webcowgirl

I want more art. I am thinking that I will have to look at getting some when I go to Seattle. But when I see David Kroll's paintings at the Grover/Thurston Gallery, and Darren Waterston at Greg Kucera, I think that my income has in no ways kept touch with my tastes.

I need a new spring icon, but this will do for now.

Reading an article on the Seattle times, I saw a little ad in the background for, "SLOG: the longest three hour drive in American history." (It linked to this site, where you can see the movie, and not the Slog that is The Stranger's blog ... we'll see if lawsuits follow.) What's funny, especially if you live in Seattle, is that I thought the whole while the ad was playing (before I turned on the sound) that it was an ad for a typical Seattle/Redmond commute - should take 20 minutes, in actuality can be much longer - or maybe for Seattle to Tacoma (40 minutes/frequently 90). Nope, in fact, it's for the supposed three hour drive between Seattle and Portland, which Horizon is recommending you handle by flying between the two cities (forgetting the two hour advance check in and of course the joy of getting two and from the airport, eh?).

I find depicting this drive as taking three hours EXTREMELY humorous, as this can only be done if you avoid 1) morning rush hour 2) afternoon rush hour 3) construction 4) weekend traffic. Seriously, I thought it was all about NORMAL commuting, not roadtripping. And, I wonder, why the heck isn't Amtrak using this kind of ad to promote taking the train? Not that that doesn't just as often as not mean you're going to be stuck on a bus, er, I mean, "replacement rail service," and dropped in the traffic with every other poor shmoe ... but at least you leave from the middle of downtown and arrive in the middle of downtown, in two cities with really good public transportation systems, natch ...

I have a few folks out there in LJ land that are very tut-tut at me about how I did nothing but talk down people in Seattle and my experience there.

Tonight, at home, alone in my apartment (while shadowdaddy is back in Seattle-land), I'm reminded of how I felt living in Seattle most of all of four years ago. I was damaged goods, I was a waste of a human being, I was bad on the inside, I was not worth being friends with, even though I was 35 and had been trying for years to be a good person and trying to find good friends. I was most of the same person that I am now, but because of how a group of people treated me, I felt not only incredibly lonely, but really sadly broken. I believed there was no hope for me, that people just would never like me. (That time is blogged quite well if you want to read back that far, but since I try to avoid LJ drama like the plague it is, I don't talk much about what is upsetting me in those posts. It's just day after day of bleak and lonely and snow, my guts a little Narnia, my heart overwhelmed with the splinter of glass that said, "You will have no friends, ever. You cannot figure out how to do it and nobody wants you. Go hybridize dahlias or raise poodles or something so you're not just a waste of space.") This went on for months and months and months, pretty much from August to August, building up little pieces until I formed my very solid conclusion about my fate in life as a person of little worth. I mean, really, if that many people who had known me for so long saw me like that, how could I not think they were right?

I think that someday I'll just let it all hang out and tell it to the world, so the people that think I hate Seattle "and everything in it" can nod their heads and say, "Ah, now it all makes so much sense," but really, moving forward is generally healthier. (I'm saving it for my graphic novel, anyway.) And in some ways so much of what was making me miserable was what was happening at home and the fact that I felt like I couldn't talk to anyone about it, but the feeling of being so utterly worthless was very toxic to my brain. (Amusingly enough, this psych book I was reading Saturday night was talking about how this feeling of being icky and damaged is a key element of people's sexual fetishes, but somehow the two never got linked up in my head. I still get shut out of plans of people I know, but it doesn't get me all hot and bothered. Go figure.)

I feel much better now, and fairly regularly, even though tonight I'm sitting in my empty apartment drinking flat, warm cider and getting ready for a (bleah) 6:30 AM shift at work. Boo-yah. In 2004, ergotia, ciphergoth, spikeylady, and lilithmagna convinced me I wasn't worthless, and I decided that I would move moth-like toward this light and toward the person they treated me like rather than the person I'd come to believe I was.

Thanks, guys. And thanks to all the rest of you here, and thanks to the people I met after that summer that made Seattle better to live in after all of the crap had happened.

I'm still marching along with the Proust, and I've hit the halfway mark in volume 1. The narrator is happy, but you can feel that things won't last. Proust has just stuck a long passage about how art that advances its art can only become appreciated later, once it's had a chance to influence people, which seems to me like the author saying that he is anticipating his book will not be well-received. I'm alternating it and the third book by Richard Morgan - brutal cyber-punk versus dreamy late-19th century reveries, what a difference!

Anyway. Home. Alone. Drinking. Tired. Going to bed soon. Please take care of shadowdaddy, for me, Seattle folks, and hope that while he's there he can find the happy that hasn't been coming to him since he moved.

Did I really sell out a chance to see the Venere Lute Quartet in favor of spending a sunny (just occasionally hazy, as if to cut the glare), 65 degree fall day biking along the Sammamish river?

Oh yeah, baby. And it was good. Nice, flat, pleasant, beautiful, just enough food from the Maltby Cafe beforehand (I got biscuits and gravy and poached eggs and stole some of shadowdaddy's "Montana Potatoes"), sore in various parts by the time we hit the halfway mark (but not miserable), tired by the time we hit the 8 mile pole but enthused about getting a horchata at the Pachanga taqueria before we went home. My quads feel well worked out and my "sitz bones" are a bit sore but it was just perfect.

It was a damned good ride and a damned good Sunday and I'm glad we went. I know there will be few days like this in the months to come!

This morning, taking shadowaddy to the bus stop (I was driving so I could stay extra late at work and just go directly to rehearsal afterwards), we could see the snow-capped peaks of the Olympics across Elliot Bay (and Puget Sound) as we drove over the crest of Yesler. God, it was beautiful. And all the way into work Mount Rainier was hovering in the distance, looking like a giant pulling itself out of the bowls of the earth and preparing to go stomping across the land, a looming, weighty presence, luminously white.

Lunch somehow had to take place on the fifth floor patio with the Olympics view - the cheapest view dining in Seattle. After my coworker had scuttled off to a meeting I found myself paralyzed in the sun, unable to stop gazing into the distance and daydreaming. I stayed for an extra half hour, just enjoying being warm (and admittedly talking on the phone to people, since I could - no luck sending phone photos, though), looking at the mountains and the tiny skyscrapers and the forested hills close to my office.

As I got ready (after making a car rental reservation - DONE!) to buckle down to the rest of the afternoon's work, the kind of hazy slackitude of the afternoon really kicked in, and I found myself craving ... ice cream, for some reason, it just seemed like the right thing for what is a rather warm day. And then there was an email in my inbox from the Big Kahuna, saying he'd bought some ice cream, and could we all come over to his office and "get it while it's cold ..."

So perfect, really, just all of it.

Look, the Seattle Times has done an article about why Seattle sucks why Seattle has left me so empty after such a long time here. "Seattle: A City of Warm Smiles and Cold Shoulders." It's nice to hear I'm not the only one that finds it's nearly impossible to achieve true intimacy here - that you just keep bouncing off of people's polite shells. "After a series of squirmy rebuffs, she realized that when Seattleites say, "Let's do something sometime," what they really mean is: 'Let's never do anything ever.' " It does leave me a lot of room to be Julie, Your Cruise Director, but sometimes I want to get invitations in return. I don't want it to be all me; I want other people reaching back.

Waitaminnit, I can't just let this statement sit. butterbee, kafuela, butterflake,corvuscrx, wingedelf, fruity_goodness, jaquelea, stolen_tea, jadine, m_cobweb ... and that's off ot the top of my head ... you've either reached out or reached back. So thanks to all of you (and the people that I didn't get off of the top of my head) for making Seattle suck less.