I guess it's time to start sending them out again. Yep yep... here are the ones that have floated in, all likely due to... but interestingly not only part of, The One-of-Many Postcard Project.

My heart still beats for such arrival. glamorous eyeflutter sigh.

Postcard 21



Postcard 22



Postcard 23



Postcard 24

Labels: postcard project

because It's extremely stupid, but considers itself prime.

*

A quick note of advice [on the trials and tribs of dating]:

When someone (such as myself) asks, "So, would you still be having this same conversation if I weren't even here?"

Quite possibly, and maybe it's just me, but perhaps or maybe... you're being a bit of a jerk.

So yeah, sure, I've been seriously fucked-up before too, but I don't recall putting all that on whomever I'm with. Maybe the opposite, even though the hurt a person carries always effects the situation. I do remember making an effort to not date when I was fucked the hell up because that's exactly what EC did with me and it ended up simply splattering the carnage. I do particularly remember the time in my life that was unbearable because I held it all and was determined not to share the load.

Ultimately, maybe that was a dumb idea because it was also opening myself to the friends I now have that helped, but really: going on a 'date' and dumping all your shit?

I know it's not personal-like, but there's something insulting in that very act. Like I might as well not exist.

Like hello.

I don't know how to say this, exactly, but being "in your own head" is a upper-right across the cerebellum of all those around.

I don't even care if it's about sexy connection or friendship at that point, but man, being there - that moment you are, in this case hiking along the Washington Coast on an incredibly filterlight day that included even a porcupine, along the cedar heat-smelling cliffs, with someone else. Perhaps it asked for more than repeating how sad one was to be 'alone'. Alone.

Damn. How it made me feel really alone. [Could've done that by myself, right?].

Probably I still deserve that. Just for being me. Again against again.

Guess I needed to realize that. In the meantime: Please God, Please Please Please God, Let Me Feel Skin Again. Let Me Show Off My Hilarious New Underwear, and Not Feel Ugly or Dumb. Let Someone In-Affairs-Of-SexyAttraction-Not-Only-Friendship Offer Something besides their Own Pain.

Pretty Please.

*

Yeah, so. Enough of that. You know, one of things I love about Herald is how he will snatch up nasty scratchy items - such as bottle caps - in his mouth and pretend nothing has happened when I tell him to drop it. And how he accepts me opening his mouth and taking it out without any fuss. As if he were waiting for me to remove it.

Herald is doing well.





*

So, we've technically reached the end of The Postcard Project, which makes me sad, but happy because as of today I reached my hoped-for goal. I sent out a postcard for every day of August, actually a bit more, some silly and goofy, some closer to my heart, but all of them done, profound or not. And I received 20 postcards, which was what I stated at the beginning as being my hope. Thanks M, for being #20 today:

Day 20, Postcard 16


Day 21, Postcard 17


Day 22, Postcard 18


Day 23, Postcard 19


Day 25, Postcard 20



Very cool.

*
*
*

Also on my mind besides the Friggin Election: the Alger shooting affair that happened S-bound on I5 at the exact time that I was N-bound on I5 at the same place. One person got shot dead two blocks E from the backwoods where I live. I received a couple concerned phone calls over that one, and it twas a pretty fucked up deal. My personal reaction was nil, like my other reactions to apparent danger: hey, I'm alive, why worry anymore? If I were dead, I wouldn't be worrying either.

But the whole thing, after much local attention, just seemed to turn out very sad; CR here is fussing about parental fuck-ups and all I can think about is what bloody options exist for parents who need help when their kids are dangerous. That man needed to be off the streets, and the only way he knew how to achieve it was to kill other people. One of the ladies he killed was a deputy trying to help his mother find an environment of grace. For him, they didn't even register; they were a means to end to his freakOut. Like the only way he and his body knew of saying "help" was to destroy.

And I'm not so softie as to excuse him, but I'm not so softie as to excuse us. It seems sometimes to me that one of the main failings of Democrats is to let the Repubs define the meaning of words like courage and strength. Surely they're always redefined in actual situations.

Which acts as a segue into the whole political forum right now, which I'm determined not to let me get depressed...

If McCain wins, I don't know what. Leaving the States seems like abandonment, staying seems like approval. But McCain / Palin is so sick it leaves more than bile in my nasal cavities; it makes me feel like considering self-immolation as a safety tactic.

These are dangerous people politically, but one of the unfortunates is that I could take them down like dried-up salmon in real life. In American politics they have power, and that's some scary shit. The difference between actual and political means the difference between an easy: 1) physical bout, in which I would have both Palin or McCain, at any time of their life, pinned to the the mat via vicious compassion, fury, and suffering; or 2) verbal bout, in which it would be like talking to an effing immobile wall programmed by the sunshine alone to think itself so very, very hot. Neither sounds helpful. This world we live in becomes more separate, and when it comes down to creating healthy surviving communities, their big words will mean nothing to my life as a survivor, or as an artist. Blah Blah Blah.

I've finally reached the point where I'm thinking to actively participate, and that's intense; I guess word-of-mouth, voting, and caring in daily interaction doesn't seem like enough anymore. I need to solicit. I need to volunteer in person. I also keep thinking of Photoshop potential with PaMcC pics because so much of the time liberals seem like big ol' wimpasses in 'slander,' and that's not a problem I have. You know. Like geysers of oil shooting from Palin's mini-brainspace, or the Two Sides of McCain in action. Braaah... computer geeks unite to create Tshirts, right?

Anyhow, thank god for John Stewart. Every day he refreshes and assures me that I'm not just imagining this horrific stupidity alone.

*

To end positivo, I recently got to see my buddy NM and her lady. In fact, they came and visited me. Twas unexpectedly good. Slow meeting all around, but good. I wish I could have my friends every(other)day visiting my home, settling in, saying hey to the puppino, admiring Siegfried and the Sunflowers, sitting in the hot tub. I could have a gauntlet of sass and talky around me at all (most) hours.

Except I get less and less articulate at interaction. Maybe inept is the word. I was looking forward to seeing NM, and I was looking forward to meeting M, but I'm not sure I was super-talented at doing both simultaneous. I felt distracted or dull some of the time. A la', I did my best. Like that pic to my left. blur/unblur.

And we went to Bumbershoot 2008 - in particular I saw Neko Case [good to see once since I love her shit, but she didn't really jive more in concert], Lucinda Williams [hello, my rockstar hat-toting sassmaster], Band of Horses [ok, Dude's into his hair], Nada Surf [no music besides what I've already heard, but something really gained by experiencing it in person], Walkman [forgetable], !!! [the find of the night, what a combo], and the last fluting trills of Beck mainstage but me elsewhere with the minors by choice.

It's been about a million batrillion years since I've been to a concert, and why have I been so dumb about that?

The next day, I dragged M and NM out in the kayaks... put them in the two-person and let them circle it out. I knew I was letting them rough it, and M later gave me the Sheepish Twinges when she mentioned how I used my Sweet Voice to tell them How Well They Were Doing.

It wasn't like that; they were getting better. Plus, they were the first of my friends who were out there kayaking with me. It meant quite a bit that I am no longer able to competently express. Ah well: at least I'm still in love with my all my friends. Kisses.

*

PS. My reading is progressing like molasses these days. How does everyone manage reading what they want in addition to cleaning the kitchen? Seriously.

*

For my sis: Your dog is in love with [bossing] my dog. They are the most adorable duo on history. I've taken movies on my phone but can't figure out how to make that anything transferable, so more film to follow soon.

Pickle misses you though. But when she's with you, it'll seems like you are actually gone. So it's nice to have her bossy ass around.

Hope the cows' rears smell all intellectually sexy!!!

Labels: postcard project

Posted by: bezdomnik / 7:22 PM 0 licks & bites

EE vwuala! More postcards... each day an adventure, each day a reason to rummage across the yard, past the bunny-nibbled hollyhocks, the wild roses trimmed, the rocks falling, barrier bushes so tall I couldn't trim them adequately on a forty-foot ladder with a chainsaw-esque power-trimmer that had me convinced I was twenty seconds away from trimming the nose off my own face in a bad, bleedy sort of way. The postcards on the other side of the road-that-kills, the-road-that-also-sports all kinds of buff bicyclists to make me feel like a fat, oafish hick, either that or pitbulls that attack in the night if one (not me anymore) likes late exercise. All those postcards waiting for just a few more days, not much longer, before they end. E finito, with a few more days.

I have to admit, I had fallen behind the project for an awesome and painful five days, but today I sent the catch-up with that tremendous sigh of relief that comes from being a participant, and the pleasure of knowing that what I put out is = or > what comes back. There's something very perfect in that way feeling connected to other people has of being perfect.

Day 16, Postcard 13



Day 17, Postcard 14



Day 18, Postcard 15



*

Thanks to the emails unrelated but that don't get photogenically recognized.

*

I had my interview and it didn't go so horribly that I am not hopeful of a callback in the next two weeks.

Despite it going well (when I mentioned how cold it actually was in the interview room - due to my nemesis, air-conditioning, they all laughed [comedic timing] and then the HR lady actually stood up, collected a green fuzzy blanket from off a coat hook and wrapped it around my shoulders, saying I was the special one of the group. She didn't object when I said, Oh my, Thank you! Perhaps I'll just put it here in my lap, but), they did manage to hit my panic button by asking me if I was "done with all the traveling," which I guess is a genuine question after looking at the sporadic quality of my resume. I hope I replied honestly when I said that I wasn't "done with traveling or exploring the world," but done with "moving to new places." I also hope that the gods don't smite me for having mentioned getting a new puppy as a means of proving my dedication to location.

I don't know why, I really think it's a character flaw at this point, but I question why I seem to interpret "done with all the traveling" as having decided to go ahead and lie down to die.

Seems a might dramatic.

But really, that's how I feel when someone asks that question, and when they add the caveat of a 8-5 regular job, I really just feel like someone's asked me to slit my own throat while smiling about the gurgling upshot. Probably it's not all as wretched as that, but it wouldn't be exaggerating to say that I nearly get hives when someone suggests that I might be situated (or stuck) where I am for longer than six-ish months without some radical change of schedule. For some people it's flying on airplanes, for others it's meeting a snake or spider; for me, it's regularity.

Probably this is something I need to deal with.

The funny thing is that I don't interpret my friends' or relatives' lives in the same fashion. If they get a good job, I'm all balleyhoo, whether it involves nesting in one place or not. But as for me, I just think that way: staying still after six months equals brain-meltdown for this particular brain, thus death. Certainly many people somehow manage to stay smart after months in one place, perhaps by reading excellent books or connecting with wily peoples, but that's not how I'm used to adapting. I get the intellectual cooties by static living. Strange thing is: I've rather been committed to school in one spot for three years now, but because of the continuous shift in classes and related available jobs, it doesn't seem to register in the same way.

As I said, probably this is something I need to deal with.

But the job I applied for: very cool people, good vibrant souls immediately visible, and a job challenging enough that I could keep learning. The gig wouldn't be about something I automatically know, so I'd be stressed out and ornery for at least two months, and after that, still potentially challenged. I guess that sounds like a pretty good deal, despite the 8-5 M-Fr. Ug, 8-5.

For me though, it's still a very real question whether, after all that, I would still have the time to write, and write well. But the lords know, I'm not able to make use of the open time I have now, due to that eternal fiscal panic. Transition is less a friend to creativity than stasis, I think. Maybe. And Maybe.

Maybe it could work. Maybe the interviewers think so as well.

Herald says, 'Hey lady, all I know is this silky fluff doesn't come for free. I need the chow, and I need it now. Plus I'll grin at you and nibble lovingly on your paws.'

Herald, baby, you're such a Task-Master...!

Labels: postcard project

I finally figured out how to get the pics off my phone - they'd grown so numerous, or at least too weighty in KB to store any longer; I haven't been able to take new phone pics for a few months now. It turned out to be remarkably easy to get them off... go figure that it would take me three years to figure it out... and here are some of my favorites

(I know there are too many pics of myself, but the good digi-camera takes crappy pics of me - exacting a look greater/equal to my actual weight - whereas the phone camera takes flattering pics for when I need to feel flattered, which is frequent when it comes to appearance. Probably the quality difference between the two cameras comes from the bright flash and the way the phone lens really bends things? Anyhow, if you think I'm self-interested by posting three phone self-pics [as my sister will, and will inevitably comment on, regardless of whether she's in Scotland with a crashed hard-drive, little ability/time to check the net, etc], then all I can say is I'm really glad I didn't post the other fifty):

















*

Also, I got more postcards. It's like getting presents every day, which as you might understand, I really enjoy. Not just enjoy, it makes me gloat and bask. It makes me grin and wiggle. It makes me want to rub it in to others who aren't so lucky. It makes me a better, gentler, kinder person with joy in my heart and speeding, healthy chemicals + neurons in my brain vicinity.

Day 13, Postcard 10



Day 13, Postcard 11



Day 14, Postcard 12



*

Peace to you all, and cross your fingers - all 21 of them - for me because I got a job interview. It's not for teaching, but it could be really good. It happens next weeks sometime, so I'll be biting my nails 'til then.

Oh, and the plums are nearly ripe, I ate an apple off our tree, and the blackberries along the ocean are sweet as can be.

Labels: postcard project

Postcard 5, Day 8



Postcard 6, Day 10



Postcard 7, Day 12



Postcard 8, Day 12



Postcard 9, Day 12

Labels: postcard project