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.