June 17, 2010 at 2:39pm
sometimes he does this thing where he raises his arms to the ceiling, fingers outstretched, and pretends he’s flying.
he raised his arms, Superman-style-but-lying-down, and started steering. his arms moved slightly and together up and up and then slightly to the right and almost-imperceptibly down again. ssshhhhhhhh whhhhssshhhhh, he said, and then (as an aside): “that was a backflip.”
“are you flying?”
“you wanna come?”
“ok,” I said, skeptical. My left arm raised to join his right, and I hung on lightly. Up and up and slightly to the left and almost-imperceptibly down again. ssshhhhhhhhh wwwwhhhhhhssshhh shhhhh, he said, and re-centered in a smooth straight path before we brought our arms down.
my eyes teared up at his lovely playfulness, his reverent silliness. we were quiet for a while.
you’re going to make an amazing dad someday.
May 16, 2010 at 11:54pm
Again, I don’t know why I’m doing this. But the canvas is brighter blue now, and the decayed ropes are gone. The outboard will be working soon.
And I’ve started daydreaming about breaking it to Dad.
And the boy has been fantastic about it, scrubbing and helping and cheerfully hosing things off. If he thinks I’m crazy, he’s not showing it.
And for some reason, I keep wanting to get down there: wanting to be on the water, wanting to work on the teak, wanting to get things fixed and shiny. It feels good.
April 4, 2010 at 6:36pm
don’t ask me why I’m working on this paper again; I won’t be able to give you a coherent answer. This picture is from the first time I was working on this paper, during one of those finals weeks when I didn’t have time to sleep and so, at night, I moved all the papers and books and notes to the bed to work there—which was almost like sleeping—until eight am or so, when it was time for coffee and migrating back to the big desk in the living room.
God, my apartment had three whole rooms. I hated it—the windows fogged up all winter, the floors sloped in, and the crazy cat-people downstairs were always luring skunks around with their giant pans of catfood—but it felt like home, surrounded by these pieces of paper, doing work that I knew mattered, though I couldn’t explain to anyone why.
why am I working on this paper again?
- it makes me confused, frantic, restless, ambitious. It makes me explain things to people whether or not they want to listen; it makes me want to write more and better and more importantly.
- it makes my head race with sorting-out thoughts; it makes me want to stay up all night writing; it makes me want to write to my advisers; it makes me wonder if one can put together PhD applications surreptitiously.
- it makes my head hurt; it makes my fingers move.
- God dammit, it makes my feel like myself. my broke-ass, non-careerist, intellectually ambitious, argumentative, pain-in-the-ass self.
- I get to spend time with this and this.
don’t ask me that.
March 31, 2010 at 5:30pm
Today is Elliott Bay Book Company’s last day in Pioneer Square.
- Every year at Christmas, when my aunt and cousin came to town, one day was Elliott Bay day. They and I and, eventually, my brother went downtown and dispersed through the levels and cul-de-sacs of books and hardwood. We’d set a time to meet—say, two hours from arrival—and meet by the Young Adult books at about that time to confer about how much longer we wanted to take before heading downstairs for lunch. It was our day sans parents, our day to wander around the bookstore luxuriously. It always felt decadent, these hours dedicated to wandering, browsing, leafing, listing.
- I’ve worked about two blocks South of Elliott Bay for over a year now. I’m a regular at the cafe downstairs. When I’ve been on the verge of tears because I thought I was in over my head; when I’ve doubted by identity because I missed academic thought; when I’ve just needed a friend at the end of a too-long day—it’s where I go. I buy a programming book, I browse the philosophy section, I compulsively buy poetry books and wade through the bargain section, emerging calmed and poorer and without a clue which full bookshelf will make space.
- Yesterday morning I walked in to get a work-bookclub-book. Walking through, I realized that this place will not be there. It’ll reopen in a few weeks in Capitol Hill, but it won’t be the same. I found my book, I touched some poetry books, I gazed at some blank books, and by the time I was checking out, I was obviously weeping.
The barista downstairs gave me a tissue with my coffee.
Related.
March 24, 2010 at 3:00am
one
It must have been sophomore year of college. I built a castle in the air: a tiny apartment on Capitol Hill here in Seattle. It was a studio with just a bed (no frame) and a sea-green bookshelf. I was poor, but I found enough for dance classes. I think I wrote. It wasn’t all that complicated a thing, as castles-in-the-air go, but it seemed vastly far away, unattainable.
I don’t make much, but I’m back in dance classes. I’m a regular at the coffee shops around here and downtown; I walk over to downtown Capitol Hill to drink and eat and dance. This apartment has my bed and two bedside tables and a chair and three whole bookshelves.
This spring, I’m going to paint the little one (the poetry bookshelf) sea-green.
February 27, 2010 at 7:38pm
picture from this week. journal from two years ago:
I found myself at Victrola, where I spent so much time sophomore year with the cute boy and his self-righteous superiority. Oh, but he was so cute and kissed so well and introduced me to Victrola and their Colonille tea. I sat and tried to figure out how to read and people-watch with my new glasses without either being constantly fuzzy, wanting to underline most of Nussbaum’s words and nearly crying every time a new track from Beck’s Sea Change came on. Anyway, being there felt good. I love the feel of their brown-sugar sugar-cubes in my mouth - once Alice and I sat next to the milk/cream/sugar bar and ate them all. Every last one in the bowl, sheepishly.
They don’t serve Colonille anymore, which makes me sad. But I live near there now, and they still have brown sugar and it still makes me think of that damned boy. Man, was he a good kisser.
January 30, 2010 at 9:07pm
My laptop on my lap, sitting in bed (I hate chairs; in this apartment, I don’t have any). This is my spot. Plus,
I’ve got my books. The one pictured here is The Girl of the Limberlost, by Gene Stratton Porter, copyright 1909. My copy is from around then, it’s in mediocre shape, and I’ve been reading it since I was thirteen. It’s not that it’s such a great piece of literature—it’s that it’s a great friend.
It’s been a rough week, a painful one for putting myself on the line and being hurt, but a few minutes with Elnora and her moths and her violin and I’m in turn-of-the-century rural Illinois (a glorious time/place in which the quantity of housework made it less-than-feasible to obsess about the cuteness of one’s rivals on Facebook).
January 17, 2010 at 11:16pm
At Bauhaus, where I’ve:
- fallen in love once and infatuation at least twice
- written countless angsty journals and a few good sentences
- plugged in my laptop when I blew both fuses in my dorm room
- written papers and exams and finals
- stayed until closing
- learned to smoke cigarettes
- started drinking black coffee
- returned nearly every time I was in town
- people-watched
- run into exes
- been on first dates
- graded papers and exams and finals
- talked to strangers
- had Kool-Aid in summer and hot chocolate in winter
- sought refuge when I didn’t know where else to be
Walking around Capitol Hill on my way to Bauhaus, I’m confident and sure of myself in a way that’s rare these days. I belong here—I’ve never been a “regular,” but I love the anonymity of that—and it may be one of the places I feel least self-conscious, least like an interloper. It’s my damn coffeeshop, and I’ll stare vaguely out at the rain if I want to.
January 10, 2010 at 2:33pm
The view from my parents’ back deck last night. If you’re having a conversation with my father around sunset, he’s likely to interrupt mid-sentence with “look at the sky!”, after which we all shuffle around the dining room table until we can see out the glass doors. We oooh and aaaah, and then someone (or everyone) gets cameras and phones out, and we file out onto the deck in our sock feet and try to capture some fraction of the spectacular color.
January 2, 2010 at 6:08pm
I only remember one dream from the year I lived on this dock (the shadow-boat at the top of the picture is the one I lived on, actually). I dreamt that Orca whales had come through the locks into Lake Union and started some kind of inter-pod altercation. Of course (because how else would they do it?), they fought by getting onto boats and fighting upright while standing on their tails. Obviously, given the weight of whales and the violence of their movements, this was detrimental to the stability of the boat. In the dream, I was lying in bed listening—terrified—to the Orca-fight on deck, then got out of bed to check the boat, only to discover that the small holds under the benches were filling with water. (Dreaming you’re lying in bed, then dreaming of getting out of bed, is possibly the most disorienting form of meta-dream.)
It is way funnier from four years away.
