legends told twice to television cartoons

hola, new york. it's cold here and i rode the subway beneath manhattan for a few minutes today to the 125th street stop and carried my suitcase up stairs into new air. it tastes different here and time is a little different too, but i'm passing it fine in coffee shops and bars. ollie is a few hours behind me on an airplane from denver and he's got the apartment keys in his pocket so i've been making friends with baristas and cold city streets.

and i suddenly want a hula hoop and balloons and a living room blanket fort (inside i'd find materials for constructing a marshmallow and toothpick cathedral and a pastel colored replica of the alamo).

 i found more of my jesus collection while i was home, but i don't have anything like this. i want jesus to tell me what time it is, especially if it's time covered in christmas lights.

 road trip destination: yeovil town. i want to see the annual balloon race

 california kids are alright, sure, but northwestern boys and girls are better. it's something in the air we breathe.

here, too

Hola amigos.

I am in Mexico. Specifically, I am in Mexico from December 17th through December 25th, 2009. Just so everyone knows I didn't vacate the country due to any kind of scandal or crime, and it was just as much of a shock to me as it is to everyone else.
What happened:

I have a difficult time saying no. Therefore, when a friend calls on December 16th asking if I would like to take the place of her other traveling companion who was unable to go due to unforeseen circumstances, my initial reaction is to say "yes" immediately. Throw in the fact that the person who asked is one of my mas bueno amigas and the destination is puerto valljarta, and I don't think anyone would have said "no".
When Tiffany asked and I said yes on the afternoon of December 16th that left approximately 4 hours to pack for Mexico, Seattle and New York (more on that in a second), get some pre-Mexico waxing done and tell mom I wouldn't actually really be home that night...it would be more like two weeks.

Somehow all of this was accomplished and we left Pullman around 7 30 p.m. on Wednesday night. Tiffany's mom, Linda, had been amazing and booked my ticket for Mexico earlier that afternoon along with making sure we had a place to stay for the first few nights. We rolled up to my house around 1:30 a.m., long enough for me to say hi to my mom and my dogs and then we hit the road again, getting to Tiffany's place around 2:30 a.m.
Our plane left at 8 the next morning, so there was no such thing as going to bed Wednesday night. Instead we napped for a little while and Tiffany's mom took two exhausted, stressed, snow-sick almost-graduates to the airport to catch our flights.

Five hours later, we were in Mexico.

We'll be here until Christmas Day, and then it's home for a few days to re-acclimate myself to snow and rain and cold, cold weather before I leave for New York on the 29th, getting back January 3rd. After that school starts on the 11th I think so I should be heading back to Pullman sometime around the 8th or 9th. So there it is. crazy christmas break 2009.

let's get ourselves into it

christmas party dance playlist:

1. Gotta Get Myself Into It//The Rapture

2. Paddling Ghost//Dan Deacon

3. Swing Tree//Discovery

4. I Can Be Your Lover (But I Can't Be Your Baby)//The Ettes

5. Party Time//Final Spins

6. Suprise Hotel//Fool's Gold

7. When They Fight, They Fight//The Generationals

8. I Am A Scientist//Guided By Voices

9. Ultraviolence//Heartsrevolution

10. Spin the Bottle//King Khan & BBQ Show

11. Dancehall//Sean Bones

12. These Few Presidents//Why

13. 11th Dimension//Julian Casablancas

14. Tokyo//Telekinesis!

15. I Let It Go//The Thermals

16. Brand New Start//Little Joy

17. European Lover//Little Man Tate

18. Jager Yoga//CSS

19. Moth's Wings//Passion Pit

20. Lights & Music//Cut Copy

21. Sun Hands//Local Natives

new things i've seen but don't know what to say

Genealogically

Family tree make sense.

Ghosts, you've got to slow down

before we can draw your filmy anatomy

into the pencil portraits

hanging from the necks

of other great ancestors.

My Father's Mother

Did you dance those 1930's blues

while Bonnie and Clyde ran the trail through thirty-two

making hot chocolate and paying dues

and they quit when you were six, before you knew

my father would arrive doubled in Delaware in February, 1952

with a twin who looked too much like him

and nothing like your father, or their father, or his father, and so on.

You tried to teach them French when they were ten combined

like you tried to teach me to knit, but my hands were too small

and the needles didn't fit,

but you had Johnny Cash

and The Sound of Music

in your record collection so we kicked our feet in time

to "Lonesome Me," and your ankles were slim

and the pantyhose still had the seam

up the back.

this is what my paper has done to me

Murielle is petulant and I'm clairvoyant

addition: what i look like when i can't write a story to save my life.

the danger twins are playing our second show tomorrow.

i've been reading biographies by and about david crockett.

pretty sure electric owls are going to be on repeat for awhile.

i forgot to turn off the coffee pot when i left the house this morning.

but i remembered to catch the bus on time.

my fingers are sore from pressing guitar strings

but i think i can at least think and play at the same time now

still working on singing and playing simultaneously.

one of us has seen the light today

howl! boxcars boxcars boxcars.

Short Trip

"Honey, can you hand me the garlic press?" Suzanne points to the red utensil on the marbled green Formica, next to the kitchen sink and just out of her reach. Mike turns to look, looks past it and looks again where she's pointing.

"Thanks. How was work?" Suzanne presses garlic into the pan of chopped onions sizzling on the stove. Mike scratches the dark brown scruff around his chin and says, "fine. Tom Cooper got fired today."

Suzanne puts the garlic press down and begins to arrange the features on her face to express surprise tinged with sympathy. Once she has moved her eyebrows closer together, slanting them up at the ends, and tugged at the skin around the corners of her mouth to turn it down she says, "Oh, Mark that's terrible. What happened?"

started something new:

photos of myself wearing headphones in coffee shops. should be an easy project to follow through with since I am always drinking coffee and listening to music. i'll decide what the point is later, right now i'd like to illustrate my opinion of this double shot white coffee latte:

very questionable.

Friend and Sister: capitalized relationship transfer

My grandfather would cross to the other side of a street to avoid a race, and when my grandmother included an African-American woman in her stories and half-written novels, they were always "aunt" somebody or other; fat, jolly women, usually excellent cooks and supremely complacent at being drawn into a narrow, two-dimensional role.

we played a show
a living room sing along
I like it and I liked this:
folk people and folk tunes and cover songs and shiny tattoos
and i like liking these things in the generic, universal way

on the other hand,
your sense of timing is impeccable and insulting.
stop talking when you should be doing everything else.

get the chemicals in

i miss all of this.

sometimes i even miss color combinations making my eyes wet in midnight parking lots and late night typewriter flights and leaving things behind accidentally on purpose.

and i am glad that letter didn't stick around long enough to get torn in pieces.

Isabel Archer and Dorothea Brooke are slowly providing my earnest endeavors to be "really good" with protection, forming a framework of reference I need often. Their characteristics make me want to define myself as a follower of their theories, to do something wonderful accompanied by Scott Joplin's ragtime music and rain sounds on a tin roof while I dance inside.

and i just want to go home before everyone goes other places.

once again pullman is turning me rotten and bitter, and i can feel my insides going sour at night while my eyes are closed and i can't sleep. i want to go home.

historic highway cargo ship paradise

Historical Nervous

hysterical, my mother in the backyard when she realized what i'd done
(what i'd done) dug up cat bones in soggy buried shoe boxes
penitence is what we try to say on Sunday mornings with tongues too thick
and not enough grape juice in that tiny clear cup to tell full the sky:

sometimes ocean side and sometimes barely out of reach
and when i stay long enough sometimes the sea buried bride
walks down in the dark off the cliff, coming slow
and without her shoes which were swept away in twenty six seconds when:

thirteen whirlpool children look up with dry eyes, bed rock side
and while she watched the water babies began to make soft slow bubbles
metallic and solid until they woke up on the surface and whispered, "we're cold"
they took her left shoe first and she gave them her right ankle and dreamed:

if she rubbed each one between her palms long enough
decayed corpses could come back to breathe and lay quiet at night
inside slower spinning molecules and southern city heat,
drowsy and fed by the heat from full stomachs and satisfied:

hard wired for soft sounds

this is what i look like when i study (people) hardcore

this is who is in my headphones now all the time

this is what I did today

-made a shirt smaller

-finished a shirt-dress thing

-realized the source of everything wrong in the world might just be the greek system

-analyzed. myself and dracula.

-walked to campus and back 3 times. uphill both ways.

-caffeinated my blood

-did something on accident

-abstained

-remembered what Mary said to do with the broccoli in my fridge

-read a biography on salinger

-listened to Alkaline Trio on vinyl (self-titled)

-got super excited. twice. want to know why? here's why:

ONE: space party on saturday, in my old house on maple street. themed parties will never die; the aliens who take over the earth in two hundred years will have "so you think you look like a human?" parties, butchering fashions of the twenty-first century and unintentionally providing some kind of realistic commentary on the general extravagance of our future-extinct society.

TWO: say hi! no really, say hi! we are going to say hi! November 7th, i think, at Neumos in Seattle. It is a tiffany-birthday extravaganza event and the Danger Twins will be coming home to riot in full force on Capitol Hill.

Demons by default?

both the second and third floors of the old library were disturbed today, to a degree i'm not sure either of us will ever recover from. the inundation of frat boys with their cell phones was the closest thing to hell one can experience while still alive, not counting college hill. wait, college hill on a friday night. That surpasses Satan's hottest hellfire.

Last of ALL:

RADIO SHOW///KZUU 90.7

FRIDAYS 6-8 pm (stream it)

THIS FRIDAY: CORDUROY SHORTS IN STUDIO PERFORMANCE AND INTERVIEW!
The theme: short shorts and never nudes.

NEXT FRIDAY: INTERVIEW WITH KENNY FROM DAPHNE LOVES DERBY AND WOLFTRON!
The theme: Wolf to your mother: werewolves, seawolves and maybe patrick swayze.

dust dust dust boxcars in dirty streets

She takes her shoes off right away, loosens each heel with the other toe and kicks until one shoe lands almost in the water and the other next to and behind it, just a little, dusting itself with a light layer of heavy sand.

He leaves his shoes on and his hat, he's always wearing a hat she thinks from a sitting spot close to the water while she tests the temperature and turns her shoulders away from him.

They've brought the things they need:

blanket: she spreads it unevenly, folds in the fabric creating combinations of reds and blues meant to stay separate, but he dislikes discontinuity and she's about to sit down but he pulls the two edges toward him and her knees bend and the wrinkles disappear in ripples.

half-full bottle of old ezra, 101 proof: he pushes rocks and mud away from a small space in shallow water and places the bottle inside the space, wet up to the neck, and it sways like it hears a tune and wants to dance.

speaker: he eyes the position of the blanket, the bigger rocks and the smaller rocks, her sitting pale arms wrapped around bare legs, and he puts the speaker down behind her and to the right and takes his time choosing a song specific to the water melancholy and eroding banks.

why yes, my hair is bigger than my head

i measured it.

just woke up from a nap

sleep in moderation

what i've accomplished in the last two hours:

60+ new twitter follows, so I can be up to date on what sarah palin, nicole richie AND the economy are doing.

ate breakfast--although cereal at 4 45 a.m. seems more like a midnight snack than a legitimate breakfast.

tried, but failed to come up with a fantastic radio show name. maybe it'll happen sometime before 7, but don't hold your breath.

medicine hat

because the high notes make my red blood cells bounce

new names and new faces on their way home

I'm getting a dog. Actually, it's a puppy with rabbit ears, and his name will be Uncle Phil. Or Chainsaw Rogers. Or Something Ridiculous Like That. Should I name him Jesus?

Also, I like sitting in the backseat, in the middle. I like being in the middle, not the front, and not first, and I don't like making decisions when every option appears to be the most appropriate. Take that how you will.

Summer seems to be getting exponentially better every week and I haven't thought about the primary colors I left at home for a long, long time. I do want the other ones though, the Unicorn colors and Garden colors and frisbee in the backyard and learning how to drive a stick shift.

List of All Sorts of Things, or At Least Two Things

I am the world's best procrastinator.

Reading Shakespeare out loud is one of my favorite things, but I need other real people to play the other characters. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

calling souls from an early afternoon pay phone prayer

Where do you go sometimes? It puzzles me.

Shouldn't I be able to keep your secret for you, since it does belong to me too?

Because what if unthawing is never a possibility,

And the capacity for denial folds down into itself until the layers are impossible to separate,

As deep as the bluegrass lexicon lake

We read about while we sleep, imagining permanent shore vacations,

Pale skin and the ghost friends who swallow simplicity and forget how to goodbye.

Marion, you are a witch. did you know before I told you?

superstition, ocean wind waves kill creatures and she’s a creature.

he will scoop the waves into his hands and fling them away. He will stare down water monsters and stringed sphinxes until the salt melts away, leaving a two second spray of sweet scent before it lays back down sleepy.

she will extinguish and wither. she will drown in air.

half moon bad news curved lights and sixteen henchmen ready to destroy the earth

Janae and Adam and I spent Thursday afternoon winning car races and escaping the clutches of Fidel Castro and his Cuban henchmen by chartering a yacht and sharing lemonade with a cop. 

We got lucky pulltabs. I mean, we're just lucky.

Friday I found treasure: exposed brick walls, hardwood floors and french doors. There's only one catch: in five weeks it will all disappear.

This morning Lenah and her brother and sister and I sat in our living room eating omelets.  

The music theory book I found at Bruised Books was fascinating until I fell asleep for an hour.

I'm going to see the Hangover with Javier and Ted. 

Also, I have decided to limit my capacity for long term grudges. Any grudges, really. The only ones still in effect have been held for a minimum of four years and I'm not sure I even remember what they are. 

Still, you can't teach a middle-age dog new tricks.

 

even the hangman has friends

thought for now

my skin looks scaly

i really would sleep in that rabbit water hole

ready to make beats in a graveyard

my grandma was watching her funeral today and sometimes she laughed 

ain't we got fun? 

at least I do and I like people who do and you don't and the whole thing went helplessly rotten

but i still listen to songs about sailing and dancing and northwestern girls.

late night train car dance party: see you at midnight in sequins 

I think incomplete secret stories are the best kind.

Last night we went cupcaking and sleuthing. 

First in the parking lot behind the bar where we spied on everything while we crouched behind the car and then jumping up we scared Friend so funny. I chased J chasing me followed by my cape I kept stepping on and flapping behind like bat wings. 

"you crack me up"

But we almost cracked, we parked across the street from a farmhouse and ducked when every car that couldn't see us at all drove by/almost done for when faces floated on the porch/rolled across the road and almost smashed the cupcakes but kept the whiskey safe/crept across a field and laughed out loud because the sticks kept cracking like gunshots and we were trying to be so sneaky/stealthed up behind a barn and into the dark to leave everything on the hood.

Finally: we flapped down the driveway, two big birds dressed in black and one with a cape.

"you should check on your car!"

samurai stories are out of this world and pinochle appropriate. ask about it sometime, but only if you get scared easily.

i've run out of capital letters

four day delays make for ninety six hours of writing unfinished stories and un-sendable letters, procrastination and list making. 

i have tangible and virtual boxes of nice things i've been meaning to turn into pictures and poems on a blue background but those will have to wait until sometime soon. i plan on spending the next two hours sprinting at a standstill.

before then here is the only part of tuesday i want to talk about in real life.

i didn't touch the water because it wasn't water, it was shiny green and gooey and probably had a ph level that would have melted my fingers off and provided food for a million invisible sea creatures that will someday grow into krakens, every one.

magician on the dock

he caught a starfish

today is going slow and even the cars are keeping tempo with the music on my headphones.