Category Archives: Musings

On Seattle

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Okay, everyone else has finally left, so I’m going to write a quick entry before heading home myself.

I’m back in the Upper Valley after being in Seattle for a week. Seattle was great, full of interesting things, and the weather couldn’t have been better (this all ties into the “visitor curse:” When visiting Seattle, the weather is idyllic and beautiful. When you actually move there, it becomes cold and rainy all the time). As I’ve commented already, we were out apartment hunting, and have managed to find a pretty decent place out in Bellevue, right near access to both I-405 and 520, giving us two of the major arteries for the city. We are still in the screening process for the apartment, but we’re sure that it’ll be fine: despite my being a full time student and Mickey being a freelancer, we do have a pretty rock solid application. The real question will be whether we qualify for the two bedroom or the three bedroom (we’re hoping for the three, so we can have separate offices instead of sharing one).

I was pretty happy to be going home, but I don’t really feel “home” yet. I think it is partially because my mind is already starting to make the connection that we’re moving elsewhere, but it is still pretty strange. I mean, Vermont has ALWAYS been home. To a certain extent it always will be. It just feels a bit more foreign at the moment, while at the same time very familiar.
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Bento Box

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First, an expansion of my response to Eli on his blog: my trips to Hanover most evenings really IS an institution to me. I’ve been doing it since the fall of my Junior year in High School, with brief interludes of not cropping up as I travelled or moved. Even when I was living in Burlington, I would come down relatively often to hang out. There is something I crave that is (at least somewhat) satisfied by the experience, and I’m not sure what it is. I could say social interaction, but I do enjoy myself even when alone (though not as much). I think it might be better defined by the term “social experience”. Social interaction absorbed through osmosis by merely being out in the middle of things.

Why social experience, instead of social observation? Social observation is too abstracted a term, too much like removing yourself from the environment and viewing from the outside, which is not the case. You DO have an effect on the environment, on who sits where, who talks to whom, the mood and types of interaction occuring. Passive participation, which is different than observation. Whether you like it or not, no man is an island, and pretending you are is foolish.

I’m just rambling, though. Ultimately, I enjoy hanging out in Hanover, I enjoy hanging out with my friends in Hanover, I find that it is important to me. Thinking about all this has left me with a realization: Seattle feels like one long Hanover hangout session. We’ve wandered all over the region (more on that below), and the feeling remains the same: the same feeling I gain from hanging out in Hanover.
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Eating Cookies in Seattle

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Okay, so I’m currently in Seattle, eating some tasty chewy cookies, in our friend Arik’s house. He’s got this really amazing place (the image above is from his rooftop deck, looking out over downtown and the sound. [Larger Image]), but we can’t really afford a place like this… As much as it would be nice.

Maybe later.

The past few days have been delightful fun, wandering around Seattle and mysteriously innately understanding the general lay of the land (useful, since I’ve been playing the role of navigator). I think it comes down to the fact that I wandered around the area kind of willy-nilly when I was last here two years ago, and a lot of it stuck with me.
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Frazzle

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Today has been “one of those days,” starting bright and early at 3:30 in the morning. The smoke alarm went off, you see. But just once, just long enough to wake us up and startle the hell out of us. We got up and wandered the apartment, checking each smoke alarm, checking each room, even checked outside the door to see (and smell) if anything was amiss. Nothing. Just random alarms going off. (Batteries checked out fine, by the way.)

Woke up late, stumbled out and signed all sorts of papers that Mickey put in front of me, all concerning moving stuff, I am assured by her. I read my mail, read my fourms, and then tried to figure out whether or not I hallucinated an email that I thought I’d received the day before when I’d checked my mail at my parents’ house, but now apparently was nowhere to be found, nor even registering in the email logs as ever existing. I am, to say the least, disconcerted.

This all left me very scattered, as we drove north to mail and fax what we needed to mail and fax (on the bright side, we are now fully committed to the move and have lined up movers fully, contracts signed and all). We finally ate some food around 5 over at Ramunto’s, and then came over to Collis, where we have sat since, reading and chatting with Eli, Megan, and Megan’s friend Ernie (whom is in from Iowa).
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MORE Musings of a Frantic Mind

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Let me ‘splain to you… no, it is too much. Let me sum up:

I spent a good portion of the day at my parents’ house, doing odd things, like running antenna cable through my father’s car (he’s installing a two way radio… we’re all ham radio operators, you see). Before that, however, I was on the Penny Arcade forums, where there was a poll going on as to whether or not the art forum should try to find non-nude anatomy references to post for exercises. I think the notion is absurd (and upon checking the poll again now that it is completed, apparently the rest of the forumers agree). I recall reading in (I believe) one of A.D. Coleman’s essays a recounting of a story about Toulouse Lautrec at a gallery opening. A dame came up to him outraged at a painting of a woman undressing with a man looking on. She called it pornography and filth. He turned to her and said “The woman is not undressing, she is dressing, and that man is her husband, and I’d appreciate it if you would stop looking at my painting.”

Alas, the entire story is paraphrased horribly, as I have not been able to locate it again. I’ll go back and edit it if I discover the actual story again.
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Musings of a Frantic Mind

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It occured to me last night, around 12:30 (so technically today), as I was drifting off to a relatively early slumber, that I had not posted. I had posted another four images, but I had not actually posted anything on the main page. So, to all three of you that even occasionally glance at this page, my apologies.

First off, congratulations to my friend Andy and his wife Emily for getting married yesterday. I hope it was a fantastic wedding, and I’m sorry Mickey and I couldn’t make it.

What did I do instead? Packed. Mickey took care of talking to various moving agencies on the phone, getting quotes lined up et cetera. That took up the mid-day, and by 5, we simply weren’t up for driving 3 hours each way.
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Hanover, Pretty Red Dress

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Let me explain to you something about the past few days:

For the past several months, I’ve been feeling very rushed, very stressed. This is partially because I took more onto my plate than I’d ever had before, and I felt a bit overwhelmed. Finally, after easily six months, things have started to fall away as “done.” The past two weeks I started to feel a bit more like I was in control of my life again.

The downside of this is that the feeling is starting to have lasting effects, namely killing my motivation but good. Today, I sat around reading manga online until 3 in the afternoon, before finally showering off (and I’d felt the need for it since the previous night). Mickey and I then got up and picked up some boxes to pack some of our more moisture sensitive materials in (like books). While out and about (not in a boat), we got a call from my parents, who wanted to see my blue hair. So we went to dinner with them, over at Lui Lui’s…

Which gets us to the red dress mentioned in the title of this entry. There was a tent sale, you see, in the parking lot of the restaurant, which we meandered through after eating. Mickey managed to find a really nifty red dress that she really likes (and is now wearing), for about 50% off. There is a certain humor to seeing my wife (whom I am constantly looking toward to get permission to spend money) reverse the roles and look at me for the approving nod on the purchase.
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Ponderance

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Sitting in Hanover again, on the veranda of Collis Center. Four columns form a semicircular support for the roof above, a roof that is not necessary today… there is, in fact, not a single cloud in the sky. The air is still and warm, and there are conversations on either side of us (Mickey, Eli, and myself have just finished dinner).

To my right, two female college students are talking about their boyfriends, and fears about them. I am largely uninterested, but it bears note nonetheless.

To my left is a conversation among four students (three guys and a girl clutching a computer keyboard set up for Korean), talking about computers, their woes on the devaluation of their previous machines, the failures and tribulations of what they have now… and how they plan to upgrade soon.

I can’t blame them, I’m much the same way. I love my computers, don’t get me wrong. That said, I do very much want to get the new machine, and often go through the same justifications I’m hearing now. One of them is apparently going into the Air Force next year, and there I lose interest in the conversation.

I am thoroughly stuffed, burping gently, after eating an entire order of chicken lo mein and a kappa maki (cucumber roll). I still haven’t finished my drink from coffee, but that’s fine… it is a sipping drink if there ever was one. It’s super-caffinated, so much so that you can taste the caffeine in every sip. Take a large chai and add a shot of espresso and you have this drink. An interesting blend, but I don’t think I’ll get it again.

I’m getting dehydrated again, I can feel the early warnings in my chest and my mouth, feel the warmth at the back of my tongue. I guess I need to start carrying a water bottle again. Moving on.

As I walked out of Dirt and sat down on the bench outside, I noticed a book on the bookstand belonging to Left Bank Books out on the sidewalk. I immediately looked at Mickey, eyes pleading for the okay, and thankfully received the go-ahead: the National Gallery of Art’s collection of Alfred Stieglitz photographs, published in collaboration with Bulfinch Press. High quality reproductions, nice large book… lists at $75, picked it up for $40. Awww yeah….

Of course, what’s even cooler is that I actually SAW that exhibit down in Washington DC this past fall.

The Visceral Experience

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Let me explain to you something about me, that I certainly hope explains at least somewhat why I write what I write on this site. (When I write anything beyond Site Maintenance, I mean.)

Some people don’t understand this, but it holds true for me: the viscera of life is a priority to me. The feeling on your face as the weather shifts from still, muggy, saturated air, to the turbulence and refreshment of a summer storm. The excitement and childlike joy that fills me when I see lightning and a thunderclap almost simultaneously, the fascination and eagerness of feeling those large, swollen droplets of rain splash onto my face.

The feeling of the heat of hot pavement on a summer’s day, scorching your feet, making you feel like a lizard, skittering along on it so as not to be burned. The feeling of trudging around in three feet of wet snow, warm in your snowgear, watching clumps of snow fall from the trees, listening to the activity that dwells within a sense of stillness.

The crash of the waves on a beach, a thunderous subsonic crescendo of noise, felt in your bones. The soft rustle of dry autumn leaves being walked through, hands in jacket pockets, keeping warm in the brisk air. The peace of lying down in a patch of moss, in a fern surrounded glen, listening to moisture drip from the trees, listening to things grow all around you.

This is what is important to me. This is what fills me with wellbeing, and happiness. I wish I could share it. I wish more people wanted to SEE.

Brief Reprieve

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I’ve been trying to post every day lately, kind of like my own version of “Morning Pages” (except not in the morning, generally). Morning Pages is a reference to a book called The Artist’s Way, which suggests writing every morning, to help clear and organize your mind.

I missed this weekend, however. Such is the way of life some days. I’ll just have to try harder.
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