Just Passing Through

February 15, 2011

Wed, 16 Feb 2011 17:40:53 -0500

I’m on a dangerous mission to space. I am an underling on the ship, but I have had a vision and I know deeply that I will be called to perform a great service that will cost my life. My superiors are treating the mission as if it is a party. The Captain of the ship is a Stepford blonde and was quoted on tv as saying that her only goal for the mission was to take a long walk on the moon, as long as she liked. The ship’s elite arrive and begin drinking and carrying on, and she shoos the underlings out of the party. We sit in the “alley” of the ship dejected. They throw an alien at us for sport, and though I know the alien is not going to hurt us, I seize with panic as it approaches. In a jarring motion it whips its hand in front of my face. On each of its fingertips are five tiny fingertips. He’s mocking me when he whispers, “Evolution.” He flops around in the street suddenly shouting, “Oh, no! But I forgot that its all about feminism!! Feminism is in charge!” That’s it, I think. I walk right into the command center of the ship to find the Captain and her equally Stepfordian co-commanders crafting idly. “They are mocking us and what’s worse, is that your command is empowering men and not women!” The Captain continues gluing her colored foam refusing to answer me. I look to all the women in the room confused, “Does someone else have something to say?” “Don’t worry,” the co-captain assures her Captain, “It won’t spread.” I realize with horror that they consider me mutinous! I realize that the mission is lost if they refuse to hear me. “Don’t you want to know what I mean?” I ask. I want to tell them about my vision, the message from the alien, the great stake of our mission. She shakes her head from side to side, pressing a flower into the glue.

This photo has been re-blogged on Tumblr 1300 times!

Tue, 15 Feb 2011 13:46:57 -0500

This photo has been re-blogged on Tumblr 1300 times!

Hey Wynne

Wed, 29 Dec 2010 23:16:46 -0500

There is nothing and i mean nothing in the world better than six hours at the ladies spa.

My perfect day: written 2/2009

Thu, 23 Dec 2010 22:12:02 -0500

My perfect day

to wake up not feeling weighted down by the person next to me

or the work ahead

but to feel that crisp sense of possibility

and eager energy

to stretch gently

drink coffee

and go for a walk while the town wakes up

come home and find my boyfriend and kids running around having breakfast

he is a stay at home dad

i get ready for work and we play around

then i go to the AA factory

where everyone is so psyched about their jobs

and we high five and spend the morning problem solving

and then Abby and I have lunch

expensive salads and a glass of wine

to celebrate the launch of our new line

after lunch i meet my crew at the studio

do hair and makeup

then we shoot on site in the woods

the light is just right and everybody nails their scene

so we light up a jammy and mess around in the woods

and I feel so lucky to be part of such an amazing bunch of women

and that our work is respected and sought after

when i get home around 6 i’m wiped out

everybody gets into bed with me and we snuggle and talk about the day

when i wake up, i smell spaghetti

and I sit down with my family and we laugh so hard we start to cry

and eat spaghetti

afterward my boyfriend goes to band practice

a friend comes over and we hang out

fall asleep watching a movie on the couch

my boyfriend comes home

i kiss my friend goodbye

and me and him fuck and make out and fall asleep

and make love and fall asleep

and wake up and make out

and then fall back asleep

and when the daylight comes in the window

i wake up with a smile on my face

THAT IS WHAT I WANT

Commitment to Journal Writing

Thu, 16 Dec 2010 17:50:35 -0500

I’m making a commitment to you, Journal Writing. You will be my practice. I think this is a nice place to be stored. In Wynne’s brain, in Jr’s, I think my Mom sometimes reads.

I’ve been putting this together for a long time. Its a Consciousness Raising at the top of every month. On the 1st. I like the date being arbitrary. Or my other idea is the Full Moon. Channeling the energy of a full moon seems riskier.

Characters:

Phys Ed/Self-Defense Teacher

Home Economics Teacher (who actually teaches manners and sex/drug ed)

Pyramid Scheme: Getting Paid for Women’s Work

Adamtha: Spiritual Leader

Then having one or two guests with me on real or artistic topics.

Non-Violent Communication

Stretching

Anthems

Video

Audio

etc..

List of Stages:

Backstage

Voyeur

Hotel Room

Percival Landing at night

Phantom City

My Living Room

Eagles

Loft on Cherry

Forget It

Thu, 21 Oct 2010 02:18:24 -0400

I’ve been thinking this week about forgetting. How to forget? There is this fanatical desire since the moment I was born to learn the language I was hearing, to learn what all the words meant, and most importantly how to use the words, but now I wish I didn’t have any of it. Just the wonder of experience, and none of the ways to describe it.

Photo

Tue, 10 Aug 2010 13:43:33 -0400

Your Presents

Wed, 30 Jun 2010 01:41:00 -0400

I want to give you the protection of Sveti Petka an Orthodox saint of travel.

And the friendship of the two dogs who visited me in my dream.

And the blessings of the angels who live under the 4th Avenue Bridge, they wish you well.

And most of all love from me.

Thanks for your amazing friendship Lauren. Your lay inspiration down everywhere.

June 16th

Thu, 17 Jun 2010 00:46:00 -0400

Ryan and I went to a small, mountainous European country to meet their black president. We stayed in their royal home in the mountains on a ski slope where the water was so fresh. It was thick and pure and I drank and drank and drank until I found myself quite high. I was also quite attracted to the Presidents wife. Ryan and I went to a movie, but the film was a scary movie of us going camping, so we left. We decided to go to the new restaurant Abby and I had recently opened, but when I got there, I discovered Abby had already done all the work. It looked beautiful. It was the perfect hang out. Ryan and I hung out while the place closed down for the night, we sat on the stairs in the atrium, looking out into the street when a couple walked in to go to their apartment upstairs. What are you doing here, they eerily hissed and glared at us as they passed. Creeped out, we locked ourselves into the restaurant and turned to face two women sitting down at a low table talking. You have to go, I said, and shuffled them out a side door and I leaned in to lock it, but it pulsed from the other side. I shut it with all my might and the person on the other side pushed with all theirs. No! I yelled. You’re not coming in! Who are you? Say something! A standoff of pushing, the intruder silent. Finally, Ryan says, just open the door and see who it is. On the other side, holding a slick and shiny paper sack full of donuts was Christine, Ryan’s band mate, looking unfazed saying nothing. From across the street two dogs start bounding towards me. Both big and white, one had shaggy hair and puppy dog eyes and the other the keen beauty of a wolf. I hugged and kissed them both. I was so happy to see them. Its Scrappy, I said! Its Scrappy! Then Ryan and I realized without saying so, that if a soul can split into two beings, then two beings could combine to create a single soul. We looked at each other as if we could melt into one another, and it was the best feeling in the world. Then I realized with horror that he was coming to wake me up from my nap and I wanted to stop him! So I opened my eyes, and his head was at the door. You’ve been asleep for a half hour, baby. You should get up.

The Old The New

Fri, 14 May 2010 18:11:19 -0400

I’m all over the place.

have i told you about that?

3:04pmWhitney

at least you’re doing something productive by fb chatting with me.

3:05pmMe

that’s the thing

i’m really fucking off

3:05pmWhitney

me too

3:05pmMe

i just have so much to do its ridiculous

and i refuse to do it

on principle

in psychic class this weekend

i had to go into this cave

and in the cave were two windows

in the left a word appeared

Don’t

representing my old consciousness

3:07pmWhitney

3:07pmMe

my self imposed limitations

and in the right a word appeared

ENTIRE

representing my change of attitude

3:07pmWhitney

interesting

3:08pmMe

and then i sat down at a pottery wheel

and could make anything i wanted

so i tried but kept fucking up

first i made a vase and destroyed it

then i decided a bowl

then i couldn’t get the bowl to stay right

and finally i decided to stop worrying about what it was going to become

3:09pmWhitney

you stopped forcing a mold

3:09pmMe

and just enjoy the sensation of the sandpaper against the bottom of my hands

yeah, and the clay slipping through my fingers

Photo

Mon, 05 Apr 2010 16:48:17 -0400

Pierced Arrows/Christian Mistress at the Brotherhood

Sat, 09 Jan 2010 15:14:00 -0500

I don’t know why, I just wasn’t expecting so many buddies. I was immediately shuffled in and out of sweaty armpit hugs at a good old class reunion. No one was holding eye contact. With too many buddies to buddy, you kinda just briefly buddy by. I don’t like chit chat but here you are and it’s all you can do. Chit chat or space out. Drink or smoke weed. This part is so excruciating. I feel relieved when the opening band starts.

Christian Mistress is instantly familiar, it sounds right. The guitars chatter back and forth to each other, yelling and screaming. Sometimes egging each other on, sometimes nodding in agreement. The rhythm is furious. They all throw their hair back and forth to the music. At the end, they line up in a full row of head banging. I suddenly realize this is why they call them hair bands. Every single one of them rocking the music free through their gorgeous flying hair. Christian Mistress could sell hair bands or, like, silk screened scrunchies on their next tour and make a mint. Afterward all anyone remarks about is Christine’s vocals and they’re right, I barely take my eyes of Christine. Her eyes are scrunched up around every note. Her range is low and deeply beautiful. She razzes the audience a little, pushing people around, singing straight into them. I hope she won’t do it to me. I’m hiding behind my hair. One of the guitar players makes me nervous.

When Pierced Arrows began to play I wanted to feel transported, to get someplace high up where I could think. I climbed a chair next to my friend Tara. She had organized the free show as a birthday party. I finally relax, standing atop a chair in the twinkling Christmas light of the Brotherhood bar, looking around at all these amazing friends and artists that had come from all over for this night. This is an audience to dream of. They’ve come from all over the Westside, the Eastside, I see some people from Seattle, some legends from Portland, from New York City. The moment is like a memory for the expatriates and their friends. Of an old Olympia. A memory for Tara, who now lives in Portland.

Pierced Arrows gave it their all. I leaned in to ask Tara why she loves the band, and she said she just loves watching Toody play the bass guitar. That they are a rare inspiration to her on how to get old and stay punk, and that she thought they were totally underrated in the US. She said she paid them three times their rate. This blew me away. I thought that was so cool! Whenever I try to put stuff together, I try to get it done as cheap or free as possible, never do I say, let me pay you three times that amount because I think you’re a legend of your time!

We’ve gotten too used to free shows, people loading gear in and out, in and out, flyering, practicing, writing material, spending whole days and nights on the event, house venues getting irreparably trashed, it all adds up to burn-out. Conversely, touring bands face expensive food, expensive gas, and surly looks at the $5 door (incidentally, that’s a fee that has not changed since the dawn of rock show). Venues crash! The performers are doing their job, but they aren’t getting paid back. Well, there is no cash, says the audience! We’re broke! But…the bar, the smokes, the sauce, the stuff. Come on now. There is. Its dumb to pretend otherwise.

We need to be enthusiastic about using our money and our energy to create amazing shows. To support incredible records. To support local art & music magazines. To support great venues. To support what you think are talented artists. To gladly pay what they ask, and sometimes, to triple it.

Photo

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 03:31:25 -0500

Moon in Virgo

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 03:28:00 -0500

You want to win and be number one! Or do you? You are in a stalemate. In the front of your mind is a knowledge that you have to take care of yourself first, but there is hostility that results from garnering too much self-interest. There is someone or something coming to release you, but what? The answer lies somewhere in the culture. You must identify yourself with it, and you will know it by the love it fills in your heart. You are very capable with fine judgement and tastes. Your world is presenting you with a passionate adventure, or at least, a deep need for one. Let money and all the pressings of the ego flow through you, do not try to hold on. And lastly, in conclusion, come to the throne you seek to fight for and rise to the challenges before you. Your world presents you with its problems, and you respond creatively and wisely, with no fear or anger, no misguided cockiness in your heart. Create your own power.

Bringing in the New Year

Sun, 03 Jan 2010 02:49:00 -0500

I would like to extend my deepest gratitude for the gifts of this year. My utmost respect to my brothers and sisters in the daily struggles. My family, my friends, and for all the love in my life. May I be strong enough to bear the responsibility of this happiness by letting it shine through me and inspire others to smile.

I love you,

Sarah

Store

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 20:44:00 -0500

One Sunday after church it started, and we kept at it for a few months. The game started with everyone dividing the resources equally. We gathered all the fort-building supplies we could find, every spare blanket, every spare board, and placed them in the center of the basement. We doled out monopoly money in even stacks. We parceled out the square footage of the basements concrete floor, bickering over the demarcations. Each prospector dreamed in those moments. The building of your store was the focus of the game’s level of achievement. In the end, you were trying to have the baddest spread.

I chose the nook under the stairs, and set up my home underneath, using the convenient stair steps as the shelves of my stuffed animal store. I wasn’t in business long. I felt like a fool. I distracted myself from the lack of customers by decorating my home, but I couldn’t ignore it very long. Soon, I complained aloud to my customers, demanding they shop for their stuffed animals locally, but the overwhelming response was that they didn’t feel they needed stuffed animals, and asked me to carry something useful.

Disappointed, I pulled each little guy off the shelves finding them each a place of honor in my little hideaway. I racked my brain for the solution, finally, I found it. People needed tools, they needed tools to fix their forts. So, I pulled together all my Dad’s tools, not many incidentally, not many, and set up a very meager store. In the meantime, I’d had to sell my apartment under the stairs, my brother, Jeb, had opened a bar, and the bar was very successful selling fruit juices. I, myself spent a lot of time there. Anyway, he’d offered me a pretty sizeable amount of money for my place, which he then spruced up beyond recognition as a side wing to his own gargantuan quarters. I set my hardware store up in a small shack of the basement which I’d had to buy from my next door neighbor Josh, and there, after creating a small, but ambient fort, waited for some sales. There were very few. I think, mostly made out of pity, looking back.

I was desperate for cash. My ever saavy brother had begun dealing cards at the cash only bar, and it was Blackjack that I thought could save me. Blackjack, and blackjack alone. When I was up, I was way, way up, but, the house always wins, as my brother would say before I scrambled nine feet home to my dump of a stupid hardware store.

It was around this time that my brother had announced his intentions to marry my best friend, Whitney Boyd, and consolidate their adjacent fortresses and fortunes. I seethed with jealousy. I knew it would be socially corrupt to marry that old bartender, seeing as he was my brother, and people would scoff. But, I reasoned, given that this was a game, and given my situation; I found it hurt, like a knife in my back, that he had overlooked our possible partnership. And her! Married right into the lap of luxury! He spent days tricking out her fortress into a convenience store that sold little sandwiches made of Ritz crackers and peanut butter, on which I would spend my very last dime. As I did so, I was invited into the fort to see what they had done with the place. I sat down in the luxurious low-lit room on a divan-type blanket assemblage, very comfortable. I almost screamed in envy, but I did not. I politely ate my sandwich, and allowed myself to be inspired by what was their truly outrageously awesome home.

Okay, okay, I get it. I cannot sell goods, I must sell services. That is what these people wanted. Something for their money! Something, something, something. I held a brief meeting with my fellow bankruptees. We were all in hock to that saloon, what could we do to wrangle some of that economy our way? We adjourned to our favorite barstools and after a couple of fruit juices and several hands of blackjack, and mostly by virtue of the barkeep’s power of suggestion, we came up with a few ideas. Josh and I would get married. This would be a marriage of convenience and necessity in order to throw what little we had left together and open up a massage parlor. Customers would purchase expensive and very real massages from our greedy little hands. Drew would open up a portrait studio. There, a person of our village could have their face rendered by a very childlike hand. We garnered all of our strength, and set to work.

The massage business was indeed lucrative, and not without its titillating moments, but it seemed that no matter how hard I tried, all my profits were eaten up in the form of peanut butter ritz cracker sandwiches. Oh, not just the sandwiches! I’ll admit it; I was a slave to that bar stool! I couldn’t keep away from that damned game! I’d lose everything I had then solicit some chap to have themselves a massage, and the vicious cycle would begin all over again.

I was stumped. I sat to have my portrait done. As I hung this wizened version of myself on the wall of our home, I slumped onto the cardboard box chair. My life was a shambles; I was trapped in this loveless marriage, in this ramshackle pit of wreckage. The construction of our home had been held up considerably by my mother’s only request that we leave her a path to the washer and dryer, thus making my property the least desirable in the basement. In addition, we’d sold every excellent blanket and board we’d ever owned, in debt to the mansion and millionaires across the street. I felt true despair. I continued to feel despair all that week, the game rattled around in my mind. I lost sleep over it.

One day, sent downstairs to retrieve some frozen corn from the freezer in the basement, I found myself in Jeb and Whitney’s place, searching maniacally for their Monopoly money cache. I just wanted to see how much they had. I just wanted to look. I finally found it in their living room, in an old crayon box, hidden under their coffee table. Cash abounded in all the colors of the rainbow. (We’d been playing the game for months now, and as it happens, new currency had slowly trickled into our economy. When we’d drained all the Monopoly’s we could find, we started on the Life’s. Then, we found some stacks of cash for sale at a variety store.) And there it all was - the precious horde. I grabbed a fat stack, enough to pay rent and buy groceries and have a little something left over for the kids. They’d never know it was missing. I returned calmly upstairs to help my mom finish dinner.

The following days were peppered with guilt, but also excitement, at the prospect of gaining new ground in the game. When we returned the following Sunday, it wasn’t long before Whitney shrieked about missing money, and there was great consternation. I played my hand as well as I could, but I had been fingered.

I alleged my innocence defensively, and they shouted back with their guilty charge. “Enough,” yelled my brother, “we take it to The People’s Court!” We hurriedly assembled The People’s Court upstairs with my brother presiding as the honorable Judge Wapturd. My parents were seated in the back of the room as the jury, I expected to see them blithely taking it all in, but no, they were undertaking their responsibility gravely. I gulped. Court was quickly underway, and allegations flew. Soon, the prosecution realized they needed evidence and called a brief recess. In these moments, I confessed to my lawyer that I had in fact committed the crime. Court resumed and to my great surprise, the prosecution entered photographic evidence of me stealing the money - in the form of a drawing! I took one look at that crudely rendered fake, and demanded my lawyer intervene. The objection was overruled; the evidence held up.

Outraged, we asked for our own short recess. My lawyer and I huddled together, they had photographic evidence of me committing the crime, we reasoned, but what if we submitted a drawing of them drawing the drawing, thus invalidating the evidence. We quickly drew it up and when the court was back in session, we entered our plea. With no hesitation, that compromised low down dirty dealing judge sustained the prosecution’s objection to the drawing of the drawer’s drawing. I was furious and began to argue my own defense, but with two beats of the gavel and a truly corrupted grin, Judge Wapturd held me in contempt of court. Silenced, I sat down while the prosecution and defense laid out their final arguments. The jury briefly deliberated and the sentence was read aloud. Where once I was losing, now I was lost. I braced myself. I couldn’t believe it, I just couldn’t believe it. I was finished! Guilty on all counts.

The One

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 04:30:00 -0500

A little boy is walking down the path behind his house in the woods. He is thinking of his sister, and the soup they’d shared at lunch, the fight they’d had over the Snoopy spoon, and his mother’s orders to play outside. Suddenly a great gust of wind pushed from the west and nearly knocked him down, but before his stumble could turn into a fall, another strong wind rode in from the east, and righted him onto his feet. So touched by the hand of god, he looked in all directions for a presence. When he’d turned round in a circle, he saw at the end of the path, two brown bears turned back towards him. They moved forward with their eyes fixed on him. He, transfixed, followed. Deeper into the wood the bears went, occasionally turning to check that the kid was following. The boy was led further from home than he’d been before and he began to lose track of the time and the place. The bears arrived at the mouth of a cave and as they watched him, slowly entered. After some moments, the boy followed them. The bears stood at the end of a warm light beam that shone into the cave, and lying there on the dirt and rocks wrapped up in a ragged cloth, the boy saw a baby kicking and burbling about. The bear said something then, and even as he would go on to recollect this story as an adult, the boy would never understand whether the bear had actually spoken, or whether the bear had just psychically suggested the phrase, this is the chosen one. The boy picked up the baby and as he did, he looked into the brown bear’s eyes. Suddenly he was staring into the eyes of a beast, and no longer did the beast speak, now it begin to snarl. The boy clutched the baby to his chest and ran back to the house. His feet seemed to know the way, and every few moments he would feel the baby squirm and sigh in his arms. He was frightened for its life, but the infant’s distress also comforted him, reminding him that the special thing was still alive. He got back to the house, climbed the wooden steps, grappled with the screen door as he balanced the baby in the nook of his neck. He ran inside and placed the baby on the couch. His family appeared and slowly gathered around the coffee table staring down at the still bundle. Nervously, the boy lifted the corner of the blanket up off the kid. It fell down around and they almost screamed at what they saw. Confounded, the boy looked all around, under the table, around the edges of the couch. He looked back at the empty blanket. He remembered the thing. The form of it, the feeling. The heart beat. No ONE.

Lauren, its so beautiful.

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 01:27:09 -0500

Lauren, its so beautiful.

Okay, Dreams

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 01:20:23 -0500

I dream I’m at the store waiting until 3pm so I can go to the airport. My parents were there to take me, and my bags were packed. Judd was working. The bus pulls up to take my parents and I to the airport, and no one is there to cover! I call Jr and Kanako. Nothing. I get mad, but then, wait, had I forgotten to ask them to cover? My parents board the bus. I can’t leave, I yell at them, motioning towards the store!! Don’t leave! I yell at them, as the bus pulls away. I go back in the store, Kanako arrives. Judd sympathizes that I am now fucked to get to the airport. I grab my bags and grab a bus and get lost, ending up in the city outskirts. I had lost it, my trip to Europe. I remembered the dreams I had had a few months before, of glittering Europe, my dream. Now I was stuck.

Last night I dreamt I went to the Ladies of the Lake and instead of the lake, there were swimming pools, in the most amazing tropical arrangement, with palm trees. I was in paradise. It became an international soiree of people, but there were spies and a hidden passage into an underground transit station where we were traveling but I’m not sure how, by lightspeed, it felt like. I was lost there until I found my Mom. We stopped to grab a hamburger from the airport McDonald’s, but when we got them, the thick meat patties weren’t cooked at all. I looked up from the burger and saw Ryan. I decided to impress him by demanding new burgers from the service ladies at the Mcdonald’s counter. I threw a wild fit, condescending to the staff, threatening them to hurry. The crowd was horrified, but I felt confidant that Ryan would be amused by it.

November 20, 2009; the END of the decade is now

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 04:17:00 -0500

Even for a teenager, the party is over, it is time for bed. Only the truly wicked stay up later than this, hacking away at all the old spells in the dead of the night. I would have written about the dream I had except I only remember that one part, where you looked unhappy to see me, so I looked at the cards.

Something stronger than all of us sweeps through. The winds can grow into something of a rage. Earth prickling with it, cracking and snapping. Set fire to the whole rocky mountain range as the pine beetle, fat off a long summer and a warm winter, sucks the trees dead and dry. Earth can’t make the winter come early enough kill them. Our climate is changing. Quickly now; then faster. These energy storms alight. Sacrificing the things we have grown, suddenly all is seized! (((The moment of pain and fear.))) Now dedicate yourself to abundance. You burn a crop to grow a new one. You calmly close your eyes. You are at the gates of your castle. This castle could be yours, if you abandon your home in the village or seek to end your travels here. Your love waits inside. This moment is now. You will be changed in everything.