2013: A recap full of recaps.

Having just spent the last forty reviewing what I wrote, and wrote about in 2013, one thing that stuck out at me is how many of the substantive posts were dealing with endings. The end of 2012, the end of the Greenwood Lit Crawl, the end of my tenure as host of Works in Progress.
There were other endings I didn't post about with as much depth; the end of my tenure at North Seattle Community College, after nearly four years of tutoring. Spending 3 hours daily on rickety buses for 5 hour shifts at a wage that hadn't raised in almost a decade had become untenable, especially paired with subsequent 8 hour shifts behind a bar.
My Grandma, who taught me to love poetry at the age of 10 years old, passed last Christmas, but it was January when the services were, when we could all get together to acknowledge loss. This was a thing I tried to keep private, but that loss definitely cast its net into 2013's waters.
I also moved. For the second time in my life, and the first time as a non-student, I live alone. It's a studio apartment, but it has its own bathroom, kitchen space, plenty of natural light, a view of the smith tower that makes me feel pretty writerly late at night. this is a beginning, but it's also an end (for the time being, at least) of me living in the South End. I've lived in the South End for the last three years, since moving back to Seattle Proper, and in a sense, its become part of my identity. Not that I never left it; contrarily, it was long trips on the 7 that helped solidify my self-identification as a South-ender. Meghan K says that technically I am still a Southender, as my address has a S in it, and I'm past Yesler. . . but I'm not in the Rainier Valley, I'm on the edge of downtown. With Rachel's recent move to Capitol District (where the CD and cap hill meet and no one knows what to call it!) that leaves my job at the best bar in the RV as my only tangible connection to the 98118.

I also noticed how text heavy my posts were this year. So here's this little bit of Pop Culture that also ended in 2013:

If you didn't watch that show, I recommend it; especially if you like romantic comedies in which a jimmy-stewart-esque every man triumphs over corruption, vice, and every day hurdles through a simple purity of spirit.

I wanted to write a proper recap-- month by month, or achievement by achievement, even failure by failure. But I feel like there's been too much recapping and looking back already. The high notes have been harped on and the low notes have been struck. I'm in a different place, physically, literarily, geographically, and emotionally. And I won't be surprised if I'll be able to say the same thing next year.

2013: Internet Stats

in 2013, I posted 58 times on this blogspot. This is down by five from 2012, when I posted 63 times, and down by 18 from 2011, when I posted 86 times on this blog. 2011, so far, is the record for posts-per-year since I started writing here (instead of Livejournal(!)) in late 2007, when blogging still seemed an artistic and expressive form instead of being Crucial to Maximizing and Maintaining a Strong Internet Presence.
The most read post this year was my Next Big Thing Interview in February, right before the release of FJGTPL. The second most read was when I wrote about the end of the Greenwood Lit Crawl, which makes me happy, since it was a piece of communication I put some work and thought into, and is perhaps my favorite of the informational blog posts from this year.
The month with the greatest number of posts (nearly a third of them from 2013) is April, due to NaPoWriMo. I still mine that repository of near-finished poems and half ideas for inspiration or pet rocks worth polishing.
Most of the traffic came from instances where I posted a link to this blog on Facebook, though some reroutes from SPLAB and Wonder And Risk came a close second.
I make no promises about whether this year will continue a downward trend in posting habits, or will reverse it. But this is the information as it stands. Deduce what you will about my life from it.

On the last day of 2013

I sent my sister back to Chicago, ate Taiwanese food, was correctly diagnosed as needing some coffee, had a beer in the oldest bar in Seattle, helped Rachel clean her old apartment, shook some drinks, poured some champagne, got paid, took a shower.

not in that order. all the blogging cleanup of 2013 and the subsequent looks forward happen by January 7th, or they get skipped this year.

The Day After Christmas

the bus driver swerved
tailgated a truck with political
stickers all the way
from Everett

to somewhere called Newberry Court,
a small city nearly lease ready

while a Russian woman laughed
loudly at the girl who asked if she was German.
"Oh, svweethhchaart, I vish."

If she wins, I hope she just drops the mic and walks away.

I sat outside Rudy's barbershop and filled out my King County/City of Seattle ballot. I had a hard time mustering too much enthusiasm for many of the issues at hand, but did fill out the ballot (yes to food labeling, don't see what's so hard about that, no to anything that smacks of Eyman's NIMBY, aristocraticonservatism) and as informed of votes as possible regarding the specific candidates who'll be leading this pretty-good to greatish city into the future.

For mayor, I went with Mike McGinn. Sort of a devil-you-know approach, I suppose, as I was not impressed with his handling of Seattle's well-documented culture of police brutality. When the Feds tell you "yeah, you guys are too racist and violent," that's a fucking problem, and McGinn didn't seem to know what to do with it. That said, his opponent, Ed Murray, seems to be of the "OH MY GOSH THIS CITY IS SO DANGEROUS WE NEED TO HIRE MORE COPS ALL THE TIME .. . . but ah, no, they won't be the racist type. Trust me."

Frankly, one thing I'd like to see done on this issue (as a first, and not only) step would be to require that police officers who work in, and for, the City of Seattle, actually live there.
Or within a very close radius.
Plus, McGinn is really strong on issues like Transit, which is pretty close to my heart/ability to live and work in town.

The other interesting thing to watch has been how the Seattle Times has been outright campaigning for Murray; reason alone to distrust him. ST is as close to a republican rag as you can get in Seattle, and as it tends to service the greater Puget Sound area (you can get it as far north as Bellingham, no problem) it also caters quite a bit to Eastside interests and concerns. Which are not, in and of themselves evil, or wrong, but Bellevue is not Seattle. It has spent the last sixty years trying to play an image of both Northwest-hominess and incredible opulence. In the last twenty, it's asserted itself as a business center and constructed Washington State's second densest skyline (I think; Tacoma may give it a run), creating the sense of a City without the culture, vibrancy, or diversity*, and as such, shouldn't try to influence what Seattle does or wants. So the fact that Murray sometimes acts like he's running for the Mayor of Seattle Met, Meet Me in Kirkland For Martinis Later doesn't sit well with me.**

Also, I voted for Kshama Sawant. I'm not a socialist in any sort of large-scale way*** but we need a real lefty on the council. Someone who'll advocate for the poor and the working to big businesses, not the other way around. Someone who'll advocate for affordable housing in the quickest-rising rent (disproportionate to income, btw) in the nation. If she gets elected, will she be able to push all her talking points through? No. No one ever does. But I'm pretty stoked that I get to vote for a candidate I believe actually gives a shit about anyone making under $80,000 a year.

*This is changing. Bellevue in 2013 is different than it was, and it will continue to change, both due to abstract, inevitable forces of growth, and also because recently the Bellevue city council has been shaking the grip of some of it's most backwards-asshole influences.

** Ed Murray, if polls are to be believed, will probably win. I do not believe he'd be the unmitigated disaster that Bruce Harrell or Tim Burgess or Peter Steinbrueck would have, but I'd still have a bit of an "ugh."

***Though by any red-state standards, I'd probably be considered a Maoist. I think in the American Debate we've gone far enough to the right as of late that I'd like to see more unabashed Socialists coming out to pull this country's head out of its ass, and that can happen on a city level as well.

Sorry, Kanye

. . . but like always, yours won't be my favorite rap record of the year.

 

See: The Way Things Start and End on Time.

See: Long Breakfast Coming
Sometime Sunday morning, afternoon, actually, the day after the final Greenwood Lit Crawl, eating a veggie breakfast burrito at a favorite Columbia City brunch spot, an hour and a half before working a crazy shift where I had to use both elbows to get through crowds of dancers (without spilling beer), on a recap-tip with Rachel, I still swam with half-thoughts and images. I thought about the writers group I started attending in Jr. High and loved, then grew completely frustrated with by the time I was 19; there was no exit point. I thought about getting kicked out of the UK about six months (at least) too soon and trying to scramble to put things in place so the stuff I started there would work. I thought about how I'd loved Bellingham, Washington, in November 2005, how I'd have not moved to stop a fullscale demolition in May of 2007.

See: Not to be Confused With a Swedish Rock Band
I was recapping the story of how Basement Poetry ended-- a 67 year old one-handed veteran reading an epic narrative about his father to about 20 people, four cop cars, three separate noise-violation tickets of $250-- to Rachel, who'd either not heard it, or felt I needed to feel like I was telling a new story. Either way, a once-storied thing I'd put together (not coincidentally, with two other friends, over beer) I'd apparently not even mentioned to my girlfriend. Buried? Blurred? (ask her, however, if she wants to hear about The Crunch again. . .)

See: Everything I do, I do for Love and a Suffocating Sense of Obligation.
There is no online recording of Lobster Manor, the Poem that,had I written later in my writing career/education, would have probably taken on a greater element of word collage. I was palpably bitter because I was twenty six and had enough fucked shit going on personally that I could afford to spread it around, and because me, Jake, Ryler had to live in that house for a year after the tickets, could barely even have people over ("If this happens again, you'll probably get evicted") and I, at least, had folks I barely knew coming up to me and guilting me for not risking my house and prosecution in order to keep having shows and readings. . .you know, FOR THE SCENE.

See: Getting to the Nostalgia At Hand
One year ago Saturday, we had the first Five Alarms Lit Crawl. Below you can watch my rambling, overexplanatory introduction and Eva Suter's set, which kicked off the whole shebang. You can also remember that sometimes I don't have a beard, and then there's my hair, solidly at the middle point between "terrible" and "decent" grahamhair.




I, Aaron, and Greg got better and briefer with the intros. Saw some fantastic readings, some readers stepping in at clutch time to fill a void and knocking it outta the part (larry, jesse, kris, erin), got love in the local press, love from our friends and got to know a lot of awesome folks that we'd not beforehand. I tend to think that curating is a delicate balance between sacrifice and selfishness; when you have respected writers getting on a mic and saying "This is one of the best/my favorite literary event series. . ."
well that may not be the reason you started (because that is a bad reason to expend so much effort) but it can help you keep going (perpetual motion machine. maybe we can top ourselves)
I think next to starting The Crunch, Five Alarms has been my consistent favorite curation experience. Merging the fun (drinking! crawling! socializing!) with a commitment to quality and challenging work (that line betwen crowd-accessible and experimental and confrontational) both nailed my personal aesthetic and helped to expand it. The energy, shifting vibe-- the crawls all had basic ingredients in common, but no two had the same atmosphere around them. This was huge for me.
For comprehensive video, photos, check out www.fivealarms.wordpress.com.
I was going to have a mini list of my own personal favorite moments, but that would be some saccharine bullshit.

See: All Good Things
So if you clicked his name, you know Greg is going to Cambodia. If you've talked to any of us in person, you know we somewhat arbitrarily set out to do 5, and that you are welcome to pick our brains if you want to pick up where we left off. There've been more than a few "Why are you stopping?" queries, but they've generally been unloaded; no guilt, no guff. Partly because I think it can actually be harder to stop a reading when it's struggling; it feels like a defeat, like no one will step up. I have no question that we would have gotten to that point if we'd tried to drag it on; there were many writers I'd have loved to see at a crawl, but you know what? I'm pretty sure the scene can take care of itself. There was a sense in the conversations I heard and was a part of that this can be a start, or a link, in Seattle's ongoing literary metamorphosis.
Ending like I started: On a personal note it's been so. good. for me to be involved in something that ended at the right moment.

Fast Music For Heavy Fingers or Six Months in a Half Hour

or what happens when we commit to communication

1. Internet Presence/ts.
I just dug through a nearly disused e-mail account to to find a password for a social media network I haven't used in four years. I didn't. Find it. So I had to sign into the New, Improved Version of a site that just won't go away (you know which I'm talking about. it's switched its focus to "music" lately and seems like an unholy marriage of Linkedin and Google Plus any more) and that gave me to the wills of nostalgia and more than a few names I'd forgotten exist. Profiles that haven't been updated and therefore remain locked.
You know, though? After about three minutes it wasn't much hard to click delete on that.

More challenging is/was/will be the 8 years worth of Livejournal. no linking. you'll have to work for that if you want to find all the bouts of self pity, the odd misdirected misogyny, half hearted apologies, and lite-artist-as-a-young-dogisms that simply saying "livejournal" to anyone of A Certain Age implies. Making this whole paragraph redundant.

2. I have acquired another birthday.
You know what I always think I'm going to do? Write some sort of State of the Union*, some three paragraph synopses of the Ats that Here's Where I. This is silly. Not because I never do, or because no one cares (you clicked this link, so I assume you care.) but because I hold off on ALL OTHER CONTENT until I've posted the Big Update. Which is why three updates in June, none in July, a dwindling amount of content even with more to write.
Basically, when people write "I've turned _____ and I FEEL SO OLD" it sounds like a hack's game, someone throwing themselves into a mindset because they think they should. But I also get that it's not always the case that 32 feels just like 31 feels just like 26. Things change, good and bad.** But I'll give you a few more years before you have to endure some smotheringly smug "Getting Older is Getting BETTER!" blog about how spiritually rewarding it is to purchase couches.

3. Seattle is a sentence.
I have not quite lived back in Seattle as long as I lived in Bellingham, but I have lived in Seattle longer than I did in Swansea, and longer than I'd planned/hoped on initial return. This isn't some sort of broken-plans post,  I wasn't sure what I wanted from my hometown as an independent entity, so the result tends to be half boxing match, half dance. A frequent frustration being that much of the work of a grad program in a creative field is making connections. . . which are 8,000 miles away. Ba dum ching. So a sense of starting over that leaves me feel like Now, after an event or two, I feel solidly part of the Seattle lit community. It's a good community, usually. Now that I've done that work, do I want to . . . oh, who knows.
This ambivalence is fairly well amplified by reading through old blog entries from both those previous towns.

4. I quit my job at the Loft.
For three and a half years, I worked at North Seattle Community College tutoring English and Writing to ELL students, immigrants, exchange students, folks returning to school after fifteen years in professions that shut down during the recession. Arguably, this was the most rewarding, edifying ongoing*** job I've held to date. Obviously there were days it felt like work, or I didn't want to be there, but there was never a sense of futility. My co-workers were all engaged, considerate, often artistic folks and whatnot.
However, thanks to the repu-  state budget crisis, there's a spending cap, meaning no raise, no additional hours. Two-three hours round trip for short shifts became the sort of diminishing returns that I couldn't idealize away any more. I quit on good terms and have already felt healthier for having a consistent sleep schedule.

5. Now I work at a bar.
It's a good bar. The amusing nightmares of past bars can go ahead and remain in the past. When people say "I bet that gives you a lot of material!" the answer is "Sure, but only for the first year. Then it's a job-- you writing a story about data management?"
I like my co-workers, it's close to my house, I make close to three times as much per hour as I did helping newcomers to the country learn the language.

6. Rachel and I are still very much a thing, but are not engaged or married or living together or whatever your conceived "next step" is 
You are reading this most likely because you clicked on a link from another site. Believe me, you'd know if something big, good or bad, happened that way. Because internet.

7. I am slowly cutting down the number of literary events for which I am responsible.
Because I'd like to write my own things again, from time to time. A longer post on this balance may be forthcoming, but that's the sort of thinking that got us to this long, list based post in the first place. Never say Probably. Now I will take a bus to West Seattle, which is and is not the same place at all.

*by which I mean Graham. The UNION FOREVER!
**More specific and illuminating insights can be found in the self-help book aforementioned blog post nets me a deal for. Did you also know that change is sometimes hard, but often worth it?
*** So not including one-night gigs reading poetry, or the time I got paid by Southbank Centre to take pics of graffiti and send them to London, where they got made into postcards.****
****Yes, that was a brag. I still think that was pretty cool.

Slam Recap

For well on eight years, I've been a sort of tangential member of Seattle's Poetry Slam community;  slamming occasionally, meeting people in other spoken word contexts-- Poetry Night, Breadline, Cheap Wine and Poetry-- hanging out as my friends -- Ryler, Lohafer, Lashley-- feature at the Slam and so on. Reading at the open mic. Never being a weekly, but feeling a bit odd if I went too long without popping my head in. Consistently, every few years, having this idea that this would be the year I really polish up my set and start competing. Make a name.

Well, that hasn't happened; the urge never takes hold strong enough, and the longer it goes the less I write competitive poetry; I haven't ever truly written "slam" poetry, but I used to more regularly write performative pieces that could, theoretically compete. These days, while I believe myself to be a better performer than I used to be-- more controlled, more range-- I write less and less to performance, more and more to page or internal rhythms.
So it was not without some trepidation that I featured at the Seattle Poetry Slam last night; for me it felt both like a long time coming and a bit out of left field (despite the fact that yes, I had brooched the subject with them.) I did the following setlist: foxes of bainbridge/seeker friendly/story problem/rite aid/charity pledge drive/ambition is critical/love and breakfast/rules for riding the king county metro.
I felt good; got some good feedback. The crowd was small, but a few good friends-- Kris Hall, Bryan E, Chelsea Rose, Karen K, Adam showed up and that helped it feel like a party. As did the shots of fireball afterward. I need to cut that from my diet, or just stock up on ibruprofen and red beers.

Ambition still feels like home when performing it, and King County Metro remains an effective set ender. All in all I was stoked to read.

Yeah, no big revelations there. But trying to blog again.

"Does no one else notice the way you disappear whenever you go to the bathroom? I do, dude, YOU TOTALLY DO THAT AND I NOTICE."-Kris

Myself and Kris Hall are The Collectibles. A, erm, "troupe" consisting of two writer/performer/drinkers. This was our first show. We read inbetween a chilean sound poet and a darkwave/synthpop band. Thanks to Bemster for the video.

Lets say

. . . by the end of january, the retrospective. because so far, 2013 has felt like loose ends of 2012, even more than usual, what with burying Bana and the attendant services, emotions, and deliberate squelchings thereof.
I got up at five a.m. today to see Brielle back off to Chicago and then visited Greg in the hospital, and now am off work and about to meet Aaron to plan Greenwood without Greg. Its all a lot, and I also have lots of personal/financial errands to do, and I am feeling like a rag doll all over.

This too shall pass, I'm all too aware, but the amount of minutes I've had for blogging have often been taken up with staring at walls or fb scrolling just for the sake of it.

January 8th, half finished, in eight lines.

you will live and die in front of a computer, by choice or pay.
time spent summoning the angels will outlast the help they give.

mongolian names are harder than ethiopian, welsh, or chinese.
working girls/smirking churls/lurking hurls.

the habit of putting off hard decisions just long enough for someone else to make them.
have a good time at the funeral; you know what I mean.

you will live and die and this mist will feel the same either way.
you know what I mean. obviously, I'm being dramatic.

Craft and Inspiration

My fingers are splitting open,
oiled and pasted and drugged
and re-taped, my fingers
are seaming apart, bits of lemon
juice traveling into and under
skin that refuses itself.

At the table I read a new novel,
and think about sex. The novel
is not about sex, but sex, or something,
is inescapable these days with all these
pictures everywhere, all the reminders
everyone having these legs and torsos.

I have had sex everyday this year
but haven't written a thing.*
the walls are huge and blank
except the parts with pastel flowers
and warping and splitting,
like my fingers or the back of my neck
that she massages together every night

when two officers of the law, booted
and uniformed walk in and stroll about
the cafe. another one enters and I read
and read and read and don't look at
them or think about anything except
for craft and professionalism and
inspiration. definitely not about

unraveling, unfunctioning, jittering apart
or the fourth and fifth officers, two female,**
three male, all white except one guy
who looks hispanic, scratching their chins
and making crisp talk with the girl at the
counter whose lip rings avoid suspicion
because she is employed. In this moment

I'm glad to be reading, not writing,
because that is still less suspicious
and my hands are really starting to shake
and the novel is pretty good,
so far.

*not complaining. or bragging. 
**when approached by a female police officer, it is an excellent idea to consistently mention her gender when addressing her directly. If she is at all attractive-- and they often are-- be sure to mention that, too. They love that and will probably let you off with a warning. Also, if you've ever seen a movie with a ladycop, bring that up, possibly ask if she starred in it. There is no way that could go wrong, like joking about the handcuffs.