Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in a_wild_flower's LiveJournal:

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Sunday, February 10th, 2008
9:35 pm	U23D So I'm in the IMAX theater on a Sunday at 2:30pm and I'm surrounded by families with kids. We all have been handed 3D glasses for the feature presentation which is about to begin - a 3D film done during U2's last tour. I have my M&Ms, my friend has her gummy bears, and we are ready to go. While I love movies and am learning to love music biography films, I don't think I've ever managed to sit through an entire concert movie - rock or otherwise. It feels like watching televised golf to me; lacking the palpable energy of the crowds, time seems to slow down. I would never have chosen U23D for a Sunday afternoon activity, but I was invited and decided to tag along. Little did I know it would change my life. Shot in Argentina (?) in a soccer stadium of screaming fans, the film opens to Vertigo and some seriously close-up shots of Bono and his pores. Seemed that right off the bat, the 3D filled in that gap in other concert films I'd seen - this was like being there only I had a better seat than I'd ever had gotten had I attended a live show. I was rockin' along. This was cool. As it went on, though, the setlist and performance turned increasingly political I can't say this made me uncomfortable exactly, but it made me look around to see if it was making anyone else uncomfortable. Apparently not. I guess this is U2, I guess this is what people have come to expect from U2. And it was from there that my train of thought left the station. U2 is a pretty amazing band but they have never really been at the top of my list until the last year or two. If I consider what has grabbed my attention of late, a few things come to mind. I can't say their music is getting better per se, but it's not getting worse as often happens with bands who somehow manage to stay together. Only a few bands in history, that I can think of anyway, have managed to produce an entire catalog with both popular and critical merit. Artists often endure but the synergy of a band is far more ephemeral. There's also the amazing work Bono is doing on behalf of, well, the entire third world. I read about Bono and Bill Gates in a cover article in Time Magazine a few years back. I know Bill Gates as a force to be reckoned with - everyone who lives in our fair city does. But the article made me even more curious about the other endeavors of a celebrity artist who not only could make this kind of transition in the public eye but who actually bothered to. But the real driving factor which superceeds both of these loftier considerations is that my boyfriend of the last year and a half is a huge fan. As a result, the band has just been more visible for me and I've learned a little more about them. The more I learn the more impressed I am. This film was the first time I'd seen a concert of theirs up close and in scoping out the sweat and the pores it occurred to me that frankly these guys aren't all that attractive and even as raging young rockers... they STILL weren't that attractive. They definately have style and stage presence. They can write and perform music. They have attitude. But none of that really hides the fact that they are just four plain-looking dudes from Ireland. And on top of that, now they are OLD plain-looking dudes. Yet somehow they have enough market appeal to be popping off the screen at me in my Sunday-afternoon IMAX theater. You could make a case that the Rolling Stones are in the same category. I guess in their day they might have been lookers but these days the magic of what has been is what people pay big money to see. And what has been for the Rolling Stones was the rock-n-roll dream. Big shows, big fortune and fame, big drugs and sex... and it carries into the music they sing to us. We listen to and love the Stones because they are raucuous, hormone-driven, crazy, rockers who represent everything most of us are not. Even as they rock into their 60s, we are still impressed not just with the music but by the fact that they survived their addictions and the sheer insanity of the lives they created. They rest of us couldn't have survived, but the fact that they did makes them even larger than life. But now we're back to U2 and what are they selling us as aging rockers? They are married, with visible wedding bands in the film. They are sober, water bottles on stage. And they are devout; the rosary on Bono's mike stand does not hang there in a Steven Tyler sort-of-way. But as if all of that wasn't enough, they are preachy. Well, as preachy as you can be without being actually preachy, anyway. Singing about peace and tolerance and unity, rather than angst or pain or anger. All of this flies in the face of everything America wants to see in their pop stars, or so we'd think. Look at Brittany. People are eating up her heartache of too-big, too-early success. Yet U2 tours in the US and sells out venue after venue with tickets at $200 a pop and people not only love it, but they love it so much they'll come out to see the tour in the IMAX theater in 3D on a Sunday afternoon and bring their kids. Kids! To a concert that includes a segment of someone reading the human rights treaty developed by the United Nations. Perhaps, I thought, it's U2's days-of-yore hipness and their early albums that continue to fill the $200 seats. But the soccer stadium on the screen in front of me is not filled with yuppies like me; it's filled with beautiful, shining young faces and they are singing every word of every song in a language that is not even their native tongue. So what does that mean to me? Why did it change my life? We all think of ourselves as limited by who we are, where we come from, and what we look like. Over the last few years I've seen the first hint of crows' feet around my eyes, I've made adjustments to my diet for health reasons, and I really can't drink these days. I spend ridiculous amounts of time, energy, and money trying to reduce the impact of my presence on the planet. I listen to NPR. I read the materials and make educated voter decisions. I have a corporate job and my last real adventure was two years ago. Perhaps scariest of all is that I have grown my hair out because it's easier and I have given up on high-heeled shoes. They hurt. This has all led to a lot of woe-is-me. It's official - I'm middle aged. I've seen my best days; I'll never be a model, or a TV star or anything that involves a lens, really. And by the Debbie Gibson Standard, I'm nearly 15 years behind (she was 16 when her first hit was in the Top 40). But as I sat there eating my M&Ms, I realized if those guys, U2, can go from bad-ass rockers to middle-aged family-men and still sell out stadiums in Argentina while singing songs about the assignation of a civil rights leader and a beauty queen of a war-torn country... surely there's something out there for courdroy-clad, diet-conscious me. Thanks, gentlemen. Awesome set. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, November 5th, 2006
11:38 pm	it's official, i'm in love again. different this time. less longing, more satisfaction. less need more comfortable. i'm going to give it a go here at writing again, more and more and frankly it scares the shit out of me since i haven't written anything good in a very long time. no audience, no motivation, no point. but that's changing as my clock is ticking - no not biology but not entirely different. ironically i am effectively sniping the wires of my biological clock this month and i couldn't be happier about it. i never wanted kids, i revisited the idea to make sure and now it stands that i still don't. but the urge to create is strong and instead it's my novel clock that's ticking. must write something, must do it soon before all of my youthful experiences and opportunities have passed me by. it's true that there are plenty of things old people can write about for old people to read about but given my rate of growth i'll be virtually ancient by the time i'm really old and there won't be anyone to read something written by an ancient. i'll be lucky to catch the old crowd at this rate. i am sometimes afraid that there is nothing extraordinary enough in my life for me to have material as a writer; even my pain is relatively common, predictable, readily survived. what do i have to offer the world? i have insight, i have loved, i have lost. maybe now i've won (that is something i'd like to offer the world - the one where they live happily ever after). but there is little tension in my life and i'm not sure i know how to generate it for the sake of fiction. i re-read some writing tonight that i consider among my finest and it both encourages and discourages me. the writing comes in the form of letters which were so powerful, so persuasive, so georgously metaphorical, so plain-spoken. i had so much to say, life imitated art, art imitated life and coincidence was a common occurance. now, i am struggling to type these small words. what happened? the voice in my head silenced by a 'real job' where i do work instead of writing long elaborate emails to willing far-away correspondents? i wonder if i could go back to being an admin assistant - a position which for me required far less of my brains than time and offered plenty of opportunity to not think but to dream. granted sometimes it was a challenge to keep myself awake but i managed. sometimes i'm incredibly busy now and it's still a challenge to keep myself awake. hmmm. it's been raining all weekend and i keep remarking on it but it doesn't seem to make any difference to the rain which keeps on. i wonder occasionally at the forecast but it never really matters to me for the most part. wake up that day and wear what you wear. no point in getting worked up about it in advance. i need something to shock my reality. i need a jolt of something to inspire this prose. i still have plenty of theories, plenty of social commentary but no passion for it. the devil is dead. the audience of one is a mere shadow. the treasures of far away lands are exactly that. was i ever even really there? a photography show at a bangkok university gallery. brilliant. can't exactly stumble across that on here in town, now can i? miss you to me. me? yes me. miss me. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, October 5th, 2006
10:01 am	Create a space, a deep dark space into which I can decend. Sinking slowly to the bottom, to the depths of despair to the ugliness, the foulness of the human heart. A fat woman, upper lip wrinkled, stringy grey hair, whiskers sprouting, selling a newspaper they give to homeless people to sell to earn money. What has her life been, has she always looked this way? What kind of courage must it take for her to stand there and try to simply make eye contact with person after person who walks by and trys to look with out looking, looks down, looks up, looks aways or worst of all, stares straight ahead unseeing. She wants money, she wants dignity, she wants probably many more things but most of all she wants eye contact, acknowledgement but no one will give it to her because they'll be touched by her sadness if only for a second and we can't have any sadness in the modern world, no we can't. It's a contagious disease that must be stiffled at all costs. I seem to be pretty vulnerable to the homeless these days; they have arrived en masse for the warm winter weather and they seem to be all around me. I never give them money but I do try to give them my acknowledgement. It seems to keep getting harder. It means I have to notice them, consider for a split second their story, that something of them many have, at one point, been me but most of them never had the chance in the first place. I look at their unwashed bodies and wonder the same thing I wonder about sanity; is washed better than unwashed in some objective way, or a subjective preference that has gained popularity in an unsustainable society? Who is sane? Us or them? (Comment on this)
Wednesday, June 7th, 2006
10:48 pm	who am i I am a woman. I am 32 years old. I am single. I am tall and blonde. I am not a particularly healthy specimen of humanity but I am only mildly culpable for that. Ah, see? Only four sentences and the objectivity breaks down. I have the shakes, I am possessed by demons, I gnash my teeth and bite my tongue and wet my bed. I am taken by plagues of fits. I am medicated to counter all of this. Life is complicated when you are medicated. I've been angry about something in a slow-cooker kind of way for as long as I can remember. Would I have been angry without the fits? Maybe. Maybe it's my disposition. But it would have been a simplier kind of angry. Less red tape to aggravate my already angry disposition. This business of having the fits? I go through cycles with it. I am angry, it peaks, I give it up. Slowly it comes to a boil again until the next time I pull it off the burner and start all over. This time it's swelling because I am fed up with having the fits and instead of hating my parents or myself, this time it's starting to channel outward. I am angry at the western doctors who offer men's medicine to treat my woman's body. I am angry at the insurance companies whose values influence their coverage policies. I am angry that I am powerless to do much of anything about either of these problems. I am tired of not being heard in these matters. Some days I feel small and insignificant; some days I feel I was meant for so much more but the fits hold me back. For the moment, I'm looking to this as my forum. Maybe later, a call to action. (Comment on this)
Friday, December 23rd, 2005
11:59 am	foodie A friend asked for some recommendations for Seattle eatin'. I typed this out lovingly and decided I liked it so well I wanted to post it. I do love my vittles. ------------ Nice sit-down evening meal places - Palace Kitchen always makes the top of my list for recommendations. Our local celebrity chef Tom Douglas' crown jewel restaurant. Georgeous northwest cuisine, lots of variety, and one of those rare places that pretty much everything on the menu is not just decent but AWESOME and consistently so. Located in Belltown (downtown); make a reservation this time of year. - Lark is scrumptious. Like Palace Kitchen, a variety of what you might best call the Pacific NW cuisine. Lots of places around here are working towards the "slow food" movement and also trying to focus on local and regional suppliers for meat, cheese, and produce. Has options of both larger and small plates so you can order lots to share and get to taste many things. Located on Capitol Hill, also probably need a reservation but this place is quieter and less bustling in general than Palace. - Crave is the marriage of form and function. A small neighborhood bistro on Capitol Hill, Crave has swoon-worthy palate delights at casual fare prices. My experience at Crave has always been outstanding - until the last time I dined there. I'm hoping it's not the downward slide. At any rate, provided that my last experience was the exception and not the new rule, Crave still ranks pretty high on the list as a most-bang-for-your-buck locale. And even if the food starts to suck, the atmosphere is great. Tiny, perfect. - Six Seven is freaky and delish. The decor is like nothing I've ever seen (sort of futuristic nature if you can even imagine) and it's on a pier over the Sound (Downtown Waterfront). The food is very expensive as it has the disadvantage of being both haute cuisine as well as in a hotel, but the unique atmosphere is worth it, I think. Also a good place to just have a drink and they should be open the whole holiday weekend since they're in the Hotel Edgewater. The restaurant in the "W" Hotel, Earth and Ocean, is also a good option for this - the pastry chef is one of the best in town. - Palisade has the best view of the city as it's situated to the North directly on the water at a marina, and is located in Magnolia which is near Ballard. I have eaten there only once and found it lovely but I can't vouch for consistency. Seafood menu and apparently they also serve brunch. Hmmm. Have to remember that. And finally... the super-over-the-top places... Herbfarm and Rover's. Rover's is 4 or 5-star, 9 or 13-course French. Starts at like $100 person without wine but if you're really looking for something you won't find in SLC... also stellar is the Herbfarm - the Pacific Northwest equivalent of Rover's. Local local local, grow their own herbs for meals with an emphais on herbs in the food. As I am a total downtown snob, it's one of a few things I'll actually conceed to be worthwhile on the ominious Eastside. It's also near Red Hook brewery and Chateau Ste. Michelle Winery, both of which do tours and tastings. A few yummy (cheaper) ethnic places - Wild Ginger (the original and best) but also Typhoon, Dragonfish, and Toi. All Asian fusion, all decent - the other three are kind of cheaper copies of the original. All downtown, and I recommend all except Wild Ginger for happy hour. This truly is unique to Seattle or at the very least the West coast. We do snooty Asian food better than most places I think. - Bandeleone (Fremont, I think) used to be the best tapas place in town but it moved and now I've heard it isn't quite what it used to be. Even bad, it's still good. Harvest Vine (Capitol Hill) also rocks. Both are pretty spendy, though. Tango is good as well - Latin fusion, you might call it; try the chocolate cake with cayenne in it. And the Buenos Aires Grill is a meat, meat, and more meat experience but good meat and everything else. There are some of these places breaking out around the country but this is the upscale version. Try the Hormigas Malbec. - Kabul Afghan Cuisine - Afghani cusine which is sorta like Indian, sorta like Middle Eastern but yummy all the way around. Cheaper too - $15 entrees, that sort of thing. My favorite is the lamb kebobs and usually I don't even like lamb. Located in Wallingford, which is closer to Ballard, and pretty casual. No reservations. Also nearby is a great Hawaiian place but I can't find the name. Good Kahlua pork - extremely casual and cheap. Few blocks west of Kabul on 45th. Seattle also has a strange plethora of Ethiopian restaurants which is a unique dining experience but I can't say I'm crazy about the food. Kinda what you'd expect from a country that's starving. Pretty basic with lots of spices to cover the quality of the ingredients. - Blue C Sushi - So this isn't brilliant food but it's fun. Conveyor belt sushi if you haven't done it. I don't even like sushi and I had a blast. It probably isn't the best sushi you'll ever eat and certainly not the best in town but super-fun. Located in Fremont (also near Ballard), I don't know if you can reserve or not but if you can do it so you can get a "ring-side" table. If you go here, take a good look at the Fremont bridge right nearby (double bascule movable). We are redesigning the approaches etc. Full-on Seattle nightlife experience - The Chapel - Built in the morgue of an old mortuary on Capitol Hill, they used the slabs to reconstruct a bar. The food is generally terrible in my experience but the drinks are unique and the atmosphere is full-on swank. In fact, almost too swank for Seattle. Capitol Hill - Linda's - Lots of my friends hate this place but I love it and have since I moved to Seattle. It's where Kurt Cobain hung out at times I heard although I've never been much of a groupie. Still, it's got that Seattle grunge feel. Dead animal heads on the wall, one pool table, cheap beer. Looks like they took a bar from rural Idaho and transplanted in into metro Seattle. Crowd is grunge chic. Tattoos, piercings, and general weirdness but wearing mud boots and courderoy jackets. Capitol Hill near the Chapel. For a trifecta, stop for the best pina colada in town at the Cha Cha Lounge between the two. - Tractor Tavern - I am not a huge fan of this place in particular but only because of proximity. It's the Linda's equivalent in Ballard. Good shows sometimes. - Chop Suey - Good dj shows on Capitol Hill. Saw Goldfrapp there. People often go out in Belltown. I hate Belltown and also Pioneer Square for opposite reasons. Belltown is full of poser locals; Pioneer Square is full of in-state but out-of-city tourists. If you get dragged off to Belltown for some reason, try to make it to the Viceroy. It's the best of the worst. (Comment on this)
Saturday, October 15th, 2005
1:43 pm	gazelle I've been on the road a lot and part of that travel included a co-worker and friend's wedding in Windsor, Ontario. Windsor is just across the river from Detroit, MI. In what has to be one of my worst-planned trips ever, I hopped on a plane last minute using miles, rented an unreserved car, stayed in a hotel that my friend reserved for me (as if she didn't have enough to do) and floated in just as the rehearsal dinner had deteriorated into karaoke. As I was attending solo and I really don't know any of her other friends or family, I was assigned by the bride to be chaperoned by a supremely gracious gay couple who had also travelled out from Seattle for the wedding. I set out for this adventure in a strange frame of mind; I had just written this cathartic email to a friend that sort of layed it out about what I've discovered about being alone. See, I've had it in my head all of this time, this childish and naive self-righteous indignation that I somehow deserve to be taken care of and that I am above dying alone. That it's not fair for me, of all princesses, to be destined to be one of those people who growns old in her apartment without even a cat and eventually one day, long after her mother is dead, wakes up dead herself... and like some poor schmuck on CSI, I am not found until I start stinking. (ooo the horror). But the thing is, it's bullshit. Everyone dies alone. Even if someone loves you and they find you dead before you start stinking, you die alone. Unlike going a movie, unlike going to the bathroom, unlike going to a friend's wedding - no matter how much someone loves you, you really aren't likely to persude anyone to go with you when you bite the big one. And so, I gave it up. I decided dying alone won't be nearly as bad as spending the rest of my life freaking out over how scary it's going to be. It's freeing to give it up, but not exactly exciting. When you're pouring that much energy into something - being terrified of dying alone - you find yourself suddenly deflated when you decide you can't be bothered with that particular pursuit anymore. And so, in this reasonably deflated yet liberated state, I went to a wedding. Alone. It actually didn't really hit me that I was going without a date if you can believe that until I got there and discovered that I had been assigned chaperones. It was a georgeous ceremony and a very classy reception. Best wedding I've been to this summer, and I never bothered to type the last two up. Still, it was reasonably uneventful until mid-way through the reception when the guests were sufficiently libated. I was sitting out a slow dance, ungraciously thinking gee, I wish someone would ask me to dance, I'd even dance with a short guy (this is French Canada, they were all short) and making crude jokes about asking the priest to dance for the Father/Daughter dance... and out of nowhere was Len from Connecticut, groomsman and not French-Canadian. Well, let's just say the conversation went better than the dancing which was vaguely reminicient of junior high except we were wearing shoes. But we kept chatting and dancing. At some point between chatting and dancing Len from Connecticut blurted out that he was in the process of getting divorced and then immediately headed himself off in that conversation. I was charmed. Not because he's getting divorced but because it was so clearly a confession and such a stupid thing to tell me. We danced some more, we chatted some more, both of us glad for the company. We've all found ourselves in a moment that was georgeous and sweet and was definately not meant to surpass whatever confines and parameters had created it. I'm not so sure that Len from Connecticut was clear this was one of those moments, but I was and I felt so strong for spotting it. Die alone ... or trade emails with Len from Connecticut? A ridiculous juxtaposition that was considerably more real at other times in life. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, September 14th, 2005
11:01 am	when your life is an MSN cliche For awhile I was hanging out with a guy who writes for MSNBC. In fact, this blog was in part motivated by him (curse him or praise him - your call). When we first met and I was told he writes for MSNBC I was a little impressed and a little intimidated. A real live writer. Someone making a living at their craft. I did know that journalism was a lot less glamorous then most people think it is as I started out studying it; it's a formula and if you master it all you have to do is be persistent and nosey enough to collect details. But I was still impressed that he had the cajones to make a living doing something I chickened out on. At a wine-tasting party I unintentionally insulted a colleague of his by mistaking MSNBC for MSN. I had been thinking all along that the two were one and the same but it had never come up with my friend. Instead, this distinction to surfaced gracelessly in my trying to make awkward conversation with this colleague of his (whom he loathed, it turned out so no harm, no foul). In relaying the story to my friend, he carefully explained that how, at least at the time a couple years ago, MSNBC was a legitimate news-gathering organization and MSN was a fluffy portal site whose chief draw was their Psychic Pet quizes and anyone at MSNBC was embarrassed to be even remotely associated with it. Which begs the questions, who exactly reads the articles on MSN? I couldn't say. I don't. However, because I am a die-hard hotmail fan (like 9 years now of the same email address, which breaks the longevity record for pretty much anything in my life, including place of residence, city of residence, certainly job and school... you name it) I check it daily at a minimum. A few days without hotmail is like withdrawal. And lately because of reformats in how hotmail doles out its little white pills of email I am forced to look to the left of my screen to see what MSN is serving up today. Recently I'm frightened to discover that while I am not terribly tempted to actually read anything they write based on the fact that it's never anything I didn't know already I have noticed that it's as though they are tailoring their headings to my life. Now it's possible that they have some cookies thing worked out so they know my demographic and they actually ARE tailoring what shows up in that little sidebar to fit what they think to be something that would appeal to me. That's fine. That doesn't horrify me. While it's a little creepy, think of how much nicer life would be if you were able to filter the onslaught of info a little better. Granted it's always nice to have control of the filters, but either way - anything would be an improvement. No, what frightens me about these articles is how lame they are and yet how closely I can identify with actually needing the advice they are offering. That is, if they article actually delivered on what it promised - which it seldom does. If I was writing an article for a magazine, I'd dig around a bit and see what I could find as examples. I'd make a longer list than two, but at it stands, I don't care enough to bother - I just want to make my point. Yesterday it was What to do to make your crappy job a little more endurable. Hmmm. Been there. Might still be there. Today, it's Do you fall in love too fast? The answer is yes, yes, I do but somehow I'm pretty confident that nothing I read on MSN is going to change that... Does life mirror art, or does art mirror life? Over the long weekend I was holed up with two close friends at my parents' newly-acquired retirement hideaway. The place is a pleasing mix of old and new. My mom has brought in the china from my childhood that we were not really allowed to use then because it was only for special special occasions - funny how life changes your priorities that way - and also a whole bunch of old LPs that we used to play as a kid. I remember that part of my childhood really fondly; jumping around the mottled brown carpet of our 1980s living room, dancing and singing fully self-expressed to the Beach Boys "Endless Summer" or the Beatles "Sargent Pepper" album. In looking through the stack she brought, I also found Linda Rondstat and Emmylou Harris, both of who my mother idolized at the time since she was singing in our chuch and playing acoustic gituar. I put these on and tortured my friends for the weekend but I shortly realized that damned near every one of these songs was a heartbreak song. And I also realized that even not having heard them for many many years, I still new every single lyric to every single song. And I thought to myself, no wonder the only fulfilling love for me in my own life is one that seems to end in sadness or tragedy? Linda and Emmylou told me it would happen that way when I was 7 years old, dancing on the brown carpet. And I believed them. In addition to Linda and Emmylou was a collection of Disney albums. I won't even get into my Princess Complex. (Comment on this)
Thursday, September 8th, 2005
9:19 pm	ready set go I'm still two weddings behind but awww fuck it. I'm not in the mood. It's 9:19 on a school night and I have to go sit at a SELF-INFLICTED Chamber of Commerce breakfast tomorrow morning at 7:30am. GOOD GOD woman, what were you thinking. One day of the week at that hour isn't so bad but this will be only the second earliest I've had to get up this week. I am inclined to clock in here as I read Oscar Wilde for the first time this last weekend and week and what RIDE, baby. Picture of Dorian Gray. So rich, so vibrant... it makes the blood in my veins feel alive. It makes me feel young and an overwhelming desire to take risks and do stupid things. Oh Oscar darling, where have you been all my life? For reasons I don't entirely understand I felt compelled to bring up Oscar in conversation with my boss today on the phone. Like I'm somehow confessing to cheating on my job by reading something that makes me feel alive? Fortunately she too is a birdie trapped in a cage in more ways than one and didn't seem to bat an eyelash at the abrupt change in subject. In fact she dove right in and at the end of the call I left her waxing nostalgic for a short story she was trying to tell me about called the Nightingale and the Rose... How she stays put in that job as amazing as she is, I'll never understand. But I admire her resiliance, even if I can't spell it. It's nice to work for someone you respect, tremendously, and unbearable to work for someone you don't. When I'm pissed and miserable in that job, as is known to happen from time to time, I need to remember that fortunate I am in that way. Wilde left me with a certain taste on my tongue, suspiciously like nostalgia. It's funny because novels of that era have always left me nostalgic so I'm not sure what I'm nostalgic for, only that life seemed so much brighter and sophisticated if you were wealthy and British around the turn of the 20th century - or, well, ever now that I think about it. I'm sure it was smelly and the poor were truly truly miserable. Chamber pots are no substitute for indoor plumbing. BUT conversation was truly an art form and it is one notably absent from my life as it stands. People were reckless and "ruin" was the thing they feared above all. Why does Life seem so much more serious today? It can't be, I'm sure of it. But it sure seems that way. Personally, I blame reality TV. (Comment on this)
Sunday, August 28th, 2005
12:25 pm	Wedding Summer Part II Wedding #3 Location: Ashford, WA - mountain town near the base of Mt. Rainier (our 14,000-ft peak) at a lodge Colors: There was sort of a purple/blue theme going on but no bridesmaid's dresses, etc. Flowers: Mixed bouquets from Pike's Place Market Food: Grilled salmon and chicken, fire-grilled roasted veggies Bride: A fairly unceremonious knee-length dress of white satin with purple trim and bright purple wedge shoes. (the mother of the bride was not pleased about the purple shoes). Wouldn't have been my choice but it seemed to suit the bride very well - like she hadn't stuffed herself into a dress that she wouldn't have any other reason to wear just because tradition dictates... Details: A two-hour drive away from Seattle, the bride and groom had the good sense to rent out the lodge so their friends could drink themselves stupid and not have to drive anywhere. Which is pretty much precisely what they did. This was a really fun, personable crowd with lots of handsome Canadian men for me to ogle. This is probably one of the best weddings I've been to personally or for this job; they spent money on the right things and everyone had a great time. The bride was very nice although a little too accustomed to running the show and didn't really seem to be enjoying her party - she was a little too busy organizing it at times. (who does this remind you of?) When we arrived there was more liquor than even that group could have gone through in a week. The bride and groom came up with a drink list with fun names (Mother of the Bride - gin & diet Mountain Dew; Urban Cowboy - whiskey & coke; Panty Ripper - coconut rum & oj) which made for a good laugh when someone came up to ask for anyone one of them. The whole thing, including the ceremony, was held outdoors on a perfect summer day. My co-bartender and I could tell it was going to be an interesting afternoon when the group started walking up to the area where they had setup the altar for the ceremony and spontaneously burst into song with "Goin to the Chapel." Not only did they sing on the way there, but they persisted in singing until they had finished all ten verses of the song - or what seemed like ten verses. The highlights of the afternoon are numerous and in summary include: - the bride donning a lab coat and doing a demonstration of how to make ice cream with dry ice and then distributing her wares to the guests (apparently she works at the Pacific Science Center) - a groomsman giving a speech about how he knows the groom from Fantasy Baseball and how Fantasy Baseball prepares one for the commitments of marriage (cleverly done - thumbs up). - cupcakes instead of a cake; glassware instead of plastic, despite the inconvenience - the evening wrapping up with me getting cheek kisses from two of my most frequent patrons for the evening and once the dj shut down for the night, without missing a beat, somebody busted out some bongos and a circle formed that started singing Ob-la-di-ob-la-da Again, this wedding was Grade-A fun. My only complaint if I had one is that the bride and groom didn't enjoy the party as much as they made sure their guests were. That and I got eaten ALIVE by black flies and three weeks later I still have scars on my feet from the bites (DEMONS those things are I tell you). I give this wedding a 9.5. The only thing that might have improved it would have been putting it on a beach in the Caribbean. You know you have great friends when the bartenders have fun at your wedding. Wedding #4 Location: Knights of Colombus Hall, downtown Seattle Colors: A gorgeous baby blue satin and white Flowers: Hydrangea in small galvanized metal pails - gorgeous Food: Roast beef (finally no salmon!), veggies, pasta - buffet Bride: A barbie-doll vision in puffy white satin. Like an ad in a bridal magazine; an all-American girl. Details: At first it seemed there was nothing noteworthy about this wedding except the fact that we were generally not quite setup when this massive crowd of beautiful people who showed up at the bar out of nowhere (yikes - panic). We made it through that and at some point we were handed not one but TWO bottles of Smirnoff for the Father of the Bride. The event was otherwise beer and wine so we were supposed to serve this drink exclusively to him sort of on the sly. Well that went just fine for about the first bottle and then we started noticing that he wasn't balancing quite so well and conversations he was having with folks were getting louder. Now understand that this is a full liter of straight vodka he put away (he was drinking it on the rocks and we knew he'd actually consumed the bottle since he kept bringing the same glass back for refills) all before the Father-Bride dance. She wasn't exactly holding him up, but he wasn't exactly leading either. If you didn't know he was piss-drunk, it all looked sort of endearing out there - like he was holding her close and didn't want to let her go. In all actuality, it was a motor-skills coordination issue. I made an executive decision and decided we had magically run out of vodka. I informed him of this and gave him this overly big grin that reminded me of a submissive primate. This worked surprisingly well (especially since we weren't serving it to anyone else) and while he grumbled, I offered him a beer (figuring it would probably SLOW DOWN the absorption rate for a guy like him) which seemed to placate him. No scene, no more vodka and much to my amazement, he remained on his feet the rest of the evening. Even more impressive, but it seemed like his family took turns entertaining him, keeping him busy so he didn't get surly and make a scene... they knew he was a drunk and they took care of them for the bride and groom. Not the nicest thing they could do for him but it was nice to see a family looking out for each other even if it was in that way. The best is yet to come, however. The best best man's speech I've ever heard was at this wedding. The best man works for Microsoft and the key piece of information about that is that at Microsoft their computers and phones are integrated. If you leave a voicemail, it's saved as a sound file on your computer as well as transcribed into email and sent to your inbox. That knowledge under our belt, the best man proceed to tell a story about how he's known the groom since elementary school and that he has almost never met any of the women his friend has dated with two exceptions. The first exception was in the 8th grade and the groom had kissed a girl on a dare and they had immediately 'broken up' afterwards. The groom had described the experience to the best man as "gross". The second exception was the bride herself. After they had been out on a handful of dates, the groom had called his friend at home and work. At his work in the middle of the night he'd left a long voicemail rambling on and on about this amazing girl and how this was it, she was the one, and on and on for like this 3 full minutes. It was a georgeous voicemail and the whole reception party got to hear it because the best man had saved the file for two years on a hunch and played it as part of his speech. It was absolutely outstanding - neither the bride nor groom knew it had existed and it was as pure in content as the driven snow. Nothing to embarrass the groom or his bride, just his voice raving about how amazing this woman was whom he'd just married, unable to disguise the sheer and unabashed exhilaration of the beginnings of love. Awww. Aside from this extremely noteworthy exception, there was really little that was remarkable about this wedding. I'd be inclined to score it like a 6 or 7 but because of the best man's stunt I'll give it an 8. It's one I'll truly never forget even though I wasn't a guest and besides, I really liked the centerpieces. (Comment on this)
Monday, August 22nd, 2005
1:07 pm	wedding summer Hmmm. It's been a rough year, rough summer but I won't write on that at the moment. Later. I've taken up a new hobby - bartending for weddings. I'm having an absolute blast. It's my intention to start writing them up and I'm behind by four already so I figured I'll just plunge in. Wedding #1 Location: Cheap motel banquet room in Lakewood, WA (the low-rent, high crime part of the region for those who aren't from around here). Colors: Rainbow for napkins and bridesmaid's dresses Flowers: Mixed brightly-colored bouquets Food: Chicken and salmon, usual sides of greenbeans, rice, etc. Bride: Strapless white satin. shall we call it a floor-length sheath dress? Georgeous girl but the tattoo on her shoulder was a turn-off Details: This was my first wedding; I was in-training and nervous on my way down there. Def Leopard's "Pour Some Sugar On Me" came on the radio and in the interest of getting into the spirit of my destination I proceeded to turn it up as loud as my cheap speakers could handle as I screamed the lyrics out at the top of my voice driving south on I-5. Nothing like a little hair-band music to get you in the mood for what is bound to be a white-trash wedding in Lakewood. Whoo-hoo! I arrived about 45 minutes early, which was shocking because I'm never early for anything these days and decided to go find some food. Given that it's a poor area AND along a freeway, I was in fast-food heaven. I selected a Jack-in-the-Box for their chicken fajita pitas and made the mistake of not using the drive-though because I needed to use the bathroom. It was a mistake in that the lines at the counter were filled with people with hospital bracelets, open wounds, and skin rashes; no exaggeration - I counted at least one of each. I ate in the car but had really lost my appetite and couldn't even finish my food. I had ordered a strawberry shake and the woman with the huge lumps under her skin and the hospital bracelet had ordered a strawberry banana shake - which they gave to me by mistake. By the time I realized it in the car, I was too disgusted to either go back in to exchange it or drink it anyway. The knowledge that it was somehow meant for her was even too much for me. The wedding itself? It was a renewal of vows and then a reception - we were serving beer, wine, and coolers. I guess what I hadn't prepared myself for was that I ended up being one of about 3 white people at the entire event - it was a black wedding. So much for Def Leopard - should have been looking for what, Mariah Carey? Destiny's Child? Granted it was a black wedding and I know so few black people; this in and of itself was enough to rouse the anthropologist in me. But the genuine spectacle for me turned out to be the tough-girl hoochie-mama bridesmaids who could have beat the crap out of me in high school. Here they were all cleaned up, er sorta - homemade tattoos apparently not withstanding - and HAPPY to celebrate a special day with the best resources they could scrape together. The DJ was kind enough to announce repeatedly to tip the bartenders but I think he was almost a little too enthusiastic about it and it made me wonder if everything thought we were bugging him to say that. He was kind of cute, though - I think it might have been his first event. Overall, it was a good abeit uneventful reception. Everyone was on-time, no one made embarrassing speeches, and the food and cake were decent. Later as the evening wore on, the bridesmaids started really grinding on the dancefloor and the groomsmen were sitting around drinking out of mysteriously acquired 7-11 cups and apparently far more intoxicated than they could have been from anything we were serving. But overall, nice folks. I give this wedding a 7. Wedding #2 Location: Daughters of the American Revolution Hall Colors: Deep red and white Flowers: Red roses and giant lilys Food: Whole spit-roasted piglet, Filipino dishes such as kahula pork, salmon in sauce, Asian-style veggies, rice. Tasted nice gave me the runs by the end of the night so even though I took some leftovers that were offered to me, I ended up throwing them away without eating them. Bride: Fairy-princess dress - snow white, full-skirt, netting - lots of netting; hair pulled back so tight it looked like she was losing circulation Details: Mexican/Filipino wedding. He is a barber/hairdresser; she is a control freak. Which made it all the funnier when one of his friends who was conspicuously not a member of the otherwise rather large wedding party got up to give his very own 'special' toast and rambled on for 15 minutes about the good old days back in the hood when he and the groom used to hang and cruise for ladies and this one time he decided to pay him back by sticking the (now) groom with THE FAT ONE... I don't even know these people and it made ME want to leave the room... Fortunately half the guests had come up from Mexico and their English was limited to 'Coca-cola' and 'Corona'. The bride and groom, sitting together in the back of the room, just endured the meandering memories of this truly special friend with these hideous grins plastered on their otherwise obviously uncomfortable faces. Other than this as-of-yet otherwise surpassed demonstration of How To Make An Ass of Yourself In Public Speaking, the most entertaining aspect of the evening was the venue manager who spent the evening scouring the floor for not-so-empty wine-bottles. When I first arrived I was told by the co-bartender that the guy who coordinates for the venue was prone to loading up a box with empty bottles to take downstairs for us (how nice!) and accidentally including one full-one. Apparently it happens far too frequently to be an accident and she was letting me know to be on this lookout for his shenanigans. Well, I arrived before she did and I happened to meet him before I met her so I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt without being obviously stupid, of course, just to see if she had somehow maybe had some misunderstanding at some point or whatever. But no, she was dead-on. He spent the entire evening leaving the boxes of empty beer bottles sitting there and cruising back and forth behind the bar to see what he could scavenge. The other bartender and I took turns standing in front of the lone box of wine bottles. Overall, people had fun, the salsa band was outstanding, and decorations were stunning. Other than the one bad speech, there were no major glitches in planning or execution. But when the food makes your guests (or hired help) sick, you are bound to get a demerit. I give this wedding a 6. More to come... (Comment on this)
Friday, April 15th, 2005
1:15 pm	piece of peace There's this sandwich place across the street from work that serves hand-carved roasted meat sandwiches. It's always been there but I only recently discovered it. It reminds me of these sandwiches my mom used to put in our lunchboxes when I was a kid - which I hated at the time. They were roast turkey and mayo and bread. And that was it. Sometimes with some lettuce or something, but often not. No cheese either. I was such a tortured kid. When she made roast beef, she'd make them with the roast meat, ketchup, and sometimes pickles. My mom always seemed to have a tremendous fondness for these sandwiches which as a kid I could definately not understand. I wanted neatly thin-sliced lunch meat from Oscar Meyer. That came from yellow plastic packages and tasted like salt. That's what the other kids got, why was I stuck with these thick ungainly slices of beef or odd chunks of dark meat turkey served up on two heels flipped back to back to hide the fact that they were heels? I have a co-worker who grew up much in the same way that I did - wholesome foods, lo-waste housekeeping, and environmentally friendly living long before sustainability was a buzzword. We both share those minimalist and health-conscious values with our parents now, but we've talked about the process it took to get there for each of us. We, from time to time, hated the aspects of our childhood that recognized as so different from many of the kids around us. As teenagers we rebelled in select ways; with money of our own for the first time we wanted to buy everything what everyone had been trying so hard to sell us all those years that our parents always said no. In college being a "hippie" became fashionable and we found our counter-culture was suddenly acceptable, albeit still within the college mainstream rather than mainstream America. Then each of us fully reconciled with it in our own way. For me, it was after I'd lived in a 3,000 sf house with a man I was dating at the time who was totally dissatisfied with the material-based life he'd created for himself. He had the resources to choose nearly any life, and yet he chose to liquidate his belonging, sell his house, and travel. After traveling with him and seeing that people could be truly happy with so much less... I came back wanting less and overwhelmed at the flood of advertising for disposable things for a disposable life that I didn't need anyway. It was the first time in my life I can ever recall that I had enough stuff and I remember coming to peace in my own mind with the choices my parents had made for me as a child and even how they live their lives today. They make their cars and clothes last, something that has embarassed me occasionally into adulthood. My mom still makes those turkey sandwiches and when she has time she still washes out the plastic baggies that she puts them in to reuse them. Now I put stickers over the pre-addressed envelopes that come in junk mail and reuse them to pay bills. I bought my dishes at Goodwill. I live alone and a roasted turkey is an awful lot of food, but when I get a roast turkey sandwich from across the street, with bread and mayo, it sure tastes good. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, February 16th, 2005
10:40 pm	in the still of the night those people out there in the world that i meet and connect with, i always think in the beginning that it's the light radiating from them that lures me like moth. but as i flutter and they flicker and it happens over and over again, i'm starting to realize that it's not the light that gets my attention but the need for it. the suffocating darkness that is oozing from their pores, our pores. we don't bond on account of the light. like fireflies on a dark night we spot each other by the glow, but ultimately it's the darkness over which we bond, and we are bound. there's something almost holy about a person who has known great pain and suffering and survives to greet each day with a grateful smile. i am not holy but i aspire to be one of those people - to exude light that radiates through the darkness of the pain i've endured within. it sounds melodramatic but it's much easier to now be on the side of acknowledging that pain rather than trying to unlearn it or hide it. a close friend described to me long ago how he embraces completely the bitter and the sweet; i was unpersuaded. it seemed at the time a cop-out to me. a way of getting out of having to transform the pain into joy. now, i have sort of come to see the whole business a little differently and i too truly cherish the bitter. happy families, says leo, are all alike. but unhappy families are unhappy each in the their own way. similarly, happy people are all alike and only the unhappy ones - or the ones who have known unhappiness - offer the complexity of human psyche that captivates me. of late i've devoted some thought as to what that bond needs to or should look like and the conclusions are slow in coming. giving up resistance to pain is hard enough but it's even more difficult to give up resistance to people who bring this out in me. and yet, at once i find it surprisingly... peaceful. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, February 15th, 2005
6:56 pm	meat When I was in grade school I stopped eating eggs for a period of several years. Scrambled, over easy, hardboiled - didn't matter. I wasn't eating them unless they were buried in a recipe. This distate for all things eggy was entirely in my head and having chickens in our backyard was no coincidence. But at the time I think my mother, greatly distressed about this at least for awhile, was prone to attribute it to adolescent obstinence rearing it's acne-covered head a few years early. In retrospect, I really don't recall thinking I was taking a stand of any kind at the time. I remember the very thought of eggs was completely nauseating, and when put on the palate my tastebuds fulfilled the sensory projection. Taste, smell, texture. All repugnant. Today I am a big fan of eggs; they are cheap, easily prepared protein that can be nicely complimented by cheese. Somewhere in high school much to my chagrin my aversion had subsided but the legacy of all those years of standing my ground remained. Eggs sounded and tasted good long before I actually started eating them again. A key ingredient in humble pie, perhaps? To this day I cannot eat farm-fresh eggs, complete with chicken shit. I have tried and it is an effort I'd like to support given that a guy in my office sells them but I buy them from him and they rot in my fridge. I can happily wash off the chicken shit, but they never sound or taste good after I do that. Too many unhappy memories. I'm reminded of this because of late I've completely lost my taste for meat of all sorts, save bacon. Ah bacon, where would I be without you? I think bacon has escaped my disgust on account of being so heavily salted and I can't usually taste anything resembling the meat itself. It's been at least two months now and while I am still eating meat it's with this sort of aversion with which 8-year-olds typically eat their vegetables. I can close my nose and try to think of something else to get it down. But it still doesn't sound or taste good. I am not, and never have been a vegetarian. I don't believe in it. I also am not an avid and adamant meat eater; Americans eat too damned much beef and it serves us right to be paranoid about mad cow now after so many years of safeway-bland, steroid-ridden beef. Yet beef, poultry, fish... all are great sources of concentrated protein that I think our bodies need just not at every meal. Perhaps not even every day. A little less excess protein would go a long way in dealing with America's issues with weight. But I do think that vegetarianism is the opposite unnecessary and often unhealthy extreme. One has to eat so much more food to adequately nourish oneself without the dense protein power of meat; I know, I've been trying to do it lately and failing miserable. I can see my body deteriorating a little. My nails are weaker, my energy level is lower, my immune system is suffering. I also have no ethical objection to eating god's creatures although I do like to think that what I'm eating has lived a satisfying life by domestic lifestock standards. But beyond that? We are omnivores and at the top of the food chain. Que sera. With no real identifiable objections, then, what exactly is the problem with me and meat lately? I can't say. I do remember that in early December I was eating a frozen burrito from Trader Joe's and as will happen I got a piece of "steak" that clearly had a little too much texture to have come from any part of the cow that is typically labeled steak. And I know that in that moment I was unable to finish the burrito and have had an aversion ever since no matter how well disguised the offensive substance appears to be. Given that I am an eternal magnet for hair in my food, I habitually find and remove hair from my food only to keep eating - particularly after travel in Southeast Asia. A disgust somehow mitigated by routine. Yet a hamburger these days is like kryptonite. What gives? Seeing as how I'm fine to eat vegetarian most of the time but ultimately and fundamentally committed to maintaining my meat-eating it's occurred to me that maybe I should go see a specialist or something. Can medical science offer me answers? I suspect the link between brain and stomach is far from understood and have decided to try some alternatives of my own. After weeks of trying to disguise my food I took a new tactic tonight. A bloody steak. Full-on. Chewing slowly and carefully, all the while trying to visualize cows in a slaughterhouse. The texture was still uncomfortable on my tongue but not so much as other things I've tried to eat of late. I consumed about half of it before it hit my stomach - a giant meat lump and a queasiness came over me that I suspect is similar to that which ferverant vegetarians describe when they try to eat meat. I did my best to wash it down with some cheap Spanish wine. We'll see if it holds. (Comment on this)
Sunday, January 30th, 2005
11:25 pm	As much as I don't want to give George W. Bush any credit for anything... it was inspiring watching the Iraqis vote today. Really inspiring. We shouldn't have gone there and we shouldn't be there, but at least the fact that we are, the men and women who have died haven't been for nothing more than oil. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, December 29th, 2004
2:59 pm	us US us When I'm on the road I get to watch cable TV. I won't pay for it at home, but that doesn't stop me from watching the crap on network. Cable TV is like a little treat just for me - something to look forward to in impersonal hotel rooms. This week the tsunami coverage has dominated the news channels. Every angle imaginable - footage of the waves, mechanics of tsunamis, the diseases the tsunami will cause, the US offering aid for the tsunami victims, more footage of the waves, the UN criticizing all the cheap nations out there for their inadequate offering of free money, the US responding to this criticism... whether or not the EAST Coast of the US has adequate tsunami warning systems... Somehow it's always all about us. US. us. Bush actually gave a press conference (they let him do that now that he's been reelected) and after reading his blurb on the fact that we were adding another $20 million to our whopping $15 million, he actually took questions. Interestingly enough, the first one was on the Sunnis and the Iraqi election, not the tsunami and victims. Perhaps the reporter got the two mixed up (sound a little alike) and perhaps the press is so starved for access to the Commander in Chief that they'll blatantly abandon protocol in the few fleeting moments they do have access. I don't know who asked the question, but I can be sure it wasn't a FOX news reporter because as it turns out I'd stopped on the FOX news network coverage of the press conference and just as the question was asked and the president (lower case p intentional) started to stumble through an inept and meaningless response, the network cut back to the newsroom to its stunned anchorpeople who were sitting behind their desk staring blankly at each other (kinda eerie really). Not I'm not sure if FOX was afraid of what he'd say, if they thought it was boring compared to the tsunami death tolls coverage and would lower ratings, or if they've been instructed to cover for him - but I'm sure it wasn't an accident. It never ceases to amaze me how blatantly partisan their coverage of the White House is. A co-worker who doesn't own a TV at home at all told me that when HE travels, he likes to hear the other side of things and intentionally makes a point of putting on FOX and letting "those guys yell at him for awhile". I can't stomach it. I can feel my blood pressure go up. He said he wondered what they're yelling about all the time - I said I'd yell too if I was that afraid of everything. I did manage to switch over to CNN who was continuing coverage of the press conference, questions and all, and caught the end of what was a very lame GWB answer to the Sunni question. Can't say I've ever been grateful to find his face plastered all over the TV screen but at least someone was covering him with foot in mouth as well as in him moment of infinite wisdom and benevolence. Snort. It's the best we can hope for these days. Opportunity for more public ridicule. More questions ensued and some even pertained to the tsunami - such as, do you think our own West Coast (not the East Coast this time - that was a different segment on a different channel) has adequate tsunami warning systems? He replied he didn't know enough about them but was making inquiries. The reporter pushed harder... he evaded further and promised meaningless things... oh goodie. Now the reporters are giving the administration ideas for more Fear Mongering (must have been the FOX reporter...). Will Soccer Moms who became Security Moms now become Tsunami Moms? A friend from England sent out an email to her English and American friends a few days ago asking us to take action and write to our PM/President asking them to get up off their 'arses' even though it's a holiday and offer condolences to these already poverty-stricken countries. I wrote back and told her NO THANKS. Personally I am grateful when GWB doesn't speak at times of need. I'll never forget post 9-11 when Tony Blair spoke to the American people. Shortly after, GWB made his "smoke-'em out of their holes" speech. It's like Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune back-to-back. (not my analogy but I've always liked it). The good thing about cable is that there's always something else to watch - how about a nice comforting episode of MASH? Also in the news today, Jerry Orbach who played Lenny on Law and Order for years, died today of prostate cancer. He was 69. I always liked him. Not a brilliant actor but he was born for that part. RIP, Lenny. There will be wives to divorce and murderers to catch on the other side... (Comment on this)
Friday, December 24th, 2004
10:50 pm	good holiday spirit There's this Jack-In-The-Box commercial that uses that phrase "good holiday spirit" to make subtly poke fun at how corporate America has taken all the real spirit out of the holidays and reduced it to a phrase that means not much of anything at all. Yet at the same time, they get away with doing exactly the same thing they're poking fun at, which is minimize the audience they will offend by keeping the intentions vague. Clever. And catchy in my opinion. It has stuck in my head like nobody's business. Despite their best sardonic intentions, what I like about it is that if I am going to wish anyone anything this time of year, I suppose that's exactly what I'd like it to be. Good Holiday Spirit. Generally it's out of your control as to whether you'll actually have a good holiday or not. But you can have good holiday spirit either way. It's been a pretty bah-humbug kind of year for me. It's been hard for me to say why really; I guess I expected it to look different than it all did. Family wasn't all together this year and that has bummed me out, but I can't say that's the only factor. Actually I'm inclined to think it's the fact that I didn't do really ANY shopping. Most of the gifts I've given this year I am proud to say that I made. And those I didn't make, I didn't really shop for - I knew what I wanted and went out and bought them. See, for all the weird years of Christmas Past, perhaps the tradition that has held fast for me to all of them is shopping. Commercialism. The very thing I so despise has become the most essential tradition. I've made many changes over the last two years to really cut consumerism out of my day-to-day existance and this is the first time I have really felt it so acutely. This year my stepdad wasn't able to arrange his time off so that our whole family could spend the holidays together. I suppose I am disappointed he did that. I have been trying to tell myself (and everyone else I've explained this to) that it wasn't his fault, but in all reality it was. He chose to take his vacation time earlier in the year and the result is that we couldn't get the family together all in one place. My mom has spent the week here with me and my brother, then flies home Christmas Day to spent the rest of it with my stepdad and my other brother. I've been trying to tell myself it wasn't his fault because I don't want to think that he would have done that to us, TO ME, on purpose. But he did. The irony in this is that it's usually ME who goes tearing off for the holidays. In fact, I haven't spent Thanksgiving AND Christmas together with my family since I was in college. Some years it's been neither. Sometimes I've been visiting the family of someone I was dating, but sometimes I was just off traveling. I guess I always figured that it was my time off to do with as I see fit. It never occurred to me to think of what it's like for those who don't have me around for the holidays. It never occurred to me that it would really make a difference for them at all. Seems really obvious, I guess, and I know my mom misses me. But she always misses me so the holidays don't seem special in that regard. What I never experienced before what that it's not just me that's missing, but that sense of completeness, the nervewracking, tongue-biting, yes-i'll-have-another-glass-of-wine-thanks sense of unity that can only occur when all the family members are there. When I was little kid we had pretty idyllic Christmases. Mom, dad, tree, fireplace, church, Grandma and Grandpa, cousins, lights, snow. When my parents divorced, things were pretty grim for a few years there. Somewhere along the way we got used to these makeshift Christmases. When my mom was a single mom, we never had money to, say, take a trip to forget about the idyllic Christmas we weren't having. But as time went on, we did have the money but somehow it's just never what my family decided to allocate the resources to doing. Instead we pretend like we're still poor and scrape together the money to fly the fewest number of people so that we can all be together in the same place. Then, instead of renting a cabin or doing something we all enjoy doing (if there is such a thing), we huddle together in a place that none of us really like or are comfortable in and we spend the obligatory few days together. The success of the holiday is based on how few open arguments break out and by that measure generally the holidays really are pretty successful. The trick, we've learned, is to rent movies. Usually mom rents them and they are ridiculous Christmas comedies. Nobody really likes them, but nobody really objects to them either. And the time passes. We have no traditional serving dishes or meal. No music. No church service. Pretty much nothing is consistent from year to year except the gifts, the movies, and the knowledge that next year will be different still. This year, even for our makeshift Christmas tradition, was a little off the scales. My youngest brother announced in early December that he was preparing Christmas dinner this year and and so he served it at his apartment for my mom, myself, and three of his guy friends. A Jew, an ex-Jehovah's Witness (to which my mom blurted out - OH, THAT's no fun! Fortunately he agreed...), and a stray. Nice kids. This means that they hung out after dinner for a lively conversation with us two old ladies for a whole two hours before heading out for a party. Now, understand that my youngest brother is a 23-year-old bachelor. I did not venture into the bathroom. Yet he somehow managed to prepare a very tasty 7-course meal for six people. With beer. But after dinner he offered us all coffee, tea, and decaf coffee. With folding tables covered in wrapping paper, it was not glamorous by anyone's standards, but as I sat there, I thought, no wonder I never dread Christmas with my family like some people do. We may do it makeshift but it's never inflexible. Nobody is trapped in a tradition that doesn't suit them - one of the advantages of not having many traditions. There is no Christmas dictator, no cranberry sauce molded in the rigid form of the can. And for the most part, aside from wishing we could have just a few more arguments... I like it that way just fine. Merry Christmas. (Comment on this)
Sunday, December 19th, 2004
11:14 pm	inspiration a tricky matter to be sure. this week I was sent to Portland to coach a team being sent in to interview on a job. it was my first such experience, being sent to an outside office as the lead. i had been forewarned, probably usefully, that my 'outside' help wasn't going to be welcome. i spent the whole night before and the whole morning en route wondering how I was going to ingratiate myself quickly enough so these guys would trust me in the short amount of time i had to work with them. i really had no idea. none. on some level i wasn't terribly worried - for one thing i knew i wasn't going to get the blame if the whole thing went to shit. but it was somehow important to ME that i figure this out. on account of not taking that manager's position, this business of flying in to other offices to serve as a lead in a pursuit or interivew preparation was likely to be something i will continue to do. so far i've been successful at getting people in this industry to like me without putting a whole lot of effort into it. but it's different to show up and be the grunt than it is to show up and tell people what to do. it would help my career if people liked me, but the bottom line was whether or not i could be effective. i realized my manager seems far less concerned about the former and is more focused on the latter. in some respects i wish i could be more like her. but i'm not. and so it goes. so after a somewhat frosty reception there i was, seated across from two tunnel experts in a small conference room. a silent local marketing person at my side. all eyes on me, here she is, do something for us. the company spent money sending you here, what can you do for us. do something. do SOMETHING. i opened a conversation about the project, technical details as well as the client, the pursuit, anything they could tell me so far about what we know about anything. they talked a bit. i begged their forgiveness for my ignorance and prompted them for more information, better explaination, more details. i sat there listening, grinning like an ape, desperate for some signal in their countance that would give me even the slightest indication that... they like me. likeme likeme likeme likeme... we continued to chat. i made self-deprecating jokes. batted my eyelashes. finally the stern one cracked a half smile. we launched into the presentation they had so far. and it dawned on me. my desperation for approval is precisely what makes me so effective in this job. my dad was not much of a dad and in relationships this approval thing has messed me up time and time again. a void that can never be filled. don't get me wrong - i have a super stepdad whom i love very much. but he showed up a little late and i still have trouble getting used to the idea that there's someone besides mom to ask for advice, love, approval. but i eternally find myself on this treadmill seeking approval i will never get. not because it hasn't been given over and over an over again, but because it falls on deaf ears when it does. ears that never learned to listen for that particular melody. and in all the thought i've put into this over the years, mostly while beating myself up after a breakup, it never once occurred to me to see it as something that works for me. needing approval makes me effective in motivating people, organizing things, asking people for help... i care about how people feel when being asked to do something and want them to like me after they've done it. i've taken some classes and learned how to connect those instinctive needs on my part with what actually gives people a warm fuzzy feeling when taking direction from me. trust, sense of contribution, sense of community, trust. striking the right balance between what they're already good at and what stretches them a little. but needing approval works against me horribly in writing. you can't, afterall, have everyone's approval and if you did you shouldn't be wasting your time with a blog, you should be running for office. i've sent this blog's link out to a lot of people. most of whom i'd consider generally an easy audience, and the majority of whom i suspect are no longer reading due to my gaping absences. but given all that i cannot begin to count the number of times i considered sitting down to write about something but censored it fearing it would find itself unwelcome before the eyes of an already dwindling audience. i promised myself i wouldn't do that. but i have. and probably will in the future. these last few weeks caught me by surprise, though. audience where audience was not expected, approval where approval was not expected. a close friend, for whom my writing has traditionally been a burden to bear (i ask her and her alone to read it, she has no scathing or insightful comments to offer - only general praise, we both feel terrible as a result), told me she keeps current with what's in this blog (voluntarily!) and asked if i've updated it lately. and another close friend, the unnamed muse for this blog - the namesake Audience of One - turned up on Pearl Harbor Day. and has been following my blog. no coincidence, the Pearl Harbor Day part, i assure you. while grateful, so grateful, that he's turned up it occurred to me that his absence proved as powerful to me as his presence did at another point. see, i did it. i made the leap from an audience of one to an audience of... well... a few more. 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Saturday, October 2nd, 2004
10:19 am	capsize well, if i have any semblence of an audience left after such a lengthy absence, i acknowledge your stubbornness. i can't even begin to summarize the events of the last two months and so many times i've tried to sit down before this blank page to say something, anything. but there is so much and without time to process any of it i feel as though it's an animal that has been flattened into the pavement. i cannot describe the parts indivdually because they have been smashed together in the asphalt of my mind. i've been living in the present for the first time perhaps in my life, really and truly in the present. not much thought for the future and not much time spent wallowing in the nostalgia of the past. I think i always thought it would be nice to live in the present, but instead it has a very dissatisfying quality about it. i never realized that if you don't have time to dwell on an emotion because you're already being stimulated by something else the world takes on a two-dimensional quality that smells an awful lot like numbness. i filled out my timesheet yesterday for the last two weeks and was truly stunned by the number of pies i've had my fingers in. but i can't say i really felt any sense of accomplishment in doing so. i also went out last night. a few nights ago for a friend's birthday we met some boys at a club. i had an interest in one of them; last night i had a slightly engineered opportunity to "bump into" him again. the short version is, given a new opportunity he did not ask for my phone number and when my friend suggested the four of us move on to another place he made an exit, which left me either the third wheel or in a cab home. i chose the latter. in trying to type out the story even now i'm wincing in pain of what i may have done wrong. i am old enough to know better than to beat myself up over this sort of thing; life is complicated and nothing is as it appears to be. but i guess it's not the evening itself but the flood of memories of all those times it happened before when i wasn't old enough to know better than to beat myself up. and i think it's also a red flag that the whole idea was stupid in the first place - not because it didn't work out but what am i doing meeting boys who obviously include Belltown among the places they know well and are comfortable in? i hate Belltown. some people spend their lives conforming and hating themselves for it, wishing they could somehow be something distinct and noticable. i was born a contrarian and with the pressure of youth bearing it's full weight upon me i worked so hard at blending in. but like anything i've ever bothered to work hard at i've actually been pretty effective at it; it's just that now it's become a knee-jerk reaction to fit in rather than something which serves a purpose in fulfilling any of the choices that i've made for my life. next friday i think i'll do something else. no great loss. one friday. but the other context in which this kind of decision has come up has been a little more hardcore. at work my manager left about 3 weeks ago and for a little over a month i've either been making or living with a decision i made to not apply for his position. i am serving as interium and in many respects it's been reinforcing that choice. to be blunt the job sucks - everybody wants a piece of you, now, and while i've learned considerable diplomacy in my pursuit of blending in i am acutely aware that my diplomacy is not seamless. any engineer will tell you that seams are the most vulnerable to external stresses. but wow, what a hard thing to do. i've always been bossy and always wanted to be boss and yet i've just passed up the first real shot i've had at that. i've been telling myself that for once i'm making a strategic life choice, a decision that may seem a little hard to swallow in the short-term but will serve me in the long run. the bigger picture. i will be more effective in a management role when i truly feel as though i'm not still winging it. and there is the fact that i do not want a job that is life-consuming; i want time for other things (which apparently do not include the meat markets of Belltown). but like i did last night in going out, i am making myself vulnerable and it's hard enough to do at all but even harder when it doesn't pay off. the risk i'm running is that i'll ruin any opportunity i might have had at a management role in the future by not showing an agressive enough spirit now. i am gracefully bowing out of the contest and robbing the powers that be of the decision to tell me 'no' and watch the muscles in my face react. i am not inclined to think that these powers that be are likely to hold it against me. but it is still a risk i am running. in matters of love i used to be all vulnerability and no strength - and the reverse elsewhere. i think this blog's ongoing discussion of what it means to be a modern woman applies here: neither vulnerability nor strength in absolute has served me in the past in any part of life and i'm still learning when to tack - and when to jibe. 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Wednesday, July 28th, 2004
1:36 pm	revolution My bus went by another bus the other night. It was stuck at a stop. Apparently it had started to leave the stop and someone who didn't make it on before the doors had closed picked up a ROCK and threw it into the windshield. Now given that it's a BUS you wouldn't think this would cause all that much damage unless it was a pretty big rock. Well, I didn't see the rock but I did see the windshield and one window was entirely ruined - an impact crater and radiating cracks. One of the passengers that boarded our bus at that stop had just exited the damaged one. After he explained what had happened to a few inquiring people in the front of the bus where he was sitting, he took this as an invitation to work himself up into a frenzy about what was wrong with the city's public transportation. By the time I got off he was still ranting and while he'd had an audience at one point, faces had started glossing over and pretty soon there was a whole bus full of stubbornly blank-faced people who could neither hear nor see him. Behind my own carefully contrived dull stare I struggled not to laugh out loud when he suggested that we should rise up and boycott the city's public transportation. That if we all stood united for just one day, he said, one day, that Metro would have to listen to our demands. If this gentleman does the speaking for us, then our demands would apparently be to have a subway "like New York and Portland". Technical definition of a subway aside, on this point I agree with him - rail transit would be a welcome addition to Seattle's transportation nightmare. But the Seattle agencies have been working towards rail transit for years and years and it's the people - not the agencies - who keep voting it down. The textbook irony in all of this is that a rail line here in Seattle is currently being built. Not designed or conceptualized for public vote but actually built. In what has to be the strangest public transit PR campaign ever, our city is actually building it's first operating rail facilities over the next 4 years and nobody seems to know a thing about it. The other night at a BBQ I regaled tales of quick, clean, reliable public transportation in Seattle to a small astounded audience. I may as well have been explaining about the earth going round the sun to Galileo's Vatican. Rather than risk becoming the focal point of this Bus Wacko's tirade, I kept mum. It occurred to me that perhaps the transit agency responsible for this light rail project has encountered their own fair share of Bus Wackos and has applied the same strategy. This morning I rode past one of the earliest construction staging areas on my way to work and there are signs posted that something is happening. But what exactly? The signs don't say. They say something about Utilities Relocation and show a picture of a rail car. But there's nothing that specifically explains exactly what they're doing, when, or what the final project will look like. Public involvement was added to our government works system specifically so no voice goes unheard and this is key to an effective check and balance system. In preparing for the next Olympics the Chinese government has ordered a 2-square-mile area cleared to build sports facilities. People's homes have been relocated and some have even committed suicide in despondency. Our system is designed to protect our citizens from exactly such autonomy. But in making every decision by committee there's also an inherent opportunity for abuse and dilution. You say you want a revolution? Perhaps the next evolution of the Revolution is to find a way to expedite sifting the legitimate public involvement from the Bus Wacko rants. It goes without saying that boycotting a public transit agency is futile; fortunately an idea this misguided is unlikely to find support. Or is it? Thanks to one Big Fat Wacko, Washington state voters find themselves with opportunities to keep passing laws to repeal taxes that are paying for infrastructure. A few years ago we slashed bus routes and ferry schedules when voters axed car-tab taxes; this year's ballot will contain an initiative to reduce property taxes. The argument is that government agencies should be held accountable for their spending. But the icon of government abuse, the $20K toilet seat, doesn't hold a candle to the portion of infrastructure project budgets now allocated to managing and documenting environmental or social impacts, public involvement, and mitigation. Frank Zappa said he didn't think the world was likely to end in fire and ice as everyone seems to think it will. His money was on ever shortening cycles of nostalgia - or paperwork. How many trees do we need to cut down to show the Wackos that we're taking appropriate steps to protect the environment? The good old boys long for the good old days where you could clearcut and blast your road right into a hillside without a second thought for the spotted owl or a salmon-bearing stream. I can't say I'm among them. But there has to be a middle ground somewhere and it has to start with good intentions on everyone's part. As we all know, good intentions worked wonders in the Road to Hell Pavement Project... (Comment on this)
Wednesday, July 14th, 2004
10:57 am	fire, water, wind Every once in awhile you bump into one of those events that reminds you life is precious. This week I bumped into two and the week is only half over. Sunday night my boyfriend and I were on the other side of town at his work when we got a phonecall from a friend. She lives a few blocks from where he lives and wanted to know if we were okay. Apparently great billows of smoke were coming from something right near his building and the road was totally closed off. Turns out it was a convenience store that is on the corner - a stand-alone building effectively one building away from his and maybe a block from mine. Burned out entirely, but the apartment building directly next to it was unharmed and no one was injured. By the time we returned, my boyfriend's apartment smelled like a smokehouse and the fire was almost entirely out. We wandered down to gawk at the wreckage. As we stood there watching the firefighters take photos and occasionally turn on the hose to spray down the corner of the building that kept reigniting, we ran into one of my boyfriend's neighbors: an extroverted young woman with a nervous little dog. Also on hand was a crazy guy missing those most useful front teeth who had on gloves and was collecting stuff from the smorgasboard sidewalk and street. I say smorgasboard because the contents of the convenience store had been washed out into the street - lock, stock, and barrel. The entire roof of the small building was gone according to one of the occupants of the abutting apartment building and the firemen were on the roof of that building spraying down at it with the hose. The water had put out the fire, but it had also washed chared pieces of debris and tasty snacks out into the street with the water. It was like an illustrated version of Don DeLillo's 'White Noise' - waves of American processed food culture strewn about by the casual caresses of disaster. Red Vines, Moon Pies, Hall's cough drops, cigarette lighters, Dr. Pepper, Whatchamacalit bars, bottles of Odwalla, Slim Jims, Chapstick tubes, boxes of individually packaged Tylenol and Advil tablets, FunJun's, Clorets... the list goes on and on. I think my favorite had to be the Moon Pies. There's something inherently comic about Moon Pies and when they are littering the streets - even moreso. It was shocking to see the smoldering building but I confess a not-so-secret delight at this fascinating exhibition of Americana. There are gaps in the English language and I can think of no one word for this emotion, but if asked to describe it I'd say it's that thing that makes the hairs stand up on the back of my neck because it intrigues me in a way that surpasses intellectual curiousity. I am intellectually curious about String Theory but it does not light me up in the way that modern material culture does. On this occasion I realized that when I go into these stores I never see all of what is there anymore and the increasingly bright packaging starts to make sense. We gloss it all over, looking for the products we know we like and generally tuning out everything else unless something is unfamiliar and the new packaging gets our attention. However taken this far out of context, I couldn't help but notice details, even in the shadowy streetlight, that have escaped me forever really. Particularly in such a random display as this. I've heard foreigners remark over and over again about how impressive our selection of junk food here in America is and never really thought much about it. But think about what a fantastic metaphor the convenience store is for how we as Americans live our lives. Wow. So, beyond the shock and utter fascination, I also felt the stirrings of patriotism. Seemed a strange place of it to show up, but one cannot help but feel grateful to both the firemen and the organized and unified human efforts (call it government?) that makes such an infrastructure possible. And better still - the sign posted across the street by the neighborhood bad-ass coffee place (next door to a tatoo parlor if that gives you any idea) offering free coffee to Firemen. Or the Red Cross volunteer sitting in the lobby of the abutting apartment building who was watching people's pets so they could evacuate the building and not have to worry about their animals. It was a sad day for the owner of the store but for a generally indifferent neighborhood where people see each other every day and don't even acknowledge each other it was kind of an inspiring moment. So that was Event Number One. Event Number Two was last night, and while far less life threatening it was perhaps more thought-provoking. I go sailing from time to time with a kindly old gentlemen and some friends - Captain Ralph is 80 and sharp as a tack. He's outlived damn near everyone who he was close to, except his daughters and he has more than I have been able to keep track of. He's an excellent seaman and I've yet to see him angry or impatient or flustered. Which is impressive for the Captain of a novice crew. He patiently explains what he needs you to do and if you have no idea what he's talking about (sailing jargon) then he explains it again in a different way until you understand and can carry out the order. He is amazing in this respect. I suspect it's how he's managed to live to 80. Last night we went out for a race called the Duck Dodge. It's on a relatively small lake and it fills with boats of all sizes. It's a casual race as sailing goes and the rules are basically to 1) Not hit any other boats 2) Not bribe the racing committee while anyone is watching 3) Follow the rules 4) Not hit any other boats - and perhaps most important 5) Never make a duck change its course. Small lake + many boats equals lots of crowding and near-misses. I am continually amazed at the precision with which these people handle huge boats on the water. There is a certain set of skills that people who crew must have - the must listen well, not question an order, and above all pay attention (I struggle with this last one the most). And there are certain skills that a good Captain or Helmsman must have - including but not limited to knowledge of how to coordinate the efforts of many people at once, how to actually sail the boat to maximum effectiveness given the wind conditions, and how to navigate the course most effectively. All of this can be intellectually learned I think. But there are those people who are gifted with spatial relations and those who are not. And I am continually amazed at the seemingly effortlessness precision with which these boats barely avoid collision over and over again throughout the course of the race. (this is my excuse for not paying attention). So, the stage is set. Fun race, great Captain, good crew. Fairly novice but good natured, willing, and generally able. Winds were low, spirits were high, we didn't win the race but that's not why we ran it. The Committee boat is moored in the middle of the lake and all the boats are tying up after the race to join in the post-race revelry. At 10pm sharp the Committee boat cut everybody loose, lest the partying go on all night and the residents of the lake complain. What no one knew is that the Native American fishing season had just opened at sundown and strewn across the lakes were nets to catch fish - in a lake where no other net fishing is allowed EVER. So scattered throughout the lake in their unglamorous little fishing boats were Natives with these huge lines and tiny little buoys on either end - making them virtually invisible until you were too close to them to stop. Which is pretty much exactly what happened. Only it was me who had that nightmare moment of seeing the line stretched across the water and having that cinematic slow-motion moment of recognition that something very bad was about to happen and I was powerless to stop it. I started yelling STOP as loud as I could but I was both the least experienced member of the crew and too late. By the time a couple of people saw what I saw and joined in and the Captain heard and reacted it was too late. We'd caught the net. So there we were out in the middle of an urban lake kind of stranded and not really sure what to do. The Native fisherman was nearby and came tooling over to see what we were going to do and our interactions with him played out like they have throughout the history of the interaction of our two cultures. Softspoken and unflustered, he was worried about his net and didn't want us to cut it; we were worried about our boat and to hell with his damned net. What was he doing there on an urban lake in the middle of a sailboat race course in the first place? By and large the Captain and crew showed admirable restraint in their comments and all parties managed to stay focused on resolving the problem but it was probably the only time I've ever seen Captain Ralph truly angry. The details of the solution weren't really that interesting: we tried a boathook and some tugging and a variety of other suggestions and implements before one of the guys peeled to his undies and dove under the water to free the net from the boat propeller - which was still not as easy as it sounds. Amazingly enough even his toes kept getting caught in the plastic of the net. Eventually the fisherman seemed to realize that it was simply not going to be possible to avoid cutting the net somehow and he did what he could to help get us unstuck so he could resume fishing. He tried to tell us a several times that we would owe him money for the net and even demanded to know who is the owner of the boat. I wouldn't say we were ignoring him but nobody seemed to want to answer about who the boat belonged to and basically nobody would acknowledge his requests about the cost of the net with either agreement or disagreement so it was almost like he'd never said them. Somewhere in the middle of all this a drunken motorboater showed up to help take charge of the situation which helped at first but then his prop got caught as well and he nearly chopped up our guy in the water when he put his engine back on. Once the prop was freed from the net, we couldn't really start up the motor again for fear of drifting back into it so the fisherman towed us away from it and took off without asking us further for money. I think he was glad to be rid of us more than anything. We dodged more nets along the way home. The fisherman ended up with an entact net but with some big holes in it. We lost a flashlight and our man in the water got a cut on his hand. All in all, it was not a big incident. We even refrained from swearing at each other which was more than we could say for another boat we passed later - a 70-foot yacht with an irate man standing on the bow shouting foul foul things at three Natives in a dinghy below him. (they weren't exactly rushing to his aid) The "moment" in this event was one of those "man against the elements" epiphanies. It was really such an innocuous event and we were in no real danger at any point. We could have called the Coast Guard to tow us on any one of half a dozen cell phones if we'd broken the prop and it would have been another 10 minutes to the moorage. Worst scenario would be that we ruined the guy's net. Even the guy in the water didn't have it so bad considering it was a very warm day and the water was temperate for this climate. But for just a minute it was really kind of scary. The sense of being stranded and helpless - trapped on the water. I've taken boat safety courses but I have been very fortunate in the skill level of the people I've sailed with and never found myself in an emergency situation. This still wasn't an emergency really, but it was closer than anything else and a reminder of what can happen at sea which still managed a happy ending. It was also a first-hand reminder of what our cultural interaction with the Native Americans really comes down to. I somehow had the impression that they had made some progress - they did, at least, manage to legally win the right to fish these waters earlier than any white man can. But they are still paying a price for the right to do so, and the price of the net itself is small in comparison to the continued scorn of those who get caught in it. (Comment on this)