michele

i started out the day in the neon salem library trying to judge whether the 4 bookcases making an X shape was equivalent to the X in indiana jones’ library adventure with sean connery. i experimented with some of the metal statuary as digging tools to break down the linoleum floor and find the underground crypt, but 15 minutes parking space overruled my love of breaking and entering on corpses, and we left the library behind for portland.

today we went to mississippi, alberta, gay coffeehouses, and nob hill. also a tree covered roadway with tunnels west of nob hill when we briefly got lost in the forest of portland. it was very sudden. a sudden forest. with sucking tunnels. and then we were goners. first nob hill lured us in with the fancy houses on the hill that we could never afford. even if we had broken into the salem library burial chambers and found gold dubloons ringing the necks of all the potential perverted sexual victims, we never could have afforded these places. well, actually, this is portland, probably then we could have. though we might have to register with the sex offenders guild. assuming we followed through with the necrophilia. does that even count? i mean, maybe if it was a 12 year old dead body. right, houses, and then trees. and tunnels. moss everywhere and a valley. portland disappeared again. into the rain or the bridges of yesterday.

we found ourselves again when shopping for t-shirts.

dinner consisted of john’s childhood friends being hilarious and way too much thai food. now it’s time to curl up in my bed for at least 9 hours. maybe 10. man, i love sleeping. and tomorrow, it’s time for vernonia.

standing on a street corner today in portland with jason in the rain, i waited for the blinky man to appear opposite, beckoning me to cross. my time in powell’s had already been well-spent, but my time on the street corner was just beginning.

here i am, looking around, in the rain, trying to blow out of the corner of my mouth at my hat falling down upon my eyes, failing, but unwilling to remove my hands from the deep pockets of the coat, the only warmth to be found for poor fingers. i wondered what i was doing here. in portland. on the corner. in the rain.

more water around than bridges. though my own body could form a bridge between one step and the next, if only the blinky man would appear, between the water falling from the sky and the water waiting on the ground. how many bridges did i cross today? did i ever leave the corner?

i’m still standing on the street looking around at this city i don’t know listening to my phone beep text messages at me and smiling because at least i don’t have strep throat.

i’m too sick to make captions.

so, as some of you know, in my desperate search for employment i sank so low as to offer my services to a paper writing company. so that slacker students could pay for my paper writing skills and cheat their own education.

i have yet to write a paper. my hotmail inbox is flooded with automatic messages telling me that a job posting has appeared on the website and i can go claim it. but everytime i get there they’re all gone. who are these people? how do they get there so fast? everytime i do manage to get there before the hordes have descended and pillaged all the beautiful maidens, the left over fuglies are too boring or too complicated for me to even approach. i hate this job.

also, i think i have poison oak. again. stupid cat.

drive, drive, drive, tire go bang, drive more slowly and have my balls handed to me on a platter by everyone passing me, feel small, arrive! hug, eat, drink, drink, drink, drink, lost count of the drinking, chris the bartender is the devil, stumble into wall, collapse on sean, argue with sean about exit strategy, chris the bartender gains two new admirers in kristen and i, got laughed at by taxi driver, arrive! collapse on floor, fall out of bed, crawl around after cat making friends, wake up sean, go to bed, sleeeeeeeeeeep, go to tire store, be entirely unimpressed with tire store, go to brunch, eat, eat, eat, go to bacaro, back to tire store, am very rowdy with sean at tire store, go to nuala’s work, go to bookstore, read really, really bad free ad book for a series, read really, really sexually explicit book, had seriously dirty thoughts, had to walk around for a while and rearrange books in alphabetical order and straighten displays, felt a little OCD, and a little sexually frustrated, went to dinner at molly’s second job, eat eat, eat, mashed garlic potatoes are SO GOOD! drive home, san argos is really scary, sean’s san argos resident voice impression is scarier, possibly san argos is actually scarier, as is the bathroom at the gas station next to keefer hotel in KING CITY! sing loudly, arrive HOME! home, home home! bed, bed, bed! cat, cat, cat!

pictures here

i just applied for a job at a library in oregon at an abbey. monks live there! i told my mom about it and she said that one of my uncles went there for a while because he thought he wanted to be a priest. life is weird. i wonder if i could be a priest. or at least a librarian.