blok

Writing has been a struggle lately.
Rejections right and left, terse little cut-and-paste no's. Recording project treading water. Inspiration as foreign as a Swahili dictionary.
Stop trying so hard to make things happen, my shrink says.
Talk about foreign.

cop shop

This picture is from the Seattle police department's west precinct. I spent five hours riding with a female officer last week. I'm no fan of the cops but I'm no hater either. Like most people, they're doing the best they can with a shit job. Sure, some of them are assholes, but a-holes are everywhere, although most of them don't have the power to lock you up or fuck you up pretty royal. Anyway, it was a fascinating night:

• Lots of drunk people, street people, stoned people--sometimes all three at once
  
• As we drove by Westlake looking for an escaped shoplifter, the street kids saw me in the patrol car and started yelling "snitch in the front seat"
• I saw a dead guy OD'ed on heroin in Pioneer Square, naked from the waist up, medics frantically trying to bring him back
• One time, we slammed through downtown, lights and sirens, down one way streets and through red lights, and it was the bomb
• And damn do cops get hit on. A lot. In person, in The Stranger, you name it.

Anyway, thanks SPD. It was coolio. No offense, but I hope our paths never cross again.

I don't want to believe

I don't believe in true love.
There, I said it.
You know what I'm talking about. Long-term romantic love, a soul-mate--I call bullshit.
What there is is now, connection for today, satisfaction, the oui within je ne sais pas, rolling along like waves or a sandstorm.
You might think I'm cynical. I think I'm living.
$
ps this photo is from the bar at church, two consecutive nights last weekend. I collapsed late Sunday in happy exhaustion.

untitled (copout)

sparkle

well I used to think nice people were soft pushovers, suckers.
now I wonder.
maybe the *h*a*r*d*-est thing is being cool when I don't much feel like it.
... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...

Richard "Woody" Johnson

A sometime reader of this blog told me he thought blogs were masturbatory. By implication I suppose he thinks this one is too.
Well--DUH.
And anyway, what's so bad about masturbation?
$
I love this graffiti from a Washington State Ferry. "Jeff" thinks he's being such a badass, defacing federal property, and then the next guy with a Sharpie takes him straight from badass to dumbass.
You'd think people would have more profound things to say in a public space, but no. We are preoccupied with meaningless details, with dropped pennies and belly button lint. Our universes are comprised of bills and dentist appointments and taking out the recycling. But guess what? The truth is in the details, as every writer knows. Give me "Jeff is a Dick" over Mount Rushmore any ole day of the week.

push it

I stopped reading last year, gave up on books and the news and Vanity Fair and the New Yorker. Other than the occasional Real Change or spy novel re-run, I pretty much dumped the written word. At some point though I ran across xTx's blog Nothing to Say. She writes like a person punching you in the mouth, and then kissing you. It hurts like hell and then it's amazing. I inhaled her and then I forgot about her until today, and yeah she's still writing like a Fight Club extra.

Try this on from the one where i unexpectedly cry while writing it and then know i hit a part of my truth and it hurts: "My heart constantly yearns for other things. Things I cannot have. I think that’s what continually drives my writing. With my writing I can put that yearning somewhere. I can put all of my stomache aches and my cryings and my what if’s into the imaginary. I can also, in some cases, make people like me. I can sometimes make them love me. I make them all my father."