Tuesday, May 20, 2008

SIFF and meat loaf

Soooo...

I leave my office at noon, since the showers have blown through and the sun is coming out. I need to pick up my tickets for the Seattle International Film Festival downtown, and think this will a) take care of an errand; b) give me a reason for a noontime walk.

Two blocks away, and I remember that I have left the confirmation sheets lying in my printer, so I dash back home, race upstairs, grab the documents, and am off again.

By the time I screech into the SIFF booth at Pacific Place, I'm deep into my lunch hour, and am starting to realize how silly it is to try to pack all of this into 60 minutes. But I figure "breathless, and wearing sunglasses" is a good persona for someone buying SIFF tickets, no?

The boi working the desk is quite ultra-deluxe, in that all dressed in black, tragically hip kind of way, but he's got nothing on me. I'm wearing black and charcoal. Ha.

I saunter up, grin, lean forward, and triumphantly (but not TOO triumphantly, because that would be so NOT cool) slap my sheets of paper down in front of him.

He's all business and grabs the sheets up, scanning the sheets for meaning.

Can he not find the confirmation code?
Has the printer garbled something up?
Did it spit out blank paper?

None of the above.

He looks up at me with the blank stare of someone being addressed in a completely foreign tongue.

What I have handed him is an unsolicited but dutifully printed out e-mail from my mother, giving step-by-step instructions for how to prepare her MEAT LOAF.

CLUNK.

That is the sound of my pride hitting the concrete floor.

Thursday, May 15, 2008

linen

I wore linen for the first time this season.

I retrieved it from the back of the closet last night and washed it, just so I could hang it up to dry and be all fragrant and fresh when I pulled it over my head this morning.

I opened the window in my office this morning so the breeze could ripple the fabric and my bangs.

I smiled a lot.

I looked down at my painted toes in my sandals and wiggled them. The polish is a bit chipped. My socks didn't care this winter, but the sun pays attention to these things.

Friday, May 9, 2008

one (wo)man's trash is another (wo)man's treasure

This is part travelblogue, part journal, part connection to far-flung friends, part tap-tap-tapping of fingers on touchstone keys.

I'm drunk on lack of sleep and overstimulation--too woozy to offer up anything coherent, too wired to let it go and slip under the covers.

I've been to the other side of the country and back, I helped a friend say goodbye to her mother, I kissed men in subways and women on the street next to steam pipes. I broke bread with people I see too infrequently. I learned to drink single-malt scotch. I took iPhone pictures and fired them, little moments in time, deployed across space to the other coast and into a friend's eyes. Sometimes the images were refracted back to me through his wry comments.

I took in all manner of art and believed that it's the only thing that will save us in the end. I told this to people standing next to me and they agreed.

I saw a dress made of discarded teabags. It was part of a rite of passage. I was humbled to stand next to it and its creator.

I thought it high time to start singing again. I wonder if I will.

I was greeted like a soldier returning from war at my favorite restaurant, even though I was there last week…I realized that I was a "regular" someplace. Me of the restless soul.

I relinquished my competence and control and softened into a willingness to be pampered. A good night's sleep and I'll be back to my usual armored self, but with a chink.

I made someone shush and listen to geeky choral music. He didn't mind.

I taught a friend a word I love that doesn't exist in English.

It's "Lebenskünstler" and it means an artist whose medium is life itself.

I think my life of dabbling in every experience I could wrestle to the ground has always been an attempt to be one of those. Singing and taking pictures and painting and weaving and throwing pots and acting and writing have all just been a foil, a legitimation of my gluttonous desire to do, see, hear, taste, feel, and know everything in my range.

I unpacked my bag, washed its contents, and folded it all right back into the bag.

The car picks me up at 0530 tomorrow, and off I go again.

Thursday, May 1, 2008

yin-yang


+ I love my iPhone and the ability to take reasonably decent pictures and send them to my friends on the spot. This one is so green and pink and red and fresh and lush and spring. I know spring isn't an adjective. Sue me. ; )

- I hate living in a condo I love, only to have the owner try to sell it out from under me. From his perspective, I've been paying his mortgage while he speculates and invests. Now that he has a little cash flow issue, on the market it goes. "Can we go month to month when your lease expires at the end of this month?" he asks. "Sure we can" I answer. After two weeks of disrupting showings, I have given notice and paid a deposit on a new loft. He's horrified! He has cash flow issues! What about the rent I've been paying? Karma, dude. I feel not one speck of guilt. OK, maybe one tiny specklet, but only because I'm a nice person.

+ I love procrastinating about going to the gym, finally going at the last possible moment in the evening, and coming home to feel great AND virtuous.

- I hate suspecting that someone called me yesterday under the guise of wanting to chat, and spent half an hour to get around to what he really wanted: to know if a mutual friend is "available" for a romantic relationship. Just call and ask that. We're not in junior high. Don't waste my time.

+ I love that I am curious.

- I hate that I have a great recipe for taramosalata and a jar of tarama and no one around to appreciate it.

+ I love that I get to go get my hair cut tomorrow. I'm pretty sure I have such short hair so that I can go really often, and I'm equally sure that I'm more interested in the shampoo and head massage ritual than the cut.

- I hate that I don't have any particular flourish of an ending to this blog.

+ I love that my friends won't care and others won't read it in the first place.