It's the invariable water cooler talk on Monday mornings, not to get ahead of the fact that it's 11:00 on a gorgeous sunbeams-sliced-through Sunday morning, and the whole big, beautiful day is looming ahead of me. I don't know what to do with myself. I've been up since 9 and I can't quite tell you what's happened since then - I know. I showered, and put the bathroom back together from cleaning it. I got dressed. I stripped the bed and hung everything out on the railing outside so that it could get new air, and put the sheets and floormats in the wash. I taped leaves up onto the windows, and washed last night's dishes. And I've been all kinds of derailed. I woke up this morning and it took me a half an hour to physically get out of bed, which I only did because the cats were screaming at the tops of their little cat-lungs. I couldn't not get up because it was hard, or because I wanted to sleep more - I woke up so excited that I didn't know where to start. And the possibilities, while technically endless, weren't overwhelming or anything: straighten up, go get fresh herbs for sauce... read. Write. Coffee, maybe here, or Ladro, or the new Vivace. Gym? Nah. Tomorrow. Go pick up the flash at Glazer's. Cut strawberries. Take a walk down Broadway. Get a movie for Super Sunday Slackfest (our new weekly installment here at the Aloha Cabana). Start thinking seriously about Halloween. Put the Tom Brosseau stuff up on the walls someplace, maybe up over the fridge in the kitchen.
So, here I am. This is the writing part. Glossy cats napping all over the place. Wrens t-shirt. Hi.
And I don't even know what to say. Well, I do, I mean, I just did - and it's still a continuation of the thing that kicked in last week that hasn't left, where the voltage meters swelled and the Universe started throwing me hearts - it hasn't ended. Every day I try to stay tuned into all these little intuitions, and it's working. And it just gets better, and better, and better. It's "awesome", and by "awesome", I don't mean the band "Awesome", I mean "totally fucking amazing and righteous and it seems like awesome has become my new favorite word" time. Resting state of completely psyched has been achieved. And I'm sure as the Sunday morning stretches out languidly into early afternoon that dips and lows will come eventually, but - what if it pretty much stayed like this? Like that cutout Kristin has, if the best day of my life just kept repeating itself over and over? It seems like my job might be the only forced-in jigsaw puzzle piece, but I'm boomeranging that back out into the Universe so It can take care of things. I'm working, and funding this great crusade called My Life. And I'm trying to listen.
So Wednesday... the pledge drive was amazing. It's so amazing to be such a part of a community, to be making a difference, to be just doing what I love and having it be part of this big, amazing whole - it was just tremendous. The pledge drive, in and of itself, was always a drag to listen to - but this time... it just was different. I was hanging on to the daytime shows, running to the bathroom and back in time to hear the countdown (which I think is what really turned it into a pleasurable event moreso even) and spending the in-between cheering them on. Next time, I'm going to do like, three shifts instead of just one. It was such a privilege. So, that bled into Thursday morning, and driving Kristin to the airport, and then getting out the door to work late, working... coming home and feeling like a cat that had been let out into a different room. It was fine, and good even, but - I explained it to Kristin like when you take acid (literally), and the end comes, and the walls aren't melting anymore as much, and you can have full thoughts again without losing them, and you're like, okay. I can like, go to the grocery store - and you go, and it's like, not good. You are definitely not done tripping. So, absent the consumption of actual hallucenogene, that's how it was until... sometime yesterday, I think. I didn't realize how much Kristin's disciplines and realities ground me, and keep me in check, like a sunrise and sunset, or coffee in the morning and herbal tea at night, or... just - a meter, I suppose, to put it, I mean, on top of all the encouragement and love and warm arms all folding around - what I found out is that she helps me in ways I don't even know, just by like, being around. I call that science experiment time, all watching my subconscious unfold and react and stuff. Petrie dish, Seattle style.
So Thursday night - cripes. I was up until like, almost one in the morning, watching ten episodes of MSCL in a row, eating cake frosting from the cookies I made for the pledge drive (because I didn't have any money left, but I had like, gingerbread cake mix and stuff), and I didn't like the way they came out, and I didn't like how I felt from eating poorly, and at the same time, I was like, you're just like, having one of those times. It's okay. You're okay. Put the frosting away, but just like, let this happen. And I did. And it did.
Friday found me writing notes to myself in my email, like "radio free Seattle" and taking ibuprofen just because I was hung over from like, a big purge-y gorgeous late night just getting all spun out (in a good way) over everything and nothing in particular. Oh, and I did do a basic card reading on myself, because the episode came on where Amber lends Angela her cards - and I'll just say that things are as they should be. I have beautiful things at my disposal, a warm and encouraging environment, a looming period of welcome solitude, and big sweeping predictions and blowout future cards, just like I always get. Are they major arcana or something? I don't know. But my last future card is always the Wheel of Fortune or something, all huge and looming. And this case was no exception, asking about love, boy-girl love, just like, kind of making sure I wasn't going to be a cat lady or anything.
So, all hungover like that on Friday, impossible to stay focused, hanging on to every minute of the countdown, cheering on the djs, who wound up breaking - breaking, in like, the biggest most hugest recession ever - the overall goal, which they had metered and figured out to come within 10 - 20% of to still call it a success. Broke it. Blew through. It was fucking crazy. No joke, and don't make fun of me or anything, I was right on the edge of crying. I did, in fact, feel the sharp hint of new tears, I paused for effect because the moment just called for it, and it - it was amazing. Cheryl was emailing me frantically back and forth - I'm like, you go girl! and she's like, don't send any more money! Because they know, how hard it is not to. You get all caught up and go, I could just like, send them my whole credit card! Yes! And it makes sense in that instant - and it's so funny that she can plug into that and call for me to not respond. So funny.
And I went down to the meeting that night soon after, covered in buttons, wild eyed, in my dad's cold-weather military issue coat and a scarf and boots. A chill had settled down, and I decided to embrace it with layers and all on foot. The meeting was great, and a few people invited me out for coffee afterwards, so we walked up Broadway (down Broadway?) to the Vivace stand and sat out on the plastic chairs that were less cold and laughed and drank white velvets. It was divine. I just felt so - in my element, so home, so complete. Laughing, fake smoking, lattes all late at night - it's getting to the point where I recognize people and I even remember their names sometimes. It's awesome. So, with Jeff I think? And Gavin, and Sarah, and soy white velvets, and the nighttime - I left them after about an hour and walked up to Neumo's, because I had left my credit card there during JITMAN buying Red Bulls at the upstairs bar. Turns out the kid working there is another person I know from Mondays (because we're like, everywhere, literally) and after I get my card he gives me a ticket to go in. And I'm like, can you do that? And he's like, poof, making this big funny motion with his hands, and gives me a ticket. He wears this great hat all the time, and has a great dismount from his bicycle. I think Black Kids were playing, but not until later on, closer to midnight, so I stood around for a song or two and then headed back out.
People like, talk to you here. The gay guys walking a few blocks with me for real-time directions, talking about the East, and Vermont. The British kid outside Neumo's, who was about to have something big happen, all smoking and excited. People all spilling out of and into clubs, gathered in groups on corners at intersections, some smoking, some not, lots of headphones, lots of smiling. I walked the wrong way and cut around a few loops going between Pike and Pine to orient myself, and then finally figured out I had been like, a block from Broadway the whole time and headed back up (down? Up.) towards home. I stopped in Everyday Music, which is open until midnight like, every night, literally - and managed to get The Crane Wife and Putting the Days to Bed for $4.00 each - score! - and took my time all ambling back up the sidewalks.
There's this art installation (which you saw, the thing I posted on YouTube about the TVs) in a couple of the storefronts as you get to Dick's, across the street - the most notable of which are these garish ballerina-esque dresses, all poofed out and on a system of pulleys with shoes hanging down, that dance around the empty space. Some go up and down, ballet slippers briefly brushing against the ground for a moment, and some go side to side, and they just all do this endless metered dance, so much gentle movement all at once - and it just makes you pause, and I always love catching it when I'm over there. It looks better at night, just like a lot of other stuff does. But I saw the kids from earlier across the street, and I thought, I could just like, do that thing I do, and go over there and eat french fries and get validated by some testicular hormonal level of whatever, or I could not, and let these guys like, bond, and do whatever it is they're doing - so I stayed. And in the next instant there was a huge pile of trophies and disco balls, all stacked up huge in the littlest window, and past the doorway there was about 8-10 televisions of varying quality and size in the next storefront. So I stood there and leaned on a lamppost and taped it with my little camera. I kind of felt like the kid that taped the plastic bag in the wind in American Beauty, but I just - I had to get it, and it didn't even do it justice, because it was so amazing and so beautiful - and it just turned my head inside out, trying to watch them all at once, because they were all traveling and moving, all a different scene - one from the side of a boat, all ocean super early in the morning, all faded; a few from the window of a train: one getting the train and the people looking out, one going through what looked like parts of Manhattan kind of, or just a city - one all early seventies looking focused far away in the distance, one from the back of a rickshaw... it was amazing. And so you can't see all that in the video, but I think I must have sat there for about five or ten minutes, just standing there, watching.
And so it all circles back to the intuition thing, and all the amazing stuff that's there that I get to see if I am open to it, the gifts I only get if I make myself ready for them - and I thought it was about arranging things just so, that I had to have a clothesline of postcards clipped to it and have read certain books to be okay - and those are good things, and I want to do them, but that's not the It, you know? So I kept doing it, all the way home, and kept getting little rewards like yesses in my bananas, like the pictures I shot walking back, and standing watching the drag burlesque show through the window of Julia's, and stars, and words scratched into the sidewalk, and the warming of inanimate objects through knitting. It may sound like a pile of - I don't know what, to anyone else, but - it was all so beautiful. I almost couldn't stand it. I haven't read The Unbearable Lightness of Being or whatever it's called, but those are the words that rang through thinking about it just now. It was so great I almost couldn't take it, and not in the psychobabble fear of success way.
It was just so totally awesome.
And then yesterday, and and and... stepwork, all under a blanket on Gloria's couch, eating the greatest zucchini bread (oh yeah, I made bread until like, one in the morning, and watched more MSCL episodes, and had a good kind of late night, because it was Friday) after sleeping in a little too late. Coffee. Always all this coffee all over the place. I haven't eaten yet today, whoops - side effects of Perpetual Excitement(TM). Occupational hazard. So Gloria, all understanding and great, and real, and telling me John Roderick looks like my dad from pictures in the mid-seventies, and talking about blowing guys in bands in the backs of vans and wondering why we were the other ones and not the girlfriends... she's fucking fantastic. Lists. Listening to the Long Winters, just because I hadn't rolled around in this album just yet. So good! I have it on again now. I feel like I'm writing a letter to someone all of a sudden, but nobody in particular comes to mind. So I came back here and cleaned, and was Extremely Satisfied by doing so, and got my laundry going, and made the Executive Decision to have popcorn for dinner and to watch some more episodes of MSCL that night (it's the running theme this weekend, all heart catching when Angela puts her hands out on the bike going downhill, talking about life being enough in those moments, and how I do that on the back of the scooter with Kristin; and about Rayanne in rehearsals for the school play, about missing the important parts from not paying attention to life happening, and like, almost being in tears)... all these long sentences. Editing pictures of Sean Nelson and sending them to him, giggling on the couch and on emails with Kristin, who was suddenly a few thousand miles away and then back again so quickly - and then that's now.
That's the last like, few days. Of my life.
How am I supposed to answer when they ask about my weekend without saying all of that?
I know. I'll just tell them it was awesome, and that I did some stuff around the house, and got some new albums, and fell in love with my neighborhood. And white velvets. And candids of boys in bands.
I kind of feel like this right now, all ending the entry. That's a window you're pressed against - did you say what you wanted said? Tall orders from small shoulders, invitations on blue paper... leaves in the window from back East. Kisses.
VvB
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