View from the Back

It's rare that I'll get to keep a picture I take. My camera use has become an exercise in loss and suffering. 

Rooms

I have written about two dozen or more e-mails this week to strangers with rooms in Portland. I have ended up with about 4 responses, had two interviews, and have not found the perfect fit. That is not to say that it won't come along. I just need to cultivate a practice of patience and keep the faith that the right thing will fall into place.

In order to cultivate this process, for each ad I respond I write an individualized e-mail, addressing specific points in the ad and highlighting different desirable qualities. For the various ads that express need for in independent, mostly unseen roommate, I mention that I will be staying with my partner a lot of the time. For people looking for "someone to be a part of our little community, have family dinners, etc.," I mention that I am looking for new friends and a sense of community since I'm new to town. For prospects with dogs, who usually post pictures of their dogs, I self-identify as a dog-lover and go on to praise how particularly cute their dog is. Through this all, I cannot say that I am being deceptive, just not comprehensive. I don't have the time to respond with long, descriptive essays about my values, habits, personality, idiosyncrasies, aspirations, abilities or interests. That sort of information is revealed in increments, and I doubt that the best writers could possibly suggest a sense of this information without being long-winded. So I'm just clinging to my strengths: punctuation, complete sentences, a moderately sophisticated vocabulary and flattery.

I guess we're in the middle of the same project: strangers, homes, new places, and negotiation. There's no guarantee that I am even dealing with people who speak the same language (of course I am being more figurative here). Put the good energy out for my search and I'll do the same for you. Best of luck.

Fragments, Epiphanies

First, I am grateful and glad to be sharing this space with you, Favorite Hipster of Mine.

You'll know I'm working on another, quite diurnal (see Latin relation to journal) blog. I have considered how to format my space here so that I'm not repeating myself unless that process proves useful.

If you remember, at 1304 I was not only collecting Agatha Christie but also immersing myself in James Joyce's Stephen Hero and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. In these, I found 'the epiphany'-- an event that I had really only experienced before in terms of the Catholic holiday.

I won't get into too much detail yet, but I want to note know that after these few years, I'm developing an issue with idea of epiphany as discrete event instead of process. But we'll see-- perhaps in doing a more in-depth, long-term study of the concept and its occurrence in my experiences, I'll find out something contrary to my expectations.

Last, I want to remind the audience that I'm not a dirty or self-righteous hippie.

Welcome Back

We've come a long way since then.

We were mostly single then, you were flirting with that guy with the rosy cheeks and I was dating that blonde kid with the skinny neck. Now we are in some pretty solid relationships (beyond the friendship which we both already enjoy). We were trying to take in the European new wave oeuvre film-by-film. We had a mountain of cable. We co-owned a Christmas tree. We had adjacent bedrooms. I sat on a stool a lot and played some sort of game. I loved my job. You had just started collecting Agatha Christie novels. We cooked.

Now, we're both moving somewhere else within the span of a month. We are uncertain about tomorrow, by which I mean tomorrow, tomorrow. You have two cats and I have three plants. They are all alive. We have lovers well-known by our families. The future is uncertain.

Perhaps it was better then because we weren't looking so straight-forward as we are now. A lot is in question but a lot is locked-in now, so our path has definitions but is as of yet uncertain.

I will be sure to take many pictures so I can show them to you. I will be frequent. All I ask from you is that you tell it as you feel it: don't save up a story, be immediate and I will do the same. We will enjoy a revolution and it started at 1304.

Seal:Soul

"... I've been loving you-ooouu-oouu for so long, I don't wanna stop nowwwwww..."

I've driven back and forth from south of town and College Place and back a lot in the past few days, always with Seal's latest album on the stereo. Thinking a good deal about the upcoming move, describing to anyone who'll listen my fascist tendencies.

Fascism being my term for pure, unadulterated self-interest. For not wanting to be accountable to anyone else, even my best friend. Barely to myself.

And the top of my list of New Year's Resolutions was: "learn to love better".

Getting Laid?

Good on ya.







I think I just realized the implications of a serious attempt to "cultivate friendship" until next Spring.
Yikes.

-- from "Manual of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan. In the week before their departure to Arrakis, when all the final scurrying about had reached a nearly unbearable frenzy, an old crone came to visit the mother of the boy, Paul.

Michael, let's discuss intimacy in bed later on.

Gayface strikes again!

The best part of this article is the pictures of gayface through history.

Although, as it stands, I don't think that historical readings of gayface are entirely appropriate, although current readings may be perfectly appropriate.

PS: Shakespeare = gay.

Work you love: 1 year, a retrospective

The reason I started working at Pho Sho was simple: I couldn't stand the last place I worked at, Coffee Connection Cafe. It wasn't that I didn't like to work hard or that the money wasn't good, it was that it became an abusive relationship, the type in which you have so much invested, your paycheck, your lively-hood, that leaving seems more painful than staying.

That all changed when I met Island and Chris, my current employers. They didn't care at first why I wanted a change. They saw me for who I was, firstly as a person, secondly as a good fit, and thirdly as a person who knows what panccetta is ("an italian bacon?"). It wasn't like that before. Before, I was an exploitable, not-to-be-trusted body that wasn't expected to know anything. Despite my education and honesty, my willingness to cover shifts and give up entire weekends, my former employers treated me and my co-workers with open hostility, brought people to tears, and seemed as though they didn't even trust each other. Finally, as my last college finals were approaching, I made a very scary change which has turned out to be the best professional decision I have made to date. I took another job.

I wasn't perfect before. I showed up hung-over, I became a mean person to line cooks and bussers, but I had no reason to want to be better, or even good. My natural affinity to relate to strangers and to endorse Walla Walla brought my only joy. 

My theory on love is that it is a quality that brings the desire to create more love, that it inspires beauty and a strong passion for self improvement. When you love what you do, you want to be the best at it, you want to bring your truest self.

In my current position, I am also not perfect. I sometimes grumble when challenges seem insurmountable, and I am indignant, although privately, when I give better service than my tips reflect. I have taken it fully upon myself, in love, that I can and will be the only person to improve this. In any case the rewards are abundant. I get to develop rich relationships with everyone there, from dishwashers to owners; I feel the type of love and support I miss still from the family I left behind in Colorado. No paycheck could reflect that kind of security. I can continue to build an affinity with diners and share a love for food, sometimes wine and sake, and always the joy of living in or visiting a real community.

A year hasn't been very long. It has really been quite short. The arrival of this anniversary has actually been a surprise, but so much has happened. I graduated from college. I surprised my family for Christmas. A relationship began and ended. I was in a wedding. I left a church. It's great that some things stay the same, like this job I love.

Do not be deceived by the fact that he was born on Caladan and lived his first fifteen years there. Arrakis, the planet known as Dune, is forever his place.


If I were a religious fanatic I might be flaying myself right now. Oh, I am sweating wickedness as though I drank it with my dinner.

NYT: Introducing Outdated Technology to Old People

I stumbled upon this New York Times article yesterday and was like, yeah, duh.

People have been using the internet as a tool for sex since the very beginning. In fact, the rapid growth of high-speed networks can be partially attributed to demand for streaming pornographic content and live video chat. The NYT takes an interest in the very most basic tools for the exchange of sexual content: craigslist, a text-only, utilitarian website which is basically an online format of the classifieds at the back of a newspaper. There is nothing sophisticated about craigslist, and while that may be the reason for its popularity, other websites and information technologies allow users to exchange richer media such as video and high resolution images. Welcome to 1997, NYT. I hear that you can use the computer to send electronic mail that arrives almost instantaneously. That will they think of next?

Print may be inviting its own end.

Although sex is solicited online in many places — legally and otherwise — the Casual Encounters listings are a major hub, offering to do for casual sex what the rest of the site does for no-fee apartments, temp jobs and old strollers.

Like bathhouses and sex clubs, the Casual Encounters section caters to the erotic underbelly of society, where courtship gives way to expediency and anonymity is a virtue (or at least a turn-on). The section was introduced in late 2000 and is available in all cities served by Craigslist, for users gay and straight, male and female. The ads range from prim to raunchy; a good number of people include photographs of precisely what they have to offer. (The site has a policy against posting pornographic pictures, but it does not seem to be enforced very vigorously.)

To begin your study of the life of Muad'Dib, then, take care that you first place him in his time: born in the 57th year of the Padishah Emperor, Shaddam IV. And take the most special care that you locate Muad'Dib in his place: the planet Arrakis.

A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct. This every sister of the Bene Gesserit knows.

Thank you, Dylan, for your resourcefulness.

PIST.

So, I was unable to find my copy of Dune. Suspect either I'm losing my mind or have lent it out to recent fuckbuddy. Will retrieve and begin posting.

So that you may always know everything: Twitter

Let it be said that I was recently interested in a certain event for which television coverage may never exist.

If you want to know more about the event, go here (NSFW)* to find out. Suffice it to say that the event, while mainstream in its own discipline, is not generally mainstream.

The most useful tool for getting minute-to-minute updates, the whole weekend, were up-to-the-moment tweets from "journalists" at the event. I felt so very there. I learned from blogs and other sites about certain attitudes and biases, and I saw them all in action. And then the live stream. And the tweets. And instant google searches for images and video (done on the iPhone), I was there.

The existence of information and a location for that information have separated. They are considering divorce.



*(I have never used this particular acronym, and it makes me wonder [upon encountering it many times last weekend] who would be reading blogs about the adult industry and its stars and events at work. Here's another interesting item on a related topic.)

A WORLD WITHOUT BOOKS

I am going to post-- in a circadian mode-- two sentences from Frank Herbert's Dune. Here.
Then, when I have posted the entire book online, I plan to burn my very well-loved copy of this sci-fi classic.

Walla Walla: A town for winos

It occurred to me that I've had a lot of wine this week, and I didn't really pay for a drop of it.

The glass of wine is as ubiquitous here as dandelions and lilacs, but this spring lasts the year round. I tasted 13 wines today, at work, before lunch. I took three bottles home. I don't know what to do with them, and I was hoping you'd help me.

Haphazard, like a drunk white lady, I stumble through Walla Walla life, without having to worry about being sober enough to get back on the plane to Seattle.

Rapidly advancing technological world confronts man: a blog

The choice is simple. Fear or resignation.

Here is a list of very outdated technologies for which I am neither nostalgic nor longing, but which I have used in my lifetime:

Rotary phones
Incandescent light bulbs
Tape-recording answering machines
Disposable 35mm cameras
Phone books
Checks
Purchasing CDs and Tapes

But then again, I wonder if I have too many toes wet in the technology pool. For instance, I realized this week that I have Facebook and MySpace accounts, a new twitter account, and a blog, all of which I can manage at virtually any time from my smart phone. It has become time to ask myself if this is my salvation or damnation, although both effects are not entirely contrary.

Wanted: a long walk.

WATCHMEN!

OMG. We loved Watchmen. All of us. Except Luna didn't see it, but we know she'll love it, too. There's a lot of blog buzz about Dr. Manhattan's big blue cock. Check it out.