helvetica.

technology is cheating. 
helvetica is love. 
helvetica is wisdom.
wisdom is death.
death is love.
never mind.

words are made up things to make sense of our ponderings. 
nothing makes sense. 
nothing is real.
god is dead. 
helvetica says it is so.

Cheater Cheater, Pum{kin Eate}

Concerned I am not being true to the art form of "self-publishing" by using the computer too much...

In the forest

Stephen Baldwin

One time I met Stephen Baldwin.

I was a waitress at this restaurant in Redmond and he came in with a bunch of sexy people, all of them coupled off. Stephen Baldwin was not a part of a sexy coupledom but I suspected he was in a little bit of each.
 Before I knew who the hell he was I thought he was a nice guy.
He politely asked for a separate table, quiet, away from his party with one of his people.
Stephen Baldwin ate two salads with thousand-island dressing and ordered an extra helping of rice pilaf when he received his meal. I believe he ordered the Chicken Strips but the details of the experience often escapes me.
At the end of the meal I split up all the checks, one for each couple. Everyone made nervous unsure gestures until Stephen came over from his secret table and told me it was all on him. When putting the checks together he stood by me waiting with his card. One of the the other waitresses asked if he was "a Baldwin." He said he was and his debit card said Stephen Baldwin so I knew for sure.
I don't know why I still have the receipt.
Maybe one day when he makes a comeback I can sell it. It's very faded.
Apparently he was in town for this Christian thing that had been heavily advertised. I kind of felt bad for Stephen because all his friends were mooches.
I'd like to know he is doing well. 
Arrangements can be made if you would like schedule a holding of the Stephen Baldwin receipt.
Today I went to said restaurant and sat in the same spot he sat. I call it "Stephen's Table."

Ramadan began this weekend - السلام عليكم

This morning, in a dream, I was in Iran.
My sister and I drove my Chevrolet Corsica to my old elementary school which was the stage for Iran.
"As-Salāmu `Alaykum," I yelled at somebody and these Arabic boys yelled back, "Alaykum As-Salaam."
I was really embarrassed because they were super cute, hanging out near the old tether court, looking student-like and smiling.

I had on the full robe, light blue. Unloading my car I my laptop and some cork-people from the car to plant somewhere and headed to the old gym. 
Walking through the turf of the recess area (where I once played as a child) people were swarming here and there, bike riders perusing through, kids were on the play sets -- lots of activity. 
"What if they bomb us here?" I thought absentmindedly as I headed into the scrum.

In the gymnasium there was a huge buffet table lined up; hot foods in dishes placed in white paper bags so when you went around you had to look in the bag to see what it was. The food was exquisite - not Indian food but similar. I imagine it all tasting like figs. 
A girl I used to work with for years ago was there flirting with someone in wearing a burka as well. 
I got a pancake, something I was sure would be vegetarian and buttered it. Then I found it was still wrapped in cellophane. Cultural blunders follow me even in my dreams. Damn.

Then I woke up.

I put make-up on with my fingers.

I put make-up on with my fingers. Foundation. Blush. Eye shadow. My body is an amazing tool. Make-up brushes are not.

Get gone.

"Get outside," I tell myself.

So I am.

Listening to Adam Gnade.

I keep disappearing into my head; falling in a trance while standing, while listening, while talking.
When I was ten I had a friend who's Mom had brain cancer. She wore a turban and sometimes she would be talking to us and then just go away. Not physically leave but fade out of reality and go somewhere else for a moment. They wouldn't let her drive. Maybe I shouldn't drive. Not saying I have brain cancer.
In yoga we sometimes do meditations for staying present.
Be in the room, they tell us. Be present.
Even now I am in my head.
I try to be here. In my living room, listening to the sprinklers, traffic outside.
Suddenly I am staring and hear nothing. My pupils disappear and all that is left of my eyes are my irises and the wash.
Have I trained myself so well in the art of mental escapism it has become my default-mode?
Perhaps there was a time-quake and instead of events repeating themselves they are happening differently and my mind is still living in the first set of events; reliving the memories of an already time.
This year has had that kind of quality ... getting fired, new jobs, writing zines with serious intention, becoming connected to a community of letter writers and project makers. Maybe it was never supposed to happen.
If there has been a time-quake my hypnosis is becoming stronger as the schism between the old reality and the new become increasingly disparate. Becoming ever more so with every day of action and every new unexpected happening.
It is summer and I am overwhelmed with the momentum of a radical transformation.
What I was wanting to do with this friend was have a meaningful conversation.
But, rather than speaking, I wanted to connect in pure to images, telepathically, quiet and without words. Communicate like Vulcan's in a mind-meld, splayed open palms rested on temples.
Sitting in the grass, picking at mosquito bites words seemed flat, flooded with over-generalized meaning. Bulky words clunking on a delicate surface. They were knitting needles when I needed embroidery.
I wanted to discuss the big things but couldn't find the grace.
It all makes me think of the bit in Waking Life with the beautiful swirling blond haired Kim Krizan:
"...so much of our experience is intangible. So much of what we perceive cannot be expressed. It’s unspeakable. And yet, you know, when we communicate with one another and we feel we have connected and think we’re understood I think we have a feeling of almost spiritual communion."
I've been living a separate life and haven't invented the words to explain it.

My Mom

My Mom can't pronounce the word "zine." So she calls them chap books.
That works as well.

Bad words.

My parents never let me say the words "kill" or "hate."
(they are awful words...)

Remember?

Remember the time in school when we were kids and a bird flew through the open window and couldn't find it's way? Remember how the lesson was stopped and we all opened our mouths at the ceiling as it flew from the rafters to the book case? Remember how it perched on your science model -- paper mache Jupiter? The scratchy sound it made as it tried to cling on?
Remember when the teacher called the office and then told everyone to "settle down," insisting on finishing the lesson? Remember how we never once lost track of the bird and followed it from the corners of our eyes and even behind our heads and didn't listen to one word teacher said that day?
I liked that. I liked the moment we all shared. Problem is, I liked that moment so much I never stopped. I never listened to the teacher again and kept looking for birds in rare and inappropriate places. Except it isn't even the birds anymore - it's the mysteries - the wonderful sudden things in the corners of my eyes.
Remember the girl who lived in a tree fort with her dog? Or the sisters who laid on the sidewalk along the busy four-lane bridge after their mother died? The mailman who whistled in the morning times? Or the mother and daughter who stole cookies at Safeway when an electrical storm shut the power off?
I can't stop...

Currently listening to: Tape Song by The Kills

My not-real zine friends are making music recommendations so I have made a playlist.
Lucero from a girl in Reno who writes about moments. Alex Wrekk and her Lemuria, The Kills, Sleater Kinney and Jarvis Cocker recommendations.
A loose community I pretend to be a cog in, the ghost on the porch nestled among of their stories, in their street dance parties, drinking the same dreb on 4:00am porches in my own realm, a naked 40 watt bulb shining through me. Not even a shadow. A voyeur.
Tape Songs makes me wish I was at the Domino Room slapping my hair against my cheeks, pretending I am made of pure bone, wearing unnecessary bracelets. Being a teenager, I suppose.
These stories. What do they mean to me?

Vol de Nuit

Ride your bike down a certain street on a warm night.
It's the smell. The late evening early late night smell of domestic activity and the air will make your brain pop in a million places. Pop like vertebrae when you sit up straight.
Neurology specialists attest the sense of smell to be the closest to our memory. Not sure of the science of the matter I find the connection more of a concept than a science. Sights, feelings, and touch take over our lives and memory in an overwhelming abundance; imagine filing cabinets in some FBI basement chock full of photos and reports. Smell and taste preserved from this motley, remain exclusive -- time capsules being not the most groundbreaking of memories preserved in smell but little pockets of insight making a smell map chronicling the most primal of memory (ever take a bite of baby food?)
Sometimes I put sunscreen on in the winter.
Coast the long way home from Pilot Butte after a sunset and take your time to get to Franklin. Midnight black road of 15th where there are no street lights, right at Bear Creek, forget where you are and swerve into neighborhoods. Watch cats hypnotize themselves watching moths flurry in the street lamp and take one long inhale. Pass the swimming pool for the waft of chlorine surfacing the child who first choked at the first jump into the "deep" end.
Popcorn, laundry, lingering barb-b-ques, sprinklers crisping the air with a hiss of water: a flood of experiences rush in, as if flipping through a photo album where the images are in no specific order.
Cigarettes make me think of Kevin.
Pipe tobacco makes me think of Tonia.
The smells hang in cloud pockets, waft in invisible orbs.
Carry your head through them and never exhale, open your mouth to taste the night on the back of your tongue.

Jay Rowan

It has become difficult to find pictures of him online.
At first it was easy, before 2006.
Jessica and I printed off pictures of him just to look at, paste in our journals like a mid-90's Rider Strong or Devon Sawa. A popular one among us was a photo of him winning a set of speakers from a tech store. The internet fulfilled a desire a real relationship would have if we'd had the courage.
When you look for him his name is everywhere but always in regard with swimming events partaken in his honor.
After he graduated and moved away, Jessica and I would call his house
"is Jay Rowan there?" we asked every time to his frustrated father.
"He's IN COLLEGE," Jay's father would state and hang up.
Funny how the temptation to call remained after he drowned. It almost seems he's still in college. Doing amazing things.
In the grieving process I never got passed the denial phase.
Still, knowing Jay is not out there getting old and doing the spectacular things makes me restless.
There are so many people out there doing stupid things; being phony and messing things up for everyone. To recognize one of the equalizers are gone can make one crazy. It makes me want to do better. Make up for the loss in the world.
You ever see the movie "Always" with Richard Dreyfuss and John Goodman? Richard Dreyfuss is a firefighter pilot who dies and comes back as a ghost to be a mentor for another young pilot. "Pete" (Dreyfuss) hovers over the shoulder of his student making telepathic suggestions of what to do, when to drop water, blah blah blah. This is what I imagine Jay doing. A made-up mentor, a Bodhisattva, a ghost who can talk to me through the channel of Whoppie Goldberg (but I will not make love to Whoopie Goldberg even if Jay Rowan has possessed her).

I don't know what the hell I am writing here. I miss him.

Practicing for Winter-time?

My eyes are blurry again, the way they were in the wintertime when all day was devoted to avoiding the cold, all was a distraction from the elements which only caused death. Sylvia Plath had an interesting take on winter in her poem Spinster which my friend Patrick says is misandrist. She writes:

How she longed for winter then! --
Scrupulously austere in its order
Of white and black
Ice and rock; each sentiment within border,
And heart's frosty discipline
Exact as a snowflake.

These bleary eyes as testament -- winter is not longed for.

There was the line in Fight Club dealing with Sylvia Plath which never made a great deal of sense:
"In the Tibetan philosophy, Sylvia Plath sense of the word, we're all dying." Did Sylvia Plath ever say this or feel this? Her journal and her life conveyed a sense of extreme depression but death was the outcome of her sadness. Her biographers bite and spit over interpreting her life making unlikely a person of my two-bit informed nature an expert interpreter on the subject.
But Chuck Palahniuk got it wrong like he got the Greek gods confused in another one of his novels (he overestimated Zues's loyalty to Hera - perhaps the Disney Hercules edition of Greek mythology).
Camus equated life as the only thing really important (if there is no afterlife life is all there is) and spelled out an equation for an acceptable suicide if the pain of living is greater than dying (and consequently worth giving the greatest of possessions).

The details of this information have been not much less than completely forgotten...

This article is crap.

Olestra and bleeding butts

When I was about ten the mail lady dropped off this package that was a sample of these fat-free chips they were testing on consumers before hitting the shelves. The chips were potato I believe and they were a totally weird new thing where the brand (Lays?) used some fat substitute agent lacking in actual fat. What the package asked myself, ten-year-old Rachel Lee-Carman, to do was try the chips, report back and tell said company whether the chips were good or not or whatever.
One stipend in regards to these new chips warned anal bleeding, stomach cramping, etc. were some possible outcomes of eating these chips.
I remember biting carefully into the chips - really chewing them up and rolling the mash in my mouth for probably a full minute, eating one chip at a time conceding that the moment my butt began to bleed I would hasten my guilt-free snacking. Being the snack happy child I was this product was a manifestation of my loftiest fantasies.
However, the chips never made my butt bleed and I never saw the chips at the grocery store...

For those dealing with Olestra addiction please read:
http://www.salon.com/health/feature/1999/08/16/olestra/