Purely Medicinal (1)

I think it's that recent My Bloody Valentine album that came out early 2014 all suddenly, was the talk of all my feeds, and now I largely don't hear many people mentioning. Or a rough facsimile.

It's been a long enough week that Monday feels like, a week and a half ago. A WEEK AND A HALF! So much longer than four days. Timescale stretched by minutiae. But largely good-- have all the writing in for the Medicine Ball, so my curation/wrangling/writing portion is done, and it's on to the staging, blocking, memorizing.

The theme is (d)constructing Seattle. This theme, or a variant thereof, seems to be on everybody's mind, I just participated in an event called "Inumbrating Pinnacle," which was investigating the Now of Seattle, the Becoming, the Past/Present/Future. For that I wrote 7 pages-- 17 minutes aloud-- of new prose poetry. Still mulling what to do with it now. Perhaps it'll turn up here, in chunks. For Medicine Ball I ended up filling in for a poet who had to drop out. It was challenging to write to two similar themes in one period of time, but I tried to create content that varied enough in tone and subject matter as to be interesting (to myself at least, not sure how many people will see both.)

Now I go to Target. The glamorous Saturdays of weekend workers.

Please Don't Let Me Quote Pink Floyd Again/2015 in Review (two)

It's my thought that years, like decades, are best reviewed with a bit of hindsight. Just like 2010 felt like the last year of the '00s, despite the regenerative rituals and retrospectives, Januaries often feel like the long walk out of the last year.
Any sort of accurate hindsight doesn't tend to start for me until March or April, at which point the full stuff of current years renders reflection superfluous. Still, in the interest of head-clearing, communication, and a throwback to the days when transparency meant connection instead of liability, I always feel compelled to year-in-review.

So. 2015.
A) "A tough year of hard decisions that ultimately has spurred a lot of personal growth and has me set up for much more."
B) "If I could pay to watch 2015 die in a fire, I would."

Depending on my mood.
Let's start with the good, the potentially exciting, or the highlights:
Soliana Monillas: The day before 2015 ended, my Uncle Status was upped by one, as Amara had Soliana Brynn Isaac Monillas. Zion is stoked to be a big brother, and I'm stoked for more Uncle Time. Any year that neds this way has lots of good to recommend it.
ZAPP. So I'd already started to re-acquaint myself with the Zine Archive And Publishing Project, attended some meetings, helped recruit some writers and readers for the Xenographic series, and become loosely re-involved.
This year, however, both Emily Van Der Harten and Kathryn Higgins, who'd been largely steering ZAPP's fundraising/space-finding/still existing efforts both stepped back for various reasons. After talking to them both, doing some soul-searching and self-assessment, I decided to step into the position of Managing Director (informally, I prefer "Team Captain") of the Zine Archive and Publishing Project.I'm working with some great people and the hope and plan is to get ZAPP into a new permanent physical space this year.
I may write more about this later, but on a personal level, I am very excited- and challenged- by this. It will be a better use of my organizational/curatorial skills than co-running 2-3 literature events at a time to no particular end. It'll also help me build new skills in the non-profit field.
Freeway Park. In 2014, we played our first handful of shows, had fun and started to coalesce our sound. In 2015 we got tighter, wrote better songs and played shows in Bellingham, Olympia and San Francisco as well as Seattle nearly monthly. The Makeshift show in Bellingham, Charlie's birthday show at Rendezvous, San Francisco, and the gig at the Highline were particular highlights. Right now we're working on our first official recordings, which we hope to have out first half of 2016. Personally am working on being able to harness the shots-fueled, beer-fist swinging energy of live performances into a bit less comic (or booze-dependent) intensity.
And I really want to sell you a "People in Seattle Love It When You Travel." t-shirt.
Writing. I've been back writing for Nadamucho, I had a goal to write six short stories and have them all submitted out by the end of the year and that didn't happen. But I did write a few that I think have promise. And in addition to having The Third Best of All Possible Outcomes come out on Shotgun Wedding, the newer poems and writing are things I'm pretty happy with. But such things are ephemeral, we'll see how I feel when I check back on them. Either way I'm stoked to have some stuff to work with.
2015 was also the year that Graham got an I-phone. That is neither here nor there, but it's definitely a thing.

Okay. The rough chuckles.
There were plenty of them in 2015. From the supersweet pest invasion that marked the beginning of the year in my apartment (at a time when Rachel was dependent on the space for her air b'n'b biz) to my friend and Co-worker Beau Martin's suffering a stroke that will take a long time for him to recover from (it's going pretty well, he'll be home with his folks soon) to multiple of my friends and family spending time in the hospital for various reasons, there was a reason that my motto for 2015 became let the bad times roll. . .because at some point, that's just what seemed to happen. This at least gained some catharsis in the event Bummed Out, which could be accurately described as my first time curating a "club night." It struck a chord with a few people, and may go quarterly.
Which would be a weird "making a shitty year into art" move, but I'm rarely opposed to such moves.
The roughest for me personally was ending my 4.5 year relationship with my girlfriend in June.
The reasons for this, and subsequent social fallout, is best left off social media both for our privacy, and desires to move forward. I'm sure if you're curious and haven't had one or both of us give our interpretation of events, you know where to find us. I believe I made the right decision, that it's already better for both of us, but that doesn't mean it was easy, or casual or didn't make me incredibly fucking sad.
The one other thing I will say, is that in the event of such a momentous life change it's really easy to take a long view (especially when said event occurs mid-year) that places every event in the context of The One Event. Everything that happens being somehow related, directly, or indirectly, to The Thing and How It Was Handled. where the first half of the year was all building up to this, every argument or bad day was another brick in the wall,  that subsequently every instance of progress, (or regress) was a direct result of said thing. Which is reductive and stupid; while there was a lot in the first half of the year (and last half of 2014) that played into things, there were also lots of decent-to-great times. Likewise, while the remainder of the year can sometimes feel like aftermath-and-regrouping, there's also lots of stuff, good or bad, that would have happened either way.
I guess what I'm saying is that I'm also trying to be a bit less dramatic in my self-narrative.

Well.
That's a lot. If you  made it this far, congrats. You get a cookie, the metaphorical salutation kind, not the actual, delicious kind.

In short, yes: 2015 has been hard. I got lots to work on, both internally and externally in 2016, but I can say with cautious confidence, that I'm starting '16 way better than I started '15, and hope to be able to say the same next year.
And hope that for you as well.

Sad Songs/Make It Better/I Thought I'd be writing about 2015 (one)

The Beatles are on Spotify, and Pandora now.

I know this because of Caffe Vita, because of Eastern Cafe, because of passing strains in the mall, passing retail stores where very thin people feel like there's too much of them, even in the food court. 

I'm not complaining about The Beatles. . . especially when Yesterday comes on, which is largely recognized as one of the best, saddest, most heartbreaking but uplifting songs to exist. I get it. I'm just noticing that it feels like 1996 again, when the anthology and the "new" songs and Oasis were all over the radio and I enjoyed it all but felt disconnected from my generation. 12 year olds, 16 year olds getting really into The Who, often less for individual songs than the black and white footage of Mods. Were The Who better than whatever was on the radio at the time? Maybe, probably, doesn't matter.

Being so very suceptible to nostalgia, I guard myself against it. When I saw a whole generation sighing wistfully for something they didn't even experience, I couldn't help but roll my eyes-- I also "missed out" on swing dancing*, victorian chic, craft/scratch cocktail culture**, and many other things. Got a little into the Garage Rock Revival, but even then, the bands that felt like pastiche of older styles without any new voices tended to leave me cold; but then that's the point of revivals-- replicating, not making new.

So it's easy for me to steel myself against nostalgia to the point of cynicism. Ironic, considering that it's a lovely day, the songs are pleasant, (I really do love "Octopuses Garden"-- Ringo haters can bite it) but those sudden flashes of the "Free As A Bird" music video threw off my plans to start a semi-comprehensive and inevitably incomplete look back at 2015.

We'll see just how nostalgic I get about that.

*I realize some of these things were also just discoveries of fun activities, not necessarily nostalgia

**Or delicious drinks. Like the drinks, but you can keep the culture.

Evenings/Weekends/Holidays

Rain always on the edge of snow and my instagram feed fills up with pictures of evergreens mounted with shiny baubles, LEDs strung on walls, by windows, outdoors. Your friend (back) from DC, posting pictures of the airports, families together after three, eight months, one, three, seven years. Adorable slippers and sweaters we're told are ugly. In the spots with food or drink for public consumption, surrounding choruses of "how've you beens?" and "oh my gosh LOOK AT YOU." A lot can change in a year, sometimes nothing does.

I am skipping the holiday party. The religious reasons for the season are one thing, the faith swell, the secular stop-and-breathe-in, some sort of great siblinghood of humanity. But the scheduled reality of the holiday season is a dedicated break for everyone with work seasons recognized by the Government as Regular. Say 7-10am to 4-7pm, five days a week, give or take a project here, three day weekend there. The holiday party is, was, and will always be scheduled on a Friday night, or maybe Saturday afternoon, depending if the hosts have children, how many hugs they want to give in one evening.

This is why, anymore, as a service industry worker, when people ask me about the Holidays, it's roughly the same for me as Friday afternoons when a well-meaning will say "so, looking forward to the weekend?" and I make a decision whether to say "yes, sure" or whether to say "actually, it's my Tuesday. I work tonight, tomorrow. . ." But that analogy assumes a direct, linear work week, when often, shifts are scattered in such a fashion that there's no functional end of week.

This extends far beyond food-and-drink workers; think also of the Nurses, Bus Drivers, Cops, Firemen, Grocery Store Employees, and many  more professions that are so necessary to society as to not be able to shut down for more than a day (I'd say the food/drink is a soft-necessity; there's an amount of emotional labor that bartenders take on during the holidays especially).  . .

It is a bit surreal to have the lights up around town, the constants of holiday greetings sincere and ironic on every feed, the cousins and friends in from out of town that, likely, I won't get to see, the entirety of Puget Sound rushing to relax, connect, get Meaningful during a handful of days, to walk in, and among it, but feel so solidly disconnected; like watching cars on the freeway from Jose Rizal Bridge, wondering if they'll get where they want in time.

Those Lights, Those Pipes.

Top floor of Vita, as the day transitions from natural to artificial light, and the destinations of commuter buses shine. Mukilteo. Lakewood. Ash Way Park and Ride. Detroit minimalism in the headphones, where you see the inorganic turning grass again. Flowers. Never been to Detroit, so it remains unsafe from romantic narratives. After a full press of e-mails, clicks and drags, work that doesn't feel like work, but feels so much heavier than

work.

If I have to see another friend in the hospital I swear I'm going to

just go see them, what else can you do? Again again again. Everett. Federal Way. Mountlake Terrace. Atlanta bounces and bangs through the coffeeshop speakers. They've transitioned from day to night music, from coffee for business to coffee for necessity. Americanos are an all hour drink, eyes sleepy or engorged. Mouths dry from telling stories. In telling stories, in

sharing

concern I'm trying not to be a gossip. Trading others' troubles across platforms like handshake bribes at a party. Ways to make it to the invitation. Staying here with the mottled wood and metal pipes and architecture's dance between warmth and starkness. Outsidde keeps dimming. Fully artificial. The sky is so dark and these lights are so bright and the sky is so dark and these lights are so bright and the sky is so bright with: Tacoma Dome. Bothell. North Lynnwood.

The necessity of new satchels.

A day of meetings/meet-ups. This is more of a consistency post than anything, blog maintenance being not the strongest of my suits.

Got dressed when it was foggy out, and now I'm overlayered for late-September sun. The fall that never fully settles, just hits harder when it does. It's been sunny out long enough that a nice misting of rain is a comfort, like not being covered in a thin film of sweat once you step behind the bar. Thanks, five blocks from bus to workplace.

Upsides: writing this on new/old laptop. Suddenly, so many projects feel so much more possible, though I may grow to miss the time-crunch that library-internet provided.

Broadcast Coffee, Summer Day Date (Overheard) (rough)

Tables separation. Tindr date near the door. Hum of espresso. Pretending not to eavesdrop. Pretending to pretend not to eavesdrop. She is more attractive, objectively, than he is. This always encourages. I ate fishballs for dinner last night, and possibly will have grilled cheese this evening. These are the sorts of details people tend to omit. Or lead with. Who knows. This thing that everyone does, no one seems to know how to do. Dinner, movie, checking apps.

Now.
Now.
Now they are talking about housing prices. Each face drops, but they are new and do not have anecdotes that don't make them sound like they'd rather be home. A house in place for a price is
how much? My head starts to hurt. Neither likes this conversation. But they can't stop. The boredom oozes across and around the coffee shop. The decor seems somehow even more tasteful. The barista caresses his own beard in an effort to soothe himself. They keep talking. Really? That much for a room? Something about investments.

Other conversations wither and die. The boredom seeps out of the coffeeshop. Kills the trees in the park. Another building topples. Time, space, stop. I am slumped to my seat. No one will every make love again as long as the dry tongues of endless boredom and the fidget of anxious fingers.

A terror so mundane that nothing can stop it.


________________________________________________
the original draft accelerated the level of absurdity of the situation, and in this version I tried to reign it in a bit, cutting lines like "Jesus goes back and un-dies for all our sins," just because that sort of goofing tends to be a well I go to a lot. But I'm not sure-- kinda miss that ramp up.