Month: June 2002

I just washed black newspaper ink off of my hands, having packed up all my breakable artwork, heirlooms (mostly teacups), etc. someone said to me last week, “you must have this [packing/moving] down by now.” to which I laughed and said that I’m a nervous wreck when I move. which is entirely true…at some point the enormity of the task just overwhelms me.

but I have picked up a few tricks: I can pack fragile things – esp. dishes – without a second thought. I know how to guess whether a box is going to be too heavy for me as I pack it, and when to switch from paper to sweaters in a box.

my life for the last 10 years can be understood as a series of moves…consider this an addendum to the “timeline”:

August 1992: moved from the house I’d lived in since 1982 to Seward Hall, UPS – a four-person room. left at the end of the school year.
May 1993: moved my gear into a 4(5?) bedroom house on S. Oakes St. I spent two months at home before I moved in myself in late July or early August. this dwelling became known as the Hell House. left when our lease ran out.
May 1994: moved into a 2-bedroom house on N. 11th St., on the same lot as my landlady. cute little place, if a little close to her kids & dog. left as part of a divorce dispute (hers), plus some additional craziness.
August (September?) 1994: moved into a 2-bedroom duplex on N. Washington St.; the landlady and her aged mother lived downstairs. very small kitchen, no living room to speak of. left after the 2nd year of our lease.
August 1996: moved into a studio on N. K St., in an old house broken into three apartments. bowed floor, miniature kitchen, some of the windows never closed. but it had a built-in bookshelf (eventually). left at the end of my lease.
August 1997: moved into a 1-bedroom apartment into a carved-up old house on N. Sheridan. beautiful exterior, but I can’t say enough bad things about this apartment. broke the lease.
February 1998: moved into a 2-bedroom townhouse on Division. the Grey Gables. there were some weird problems in the basement shortly before we left, but otherwise it was the best place I’ve ever rented. Tom lived across the courtyard for a year, too. we only left because the landlady had decided to sell the unit.
February (January?) 2000: moved into a 2-bedroom house on E. 62nd. horrid little house, neighbors with huge dogs and noisy kids. left at the end of our lease.
January 2001: moved to Lakewood – a 2-bedroom duplex. bland, bland, bland. horrible radio interference.

except for the last two moves, they can all be described as an enormous circle/spiral around the north part of Tacoma.

packing/cleaning
pull & pack:
– winter clothes
– extra blankets
– candles & decorative odds ‘n ends
– pots and pans
– less used shoes
– coats
– stuff in the back of the coat closet
– upstairs bathroom
remove trash/paper from 2nd bedroom
go through my files on 2nd computer – what needs to be saved?
finish packing my stuff in the 2nd bedroom
laundry
yard sale:
– begin organizing
– create flier
– cost of TNT ad?
leave message for Bob

other
finish & mail necklace for Elizabeth (9″ if with clasp, 14″ if w/out)
scan photos for K
research CD-RWs
send card to Wylie-Carter’s
updates to diversity hair site
plan revamp of zographis

I think I had a dream about Middle Sunday at Steve & Paula’s, and it was such a pleasant dream. I want to have Middle Sundays at my new house.

what was Middle Sunday? the third Sunday of each month, Steve and Paula would host a potluck – a whole day/evening of food and board games and word games and conversation. oh, and mah-jongg, lots and lots of mah-jongg. sometimes there was a theme (one October it was everything pumpkin), but as often not. I loved those days…even though I never really made friends with any of their friends, I always enjoyed the company, the games, and the food.

he’s not saying much, but it has to do with smoking – I wish him the best of luck in overcoming his addiction and in returning to full health.

I’m not dogmatic about too many things, but I have been anti-smoking since I was eight years old when my father died of a heart attack. I’m sure there were plenty of other factors: he was a little overweight and apparently tended to be an anxious, type-A person. but the connection to smoking is the one that was burned into our brains.

Because every time my mind encounters a problem it says “OK, I’ll just have a cigarette then.

a suggestion from someone who’s never smoked: if you can, when you hit that point, take a shower. otherwise, go for a walk around the office. both of those activities have served me well in handling stuck term papers, novels, and technical problems. in extremis, walking has been a great aid to alleviating social/emotional troubles.

and K, let this be a lesson to you. (I say that with as much gentleness and friendship as I can muster, when what I really want to do is smack you soundly upside the head.)

268 million unique possible productions of Dune cast entirely with bloggers and Jose Ferrer – this is sweet. Wil Wheaton as Paul Atredies, Kottke as Feyd…. (found via the wonderchicken, who was surprised to have been cast as the unfortunate Jamis)

Well, your smile is as wide as Montana
And your eyes as deep as the Caspian Sea
Well, I guess these these don’t count as the things from inside
But these are the things that made me blind

when I was a kid and a teenager, I hated summer – of course, I always loved the time off of school, but otherwise, summers were just heat and yardwork. summer in Southern California is a time when the temperature regularly climbs over 90 degrees and the air is thick with orange haze. I remember looking up at the mountains, and you wouldn’t have known they were there, for all the smog.

but here summer is a season to anticipate…after a long dark wet winter, it comes with clear blue skies and bright green everything. a very hot day is 85 degrees, and there are lots of nice days in the 70s. today, the first day of summer, the sun came up around 5 am and set after 9 pm.

and over the last 9 years, summer has come with a burst of sensuality each year. Greyson used to remark, when he still lived here, how as soon as the sun came out, the cute boys took off their shirts. 🙂

for the last 5 summers, I’ve shared my summers with C, going out to the river, down to Chambers Creek, to the beach, etc. in some vague sense, I know it’s summer when I throw his grandfather’s threadbare yellow plaid shirt over a tank top and jump in the car for a day in the sun. and that pattern makes me totally happy.

but there’s this echo of times past as well, the summers when Heather was the first thought in my mind – one summer when I eagerly anticipated each letter that had come from so far (would it have been email, had it happened now? that almost makes me sad, thinking of all the lovely quirkiness of her missives) – one summer when we went driving, riding beside her in her little old car, out to the Point for long walks along the beach and in the woods, then back to Cafe WA (long closed now) to talk and drink root beer, peeling the labels from our bottles. she worried about him, about their relationship, and all the time I was there, waiting, but too young/foolish/shy to speak my mind properly, her too young/oblivious/shy to notice. or something.

today we went to the river again – a little ways away from where I sat, I could hear drumming, and I walked up the river to see a young pair, a man and a woman – he with the fierce demeanor of a Celtic warrior, if in plaid shorts, she looking like Cate Blanchett, but a little younger, browner, in halter top and shorts…they were both redheaded. I stood in the river for a while, listening to their ferocious drumming – a little tribal, a little marching band. 🙂

and thought about 6 years ago, working at the CMT, the summer when I was so cruel to Kat, the summer that seemed to be so auspicious for Edith and K, the summer when Greyson and I were so close, and yes, the summer of my brief conjunction with Walter, that gave me the nucleus of my other, also-unfinished novel…. sometimes I feel that was the last time in my life when I was really wild and open to life, and the first time I had a taste of wildness without being dragged or cajoled into it by Raul. [edit: going outside and staring up at the almost-full moon reminds me that it was the same summer that I went swimming in Lake (Union? Washington? I can never remember which is which) after going to the $3 gay cinema (Wizard of Oz?) and Kat and I howled at the moon while bobbing in the lake.]

steal the kiss postcards to the one i
miss forever the one i miss forever dont you write
it down remember this in your head dont take a
picture remember this in your heart

(and of course there was the whole Joy thing, but that was really at the end of the summer, and it seems vague and insubstantial now anyway.)

so go out and howl at the moon. I’ll be out dancing on the back lawn of a house I hope never to see another summer in.

before I take off to the river (goodness, what a lovely day!):

little dinky case mods

“dot leaders” for tables of contents, no tables

Oly Gay Pride event

I love taking pictures. for so long, I’ve been so lousy about getting film developed (there’s a roll sitting on the table by the door that’s been there for months, at least) that I’ve forgotten how much fun it is to take stacks of pictures. I am reminded of something I’ve heard photographers say – that you have to take a lot of really bad pics to get the one good one. and my own experiences with the mavica seem to be bearing that out. but hey, floppy disks are cheap! and maybe I’ll look into taking Benedetti’s digital photography class one of these days.

the cats and Point Defiance park…plus a squirrel. also, a snapGallery version of my jewelry. (I’d like to modify snapGallery to use better CSS – external stylesheets – but I’m a little afraid of crawling into the code) yes, K, I am going to scan those photos for you. (what size/rez do you want?)