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.