Draft saved at Tuesday, March 25, 2008 (2 days ago)
Thursday, Mar. 27, 2008 - 19:01

0. Magnum opus

Not much going on today — people out of town or working from home. I default: open Notepad, start typing.

I.

Have I used this sentence in a story yet?: "His mother died a religious maniac." I've been saving it — I saw it in some Wikipedia entry last year — it was Friedrich Ludwig Zacharias Werner and it wasn't necessarily Wikipedia, although it probably was. His mother died a religious maniac — an interesting sight, I bet.

II.

I'm cold and it's March. When I moved to Ballard, I had no idea what I was getting into. I would get off the bus on 32nd and walk towards home through my neighborhood — you sort of crest over the hill, and you get this full view of the water and the Olympics. The people there have yards, actual yards, full of flowers, and when I moved there everything was just about to start blooming.

That's the thing about Ballard that makes it so great and so fragile — when those houses were built, Ballard was way out of the city — there was no need to mushroom everything in close to each other. The small houses that were built in the '30s and '40s were on their own lots with enough space for a yard to play in and plant a garden in. Now people want to move to Ballard to live that small-town life, live in a neighborhood like that with grass around the houses, so they buy some little old house, knock it down, and put up a giant house that takes up the whole lot, three stories tall blocking everyone's view. You can fit an awful lot of building on one of those lots, you know, you can even put up condos. Condos, condos, everywhere.

Anyway.

Anyway. By chance I moved into this beautiful neighborhood, by chance I got a bedroom that had a mock orange bush right outside the window.

This morning walking up my alley I heard a noise and thought it was sea lions but there aren't sea lions here. Some garbage cans were knocked over but it's too early for bears to be down here. Perhaps raccoons had done it — I saw one yesterday, across the street — it scared me.

III.

Faintly through my speakers I hear the Replacements and if anyone ever had a sense of disaffected youth running around Europe in Doc Martens you'll know how I feel. I bought steel-toed Docs in Europe but it was in Austria, in Innsbruck, not Dublin or Amsterdam, and I wasn't disaffected. I have Disintegration on vinyl but there's a goddamn skip. What I mean to say is, every so often I start feeling like the only thing to do is to get up and leave. I've gotten a lot but I've never gotten that.

If I'm feeling ungrateful I should remind myself of what I have had, and in fact I probably have had that — I always kind of don't believe it when these things happen to me. And also I'm so easygoing (it's true) that when these things do happen to me I realize, ehh, you know, it's just life. So these things happen and they are what they are and that's it. The remarkable becomes unremarkable because otherwise you'd just be bragging.

— that was one of the things that drove me nuts about my goddamn jackass neighbor — he'd tell stories about things that had happened to him, stories designed to impress or awe, and they didn't impress or awe at all because they were really unremarkable. I could top his stories 100 times but that would just be bragging. His stories were so lame it wouldn't take much at all to top. One time a tranny touched his butt? Holy shit wow dude, that's the craziest thing I've ever heard, you must be super cool. Your drunk friend couldn't find a McDonald's one night? Ha, that's so goddamn hilarious and crazy, you crazy party animal.

My jackass neighbor never realized what a jackass he was, he never realized that I sat there working up his psychological profile while he talked and talked. He never realized that all his criticisms of this city were really criticisms of himself.

IV.

I used to go to these bakeries in Vienna — a bakery chain — and get these sandwiches with cucumbers and butter. I never understood bakeries — I still don't. I mean, I have never been able to fully utilize a bakery. I do a little internet research and oh yes, those bakeries were called Anker.

Anker Bächerei. Naschmarkt. Burg-Kino. Cafe Mozart. I ran around Vienna for... three months or so, rode on the U-Bahn and the streetcars. Didn't like it but now I want to go back. I lived in the 7. Bezirk, Neubau, on Hütteldorferstr. My host family was strange — the teenage girl and her cousin, a 12-year-old boy, were extremely close, they were shower-sharing close; the tip of the mother's nose was discolored and moved when she talked. The father was having an affair with a friend of the family, a fabulous, glamorous, violin-playing friend — he played the clarinet — I would have felt sorry for the mother but she was so unpleasant I didn't blame the father. The father would come out of their strange kitchen bathroom in his bathrobe, chest hair revealed. My bedroom had a skylight and a sticker of Pamela Anderson on the wall. We were just down the street from Otto Wagner's summerhome. Yeah I want to go back, I can't stand not being there right now. Those snotty old people, those huge ridiculous buildings, that ugly ugly German.

I'm cold and hungry, there's no color here, I'm barely getting by, what in the world am I doing? Why would my ancestors have left there? Why has my family been moving west, always west, for the past 400 years? Two hundred years ago some of them were in Innsbruck - I went there and couldn't believe it. Why would they leave? Oh but what the hell do I know about what it was like in London 400 years ago. But seriously. If I go east, if I go against this westward movement, will I be doing something wrong?

V.

Here's a new clause to save for a story: "I may have grown up among lumberjacks but..." Oh the potential.

VI.

On another note, I've always loved hotels. Motels, too. I can't imagine finer luxury. The best job I ever had was in housekeeping up at the ski resort, two very nice hotels. I should just give it up, give it all up, become a maid again. Work for the winter and the summer seasons up on the hill, and during the fall and spring travel, travel back to Australia and Austria and everywhere else that makes me crazy to think about. It would get me away from the computer, where I sit with gmail chat open and look at your name.

VII.

Sometimes I get inside my house and can't stand it — I can't stand all the crap that I have around, I can't stand that I have 10 different bottles of face stuff that I'll never use — I can't stand throwing away plastic — I can't stand that they only recycle clear plastic here — I can't stand that I can't stand throwing away plastic — I can't stand the accumulation of crap. Fine, fine, I'll just throw this out — I put something in the garbage and feel better — divested — but I think of it sitting in the landfill forever and ever. Someone needs to do spring cleaning and it seems like I do that every week but nothing stays tidied up — I clean my living room and kitchen every week but someone comes in and messes things up again, dirties my dishes, puts the mail in piles and never processes it.

On the one hand I'm glad that I'm poor — it makes things so simple, it makes me so aware of what exactly I have and what exactly I can afford. Things are more direct and a simple Kit-Kat bar is so glorious.

VIII.

My crocuses are finally blooming, finally there is purple and yellow in my little flower bed. I finally planted my seeds — they are in my alley room at this moment, growing and growing. My hops are coming up, morning glories are planted, sweet peas are out there.

VIV.

Two days after typing this I look outside in the morning to a wintery new layer of snow. I get my Polaroid, take a picture of my crocuses sticking up out of the snow.

Okay.