In the last few weeks I.... Went to Seattle and the beach Rode a train for the first time Parallel parked for the first time in almost two years Missed three workshops at the IPRC for various reasons Contemplated drawing paperdolls Started singing karaoke regularly Got my bank accounts straightened out Figured out my health insurance Attained the level of Journeyman in the union Skipped out on two days of work to go see a boy Began weaving again Discussed starting up a basement speakeasy Set a mouse free Sang in a choir Found 7 year old photographs in a shoebox nd put them in an album Began practicing keyboard again Tomorrow I might be buying a tenor saxophone. It's exciting.

we missed ya. in the last few weeks I... lost my job found my soul, or at least where it's been sleeping. got a tattoo. recorded 8-16 bar beginnings of a handful of songs. hiked more than i had in the prior 20 weeks. woke up stoned, on a rock, in the sunshine and decided to just take off running. found a log crossing a stream where you could sit and watch the trout swim. learned the art of crafting hashish. started lifting again. assisted in a fine-art printing project. visited a variety of museums.

Sorry about the job. In the last month, I've gotten out of Portland twice, after being in town nearly two years. I can't talk about going to Seattle at work or to my family because some of the lies I gave to go and because of my reasons. Oh, another thing that happened if the last few weeks.... I thought I was in a "long-distance relationship" but apparently for him we're "friends with benefits" as long as we live 200 miles apart. Oh well. I told a friend at a party that I'd smoke with her, but we both left instead... Probably a good thing seeing as it was nearly four in the morning on a Tuesday night.

losing my job was great. it lead to everything else. i hope you don't get into trouble with having things you can't talk about. filters complicate life. i think unecessarily so, but everyone needs to arrive at those kinds of conclusions on their own.

I understand the complications, but relationships are things I don't talk about to my family. As far as they know, I've only had two boyfirends in my entire life and only kissed one. My mom tells one of my grandmas, who tells someone else and pretty soon they're saying I'll be the next one married. Maybe if I talked about clothes and church and boys all the time like my little sister they wouldn't care. At work, it's ok... my coworkers hear a little more about what's going on in my life but it doesn't get carried off like with the extended family. They just think my Great Aunt Eliza died and I was in Bend instead of Seattle. Thay my boyfriend broke up with me when I was grieving. Sounds exciting, doesn't it. They don't know who he is so it's not talked about much. The only people who know what's going on are my roommmates and a couple of friends. My friends actually know more than I do because they've known him longer. Crystal went up there last weekend and hung out with him one day and they talked about it. She's filled in the holes in my mind but I'm a little confused about things still. The lack of communication bothers me but email doesn't seem to work and my phone card's almost out. Where do friends end and benefits begin? Is flirting/ going out with/ kissing/ having sex with other people cheating or am I free to do as I please? Does it mean we're utterly platonic in public and no one would be the wiser except he spends the night at my house? Should I be rereading the Ethical Slut? On less soapbox-style topics, what does the enw tattoo look like?

tattoo i do understand the family thing. i filter for the family, but only to protect them. my mom especially worries about me, and i don't want to cause her undue stress. (the gossip network is also well established, but i no longer worry about that. family either accepts you for who you are, or what's the point in maintaining this network based on genetics instead of preferences?) co-workers too, i suppose. most of my life is beyond the understanding of software engineers. not that i am one anymore, i retired from the line of work. maybe because most of my life is beyond the understanding of software engineers. i think you should be free to do what you please. i don't think there is any need for you to even consider sincere, complex, devoted relationships with anyone. there are so many kinds of people out there, you need to comparison shop. not only that, but the weight of your existence is based on the quantity of your memories. life is experience. does it matter to you if anyone is the wiser? (and i mean this as a real question, not some sort of loosely guised statement.) you are someone i can see becoming free, as in the true sense of freedom. i've never gotten past the fear of losing track of society.

Nice. It's beautiful. I don't know about complex and devoted, but sincerety in relationships is extremely important to me. I'm not particularly good about being friendly or anything so I have to believe that they really want to be around me. An old habit of mine was simply not saying hello to people I knew even if they were talking to one other person. I used to think it was that everyone had some sort of vendetta against me, now I realize that I wasn't the only person in their respective worlds and someone else got there first and I could have stood there and talked and it would've been fine. A mouthful, isn't it? I love sincerety but sometimes it's my downfall because people can be a tad too blunt sometimes when they break into my dreams. "Losing track of society" ? I'm not quite sure if I understand. Do you mean being behind the times or being left behind by others, losing track of individuals? Or maybe not reading the news everyday? Information is addictive. I have two main fears being (1) loneliness (a very particular loneliness since I love being alone, the complete and utter inability to connect in any sense of the word with other human beings) and (2) dinosaurs.

Got the Tenor. It's great. I'm starting a Punk Rock Karaoke Marching Band.

i think i meant sincere more as bonifide than honest, but maybe that isn't correct usage. is that flippant? your fear of dinosaurs? in 'losing track of society' i mean losing the ability to interface with and be a productive member of society. falling behind the times, somewhat, but mostly just losing the will, the mindset to handle it. developing traits that don't work well in 'polite company'. speaking your mind in a pure fashion would be an example of this- if you had no restraint, no inhibition, you would offend most everyone. i would, anyway. if i opened my mouth every time i thought someone was speaking like a moron i'd have no one left to speak to. but, by never censoring yourself you gain significant freedom. i crossed paths with a rattlesnake today. even though the rattlesnake took off into the scrub, that point in the path became a point of no passing for my hiking buddies. it became an opportunity to turn around. i mostly hike alone. i always suspect trees that have fallen across the train in such a manner that you must walk under them. they are less trees and more frames of gateways. you feel like you are moving through something, into a new space. at one such tree i stood for several minutes trying to command it to stand up. laugh if you will, but i had smoke a solid joint twenty minutes prior and was in a state where such a thing might just work. and for the benefit of the tree, absolutely, as it was still alive but slowly yielding to the death of exposed root ball. so i worked at it for several minutes. focused on this tree. just little nate in the forest stirring up all sorts of energies. energies, mind you, that have been productive in the past. in plain view and with measurable consequence. then, i get the distinct feeling that the forest is not happy with my disturbances. i decided that it was time to leave, so i turned and went. where am i going with this? i don't know. perhaps i just want to show that i spend too much time alone. and that i'm more afraid of the forest spirit than a rattlesnake. because it is the truth. but for god, fear none.

Sincere is both bonafide and honest. In my opinion, anyhow. I read somewhere that if you had the distinct feeling of blundering into a spider web in an open area, you were being touched by fairies. I thought the fairies liked me tons. On the other hand, this is coming from the hands of a girl who also once believed that she had an invisible pet cat by the name of Head (yes, Head) that would attack if ignored. Dinosaurs. Trying to sleep at night, lying down with one ear to your pillow, you can hear the echo of your heartbeat. My four-year-old explanation of this was a T-Rex tromping around the neighborhood. A rather ordinary childhood fear of being eaten. When years later you have to convince yourself that no old rich white guy has cloned Cretaceous carnivores and that they're not coming to Oregon to eat you, there's a tad bit of a problem. Losing track of society, in your definition, sounds like fun to me. I aim to be a crochety old woman, living off the land and spitting where I may. Besides, making others believe in your own insanity is a fine game to be played at any time.

the weight of your existence is measured by the impact of your actions.

These threads get me thinking. There was another one, and I wanted to say something but it was just too much. I'm afraid if I start posting I'll never stop. It's good to hear from you Lapis.

I just got home from the hospital. My grandmother broke her arm and should have gone home late Saturday night but they discovered that her sodium levels were dangerously low and that's why she's been having problems with her memory. It took an hour and a half to ride down there on the bus, but when I got there she was sleeping and I couldn't wake her up. I sat for a while and watched her breathe. It's never occurred to me that she's the most fragile person I know. The doctors came in to check on her and the IV, she still didn't wake up so I wrote a note and left. Hospitals make me feel mouselike.

"energies, mind you, that have been productive in the past. in plain view and with measurable consequence. " I'd pay good karma to see that.

This is totally irrelevant: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/2905953.stm

http://www.iraqometer.com/

hmm. when people talk about energies and fairies, i often laugh. not out of scorn or anything like that, but more from delight because it is beautiful. it makes me so happy when people are not afraid to speak like this, and when i am happy i laugh out loud, escpecially when happiness takes me by surprise. people who know me well know this about me, that just because i laugh doesn't mean i am lightly brushing them off. but a lot of the time, people dont know me that well (this has been true a lot recently, since during this first year at school i have met so many new people who i am delighted with). i sometimes feel like they are hurt my my laughing, but i hope that people will understand, and think that many do. this troubles me sometimes though.

i don't know why anyone would be hurt by honest laughter.

It's that dishonest laughter that hurts,the phoney laugh.

Early morning irrelivancies help me poop. Thanks Semy!

Alas, poor floppy is now a stiff. Dave, UK O, do you mean the delighted, smiling, hand-clapping laughter? That's excellent. I thought it was nearly extinct but now I know two people who laugh that way. I'm starting to notice streetlamp behavior again. Last summer there was one on the corner on my way home from work that would always turn on as I passed underneath.... Last night I passed under a different one that had a low beam that flickered and went to full power. Somewhat strange.

streetlamps turn off for me. if you and i walked together, lapis, perhaps it would destroy the universe. there was sunshine rain again this morning. only the sun remains, and everything releases steam in its honor. yesterday i spent 14 hours in studio. i wrote one song to near completion, and another is nearly half done. maybe. i think. today will be less productive, i think, because i want to visit the outdoors for awhile. but there are ten days, now, to my self imposed deadline. i want four songs.

Destroy the universe? Maybe burn out a few light bulbs, but keep it in balance. "there was sunshine rain again this morning. only the sun remains, and everything releases steam in its honor." I like the way you talk.

"if you and i walked together, lapis, perhaps it would destroy the universe. " Funny you should mention that, Nate. Yesterday, when you talked of your energies, I remembered the dream that set me on the path of the surreal. When I was 10 or so, I had a dream wherein I had limitless powers. In the dream I was talking with a friend, and he asked me if there was anything I couldn't do. I said, "what if I said, 'destroy the universe!'" And I destroyed the universe. Reality fractured, and all of existence started sliding apart. Then the dream ended. From then on I felt something was different about me. I've never been able to see any physical manifestation of it, though. Never stops me from trying. :)

you're trying to destroy the universe? or you're trying to manifest your powers? that is a crazy dream for a ten year old. i can't imagine being ten, but if i could i would imagine being ten as being not emotionally ready for those kinds of images. or, maybe, a lack of emotional maturity takes the weight from it. i worry more about the universe destroying me. eliminating my destructive interference. returning me to phase. there was a man once who stood at the foot of my bed. i remember drawing him in highschool chemistry, so i must have been 15 or 16. he was dressed fully in black, with some sort of cape and a sheathed sword with a hilt fashioned into an octopus. oh, and his face was gone. just smooth and black like obsidian. so, it was probably a dream i remembered funny. but he stood at the foot of my bed and said something to me. and for the life of me i have no idea what he said. i can't even remember if i ever remembered what he said. i remember drawing him in chemistry class and showing him to my buddy and saying "this guy appeared in my room last night." this is all before i touched any drug, too. i want musical sorabjiites to come visit and record with me. my schedule is wide open.

My friend Ged wants to let off a nuke. He dreams about it. He's been talking about it for years. My friends are weird.

Ged should watch his freakin' mouth, or they might send inspectors to his closet.

What instrument you want? That's weird. Have I ever told you about the green man? I can't get his mask out of my head even now.

any instrument, all instruments. tell about the green man.

(Long winded, but the parakeet has something to do with all this. I promise.) One year, when I was a Junior, I asked for a parakeet for Christmas. I'd never had a pet of my own, other than one duck... The family'd always had cats, but they weren't mine. So I got a cage and some books and we went to the pet superstore a couple days after and got a parakeet which I named Rhee. A common little blue bird, not yet full grown. Rhee was a little noisy, had a particular little chirp when I fed him, would perch on my hands when I took him out of his cage and nibble at my fingers. Every once in awhile he'd take off and I'd have to chase him around the carpet (his wings were clipped). He grew extremely fat on millet seeds because I gave him too many. After I'd had him a month or so, I read that parakeets occasionally needed to be bathed. So I gave him a bath and dried them in paper towels, but I guess I didn't do a very good job because he was shivering and and the next morning he was sitting on the bottom of the cage, under the newspapers, something he never did. I pulled him out from otherneath, caressed his feathers and went to school. I had drivers' ed and pep band that night, so I didn't get home until late. I get in my room, turn on the light, Rhee's on the bottom of the cage again, obviously dead. I freak out, run out of the room and won't go in again until my dad took Rhee and the cage and put them somewhere. I can handle dead mice just fine, but never the birds. Finally I go back to my room and get ready for bed and try to sleep, but just lie awake instead. That's when I felt like I was being watched. He was tall, somewhere around 5'10", tan skin, long black hair, nude except for green woolen cloth wrapped around his shoulders and fastened with a silver pin. The most extrordinary thing about him was the mask. Made of two human skulls seamlessly fused together, with three eye sockets and a pair of small cattle-like horns. He stood there for a long while, and I knew he was real, but in a different way than we're real. He was real in the same way gut feelings and nagging supisions are real, the kind of real you keep to yourself. I tried talking to him, but he wouldn't respond to any of my questions. They weren't the right ones. Finally I asked why he was here. He replied "protection" and I fell asleep.

nate, i heard swine has started his own business - a music studio in philly. but maybe you already know that.

you're kidding - when did you hear this?

a couple days ago?

wow. That's cool, and he's still a bastard for being MIA.

fuck you swine. fuck you. ok? fuck you. i have babies. fuck you.

i didn't know that. swine got tired of my bullshit a long time ago, i never hear from him. it's good to know, though. it seems like what he should be doing. my label launches soon. though 'launches' is a rather strong word.

and patty, you have A baby. just one. i know you're all hopped up on fatherhood and shit, but you need to keep reality, at the very least, in the same building. or, you know, somewhere you can see it. maybe if you get up on your roof with some binoculars or something.

i liek saying "babies" i makes my sperm dance.

you might want to give it a year or so before your sperm does too much more dancing. space'em babies.

i dont think we want any more...we like being at 3.

whoa, pez. your green man is fascinating. its really interesting how real something can be, makes you wonder about objective reality, whether there is such a thing.

I had several nightmares last night that kept waking me up. I don't remember what they were about, but one of them must have really freaked me out because the light was on when I woke up this morning and I vaguely recall beating my blankets with my fist. I also had a dream about my friend's 19 year-old roommate which was just odd. Then I had a longer dream that I was in Baghdad in one of Saddam's Palaces (I always want to say Jabba's Palace...mussbe the desert thing). Anyway, he was dressed in a white suit and he had a hearing aid and his son was there too. I was wearing some kind of formal gown and I kept walking around wanting desperately for the night to be over and avoiding eye contact.

who's protection do you think, pezuli? i've seen that mask. i know i have, i'm trying to place it in my memory. two skulls fused to make three eyes. it will come to me.

I'm not quite sure. That was never a question I asked him. I've always assumed mine, since I'd see him every so often for a year or more. He spoke more as time went on, but I always had to fish for answers. The mask was certainly striking, I can't draw it but I can't forget it either. It had both nasal cavities and two sets of teeth to either side of his mouth. The horns jutted from the twin foreheads and his nose was visible through the thrid eye.

<<...glanced to me and with her boney fingers without hesitancy, she gave me the bird.>> that's the shit right there, child. keep up the good work. i come around to take a peek once in a while. the whole abstract-thing inherent to internet communities doesn't really work so well for me, though. i've gotta have some history of looking at somebody in the flesh to make it real and worthwhile. otherwise it's all my own self-justified bile and projected bullshit. (except when i'm right and you're all wrong, of course) anyway, you've got a beautiful child, man. i saw the pictures. i was listening to this track we made that none of us knew what to do with. since i saw your eva-jude i figured i'd give it to you. it's way over the top, but the sentiment is there. http://www.blindswine.net/mp3/illy.mp3 feel free to poke around. there's a bunch of tracks in various stages of completion in that folder. i'll leave 'em up for a couple days. lemme know what you think. nate-- glad you found your soul. you should let me hear what you're doing in the studio. i'll ante up on the drum/keys/bass line i said i'd send a few years ago, but you're on your own with the jerk seasoning. sarah-- is mark taking notes and sending them over to you every time we hang out? i'ma sign back up to the scrabble boards and kick both of your asses.

she's no girl of mine if she's not giving me shit from the get go. gracias for the sentiment. nice work. bizarre and warming at the same time. im diggin "unknown track 1" at the moment. i'll continue to rummage around as i'm not going out much these days. give my mom my best.

bizarre is right. i think elo started channeling ethyl merman and judy garland somewhere in there. send me your e-mail. i think i've got something else for you.

here i am

I miss you, swine. Play scrabble with me!

Huh. Leave the boards for a while and come back and everything old is new again. Huh.

hi !

I missed you too, Margret, you evaporator you.

Now we just need Droopy and Sheila to come back for one post and disappear again, and our reunion will be complete.

the question is, who will go with them? someone is bound to disappear. this happens whenever there is a reunion of sorts.

Well, Nate, maybe it will be you. You could disappear into the studio to deliver on your self-imposed deadline and then *whammo* have some sort of epiphany and get sucked into a creative maelstrom.

maelstrom fuck i love that word. not for its meaning. but for its look. its the kind of word that snuck out during pep rallys to smoke cigs.