July - August 2003

Resurrection

The man on crutches came back. I had Monday off & was walking up to Broadway to buy the paper when I saw him come gimping down the sidewalk. On the other side, so I didn't run up to him. In fact, I didn't quite believe my eyes (naah, it's somebody else on crutches who looks like him). I did not consider a ghost. There was no Times at Safeway or at QFC. I began to wonder. But I got one at the Starbucks & went home. And the guy on crutches was sitting on the pile of boulders like he always used to, having a smoke. He waved the way he always did. I stood on my curb, put my fists on my hips & yelled, "Where the hell have you been??" Did not.

I stopped & crossed the street & said, "Where have you been?" He's been taking care of his mom on Camano Island. She had a hip replacement. He misses the old neighborhood. (Seems a long way to come just to sit on the rocks & smoke.) I didn't find out why the managers cleaned out his apartment, but maybe he moved his furniture & left a mess. I know there's more to the story than I will ever find out. But I gathered that he's on crutches because of a bad hip.

The theatrical black/brown guy with the teddy bear hair (Micah) says: "There's a story there." I like him, he calls me Princess. It's such a hot summer day that all the people who look like they should have circling flies do have circling flies. Beginning with the ever-present Hungry Man.

7/21/03 Broadway «Bux

Significance on Broadway

Twelve cats at least on a summer Sunday afternoon, but that's not enough for me, & I come to Broadway expecting to see something Meaningful. Instead I see the usual amazing fatties, couples (odd) & foreigners, tattooed freaks, foreigners (more!)(with backpacks!), boys with cowry shell necklaces, trendy people with wiener dogs, families mall-walking & 3 anorexic girls who make me wonder: if I threw away my cake, could I look like that?

However, I didn't see any old boyfriends with or without their wives. Then the dramatic baristo Micah pauses in his work to read me his poem, "Tell Me Why."

Bway «Bux 7/27/03

Chaudron fêlé

Or cracked pot. I was going to give my quote from Flaubert to les deux femmes who were studying Français here Tuesday, but knew they'd look at me funny (show off!) and/or the teacher would address me in complicated Français & I would have to admit Je ne parle pas. What I mean is, as theatrical spectacle (as theater, as spectacle), it would disappoint. Besides, old ladies who butt into other people’s conversations make me see myself too much as others do. Probably do. Like that skinny-necked weirdo in my just retrieved photographs—would you know, in the picture of me & JHY I look dumpy & have my eyes closed & he looks like a professor of history. I look okay in the pic w/ Karen, but I have my Rooshian scarf on my funny little head. Over my funny little hair.

*

This is by no means the sum of today: mid August sunny evenings & the 2 "girls" with identical haircuts (ident. to each other's & to mine) are so yellajacket buzzed/bugged that they come inside. (Oh, these girls.)

I want, underscored. I want meaning or I want perfect representation. I want those 3 slutty looking, raggedy haired Goth girls in the platform shoes & torn black net stocks frozen forever & stuck on a wall. Not just them, the whole of Broadway. Yes, even the normals.

God, I miss Jean—though it may not be the actual Jean I mean. But what she represents.

(And what might that be?)

Bway «Bux 8/14/03

Shocking Revelation: Vera's a He

I talked to Lee on the phone today. How was/is he? He talked fast, hardly let me get an edgewise word in, which was fine, I didn't want to talk about me. He may have been on drugs & how—he said he was out of Oxycontin. He told me he is on 6 month’s probation for an open container of beer & a joint in his cigarette pack. Pulled over by a campus cop—for seat-belt [bogus! we agreed], after stopping to take a pee late at night. And he has a social worker & a probation officer, but, he says, not a single friend in K'zoo. That when he talks to people, they edge away. So he only hangs out with Vera. And Vera's been sleeping in his armpit. And Vera's a boy. They said he was a she & by the time Lee caught "her" licking her little pink thing...well, what was he gonna do, give him back? So, he just didn't tell anyone. "No wonder 'she' got on so well with Elmer," I said. (Elmer was a girl.)

And his brother Lance has a warrant out on him for not paying child support. Lee said he might/ought to kill himself & I said, "Oh, don't do that." He didn't sound more than half-assed about it. He's been watching cable & not doing art. The doctor doesn't know why his back/neck/head hurt. "Well, my back/neck/head hurt too & I can't get drugs...you don't hear me complaining," I whined. God, it was nice talking/listening to him. I'm gonna do it again soon.

Then I found a mosquito bite on my arm—my first mos. bite in years. So I'll probably get West Nile virus meningitis & not even know because my neck has been stiff for weeks.

B'way «Bux 8/10/03

Succession does not imply Success

Though if process is implicit in procession, then why not?

Because.

Over-excited yesterday, what with talking to loopy-on-meds Lee & catching JHY in a misquote (on top of a lot of—sniff-sniff—smells to me like rationalization), meeting Jamie at Twice Sold Tales (knowing it had to be her when she told me Robertson Davies was her fave). My brain burbled....but then, I slept w/ exemplary Badness after two good nights. When I thought I had a new lease on sleep... Last night the neck, the hips, the shoulder—oh & esp. the 2nd waking (or was it the 3rd) lasted from 4 or so till 6. I still don't believe it matters, but lying there hot & sore & uncomfortable no matter which over you heave, well, it's a damned bore.

*

Today the Achilles tendons ache & my neck doesn't want to turn. Oh stiff necked me. What kinda metaphor you call that??

*

That after all those x-changes, JHY didn't e me—maybe chagrinned that I corrected him? Gaw, like he hasn't done it to me enough times [Yeah, & it Really Pisses You Off too.] [Right, & now, I got him back: ha ha ha ha HA.]

Not nice? You betcha.

I will write to him soon. Kathy-Centered from Alpha to Omicron (& maybe further, maybe Pi). Will he be charmed? He may like the photo.

I need some omega-3 oil? No, I need some magic elixir. An acceptance. Money. Cheer, not Jeer.

Day of work tomorrow. Alvia gone to Loozy-Anna. Libraries closed next week. But Jean will be back (?).

B'way «Bux 8/21?/03

What's This About?

I tell Marcus how I talked to Lee & how all these Facts came out, because he was loopy on pain meds. And how it's difficult to know what's going on & how you can only Do So Much. And Marcus tells me that his friends told him they could do no more. Regarding what precisely he does not quite say, and I don't want to ask him if he has AIDS (or a pill problem, or...??)

This is my first day back at this Starbucks since I Don't Know When— before the dog-hot days of July, f'sure. And there's handsome baristo Sean... It was a back-flash day. I went to Montlake Library & saw Angela & John & gave them pages from 01 where they are mentioned. Egotistic of me, maybe.

No sign of Hilda, but I feel bent over enough for her & me both. Could I wish it away? Could I give it the slip??

15th Ave «Bux 8/23/03

6 Billion Idiosyncrasies

Or 6 billion idiots in their: harem pants & dangly earrings, jeans & T shirts, khaki shorts & sport shirts, big headphones, zip sweatshirts, low slingin belts, running shoes, sandals, hiking boots; carrying blue rip-cord gym bags, cell phones, hoses (!), blue & white backpacks, cups of iced lemonade, canes, plastic bags full of groceries, magazines, videos, brown paper bags full of I won't even guess what. I saw an eco-cotton bag, but no string bags. All in just 6 to 10 minutes of watching the passers by pass by... Haven't seen any one carrying a baby (well, it's Broadway) or a small dog (which is odd, it's Broadway). But there's another chatterer with a cell phone & another and a baldheaded girl in a short tartan kilt-skirt, big Doc Martens & purse decorated with a grinning skull.

At last, there's a woman in a striped shirt & bell-bottom pants pushing a black-haired tyke in a pushchair. I even see someone who makes me wonder what(ever) happened to Coryell Court manager Jeffrey T. Don't think it's him though. Just the usual Broadway parade.

Bway «Bux 8/25/03

Missed a Schism

and fell in a whole. Came to the café with nothing to say and so... let me list.

Three little cats in Volunteer Park on the west side of the reservoir, just at dusk; 2 black & one Mas. That was Thursday. Could you doubt that I went back same time/same place on Friday? Only one cat—the little Mas who sphinx-sat & looked at me, cat-warbling my little Mas-vanquished heart out, & then skulked away. I walked home in the cooling dusk of August's end. Am I going back tonight? Will I be taking cat food with me?

What more to say:

The jewel in the heart of the lotus.

Whatever else it may mean, it states with perfect clarity the value that lies in plain nature. (The lotus grows out of the deep mud of lake-bottom). The old (Af/Am) window washer from 1988 (Rainier Home Loan) was sitting on the Roy St. forest path tonight chanting, though not om mani padme hum. No matter.

Bway «Bux 8/30/03

Schopenhauer - Eisenhower @ Power Hour

An eccentric equation (not proven!) — no, I've been wondering how you'd turn old Schopes into an adjective (he always wanted to be one). You know: Kant-Kantian, Plato-Platonic, Leibnitzy, Wittygenstein, Whiteheaded. So, if I’m not Nietzy, what am I? (Leave Ike out of it!) Schopenhauverian? Maybe Arthur S. did not aspire to adjectivehood. Maybe he just wanted some fun.

*

I'd give it all for some drawing ability. But that's not on offer. (And I have nothing to give.)

Suddenly the café fills up. Two skinny stylistic boys. Two old ladies. A funky bearded lady, two casual girls. And then— a guy in black with a vintage David Bowie head (esp. dramatic back-lit by the evening sun) — & oh god, he walks out with a girl who looks exactly like him only scaled down. Birds of a feather do indeed flock.

Broadway «Bux 9/1/03