June 2005 Archives

pack, pause. pack, pause. reflect. clean. pack. pause...

reflect.

I've changed so much inside these walls, funny how apartments (or houses or boats or tents or rooms or rooftops or wherever you call home) are these little coccoons. we morph and change, for the better or for the worse, we get more in touch with ourselves or we slip away from everything that's real.

I'm a fucking butterfly, man. really.

see, in the last abode, the house with the soon to be ex, I fell into the worst creative slumber I'd ever experienced. and it wasn't his fault, or because of the house, or anything like that, but it definitely was its own chapter of my existence. there was no KEXP, no ramblings in sharpie pen on the backs of receipts or in the margins of cookbooks, no dancing around naked and laughing. there was much walking in circles, banging my head against the wall, wondering why I felt the way I did, knowing I had to get out (of the relationship, and the house as well) and it being the most foreign feeling ever. the taking care of myself, I guess, which is the biggest difference between then and now, via the Golden Road of Being Painfully Honest With Myself. then, I was lining up yogurt containers and dishes through the glass so as to present the perfect facade. arranging the pictures on the top of the piano (that I never played) a hundred times. getting stuck staring out the front window onto the yard I didn't want, the garden I hated, the car that cost too much, the mailbox that held no promises.

I paced the driveway of that house one warm weekend morning, probably close to a year ago, towards the end of last summer. clutching the cordless phone and cracking into tiny, irreparable pieces. I don't know if I should have married him. walking down to that forsaken mailbox, warm pavement under my feet, so as not to let him hear. crying, scared, relieved, free, terrified. wandering back into the kitchen, avoiding his touch, avoiding his gaze. nothing. why does something have to be wrong? except it was all so wrong that it was tangible.

the solution for me then, the pulling of the trigger, was to have a one night stand with a friend, which rendered me a heathen and therefore solidified my exit. I couldn't stay there after doing to him what I hated him so much for doing to me. one day, a morning soon after the walk and the awkward sex on the floor with a man that was not my husband, I told him I couldn't do this anymore. he thought I was talking about getting up early on sundays or something of equally small importance. or maybe he didn't want to believe it because he had been here before with his last wife, just as his parents had sat, wondering what to do next. I blamed it on so many things, and the words fell out of my mouth and piled up on the floor and made no sense at all. I kicked them around and tripped over the infidelity, and we screamed and sobbed.

you know the rest of the story after that. a trip to seattle, the honesty in my notebooks, the evolving of my soul, the letters here at my fingertips. morning pages. lost looks out the window. sobbing, laughing, resistance, unfamiliarity, a sense of being home, acceptance with open arms. more sobbing. more lost windows. a year by the sea, which really wound up being just about seven months. victoria's emotional gestation period. complete with mix tapes and peanut butter and various forms of reckless abandon.

had I not landed here, I would have not had a friend for a landlord that let me pay month-to-month. I would have not grown upset with such pricey rent for my ocean views, I would have not sought out less (less really being more in this moment of the trip) and I would have not found the most perfect apartment in which to begin the next stage of my evolution. which is, by the way, currently swept and swiffered and lemon fresh with cleanliness, with plants on the windowsills.

so I sit at the kitchen table, surrounded by a list on the back of a bookmark, a wayward cd, my beach bag, and boxes. so many boxes, even though I've managed to rid myself of a lot of unimportant stuff. a truck waiting for me early in the morning tomorrow, the last load of laundry in the washer, and the note I've got to leave andy so that he knows I didn't bludgeon anybody to death in the bathroom - that it's merely splatters of hair dye that the bleach wouldn't fix. I'm ready for the next chapter, for tapestries and photographs and tea and homemade veggie sushi parties with myself. for naps with chacha and the rain on the rooftop and the stars in the summertime and the long city winter that will be looming ahead sooner than I think. for good books in the afternoon, and letters to the strangers I fall in love with taped to the walls. for christmas lights, jade plants and the perfect soundtrack.

always the perfect soundtrack.

let this then be the perfect opening line...

~vvb.

and it took everything I had
and everything I'd ever lost
to drive away from you
on this balmy grey afternoon...

stinging with new tears
turn up the volume
to drown out the thoughts
of wanting to throw my arms around you
until everything was alright.

I can't save anyone
anymore
I'm bleary eyed and concise
I live in a world
of mad scientists
and synchronicity

you're the earthquake in the quiet
the angry plate shift
the aftershock
the rumbling
the tearing apart of things
that's you.

and the philosophers say
that all the change is good
but I'll cry my tears
nonetheless
seeking salvation
in cvs
and trying to forget
about looking at you
looking at me
through sweet brown eyes...

so I don't quite understand this thing, about how things have to sneak up on me, on how I never get the email reply or the phone call or the letter in the mail while I'm waiting for it. only after I've forgotten about it, then does it arise with fury, or sometimes as quietly as the peep of a baby chick, both throwing me to the ground equally and knocking me senseless.

emails from TB, on a sunday afternoon in a hot kitchen. love letters I've written to boys in bands, answered so completely, so thankfully, so delicately. cds in the mail from kristin. a book when I'm wondering what to read next. fellow obsessors of the butter of nuts. a sonnet from a friend about being downright sexy.

I could go on and on.

I guess it's about me not choking the life out of things, floating instead in the beauty and translusence of surprises. it's about doing things and forgetting, doing them just for the good of doing them. Putting It Out There.

so here's to phone calls from long-lost lovers while I'm taping pictures to the wall. here's to stolen kisses in the middle of hanging christmas lights. to emails you sent without hopes of reply, and your favorite band playing down the street on a friday night by accident.

it's like throwing sparkles - if you keep flinging them out into the universe furiously, some of them are bound to land on you, even if it's not your intent.

~vvb, with a flourish.

driving today was like a dream
where the world went by
in a stream of sparkling sunbursts
and the voice in my mind
sang along with its glittery existence
and I thought about the windowpanes
and my red string bikini
and you...

and as I burst through the rooftop
exploding
volume as loud as it could go
sun as hot as it could be
time almost stood still
warm breeze shooting past my ears

it's time for new holes
and new dreams.

so there's a chapter being closed
half packed, half assed
stopping for naps and love letters
and whatever else I find along the way
struggling not to need as much
to not do this the way I'm used to
have less need less
to be point less
staring out at something
dreaming
divorced from my troubled mind
fears and lifelessness pushed aside
still and
dreaming

with fingertips pressed to the glass...

I'm walking around in circles, alternating between packing and looking around at everything and going, holy shit, I'm packing. and in between those are moments of tearing my glasses off of my face and crying when grace cathedral hill comes through the speakers, and things of that persuasion.

I'm bewildered and belabored, bespectacled and beguiled. I think I have too much, but there's nothing more to be thrown away just yet. and then there's the rickshaw ride, which I'll talk about more later on tonight.

maybe now is time for the reminder that moving is on the top five biggest stresses ever list? along with weddings and the fear of dying. it doesn't seem like it would be that bad, but then here I am, in my wanderings, bumping into walls and turning up the volume to drown out feeling lost.

and yet I've never felt so found...

you take out your wrinkled suit from the back of the closet with a sigh. the one you only wear for funerals and job interviews.

I sit under the only broken light, three rows from the back, and wonder if I'm in a dream...

she wears a dress that hasn't fit in years, but anything besides black just wouldn't work today. putting on mascara, detached from her very hands, trying not to think about the rest of her life without him. she crossed herself before sitting down for the first time in a decade.

and the children smile, playing in the pews, just like a sunday would find them.

and what if it was all over tomorrow, would you be happy? would you watch those last moments fly past like the pavement flying towards your face and smile, because you knew you had no regrets? did you say everything you wanted to say? or did you wait to see what happened...

maybe I'll be a missed connection. maybe someday I'll feel differently about that. maybe I'll call him next week. I wonder if this looks okay. I can't do that, what would she think? I can't say that, because then they'd know...

here are my dreams and my world, here at this keyboard at the end of my fingertips. slowly but surely the bliss that looms ahead becomes more tangible, as I rid myself of things in stages and tape up pictures in perfect places and send emails without expecting the answers. where I play pretend and make sure that I've got the tickets and the sparkles for the perfect city night. I'll tell you that I'm terrified or happy, whatever the day decided to bring me, whatever I decided to pay attention to. I don't watch the news. I ripped off my fake fingernails. I stopped carrying around shit from place to place that was just weighing me down and making me sad about all the things I forgot or wasn't or didn't know how to do.

today I have friends that I hold wrapped in my heartstrings. one of them is at the hospital, consoling a woman who has to make the decision to deal with her husband's bike accident last night, or to check out, whatever she can handle. the doctors are talking about making decisions. she's asking when he can come home. I'm going to see them all and hold their hands as my mother lies eight floors above us, poison feeding through her veins in the hopes that she'll be better soon.

and we were never the same again.

so I'm financially throwing caution to the wind today. I'm not making any more money than I have on any other day, actually it's probably less, but hey - it's why God invented credit cards, right?

reckless purchases between 9 and 2:

okkervil river cd ($12)
devin davis cd ($15)
two tickets to see jump, little children at the paradise ($45)

emotional well-being that's sure to come as a result, even though I haven't finished digesting all the music I have sitting at home yet:

priceless.

~vvb.

all the lights on and you are alive
but you can't point the way to your heart
so sublime, when the stars are aligned
but you don't know
you don't know the greatness you are...

~cary brothers

this happened right when I hit send. my heart skipped a beat and I knew it was for you. I hereby declare june 3rd as national you day. mark your homemade calendar, which I think about every year when I shop for a datebook and I'm tempted just to draw the lines like you do.

~vvb

usually when I go to a show, I start writing it in my head. either literally, or I'll take these mental snapshots, like when the feather fell to the drumkit at the decemberists last wednesday. or when I was talking to ed harcourt, knowing I'd be scribbling about it furiously the second I got to my car.

the wrens, however, have rendered me speechless.

so go put the meadowlands on as loud as it will go.

we stood wide-eyed in the bowery ballroom, now littered with cups and papers, looking at each other in disbelief.

me: jesus fucking christ.

kacia: I think I'm in love with charles.

I'll let you know if I come up with any more words.

~vvb

I woke up deliriously tired and smiling. last night I ran through the streets of boston in a monsoon, screaming "I'm a pirate!" at the passerby. my throat is sore, my eyes are shining, and my feet hurt.

I have seen the decemberists, and It Was Good.

it all started innocently enough, picking up kacia at 3:30 for our usual possible traffic / wanting to stand in front freakishly early departure. we caught up on the last few weeks and some new cds, and about an hour outside of the city we realized we were on our way to the avalon for the show. had it not been for the shitty weather, it would have been top-down-volume-up, crooning away with colin:

I know new york I need new york I know I need unique new york...

we stood in the rain for hours it seemed, only it was probably 45 or 50 minutes at best. I was, hands down, the oldest person there, with the exception of the parents who accompanied their children. this was, after all, an all ages show. and I do mean all ages - girls in the bathroom with punk rock belts and braces. I was just not that cool, not even ten years ago, let alone fifteen. it's the fucking internet. but then, here I sit, plugged in, ready to give you a saga about how back in the day... okay, I'll bite: you would have had to have been on the mailing list - remember those? the brightly colored cardstock waiting in your mailbox, the grassroots word-of-mouth that got you to the show, the buying of tickets at the door, and if it did sell out, you knew the band, so you'd always get in anyways.

I'll stop here before I start ranting.

we stood in the second row waiting, and as the room started to fill up, it became clear that not all attendees were here for the love of the band - it was for some the place to see and be seen on this rainy wednesday night in boston. this was illustrated by the discussion with our friendly neighbor, talking about expensive jeans and bands that the "indie" (and I use that term extremely loosely) kids only liked because they were supposed to, yadda yadda yadda.

me: I couldn't believe it, they played 16 military wives on a total mainstream station last night at home!
girl: yeah, I heard it played over some commercial for some show that was going to be on mtv...
me: don't you want to say militry instead of military, doesn't it sound weird to say it that way? (laughing)
girl: yeah, sure...

she had no idea what I was talking about.

I could write an entire paragraph about this whole part of the night, but like I said a minute ago, I won't rant. I've got lots of unattractive things to say, and my time and words are better spent painting the picture of a night at the avalon. back to the show.

our opener was a tough chick in her early forties who sang abstract love stories with an electric guild. strumming and smiling and looking out at the audience coyly through her mop of hair. warming us up, telling us stories, lamenting that that crowd was too young to know who donahue was. obnoxious boys yelling for the decemberists to start only strengthened her resolve. she was the kind of chick you wanted to smoke cigarettes and drink cheap whisky with in some old bar nobody knows about, as she crooned in the spotlight from a stool on the stage. the band (minus colin) joined in for her last two songs, which she told us at the beginning of the set were her skating backwards songs. the ones you'd request to find that special someone to roll around the rink with, and maybe get to make out with for a little while... javier and me boxing, but I've got this fish, and it was thirty-five dollars, and we named it snowball, and we decided to go steady but I broke up with him twenty-three minutes later because it just wasn't working. yes.

the crowed pushed in a little closer as the speakers filled the air with carnival music made especially for mariners of the high seas, it seemed. it was tangible, this waiting, this anticipating - like the ones who knew were on the verge of the greatest show on earth. my mind is calling out, I'm a pirate. I believe in robin hood. I'm coming to portland. just play, please. please.

all of a sudden, the lights went red and the church-bound howl from the opening strains of picaresque pierced the room. we all cheered and screamed and swooned. our magicians ambled out and the way they all looked for a moment in those red lights made me high. I was knee deep in endorphins and up to my neck in starstruck. there was no better moment than this, and it went on for two hours.

there were songs and theatrics and giggles and the holding of instruments up to the gods. the silence between the screams was thick with wanting. we hung on every word and every note and every second of everything, and during a full blown frenzy my world stopped and I watched a feather float down through the stage lights to land behind the drums somewhere. the drummer was out in the middle of the stage pounding on a floor tom with a tambourine while colin played jenny's accordion and petra tried her hand at the stand up bass. there were violins and harlequins and colin had us in his grip, controlling the volume of our claps like the pied piper of everything. he got us all to lay down on the floor, looked off into the distance at the imaginary nanny and went shh... they're sleeping... and we all waited for the release. I was spellbound and dancing and in love with everything.

I fall in love with everything.

they played from the albums note for note, fill for fill, howl for howl. when you raised your fist because you knew it was coming, you were never dissapointed or left without the searing screaming joy in your very veins that made that second the most perfect it had ever been. it was quite possibly the first show in forever that I walked away from satisfied, where I said they played for so long instead of wondering why it was over already, where I wanted more but was okay with leaving, where I didn't need a set list or a bottle cap to feel complete.

no, it was better. I got the show for fifteen bucks from the great folks at the instant live table after the gig. this officially trumps my best cell phone hold out saved voicemail song, for here was everything, and maybe even some of my screams. it hasn't made it into rotation yet, but I'm sure I'll hear colin camly repositioning his glasses as he stood with the look of being meant for the stage in silence. I'll hear the smiling at petra as she sang her heart out and the band mock-swooning behind her with love. I'll hear colin standing in front of me, motionless, then kneeling, while we all felt it coming without making a sound.

I will relive the show, and It Will Be Good.

and as I stumbled onto the sidewalk like I have so many times before, I ran down to beacon street with glee exploding from my very pores. screaming about pirates at the passerby, laughing uncontrollably as the umbrella turned inside out and pulled me down to the crosswalk, jumping in puddles and soaked to the bone and alive and high with show. kacia and I realized without hesitation that this was, in fact, the very reason that we were alive, and sang our hearts out the whole way home. it beat out the tired and the cold of our soaking wet jeans and the dried sweat and the jaded looks from the people who didn't understand why we were dancing. it beat out the boy I couldn't love and the things I couldn't have just then. it beat all the diamonds and the shiny cars and the hardwood floors that the universe has seen fit to grace me with in the past.

no, this was akin to the windowpanes and perfect shots, the unspoken moments and the secret smiles in the notebook that you shared with strangers by the look in your eye. the nights in the summer under the stars on the rooftop, when you weren't waiting for anything or anyone because it was all happening already.

and I've got the soundtrack to show for it.

with sparkles still in the corners of my heavy lids and the drunken ecstasy of remembering,

~vvb

to: kristin
fr: victoria
re: second chances

so in the packing / unpacking / repacking / disassmebling / regressing, I've come across some jlc, lovingly provided by you, stashed as "I hope I'll like it someday" and I think you were still in boston. my mind is open-er now. would a show at the paradise ellicit the same strict attendance orders as colin at the iron horse? like omg, you so totally have to go? I've perused the site and stuff and - well, you're never wrong. it just takes me a while to catch up. like how the decemberists sounded not quite right, until I saw them live. and how the frames sounded different after I saw them live. and how if I had to base my love of ray lamontagne off of the studio album, I probably couldn't. and please don't bash me about the celtic comment again, I was, um, drunk. or something.

~v.

to: victoria
fr: kristin
re: re: second chances

No bashing.

Let's put it this way:

I went to see JLC play Paradise. I was in pain. Was blown away by how *happy* they were to be doing what they were doing (making music with their siblings/best friends). Was blown away by the wounding beauty of Jay's voice. My soul moved outside myself. God said to me there, in front of the stage: end the dead, 3-year relationship you are in and (this comment edited to protect the author, but trust me, it's a big deal). I knew these two truths like I know my own name.

So I did.

I've seen the play probably 30 times and came away from each one feeling one step closer to who I'm supposed to be.

Go. If only because I can't.

:*

~k

(editor's note: as I recreate this interchange, the page I ripped from the door of the paradise that had the times for mark geary & the frames just fell off the wall. that's enough for me. well, I was already going to go, just off of the email, but you know what I mean.)

so if you're paying attention, you'll notice a $25.00 deduction in the blissfund. no, I'm not dipping into the till - here's wha happen:

uber-nice craigslister gives me $25.00 for my pier one mirror, in the form of a check, which sits in my car for two weeks. I add it into the fund total online with all intentions of cashing it and putting in the shoebox.

slightly weird ginny cheap cologne cadillac guy gives me $35 for my archaic twenty pound vcr, and dvd player.

realizing I need an air conditioner for the new digs, I peruse craigslist for one, and I meet tammy, uber-cool craigslister number two. she gives me the most well maintained window unit ever, with remote and all the original screws in a baggie. with batteries. for $50. so she got all the cl funds from those two transactions, and I had five bucks left over, which went to a latte and the basket on friday.

so that's the blissfund report. it's lower, but I've saved more than I was going to increase it by.

other site changes - you may have noticed (a) the commenting thing and (b) a general lack of postings by yours truly. I was starting to get spam comments for online betting and all kinds of general shite, and when I got about a hundred in an hour, I plugged in the commenting tools from typekey. if you're wanting to post regularly, please take a second to sign up - and if you can't be bothered, just tell me you love me (dammit) in my guestbook link over there on the right.

for the lack of posts - which I started noticing once my columns all disappeared as the days started to pass - there's been A Lot Going On. trying to find time for mom, packing, shows, laundry, the job, showers, and the like. the job and the shows (unfortunately in equal but opposite ways for both) are often the first things to suffer - but I'm getting back on track. I sat on the back deck at my mom's on monday in the sun for what felt like the first time in a year. it's just been so fucking cold. and everything else - well, two-thirds of my belongings are going to be at the space flea market this weekend if you're wanting. I had to make the call of either using my time to maybe make fifty bucks over a weekend of tagsale-ing and tagsale-promoting, or I could bring steve all my crap and get guestlisted for a couple of shows.

so steve's going to sell all my stuff.

but it all balances out... the things I thought I couldn't sell, like some old jewelry I was going to consign, a shitty old laptop, my retardedly expensive stupid purchase dishes - there have been people in my passing that need these things. a friend wants the jewelry and her son wants the laptop. the guy moving in, who just called off a wedding last week, loves the dishes - I'm going to pick up something funky at a secondhand store and find some silverware and cups and I'm going to have him pay me back for it. and dave kone is buying a house, which I'm seeing as finally getting paid for the hours and days and years of stamp licking, volunteering, sweating, crying, and general emotional angst that mighty purple and the space put me through when I was starting to grow up.

I am the karma enforcer. (say, I am the firestarter. you know.)

plus there's a guy coming to buy the printer, a chick for My Big Orange Retro Couch, and I think the only hit I'm taking to move is to pay to get the piano back to my mom's. I was setting it up via craigslisters, and she was just not having it. she'd rather dish out the $200 for professional movers, which I then in good conscience can't let her pay. she doesn't mean for it to wind up like that, but that's just how she is. I've learned to stop fighting her about this stuff. plus with how cheap my rent is about to get, these things are less of an issue. the cd I can't live without, the class I'm pulled to take, the movers my mother insists on - they are now a little more manageable.

I won't be able to catch iron & wine, because I'll be moving that weekend, but to be honest I thought it was a little too expensive anyways.

so that's the update on the blissfund and the blissful one. on where things are, where they're going, and what the fuck it has to do with flea markets and pianos and stuff. I've got this great pile of stuff I'm piling up to tape on the walls - a mishmosh of moments like you wouldn't believe. tickets and set lists and photos and passes and magazine articles and just general goodness.

I was going to list a word from our sponsors here to wrap up the post, but it deserves a top spot.

be well.

~vvb

all together now, send a collective sigh for my insane life!

(awwwww....)

so I bought a ticket to go see mark geary, who I love love love, but I don't think I can make the trip! shit. I've got about twelve carloads of stuff to bring to the space for the flea market this weekend, a piercing that needs repiercing, I need to go to old navy for some shitty tank tops, I have to pack for the retreat this weekend, and I don't know if taking eight hours out of thursday to go to boston fits on the docket.

fuck.

I'm going to do to the best I can, with a full report forthcoming on how it all turns out. oh, by the way, I'll be gone all weekend, I'm packing up my entire life, and I need to get some storage bins from ikea... I guess I could do that sunday. this is such a lame post. I'm just going nuts trying to fit it all in, and I really don't want the show to get cut from the plans, but it might have to.

by the way, I have got THE BEST PICTURES EVER from the wrens show and an awesome write-up about the decemberists waiting in the wings. more shit to get to. I have to stop and love my life.

maybe that was the point of all this.

these are all good things. my life is a blast.

I love you guys.

~vvb