So, no internet or phones for awhile, what a shame. heh.

Anyhow, I expect to be back into town towards the end of August, and from there, straight on down to Chi-town, where I will resume my final year of Art School with hopefully some spunkenergy to place towards writing and producing something rockon. Wish me luck, all, and I'll send some of the pigment green down your way. Yo'

barnacle scratch on the bum bikini nakedness bee peeing foam beer bottles music wanderings rocks ridges holes cerations, tracks hitting the tracks, wind filling in for words, no words, a facetfaced sound alone


toe heal toe heel


people talking around me and having lost the sense of their sense, having lost the care to care, sometimes i have heard all the sounds that tongues have spoken, and all that is left is music, are small digits and numbers lined up and then tumbled, color discollected focused, arranged and re-oranged. not because i am wise but because tongues are dumb, contrary contrarily to blood


i want to write like a sound. like a breeze coming in around a northwest pointing strut, and landing like a tapdance, a balloon happy cloud disappearing. something easier than light, not so much like a language


hears, here's the task: my writing lately does not ride, buck like a will-o-wispish, slap my bones straight, and timbre the ear. i want it. i want to land somewhere between story and sight, wrrrr of a strange bird off in the unseen parts of a tall sitka with no taproot only a hive that spreads shallow along the thinnest topsoil and clings tenuous and prone to tip right over


beach wood rust fly away fall small waves nobody else here, nobody else to be heard, spine opening like a desert flesh, splinting sail in blue wash

The first weekend I got home, the weather was still thinking about being nice. Thinking about, is all.

The Classic Tubing Trip, to be perfect, must take place when the temperature is approaching at least a hundred and you're so plastic hot on the black tar stretched rubber of your tire, that you have to tip yourself off into glacial water simply to think about discovering normal body temperature. Your teeth must chatter, but the second you climb back on, you feel hear your skin sizzle, your blood fetch, a fridge woosh to the tip of your tongue, and thirty seconds later, you're too hot, goddamn, you're far far too hot.

This trip was near-perfect, but cool enough outside that one kinda had to perch on the top of the tube outa fear that one's butt might get wet. I.e. my butt. My butt that wasn't quite warm enough to commit to falling in. Or being splashed by the sis, etc. The second hindrance to achieving perfection was that I brought a young cousin, and while he's very cool, I had to promise his mother I'd stay sober and look after her kid. Which I did. Stayed sober.


I have to say, it's pretty odd to hit the end of a tubing trip and not realize that if I fell off, I'd drown, and that I would be perfectly okay about dying at that momement, having achieved maximum spin temperature content happy glory boyohboyohboy tube-nirvana. This is part of the deal: realize possibility of death, feel joyful - a ritual of excessive touch.


However, if you look at the picture directly above, you might realize that my bro-law achieved my mission for me. At one point he was balancing a can of beer on one of his breasts, and a whiskey flask on the other. Plus he was cackling, and thought my idea for waterproof drums was a good one.

All said, the day was good, the sky bluewhite, the birds and family twitterpated, and I saw a woman on the banks who looked exactly like a toad buried in the mud, except she was throwing sand at her own children. She looked exactly like a toad other than that. Ah, true wildlife sightings.

it's pouring outside right now, can't say I mind it, can't say I find it anything but soothing today, quite green, although it's 2:30 a.m. in the PacNorthwest.


as my plane came in I caught sight of the mountains, a long chain that seems smaller by air, larger by memory, by exploration. long dry mountains ripples coming in, all the snowcover up in British Columbia or with a tilt of the plane, the Olympic Penn. I found a perfect sight of downtown Seattle, of the water, of the dryness off east, and Mt. Baker hovering so closely north. I was listening to music until instructed to turn it off. right in the middle of it and mountains and ocean and downtown and touching down, haunting it all, all ready to be here, I started crying and couldn't stop softly even with two co-passengers watching it all beyond my shoulder - the thought of why i still haven't ever come back, although we all do.

I guess I'm just at that point in my life when I realize that for any dreams to come true, I'm just going to have to turn them upside down. the reverse of what we are told, which either get your feet on soil realize the deal down here get yourself out of the myth you make, or to reach for stars touch them feel their shine, etc etc. and I think it's all the opposite of all that but making the airy land reach out and touch whatever you're going to have to make do with and give it some kind of diatomic shine, sliding off your fingers in realtime as you decide, take the jump risk to jump into something that is actually quite frigid, likely to turn your lips blue, and not "make it happen" but maybe. just see what is. in a fashion more likely to keep you going hopefully for some reason i will soon find because i am losing it these days. losing why love, family, friendship, respect is enough when you haven't had hope of touch sharing vision getting past fear not-alone. all these questions lately about why precisely i, not just anyone, but me personally, i, keep going when the thing I've always wanted most to see with to share to give in the venture together and have someone gasp and wrap a hand around... well, i'm thinking... not just the arm, not the ass, not something simply pleasure but above not just that one single star that pops out in the city because it's not a star but a planet and ever so close and thus can make it through every form of smog or headlight, but the photon of something eternally distant and further in time than ever was. maybe just an arm around the waist.

just to be clear on this:

i have been to a cd-release party with a friend and bouncing up up up, tapped down. rafting, drinking with a best buddy, glimpsed the ex twice (i think, definite on the second time, when i thought my god, she's gone butch, but seems to be owning it, and dodged down the street so fast even though i felt healthy and curious and nostalgicish, just because i realized the healthy and curious has somehow been related to saying no, mostly to myself, but no). attended a pride parade, hula-hooped, been to two movies, walked on three paths, heard fountains riveting and rain finding, shown up drunk to a family affair and managed to not be rotten, visited a favorite prof, been honest, danced poorly with my sister and admired her flowers which she knows the names of better than i do, missed friends, hottubbed, shoved my face into wild honeysuckle, stared at a green heron or least bittern and not known which, connived my father into buying me three new books i'm excited to read, enjoyed a few essays, been attacked by a rottweiler, lost at air hockey, won at pool (just at the last moment), taken pictures, stretched my back which is still fucked up to the point of near panic, hung out with cousins, watched a frog, held a newt found by a friend...

yah. i'm trying. really want to live a thousand lifetimes with as much frequency and variation as possible before my fastforward life might run short which i think possible maybe, and sometimes hope for as long as i manage to write a few things to make me myself, beth nugent, and my family proud before all that.


i've also been feeling a bit oddsad about the recent dating session, which seems like further emphasis of the idea that i should really just step off, just find satisfaction/nirvana with what faces me and learn to live without the humanity idea of how-we-should-desire-to-live.

boo! it was so good for so very short a time, i can't wrap my head around it. but it has taught me that understanding is not just about the intellect and getting it, but also about accepting the true consequences of what you understand and acting moving speaking through with that thoroughly-taken state even when it doesn't feel right (i.e. what you want). that said, i'm still telling myself to stick my chin through the streetlight illuminating my green skeleton with pride and the-best-i-can-do. i guess.

it'd be so easy to run off with that persistent 18-year old who was the most energetic enthusiast in my life, in a way. no matter what is said, women after 25 are selfish-selfcentered cats in need to heal themselves. it's a strange thing, not a judgement because i know its genuine, i do, after a fashion. but if i hear the word 'selfish' spoken again in terms of a relationship, i'm going to gag on whoever's shoes it might be, and then sob for three hours without leaving their presense just so it comes through that the attempt toward selfless/balanced is just as hard in the quest towards healthing our memories vivid, dark and aroundabouts.

see, look at me whine. but to put it in perspective - I had a nightmare a few nights ago that I drunk-text-messaged something to this girl. and I woke up in a panic and ran to my phone, only to feel relieved that I had actually managed to not expose myself for no reason in two weeks.

then I went on and had a full huge day here all to myself, and it will always be something I had to myself. years and years as such and I'm pretty sure I don't even want to write it all down anymore.

hope the fishing is bizarre enough this year, yep i do.

Each interaction lasts just a trace less.

I thought I was feeling okay about things, being that I was panicking and it wasn't just her freaking out (when she asked me if I wanted children [in general] on our second date, and whether I was the type to take a married lastname on the third, I, um, had nightmares for two days and wondered what the fuck was going on, dreamt about stuffed animals and fake flowers one day beyond the nightmares)... but now I'm a bit sad that either I was hanging out with a polite person who didn't want to hurt my feelings, or someone who turned out to be a flitting movement, not right, and that's all. Or maybe something else that I'm not up for, or not capable of understanding the right moves or interpretation or space, infinito & etc, for (confusion that wishes it were something else, finds soil with gaze).

Okay, get me: yes, I thought Ms. Woosh was beautiful from the moment I saw her, but I really fell into a crush when she came around with the customers. She has this kind energy sweet sassy forwardness to her that musics around her, and who could but lean into that, especially me who loves nothing more than an attentive force forward? So, yes, I thought about her and saw her and looked away and then looked at her eyes for as long as I dared for about a month, and being the ignorant wimp I am, I would have been content after a fashion with just that, although after certain interactions I could help but blush and ask out the first person I've asked out face-to-face ever.

But as it was revealed: she brought her friends by to buy flowers just so they could pass through my register to assess me - long before I asked her out. She worked on a group-meeting so she could come talk to me. She said she made big-eyes at me whenever she could. She made me bouquets of flowers every day for week and snuck them in at spare moments to talk to me. She googled me and admitted it. She made a flowerpot design for me, and it sold in a day. She invited me over to her friends' house on our first date and put her arms around my waist around them another time. She picked me up on a surprise trip after work and took me downtown. She suggested that instead of visiting a gallery or beach nearby on the day I weaseled off work, that we take a daytrip out of town and enjoy ourselves. And it felt right, whirlwindy, but connected,

So, by jove, it wasn't just me, was it?

Every time, it seems like so much hiss and sizzle, and then someone who would put a brick through my window for a buck. I'm exaggerating and being dramatic, but i didn't expect it to feel sucky. i guess. or i didn't want it to mimic the last night before i headed home. night's before, i've added them to the rules.

[Thou shalt not allow goodbyes to turn the plane-ride home into a philosophical Buddhist hiptrip involving an incessant watching of the water along the wings as it drains down and out like flecks heading opposite and never downward.]

Since... since I really like, yeah I do, this girl, I tried really hard not to fuck it up. I "played it cool" to a degree although I answered text messages like I was waiting, which maybe I was. I was sweet, because dammit, I am sweet. I gave space - forgodsake it was only so short, so I didn't make any sexy moves for particular reasons. I took risks nonetheless, like bringing a flower when a flower wasn't brought to me, and making cookies (!), and lending books...

I am completely inept. That's all. I just adore someone once or twice a year and want every little gleaning from the ribs of the experience, and somehow that is enough to make me, if not an scorned chesnut, at least a walkaway point, for each of them. And seriously - it's not very often this happens to me, this zing, I think.

So, yeah, things have been cold for a week now. Seriously. And I can't figure it out. It's up-down but mostly down - words that sound flat as our perception of the sky - references that sound like grocery visits, about when I return from fishing. And this last week: the bouquets stopped, although I got splashed with water and we went for lunch at break. Yet, it's all in the vibe, right? Distant, for sure, and she didn't ask me for my address in AK when I asked if I could send a postcard.

I'd get the yankaway somewhat if the physical attraction weren't there, but what about when it is? Am I just a temporary trik, or a longterm abstraction?

I don't know whether investing means stalking, or trying, anymore. And the first is abhorrant and unworthy of what I think of myself (pretty nice, full of the need to be loved back, too, and not Take Care of others, life, space, potential... but still be out there all the time as best I can), whereas the second looks so much like the first, they could be twins, but I wish I could believe they're not.

Ug, I swear I won't talk about this shit anymore because there's lots more to talk about that should really, but doesn't, make me feel complete. Blah.



Heading back to the PacNorthwest tomorrow. Actually I think it will fucking rock ass to be home again. So there. And there you go.

Labels: etchsketch

Last night, a little boy wandered around the plant nursery, crying because he lost his mother. I picked him up and put him on the counter near my register, but he kept crying, so I went out and found a flower in pot. I placed it in his hands, told him to hug it tight because it was a magic flower, and if he concentrated on it enough, his mother would know where he was and come find him. I didn't know if what I said was true and felt guilty. The boy closed his eyes and squeezed the pot to his chest.

Five minutes later, an enormous woman, massive, probably ten feet tall and at least a ton in weight with billowing sheets of fat fluttering along her body, came and found her boy. She said thank-you to us, and then opened one of the creases between her fat and dropped the boy in. He completely disappeared.

I felt him sucked to the very center of her and wrapped around with muscle and viscera. I knew he was happy his mother was there to recompose him and the blue flower with her flesh.

...which it was... then why do i feel so vulnerable?






last weekend i went to a state park with mn... 2 hours out of chicago: it was wonderful, all the way through.

but... i am feeling weird right now about everything, and have only a few clues as to why.

i wake up in the night feeling nervous, i rose at 5:30 this morning, on edge, flittery of thought.

it's the whole world that sprawls to unknown.

lovely sometimes, i think.

Labels: etchsketch

plus it happened to me last summer while fishing, a few times in art school this year, and once in a (truly healthy) relationship: