I think Connecticut Victoria would get mad at me if I stayed home this weekend. You know, all "Well, Tom Brosseau invited me to a party in Portland, and I had a free ride with a coworker who just happened to be going that way, who also asked me to go skydiving -- but I decided to stay home and put together my desk. And you know, like, get my laundry done, and stuff. I'm really glad I didn't go. Look how clean these floors are!"

Right. I would seriously just about fist-fight myself. Besides, as it stands I think we'll be back by the early afternoon on Sunday, leaving plenty of time for varying levels of sloth and domesticity.

From somewhere up above ten thousand feet,
*Victoria

black and whites and blues and glass and tabletops. worn-out floors and lamps on chairs on sheets on couches. the sounds of different walls, tiny ants crawl down the hall, and I'm anchored here like a radio station to amplify and pull all the words through, they're just right the first time. typing, not writing. but still.

{and I didn't understand / when you reached out to take my hand}

I really am closer than I've ever been before, on the edge of all this tangibility, not waiting for anything or anyone, riding the fringe of all the amazingness that's been practically thrown in my lap. and still, tonight, driving up broadway, stopping home to go out when I should be home sleeping and I'm tired and worn a little thin but for some reason I'm not sleeping - I'm practically sideswiping cars on my way up to the light because it's got me so bad that I have to take my book out and scrawl illegible blue ink all over the place. shifting. driving. praying for a light to get it down before another thought steals it all away, before it's gone forever. to grab that snapshot, the way the mountains looked and that particular shade of pink fading into dusty dime-store lips.

home, with a few weeks looming before my year anniversary here (which I will promptly celebrate by leaving the following day for chicago). it's a year and it's five lifetimes and five or ten minutes all at once, with a half-dozen versions of myself under my belt and folded into pages of some notebooks on a shelf. and me, afterward, glorious, sleepless, amazed, sunset-ingesting, lyric-laden, and free.

*sigh. I might shatter into a million brilliant little pieces, right on the spot. there's the whole part about how I've never been to austin, and how I don't know where I'm staying, and how it's about a hundred and thirty-five degrees there in the middle of summer, but whatevs.

There have been all these times that I've been posting about being free and happy, and how it was all Angela Chase hands-off-the-handlebars time, and references to how I never would have asked for things to get this good because I didn't know it could be like this - but I am here now to tell you (yes, you) that Life Is Rad and I Am Happy. All the time, mostly. As much as I can be without the aid of any mind-altering substances. And it's the kind of Happy that I've never been privy to before. It's like how Kristin talked about, when she was living here and I was in the recruit-ee stage, going, "You know, sometimes I'm just going down the street and I realize that I'm like, smiling. All the time."

I'm smiling.

All the time. Kind of like this:

So, the job is rocking and rolling. It's getting on ten weeks plus and I think I'm on to the sea-legs stage... there was a lot of crying and throwing up to start with. But case in point, the same thing that happened last week happened today, and it was fine. (Last week I almost started smoking over it.) Sleeping helps. Eating regular food helps. Scooters helps - a lot, to the point where I'm trying to figure out how to rationalize getting one.

And there's all this funny stuff happening too, stuff that I call "science project time." During SPT I observe my actions and kind of take some mental notes, and think I should be writing them down, and then I don't write them down, but when the actions come up again, the notes just kind of appear on instant recall. Take, for instance, the fact that I am now Remembering To Do Things, as opposed to Forgetting To Do Things. RIght? I know. I'd be on the way out of the apartment and realize that there was something I wanted to bring, or forgot to do before I left, and I'd pretty much start flogging myself in the middle of the sidewalk, and I'd keep going to work or wherever I was going, telling myself what an asshole I was for not ____________. Now, when the same things happen, I'm all, hey brain! Thanks for firing that extra neuron or whatever! And I go back and get it, or decide it's not important, or whatever the case may be. Isn't that weird? No? Well, I'm sure most people learn how to do this stuff when they're, I don't know, five, or whatever. But still.

The other one is that when I go to get pissed off or set out to have a bad day or decide that something is hard or that I can't do it or something, a part of my mind goes, "You know what? Maybe it's nothing. Why do you want to get all jacked up about that?" And so I fake say to myself, "Hey self, maybe nothing is wrong." And ten minutes later I either believe it or have forgotten about it - but even six months ago everything I touched was embedded with clawmarks. Deep, bleeding clawmarks, all hurting and everything felt like tearing my skin off all the time and it was just awful. And now? Nothing.

For this girl, these things are huge.

Huge.

Could life have really been like this the whole time, and I just didn't notice? Is that even remotely possible? My dad read that book "Conversations with God" (wherein said God was really the dude writing the book, who finally admitted it years later, after book sales and paid multi-thousand person talks and online communities of people backing him up - awesome, right?) and he would talk about some of the shit "God" said, which I suppose would be applicable on a bunch of levels, no matter who delivered it - but Cheesebag McLiar book or not, it spawned conversations about needing to experience not having something to get to the joys of having it: being cold to really know warm, being alone to appreciate togetherness, and on and on. Point is, maybe I wouldn't even know how rad all of this stuff was if I wasn't so familiar with how not rad things had been. Was. Were. Fuck.

Already, it's too much thinking - like spending all of this time on self-analysis really is waxing poetic and it's just unnecessary and wasteful. I think that when I need to be thinking about shit and looking at whatever is giving me a splinter at any given moment, it will be just that - like a splinter, I mean. Necessary to address, with disregard to timing or convenience. I mean, you don't sit around figuring out why you don't have splinters and what shit would be like if you did, right? It's just like, not there.

(In Brian Krakow voice, really. Ha.)

Really. Is this me? Has some alien life form taking over my existence, skipping down the sidewalk, going, "Look! I've got nothing to worry about!" even when there's still real-life shit going on? Is this perspective maybe, or some level of internal or external forgiveness? It really doesn't matter now (because there's no splinter), does it? No.

I've got nothing to worry about.

Except love (strikethrough - lust) & rockets (or fireworks) & moving for the twentieth time in sixteen years (and that's pretty close to accurate).

*Victoria

Things are just falling into place. Or seeming to be so, at least.

The figurative honeymoon is over at my job - while I've been welcomed into the fold and all with wedding invitations and being taken up on catsitting offers, I'm also catching the other side of the family lash - no one is hiding their ugly. The drunk cousin everyone works around, the misdirected anger, the taking of emotional temperatures, the misunderstandings... everything is on all of our sleeves. I love it, and am momentarily frightened (and then empowered) by the learning curve. Curve. Curveballs. I want to go to another Mariners game.

The ADD has been completely unnerving today. To the point of having to give up on work-work and focusing on a getting a bunch of personal stuff off my list instead, because I can't be trusted with the details. So much happens every five minutes - work is a hundred and ten m.p.h., I'm getting back into a round of shows (Lemonheads this Friday!), I found the perfect apartment at my fingertips without even trying, I'm running budgets and fulfilling photo orders and running into people at my job in bands and keeping up with my hair dye and now I'm packing and giving my cat as much love as my schedule will allow - and eating too much sugar - and perpetually running fifteen minutes late. But it's because everything is good, not because I'm bonkers. Well, I am bonkers. But in the good way.

Things I have been offered thus far since I started querying around for free/cheap stuff: a leopard print footstool, a huge new television set, and an upright piano. OKAY! I'll take it. And I think someone just emailed me to clean the apartment for half of what all the other people were going to charge. (FTW!) It's... it's fun, this trying to keep up with it all. I kept getting all scared. But really, it's rad. It's not that shit is happening, it's that rad is happening. Rad happens, I suppose.

Rad happens.

Am I ever going to stop worshiping Glen Hansard? I don't think I will.

So, lumberjack mansions and Jesus Christ parking lots and and roomfuls of heroes who can't come clean. Unstretching, bumping into walls, onward upward and crawling out from the underneath of things. So funny, all domestic, all everywhere all the time, all the girl people want to stop by and say hello to, the girl with all the plans and all the happy. I think they're (you know, Them) putting one of my pictures of Pearly Gate Music in Mojo. No fucking shit. Painted windowsills, plants and animals, square black-and-white prints of Audrey Hepburn and forlorn souls heading down black hallways on black stairs, huge sheets of children's writing paper, other people's lyrics... pictures of the corners of things. Poster frames. The irony of twin-sized beds, the keys to the city, the soft sidewalks of our town, bird on a wire. And me. And like, destiny and stuff.

And Pearly Gate Motherfucking Music. For reals.

:*

seriously.

so, I know this is typing and not writing, but the blogging has been pulling at me lately. friday started my first annual best birthday in seattle ever, when laura asked me to go see mike doughty at the triple door - the asking in and of itself was grand, and that guy seriously sad-bastarded my face off. ache, and bottle up the stars, and six-minute songs about one girl in one dress and staring at an ad on the side of a bus. after, because of course I'm figuring she's asked me because everyone else said no, I find out that she sought me out to come specifically. she thought I'd dig it, and besides, she hadn't seen me in a while.

me. laura hadn't seen me in a while. you know, 'cause we're friends now. whatevs, right? right. pinch me. just another friday in the city. shooting the shit with mike doughty for like an hour as the staff cleaned up the triple door, and hugging laura musselman on the fifth floor of a parking lot.

saturday was full of gradually increasing sunshine and a rad fucking game at safeco, even though the mariners lost (they wound up taking the sox at the end of three games, though). friends, and a little sliver of skyline, and garlic and laughing and the whole world felt like love and baseball. even before the garlic part, walking up, just the air and the park and the everything, I found myself like, skipping down the sidewalk. totally excited. freaking out a little. I mean, ollie and I bought fingers, for fuck's sake. he's allowed and all, you know, since he's six and everything. me, well, I am too. but it was kind of funny, all debbie harry blonde chunk of hair and a sasquatch shirt and chucks and a big fucking foam finger. good game, good game, good game.

today I slept until I was done and went to a luncheon-y thing and soaked up the last day of being 32, via some ridiculous sunglasses, a little quickie nap, and a few hours with bree and some of the fiercest gay dudes I've ever met. like, if I wasn't there with her, I'm sure they would have completely slaughtered me. but I was, so they didn't, and it was this bizarre little piece of a movie, where they were all caricatures of themselves on a long white vinyl booth inside. walking down the street with aviator sunglasses and a big pile of gay-badass. and as I type there's a cat on my lap and the iron heating up for laundry so I can go love the fuck out of my job tomorrow.

who's got it better than me? really.

the more I reach back east, the more it affirms my leaving. the more I say yes to everything, the more my life explodes with amazing. the more I show up for the hard parts, the less I have to hate myself. the more I believe in all the little (and big, but those are easier somehow) pieces of myself, the more space I get in my head. and then I remember things like taking care of how I look. and the feasability of dating. and instead of looking around wondering if I'm alright, I look around and tell myself in that moment that I am, and the shit kind of works some magic on the rest of the knots in my head, and... I didn't know it could get this good. I thought maybe it might but that other people got to feel this good and stuff, you know? I didn't know it could all happen to me. it's really slicing all the proverbial fat out of my relationships, because they either fit or they don't, kind of like shoes. only more important than shoes. but then shoes are pretty important I suppose.

I'm just so full of all this good stuff. it must be getting boring to read about. but this downtime, this quiet, this lack of anything - for once - isn't because something is wrong, it's more because everything is right. not aching doesn't mean that I need to be doing something else. kind of like when I thought I couldn't write without red wine. only different.

dammit I'm tired. the iron is going to blow up if I don't go use it, and the loft is beckoning. I'll just finish tonight out in the middle of these old mix tapes, and wish for a little bit that I would have posted something more interesting. but I suppose this might be all I have to say right now. all this, and that I'm compulsively checking to see if the frames are going to go on tour anytime soon. like, twice a week, I'm all over the internets about it. it's sort of ridiculous. but it's my ridiculous. and I love it.

x.

Eek.

Tonight I was walking back from my car, realizing I had been here for nine months, freshly annihilated by the sunset, worn thin and toughened up from a good hard day's work, and I thought about all the springtime. Everywhere you go it smells like flora, like blossoms, like the air would be sweet if you could reach out and eat it somehow. My hair changes colors from week to week, and I drive home without thinking about it (in a good way) because I'm able to get around my square of town. Bright lights, big city, and I'm not moving on.

I've been toying with the idea of getting a scooter, and writing blog posts in my head, even though I've been off the junk for a while now. And just read Kristin's post, and it's so funny that we're both all in our own moments of the season. I'm opening windows and cleaning and mismatching my clothes just for fun, to match my sunshine patchwork insides. I know what time it is by which dj is on, and the days are not divided into love and hate. Everything's amazing. My boss practically dares us to keep up with him, and I didn't know I could vault into such challenge.

Kristin did a reading for me recently, and there were parts about being funky and trying on the new me, and she'd said how everything was going to open right up, and she just... she knew. She knows stuff. And she'll go, yeah, I think I've done a lot of this before. And I want to lay down next to her in a square of warm light to just absorb some of what seems to come to her so easily. Maybe that's why she pops up in practically every post, the GirlBug, pulling me in on her radar without even knowing. Or knowing, because she knows.

And really, I am seriously tossing around this scooter thing. Recklessly. Like, fuck it! I'll sell the car and worry about the rain when it rains, and worry about winter when it's winter. I think they call this Spring Fever. Or something just like it. Or maybe I'm just more alive then I've been in a long time, or maybe all of it. Maybe it's just all the blossom-flavored sweet bright everything. I don't know.

So now I hit the wall because I want to go poke around on Craigslist. But before I leave, the other funny thing I was writing about in my head today was how a few people I haven't talked to much at the new office came by and said hello, and I've been so busy that I don't notice much, and then I find out from one of the women there that some of the boys are afraid of me. Ring any bells out there? Apparently I work at the nonprofit bioresearch version of Melrose Place, and my little talk with the boss spread like wildfire - all the way back to the other building. I suppose they can just come and say whatever they have to say, and I'm not scared, and I took a situation in my life and addressed it and I'm - well, I'm getting some street cred. Apparently. I thought I was getting all the good insides that comes with taking care of yourself and standing up for yourself - but I'm winding up with a little extra, some r-e-s-p-e-c-t. And all I'm doing is setting the bar and laying a foundation, and life just shoots me up with a big bag of awesome. Day-job style.

Oh, ps, the crazy-time retreats are riddled with relationship-crossing makeout sessions. I kid you not. Tonight: "Well, it's not like, orgies or anything going on, but like - well, we all let our guards down and people are just sort of grabbing ass and hooking up sort of. Pulling skirts and making cardboard sleds to ride down hills with." And allusion to girl-on-girl action.

Geesh.

You crazy passive-aggressive West Coasters. I think it might be that we're both from back East, the thing that gets us past mornings like yesterday. Whatever it is, as I've ended most posts of late, I'll take it. Every shiny back-strengthening early-morning blissy-daylight KRDO-riddled girl-making-a-place-for-herself-in-the-world moment.

Hi. I live here.

No, really.

hearts,
vv

and a sink full of dishes. I'm kind of dirty a little bit. but only when it's busy. oh, and said cat thinks I moved out and that I'm just dropping by to visit at night. thinking about writing. swimming about bicycles. sleeping less is more. I can't believe my life right now. painting basements with famous people. slapstick backstage passes just because, 3D mountains bathed in pink lights at sunset, answers, less questions. less worries. hat parties. KEXP at night, and only very early in the (john in the) morning.

I seem to be updating weekly. interesting.

I'm not waiting around for a boy. I'm only going to the shows I really, really like and want to see. I have actual legitimate friends that know enough about me in the time that I've been here to know how I am, and when I'm off, and when to ask if I'm alright and why.

all crying in front of the boss this morning. he's a tough one. the long and short of it is that people that are in my life for this many hours a week consistently are either someone I would share a bed with or someone I would eat out of the same bowl with. fork included, I mean, I'd share it with them. the fork, on top of the thing with the bowl. and when that person is thrust into your life suddenly, little more than a stranger, no bed, no forks - it's hard to find a way to get through conflict. I'm used to hugging it out, or throwing stuff - today I had to schedule a meeting, sit down and ask about expectations and communication, listen to some real facts about my responsive behaviors, and while I was trying to say it all out loud I cried. like an asshole.

I care about this place, and I also care about myself enough to not withstand awful relationships. I just can't. I would rather risk an overshare or some massive amounts of awkward than get to the point where I'm breaking everything I touch because I'm so freaked out. I was starting to feel like I was in front of a firing squad every time he came out of his door. so I told him. and I also told him that I am 110% behind everything he is behind, because he believes in what he does, and talks to our department and says things like how we hold ourselves back because we don't even know the levels of greatness we are capable of. I can tolerate a lot from someone who says (and lives) statements like that, repeatedly, not to be heard, but just because it's their reality.

he told me sometimes that he's just thinking out loud. I told him he thinks out loud in a really abrasive manner. none of it is personal, I have things to take back to my corner and work on, and after a brief sobbing stint on the floor of our big industrial bathroom I come back in to an email that's the closest thing to him telling me I'm doing a good job that he's able to say to me. and it's that he talks to me like he expects me to know what he's talking about because I have met his expectations and not shown signs that I'm incapable of handling what he throws at me. so he's treating me like I should know what he means because he thinks I know what he means. even though we're talking about proteomics labs and all this insanity and spreadsheets the size of a kitchen table.

I suppose some people would say I was inappropriate for having this kind of a discussion with my boss, or that he shouldn't have overshared of his own accord after the fact - but I did, and he did, and today was tremendous. it's much easier to take the hits when you know why they're being thrown, and even moreso when you realize it's just shrapnel from these giant dedicated love-bombs going off at the next desk.

so tired, so happy, so ready to do it all over again tomorrow.

truly in a state of flourish,
vv

I haven't been shooting much, not to say I don't break out the p&s here and there, but I haven't been doing any shows or events or anything. I've been all hung up on work, coming in early, staying late, giving 110% and getting practically giddy from the focus. I think this is what they mean, when they talk about the service work and how it saves your life. I also think this is what they mean when they talk about callings and dharma, but I generally can't talk about that without sounding like a lunatic.

I work for a guy who is only 3 or 4 years older than me, who has a pre-teen and a new wife and a new baby. it would be strange to me to have that much now, mostly because I've stopped comparing myself to what's around me and wondering where I'm falling short, instead I get all thankful and happy that I am the way I am and I think about how amazing it is that we're all different and painting our own little colors into everything. he's one of those people that just goes through everything like a tornado, everything is now and solution-oriented and executed with more people skills than most of us will hope to ever see in a lifetime inside of one of his weeks. he's got this fierce, crazy enthusiasm that's completely addictive, but only to a few people who can tune in - everyone else thinks he's off his rocker. and seemingly that I am too for jumping onboard his ship. but it's starting to seem like a big waste of time to sit around thinking useless thoughts and... well, and wasting time.

today I asked if I needed business cards. he talked about how I might not, but how it would seem unprofessional to not have one in a moment where I needed one. I told him we could hold off since they were still evaluating whether or not I'd be there permanently, ninety percent kidding, ten percent testing. he told me to email pam to order the cards. I ordered the cards. and left the proof for him to sign, sometime around 5 in the morning tomorrow when he gets into the office. I'll follow up for about 6:45, taking an hour to get the day ramped up and to get both of us organized so we're full steam ahead by the time it's 8. and then - then I kind of lose the day. I plow through whatever we came up with, fielding about eighteen different distractions in as many minutes every half-hour, learning on the fly. formatting excel files out of my ass. making power point presentations six minutes before meetings with millionaires. and in between there is laughter, and an interlocked team, and nights like last night after the opening of a symposium about molecular whatevers with a bunch of people who've known each other for years practically doubling over with laughter about everything. EVERYTHING. they joked this morning about how they thought I might not make it back in after all that. I mean, they were talking about felching and passing out irish car bombs. I am not exaggerating.

tomorrow I think I'm driving the most expensive car I've ever been in up (down?) aurora to get emissions done. right. I just looked it up to get a gauge, and I wish I hadn't. depending on the year, it's got a rough median price of about $75,000.00. I shit you not. I don't think I've made that much money in the last three years of my life. not even gross. holy beans.

I've kind of been rendered speechless here. I'm not quite sure what to do right now. I suppose it's time to go to bed and wake up excited about work again tomorrow. if I can keep from throwing up on myself (and hitting anything with this fucking car). I'm not real religious, but I think I'll be reciting a few hail-somethings before I get behind the wheel.

this is my life. damien jurado tweeted at me. eric corson goes to shows where I go to shows. everything is everywhere, everything is within reach, kristin's across the bridge, and the world is springing up at my feet.

I'll fucking take it.

hearts, and flowers, and amg box-cut 12 mpg wagons,
viva