thursday-sunday-friday-saturday-monday-monday-monday

Inside my purse there is a crumpled business card from a novelist who wore heavy makeup hidden behind glasses, a thrice folded cardboard jacket from Saturday afternoon's coffee (hastily sipped as I wandered in bouts of rain between poetry venues), a pack of gum (I don't like gum, but I was sick of the coffee, breakfast, whiskey taste and didn't have time to run home and brush my teeth), one fingerless glove (black), an inking pen (oh wait, TWO inking pens), current bank balance, wallet, a tired piece of yellow paper with the words "one brain for one body should be enough for somebody but anyone can make my two feet run" written on it in red ink (absolutely no idea where this came from), a collection of common writing pens (five blue ink, three black ink, and two red ink), a letter, two poems scrawled out in my sloppiest handwriting (one by Dano Quinn and one by me, something really pretentious that contains: "our tattoos make our fears approachable and our bodies un-broach-able/while in our ears dangle the earrings of lives we have forgotten, or grown out of". I think we know why I'm not a poet), a white crocheted hat, head phones, a red bandanna, four pennies, a dime, a pink guitar pick, chapstick, five bobby pins, a black button, my phone, and the security card that unlocks the office doors.

This was my weekend: one long stumble from coffee to beer to coffee to boardwalk to building, from poem to poem to song, and back to bed for some quick hours or minutes then perhaps a county meeting.

As you can see from the picture, the amazing Sara Johnston came to visit: two whole days! We had fun even though I had to work and dragged her around with me all through Astoria listening to some truly awful and truly excellent fisher poetry. When people come to visit, I realize how boring I am. I don't go anywhere, I don't do anything. I work and sleep and sing to myself while playing guitar and I play the same five songs, my entire repertoire these days. I only eat out at the Columbian. I don't have a favorite bar...although the VooDoo Room is high on the list. Side note: I had a chai martini last night (thank you, Bartender Josh...I think that was his name: Josh?) and it was like nothing else I've ever had. Martinis...ewww, at least for me, but not this one. This one was...I don't even have words to describe it. Oh so good.

I covered the Fisher Poets Gathering and in 10 minutes I really need to make some final phone calls and write the whole thing up. First, I'm going to eat muffins (they're baking right now). The story is for Monday's cover and I'm not sure where to start. I have an entire notebook crammed with scribblings. There are so many ways I could start and once I start one way, I allow certain stories while I forbid others.

Ooops, there goes the oven timer.

updatin the blerrrg

so tired that I just ate the last of the angel food cake Sara and I bought without actually realizing that I'd done this. I don't even know why I'm bothering to punctuate my sentences or capitalize "i"

all that extra work

why why why? also HWY. which means something else entirely

sooooooooooo there were about a million things I was supposed to do this weekend, in addition to WORKING

they did not become done

instead I just worked

which in some ways I suppose makes me very adult and mature: being unorganized

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if you are my mom or dad and you are reading this:

I am well

am happy

am relatively well-fed

am working hard

am playing guitar again

am not playing piano since the catholics won't let me into their chapel (we pause to note that this is very unfeeling of them)

am covering the fisher poets gathering and there will be a story on monday (need to remember to email it to certain strangers I interviewed tonight...shall probably forget...alas)

am going to bed now and will probably get seven hours solid rest after two i mean three weeks of not

am going gospel tomorrow morning SO EXCITED, clappin and foot stompin with the best of 'em

goodnight

pancake landscape: part 2

Here's what I covered and wrote last night and thus it ran today. Newspapers are magic. Instant publication! Instant gratification! Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

The Young Entrepreneurs who already know more about business than I do. I had to Google "overhead costs" to make sure they were what I thought they were. And they were, but I still had to double-check. Sad.

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Pancakes tomorrow! I invited my neighbor to come by for breakfast and help me consume them. Even if that doesn't work out, I'm still making pancakes.

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So you can't tell, but about fifteen minutes have just passed. In those 15 minutes, three or four police squad cars, one ambulance, a tow truck and a fire engine pulled up outside of where I live.

I'd just returned home from a meeting. I'd written up the meeting story and picked up some more flour from the grocery store. Nothing beats whole wheat pancakes. But anyway: POLICE DRAMA! Did I really want to tangle myself in a possible messy, newsy situation? Not really, but I was so curious. I knew if I went outside I could walk straight up to that crowd of policemen and ask questions and they would pause in their dispatching and law-laying-down and polygraph whatsits and answer them, cagely maybe. Still: information. It's a terrible lure and I'm a dumb fish.

Curiosity warred with fatigue

My sinful desire To Know won the day.

I spent a few minutes on the balcony pretending to smoke a cigarette while mapping out the situation before I went down. Then I got a pen and grabbed a notebook at random. It happened to be a paisley green, floral-ish, very horrifyingly girlie leftover from when I was 15. How do I possibly still have it? Lord knows. I flipped it open to a blank page so the cover wouldn't show. The last thing I need is an officer of the law judging me for my notebook choices.

As I walked down, I was reviewing in my head what Tim Harrower told me in his text books about being a reporter on the scene of anything. Find the fire marshall! Don't disturb the bodies. Something like that. Remember your training, Luke. Etc. Instead of being suave and professional, I just asked the first person in a button-up shirt what was going on and he pointed me to an officer who pointed me to his shift supervisor who asked if we could step out of the rain so that his hearing aid didn't go phzzzzzt. I think I met him over the summer while covering a semi-truck jack-knifed in the middle of a residential road. His name sounded familiar.

Anyway.

The situation: single vehicle crash. Meaning, some poor tree/bush is bearing the weight of another being's folly. Police arrested a grandma-type (as best I could tell in the dark and the rain) older lady on DUII charges. Let's see...it's...Wednesday?...yes, Wednesday night. There's a good chance she might even stay in the jail until morning. It caps at 60, so (for example) on the weekends overcrowding means people rarely stay in for very long...maybe not even twenty minutes on a rough night.

No story will come of this. It will be another log entry in tomorrow's paper. But I don't think I could have slept tonight if I hadn't gone out there. Now I can rest easy, all virtuous and stuff.

pancake landscape: part 1 in a multiple update kind of day

Finished morning proofing at work, grocery shopping, bridge crossing and all roads lead to PANCAKE MAKING while the coffee's brewing. I sat down with Mozart and the Musketeers and tried to make breakfast as pretentious as possible, with lots of butter and maple syrup too.

Another night assignment means another afternoon off. So I'm going to clean the studio, do some drawing and some writing and probably go to Ross to buy household items like...cups. I have a house guest coming tomorrow and I don't expect her to abide by my primitive standards of life quality.

For your amusement:

1. My newest favorite place on the internet: UNHAPPY HIPSTERS. How could this not make me smile? Especially to have one reason to be glad I don't live in Portland. So far, it's the only reason. Not that I'm homesick. I'm not. I'm very happy where I am, especially since I can wear reasonable, non-North Face, seasonable clothing and not feel like I'm being judged. I was so close to getting a sparrow tattoo you have no idea. It was the peer pressure. Now all I need to make me happy is a baseball cap and some better hiking boots. Mine squeak and I'm ashamed of them.

2. ARMS DEALERS! holy Gregorian chant, Batman! This story is crazy. Obviously my understanding of the modern world is lacking since this whole scenario of arms dealers and assassins blows my mind. Also interesting: as powerful as these men are, they have a hard time actually killing people. The movies make it look so easy: You have ultimate power, you pick up a phone and say in stony tones, "Deal with it" and some masked underling mutters, "It is already done" and BLAMMO, no more Swiss mercenary turn-coat even though he was protected by the entire neutral Swiss army and was being kept in a secret location in a country that doesn't exist.

Not how it goes out there in the real wilderness. Should I find this comforting? Or is it still scary that so much effort is being put into attempted murder? I don't know.

And, what makes these people so appealing? These ruthless men of money and blood? Is it like how we're afraid of God, the infinity overwhelms us? Both benevolent and brutal? Something that guides our small and big concerns through economics, geography, history, society, ethnicity, sexuality, what atrocities we practice on our verbs, what glorious heights we raise our infirmities toward. These puppeteers fascinate us and are the reason we write so many books.

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Things to look forward to:

1. SARA JOHNSTON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (if all goes according to plan)

2. Fisher Poets Gathering, aka my weekend assignment. I'm going to pretend that I'm on assignment from a famous magazine. Like that kid from "Almost Famous". I thought the movie was dumb, but I loved that kid.

3. Album review. Hopefully it will be up tomorrow. Yes, I'm reviewing an album. Should be fun.

les trois mousquetaires

Bat-owl, made while watching "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind"

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Long ago, when we were young, Liz gave me old copies of "The Three Musketeers" in scandalous three-volume-novel format. So each volume is its own separate bound book. I love it. I'm on volume 2 and the musketeers are such morons I can't believe my eyes, but I keep reading anyway. Besides, I love Athos. He's so badly-written and predictable and if Dumas didn't keep beating into my head in voluminous descriptions (via the musings of D'Artagnan) that Athos is taciturn and depressed I would never have figured it out.

My favorite part so far is: "So I found out she stole stuff, like plates or something, from the church so I hanged her from a tree." And D'Artangan murmurs sympathetically, "Well, I don't really see how you could have done anything else." And they call for more wine.

Once I'm done reading the English, I'm going to dig up my French copy and battle through it. I miss knowing another language and French satisfies a snobby, dramatic piece of my soul like nothing else.

So 1993 was a good year. Remember Chris O'Donnell and how he was supposed to be all dreamy and swoony? And Tim Curry and how he isn't? Ever. Watch this epic fight scene:

1993 Musketeers movie!!!!

Casting was obvious. Charlie Sheen, Oliver Platt and Kiefer Sutherland have always seemed to scream out "I am a 17th century French swordsman" to me.

My parents own this movie. I need to steal it next time I visit.

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This week: early morning proofings, Fort Clatsop wanderings and meetings, Fisher Poets gathering, landscape assembling, cupcake eating, hamburger + beer buying

Oh goodness, you have no idea (NO IDEA) how much I wanted a hamburger last night--how much I want one now. It's a sign. My body demands protein.

I'm not really a vegetarian, I just don't go out of my way to prepare or consume meat. So I go along, all merry, until suddenly my body bellows, "FEED US MEAT." And I must obey.

elle se sauvait...en me jetant mon masque

Tom Waits, whose voice, someone (maybe Tom Waits) said, sounds "like it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months, and then taken outside and run over with a car" is what I'm listening to. Specifically "Swordfishtrombone" We are at track 3 in which Dave is both a butcher and instrumental. I don't know if Tom Waits has killed anyone, but I assume he has and it happened sometime in the evening when the sun made the river look like whiskey poured out by Nell, whose silver wrists clank when she sets a shot on the bar, but the boys there don't mind. They say it's part of her charm while next door a circus rages until 4 am and Bill, the cyclops, bursts out of his cage and sets the lions running through a line of chorus girls. Somewhere in the middle of all this, Tom Waits kills a sorry boy from Ireland whose ticket was stamped "No entry," and later kisses a girl with a crooked lip. His dreams are colored yellow as he dreams that he dreamed about her in her sea shell house pulling all the shadows in.

"Is there anyone cooler than Tom Waits?" asked a Eugene friend. Except it wasn't a question because that could never be a question and he continued: "I don't think there is" (in kind of amused wonderment, like: What a beautiful world we live in, said Jimmy Stewart, It's just the most gosh-darn wonderful old world. And you're a peach, Mary. This old ramshackly house, all these kids. Wh-wh-why, Mary, how you ever came to marry such a left footed guy like me I'll never know. And MERRY CHRISTMAS!)

We are now at "Town With No Cheer":
This tiny Victorian rhubarb
kept the watering hole open for sixty five years
now it's boilin' in a miserable March 21 st
wrapped the hills in a blanket of Patterson's curse
the train smokes down the xylophone
there'll be no stopping here
all ya can be is thirsty in a town with no cheer

Banjo Patterson? Maybe? Waltzing that matilda out from Snowy River, hey Clancy. Etc.

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Wow. Just rambling with no restraint.

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Tom Waits might be the scariest man alive. Which reminds me of a story someone told me recently.

It starts like this:

A woman who runs a graveyard was approached by a man In Charge of Things because the two of them had to formulate disaster plans: natural, pandemic, epidemic, etc. The essential question being: How would you bury a whole lot of people quickly?

You know, just your average local government business. So they formulate this plan and have a schematic of the graveyard and she remarks, casually, "Well, Uncle Adolf would certainly be proud."

"What???" asks the man In Charge of Things.

"Adolf Hitler," she replies. "He's a distant uncle on my mother's side."

True story.

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Today I met the three dogs I'll be house-sitting at the end of April: lean, goofy, loving hound-mutts. I came home smelling of dog and covered in dog hair.

It's beautiful outside. I'm going to wander down to the Columbia, yes, just saunter down to the Columbia River and wallow in how amazing it is to live where I live, where continent ends and river runs to ocean and cliffs stack up like building blocks and people lay gillnets out in the front yard to dry off under the sun.

aujourd'hui, deuxieme partie: the international version

Introductory note: After slaying the spider and rebuilding my bed, I was off to the ocean for hiking and climbing and wishing I knew how to surf.

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C'est moi, ambulo dans und silva.




Maintenant: those arbols et ra. Regardez las bonitas stroms. Pas un drzewo genealogiczne. Real foret.



Arbor avec problemo:



Branche und branche und outre branche...



La mer-scape, sea-scape, l'ocean, oceano pacifico, pax vater



Ecola: active landslide area in 19soixante. Pas excelsior, or something. Shale, sandstone, et sangre.



Maison, mesa, miracle, Mad Max, and other letter M associations. Also: The end.

But the ocean is filled with tears
And the sea turns into a mirror
There's a whale in the moon when it's clear
And a bird on the tide