all around you

"I was on this bed and there were bars in the headboard and I fumbled around with the bars- the bed must have been half a century old... how many bodies had it slept? how many had died?
my fingers found hardened cakes of gum, I stretched there on that lumpy mattress and flicked off the hardened cakes of long-stopped chewing, it was like peeling away the agonizing indecencies of that space between the birth of those bodies and what had finally become of them...
a flake playing with flakes..."
-bukowski

-that curvy bit of Spenard becoming I Street. you know, by the lagoon, where you probably speed.
-same place, west-er.
-I keep taking indulgent self-portraits because I love realizing that I look cross-eyed and vexed in EVERY PICTURE. this is the scarf I knitted yesterday while it was slow at work. I wore it home. good thing, 'cause it was cold.
-6th & E.
-Spenard.

a restful, romantic stroll in the FUCKING COLD WIND

I am coated with the dust of a filthy, unburied city. my snot is grey, my hair feels like hippie, and my eyes itch. everyone at work was complaining. I didn't mind until tonight, when I was walking home from the grocery store with cat food in one bag and toilet paper in the other, both bags acting like sails in 20mph northern gusts. I could see the clouds of dust long before they arrived. birds careened backwards overhead. when the wind died down it was almost warm and I could focus on how fucking beautiful it was; the sun's trying its damndest to feel like the end of April.

-11th & E. the snow's melting... yay.
-please first donate a less-pathetic donation sign.
-cavemen. on a dumpster. anchorage, will you wear this promise ring? because I think you're really keen.
-garbage can'ts.
-if you can't be vain in a sterilizingly-cold windstorm, you are... enviable.
-2150 AKST. this does not ever get old.
-this probably would, though.

time for tea and meet the wife

it's been one of those days when I think "okay, this is gonna work out."

I didn't take any further photos at the laundromat this evening. I fucking love that place! I dislike staggering to and from work with a bag of dirty clothes- though there's something so romantically blue-collar about it!- but the laundromat itself is a bastion of poetry. the orange and yellow walls, the potted plants, the incredibly nice owners who are always there, always cleaning, always smiling. they don't make me feel like a white-trash piece of shit, and I appreciate that tremendously. i played with my phone while george and laura bush simpered under closed-captioning on the mounted television. a kid with a Mohawk, a girl with pink hair, a lady with bags of baby socks, an old man pacing out front with a cigarette. a large woman in a full-length fur coat and feathery fedora arrived soon after I did. she used about 6 machines to wash her various 4'x6' rugs. my wash ended and she was standing right there while I transferred my laundry to the dryer. underwear fell. she picked it up, handed it to me, and giggled.
I now have exactly 15 days of clean laundry, not counting work garb.

-Arctic Blvd. one of the best things ever.
-Valley o' the Moon.
-TURN IT OFF.

antici....... part two.

-it snowed today. the snow turned to rain by noon and much melting occurred by this evening. huge swaths of piss-scented, shit-strewn brown grass are now visible. geese and ducks walk around in puddles. bare-ass pavement, yo! it is a jubilant feeling....
this is my sexy, mysterious alley during the actual snowfall.
-tonight's quest for streety arty things...
--9th & M.
--the slide at elderberry park.
--5th Ave.
--Cook Inlet.
--I Street.
--elderberry park.
-and what happens when you give unnervingly precocious kids m&ms.

window open, blaring Nilsson.

-I have a crush on this building. as an aside, I once knew someone who always called these "Kwanzaa huts"- out of sheer ignorance, not uncleverness. irritatingly, I now automatically think "Kwanzaa hut" too, followed by the dulcet tones of my shrill voice correcting myself.
-holga filter narcissism.
-the SUNSET tonight, oh my GOD. I need to fan myself. FUUCCCK. anyone else? lord lord.
-cyanotype. nice fucking tshirt, jerk. what are you, twelve?
-outside 7th & G. it used to be the Arco building...? when my mom worked here we got to watch the Fur Rondy fireworks from the 20th floor. is this still the second-tallest building in Alaska?
it's thawed exponentially over the last few days. there are suddenly a lot of bicyclists out, all of whom seem to be smiling.
-random refrigerator crap.
-baseball in 945pm snowset.
-the lair.
-5th & K.
-more sunset pictures. DAMN.
-the little shit.
-the yard. the phone/camera focused on the filthy window instead of the outdoors, but I kinda dig how it turned out. thanks, shitty phone/camera!
-the alley near 6th & I.

make it easy for me

-anchorage: where you can find a million bucks on the sidewalk.
-10:40pm AST.
-sexy, mysterious western exposure.
-if you don't know exactly where this is, it becomes much funnier.
-1.75L. NO TAX. that's the price of 1.75L vodka. fuck yeah, wet municipality with no weird taxes. and fuck yeah, awesome friend with her awesome Costco membership.
-mid-April in anchorage.
-in our parks, we get whales 'n' shit to play with.
-eerily, I do not remember taking this picture. I know it was last night, when I was wandering around like a dreamy idiot, but... weird.
-3rd & H-ish.
-she loves it.

stumbling through the ides of April

-Ghetto Carrs, you haven't changed a whit.
-split open and melt.
-popped beads in beautiful Spenard.
-Venetian blind experiment.
-sexy, mysterious Fairview.
-blue rice. in a church parking lot. how romantic!
-my hood.
-been trying to meet you...
-signs of life.
-raven paws.
-31st Ave.
-the cliched angle over westchester. it was lovely as the dickens today, to borrow another bon mot from those wacky youth.
-crap-filled car. if this is your car, please take smug comfort in the knowledge that I don't even have a car.