Listen to Om or get the fuck out of my face

Avoid going to favorite coffee spot for fear of running into everyone I've ever known here, some early morning headachey This Is Your Life.

Struggling to push THAT WHICH HAS BEEN OBSERVED IN ONESELF to THAT WHICH IS NOW FIXED IN ONESELF.

Restless for the next respite outside Portland. Laredo, Texas and Anahuac, Nuevo Leon, Mexico in three weeks. Then...? The coast. Something. Will lapse into apathy re: leaving unless forced to keep line of sight.

Upset with self, inactivity, at least confusion has been supressed more often.

Wasted 12 bucks on a Dils record, should have read the back more carefully. Next visit: pick up Television Personalities order, the Wipers.

Learning to listen to my brother, see growth and constants within him, offer support without forcing opinion. Will probably always feel as if I could do more. Save money to bring him here again.

With the onset of winter comes the onset of FULL BLOWN VICES. YEHHHH.


Portland now enters the worst period of fall. The time of soggy, soggy leaves underfoot.

First Thanksgiving sans adults to cook the turkey went spectacularly well. A fine fine bird was produced from our oven, preceded by much basting and fretting and costumes.

I got drunk with Gus Van Sant Wednesday night at PNCA, and he spoke of trying to get Vincent Gallo for a part in My Own Private Idaho. LET THAT THOUGHT SINK IN. River Pheonix, Keanu Reeves and Vincent Gallo sharing a screen.  A moment of mourning for the wonder that never was.

Two sips at a time.

Today was cold, colder than the wool sweater I wore and the rain-proof shell I threw into my bag as I left, running to catch the bus, having woke up sick, stuffy, misaligned. One would have been misled by the morning: sunny, warmer than anyone had dressed for. Sitting on the concrete block at the bus stop, sipping the warm drink I bought after realizing I had enough time to get a caffeine fix now instead of later, trying to humor and avoid the "eccentric" woman also waiting. Throwing on my work shirt, knowing I was ill-prepared in rest, not to mention levity.

Not exactly sure what is meant by the content understandings that come when the wine and the marijuana convene.

His room contains these constants:
-Empty liquor bottle
-Rick James record sleeves on the wall
-a Kafka quote scrawled in yellow chalk upon his bookcase's side
-A painting of Bigfoot ejaculating a rainbow
-An expanding shelf of Situationist literature
-Bookmarked, dog-eared books hidden around, ranging from halfway done to almost
-Alphabetized crates of records
-Relics of his Southern past

My body hangs. Sounds curve around it and I'm too worried to keep my eyes closed.


"Rumney spent much of his life living as a wanderer, and was variously described as both a 'recluse' and a 'media whore', seeing his existence as a 'permanent adventure and endless experiment.' He moved, as his friend Guy Atkins said, between penury and almost absurd affluence. One visited him in a squalid room in London's Neal Street, in a house shared with near down-and-outs. Next, one would find him in Harry's Bar in Venice, or at a Max Ernst opening in Paris. He seemed to take poverty with more equanimity than riches."

I'M LEARNING TO SPEAK.



LIFE RULES.

The feel of putting on cold clothes on a cold morning in a cold room is going to kill me. The beginning of winter has now become associated with anger.

I feel good. The water on the Willamette makes an outerspace scenescape and an otter splashes, proving you wrong when you swore there were none on that river. Listening to the sound of drunks screaming on their way home, cigarettes I didn't even think I wanted on the porch with the purple peepee eaters, never being more alone but more content. And remembering that meeting people is easy.

Another King Khan show in a couple of weeks, this time with BBQ. The almost lost feeling of excited anticipation.

Your awkward conversation makes it OK to let myself speak. Sometimes I hate words, and I hate that I have to verbalize. Less than earlier, more than tomorrow. Before I wouldn't let myself speak for fear, now I will speak more for clarification. Their inexactness may not be a match for my wordsoup, my sentences that speak only of each other.

Boston wanted me to be intoxicated in some manner all day. I politely declined on many an occasion, but acquiesced on some. Boston wanted me to be loud and to be assertive. Boston wanted me to go the wrong way down a one-way. Boston wanted me to sit on the porch and heckle the throngs of yeah-dudes and slutskies gathered in the street.

Since returning, I have become reclusive. I have become ill. I have become reunited with nothing. The nothing that, uncredited, ran my life for 16 years. The nothing that I bid adieu to last summer, unknowingly. The nothing that kept me awake for days, that suffocated me on the brink of sleep, that left me muddled, bleary, confused and weak. The nothing that chased me until I stumbled and fell to strange depths.

It's too bad I didn't realize I needed it.

I'm sorry. I miss you. But I will start anew as many times as need be. I will understand nothingness. I will lose people and ways when I become erratic. And I will build up again when I feel stable, always hoping that it will be the last time. For if nothing is the only thing that seems real to me, despite years of attempting to understand what seems to come so easily to others, to understand all that builds the everyday, then I will weave the nothingness into the fibers of my personality, my mind, my senses, my everyday.

Midnight saw me in Oregon, and the morning getting off on the wrong subway stop in New York City. Meeting my friend on the J train platform and eating home fries in St. Marks Place. Bleary eyed I followed Alyssa around the city, every square inch fascinating. Ocular overload. Staying out of downtown kept the 9/11 memorials to a minimum. To Grand Central Station where we boarded a train, on which I veered between a dreamy wakefulness and a restless head-on-the-seat-in-front-of-me slumber. Napped in Connecticut. Change of shirt, greasy Chinese. Gas station coffee with French Vanilla creamer to fuel the drive to Providence, Rhode Island. Another stop for Benadryll as my sinuses apparently can't handle the east coast. Cigarrettes and Jeopardy the board game in a basement. Three thirty in the morning at a greasy spoon and now I'm in a comfy bed, teeth unbrushed and in my clothes. Tomorrow is for exploring Providence and heading to Boston.

I was seeing, perhaps myself.

Apathy, no, atrophy?

Teratomas.

I spent the night on a hospital cot, watching my friend hooked up to a multitude of tubes. One snaking down from his nostril, down his throat, into his stomach, a pink-grey-salmon colored substance coming back out. The night watch told him there was no way he was going home, a plethora of tests were needed, constant supervision. He panicked, said it was useless, and instead of being met with comforting words, a stream of lorazepam was pumped into his veins as his wide, fearful eyes met mine, only to be replaced within minutes with dull, sleepy ones, his formerly vice-like grip on my hand morphing into limp fingers. I said what I could, I told him it was necessary for this to be taken care of now, and tomorrow would hold the answer to his illness. A sleepless night, most eventfully met with a trip to the vending machines for a bean and cheese burrito for myself and a smoke break in a smoking room straight out of A Clockwork Orange located in the parking lot. The morning watch said go home, you're stable and you can make an appointment with your primary care provider for some time later in the month. The feeling of guilt that overtook me when I thought about my words the night before, not knowing what was really to happen. Yeah, I apologize, your Nothing By Mouth orders the past 12 hours were in fact useless, sorry you're hungry.

Sleeping in a basement has fucked with my sleeping schedule in ways I thought only exaggerated. There are days when I wake up at a desired time, 8 or 9, and between getting dressed and emerging from the room to find a portal to the sun outside, I end up in a nap that, pardon the repeated vocabulary, fucks with my schedule for the day. 4 hours gone.

No need to dislike any aspect of myself, I'm quite sure I've got it covered when it comes to hatred.

I'm working on it. I promise. I feel like I've spent the past 3 years catching up, soon I'll cover that ground and we'll move forward and waking up to my image in the mirror will be easier.

Sometimes I hate that I have to talk.

I've become afraid of amassing belongings for fear of permanence, lending myself to scenarios that cause me to clear them out. For some time I convinced myself that it meant simplicity but now realize what it meant was some sort of chronic instability, or maybe a constant way out were I to tire of my place. Floating aloofly among a carousel of situations. Gleaning what I could from my adventures through the social strata. Amassing experiences and ideas, devouring them. The constant need to expose myself to anything previously unknown for its own sake, falling in love with ways of life. All this created a void of constants that filled itself with even more confusion. More concerned with the impressions of scenarios than the memory of and knocked between potentialities in a chasm of open thought. And now I see a movement to find a place for ideas and tangible evidence of passed time.

The sun is coming back and that means there's no seasonal affective excuse for a weak will. But we'll get the option to lay in the grass, sit on a seesaw, walk on the coast on a whim. I can see a little better every day. After unpacking the last box into my new room, I knocked into Glen, the lo-fi porn star and underwear model I'm forced to see 8 hours a day, while walking into the kitchen. He was in his underwear and my roommate was smashed so I left. Scotty picked me up and we taught each other to live and pinky swore to practice it. I told Cynthia that sometimes I purposefully do my best to learn the hard way. She told me I was a libertine. We're taking a trip and finding a small town to become a part of.

Half of my posessions were stolen. I'm not sure if I'm ignorning it or if it just isn't much more than an inconvenience. My life is a hell of a lot simpler than I thought tolerable at the moment. The minimum items of clothing needed to keep up with the all-American Apparel uniform at full time hours, plus a few items to keep me from looking like even more of a Dov Charney tool. Three jackets: a peacoat, a leather jacket and a parka (currently being worn mostly indoors because it's fucking cold in here) to swap out. My laptop, to keep myself occupied as needed and to keep all my music with me. One purse, supplemented with one of Scotty's most prized mod posessions, the Fred Perry weekender bag, when a small bag won't do. Toiletries. A rotating choice of books. A place to write shit down that fits in my pocket. And I can't say there's anything of note past that. A pen, a good one because I'm now making sure not to lose it. There are three boxes in the basement that contain what's left of my clutter, as well as a mailbox, a bookshelf, a pinata and an end table.

I'm staying at a house, the bottom floor of a duplex. Dark hardwood floors, a bunny, a cold and box-filled basement with potential and some misdirected artwork by an unfortunate tenant hanging on the walls, a tree growing through the porch, a dog named Zula, a drawer for my things, some hangers on the clothes rack, a bin in the closet, a comfortable bed and this dark-haired gentleman with timid eyes and a crooked, cocky smile to go with his sharp clothes. He's got The Dead Milkmen and a marionette and Neal Cassady on the wall. I walk from work through two rose gardens and a park, past crude liquor stores and cars packed full of tents parked outside the hostel, down streets that are so layered with traces of people I've known the past year and a half, weird memories and old habits that it adds a few minutes to my trip because I let them trickle through me. They're layered with layers of soggy leaves now as well, soggy leaves and puddles and a little mud.

I realized I had worked my way into the American Apparel circle of trust when I was let in on the boozy, stoney backstock room hang outs that take place on slow nights. Now work is easy breezy, having proven myself against some slight distrust and distance the AA circle tends to put out. I already liked work, now I even genuinely like the people.

I'd say about 75% of the people I've met over the past few weeks at work, at bars, at parties, through friends have been from San Diego. And slowly I realized they all knew each other and still hang out. Some scene in San Diego is funneling its folks into Portland.

I've got to make my way from the day-to-day and continue building something long-standing.

Portland, Oregon has done nothing but take care of me.

It's fucking amazing how over the matter of two weeks the same locations can take on wholly different meanings and impressions. The company being the operative element. Beulahland, Dot's, the bench outside Dot's, work, East Burnside, my room.

Sunday October 14, the siiiiickest day of my life. I've had a pretty good stream of days that were non-stop fun. The interactions we had with strangers yesterday were ridiculous, hilarious, fucking nice. I don't think such things are possible outside of this city. Fitting to come back to sit on the porch of the white house and find a front page story on keeping Portland weird.

I haven't been in a bad mood in weeks. I'm stoked even when stressed or annoyed.

American Apparel is definitely working out. Despite the brain death that occurs occasionally after long periods of wandering the sales floor, I can't quite complain given that I get to listen to some sweet jams and they throw free clothes at me. HOLY SHIT GUYS TRI-BLEND IS LIKE WEARING A CLOUD. Get that raglan pullover, shit. And given that it's a 5 minute walk from the apartment and that there is a steady flow of friends and acquaintances coming in, the work day isn't the load I'm accustomed to it being. Also, either I happen to work with the non-hipster-pieces-of-shits or I'm one as well cause everyone there's alright.

The past months have tested my ability to adapt to steady change. It's alright.

"I probably wasn't on the right drug at the time."

I always smell like coffee and cotton basics and probably sweat. Since I haven't washed my hair in some time I bet it reeks of weed. Let's smoke my hair, guys.


DEAR ALYSSA ALLI MICK SEAN CLAY CURTIS TIM YOU ARE FUCKING RETARDED AND IT'S AMAZING.

Husker Du - Eight Miles High Mentally Ill - Padded Cell These New Puritans - We All Know Derniere Volonte - Verbes Fragiles Government Issue - Lie, Cheat, & Steal Ariel Pink - Ballad of Bobby Pyn The Smiths - You Just Haven't Earned It Yet, Baby The Screamers - Punish or be Damned Geza X & the Mommymen - We Need More Power Causey Way - Geological Lust

It's taken me over a year to wade through feelings of self-imposed alienation and night horrors and I've come out stronger, better, worse, reckless, but here's one of the conclusions I wanted to share: my apartment has become a haven, a parlour and a salon (in the classic sense of the word). I am endeared.

REPEAT
THE OLD WORLD IS BEHIND YOU
REPEAT

Until one too many draining vibrant nights led to the graying of the vision I had of the emerging trudge through the tail-end of adolescence, I had been under the impression that the recent financial/personal stumbles were forcing a reconsideration of my basic ideas concerning a torrent of topics (most frivlously, understanding base 21+-Portland-mingle among your peers- music-alcohol-fucked up kids looking for company-paying to sit around somewhere interaction). As I inhale the leafy trains of smoke we all paid for with money we had reserved for paying off landlords and electric companies, I rise and fall into myself and I it occured to me that I'd once again allowed myself to ignore my actions and inactions. Things are rushing down once again and the approaching rumble distracts me throughout the day, and I'd only slowed down the descent I was familiar with, not halted it as I had thought. Round 4, 5, 6, innumerable. I've a notion that I'll wake up refreshed if I can will myself up before noon at all. Erratic sleep schedules leave one with a heavy sludge to wear all day.


I'm here, Carlos. I'm sorry.


Compliments are as hard to believe sincere as jokes are innocent.


Broken window, broken blinds, broken water, broken glasses, broken clothes, broken phone, broken dishes, broken chair, broken lamp, broken pipe, broken crate, broken frame, broken everything.

As down as this post seems, I'm actually pretty happy most of the time.

I don't even know who stays in this apartment anymore. Everyone, apparently. "Daniela, when did you decide to run a commune?" I don't know, but in doing so I created a messy, smelly, dizzying, very enjoyable reckless time.

dbs.

Oh and I saw the flow of existence.