style-ish

I'm thinking about starting a sometimes blog feature called Style Icon.
Beautiful objects have saved me, so many times.
I exaggerate not.
Now, the city in which I live is not known for style, as such. But some of us do have steez, style, lewks, whatever you want to call it. Oftentimes it's an unpredictable mix of thrift store finds. Or a particular genre, strictly adhered to. Or a passion for color.  Or maybe just an irrepressible sense of fun.
I know folkx who rock the oddest ensembles and the best part is, especially in my neighborhood, no one blinks an eye, unless it's an admiring one.
So, I'm thinking about ?'s to ask--influences, likes and dislikes, most and least spent, etc--and how to make it visual and I'm excited already.
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As the ever-irrepressible Santino Rice sang, "Lighten up, it's just fashion."

floccinaucinihilipilification

I love love Love LURVE this cartoonist.

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More here here here. Yes and here (insomnia).

a fountain of eyes

It's funny, I took this picture sitting around in a rental car waiting to pick up my fella. Picmonkey boyeee, I am having fun with it. A friend commented that I should release an album. Right?! Except...I can't sing.
Good news ahead, another story about to greet the public. More to come!

from whence

I was reading George Saunders' GQ article about his visit to Dubai and realized with a start--this is where the Busysmartypants motto came from: "Just before I doze off, I counsel myself grandiosely: Fuck concepts. Don't be afraid to be confused. Try to remain permanently confused. Anything is possible. Stay open, forever, so open it hurts, and then open up some more, until the day you die, world without end, amen."
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CHBP was a blast: three days of friends, music, beer, sun, treats--could I ask for more? Probably. But tonight I'm feeling grateful: Purity Ring delighted, TacocaT rocked hard, and on the last night, I danced til I was sweaty and breathless to Latyrx.
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Last week my pals at bIGTiME threw an album release party. It was a bumping night, I hugged them all and even managed to get down, a little. (Quote of the night, when Ms Kelly Castle Scott hit the stage in her zebra stripe jumpsuit: "now THAT is a onesie.") I'm so proud of these kids! And last week some of my besties up and got married, a low-key affair in their backyard, presided over by a neighbor-slash-judge, toasted with bubbly and a special pinot noir and a bubbly pot of cheesy ziti. 36 hours later I joined the newlyweds in Vancouver for fireworks and Pride, drinking margaritas and sleeping in on Sunday and enjoying a late breakast, loving another weekend of friends and le party.

drip tag

So it seems this is a tag, it's the 2nd set of carefully articulated drips I've noticed in LQA (see last week's post).

drips

Post-Kansas and I'm still feeling a little lost. It's been a busy summer and yet a lonely one (and I guess there's no rule that says those two adjectives are mutually exclusive). This past week in particular started real-ly and metaphorically awful and continued down an implosive spiral. If ever I needed my friends, this was the week. And mostly they were absent--traveling, busy, gone.
There was a memorial service for a lady I knew once; a few minutes in, I remembered with a pang like a sucker punch the poisonously pitying stares of church people, the knowing, prying eyes, the behind-the-hand whispered updates from the choir. I popped a pill (thanks Sid) but I can still feel those eyes, like a thousand little stabs. A day later I was out for an early jog before work, dazedly putting one foot in front of the other; near Seattle Center I tripped and ate pavement, ripping big patches from my knee and elbow. I ran home, hot and shaken, blood streaming down my leg. The week passed in a hot, tired haze. I tried to socialize, I did try. I drank beer and ate nachos and attempted to sparkle. By Friday I was on the phone with my shrink. Hearing her say you are in a dark place was less of a relief than a relative assuaging of pressure, like unkinking a hose and then whipping it against the side of the house. 
It got better, slowly; I enjoyed a Friday night with an allied soul, drinking and confiding and ending our night at Pony with booze, beautiful boys, beats. Yesterday, backyard margaritas with dear friends, navigating their own hellish few weeks. We found solace in trading painful stories, finding laughs, and jointly supporting a fragile soul just out of Harborview and trying for a place of peace and health.

The photos are paint drips on the backside of a parking garage on Roy Street.

the farm

After a week with the fam in the 785 I feel more connected and less sure of myself.
I hang out with my cousins and aunts and uncles and little cuz's and my nearly-92-year-old gramma and I recognize kinship, in their eyes--the dark ones especially--in the backs of their hands, their laughs, a particular way of pronouncing t's.
Then I see how much like my sister my little niece is, how that even though they aren't blood-kin they most certainly share chromosomal attitude.
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This picture is from my gramma's farm, somewhere off Highway 40, near Fairport, nearly 100 acres of mostly wheat fields. On a 90+ degree day my sis and cousin and I wandered around, looking at bits of decayed limestone foundation and surveying the endless sky.

shabiby ride

--a video I took in Tanzania, on the Shabiby bus from Dar es Salaam to Dodoma -- now with beats!

newstuf

Found today, randomly and zum Glück--newstuf to read and to peep:

6 Insane Discoveries That Science Can't Explain | Cracked.com

We like to feel superior to the people who lived centuries ago, what with their shitty mud huts and curing colds by drilling a hole in their skulls. B...

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apropos of nothing

Sidewalk commentary, nothing better on the first day of summer.
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I welcomed the solstice over the weekend at a local parade and fair, a homegrown event and while a little corny (free hugs from sketch-looking hippies--nah), mostly a blast, powered by people, and genuinely fun.