may 28, 2001
filmic timing (or, how to call a spade a spade)
memorial day. i keep dreaming in a frenzy : cut-rate/sore-throat -- my form devolves often into including encryption and russian halftones. all items kinetic have frozen -- gelatinous & sinewy, fine design smoothed by muscle tone and a soaring dive on pause. creativity clawing at the edges of my ideas, i keep slipping further into this cave -- one day i'll come out again with some fancy dress on, speaking incredulously of the shadows on the walls.
i find myself becoming more dull by the minute. how desperate is it when i cannot even entertain myself?
slowly sliding southwards, this tiny blip -- bullshit radar -- high-class hypnotic -- i feel a storm coming on.
quest! getting stuck in all these in-the-moments, seems like just yesterday i was a kid, trying to "expand & demand." still so much more learning to do -- some days i feel all dried up & uninterested, others utterly overwhelmed by all that i need to experience/know.
every time i read something fantastically energizing (most often in the science realm) i can't help but wonder if i'm on the right path in my life. certainly, paths grow & change -- eventually developing along with one's mind so that the two become intrinsic & therefore stamping the idea of separation with ridiculousness. but the essence is this : am i wasting my time?
i could view my evolution as a minuscule work of art, and in this find a bit of peace. i feel tortured & it's pathetic -- i'm far too idle. hedonism never felt so sickening, so mistaken (with an epicurean predisposition & a fear of ______).
fucking small time reality, sugar, let it be free -- why don't you just take a step back and remember it ain't always this easy, and it ain't always this hard. with the mood swings i've been having, i've been contemplating medication.
ugh. with no faith in any great design, it's difficult to rationalize why i should continue to battle this on my own. i feel so alone and this petrifying inability to crawl back/above/around/in. illegitimacy and the fear that i'm just as ridiculous as i really feel i am but no one else yet seems to notice.
miss lu's fur wet with tears, even in the sunshine i find no comfort. everything empty, i wonder why i bother delving or pondering or what-the-fuck-ever-ing.
i used to think that if one could ponder insanity it must mean that one wasn't insane. now i just don't even know what insanity is and whether or not it matters when i can't even force myself out of bed.
may 26, 2001
over a week ago, speakeasy cafe burned. a halogen lamp is to blame, igniting a work area in the warehouse space above the cafe, quickly engulfing the cafe in flames. the building itself is rather historic, it was built in the early years of hollywood as a storage space for paramount studios' extensive "on the shelf" catalogue.
we were at a bar-b-que at matt's place, all of us crowded around a mini-barbie, waiting for the corn to heat up, sipping on cider & sapporo when the call came in over a cell phone. at first, the announcement was treated with utter disbelief -- this kind of shit just doesn't happen. period. a few minutes later, a helicopter was filming it live, transmitting it to the local television stations, interrupting programming for a sensationalized play-by-play of our ladies' demise.
when i arrived at the scene, hours after the last smoldering had been snuffed, the building was crumbled, desperate. windows blown out of the building across the alleyway, the streets filled with muddy-charcoal streams, the cloying smoke crawling into lungs and reminding that any particles landing on skin are that of the past. history up in a puff -- our roots, the elements of our soul as an organization, imploded by electrical mayhem.
i spent the following days trying to escape from the reality of this disaster, hiding in caramel apples and people-watching, gorging myself on shark & dolphin documentaries, thumbing through erotic comic books, trying to dissect that which is amorphous and utterly fantastic.
strange thing, this. so enormous, a monster, the week since has been unnervingly reactive. there are things that must be done, arranged, everyone i speak with has a crack in their voice, crushed sentimentality, weighted memories. such a bitch! this event in its gargantuan state merits none of my attention, i feel embarrassed by its selfish demand that i weep over all the moments up in smoke.
working at speakeasy is like being in any other family. sometimes you're frustrated and pissed at the people you see every day for some minor reason or another -- or life just begins to pile up and belly laughter more sparse. whatever the reason, you dread showing up, don't want to see those same old, same old -- no more fucking customers complaining about triviality! please!
but then, as everything has balance once we begin to notice its interconnectedness, there are moments of pure happiness for which you have only these same people to thank. yes, sometimes i hate my job with a passion, but that passion comes only from how much i truly do love the people. i sound cheesy, you must allow me just a pinch of sentimentality as i reminisce four years in the life of the speakeasy cafe.
the mayor bothered to come down to the site the day after and offer his condolences, siting aid for the rebuild, and calling our little bubble an "institution." we will rebuild, somehow, and i've got this feeling that what comes through is going to be amazing. it's just taking a bit of a roundabout approach, keeping us humble, oh darling fortune.
thursday night was the seattle international film festival's gala opening night event, to which we scored 80 tickets, our slowly evolving cartel has reached nearly ridiculous proportions but it's an incredibly good time. my date for the evening was one of the infectiously cute router-bois -- he's only twenty and i spent the evening contributing to his delinquency via red bull & vodka. unfortunately i over-served the poor lad and had to coax him lovingly as he gripped max & adrienne's toilet bowl, praying to several forgotten gods & mentioning his science teacher from high school.
sometimes i think the greatest enemy of art is recorded fact. nothing existing on its own, forcing jumping jacks in solidarity with "meaning." like the fluidity of waterfalls or the gutlessness of half-dried glue, everything stringently defined -- i detest the assignment of singularity. vibrancy muted by cataclysmic converters -- brazen horns hemmed in by an extreme disassociation with the physicality of tonal emission.
get lost -- get wasted -- get it together & meet me back here.
funny how life hedges her bets, never handing over anything formed in total grace.
may 14, 2001
door number one
self-censorship, i promised i wouldn't -- but after rereading my diatribe yesterday, i realized how utterly drab and uninspired it was. literally no fun.
the main themes covered my usual dissatisfaction with life and my inability to pull myself up by the fucking bootstraps and do something about it instead of just cataloguing the frustration/angst -- clearly giving up too easy.
i am attempting to dive into work, if only to learn new things and not feel so bogged down by the grind. learning is both a passive and active art, sometimes i have to sit back and let things process, can't always jump ahead of the bandwagon and break myself up over experience.
attempting to stay ahead of the rash, my mind is often frenzied and my emotions a bit of a ball and chain. i need to invest more time in my relationships, i'm beginning to feel that hollow ache of solitude, mistaken alone, persecuting self-involvement. in the past, i've loved too easily, and it seems that i've one-eightied and caught myself up in a wire cage, locked away. i'm going to endeavor to change this, goddammit.
but now, sleep.
may 11, 2001
aloha!
adrienne & max were married on 5/5/01 -- forever blessing themselves with a margarita-saturated anniversary -- at sunset on the beach in kihei. the house we rented was lovely -- and will forever be referred to in a shriek of glee as "ocean -- pool -- hot tub!" such wonderful pina colada & maui wowie covered moments. i had the time to skulk around my favorite areas, primarily upcountry (haiku in particular) which reminds me so much, primarily in vibe, of puerto viejo. funky small towns populated with individuals hoping time, and capitalism, will pass them by.
i maintain, yet again, that you never really know someone until you've traveled with them. it was interesting to observe my friends outside of their environs, some celebrated and embraced all the differences and changes -- covering everything from the weather to the activities to the perceptions of reality/space/time -- and some shirked, complained, and desired nothing more than to impose their normal rigidity of pace and schedule on a new location. travel as boxed candied cereal : chock full of toys, absent of any nutrition. perhaps i'm a jaded traveling bitch, but......explore! immerse! scare yourself! get uncomfortable -- you'll be better for it, and you fucking know it.
little miss kat, up on her soapbox, telling everyone what for & how to. blessed lickle know-it-all with a penchant for redefining her own selfish actions as "grasping perspectives" and "exploring realities." admittedly, i enjoyed myself immensely, the only minor tribulation was due to the sometimes clashing aforementioned traveling styles.
whew! i didn't get in as much introspective thought as i had hoped, but i was able to see parts of the island i hadn't before. i feel refreshed, definitely, and a wee bit of relaxation licking at my toes. eight days on the valley isle is certain to clear up anyone's psychological gout.
i've been reading one hundred years of solitude, hungrily lapping up every delicious detail. literary cataclysm handing off several new approaches to the spinning of tales : bits of wisdom welded into the triumphs & desolation of macondo pokes giggles and stabs the morose.
excerpt of a stolen moment :
for to swim! our new motto is "do i want to be here if there isn't a no trespassing sign?" too ridiculous, and surely our brand of selfish tourism is the bane of all locals' existence, but goddammit, i just love a good waterfall.
back to work, the itch is already heating up -- listening to drivel on the phone, attempting to "network" with media types & "consumer research groups." ugh. the thought of it all makes my skin crawl, truly. scanning my email today upon return, i was again sickened by the limited world views and ridiculous demands/claims of industry-types & customers alike. the self-centeredness is astounding, disturbing. just another facet of this society and economy we have created to feed off itself -- generates the need & sates it. never-ending cycle of greed, the exchange of power, the expansion of some poor fuck-off's ego -- eventually crushed in some pitiless reversal of "fortune" (most often the direct result of unapologetic excess.) more more more more now.
time is the only winner here, she gets to sit around & watch the whole show. not a moment lost on her, never a second missing nor poorly spent, for each spilled tear - clipped laughter - protean explosion - summer lemonade is merely another sidenote on the wave of universal simultaneous experience. but to live life as a competition is surely the saddest existence of all.
"there are no winners, just livers."
speaking of livers, despite my semi-indulgence in the tropics, i've been fairly sober the last few weeks. cleansing the palette, perhaps, or just reminding myself why i ever sought the refuge of alteration. non-imbibing is really not that difficult once you lose your taste for it. there is no temptation, save friends' smiling faces proffering beer/cocktail/pipe. it seems the drugged explosions kicked off with my birthday party last november and ending in a shaky early morning promise in february to never snort anything off of anyone's tits again -- unless it's my wife (as yet unnamed), claro que si, attempting to seduce me via sultry cinnamon & clove -- has screeched to a halt in my social circle. thankfully we all made it out without a knick, scratch, nor pumped stomach.
i gift exploration with arguably the most strenuous admiration, and therefore classify each of my meanderings in the natural & designer intoxicant realm as just another journey -- four months hitch hiking through chemicalea. interesting sidenote : those that chastised me during my first few months of ingestion are now treading that same path, a couple months after i've lost my taste for it in any regularity.
alas, temperance is a virtue i think i may have eventually acquired -- at least in respect to druggin-n-drinkin. merit should be based upon one's ability to discover something new with the experience, once it becomes a practiced skill and you're touting all the antidotes you should wonder what the fuck you're doing, no?