but you know how there's places you go to where you can actually depend on things turning out the way you want it to? that's how i feel when i go out for coffee. i like to stick to the same places when i'm not the one making the coffee.
it's bad.
i know.
i really do.
but i'm just picky.
i've been doing this coffee making for too long i guess.

anyway.
today was the first day someone remembered my name.
i can't tell you how long i've gone to the 320th starbucks in federal way (k, i will, since it OPENED when i was nine or so).... and the vivace's? i've spent more money at all three of them than i have at any other independent shop. but i just started hanging out at the elliot bay cafe downstairs from their bookstore... it's nice, and i love books.
but i walked in and the barista looked up at me and said "hi holly!".
i stopped breathing for a half second. she knew my name? i only told her once. last week. nobody has EVER remembered my name before. you have to understand, i'm not writing this like "oh, poor me, nobody remembers me". nonononono not in the least. it's just like... i spend all my days trying to remember my customer's drinks and how they like it and what their names are, and i really hardly expect them to remember me because....well i'm getting paid to remember who they are, if they're nice, it just makes my day more pleasant, but i don't expect much of them, since i'm only about five minutes of their day (three, if corporate is present and timing my speed and accuracy).
but this girl only made my drink once.
it floored me.
and it made my day.

juliette lewis and the licks

played at neumos a few times.
there's some station on television that plays live concerts all afternoon, and usually there's some good bands, so i flick it on and do some chores around the house. of course of course of course, the one song i absolutely fall in love with, the one that makes me stop dead and stare at her on the screen..
of course of course it's titled 'suicide dive bombers'.
oh life. you're so ironic.
anyway, juliettes amazing on stage:

and seattle's damn near perfect when the fog settles and grey clouds roll in. curl up with your americanos in the hottest coffee shop, kids. fall's here.

muse

oh i gotta tell you who you gotta get your ears adjusted to. let me tell you all about karen o and the kids all over the soundtrack for 'where the wild things are':

i saw karen o with the yeah yeah yeah's at the beginning of september at the bumbershoot festival. i was a ways away, and i'm pretty short, so it wasn't at all as i had dreamed i would first see her. but lord have mercy, anyone who can get up on stage and scream and sound like love and everything else is near holiness in my book. and karen o fits this to perfection.

let me add the blood brothers and brand new as two bands that would also fall into this category.
just had to let you know what all the noise in my head sounds like these days.

ps thanks exclaim news for the lovely image.
and karen o for the lovely soundtrack.
cheers.

hang me up to dry

cause you've rung me out too-too-too many times.




one of the better things about having espresso from anything but an automatic machine is that you will more often than not find coffee grounds at the bottom of your mug.


my great grandmother read tea leaves for a long time. she was an extremely devout catholic who was a hairdresser, and from what i understand, was so right brained she damn near fell over every day. i'm told i'm a lot like her.
and she read tea leaves. i'm told she would always read tea leaves to her friends, family, neighbors, and whoever else came by. i'm told by all of my relatives she had quite a knack for reading future events in tea leaves that would coincidentally show up in the future of whomever's leaves she was reading. i know most of my family is crazy, but whose isn't? these stories are always told to me firsthand. one that is told more frequently than others is one where my grandmother foresaw the death of a neighbor's horse. i'm told she was extremely uncomfortable upon 'seeing' this news, but was so compassionate towards everyone she met, and found it distressing to hold this news back. i'm told she had never foreseen death before, and a week later when the horse died, she never read tea leaves again.
nobody wants to see death, i don't think. or at least... i don't think anyone would want to hold on to that information.

but i often sit absentmindedly swirling my coffee grounds at the bottom of my mug... looking at the pictures, wondering to nobody but myself whether or not i'm looking at my own future.
and the future is now, they say.

cheers.

aw mama's just jealous it's the beastie boys

it's funny how we affect each other-
we've been each other's best friends since we were five. i can't tell you anyone outside of my family that's stuck around that long...and i can probably bet it's the same for her.
it's nice.
half the time we're thousands of miles apart, but nothing makes me feel more important than talking to her.




these last few months have been more of a struggle than i'll admit i guess (because i don't admit these things). but i think i'm on the up and up.
mostly because i'll make myself physically sick if it gets any worse.


::sigh::
more later.
more pictures.
more....figuring out (because for some odd reason blogging acts as an outlet for me... let's me map out what's going on inside my head, you know?
xo

iced americano

it's the first day of autumn in seattle.
funny, because the weather's lovely, something like what summers used to be like before this one and the last... these have been devastatingly hot... but i won't complain--- where else will i find a world like this?
a and it's lovely outside, but fall is certainly here. the leaves are beginning to turn, and my car is cold when i leave at work, and the seattle wind smells cold and salty when i walk from my car at five in the morning.

the sun is moving further away.

i spent some time yesterday watching a class at the pacific northwest ballet, and everything i remembered i dreamed of when i was a teenager rushed back to me. my heart raced and i felt i was about to weep, so i started talking to a mother who was making a costume for her daughter. we talked about baryshnikov and romantic tutus, and some things about me have never left, though i doubted for a long time they were anything important to me.
i will always love ballet.
it still extremely hard for me not to dance.
everyfiberofmybeing wishes i had never given in to not believing anymore.
but that was yesterday.


today is the first day of fall.
and it is new.

and today is going to be more difficult than i would like it to be, but standing up for what i believe in is a slow and tiring process when i've all but given up on myself. but i know that i wish i had never given up on ballet..i know i was really good. so now... now i suppose (and i know, in fact) that i can't give up on myself this time, either, or it will just be..... it will just become the life of others, and not the life of my own.
and today is new.
and today is the first day of fall.

spearhead

i honestly made a point to dislike everything he liked.
not because i was spiteful, just because i didn't really have a more effective means of getting over it when i was eighteen.


three years later, sure, we made up in our own extremely awkward manner... probably mostly because we both loved her the most and knew she wanted us to get along. and we did, genuinely, while actively avoiding the obvious elephant in the room (which, i suppose, was the fact that we tried dating on multiple occasions, but again couldn't find a means of getting along properly as two civil people should). there was no spite between us before it ended. i don't think. iguess i'll never know, because he's gone now.
and he played one song once over and over again one night... or maybe it was a summer afternoon when we chased geese.. i don't really remember, i just remember the song "oh my... oh my god... oh my.... oh my god".

i don't remember much else to the song.

i downloaded it onto my computer though, and it was just one of those things i never tried disliking because good music remains good music in your heart of hearts, regardless of what your mind tries to tell you to do.

and i never really cared for the new spearhead song... i didn't even know it was michael franti till i saw his name at bumbershoot and saw them sing it when they were opening for jason mraz.
and now, to add on to it all, it plays on the radio all the time.
and now that i know, and now that it has a different meaning,
i listen to the words.
and the words are good.
here's to the crazy crazy life- this is when i saw it live (but unfortunately did not see this close):

the real video's good too.
check it out, since i can't add it to my blog properly:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoaTl7IcFs8
sweet.
k.


off to figure out what i'm going to do with my life... some more...
love.

cause it's all been done.

here's to the end of summer:

it might be everyone else's favorite song, but i don't care. it grabs onto my heart a lot tighter than most people do.
i woke up today and realized i don't know a lot things.
but i do like listening to music really loud
and i like it better when i know all the words
and i like it when i'm standing with the band in front of me.

programmed.

i know what i'm doing.
really.
swear to god.

i'm sitting at the first tullys i used to work at and everyone knows my name. you see the raiser on the floor behind the pastry case? the one you have to step on to see your customers? they put that there for me when i worked there. i've left my mark.
swear to god i know what i'm doing.
i'm planning my life. the one i'm living. the same kind of "life of your own" that i preach to my comrades to take hold of. the one that i can't seem to manage. and i know what's going on, i swear i do because i'm right smack dab in the middle of it. i swear to christ the inside is way more organized than the outside. all my thoughts follow themselves the way they should... in a similar fashion that all my organs run against each other rather formally.
and i do. i know what i'm doing.
i know that people look at me and think that i've got nothing in my life in order. at this rate it will take me six years to finish college. i'm watching my high school classmates get ready to graduate and begin their grown-up lives. i know that people are looking at me thinking i'm running myself into the ground. i know that. and i know that ever single teacher, professor, instructor, mentor and so on have looked at me and let me know i'm so right brained i'm going to fall over. i almost failed out of my high school english ap course because i couldn't understand how to write a formal paper, and i remember just getting by because my ideas were "incredibly well thought out". check it.
i know what i'm doing.
so maybe this is it.
me.
literally being so right brained i'm falling over.
but hell, this system has worked for me my entire life so far, and why would i want to try and be something different? something that fits in better with the crowd?
screw that.


here's my plea:
please.
don't try and make me do what you would do. clearly, i would not do that. i will not learn how to do things on my own if you try and do them your way for me. it hasn't worked for twenty years.
scratch that: twenty-one. going on twenty-two. a whole ten years older than i was when i was twelve.

::sigh::
/rant to higher powers of the home.

pam's kitchen

i pass out.
not a lot, but enough for me to make a note to visit the doctor again. i figure it's food related since i've been known to take poor care of myself, and will probably end up seeing a nutritionist.
i picked up a shift at starbucks headquarters today, but had to leave an hour and a half into my shift when i started fading in and out of consciousness. i mean, what is that all about? it's fair to say i didn't pass out in the back room, but i have a feeling it's not normal when my vision turns on and off. was it a black out? was i losing consciousness? i don't know. i attribute it to not being able to remember the last full meal i've consumed.
but don't get me wrong, i love food.
so in light of my lack of eating, i decided to post the restaurant i'd like to visit soon- it's in the u-district, and i mean seriously, what DOESN'T sound good about trinidad cuisine?

check it out:
www.pams-kitchen.com

sodo lobby round two

starbucks is not the be-all end-all of coffee by any stretch of the imagination.


i know this
because i'm working at headquarters again today
and i'm working at the starbucks in bumbershoot on monday
and all of a sudden
i don't care about making coffee.
i don't care that i'm pretty good at it.
i don't care that it used to make things better.

because all i'm doing now is pushing buttons...
and as far as i'm concerned, i'm just dumbing myself down.


time to find something worth doing
again.

hunabku

went to a bar in auburn tonight.
skeezy, cheesy, something up the wall and drab.

but she wore a yellow shirt, and we sat at a table in the corner like we always do, because most bar goers aren't there for anything more than surface-level superficial bullshit.
and we talked about how she's leaving for florida at the end of the month, and how i'm moving out to be on my own finally. we talked about how we need to get the hell away from these parts, and how our dreams are prophecies are intuitions are telling us what we already know. and i told her about the handful of good conversations i've had these days: the ones with my family and the one with my co-worker who is the only real person i've met for awhile.
in our lives, we are given people for a reason, i suspect.
and we still have eachother
and we're splitting the hell out of these towns because we're so much more than we already know.
and it wasn't a dream this time.


i have so much work to do.
and i don't know if i have anyone to trust with this sort of thing besides her.


more later.
let's save the world.

in between molecules of oxygen and carbon dioxide

i dreamt a few days ago.
and i've been dreaming a lot less lately, and a lot more vivid when i do.
and it's making me realize that there was so much more to it than i knew.

but i dreamt that i began to think
and i dreamt she was moving to california
and i dreamt i gave her all my savings i had been collecting for months
and they had been kept safely under a tree on a small hill... back where i used to live when we were younger and the biggest problems we had were things like staying out past dinner time... or getting caught sneaking into neighboring yards.
i dreamt we sat in a claw-foot bathtub, the one from the apartment we used to live in
and i dreamt we did this while wearing yellow dresses.
i dreamt things were getting better and easier, and i dreamt that we'd make it to a time when things getting better and things getting easier meant the same thing. we talked about future plans: about how we both needed to get the hell away from the worlds we'd created,
and we talked about how we needed each other.

we still do: whether in dream or wake, this truth knows no boundaries.

lollipop

stoked:

more news later.
as of right now, this is it.

a million watts of sound

found on a blog i frequent.
and still...
i've got to start somewhere...

broadway is dark tonight

it moved me further than words could begin.
i used to be like this when i was a dancer:

and i know in my heart
everything i'm up to right now
is nothing
compared to what it used to be like
when i loved to dance.

sunday secrets

i'm sure this would be better with photos, copied postcards, or something a bit more tangible, but i'm short on all those things and i'm sure sending my sunday secrets off into cyberspace will (at very least) make me feel better.
so let me get this over with:

+i turned down going out today because i am secretly REALLY excited to write my paper that was due back in may.
+i'm afraid to turn people away (because i know i keep most people at bay at a fairly surface level to begin with... and once they make it "in" so to speak, i feel a bit pained to force them "out"). i avoid this by first not letting most people 'in'. it's hardly a problem anymore, though, becasue i'm getting better at both my game and my tolerance with myself. i guess.
+^^^i hate when i say "i guess" because what precedes the phrase is always what i find to be true, but i'm usually embarassed/ashamed/unsure how to admit it. i know, right?
+sometimes i miss hanging out at the skate parks in lakewood. there's nothing particular about lakewood skate parks, i just never hung out at any other ones, and i always wished i knew how to skateboard.

+ ^^^ i gave up being taught how to skateboard because i was too afraid i'd look like a poser.
+ ^^^ this has hindered me from doing a few things.
+ ^^^ it takes me a while to digest that it's never too late to try anything.
+i used to only get sugar-free flavored anythings in fear of extra and unnecessary calories, but now i just feel like sugar-free things are cheating me out of satisfaction.
+i lust over double and triple group head, semi-automatic la san marcos:

read me the torah

you'd never guess.

i spend hours pouring over religious text, books on historical religious culture and the unity of religion and ecology...
and yet
i tell people i consider one of my lifetime achievements to be
rocking the fuck out to offspring during the summer of 2008.
they hosed the shit out of us in the mosh pit
it was that amazing
and lord knows we have typical pacific northwest weather.

i mean
i'm not entirely serious about it being one of my lifetime achievements..
but it was probably one of the best concerts i've attended
(and that number lost its count in the middle of high school).



i know, right?
it doesn't make sense.

i never.

i never want to be
the kind of grown-up
who sits in an office all day.

i know... i know i know i know
sometimes you don't have a choice.
but i'm young and i'm twenty-one
and right now i do have choices.

i never want to be
the kind of grown-up
who wears a business suit to mean business.
i see them come in my coffee shop all the time,
and they think they have it made.
but i don't want people talking to me
just because i wear a suit
and i make money
and my hair is the shit.

when i finally have to be an adult
and get finished with college
i want to have choices.
when i finally have to be an adult
i want to be talking to people
because everything i say actually means something
and everything they say means something to me.

so i guess
i can't put it off any longer.

sure, baby, hold back

to say nothing's been going on would be an absolute lie.
to say i've been uninspired to write lately would also be a lie.

i just don't know where to begin (or end?)


since my parents left, i've been sleeping in their bed. actually, i found a small collection of quilts and pillows and made a pile on top of their bed and slept in the middle of that.
best idea ever.
haven't seen my boyfriend much lately.
went to see him today and got the whole 'buddy' shoulder punch... solidifying my suspicion that i may be kidding myself into thinking.... i don't know what i'm thinking these days.

best part of my day?
going to the bank in redmond.
the lady almost wouldn't give me a cashback because she honest to god didn't believe it was me in my drivers license. she said i was "way too beautiful in real life" and "needed to change my id right away".
i've been up since five, working on four hours of sleep. i smell like coffee grounds.
seriously.
best part of my day.

promise (mostly to myself) i'll post more interesting things.
like my new love for jimmy eat world.
xo

corporate whore

working at sodo lobby today.
new high?
new low?
corporate whore? it's just a job i guess...
i can still remember driving to the beach and stopping for coffee at a random starbuck with my sister last week. the barista asked which store i worked at, and when i told her i was downtown, her other baristas just looked at me and said things like "ohh, lucky" or "oh, i'm jealous".
all i could do was laugh... all the stores are the same i guess.. which is odd because working for starbucks is... just not the be-all end-all of the barista world.
anyway.
i was invited to transfer to the first starbucks store yesterday when i was out roaming seattle with my sister. i'll mull it over... who knows. right now i just... need an escape... and work is about the only think i can do well on autopilot besides breathe.

so..
off to starbucks headquarters for six hours...
lord have mercy.

go ahead

i've been such a concert junkie since my sister took me to a go ahead concert when i was in seventh grade. we'd gone to the backstreet boy's black and blue concert when they came to the tacoma dome... it was my first concert ever, and while it was amazing, it was nothing compared to the rush of being crammed into my first mosh pit and watching sweat roll off all the band members.
it was amazing.
thanks to tony d'angelo, i was never the same.
sure, that concert was at a middle of nowhere venue, and only about fifty people showed up, but after that i hardly ever missed a go ahead concert.
i was hooked. whenever i heard the first few notes of 'supposedly' being plunked out, my heart raced, because all of a sudden all the stupid jr. high stereotypes, all the drama, all stupid private-school cliques washed away. i knew that everyone around me knew all the words to all the song just like me.

go ahead blew up, and i was suddenly one of hundreds of thousands of screaming teenage fans who showed up to skeezy venues all over the seattle/tacoma are for a show. i got hooked onto other bands like pistol for a paycheck, jupiter sunrise, ghost runner on third... daphne loves derby, truce, sub motive, the geeks.... there were more, but most of the names have escaped my memory since they've broken up.
but jesus.
i remember going to concerts on the weekends like there was nothing else to live for.

i still remember every single word to every single song... they're all engraved in my brain more deep than any math equation or nasty rumor. i remember finally selling merch. i remember the handful of pop-punk show-goers like myself asking me to introduce them to tony d'angelo, who, by the middle of high school, was something like a local band god (though my current boyfriend will tell you otherwise)..and i remember being absolutely cool for doing that.
and it built up.
and i belonged to something
something
that was far above all the drama and all the labels and all the private school high school bullshit i went through on a daily basis.


it's been years since my first concert, and i'm a little sad to look back and realize i've done myself no justice in the concert-going department. i wasn't too hurt to miss no doubt and paramore last weekend with all the current crises at hand... but i think the last band i saw was natalie portman's shaved head back in... december? this year's been a trip so far, and while i wish i could say i've seen more, i'm not too disappointed with myself.
besides.
i still have my original go ahead hoodie
and go ahead's first cd
which was probably made in someone's basement.
these things are priceless... if anything for the memories they hold, right?

ps. hope you enjoy all the crappy quality videos linked to my youth:

xoholly

frozen ice and drunken fear
(this song is sung for you, my dear)
i'm waiting patient as before
and once and twice and even more
i sit in fear and only just
because i can't contain what must
not happen. look. it happened once
and tore me down and broke my trust.
but you, i love
and drunken sing
and wait
contained
the world to bring.

redmond: adventure 1

or... "how boredom allows me to include links in my posts because i forgot to bring my camera with me."


i'm hanging out on the eastside today waiting for boyfriend to finish work.

you know, i've been hanging out on the hill (is it appropriate to include a link here? or can it just be understood that the capitol hill area of seattle is a notoriously trendy hipster hangout?) and around downtown seattle for so long now that being outside the little world is almost a bit of a twist.
i'm hanging out in redmond on the eastside waiting for boyfriend to finish work. when i first got off my bus and wandered aimlessly through the outdoor mall... i realized a few things:

+ everybody has a tan
+ and if they didn't have a tan, they had a great pair of legs
+ and if not that, they had some pretty foxy shazams
+ the "alternative" style is something of a strict black dress code (as far as i can tell).

i guess you could still accuse the areas east of seattle as being just as sickeningly trendy (but god, we love it) as downtown, but it's a different kind of trendy.. or, better, the trends are different.
everyone dresses well. geared up in northface and carrying shoulder bags that seem to be a complete 180 from my nasty, grungy, punk rock, army green messenger i've been carrying since 2002.
cheerleaders do not look out of place here (as they do on my college campus on aforementioned hill).
the bohemians look clean on the eastside. i wouldn't begin to suspect that the hippies and the granolas over on the eastside maintain a fair amount of personal hygene instead of really keeping things all natural (not that there's anything wrong with one lifestyle or the other... just something to take note of).

((god.
i need batteries for my camera.
or i can keep describing the scene.))

i noticed something while i was meandering through the outdoor mall.
sure, i had my oversized sunnies, and sure, i was wearing flats and a short dress... but the homegrown quality of my messenger bag and the unkept natural disaster of my unkept hair began to make me a quickly assumed outsider. sure, every girl and her mother could be spotted in high-waisted short-shorts, but i was the only one in sea-blue lame spandex peeking under my dress.
it seems that what is socially acceptable in the too-trendy hill scene marks me a bit out of place in it's wealthier, too-trendy eastside sister scene.
is it even a scene?

i'm probably thinking too much.
and as much as i feel like i fit in alright in seattle,
and even though i was a bit taken aback when the barista i encountered over here had no idea how many shots were in a doppio (two...does this make me a coffee snob or just a well seasoned barista?),
i don't feel like i'm home every time i go back to seattle.

thing is,
i don't always feel like i'm at home when i'm in slow-paced edgewood.
or maybe... home is where the heart is.
my heart has found itself in many places.

night time blurb

waking up in four hours to open shop
need to fill my life with everything again.

none of this half-hearted mediocre shit.




we had a twin peaks night.
we had the cool girl, the tall blonde, the sassy actress and a handful of the actors, two navy boys, two love birds, the quiet riot, the romantic writer, and myself.

every night i used to go to bed thinking "this is the best night of my life",
lately, that hasn't been the case.
tonight was one of those nights.
i need to get back into doing everything 110 percent.
like living.
and breathing.
and spending time.

i have to wake up in four hours.
that counts... right?

start at the beginning

it started going down
when she told me
i made her want to kill herself
when we fought.

or maybe it started
when we sat in the grass
away from the rest of the world
during recess
and announced that we were worshipping ourselves
instead of anything else we were supposed to when we were ten and eleven and twelve in private school.

maybe it really started
the late afternoons
we went to aa meetings
because she was too afraid to go alone.

maybe it was when i felt like a bad friend
for suspecting the truth
and wondering whether or not
the cuts were really from withdrawls

maybe it was before that when i saw track marks
and learned what that meant.

maybe i learned about it all too late.

maybe it started when
he told me to stop trying to save everyone
and save myself
but i doubt it
i never loved him anyway.
i guess.

(because how can you love something that's incapable of loving back?
it's like doing arithmetic with electricity and pots and pans
when all you really need are numbers and equations.
these things
it doesn't work properly.)

no.
it never started with any of these things
let's start at the very beginning:
it started when we realized we'd never resolve a single fight.
when she told me i make her want to kill herself.
oh.
jesus christ.
if i were ever to call on saints,
now would be the time.

outlaw, baby.

and i still think i see him.

it was always like this when he was still alive... because he was the sort of guy that wanted to do every last thing. i didn't know him as well as most of the other people in his life, but i silently cherished the secrets i was privileged enough to hear (the sort of secrets that began with "i don't tell people this but..." or "i don't talk about this all the time but..." and of course: "anyone will tell you i act different around you because...").
and i knew he wanted to try everything.
and i used to see him around federal way
here and there
like the time we laughed when i announced to the federal way barnes and noble just how crazy i was when i was little.
we hadn't spoken for months before that.
but i used to see him around
and i'd always do a double take when i thought i saw him anywhere else besides federal way.

and i still take that fucking double take.

i wish he didn't do it because a part of her is missing
and coincidentally
through that
so am i.

i'm just a girl in the world

ohh.. summer has hit. most days i'm waking up at the crack of dawn to open one of ten million starbucks in downtown seattle...sometimes i think i'm too old to be 'just a barista' but then i realize i think much more of myself than that. sure..you can hire any punk off the street to make coffee for a little more than minimum wage, but i actually really like this. even the automatic machine we have at our store- it's one of the better ones i've worked with.
so i wake up around three thirty... and even if i'm not opening... my body has begun to wake up with the sunrise. seattle is lovely when there are no cars in the street. you can smell the ocean. you can walk in the middle of the streets. nobody bothers you. it's beautiful. i like to pretend it's my own secret part of seattle i don't have to share with anyone. the buildings are painted orange and yellow and blue from the sunrise... you can breathe the salty air that goes missing once the streets are flooded... it's beauty.
the downside to this is that i've really begun to feel tired by the afternoon... but i don't want to miss any of the days of summer... because i know that once fall rolls around i'll be missing the heat and the sunshine.
so i've been filling my time getting as much as i can..... spending late nights laughing with close friends... and though i always leave muttering "i have to wake up in three hours...", i wouldn't trade any of these nights.

i've been using my film camera my mother handed down to me... last year we had our own photography classes every monday... she taught me everything she knew and we went out together and practiced taking photos together. sure...every hipster on the hill has a camera... but i enjoy it, and it's something i'll do with my mother again after we've stopped arguing.

ohhh, i've started hanging out at the trendy-as-fuck coffee bars all over seattle again. these are what i will miss if i ever move... because let's face it, i get free starbucks coffee any day of the week, but when you're competing with arosa and vivace's and victrola and vita and........ ohhhhhhhhh seattle :)



i've recently been accused of not caring about the right things.
truth is, i care about everything, but lives > grades any day of the week.

goodbye old life.
goodbye pleasing everyone else.
hello new world.

i wanna be your crystal baller

music.

the world's been flipped inside out lately.
and i've never been creative with solving problems... and sometimes there's nothing like slamming down a round with your best friend at the trendy-as-fuck bars in seattle,
but.
oh.
what the hell:

there's a clever line between turning twenty-one and turning alcoholic.
sometimes i wonder.
but even that's not an important question to ask, because there's bigger fish frying and i've got nine times less the time between watching living and watching dying. so i've been working and waiting and watching and living and dreaming of the better days when we were six and sixteen and the world was just as innocent as we were. i'm blasting the commitments and tragic kingdom because i absentmindedly bought them and realized after i got back to my flat that my mind
was absentmindedly buying the titles
for what they were saying
this seattleland is hosting one hell of a tragic kingdom.
you can never leave your best friend.
it's more than a commitment.
we're bound like the holy bible for life.
and i'll keep hitting the repeat and flipping cd's... waiting for a track to enlighten me with some clever mischief or some differnt way to solve these problems because, lord, these days the world is flipping inside out, and when you're the kind of girl who works from the inside to the outside... and the innards are ten and twenty million directions out from where they should be... all i can do is be consumed by painting and drawing and music...
something will emerge from this creative mess to find and fix this web that's woven. i know i can't solve everything... but i sure as shit can fix what i've got in front of me.

i just need to get a little more creative.

backwards

i fell in love with a notebook:

i know. it's silly. how can i fall in love with an inanimate object? it can hardly begin to love me back. it doesn't live or breathe or do anything for me unless i do something to it first. but i fell in love with a notebook a few days ago. i was heartbroken when i arrived in my hometown without it... i left it on the coffee table back in my apartment in seattle.
how can i fall in love with a piece of secondhand something else? it was in the "various silverware" bin at the overly trendy hipster hangout of value village on capitol hill. it was already written in- really, we're talking secondhand. there were drunken scrawls of love lost and dreams of moving to seattle. some of the writing was hardly legible. there was a "stalking list" with phone numbers in the back. it's already half used, and what's worse... there's a $1.99 green-tag sticker on the back that i'm sure will never come off entirely.
but i really had to have it.
i have my barnes and noble discount- i could have bought the same thing for a decent price free of drunken lamentations... but... i felt for the lonesome writer with dreams of leaving california for seattle.

it took me a whole two days to realize my best friend has the exact same journal somewhere. one of the few things she takes with her wherever she moves to... i guess i've been holding it so close to my heart because it reminds me of her-- something we share... something like how i wish i could hold her hand wherever she goes.

sometimes there's nothing at all you can do about the little losses in life.
i can't explain it much better than that.

procrastination's a work of art

and i'm the artist by no stretch of the imagination.

three things:

-world religion

-maine

-ugh.  coffee. procrastination.

this post will definitely be embellished when i get home.

home

this quarter's been killing me... but sometimes a trip back home to edgewood fixes everything.  i wish the city was like edgewood.... or.... i don't know what i wish for.  the wide open spaces do something for me... the same thing that sitting on top of buildings and driving down long stretches of highway do when i'm looking for something and feeling absolutely lost.

sometimes you don't need to look further than your own backyard..
sometimes i miss walking fifteen minutes to the gas station to buy an ice cream in the summer..
and all the space the wind has to move the dirt beneath the trees...
and the mountain.  lord... there's nothing like sitting in front of the mountain without anything between you and it and all the things you begin to imagine being just as beautiful.

because when you're here...

you're home.

word vomit

word vomit---- bulimia of the text.  no, better:

bulimia of the remarks.

it's not like it's even a big deal, but it hit me today, when i've generally been great at letting the curiosity pass without much thought.  what happened today?  it's not like anything bad would happen if (or when) i meet her.  she's just an ex girlfriend.  you know... the one right before me.

i was invited out to meet all his friends this weekend in lakewood (lakewood.  oh.  god.  let's talk about an entire novel one of these days...), and i could feel the question crawling up my legs.  i didn't want to ask it.  but i could feel the words sticking to my stomach and stewing into a mess of something completely different: the kind of something that i'm usually good at letting pass but forgot how this time around.

it was like the fucking grand coulee damn couldn't stop it.

why the hell would it matter if she was there or not?

because i've learned from many experiences that girls judge i guess.

maybe some girls don't though.  maybe his kind of girl doesn't judge.  maybe his kind of girl is tall and athletic and with perfect straight brown hair.  older.. you know... his age.  maybe his kind of girl doesn't go to her parent's house over a few weekends here and there... maybe his kind of girl doesn't miss living in a small town in the middle of nowhere.  maybe his kind of girl is super independent and knows what she wants to do with her life?

let's get this straight out: i'm terrified that one day we'll both be in the same room and he'll size us up (because he loved her for four years, and the sizing will happen naturally whether positive or negative, superficial or deep, meaningful or meaningless, consciously or subconsciously... i swear to jesus christ it will happen if we're both in the same room).  i'm terrified that we'll be compared and he'll realize i was the wrong choice.

falling in love is pretty fucking terrifying if you ask me.

and it's only because i'm in too deep to turn around now (not that i want to, but it's not less terrifying).

so out it came.

it boiled up through my throat, onto my tongue, and out my mouth, and i asked him if she would be there.  he paused.  he weighed out his words... maybe wondered himself, i don't know.  i wished i had more self control.

it really doesn't matter.

i get paid to be pleasant to people.

i avoid drama at all costs.

why did i have to ask?

and he kindly entertained my question with an explanation of why she would most likely not be there.

and then he asked why i asked.... and the bulimia of remarks began.  i couldn't tell him the entire thing.  i don't know why, it's not like we're on 'keeping secrets' terms or anything.  but all these idiot reasons came out- one right on top of the other: 'girls judge iguess', 'it will probably influence what i wear', 'she's your ex-girlfriend'.... they seemed to go on for ever.  i couldn't stop myself after the first five or ten. what was unfortunate was that most of them were pretty true, but all still danced around the reason that justified their stupidity.

fear justifies a lot of fucking idiot reasoning.

let's put that one on the record.

so i guess i'll just say it:

i'm terrified that he found his love long before he found me, and i'm just the interim girl.

junebuggy

i have so much to say

but everything's bogged down with this life i've tied myself to.

because really

i'm just trying to figure out where i'm supposed to be.

every time i catch a glimpse of it, i try and run after it the best i know how.  but i've lost it again.

i can't forget (to begin to explain

sun, moon, stars, rain)

to write about all the pieces of the puzzle i'm putting together.

i have nine months to pull it together again.

this post is so sporadic.  it will probably make less than no sense when i roll out of bed and review it the day after tomorrow (because i won't be sleeping tonight).

there is so much going on and i don't have the energy to write it all down in one cohesive block.  buti have nine months to pull it together.  i've been in classes all year... a solid nine months now, and i don't feel like i've got a damn thing figured out anymore.  if anything, i feel like i've lost a solid few things that had held me together this whole time:  i've dropped him and i've dropped her and i've left the home i built over the last eleven years... a home that was never actually my physical home, but the home and the hubbub and the community of people i surrounded myself with.  i've managed to dig out the thing that i was certain were bringing me down (and admittedly, i let them).  i left the old adage at the door... the one that says "keep your friends close but your enemies closer".  i don't have any more enemies... i think i'm my biggest one if anything... i don't know.

sporadic post.

nothing's making sense.

i've got a total of four hours of sleep over the last forty hours and i've downed damn near ten cups of coffee to keep me going.  i won't be sleeping for the next.... fifteen.  shit.

what has happened to me.

when i used to pull all nighters, it used to be fun.

and now the blogging will begin.

because i've got to find some sort of way to keep track of what i'm figuring out... right?

because yelling at dead people is generally regarded as going insane.

praying

Oh.  God.  and this is how you get down on your knees and pray.  this is how you move when you don't think you have an ounce of energy left in your body.  this is how you walk backwards into the same place you've been in for the last eleven years of your life and realize it will always be comforting in its familiarity, but it won't quite be home.  this is how you force a reality: this is one this is two this is three this is four.  and one is two, and two is three, three is four, and four is five.  when you get back to one it's five and nine and sometimes twelve and this is how your force something to be real.  the only reason i'd begin to think there might be something wrong is because i have a hard time doing what i'm supposed to be doing.  the problem is there are two "supposed to be" 's going on.  one's driven by the everyone else and the other's driven by the naked good.  the raw love.  the dawn and dusk of the every day.  the first is the one that counts with numbers that men make, and other is driven by the rise and fall of the sun.  one was before the other, and the latter is taking over.  i can't keep myself in a controlled mind inside a body of a frame that is told how to live.

it's sad that these days

how to live and

how to love

are only one letter in difference but belong to two schools from opposite planets.

so this is how i'm doing these days

this is how i walk into a church and pray, because lord knows i'm drinking my addiction like the sweet virgin mary drinks up my tears... like the emptiness left in a church on monday.  i drink coffee like it will save me, because lord knows i'm looking for something.

karma.

police.

this is how you pray.

l'imparfait, or, my new job.

oh.  some things just sound sweeter with time.  some things smell sweeter with time, too.  it's probably halfway to disgusting, but i always like the split second i inhale when i'm tearing off my work clothes and i smell old coffee grounds lingering all over me.

i can't believe i've been doing this for three years.  the unfortunate thing is, i'm at a new store and i don't have the energy or the focus to put the right words together to get myself away from the god damned register so i can just sit and make coffee.  it calms my nerves.  it's stupid, i know, but it's one of the better habits i've acquired.  but i've been forgetting stupid things like re-brewing coffee...i haven't been on top of my game for almost a month now, and i've never been out of the loop for this long.....

...............(but how do i tell my boss i'm still wrestling with the idea of people in the family trying to kill themselves?  and how do i tell her i'm mourning for his loss and the pain i feel so deeply for my best friend?  you can't explain that shit.  i can't explain how i've been extremely sensitive my whole life.  i blame it on my great grandmother who i have the oddest suspicion was a mystic- and god damn it being the thing i love that i've inherited from her)........

.....but things will carry on. i know i'm the impatient kind.  i know i'm the quiet kind.  i know i'm the every which direction but the one i look like i'm headed toward kind.  i'm stuck between a rock and a hard place and i know this one well because i dug the entire grave myself.  back to back and front to front, it's like one long dance where nobody moves.. and here i am.

i can feel my edges sharpening.  i can feel it when i walk into a room, how everyone sees my five-foot stature and silent shape move around, my hair that has finally grown back and my tiny white frame that holds it all together.  i can feel it when everyone looks at me (and i can feel it when nobody looks at all) and i can feel my edges sharpening because i just don't want things to go back to how they used to be.

"and a physical return does not mean an emotional return" and i can hear those words ringing like "oh. fuck," because i'm always going back for more.  i keep doing it until i get it right.  i know i do.  i always have.  but the difference is i've always gone back to the emotional state... they had always walked hand in hand.  but now the 'had' is a moment in time that is solid.  it's a place.  it's a point that has ceased to move.  

c'est pas le passe compose- c'est l'imparfait, non?

but i'll always be going back for more

because i've never spent just one day on a masterpiece.

and this one

is my life.

i'm just.... betraying a few more monsters i guess.

not really enlightening...

but lord have mercy, this month has been hell.

ive been trying to find some sort of enlightenment in each day, some sort of little lesson to be had with each and every new day.  it's almost a waste to go through an entire 24 hours (and if you're like me, you go through those 24 mostly awake) without discovering something or learning something new.  so here i am, sharing my enlightening experience of the day to the random few that sporadically follow along.

it's really a silly sort of comfort to hear a song come on and realize you know all the words, not because you've desperately listened to it on repeat after buying a cd, or because it's one of the top 100 or something, but because you've absentmindedly listened to it more then enough times over a significant amount of time.

i found myself in this situation today.  it was something like comfort to realize i know all the words to more than a handful of songs playing in the coffee shop- the melodies, the harmonies, the clicks and beats and what all comes with it.  maybe the comfort is in familiarity.  or maybe the comfort is imaginary, because i'm sitting in a tullys, and i swear to god they've had the same playlist since i started and stopped working for them.

really, tullys.

you've been playing "anchored down in anchorage" for a long time.  as far as i can tell, it's been on your playlist since 2006.  the same can be said for a handful of eighties one-hit wonders and a few undiscovered tracks that will probably never make it big.

it's not bad.

but.

come one.  it's been almost two years since i've left your company.

not much has changed?  i've included a photo of myself circa 2007 when i had no hair and wore a tully's apron.

check it.