from dinosaurs and robots:

"Then, there is the Los Angeles that I know. Aerospace surplus hardware stores, smoky and ashtray-less Koreatown English hunt club bars in crumbling hotel basements, perfect beer buzz lunches at the Farmer's Market in filtered sunlight, the wild dogs of Pacoima, sprawling thrift stores, trolling junkyards for old diaries and Polaroids, the drag races at Pomona, chrome plating shops, backyards stacked with 300 bicycles, gold miners eager to show their biggest nuggets, fishing for carp in the Los Angeles River, optimists taking over art museums, the nicad battery selection at Electronic City, the metal patination case at Industrial Metal Supply, Kit Kraft Hobby, the gem vault at the Natural History Museum, the szechuan peppercorns of Alhambra, the churlish bartenders at Hop Louie, the sneaker shops of Little Tokyo, the imported coldcuts at Monte Carlo Deli, the Japanese garden on the roof of the New Otani Hotel, the bicycle swap at the Encino Velodrome, the DDR kids at the Santa Monica Pier, the mustard at Philipes, the dimsum carts of Monterey Park, the carnitas at Carrillos, the buffalo at Hart Park, the Kris Special at the Waystation, the netsuke room at LACMA, the Remington Rolling Block at the Backwoods Inn, the coffee shop at the LA Police Academy, the abandoned restaurant with leather walls at Union Station, the yardage of the Garment District, the abandoned fire station in the Toy District with the quartersawn oak lockers viewable through the crack in the door, the first two rows of lowrider history at the Pomona Auto Swap, Abe Lincoln's hat at the Huntington Library, the camillia forest of Descanso Garden, the bolt room of Roscoe Hardware that is hidden in a kitchen remodeling home center, the genius at the Museum of Jurassic Technology, the chile pepper booth at the Grand Central Market, sneaking to the top balcony of the Bradbury Building, the threadbare and dented Variety Arts Center, the orange groves of the 126 and secret utility salvage yard in the northeast San Fernando Valley."

I'd like to take the time to make this sort of list for everywhere I've ever lived.

every sentence from here on out starts with "i".


i've been feeling really unhealthy lately. emotionally and physically. i've had a difficult time figuring out how best to cope, and a hard time remaining positive. i thought that i was dealing with things better than i am, as it seems that i've really not dealt with much at all. i had a really long day and i feel completely drained. gotta be up early for work again. fuck.

tv time

new recipe: yogurt, coconut milk, agave and a freezer. frozen yogurt!

listening to joy division and cooking dinner for friends. i made mac and cheese, roasted acorn squash, chocolate apple brownies and salad. i'm feel ok right now. pretty content about most things in my life. loose ends wrapped up, and i'm moving by november 1st. i've got a lot of stuff i should get rid of! i want to see mission of burma play in seattle on wednesday the 15th.

how i feel after another day of work

greatest grift movies

any ideas?

paper moon
the producers
midnight cowboy
run lola run?
raising arizona

what I'm thinking about today: the eleven

1. I worked from 10am to 8:30pm.
2. I will no longer be sleeping with ex boyfriends.
3. brandon got back from his 10-day meditation retreat. I am intrigued and we have plans to work out at the ymca and dicuss his experiences. so far, i'm scared and into it.
4. david foster wallace died on friday. i'm listening to him on public radio right now. he wrote a supposedly fun thing i'll never do again, a collection of essays that i read and found immensely comforting when I first moved to olympia.
5. club mate. so delicious.
6. the american financial crisis. I will be closing my bank of america account this thursday.
7. KUOW, the local AM public radio station. I can only listen to AM stations on my radio, and I'm glad I've found this. Looking forward to listening to This American Life on saturdays at 11am.
8. I need to call carli about TCTV.
9. I'm reading a book by A.J. Liebling, called Back Where I Came From. it's a love letter to new york city at the turn of the century. it's so beautifully written. I have a soft spot for love-letter-to-new-york books, and songs:

10. all i want for my birthday is thousands of antique teacups and maybe some other stuff. I'm thinking of going on that meditation retreat for my birthday.
11.

I'm home

I don't want to write about my life right now, i just want to watch these videos.






i don't like this song that much, but i think the audience parts are brilliant:

Sitting in a theatre agency in Berlin, Germany, putting together excerpted reviews for press releases, I feel divided/conflicted/nervous/ill at ease/an entire sea of similar discriptive emotions about my experiences this past month. I left home at a surprisingly inconvenient time, just as conflicts were being addressed, new possibilities raised their heads and old relationships seemed finally laid to rest. I have only the slightest clue as to what it will be like to return home, and I'm not sure that I'm excited by it. I'm worried as to how I will fit back into my life, and concerned that rejection and disapointment will be inescapable. These past two weeks, particularly have given me ample oppurtunity to set myself up for these feelings, and I'm kicking myself for it. While the start of the tour was dazzling and vibrant and full of new people, I've found myself settling into an all-to-familiar domesticity that I had taken this trip to escape from in part. Within that, of course, I'm rediscovering dusty and forgotten parts of myself that I didn't know I missed. For this, I am thankful, and perhaps cannot explain the importance or personal significance of hours lost in a library, or the thrill of exploring and discovering the secrets of a city that may not excite anyone but myself.

I'll be back at home on Sunday, and I'm on the fence as to if I want to burrow back into Olympia and that life, or if I would prefer to shake it off, uproot and start anew. At the moment, so far from everything, I am tempted by the latter. I just finished reading Paul Auster's City Of Glass and was struck by how beautiful an oppurtunity it presents for shaking off the vestiges of your history and escaping life. I know I have a bad habit of blinding optimism in my interpretations, but I thought it showed less of a pitiful fall from grace and more of a rebirth. I might be a little starried- eyed from all those library hours.