Monday 2 November 2009: MississippiAlbinaAlbertaBurnside

Drove through all kinds of weather to get to Portland Saturday. Once we arrived it was tame and gentle outside, quite right for hot chocolate, then even warm Halloween night.

Friday 30 October 2009: Almost Already November

Almost time to buy the 2010 Nikki McClure wall calendar…

Thursday 29 October 2009: Trick or Treat

Off to Portland for the weekend with high hopes of stopping at Sweet Pea for banana bread, brunch, something or another:

Wednesday 28 November 2009: H1N1 Fever!

Being pregnant and considered “high risk” for catching swine flu and it, you know, killing me, my parents are so worried that I’ll contract the virus–the “high-knee” as my dad calls it–it’s become completely nutty. At dinner last night my dad changed his shirt after riding the bus, even though he had a coat on, washed his hands three times before the meal, and made everyone put a napkin over a loaf of bread before cutting.

It’s these sorts of antics that convince me I’m a goner. That irony will win, that of course the high-knee will be mine. Which makes me really, really want a blue knee high right now. Five weeks and counting.

Monday 26 October 2009: Greengray

Signs of life in Upper Queen Anne:

Friday 23 October 2009: Lemon

I dreamt D left last night– don’t know why, probably reacting to recent news that friends are sick or displaced.

I was in my old house, in the little pink bathroom, crouched below the sink. I put my toothbrush in this plastic cup with a circus dog face molded on the front and felt, more clearly than most times in waking life, a thick blanket of abandonment and futurlessness.

When I woke up and felt D’s back next to me it was warm, moving away from me and close again.

Tuesday 20 October 2009: Killer Slayer Art Show!

Went to the Old, Weird America exhibit at the Frye this past weekend and completely loved it. The show originated at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Houston and is on its final stop, in Seattle through January. Better yet, the museum offers free admission.

(I almost wrote next, “Killer way to spend a rainy Saturday.” Who am I kidding? I’ve never called anything killer before, but it naturally came out of my head. Next I’ll be saying, “That slayed me.” But truthfully, the show kind on was, well, killer. Ouch.)

Monday 19 October 2009: Vino Rojo

Thursday 15 October 2009: Saw him at the market, buying tarragon

I bougt my mom a bottle of tarragon-infused vinegar from Pier 1 in the late 80s. She kept it on the counter as a decorative display for maybe a decade without ever opening it. It’s all shock and awe to me that you can actually make tarragon vinegar that looks this fresh and aromatic:

photo Misty Martinez

and knowing Misty at Lemon Spring tastes even better.

That’s it. I’m headed home to make a batch and next week I’m dousing it over a mound of crispy yukon golds straight from the broiler.

*I’m taking a vacation day Friday, more Weatherspoon Monday!

Tuesday 13 October 2009: Boring

Coffee break:

Monday 12 October 2009: Places you should go in Europe

From McSweeney’s: The Door to Hell: Paris, France? Shaken, Not Stirred: Monaco? Tell me more.

Thursday October 1 2009: Jubilee Farm

October is officially here. That means it’s time for a winding, back road drive from Seattle to Carnation during pumpkin season at Jubilee Farm. There are a ton of U-Pick pumpkin patches, hay mazes, and farm stands selling gourds and squash in a stone’s throw from downtown Seattle, but I’ve been a regular at Jubilee for years. It’s the sort of farm where you want to help clean carrots and pour cider just because. Plus, the hourly pumpkin throw is cooler than cool.

Here’s pumpkin cowboy Miles Ellenwood at Jubilee last year:

Monday 14 September 2009: S+H

The shipping guy left at my job. I’m the image librarian. The marketing person. And for now I’m the shipping guy, too. Which means I convey e-mail messages like this:

The labels that stick on envelopes should be printed black + 2 Pantone colors (matching your supplied sample logo) 1000 sheets of 68 x 102mm 8-up sheet (1,537 this time plus future mailings). Then black addresses on the logo label for this 1,537. One label stick on one envelope. Sticker paper sample and blueline will be sent to client in Paris for the 8-up label for approval. All additional catalogues and invitations sent directly to NYC and London will also need to be placed in envelopes and stickered with blank mailing labels.

It may sound nutty, but there’s something surprisingly gratifying in writing bullet-point messages about quantity and carton weight, sending PDFs of destination addresses, requesting quotes, that sort of thing. It’s the part of me that wants to be a tax preparer, the part that aced algebra in high school and logic in college.

In general I consider myself to be floaty verbal communicator. Somebody who thinks about vintage birds sailing on a string of balloons or pickled beats with licorice arms and legs dancing in the streets.

But this shipping stuff, I could really do this. Because it’s like every day is a post-it note, and you cross it off. You go home, wash your hands, make dinner, roll up your sleeves, tie on a bib, and dig in.

9 September 2009: Serious Funghi

Apparently in Australia, they take their mushrooms very seriously.

Ever heard of the mushroom tunnel? Didn’t think so.

Friday 4 September 2009: Hearts of Palm

Four more from California:

L to R: Emmy’s Spaghetti Shack in Bernal Heights, Palm Tree at Indian Springs; Exterior of Ritual Coffee on Valencia, Living Room at Chateau de Vie

Thursday 3 September 2009: If this doesn’t make you feel young, nothing will

I heard this old lady say, “I’ll die the day my gobbley neck scrapes the sidewalk. That’s when my pillowey ass is more likely than ever to betray me.”

Tuesday 1 September 2009: Orange Crush

Recently, I was in California:

L to R: Bi-Rite grocery on 18th and Guerrero, Indian Springs, Hotel Rex lobby, Tartine Bakery

Friday 28 August 2009: The birds and the birds

I love him.

from a Marc Jacobs ad?

Thursday 13 August 2009: A Total CF

I’ve always wanted to feel more than I sometimes naturally do in certain settings, like by feeling more the situation will be heightened enough to become memorable. Which I’m realizing is total crap.

Some people I care about are losing their jobs today, and I’m sitting here near the end of a day that feels more like November than August listening to Elliott Smith. Baby’s kicking, E. Smith sings, “I’m never going to know you now but I’m going to love you anyhow.”

You don’t realize how much time you spend with co-workers, how big a part of your life they are, until they leave town or something. And then there’s this huge space that’s not actual intimacy lost, but commonality. Shared Mondays, bus rides, pet and kid updates, the sort of things people say around the office that they don’t say other places. Like, “That job is a total clusterfuck.” Nobody else says clusterfuck. And that’s over-sad.

Thursday 6 August 2009: Re-imagining a Very Sad Thing

The brother of the woman that was drunk and high and drove down the highway for miles outside of New York City on the wrong side of the road said she wasn’t an alcoholic, and I believe him. She crashed and killed herself, and her and her brother’s kids, and the people they hit, all in a second.

Maybe it’s just that it was July, and she had all these kids in the car, and it was rainy, the kind of day that felt like everybody should be cleaning bathrooms, or napping, or making coffee. But not driving in traffic and worrying about a lump in her leg. So let’s just say she started drinking scotch until everything smelled like Mr. Clean, smoked a joint from a little sardine tin rolled in a sock in her dresser drawer, and kept moving. Everybody keeps saying she had a stroke, then drank, or that something spectacularly medical happened. Diabetes, heart attack, stroke, and aneurysm have all been ruled out, says a county coroner.

But me? I think there’s something annually reckless about late July, because we’re on the cusp of everything falling.

Wednesday 5 August: Busy busy busy

Thursday 23 November 2009: Beer me

Warm water and butterscotch cake. My father in law fell asleep on the couch until his daughter told him how much her chiffon wedding cake costs.

Wednesday 15 July 2009: Noctilucent Clouds

Cliff Mass explains that last night, Seattle did dishes and walked dogs under the highest clouds in the world:

These are ice clouds that form on dust, probably produced by meteors. Such clouds often have a silvery or bluish color, and a ragged look. So on the next few clear nights take a look during twilight and see if you can spot them.

I’ll be on the look out for more noctilucent clouds tonight.

Wednesday 8 July 2009: Black Swan Green

Seems like I was asleep more than awake for the first few months of my pregnancy, so my regular reading pattern slipped. But a very cool thing happened last week, one that hasn’t for a long while. I started reading Black Swan Green by David Mitchell (Cloud Atlas) and I couldn’t stop turning the page.

I don’t really want to tell you what the book is about, or why it’s worth you reading, because all you need to know is that this is the sort of book that you don’t have to make time to read. You’ll think about it before going to bed at night (especially if you grew up in the 80s, when dads seemed much more grown up than 2009 dads) and you’ll want to hold off on making dinner to read another chapter.

Whenever I finish a paperback I slam it on the ground really hard. Just to say that what’s done is done. But sometimes, and in the case of Black Swan Green this will certainly be true, it’s because I really loved reading it, being in a certain world for a little while, and now the holiday’s over.

Tuesday 7 July 2009: Seven Seven Seventy-Seven

Thursday 25 June 2009: I’m never wearing a single glove again

Wednesday 24 June 2009: Geography Bee

On especially slow days at a former job I’d arrange geography bees for my co-workers, printing maps with random unidentified countries. We’d sit at our desks and see who could locate Madagascar or Zimbabwe the fastest.

Puget Sound geography has ridiculously fewer bodies of water and islands to identify than, say, the world. And I’m ashamed to say I can’t name a lot of the areas reachable from Seattle by ferry, and I’d bet I’m not alone.

But today, that’s going to change. I’ve modified the map below, adding colors and lines. Numbers match names. Time to cram before I mail you a pop quiz!

1=Orcas Island 2=Deer Harbor 3=West Sound 4=Shaw Island 5=Friday Harbor 6=Lopez Island

Monday 22 June: 5:00

My walk from work to the Hill:

Friday 19 June 2009: 49 Reasons Why

Valencia St., SF

Thursday 18 June 2009: Muncie is Coooooler than Seattle

Tuesday 5 May 2009: Nerds

My dad gets kidney stones, like, all the time. Once when I was a kid he called me in the kitchen and asked me to hold out my hand, then poured what looked like a jet black nerd candy out of a dixie cup and into my palm. A 4 mm kidney stone that had been in his body the hour before. He was almost proud to show me, and once I realized what I was holding I squealed, threw the thing in the air and ran outside.

I called him this morning to say hello, and he answered the phone sounding stuffed up and half-asleep. “Hello, dad?” “Yeah.” “How are you, how was your night last night?” “Oh, I’d be fine. If Seattle didn’t hate me.”

He went on to tell me about how since he’s moved here a year ago only bad things have happened to his body. His allergies are worse. He pees a lot more than he used to. He has a deviated septum. And now he has another kidney stone.

He moved to Seattle from Indiana, the land of the deep fried fill-in-the-blank, the chili cheese dog, and the Chinese buffet. Everybody eats well here, and the truth is he eats better now than ever. But the city is an easy scapegoat for any ailment–the perfect answer for why we’re lonely, or broke, or allergic.

Wednesday 29 April 2009: 100 Days

Things I did during Mr. O’s first 100 days in office:

Washed pillowcases

Roasted potatoes

Went back where I came from

Walked on the greens of a golf course at dusk

Watched Step Brothers

Hoped the light was on our side

Tuesday 14 April 2009: The House Near Lemon Hill

There have got to be more lakes in Northern Indiana than pores on skin. So like a lot of people my grandparents bought a lake house, just off Lemon Hill near the Michigan-Indiana border. There was wicker everywhere and a creaky swing in a screened-in porch with fishing poles lining the wall. We’d sit whole watermelons to chill in an icey-cold brook that ran next to the house. Inside, there were Dixie cups in the bathrooms with vintage cartoons printed on the sleeve, stored inside closets filled with antique quilts and afghans.

I was conceived here, in this house in the late 70s, in what everybody called the George Washington room. That was thanks to its blue-and-white wallpaper playing out colonial scenes–tiny cannons next to scrolls held by men with powdered wigs. Looking over the lake, the room was small—there was the four poster, a night stand, and an old pump organ with a pink velvet backboard sitting above yellowed keys.

I spent a lot of summers at the lake growing up, so the place easily became an indispensable part of my identity. But knowing that I was actually made there sort of elevated the house in my head—especially after my grandparents moved away.

I’m traveling to Indiana to visit family soon. When I get there, I’ll ask my grandpa to drive me in his red truck to the lake. I’ll take my shoes off and walk down the brook to the front of the house. I’ll find the window of the George Washington room and think about beginnings, and growing older. And I’ll jump, being almost certain that I saw my kid self in the window, squinting out over the water.

Monday 13 April 2009: Broken Compound Hyphenated Adjectives

Over the last couple of weeks, micro-earthquakes have been happening all around Seattle. Earlier today, a 2.5 magnitude mini-quake occurred a few miles north of the city, digging down for 17 miles–a hairline fracture on a very long femur.

I missed Seattle’s 2001 Nisqually Quake. That February I was back in the flattest place on the planet, driving around state highways pretending corn silos were tiny mountains.

A friend who went through that quake was downtown, eating lunch outside when it hit. All of a sudden there were rolling, slender buildings shaking bits of glass all around her. The city was a huge Jenga puzzle, but miracle-on-miracle, no one died.

Friday 10 April 2009: Halo Eggs

Friday 3 April 2009: Bedheaded Birthday

Going on a little holiday for my birthday, and I’m very much hoping to catch up on some sleep. Be back with you next Wednesday, fresh from the land of milk and honey that is Oregon state.

.

Wednesday 1 April 2009: Is This a Joke?

Cliff Mass reports on his excellent weather blog the sad truth about the very chilly Seattle weather we’re still in the middle of:

During the last month only 3 days have reached or exceeded the normal maximum temperature, while over half the days have had minima below the normal lows. We should have highs in the mid-50s now.

But chin up. Saturday looks like it’s going to be warm and sunny enough to pacify even frosty, rain-booted me.

Monday 30 March 2009: The Wind that Swept the Lettuce Off Her Plate

I used to get earaches every other month as a kid. My parents were very pro-antibiotic, so the infections never got far. But I’ve met a good handful of people who’ve had middle ear infections so bad that they woke up in the morning with a tiny puddle of blood on their pillow, hearing a hollow sound in the whole of them. Windy waves of chutes and ladders.

I had a pretty bad sinus infection last week and, just for a night, my right ear didn’t ache so much as kick and scream. And right then I wanted the whole thing to pop. It would have been a heartbreaky release, but a release all the same. And think about the sounds I could have heard–good evidence of my body working.

It’d be like listening to the conch my dad had in his office when I was a kid. I’d jam my ear next to the shell, tilt my head and nod as it swooned, the way I still do when someone tells me a secret.

Monday March 23-Sunday March 29: Reading Week

Having historically spent spring break during college in Midwestern bookshops, drinking Mr. Misties and doing doughnuts in church parking lots, I’m officially declaring that this week is spring break for any and all non-students.

So that means staying put in Seattle. Instead of daily writing on Weatherspoon I’m planning to do a whole lot of daily reading. I’ll be back here next Monday, fingers-crossed fully recovered from a wheezy cough, with wild tales of peeling tangerines, painting gourds with cat eyes, making paper mache dinos, and reading until my pinkies freeze.

Thursday 19 March 2009: When You Have a Fever

On the last day of winter:

Wednesday 18 March 2009: Two Thousand Bodies of Water

I can see the Washington Mutual Tower from my desk. Around here the skyscraper, on First and Union in downtown Seattle, has become a symbol of what’s gone wrong–a part of the reason why the state’s unemployment rate is the worst its been since the mid-80s.

But today the building looked beautiful. It’s cloudy, and from my seat the windows were two thousand bodies of water. The office lights, I swear, were tiny clouds. Seagulls were circling the building, and the tree right outside my window, just beginning to think about budding, fanned out across several stories.

The way things grow so quickly remind me why I don’t believe the end is the end.

Tuesday 17 March 2009: Coffee and Pastry

Follow my map to favorite Seattle cafes:

1 Top Pot Doughnuts, Capitol Hill++

2 Victrola on 15th, Capitol Hill**

3 Cupcake Royale, Madrona++

4 Presse, Capitol Hill++

5 Zeitgeist, Pioneer Square >>

6 Umbria, Pioneer Square >>

7 Gelatiamo, Downtown++

8 Macrina, Belltown++

9 Fiore, Crown Hill >>

10 Zoka, Greenlake** ++ >>

KEY:

** = Coffee done right ++ = Go for pastries and treats >> = Go for ambiance/location

Monday 16 March 2009: Moon Corn Whiskey and Wild Turkey Bourbon

After months of speculation, it’s official. The Seattle P-I will produce its last print edition tomorrow, after 146 years:

After the closure announcement, breaking news editor Candace Heckman pulled bottles of Georgia Moon Corn Whiskey, Wild Turkey bourbon and George Dickel Tennessee Whisky out of a bag and set them out at her desk.

“I’d been saving that for a while,” she said. She’d just sent a “farewell” e-mail to the staff that said, “Come by the city desk for a drink: bring your own glass.”

Make it a double.

Wednesday 4 March 2009: Standing in a Circle of Quiet

I read Madeline L’Engle’s A Circle of Quiet around the same time as C.S. Lewis’ A Grief Observed and Sheldon Vanauken’s A Severe Mercy, and putting those writers together–all orthodox Christians, in older, reflective postures, flavored how I read L’Engle’s thoughts on family and creative life. I’m re-reading A Circle of Quiet this next month—a book club choice–and am ready to pick it up being ten years older and in a different phase of life.

In the book, L’Engle describes setting up a writing space above her garage. I’ve lived in small spaces or with other people for the past many years, so it’s not yet been possible for me to have a my own space, even though I’ve tried desks (too rigid) fluffy chairs (too sleepy) and tables (too studious). So for now I’ll keep up my most productive pattern, which is writing on my laptop or journal in cafés around Capitol Hill. But someday I’ll have my own closet or attic, and I’ll make the thing a livable junk drawer with clusters of photos and sheet music on the wall, a thick narrow rug, bowls of beaded fruit and pools of blue pens.

Tuesday 3 March 2009: States You’ve Slept Through

Turns out that I’ve lived in five states for more than a few months, which feels like very few. What about you?

Thursday 26 February 2009: Portland’s Beast Destroys Brooklyn!

Went to Portland this weekend, and while my trip ended with a bad case of influenza, I found a very bright spot Sunday over brunch at this little place north of downtown called Beast. Everything is local and lovely, in four courses served to two communal tables.

An article ran in the NYT yesterday called Brooklyn’s New Culinary Movement. I’ve eaten all over Portland and found one place better than the next, and every time I shop for the week I find more homegrown, artisanal goodness in Seattle. I’m proud to live in a part of the world that’s been producing a lot of the specialty foods mentioned in this article, with less fanfare.

They’ve got Prime Meats, we’ve had Salumi. Brooklyn’s Mast Bros. Chocolate roasts from cacao beans, Seattle’s Theo has been doing that for years.

But then again I have to ask myself, why the food fight? Truth is a lot of us are buying locally sourced blah blah, and the more the merrier. Plus, out east there’s a guy who owns a business called Cut Brooklyn. He spends more than an 8-hour work day making one knife, turning out a handful a week. Game point Brooklyn.

Wednesday 25 February 2009: Rocaterrania

I became interested in folk and outsider art after working on a couple of related books at my job, so this article from the Sunday New York Times caught my eye. It’s about Renaldo Kuhler, a Raleigh, N.C.-based artist who, like Henry Darger, has created an imaginary world called Rocaterrania. He’s cultivated the place for the past 60 years, inventing a love interest, a language and an alphabet. The 76-year-old Kuhler has dressed like a Rocaterranian (pictue Sherlock Holmes meets a very hip elf) since college because, “It’s better to be a minute entity than a nonentity.”

[Kuhler drawing, courtesy brettingram.org]

That’s what makes Kuhler such a bad-ass. He a brilliantly gifted illustrator, sure. But even better, he’s never stopped, or maybe didn’t know he started, living very certainly in a glassy-eyed reality. Which happens to sound pretty terrific, especially these days.

[Kuhler's map of Rocaterrania, courtesy brettingram.org]

Kuhler’s work will be featured in a group show at a American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore this October, and the documentary Rocaterrania starts the festival circuit this spring. Check out the trailer here.

Tuesday 24 February 2009

A few favorite blogs, two by friends, and two new finds suggested by my friend Sarah:

The Penn Forest Oracle, a visual blog inspired by life in Central PA by artist Sarah Noble.

Drifts and Scatters by Gala Bent, featuring her work and other fresh picks from people moving in creative spaces.

Anonymous Works, using folk and outsider art as a starting point to explore lovely visual things.

Accidental Mysteries “Finding magic in everyday things.”

Tuesday 17 February 2009

I’ve been avoiding terms like “mini-me” “OMG” and “staycation” out of habit. But really, the only way to describe my President’s Day away from work is that it was indeed, well, a “staycation” in the very best sense of the term. I went to a spa in Capitol Hill yesterday, a mile from my place, called Hothouse. It was a clean, silent and really simple space run by women where you pay ten bucks and stay all day. I spent the afternoon in a circle–a hot tub to cold plunge to steam room to dry sauna rotation.

I imagined my that my pores were really blooming tea, held together by microscopic strings in the dry sauna that jumped apart in the cold plunge. This moving from hot to cold is supposed to improve circulation, scientifically speaking. But after an hour you’ll feel like a cowbell at the edge of a very open field, one dip of wind and what you thought were mechanics was really skin all along.

Friday 6 February 2009

Meet me in California.

Thursday 4 February 2009

I was in a yoga class a couple of years ago with an older man who would hack and rattle cough all over his mat, from Ojibway breaths straight through Namaste. During one of these classes, in an all-too-rare moment of silence, the instructor told us to stop and be present. To breathe and focus on the very moment.

I made myself try, fluffy as it sounded, to feel instead of think through what being present meant. My ass was sore from downward dogs, my mouth was dry, and I was very sure that coffee would only make it drier but I was craving a cup anyways. Then, out of nowhere, I started to record exactly where I was, like I used to as a kid.

Growing up, I would make myself really take note of random moments. I went cross-country skiing in middle school and memorized a particular pine tree I slid past. I put shoes in our front closet and breathed until I could remember how the house smelled, like a mix of toast and carpet and Mr. Clean. I told myself to remember what that one tree looked like, what it was like to live in the house I grew up in. And I sort of do.

Thursday 29 January 2009

I found out that we were in a recession when I was a kid in 1988 because Heather on my bowling league said so. We were eating fried cheese sticks between frames when she whispered, “Did you hear?” I thought she was going to tell me about Burke and Kim making out behind the video games again. She had the same devious look in her eyes. “We’re in a recession!” she squeaked. “Yeah, my dad said something about that,” I said dryly, dipping my cheese stick into a side of marinara.

Everybody was talking about layoffs in the café I sat in at lunch today, and this time I was all ears. In fact, I may be far too up-to-date on the situation. It’s sort of cathartic I suppose, to recap with co-workers by ticking off statistics if you’re not a part of the number. “Starbucks layed off 6,700 people, and Boeing’s cutting 10,000 jobs,” a balding business-casual huffed to his friend at the table next to me.

Phrases including “all bets are off” “completely wiped out” and “it’s a sign of the times” followed. As a casual listener, it’s completely unnerving to hear this sort of banter. D and I both work for small companies, and we’re hedging our bets that we’re in the best places we can be right now. And, hands in the air, we’re ready for bad news any day like everyone else.

But really, I can only ponder the not yet so much before I start drawing birds with four legs and graphs of imaginary weather trends. It’s not that I’m especially out of touch. Just coping.

In the car last night, we were listening to M83, to the song Graveyard Girl from the Saturdays=Youth album. A girl has this little monologue around the bridge and says, “Waiting for somebody to love me. Waiting for somebody to kiss me. I’m only fifteen years old, and I feel it’s already too late to live. Don’t you?” It’s so tender, almost too tender, but there’s this lovely resolve. The music becomes hazy and endless, and then you feel fresh, teenaged hope.

Tuesday 27 January 2009

Where I grew up as a kid:

Where else I grew up as an adult:

Wednesday 21 January 2009

My house meets the White House.

Tuesday 20 January 2009: Hello, Mr. President!

Monday 12 January 2009

Friday 9 January 2009

Man, I’m ready for summer.

June 2007, near Tieton, Washington:

Thursday 8 January 2009

People are burning leaves, ironing pants, peeling vegetables–really existing next to the abyss. Turns out that the tallest part of the ocean is devastatingly close to big, weighty cities like Tokyo and Manila.

At thirty-six thousand feet, the Challenger Deep in the Pacific is the darkest, deepest part of the ocean.

If you sliced Mt. Everest off its base, flipped it on its back and pegged it into this oceanic trench, water would still cover the mountain’s peak by a mile.

Which I used to not be able to run as a kid. I mean, the first time I ran a mile I went out for margaritas. It was a big deal. And one mile is just a pinch of salt on top of all that earth and water.

Wednesday 7 January 2009

Tuesday 6 January 2009

When did the weather get so precious?

Monday 5 January 2009

Wow. Kansas really is flatter than a pancake.

Friday 1 January 2009

Growing up, my dad used to floss in our car while driving home from dinner. Over time, our windshield would become peppered with bits of steak and broccoli that looked like tiny neon bugs splattered across the glass.

I would watch him floss in the rear view mirror. He’d be at the wheel and I’d be in the backseat. Once, I remember his fingers being wrapped so tightly around the floss that they turned bright pink, plumping out around the string. I stared at his hands, then eyes in the mirror, and for a second our faces looked the very same.

That’s how I feel about the new year. There’s this strange mix of familiarity and tension, especially now–with the whole world flipping, flopping, and boiling down.

But more than that, I feel resolved about the tough and sweet year that’s passed. Went for coffee today with D and month by month we wrote out everything notable that happened in 2008. Things like friends losing parents and gaining children, where we were on election night, travels to Prague and Vashon, playing pool on my birthday.

Thinking about all the weather that will travel from west to east this year, starting close to Capitol Hill and hitting the places I’ve lived and the people I love across the plains, over the Smokies and to the Atlantic makes everything that’s to come, scary and tenuous as it may be, seem beautiful, messy, and really really close.

Thursday 31 December 2009

The Space Needle, hiding out before midnight fireworks.

Happy New Year.

Wednesday 30 December 2008

I’m heartened. We’ve hit rock bottom.

Vernal Equinox + Mar 20 2008
Summer Solstice + Jun 20 2008
Autumnal Equinox + Sep 22 2008
Winter Solstice + Dec 21 2008

Vernal Equinox + Mar 20 2009
Sumer Solstices + Jun 21 2009
Autumnal Equinox + Sep 22 2009
Winter Solstice + Dec 21 2009

Vernal Equinox + Mar 20 2010
Summer Solstice + Jun 21 2010
Autumnal Equinox + Sep 22 2010
Winter Solstice + Dec 21 2010

We’ve gaining one more minute of light from now until March 20, when we gain two minutes of light until summer solstice. Honest-to-goodness, I can already tell a difference.

Tuesday 9 December 2008

Northwest weather is a real shape-shifter. Sometimes she’s green-tumbed and vital. Other times, she’s like a rubber band around a water balloon. A prickly pear.

I heard weather writer Cliff Mass interviewed by Steve Scher on KUOW recently and now I can’t stop reading his blog. I keep scribbling down notes about particular causes and effects of weather in Washington State. He talks about storm watching, predicting the waves and swell. And also about a rare but true green flash that is sometimes visible for a few seconds when cooler air travels over warmer water.

With everything being so unstable across the planet, it’s easy to see why it’s hard to stop reading Mr. Mass. Just last week he said we’re in store for a wetter, cooler pattern in the weeks ahead. And he was spot on.

Monday 8 December 2008

I listen to local radio when I can’t sleep because I know somebody is in the booth at any hour. It’s a good sad, that the “on air” light blinks in a dark hall for nobody’s benefit. There’s a comfort in the very idea third shift, the sound of cars on the state highway I can hear from bed, and all of the trains huffing past the bay.

One summer in New York, D and I were on our roof in the Village at 4 a.m., arms flopped off the side, just watching people walk around. A skateboarder, a firefighter, and a woman in heels walking her dog eating an ice cream cone passed by. Watching people so awake when everyone in the building under us must have been asleep made the city a good enough place to stay put.

At night, to communicate without communicating may be a half-comfort but it’s a comfort all the same. Watching and listening can get you through a heavy winter, re-placing a need to be accounted for with a need to co-exist. It’s an insomniac’s bread and butter.

Wednesday 3 December 2008

On the radio today, I heard someone explain how the atmosphere is a chaotic system meant to produce abnormalities. Which seemed heartbreakingly perfect somehow, because the atmosphere is so basic, necessary for existence, and it gets forever permission to do its thing.

There’s this tendency towards disorder when you share a space. One person leaves a sock on the floor, another hangs a bra between two chairs to dry, and each spare object becomes a whole galaxy. All 550 square feet of your place turns towards some strange, corkscrewed constellation. And it’s almost too beautiful to straighten up, because all of a sudden you figure out it was supposed to be that way in the first place.

Tuesday 2 December 2008

Friday 28 November 2008

It’s Buy Nothing Day, which this year feels farther away and just plain sadder than ever. The day after Thanksgiving—when all we want to hear is save your health, save your house, save your leftovers—and all we get is a gaggle of Kohls employees, sleepy from opening for a line of three people at 4 a.m., half-assed mouthing spend spend spend.

Oh Christ, pop in and I’ll fix us all a giant fruit salad with berries we picked and apples we plucked.

And you can turn us around, from the mall towards the water in a fleet of white hot air balloons.

Tuesday 25 November 2008

Last night, I had a nightmare about this grizzly old duplex that sits on our street in Capitol Hill that the city finally knocked down yesterday. I dreamt that its remains stretched into a track of wood and stone, thickening towards my building and rising into an arc to just under my open window. Suddenly an old landlord crawled up the pile and through the screen, looking venomous.

I was so used to walking past the duplex when it was still in tact, held together with a million band-aids, that it got to the point where I stopped noticing that it existed.

I’m realizing that this is the exact opposite of the kind of people we should like to become—ones who get so used to what’s wrong that we forget how to start over. Like a slap on the wrist or a tiny pinch, we need something to tell us that being healthy is better than being sleepy.

Rooting out old fear kept inside of even older parts of our heads, in spite of the fact that nobody’s buying Baby ballet shoes this year.

Friday 21 November 2008

November.

Thursday 20 November 2008

Tuesday 18 November 2008

It was this time of year when a house I rented with friends really came alive. With rats. It was a big 1920’s Craftsman near Greenlake with a drafty crawl space in the basement. Having always lived in old houses I should have known that there was a real risk of the place having rodents. It sat close to a string of restaurants and a grocery store and was blocks from the water. But before this house I hadn’t dealt with anything larger than mice–cute as they are creepy–and never dreamed of living with their big brothers.

I should have been pleading with Saint Gertrude for help the whole time. She’s the patron saint of suriphobia—the fear of rodents.

By the time I was packing up the kitchen and moving out the next summer, a long list of rat stories had unfolded. The rats had been quiet for some time, likely traipsing across the yard in the warm summer weather. Exterminators and dozens of traps later, it had gotten to the point where I knew I was cohabitating with the rodents instead of getting close to actually beating them. And as a result, the rats were gracious, for the most part keeping out of food and sight. But when I left I knew that really, the rats had won.

I opened a cupboard and grabbed a stack of plates to wrap in newspaper. And there it was, this perfect pellet dropped on the center of the top plate. Sort of like the rat was giving me the finger as a farewell.

Friday 14 November 2008

North by Northwest

Tuesday 11 November 2008

Around the Civil War, you could count on finding at least two books on the shelf in most houses–the Bible and the Old Farmer’s Almanac. Back then a lot of people used their almanac as a journal, marking up the white space with daily events and turning that year’s edition into bite-sized family histories.

Since it was first published in 1818, the bones of the Old Farmer’s Almanac have been about predicting weather for the year ahead, a mysterious endeavor done by reading, “sunspot activity, tidal action, and planetary position”. Although science has proven otherwise, the publishers claim that their forecasts are 80-85% accurate.

It’s like secret sauce at a rib joint or a decoder ring. There are some things that cannot be known by the rest of us–formulas concocted inside rooms at Masonic temples with musty rugs behind thick velvet curtains.

Wanting to know how tidal action can sort-of predict twelve months of weather is an intoxicating notion, one that is way better to wonder about than see written down as arithmetic on scrap paper. You can feel the weight of such floaty knowledge as it’s passed down, even if you can’t know any facts. Even if it’s baloney.

Monday 10 November 2008

I saw an article about stress with a sidebar that sounded way too enthusiastic to be helpful– “4 Ways to Stop Stressing–Stat!” You’re supposed to try peeling an orange, it said. Then, you should challenge the likelihood of your worry, plan to fret, and get nostalgic. Apparently if you try to visualize key life events, you probably won’t remember worries associated with the memories. So what’s ailing you now won’t be memorable, either.

I’m trying to write a list of big things that happened to me between twenty and thirty to see if I remember the stress associated with any of them, but instead of events I keep coming up with fragments: places I’ve spent time, music, certain foods. And surprisingly a lot of the things I’m jotting down have to do with the weather, or elements of it. Water and wind.

Things that fight off the worry in me:

The produce section of the grocery store

The Genius of Water fountain in downtown Cincinnati

Book reports

Old houses in older downtowns

The Great Lakes

Snowy fields on fields

The way the clouds look from the air

The part in the Fleetwood Mac song “Dreams” that says, “When the rain washes you clean you’ll know.”

R.E.M.

Golfing at the par-3 after the heat breaks in summer

Scarves, hats and snow boots

Friday 7 November 2008

It gets worse before it gets better.

Thursday 30 October 2008

Late fall makes me want to re-organize, probably because around Halloween was when, as a kid, we’d get our house ready for winter. Leaves were raked and bagged, the screen door was changed to a storm door, and lawn chairs were moved into the shed.

It’s a strange dowry, how everything in your parent’s house became yours by inheritance. We’re a nation born into sauce pans and light bulbs, worn-in couch pillows, salad dressing, and telephones.

Friday 24 October 2008

Thick clouds, low 50s

This morning I went to the Crumpet Shop in Pike Place Market for groats. The word, I learned, is related to grits, but the hulled oats taste more like hominy. You can get a huge bowl with frothy milk, currents, and honey for a few dollars. I brought Sophie’s World to breakfast, a book that I really should have read in college.

I have a philosophy minor and am ashamed to say I remember so little…Plato’s cave, Cratilus’ finger wave, Occam’s Razor, Foucault’s Panopticon, really basic logic. So this book about a 15 year-old girl who takes an Alice in Wonderland dive into the history of philosophy is surprisingly good for me.

I was half-reading, half-watching the owner of the Crumpet Shop, a woman in her 50s with pink-tipped wispy hair, pouring batter into molds and popping out hot crumpets in a rhythm you only get while working with your hands…crocheting through the loop, scrubbing the toilet, pressing leaves.

Then for this second, everything became mythic. The groats were manna, the book was sacred, the baker’s mixing and shifting was wind. Typical Seattle gray gave space to flannel brown, red, and green.

Tuesday 21 October 2008

This morning it was too cold to go outside until the sun hit the top of Capitol Hill, so I kept cleaning. I swept the wood floors, made the bed, and washed my oatmeal bowl. I washed my face twice and shaved.

When I finally started walking downtown, I noticed that the best blush was already almost gone, red leaves all over the wet sidewalk. It happens so quickly every year that I have to stop and say, “This is when fall begins. With this walk. Past this tree.”

Someone stuffed an old blanket through a wooden porch frame on Bellevue. I would have stopped right there, wrapped myself up and sat down, waited out the morning if I’d known you were going to walk by.