To write this, or not to write this, that is the question. Well, what is the point of a blog if not to be the modern form of the confessional? Speaking the truth without seeing your audience. Without quite knowing who is listening. Not that I feel I have sins to absolve, much less via the internet, but to get on with the story...
I was walking on Capital Hill, around 2 in the morning, and as a side-note, let it be said I was very completely sober. I only had about a block and a half to my car. But I was...detained, pulled into a conversation that only sort of made sense and yet was so very intriguing. Don Quixote and his side-kick, in the flesh. These were a pair of highly philosophical drunks, young and literary and middle-class, and my game was to try to piece together all the random pieces of thought. And then, Don Quixote stared straight into my eyes and started telling me about my own past. And, it sort of made sense. Or maybe I just really wanted it to. It reminded me of the palm-reader in Before Sunset; I was being read by someone my more "realist" side would call a fake and possibly recreational scam-artist, and yet...
So when he starting moving towards me, my thought was, "Well, here's my chance to be kissed by a stranger." So I let him. And of course, it was an incredibly bad kiss. Time very quickly reasserted itself and the cold metal of my car keys sent its message to my brain, and I made my exit from this semi-reality.
But ever since, I find myself making more eye-contact with people, and letting it linger. Looking for another fortune-teller?
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Trash: the one true human invention
Last Sunday, some friends and I broke into a condemned school building. Who even knows how much asbestos we were inhaling. But hey, you only live once, right? You only develop lung cancer and die once, right?
This place was creepy. Stark and bare and crumbling, with wide strips of pink insulation hanging from the ceiling and broken floor tiles everywhere. The smell was incredible, stale and musty and chemical. And it got me to thinking, about how when our modern buildings, made of lab-produced materials, fall into ruin, they become utter wastelands. All this plastic and fiberglass--how is nature supposed to reabsorb it? I kept comparing what I was seeing to pictures of other ruins, where stone walls are mixed with trees and plants, and the sight of it is so incredibly beautiful. I couldn't imagine this building ever being beautiful, no matter how overgrown. I couldn't imagine it ever BEING overgrown. The only plant I saw was a tiny, scrawny bush, growing out of some unidentified organic matter in the locker room. I felt weighed down by the sheer ugliness, unnaturalness. Humans used to build with whatever we could take out of nature, and in time, nature took it back. Now we are creating all kinds of man-made, nearly indestructible materials, and covering nature over with them. Permanent trash. Before humans became so clever, there really was no trash. Everything had a cycle of formation and breakdown. Dust to dust is how our material world works, and it's a beautiful system. Why are we so very intent on fucking it up?
This place was creepy. Stark and bare and crumbling, with wide strips of pink insulation hanging from the ceiling and broken floor tiles everywhere. The smell was incredible, stale and musty and chemical. And it got me to thinking, about how when our modern buildings, made of lab-produced materials, fall into ruin, they become utter wastelands. All this plastic and fiberglass--how is nature supposed to reabsorb it? I kept comparing what I was seeing to pictures of other ruins, where stone walls are mixed with trees and plants, and the sight of it is so incredibly beautiful. I couldn't imagine this building ever being beautiful, no matter how overgrown. I couldn't imagine it ever BEING overgrown. The only plant I saw was a tiny, scrawny bush, growing out of some unidentified organic matter in the locker room. I felt weighed down by the sheer ugliness, unnaturalness. Humans used to build with whatever we could take out of nature, and in time, nature took it back. Now we are creating all kinds of man-made, nearly indestructible materials, and covering nature over with them. Permanent trash. Before humans became so clever, there really was no trash. Everything had a cycle of formation and breakdown. Dust to dust is how our material world works, and it's a beautiful system. Why are we so very intent on fucking it up?
Friday, July 27, 2007
what sunshine does to a pale seattle-ite
Lately, whenever I talk to a person, and you know, you get to the obvious question, "So, what have you been up to?"--I find I have little to say. This is a summer of quiet. Do you really want to know what I've been up to? Walking. Reading obscure books very slowly, all freakin' day long. Sitting on my balcony under the trees and trying to empty my mind. I'm to the point where I can't even stand having the radio on in my car, unless I happen upon some really good jazz. If it's only decently good, it gets turned off. I'm obsessed with silence.
I think it's the summer that does it to me, along with a sudden aversion to makeup and a smirking refusal to shave my legs. I'm morphing into a contemplative. The next stage, in progress right now, is to start reading books about ecology and the state of the world and start dreaming about joining a semi-religious commune such as the Farm. But of course, what I really want is the 1975 version of the Farm, sleeping in a tent and picking vegetables by hand and living on apple butter and marijuana. Sigh. My boss last summer told me that if I had been born in a different era, I would have been dancing at Woodstock with daisies in my hair. Maybe. But only in the summer.
I think it's the summer that does it to me, along with a sudden aversion to makeup and a smirking refusal to shave my legs. I'm morphing into a contemplative. The next stage, in progress right now, is to start reading books about ecology and the state of the world and start dreaming about joining a semi-religious commune such as the Farm. But of course, what I really want is the 1975 version of the Farm, sleeping in a tent and picking vegetables by hand and living on apple butter and marijuana. Sigh. My boss last summer told me that if I had been born in a different era, I would have been dancing at Woodstock with daisies in my hair. Maybe. But only in the summer.
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