The Mission down here in Seattle has a neon glowing sign: "Come unto me..." Posters of Jesus looking up-right-left-down tesselate the window. Eat your bread and soup & watch the can-can dancers.
Montana has a gambling problem. Noticed this the last time I was up there--people everywhere turn their homes into mini-casinos. Just stick a neon flashing sign over your front door & you're in business.
Standing in line at the gas station somewhere in Montana, the little Asian woman ahead of me bought $50 in lottery tickets. An old man put $30 on a horse. Then it was my turn, and I bought a coffee. Where is my sense of adventure these days anyway.
Starting for Seattle. Since I'm self-hosting here, this blog as well as all of thegotonerd.com will be offline until further notice.
So long Lincoln, and thanks for all the fish.
I'm moving to Seattle. To work for a big company. On a 6-month contract.
There's a diaspora underway: Andrew & Jamie moved out to San Jose last month. Drew got a sweet job at Specialized, the bike company. Long-time friend & class.com colleague Thao just moved out to Washington, D.C., where she will join her Chinese fiancee & work for a defense contractor. Nick W. left for the peace corps and will soon be in Nicaragua.
And now me, I'm finally getting the hell out of the Midwest, for a while at least. As recently as 6 months ago, I was still in "I hate Lincoln" mode. Then suddenly I became ok with it (complacent? stagnant?) because I realized how many friends I have here. Being in norm4eva has definitely connected me to a lot of local music cats & I've started to be a part of "the scene" here, I think. But there's also really great friends like Jake & Joe & Mark & Henry & Ann & Wes & Luke & Heather...
So ultimately the decision to leave was a lot tougher than I ever thought it would be. I was torn & it was sleepless night. I called a lot of people for advice, which is quite unusual for me, as those of you who know me can attest to. As with all good advice it simply revealed what I had already decided inside: that I needed to move on regardless of how painful it would be.
I leave in less than a week in a rental car to make the insanely long haul up to Seattle. Only taking my instruments, computers, and a few books. Everything else--including my current car--is going to be given away or storaged. Less is more. Kent taught me that when I helped move him in Phoenix...the dude divested himself of at least half of his material possessions in one night.
The night before I leave, everyone I know & love will converge on our place for what I'm betting is one of the best Lincoln house parties ever.
Penelope and I were in Walmart the other night buying Scrabble, when suddenly she looks intently up my nose & picks a booger out with her thumb before I realize what's hit me. She gets offended when I call her weird...
Normally I don't gripe on trivialities, but seriously, what the hell is up with padlocked toilet paper rolls? As if I'm going to steal your toilet paper & run to my getaway car. Please.
And who would want to anyway, when using it is like wiping your ass on fine-grained sand paper, or at best one of the Dead Sea Scrolls? "I would have wiped but your toilet paper was so smooth and fragile that it disintegrated upon contact with my buttskin."
Dream in which I repeatedly tell Hans (my neighbor) to back off from the plate. He is playing catcher and I'm up to bat, but he's too close & I'm sure I'm going to hit him in the head on the follow-through. He says ok and then moves back at most one inch. So, to demonstrate what is about to happen, I whack him with my bat across the face. He staggers a little, stunned.
A bench-clearing brawl ensues. All the townspeople are there. I am screaming above the din, explaining myself and waving my bat with righteous indignation.
This, I suppose, is a replay of a childhood scene in which Ed split open a neighbor boy's head with a metal baseball bat. Troy was his name.
Dream in which I am hanging with the members of the Flaming Lips. Only the lead singer looks more like Tom Green, and there's a chick in the band.
What the mind can't remember properly it just invents. Or just throws up its hands in flat refusal...
...like this: when I was twelve, before I'd ever seen the female body in its splendid entirety, I had a dream featuring a naked woman who danced for me. Instead of guessing at the parts I'd never seen before, my mind attached actual black velvet censor bars to her chest and hips. They somehow rotated on the surface of her body as she twisted and turned, so as to always obscure my view.