Words

Been buying things to define who I am. This is very postmodern of me. This is very American. Or is it human? Don't judge a man until you have walked in his cowboy boots, even if they fit him just perfectly and only rub you the wrong way as you cross the desert. Even if they jangle on your feet like a child trying on mommy's high-heels.
Been buying things to prove to myself who I think I am. Let me explain: I am getting farther away from finding who I am by buying things, of course. What one needs to do is find an ashram in Bali under the direction of Ketut Liyer and undergo an indefinite amount of time thinking about nothing. This is a joke.
Spiritual tourism is very postmodern. Or very American. Or bullshit.
Been watching hours of the X-Files on Netflix because I've been needing to check out of the ego for awhile. Life is too fucking long.
People used to say, as they always say, when I was a teenager, when I was in High School that these were the best years of my life and were going to go by so fast. Who the hell were these people? In High School I made myself aware for the rest of my life that High School did not go by fast. Painfully slow.
As a child I reminded myself that when I had money of my own I would buy candy, because as a child I did not have money of my own and needed to ask permission to have candy. Now I buy candy.
Tired of finding out who I am. It seems like it should be obvious.
The Dalai Lama does not understad self-loathing. He went to a conference where the subject of self-hatred came up and it just didn't compute for him, if compute is something the Dalai Lama does at all. Doubtfully.
The Dalai Lama also did not understand the joke of a young and fucking stupid reporter who was interviewing him:
Dalai Lama walks into a pizza shop and says, "can you make me one with everything."
The Dalai Lama is not a postmodernist. He probably doesn't understand why people in this culture don't know themselves. He probably doesn't think Dumb and Dumber is funny.
Temet Nosce.
Written above the Oracles door in the Matrix. Know thyself.
A psychic told me how I was going to die, just not when.
Said I was going to be at work putting reduced fat cream cheese on a microwaved soft bleach white bagel with a butter knife, put the butter knife in my mouth to clean it off, walk towards the dishwasher with the knife clenched between my teeth, hands free, trip and have my brain impaled. My last few moments I think no thoughts and can speak no words as my hypothamlamus has been ripped in half and as I feel a rush of DMT I am vaguely aware this is the best moment of my life, albeit, understanding this without the context of words. Psychic says no music will be playing when this happens. So, I have been wearing my headphones lately.
But we all know, there is no avoiding the inevitable. Though the most troublesome bit is the reduced fat cream cheese.
I was happy in the haze of a drunken hour, but heaven knows I'm miserable now.
Seattle (pronounced See-Tull) sucks. Wrote it a letter and shoved it in The Stranger sidewalk dispenser. Dear Seattle, fuck yourself.
Wrote it on the napkin of the Cupcake Royale where we spent 10 dollars and pissshit coffee and cupcakes made primarily of white flour and bullshit. Drove the hell out of there.
Last week stayed the night in Seattle on our way to Orcas Island and Patrick told us about the "Seattle Freeze" where nobody makes any friends because no one is a local and everyone hates non-locals. People will tell you their life story at a bartop, he tells us, but never invite you back to their house. Perpetual loneliness ensues.
I asked Patrick, why:
"No one knows, some people think it's the asian and scandinavian cultures mixing. Some say weather. There are many odd articles."
The only good things about Seattle are
1. Patrick
2. Dan Savage
3. The animal masks at Archie McPhee's.

Then there's the Horned Hand with its foamy ass beers and good tours.

Kombucha

Baby Mix Tape

Caught some geo-keshers in the lawn today.
They were here and gone. Left their little treasure and kept a new one. I was able to share in their discovery. Maybe I was a part of their discovery. A couple and their adolescent boys.
There are secret places all around us, waiting to be found.

Why does the robot man on the phone call himself John when we know he is not really a man? There are obvious lies abound. Told me I would get a ticket for two on a cruise if I answer some political questions. Sounded to good to be true.

Someone told me loneliness is the most constant human condition, we all share in it, but I disagree. I believe there are some people who live their whole lives without feeling lonely. Most of us experience it anyway, because our thoughts are mostly invisible.
It's for this reason I never understood why people so readily dismissed the Borg and having a computer chip in one's brain.
Disclosed this the other day leaning against a wall at a busy venue during an intermission talking to Kelly and "Matty." I told them I wouldn't mind having a computer chip in my brain because it would be easier to access information and if I were ever to be kidnapped it would be easier to find me.
What I don't tell them is how I am terrified of loneliness. What people fear about Big Brother I crave. Constant companionship. Constant monitoring. The idea that at all times someone cares enough to watch over me.
Sure, my anarchist friends would draw away from me as would the Christian ones who have read the Left Behind series.

Want to hear something fucked up? When I first discovered what rape was I wanted to be raped. Because I wanted someone to want me. A sick small sliver of love. I was just a little kid at the time too.

What the hell is wrong with me?

More on the subject of loneliness: sometimes I want it SO BAD. In the company of boring people mostly. I would rather be alone. One interesting person is worth a thousand boring people doing interesting things.

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!
- Kerouac

Thee Silver Mt. Zion's Efrim Menuck does not hesitate from using too many words. Use as many as it takes. Just keep the tone interesting.

Haven't been learning. Just assimilating information. Being a newly acquainted mac owner has made me more postmodern, more American, could you say, less human? Unsure. What I have discovered about all this is how inorganic my thinking has become, albeit, less complicated. Considering going to Thailand all I simply look it up on google maps, locate key cultural paradigms and subtleties, key phrases, research choice blogs of American travel in the region including the list of what is in their backpacks, become acclimated with the wikipedia description of the place and local politics, perhaps thumb a National Geographic, research current events through NPR, listen to a few podcasts and radio archives of historic and current upheavals and I feel fully secure and in the know with my future destination.

My language skills have become mush. But I am exposed. I am temporary. I am a wealth of knowledge.

I feel nervous for my teeth all the time.

On the subject of identity there was a time in my teens when I applied to work at Fred Meyer's. They have this whole series of hoops to jump through, one of them being a multi-page personality questionnaire with one of the questions being: do you trust your friends? *Always *Frequently *Sometimes *Rarely *Never.
We also walked through video scenarios depicting morally sticky situations. There was one where two men are hanging in a warehouse unloading some fruit when one man admits he is hungry.  He grabs some fruit and begins to maw down on it. Freeze frame. What do you do as the other coworker?
Walking away from the experience I felt shaken by the depth I was asked to go into myself. Shaken by what they wanted to know of me. Of course I lied. Said I always trusted my friends (imply overly naive?) and would report the fruit thief to my supervisor (heartless?). Fucking bureaucracy.

Cops at my work. Panicked recalling the negative comments I made about Palestinian human rights and Monsanto via a text to my Craigslist boyfriend. I feel weird because I am wearing fuzzy boots and no deodorant. Plus, I reek of garlic from the pesto I just had from lunch. No time to be arrested.

Clock

I've seen four pacifiers on the sidewalk this winter. Abandoned by soft mouths. An omen for what? Stop reading into it. A guy who does not work with me but is here at my work asked me if I had kids. Then he asked how old I was. Then he told me my clock was ticking after twenty-five. My therapist has tried to convince me otherwise. Telling me I had a lot of time to decide. I don't think I will ever decide. It will have to be an accident. If someone asked me, where ever I was before I was born, if I would like to be alive, I think I would spend an eternity making the subject so incredibly complex I would never make the choice. THE CHOICE.
To be or not to be. Thank god, it wasn't an option. Thank god, I don't always have to make decisions. Thank god, for accidents that define who we are. Thank god, existentialism is a myth. Thank god, god is dead. Thank god.

Smoking

I think about smoking all day, all day long. I can't roll my own cigarettes and I rarely smoke cigarettes that are not rolled by Syndny. I rarely smoke at all. But I think about it all the time.

Crooks

"I'm gonna die of loneliness, for sure." -Devendra Banhart

Joel called me on it the other night after Rio's party, the party I did not make a fool of myself at, after Jim and Jonathan left. He set at my small lunch table trying not to finish my bottle of Pendleton, or not to appear so. A trick of the eye. With mirrors.
He said he thought I had been fooling around last year with many people, "getting around," I think he said, when I lived at the old place. When I had lived with Kevin for most of that time.
I had to disagree. But on the other hand, when Kevin and I broke up and we both moved to our separate flat/mother-law-studios blocks from one another, I had been getting around and made no secret of it.
Talking to Joel, twenty-two, who had slept with two, I wasn't sure what to make of myself, so I explained.
Certainly I would die of loneliness. Months passed where I was untouched by anyone. You don't realize how rare it is to be close to a person in this society without being intimate. It's fucking rare. The closest we get, it seems, is brushing by people in the aisles of grocery stores, always with a curt and whispered excuse me. Two ships passing in the night.
So I started fucking people because, because, because it was the only certain way to get someone to stay the night. And I wanted them to stay the night. Making up for months of sleeping alone.
Referring to Crooks in Of Mice and Men who wakes up not sure if his dreams are in his head or reality - he doesn't have anyone to wake up to to refer to. No one to play rummy with. No one to talk about the books he's reading (books are no good). "A guy needs somebody."
To say nothing of affection would of course be untrue. I loved the people I slept with with the love I had for missing the love of humanity. I miss them. But I cannot go back. Humanity is not the one I long for. I just want my baby.

I hate how the world treats the gentler things.
"Darwinism," the capitalist shouts from the inside of his train. Choog choog. Spits out black tar air, tracks that cut through my garden and the burialground of the birds my cat caught this summer.
Joel was hit by a car.
"Blacked-out in the air," he had said playing video games in his underwear on Hannah's bed with scabbed knees, knuckles and nose. Bruised.
I don't like it when the drunk clumsy world takes down my friends.
Andrew got hit last month. Truck accelerated into him at a crosswalk. Guy got out all pissed and what-the-hell-were-you-doing-there attitude.
"What if I had been a kid. I was so mad, I hate feeling mad," 6'5" lumberjack hero on the Charmin paper towel rolls Andrew says to me over the phone when I call him about it.
As kids we watched our dog get hit by a car. Mom & Dad on one side of the road, us three kids on the other (10,8,6) sitting on a grassy hill and he ran to meet us and we all saw it was going to happen. Actually, I didn't see it. Closed my eyes for the impact, at the last second - just like I do in nuclear bomb dreams before the blast overtakes me, the dust uproar when I am concumed by chemical fire.
Car drove away, Mom and Dad cussing and two small children screaming and it was probably for the best. I don't cry. Delayed stress reaction is common with me.

Hate how the big things don't pay attention to the little things.

Ever hear the guitar playing man on Newport Ave. near the Christian Science church? You can only hear if you walk by.

I want to be a protector of the gentle things. Want to do push-ups and learn loud words to yell in the moment.
"You know where I can find the GAY MEXICAN PUPPET SHOW?" Crooked walk transient asks my friend Juan

John

When John was growing up before he'd goto school his Mom would put hair product in his hair and call it "hair spray." Years later he found out the product was Sun-In and that is why he was blonde for a large portion of his childhood.

ZIne #9

Year of the Rabbit. 2011. Psychic told me this year is going to be amazing. Psychic told me I was a prostuite in a past life and I have a guardian spirit named Harold looking over my right shoulder. Wonder what the stars are doing. Wonder if it matters.

March, dressed in faux fur coat and danced at Holocene, Tube and Beauty Bar in Portland for my birthday then walked the morning misty grey streets of the northeast with my fish-eye lense camera to yoga. Portland, where the daffoldils come on the week of my birthday yet I am not in love with it. Jonathan says it's too ironic but my dislike comes from too many cars. Too much rain. Always cold to me.

Gary and I ran from a cop some Thursday night in downtown Bend for no reason and was there was a chase. When he caught up to us flashlight waving, looking for some bugger who started a fight at Seven, asking us why we ran we couldn't tell him anything and apologized. Talked about Dad and Lost at McMenamins, went to sleep at sister's house down the street.

Organized my finances.

Stopped going to therapy.

Taught some zine classes through the Nature of Words and illustrated for a Olympia, Washington zine for Josh James about Prince.
Guerilla art cork-people project with students from Cascade Academy.

Participated in a zine workshop hosted by my friend Hollie who asked people to draw a picture of themselves and answer, "how would you live your life if no one judged you?"
Wrote about kissing more people.

Telling my secrets to new strangers so I don't have to face the past.

In April dressed as a geisha doll in a fashion show wearing Sarah Vile's Homeslice necklace concoction at the Mad Happy Lounge where afterwards Super Adventure Club played San Fransico video-game Chromeo night beats. Paid ten dollars for a CD so they would play more and go into a Berlin trance with the UNTZ UNTZ UNTZ.

Conducted a self-invented purge ceremony on the evening I scraped my knuckles in the pedestrian tunnel while riding my bike home speaking to a past or present lover which involved turning the heat high, pushing the furniture to the side and belting Rage Against the Machine and Prodigy while spinning. It worked, I tell you. Don't let yourself get stuck in the great motherfucking sad.

Played bike polo the day before Easter in Tumalo at Holly and Peter's house and wouldn't admit to injuring myself attempting to walk on stilts before the Adult Easter Egg hunt (condoms and tequilla) taking shots with Central Oregon's Taylor Lautner who I found an hour later sleeping on the living room floor.

Dance party in a warehouse where I ate sushi and drank damiana labations between DJ's forming a back bend obstacle course fueling energy to dance until 7 in the morning. Breakfast was Nutella and scrambled eggs. Not sleeping long because of Kola Nut,Yohimbe and Korean Ginseng multi-herb I had taken hours before.

Pulled the old woodstove out from the garage with my neighbor and burned the branches and pinecones that had fallen off the trees in the windstorm. Pulled out the rug and laid it on a dead grass dream weeks later with neighbors and wander-bys frying tortillas into chips while Jamie salts them out in the open and out of nowhere comes homebrews and local brews and bikes and all of us packed on the rug sharing cigarettes and marveling at the changed world. Looking off from the roof singing Fleet Foxes and Amazing Grace.

The Mississippi river is flooding. Every interview they conduct with local witnesses sounds like a blues song; "When it gets here I'm gonna run. When the water gets here I'm gonna run."

Prince William got married and I did not see it.

This has happened before, I am sure of it. Or is it deja vu? Sliding synapses losing their rythm. 2011 has not happened before. No timequake here I am sure of it. Because 2011 is the only year I feel has been unique in it's own.

My hair has been doing some funny things this year. February I went at my bangs with sewing scissors over a trash can in front of the long mirror on the floor. Then blonde for the first time since I was 4 in Courtny's sink, then blue a month later sitting on Leesh's toilet making her roommates complain about the lingering and sense depriving smell of bleach to clean up the bathtub. Now it is tragically brown with a slice of blue still left. Anarchy supressed.

Played tambourine with Rural Demons then got hit in the head by a the head of a stand-up bass played by Larry and His Flask's, Jesse Marshall while they busked on a May First Friday in front of Bellatazza.

Thought about sex a lot. A continuing conversation which has ceased to be just silliness. Seriously trying to figure out the secrets of it, admitting how essential it is to feel connected to people with it (and not just a partner, connected to the ebb of humans. To mate is enter into a strangers world unlike words. The only other comparison I can think of is dancing). Grappling with the first earnest desire of getting it. This awkward now. Don't look at me.

Had a photography adventure in Prineville.

Watched my little brother run a half marathon.

Played Bingo at Summit for the Bend Spay and Neuter Project.

Climbed the mountain and asked the wise man at the top, "How is the moment complete in itself? How can I leave it and put it away and move on? How can I stop holding on? The moment sealed in amber on display. Fist-fulls of rececipts, hoarder of sacred moments I base my life on. Should I even let go? What is the way to love? Way to live?"

Mom held me while I cried hot tears in my old green bedroom with the Bob Ross looking painting of three large trees surrounded by water with two mountains in the background.

Said good-bye to my grandma. Under the blankets, telling me the world is going to be tougher in my time and how sad it is.
Had me type in "sex" in her crossword thesaurus when I was quite young and it read, "love-making."
Grandma, who always knows who's the baby's daddy on Maury, makes us beef stew in the squat can with the red label. Potato bread with real butter.
Ginger snaps with milk.
She never understood me being vegetarien.

We couldn't leave the table until everyone was done.

"I can run faster than you think I can," she once told my furrowed brow little brother who threatended to run away. Maybe she could, but it was hard to imagine.
Sun dress and floppy straw hat. She was my sister's grandma. Trying on clothes over clothes at Ross. My brother got her blonde hair and blue eyes.

Sitting next to her in the borrowed hospital bed settled in the old dining room where we had Thanksgiving dinner overlooking the porch with squirrels (what will happen to the squirrels?) I am holding grandmas hand. Pond's Cold Cream on her side table I rub on my neck and momentaily smell like her, soft and clean.
"Let me see your beautiful blue eyes," Mom told me they would say as she laid sleeping and she would open them.
Fresh non-generic scented laundry.
Washing my hair in the sink like they do in the salon.
Watching Jerry Springer, Rickie Lake, Judge Judy, People's Court, Jenny Jones, Montel Williams, Sally Jesse Raphael, Rosie O'Donnell.
Knitted slippers.

Said good-bye to Andrew (friend-of-many-virtues) because he left for St. Louis. He told me to not see boys that were'nt good enough for me. I wrote in a letter that I felt sad he was hit my a car weeks ago because the world should never be cruel to him (he was pushed more than hit. Truck driving jackass who didn't want to stop at the crosswalk for people crossing).

Met someone I am in like with.