Soundtrack to my western pure language roadtrip.

After I post this I will go to bed and take a fake road trip to Sun Valley where I will listen to the following songs during afternoon hikes up rocky hillsides and talk to no one for an entire week excepting other forms of communication such as pure language via eye contact, back to back sleep osmosis and a unique form of ESP you can actually believe in. Just so you know.
(1) "Portland, Oregon." Loretta Lynn: Van Lear Rose.
(2) "Don’t Look Back In Anger." Oasis: (What’s the Story) Morning Glory.
(3) "Melissa." The Allman Brothers: The Allman Brothers.
(4) "When the Stars Go Blue." Ryan Adams: Gold.
(5) "Come Here Boy." Imogen Heap: I Megaphone.
(6) "Winter Killing." Stina Nordenstam: The World Is Saved.
(7) "9 Crimes." Damien Rice: 9.
(8) "Bizarre Love Triangle." Casual: Casual.
(9) "Samson." Regina Spektor: Begin to Hope.
(10) "Halah." Mazzy Star: She Hangs Brightly.
(11) "Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right." Bob Dylan: The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.
(12) "Carolina." M. Ward: End of Amnesia.
(13) "Say Yes." Elliott Smith: Either/Or.

keep walking

We walked the snow walk, the snow dance, all the way down the esplanade and I wanted to walk until the cold penetrated mylungsmyhearteverymoleculemyblood and froze me until some warm spring day comes with the first camellia. We walked by the river, past the church I walked by as a daycare child where we pretend marry her, down the dock I’ve never walked lining a beach I haven’t returned to since I watched the dock with a boy the place we sat now knee deep in river. We tracked the clouds and stomped the puddles and tested the crispness of the leaves and mud and little blades of grass. We stopped and listened to the crisp rustle of the wind through the brittle leaves and for a moment I felt almost better than the twenty times a day I secretly close my eyes while walking while driving a little bit longer each time.
When is the last time you kissed? No, a real kiss?
When is the last time you loved? No, really loved?
When is the last time you felt truly known? The last time you felt truly seen? Without saying a goddamn thing?
Fuck if I know.

the things we'd say.

“What if we had a week of honesty?” Shelley asks. And we talk about all of the things, unsaid things, we’d say and who we wish we could be honest with.
The longer your friendships last, you see, the harder – the infinitely harder – it becomes to wade through the motions of getting to know anyone new. All the stories and the history assumed known are unknown and is it even worth the effort when too often you wonder if these people – these new people – give a damn or will even stick around? Honesty, too rarely given, too rarely appreciated, too rarely earned.
We walk a rainy walk and talk the Portland talk necessarily the Portland v. Washington talk and in our disparaging love Portland in that way that love breaks your heart. Yet Portland’s a cruel love; no mountains or ocean or anything so much bigger than you to carry you away when you get too carried away.
Oh, the things we’d say.

Putting the fun back into dysfunctional

This one goes down in the Mom Hall of Fame. She sent me a card today saying she hates to leave town without talking to me/just wanted to say she loves me/etc. Which is very sweet.

The quote on the front of the card says, "Chance makes our relatives. Choice makes our friends." (Jacques Delille)

I love this woman.

Proof that Dylan really isn't always such a spaz.

It's like water...but minty.

Not much to say other than I’ve discovered spearmint flavored water and I can’t decide whether I love it or feel I’m drinking mouthwash. Is innovation dead? Sometimes I wonder what’s left to market, really. There’s damn near nothing you can sell me at this point that I actually need. Except VitaminWater.
Oh, and I’m pretty sure I’ve run into every person I’ve been missing and out of touch with for the last couple years in the span of one weekend. Creepy and wonderful and a bit overwhelming but great.
I’ll have to get back to you on this whole minty-water thing.

What I'm Listening To

No playlist for now. Getting used to Damien Rice's new album 9: came out Tuesday, check it out (and if you still haven't heard the guy, start with O). Also ended up buying all of The Best of Blur because it's the only way to get "Tenderness" and I have to admit I was a fickle Blur fan, they lost me after Parklife and the later self-titled Blur.
By the way, free cookies or gratitude or whatever to the first person who can tell me if there was a 90's band called The Squirrels or if they know who sang a song with a "where did you go?" chorus that had a verse something like, "and you were happy/as a clown/dancing around in your new 501's (where did you go?)." Because I'm constantly searching for this song, can never find it and I highly suspect it's not as good as my memories of listening to it on college radio in, like, 1994 are. So, help me get over it already. Then we can sort out the song I always think is by Built to Spill but can never find (bring back the words....).

Democrat my ass.

This just in: Lieberman now wants us to call him an "Independant Democrat." Yep.

I Love Gibbons

Sometimes I feel like a Gibbon in a world full of chimps. But then I remember, "fuck that! I'm a mother fucking Gibbon!" And I feel all better. Yep. Just look at that hot male Gibbon up there.

A real flood.

This week the Cowlitz River rose and completely flooded the vacation home of two close friends of our family. In the span of a weekend, the water rose to the height of their chimney and they lost everything. By Monday, the river washed over the highways into the small town of Packwood, where my mother and her boyfriend also own a home, and residents could only enter or leave by helicopter. Our friend’s father built their home and they have lost not just a home but over 50 years of memories. This weekend they will try to find a way back to their condemned garage to recover the last remnants.
Talking to my Mom, though, we had to acknowledge this was no Katrina. These are our second homes, after all, our little big cabins in the little ski town next to the mountain. While our friends went to see what was left they stood in a grocery store next to people who had truly lost everything; cars, homes, land. Pretty humbling.
Crazy.

You might not want to read this if you have a penis.

Dear Every Man Who Just Wants to Get Laid,
Why do men who just want to get laid go through courtship rituals? Of course you want to get laid: we all want to get laid on some level. But if all you want is a fuck, a lay, a roll in the hay then why not own it? By using courtship as a tool to get in a girl’s pants you really only lessen your chances of getting any. First, believe it or not, we can tell when you like us and when you just like our pussys. Second, you’re creating expectations (and headaches) you never wanted in the first place. And finally, haven’t you figured out that girls only like boys who don’t like them? You’d be much better off admitting you just want to get fucked in the first place: we girls love to futilely try to prove you wrong on that point and do you in the process.
And since you got me started, what’s with the whole courtship thing anyway; the text-messaging, the rapid fire emails, the sweet nothings? You do that and you’re just paving the way for the memory of “the way you used to be when we first met.” What’s with the bullshit fantasy? I don’t want some weird super-interested version of you. Can’t we just skip to the part where I nag you if you don’t call the nano-second you get off work, you don’t pretend to care about my “problems,” I don’t pretend to care about your “ideas” and we admit we’d rather stay in and rent a movie? At least then we’re both getting laid by someone who knows how we like it, right?
Sincerely,
Every girl who’s laid there, done that and wants more

Or maybe "Wet Nose, Warm Heart"!

You know you love your dog when you have a pair of jeans permanently hanging on a hook to dry because he will get a real walk, rain or shine, whether he likes the rain or not. Speaking of which, isn’t it sad that I would probably make more money off a book of bullshit phrases like that one entitled You Know You Love Your Dog When… than I ever will as a second rate lawyer? I could even put out bumper stickers just like that god awful Dog Is My Copilot book everyone assumes you want for Christmas when you have a dog. A word to the wise: just because someone has a dog, even an annoyingly cute dog some people might like to dress up, doesn’t mean that that person wants a feel good book about how pet ownership saved their soul or another pug calendar. Not that I know anyone like that.

GUUUUUUUUUHLP!

You know how you get to that point in a relationship where someone’s cute little quirks turn into fingernails on a chalkboard? Well, last night my boyfriend, Anderson Cooper, and I were hanging out about 7 p.m., as we do, and I noticed something about him for the first time that irritates the shit out of me! He started talking about something (he’s sort of loquacious) oh so passionately and quickly, something I love about him.
And then I heard it; little gaspy gulps for air like a little dying fish between every pause in his rapid fire sentences: With six days left until the elections will Kerry’s botched joke cost the Dems the house – GUUUUUUHLP – Bush makes a show of confidence for Rumsfield but is it genuine or an election ploy – GUUUHLP- Are polygamists training pit bulls to join their church in an effort to bring down monogamy – GUUUUUUUUULHHHHP????
Anderson and I have been through a lot. My flirtation with Dan Abrahms. His struggles as a closeted reporter. His failure to understand why I’m not ready to join the army of the silver foxes at age 26. But now? I want to believe we’ll get through this. I really do. But I expected more from him.