Not Horrible

Worked until 8:45 today and probably heading in on Sunday. To make up for this, I ran to the bus stop to head down to Pioneer Square and Eliott Bay Book Co.. A series of construction sites, mis-timed buses, and people in wheelchairs found me hailing a cab for the first time (I've always called for one). Seven bucks later, I stepped from the raucous world of drunken weekenders celebrating our sweet freedom to the warm atmosphere of the bookstore. It's like walking into a bakery: all the promises of delight, the familiarity, the general glow of the place. Ended up getting another Seamus Heaney collection, a book of Borges poems, a Chabon novel, and a continuation of the Mysterious Benedict Society.

Afterwards, wandering the streets by lamplight, I realized how awesome the city is. Walked past some kind of vendor fair where a group of Capoeira fighters flipped and cartwheeled to brazilian music and chants – there is always so much stuff happening in the world that it's tough to look past the sidewalks you're used to.

Tried to sum it up in, that's right, another damned poem. Horribly unpolished, taken word for word from the newspaper that I self-referentially describe.

I'm really, really sorry.

How strange and transformed the city.

My mind is filled with song,
Perhaps the melody of a waltz
Where swept into the crevices and cracks
The bustle of action and the fervor of passion;
Or perhaps the lonely croon of a bluesman
Pouring a whiskey-soaked tune
In a room of smoke and dark, wood-paneled walls.

Peering through the windows of fluorescent-lit offices
Their sterile light piercing the soft orange glow of lamplight
The illumination of all detail
– in contrast the whispers and secrets
Hidden in the still shadows of the street.

A bus lurches precariously at the turn
Its lumbering form for a moment
The terrible bulk of a heaving monster.
They run in the streets
With frantic gasps
As they jerk
And screech
To stop:
The clockwork automata of an ant colony.

As we leave
The ebb of the fantastic
And the slow seep
Of the world I know.

So I bury myself in this poem
Letting the careless sway of the bus
Make scratches of my words
As I pour ink onto the pages
Of a newspaper I found in my bag.

Now I'm posting this as I watch Heima because it's Sad Bastard Thursday.

No idea where this came from. She's checking her phone...and...yep.

It's not a bra!

I'm a hip young go-getter, so when I suspected that the machines at the gym are inaccurate in determining my heart beat in relation to my untimely death I chose to get a hip watch/heart monitor suitable for a hip young go-getter. Thing is, the watch itself doesn't measure your heart beat, this small bit of plastic on an elastic belt does. So you wrap it just under your pectoral muscles (read: boobs) and both the gym machines and your watch pick it up. Pretty sweet, except that the adjustment slider in the back looks like a bra clasp, so the entire time I felt like people were staring at me and wondering why I needed support.

Unrelated: a poem! I know you love my poetry, or at least I haven't gotten any responses telling me not to post it and that's pretty much as close to adoration as I get. So blammo!

A place to rest

I should think a good place
would be the forest,
deep in the bramble and thicket
where age-worn oak and maple
etched with moss
vault a cathedral of branches
above you.
Lay me down in that soft earth
far down in the roots
and spongy loam
where muffled are the gentle
footsteps of elk and fox,
like raindrops soaking down,
down to that warm darkness
that heaves above you
like a thick blanket
on a cold winter's night.

So I leave my door open a lot, because I have no windows that open (well, one opens right into a thick bunch of branches, so much so that I can't actually open it) and the aforementioned fridge is spewing odors of milky rot throughout the apartment. So door open, cool breeze in. But the cool breeze brings with it flies and crap, so now I have an otherwise ignorable ecosystem of moths and mayflies that occasionally freak the crap out of me. On close examination, however, moths are pretty awesome. They're so damn stupid that they're adorable, like lemmings and dodos, and the dusty pattern on their backs is intricate, worn, and understated, unlike that damned gaudy butterfly with its blender vomit of color. So moth!

fig. 1 - Unknown to many people, moths feed on pencil shavings and the crumbs of BBQ style snacks. Some native peoples of northern Hungary feed the moths a steady supply of Red Fanta and Cheesy BBQ Fritos and harvest their wing dust, as this dust, in small portions, is a hallucinogen and diet supplement. In large quantities, this dust causes wild dementia and the possibility of fatal boners (the second definition) during the operation of heavy machinery.

Jeepers!

Saw Food Inc. with joe, which basically reiterated the message of The Omnivore's Dilemma and reminded me why I spend way too much money on food: because food inherently comes from disgusting places, and at least this way it's somewhat less vile.

And oh hey! I've got a sketch and a poem for you today! (That's supposed to be good news...)

I walk the street at night
savoring the knowledge that
i will look upon these days
with the longing of old age.

I must take all I can.

The trees, vibrant in the light of day,
are held still and silent
in the amber light of lamps,
elms and sycamore casting deep pools
of shade on the walk below.

In the distance the rise and fall
of rushing traffic
as if a midnight ocean lapped
at hidden shores.

I close my eyes and take in deep
the night pollen and evening bloom
of the cool, slow breezes
that wander here and there
but never quite stir
the branches above.

And now, as a reward for reading my crap, something stupid! Huzzah!

Although they only solved one case during their entire career, Blossom and G.T. succeeded in imprisoning thirty-seven falsely accused men on ill-gotten, extremely shaky evidence.