8/30! Addison Dispatch #4!

That molson ice pile by 306 hasn't moved for two days. The dog in 312 won't shut up

but a markered note offers to shut the bitch up in exclamation points. Seriously on

behalf of us all

shut the bitch

up.                                                    (with wire, with cloroform, with a baseball bat)

Head into the glass walls, Shane remarks that the max income requirements 

(a refreshing change)

would be considered middle class
(I thought we'd disappeared!)

                                                       in another city. In another city, I wouldn't need the requirements. I am no cigar maven, flicking his ash out against a movie about new york. A skyline in highlights that silences family who don't understand; like a movie star swoop from one frame to the next, the smith, columbia, municipal, hey.

The man in the stairwell isn't moving. Isn't smiling. Is yelling. Is swaying. Is dancing. Can of hurricane ice-- must be a different guy. Howling, screaming, dancing, the lady behind me asks if she can tell him to get the fuck out of the way or is that racist. The man behind her shouts "racist nothing," falls dick forward, they both hit two walls before landing. I shrink into walls.

Hammers on the left side. Drills on the right. Sirens every day. Not our fault. Not theirs.
Stacking piles of earplugs. New eyemasks. Prop up the bed with old hymnals. Shut down the door
with strings of tape. 

The walls are thin when you're trying to sleep, thick when you need help--
(is that you,
mark?

I was hoping you were dead, cussing out 

                                                     your mother
one last time in your braindead half-drawl

as they drove you to a 

landfill where scum like you grows 

                                                and

dies)

these heights bring out the best. Nod for a year at the lease-signer before
she remembers your name, 

(you are drunk, screaming down the hall

pulling

the fire alarm--
won't make up for no coats
or morning workouts--)

possibly for the best.

Minimal Transitions

Morning on a hardwood floor, last one in Brighton/Othello/Graham. Yes, Seattle has a neighborhood called Graham, and depending who you ask, it's where I've lived the last year, nine months. Just a memory foam, laptop, stereo and odd assortment of shoes, boots and blankets left. The impulse being to get crippled-nostalgic, or not at all. Drive through Columbia City thinking how I'll miss it when, really, just as close, but north. I guess the possibility of a short walk to Mel's in Hillman City will be missed, but not practically. The taco truck a bit more so.
The sneezing and packing and all that other stuff about moving I will not miss. Practically, I won't have to-- still not sure how long I'll be at David and Lindsey's place on Beacon Hill. Rachel (who is moving to Columbia City-- I won't have to miss it) remarks that I'm sentimental for wanting to spend a little time alone here surrounded by dust-bunnies and burned CDs. I don't think sentiment is quite the right word, but maybe. Giving transitions their due.
Lets see-- I was terrible for stats in this house. Brielle threw a few great parties with trees and dinosaurs, we had I think four Your Hands Your Mouth readings here, featuring the likes of Robert Lashley, Chris Gusta, Ryan Johnson, Shane Guthrie, Elissa Washuta, Emily Wittenhagen, Caren Scott, Melissa Queen, Rainey Warren, Greg Bem, Jay Steingold, Jessica Lohafer, Cate McGehee, Bronwyn Isaac, Jake Tucker, myself and probably some other people who are now offended.
Good, solidifying family time here. Lots and lots of The Office, Parks and Rec, Mitchell and Webb, Bones, Family Guy etc etc etc; dangers/blessings of Netflix. So much family guy. It's like eating air with sugar on it. Good seeing the first seven months of my nephew's life, day to day, as he's gotten fatter and squawkier.
Won't spend much more doing analysis. It's not like I'm moving to another country, or even city and have spent the last day, week, month, in a frenzy to ham-press hot new memories into a current space. These things are usually done drunk and I so far haven't cheated on Sober September. I'd take a picture of my empty room but the camera and cords are already up on beacon hill.

Petty Pains of Modern Life and Why White Zombie are the Best Band Ever

Recent life in Bullet-List Form

>>> Brielle, youngest of the bio-sisters, is somewhere in the midwest (not colorado, har har) right now, highwaying her way closer to Chicago,



where she'll study art and writing at the Art Institute of Chicago. The absence there is palpable, rather than symbolic, as I've been living in the same house as her the last year and a half.

******> Soon that will change. Investigating (limited) housing options now. They include beacon hill, chinatown (ostensibly), capitol district (what I'm calling that space between Pine and Jefferson and 12th and 20th that is literally Central District but increasingly co-opted by 'hillsters) or probably places in suburbs that are affordable but far away from everyone i know and everything I want to do.

>work. have had little luck/fucked up my interviews for full-time jobs. stop that, brain. >still, some digging and pestering have yielded some freelance tutoring opps, some freelance blurb-writing opps that are still in-process.

in.
process.
this is the frustrating part; waiting for writing samples to be cleared, etc, before I can go full-bore. Things I would have been more confident in before a summer of job-hunting. Confidence is key. Irony.<<<<<<<<

(Not much to do but keep at it. Dig in. Make it part of you until it doesn't have to be. All sorts of mantras to make the demoralizing slog of Craigslist and numbing rigor of cover letters into some sort of arch-masculine chest-pound.)



!!!!Tonight, however, Jake Tucker and I will drown our respective (and very different "sorrows" in beer at various town-based places and then I do a gig with Cristina Bautista's new band and Police Teeth, whom have been mentioned here before as fine individuals and purveyors of good-time, rootsy folk music, which is the best type of music for humans to make. Here is them covering White Zombie and then playing their own song about trashing living rooms and jumping fences:



and the original:



so good.

also: anyone notice how the ads for Colombiana are basically "check out this hot chick killing shit?" or perhaps more specifically, "check out this hot south american chick killing shit?"

Christmas Eve

Last night while the house was filled to the window-edges with people shouting over Elf, Dad and I hung out upstairs watching Captain Beefheart and Frank Zappa songs on Youtube.



Got a text from Spencer at 1am. . . Sardines in Cedar Lodge. . . too tired. Signs of aging?

Good lunch with Cliff. Basically spaced on trying to get in touch with most other folks I planned on. Still need to figure out a christmas-ready set for Sunday. And all that.

Swansea, days 6, 7 and beyond . . . !

. . . it should be noted that day 5 did not end at the Rhyddings in a pool of Graham-flavored nostalgia. No, it actually ended with Chris Samia and I at a dinner on St. Alban's road, hosted by our poetry professor and writer-of-many-books Nigel Jenkins and his partner Margot. The food was delicious, conversation both honest and inspiring and the wine was flowing. Oh man, was it flowing.

So it was after that I went to sleep at 1 am, woke up at 4:30am and couldn't get back to sleep. and Day 6 was the day I was to go to Cardiff and meet Anne and Howard Webb. Which I did. And it was nice. I just wish that my primo instinct the whole time hadn't been to find a corner of the pub in Glaedeou y Garth (sp?) and sleep a bit. Then in the backseat of the car and sleep a bit. But saw some amazing views of the area around Cardiff and caught up with Anne, whom it's always good to see. She dropped Howard and I off at City Arms in the 'diff's center, where we talked football (both types) travel (wherever feet may take us) and life in general. I switched between ales and orange juice when it was discovered that City Arms may have all the half-quirky, half-everyguy trappings of a big-city local, but it does not, in fact, serve coffee. In the last hours of our sojourn there, we were joined by Punk John for a round before I trained it back to Swansea.

the train ride was all sleep, and sort of surreal. in my current life context, I am used to waking up at the jostles of the 7, being shoved into a corner when the bus gets too full by an elderly vietnamese man who communicates to me largely with gestures. or the light rail, where the asexual female robot voice informs us "now entering. . . Beacon Hill station."
so to have largely the same in-again, out-again consciousness backgrounded by the landscape I knew well for two years and then disappeared from, the Welsh accents and all-- that was odd.
That evening I had a really nice dinner at Ian and Nessa Folks' house. While in Swansea I didn't go back to my old church (I chose sleep) and I missed seeing people from there whom I'd have liked to. But I was really glad to hang out with the Folks. I won't run down all the conversation topics, because there were many.

Tuesday. Tuesday Tuesday Tuesday. Due to phone-situations (and bad reception) I missed about 8,431 calls (fine, maybe 3)and my morning was spent packing. So it goes.
Dragged luggage to campus. Met for a too-short (not like the rapper) lunch with Wood where we talked music, home life and the time travel murder of millions (okay, maybe a little bit like the rapper.)
Dropped my shit off at Adam/Keiran/Jen's. Adam described his turkey-cooking efforts as "just bastin' away."
Took a quick run to Monkey (downtown) and met Theresa and Pat. Ate cupcakes. Drank coffee. Alun *happened* to be meeting Sophie there later, stopped in and said hi. That was person 3,456 that I didn't know I would see but was glad to (okay, like person 4. ish.)
On my way to the Cricketers I stopped in at Primark. I kind of regret not getting the rad coat for ten pounds, but am happy that a simple shoe-buy didn't turn into a spree.
Annmarie and I drank stella at the cricks. her new BF seems real cool. As does Pat, teez's new dude. All whatevers aside, good for them.
Weesh. My compulsion for play-by-play is wearying me, can't imagine anyone reads this all the way through. Next was Thanksgiving dinner at Adkeirjen's, then a round of drinks at the Bryn Y Mor for Punk John's birthday then various convos and mechanations to stay awake for the 430am taxi to the coach, where we were early, thus facilitating a walk around Tesco in the wee hours, Keiran suggesting various fruit fights.
Jen's sister Laura and I rode the coach together to Heathrow, where the last of the party (for me) disbanded.
the four hours in the airport did a lot to make me glad to actually get on planes and Icelandair's Iceland-centric charm did a lot to make the same three pop songs they played at the beginning and end of my trip a nostalgia-striker.

when I got home I rode the light rail, met Jake at the house, we had a pitcher of Manny's at Lotties and watched some Peep Show. I was back. Am back. Right now Brielle and a friend are making cookies in the kitchen and Jonny and Nat are watching Anime. I should probably take a shower.