It’s Catching Up

My best friend from elementary school died of cancer. (age 28)

I had to turn around on a hiking trip after rangers closed the trail to recover the body of a guy who fell off a cliff. (age 23)

A friend of a friend’s body was found in the Willamette River a few months ago. (age 22)

A tornado hit my hometown and killed 10 people. (various ages)

The mother of a kid at my preschool died of cancer last week. (late 30′s)

Is the big one coming?  http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2009/04/big_earthquake_coming_sooner_t.html

In the bigger city than the one I live in

In the bigger city than the one I live in there were people walking with purpose and aim. I was seeing the city for the first time. I did not have purpose or aim. The market smelled like fish and dirty dishwater. Sometimes it smelled like dog shit. I noticed that people were wearing business clothes. The people in this city had modified their business clothes for walking. They wore white sneakers with their suits, or they wore those shoes you buy at REI that have thick soles and leather uppers. Some wore clogs.

There were places in the bigger city created for people with no purpose or aim. They were on the “things to see” section of the tourist map. When reading the list of “things to see,” I felt a mild panic. I felt that this was expected of me. I wanted to simultaneously “do something significant” and to “waste time.” I felt a compulsion both to take photographs and to leave photographs untaken.

In the art museum, at the top of the escalator, hundreds of figures wearing tribal masks were arranged in sitting and standing positions. Videos of people wearing the masks and dancing were projected on two of the large walls. The moving videos made it look like the figures were also moving. I thought that if I made a horror movie, everyone in the movie would wear tribal masks. In the contemporary section of the art museum, a guy had hung a whole bunch of white Ford Tauruses from the ceiling with flashing lights coming out of them. Another guy had made a sculpture of a giant black mouse standing on top of a person in a bed. A girl had made a video of a snapdragon singing a Cat Power song. It felt like all these people’s ideas should have been put in their own building – that they were all too close to each other, and the interaction of their atomic particles might cause an explosion.

At the cheese factory, I ate a cheese sandwich. While I ate the cheese sandwich, I watched some guys cutting up blocks of cheese curd and turning them over. A guy next to me said, “Let’s give this sandwich the Cheese Challenge.” Another girl said, “I could do that job. Just flip cheese all day.”

I don’t know everything about anything (but some people do)

At the Tao of Tea the man wore a kurta. It looked like it was shining in the candlelight. He was sitting at a table in front of a shelf lined with canisters. He had his eyes closed and was breathing in the steam from the pot of tea in front of him. He poured it and drank from his tea bowl. He looked up, confused that I was there. His voice was low and melodic. He said the word “oolong” with his lips puffed out. Like he wanted to give the word a kiss. I smelled all the oolongs. I had a cold. Certain oolongs were supposed to smell more “toasty.” Others were supposed to smell “floral” or “like apricots.” When he opened the canisters, I tried to smell, and my nose whistled a little. I think the man raised his eyebrows at me. I bought whatever he told me. He told me how much to use and how long to let it steep and how hot the water should be. I went home and boiled the water and scorched the shit out of those leaves just to spite him. I drank the bitter tea and smiled.

He would be a feast.

She stared at him, eating the sweetbreads. Feeling the spongy matter on her tongue and the roof of her mouth. She imagined herself wielding the butcher knife, splitting him open from nose to navel, and collecting the spilled organs. Sorting and unravelling them into woven baskets. Heart. Pancreas. Intestines. Liver. Kidneys. He would be a feast, his blood the color of eggplants. The blood draining from the offal black with bile and more gelatinous. The neighbors would come over and perform their Druidic ritual with songs and chants.

She blinked and said, “I think the wine needs to breathe a bit more.”

bus #15

08/23/2009

The woman walked up and said the bus would be late. She said one of the horses had been hit – the ones who take tourists around the city. She kept checking the timetable against her watch and yawned one long yawn after another. When the bus arrived she checked the front grills  and under the bike racks for gore.

09/04/2009

The boy and girl walked along the street and stopped every few blocks to kiss. They kissed with urgency, with panic in their eyes. They caught the bus. The girl sat in the boy’s lap, empty seats everywhere. She kept running her fingers through his hair, like checking for lice. He had a blank look on his face. Maybe even an annoyed look on his face. She looked worried, and she kept saying things in short sentences, but he didn’t answer her.

09/17/2009

A woman in a wheelchair was on the bus. Her wheelchair was not properly fastened to the straps in the handicap section. She said to the girl across the aisle, “My brakes are broke.” Her wheelchair slammed into the seat in front of her repeatedly. She was looking down at her lap, and every time the chair collided with the seat her head nearly touched her knees. She said something to the girl across the aisle. “I can’t understand you,” the girl said. She said it again, and the girl said, “I CAN’T UNDERSTAND YOU. PLEASE LET ME READ MY BOOK.” The woman looked back down at her lap. The bus driver stopped abruptly, and the woman’s wheelchair rolled to the front of the bus. The bus driver said, “You really need to fasten the straps.” The woman said, “My brakes are broke.”

stimulate your package

Protected sex at least five times a week will stimulate the economy. People will get exercise. Optimism will be restored. Ben Bernanke needs to get laid at least six times a week. CEOs and investors need to fuck eight times a week. People who are laid off from their jobs should have wild sex all day with other people who have been laid off from their jobs. People will buy condoms, they will buy lubricants, they will order Chinese take-out. They will patronize independently-owned corner stores everywhere.

http://www.goaskalice.columbia.edu/2311.html

bumper sticker

they all have a bumper sticker that they use for a blanket. it is clever for one minute. they pull it over themselves, up to their chins. some of them are mice, some of them are roaches, and some of them are pigeons. they all look the same when they are under their bumper sticker.

when they are not under their bumper sticker, they wear pirate suits. they say “arrrr!” they squint at other animals. they are all running around on an island in the middle of the lake in laurelhurst park. the geese make a circle around them and try to peck off their heads. the mice and roaches and pigeons jab their hooks at the geese’s eyes and try to distract them with their striped clothing. the geese get out guns and shoot them.

the geese eat them all up, except for their feet. the geese make necklaces out of their feet and talk about how stupid the bumper stickers are.

i feel like…

a wet tennis shoe

a crepe myrtle

a fume

a ghost that isn’t scary

a velour sweatsuit

a bowl of pudding

a crooked lampshade

an animal with the head of an owl and the body of a rhinoceros

a smoker’s cough

a sagging bookshelf

a chocolate covered ant

a lottery ticket

a funny bone

a flying saucer

a cloud shaped like a hot dog

losingit

Just saw a craigslist ad for a job as a “children’s photographer” and misread it as “children’s pornographer.”

Started reading Raymond Carver’s “Where I’m Calling From.” So far… fishing, boners, kids being the little shits they really are, and married people who hate each other. So! Uplifting!

The cats are all lazy (sonsof)bitches. They are no help at all.

I feel like all the furniture is leaning INTO the room, and someone will find me in a few days under the bookcase. It’s IKEA though; I’d probably be OK.

Looked at all my old photographs. I think I’m a serial girlfriend. And why do I always take these idiots on trips with me?

the desert

The sun here beats down on you, and the mountains have shadows that look like fingers crawling out of them. Everything seems to be below you, except for they sky. We all go to bed early, and we’ve been eating alot. I have been walking in the morning up and down the hills on the gravel road. The cats are all in the garage, and they each have their own hiding place. When they see each other their eyes get wide, and they begin to hiss. One of the cats stalks the other ones, his back swaying and his tail twitching.

Like the cats, all of us are wary of each other, except when we have been drinking. We all rush forward to wash the dishes and are always asking ‘what do you need?’. We ask polite questions like ‘is that the cousin who moved from arizona?’ and ‘which type of hummingbird? the female ruby throat?’. G. barely talks at all. I talk and talk and talk to fill up all that sky, all that empty space above us.

I smear on lip balm and huge palmfuls of lotion. I only wear makeup if we go into town. I let the wind dry my hair, and I bought a turquoise ring at the Saturday market. I bought it from a woman with tables of looped clusters of turquoise beads and chakra bowls, and long strings of dried chilies.

I am supposed to be in the rain; I am supposed to be under gray skies with green leaves and tall trees everywhere and a river. I am not unhappy; I am just tired of trying to earn the space I am occupying.