what day is it?

oh yeah. its saturday. i just got a picture text from brunchers in seattle and their garnish boat. crap. i miss you. ive been overdosing on tom robbins since we left seattle. three books. well, two and a half. b is for beer is short and can be read in an afternoon. just finished skinny legs and all and realized it was a really good time to read it. the last message in it, when the seventh veil falls, is that we all have to figure it out for ourselves. and if that isnt why im doing what im doing i dont know what is. its so hard to find time to delve into things when you have duties and work and a life to maintain. i got a lot to figure out (as per usual) but this stuff is the stuff i need to be hanging out with myself to work on. in seattle i had a lot to figure out on how to deal with other people. ive spent three years learning over and over that i have a lot of work to do in that area, but i have done so with the price of ignoring myself. im so much better at talking to other people than writing for myself. i havent journaled (or even blogged) in months. longer. its time to find the balance of being a guest with a traveling partner and having more days than i can count to spend doing what i need to do. whole swaths of time to spend. its a little daunting. each day its a challenge to know how to fill it up. purpose. ill find it. while im searching ill scribble notes on what im doing. maybe thats the way itll come to me.

day 5 -- shopping mall-ing and movie watching

today we spent an inordinate amount of time in a shopping mall. this is what happens when you dont work and have nothing better to do. actually, we just stumbled across it, trying to find a hardware store to cut a spare key for a friend. (jack is letting us stay in their basement, but only has one key to the outside door.) we end up walking around a target, a big lots, and a dollar store, purchasing no more than a bag of gardettos (for me and my addiction) and a silver pocket watch with a hunting scene in gold on the flip front (for luka who doesnt leave their phone on and doesnt like things on the wrist). its actually a super-awesome watch, im kinda jealous. (oh big lots, how we love you)
then we ate corn on the cob raw from the thriftway (3 or a dollar) while sitting by the water. we found gillian and onyx, our uber-lovely hosts, and decided to rent a movie and get ice cream from the groc out. we rented oceans twelve and ate lemon-lime ice pops. both were light and tasty and gave me a rush.
and luka has taken to drinking instant coffee.
in trying to escape the trap consumerist america sets for everyone, we seem to have fallen headlong into it today. ah well, we were highly amused with ourselves the whole time, and wont be doing anything like that again in the near (or even far) future.
besides, being around all of those things to buy made me spend less money than my average $10/day.

day 4? --gravity music

a couple days ago i had the thought: when we come back as sounds, i wanna be that high bird-flute tone.
i was sitting in a big upper-room warehouse space (the one that used to be the old k records headquarters) listening to a group of string musicians play various notes all around the room, ranging from a resonant low to a harmonic high depending on how far from the center they were. it was random and unkempt and beautiful. and there was this one note that came to me as robin-egg blue, but pure and unflecked as the summer sky. i was sitting on the floor with my head on my knees, eyes closed for the first time in the hour id been there listening. it was fun to watch them move around, to figure out from which instrument each note was coming from, to watch one musician for an inordinate amount of time as they moved or didnt, played incessantly or waited forever to continue. but at this point i was letting my consciousness pull me somewhere else besides there, just following the flow of sounds and thoughts like a dandelion seed in a meadow breeze. the light in my head was that yellow, for some reason, even tho the evening was blue/grey and wet. i cant now remember the current of ideas that brought me to that particular sentence, i dont know that i was particularly paying attention, but i remember my thought language having a different cadence than normal and thats how it came to make sense that we could all be reincarnated as sounds. its an idea im going to keep for some time, i believe. i wished for a minute that i knew what note it was they were playing that gave me the feeling of catching a thermal and riding it skyward, that i could call it by name or catch it in a jar, but really the memory of it will be enough to find it again, and the feeling of it is what i need to carry it with me.
thanks ben kamen, for composing and orchestrating, and all those who performed for bringing it to light.

day 3--vegan tamales=place to sleep?

there is an art to being a guest. Its about being courteous and respectful and pleasant, but its also about knowing when to be out of the way, and knowing when to leave—while they still like you and want to invite you back sometime. There is an art to finding places to sleep, whether its your friends house or a patch of grass by the water not visible from the road, its all about finesse. Im still getting my sea legs. luka, on the other hand, can do something like this: At a coffee shop this afternoon, roscoe stepped up to our table and asked if ze wanted to buy homemade vegan tamales. -Yes. Black bean and mole, please. Also, you know of any places to sleep in town? -well, there is that hostel...but I can ask at my house. I live with gillian. -casa hueso? does onyx live there too? -yep. we have a house meeting tonight, ill ask if everyone is cool with you staying. -thanks, that would be awesome. -sure, no problem.
this is my traveling partner, folks. manifester extraordinaire. this is the person who on monday, less than an hour after giving eli and erin $5 for gas money, found $5 on the sidewalk as we were walking to the dock. instant karma. or something...

day 2--hugbots and free coffee.

first day in oly with nothing to do and nowhere to go back to. We find the grocery store (to eat on the governments dime—yay food stamps) the post office (so luka can mail some unnecessary things to mom) and the library (to check email and blog and charge phones). We walk around looking for a coffee shop, run into a friend of lukas who proceeds to give us free coffee from vita, where she works. Sitting at vita we see multiple other friends who say hi and tell us about events happening this week. This town is so freaking small it scares me. walking to the dock in the evening, we see a large graffito on the side of a building showing two robots with arms akimbo and the words 'hug bots'. i think im in love you, oly. also, the alamingo kids. josh is working in the garden when we arrive so we help tie tomato plants to stakes (my hands smell like them all night) and then the three of us and amina watch 'bill and teds excellent adventure' all cuddled under blankets in the basement den area. successful day, i feel.

day 1--le voyeur x2

spent the morning both waiting around for our ride and forgetting and remembering things at the last minute. i stopped by my old house 4 times to do different things, once just to pull up some weeds from the patio and sit on the hammock for a bit. in the afternoon, as we were driving away with eli and erin--who were off to camp for a week on the coast and offered to drive us to olympia--i watched my neighborhood slide past the window and thought: i dont live here anymore. first thing to do in olympia was eat at le voyeur, then call our friends and ask to sleep on their couch. then lazy reading on the dock in the sun, and walking across town with our packs. they are heavy. we still have too much stuff. when we arrived at alamingo house, our friends suggested we go to the free movie that night at (you guessed it) le voyeur. they were playing 'the burbs'. it was sooo entertaining. i yawned the whole way 'home' and crashed immediately. this new life is exhausting.

the nomadic life for me

so...i've pared down my belongings to two suitcases, a two-drawer file cabinet of papers, and a crate of books, all of which i have stored in my friends basement. ive moved out of my house and into a tent in my friends' back yard. i have a frame pack's worth of stuff that i feel i will need for traveling, and a super-tiny computer for working. im ready to go.
luka and i have been talking about this since we started hanging out, have been planning and working toward it for months, and in (hopefully) a few days time, we will be on the road. by that i mean, headed to olympia to hang out with friends there for a while. and maybe in the PNW for most of the summer...but that's only the first leg in our 'journey'. this nomadic life we are embarking upon. no planning ahead, no mode of transportation, no destination, no expectations. we are just gonna go and see where we get.
i like the practice of not planning ahead. sadly, my job asks me to do so on some level. i put my availability in a couple months ahead and then they schedule me for what they need me to do. right now, im expected to work for a week in august, but i have no idea where i will be then. i guess we will just make sure we arent in the middle of the woods somewhere...
it was time to leave seattle sometime this winter. i hit my wall. when i came i was gonna stay at least 2 years, had reached 2 and a half, then signed a lease for another whole year. should have known. i dont stay anywhere that long. last time i got the itch i went traveling for a month to keep myself from moving away and i arrived home depressed and decided to move to seattle. this time im going to just keep moving till i cant move anymore. luka and i just got a ups box (like a po box but cooler) and paid up front for a year. i have no idea where we will be in a year. or where we will have been. thats the point. i dont even know what a year will feel like, living the nomadic life. homefree.

its not like im sick of seattle, tho. i have many good people here, some that i want to keep for life. (not to mention my kitty) i doubt highly that i wont ever come visit, we might even show up sometime during our 'indefinite travels'. love is a magnet that can pull you harder the farther away you get. but its time. its time to go before i cant stand it here, or before i refuse to ever leave. my love of chicago is so strong only because i moved far away from it and visit regularly.
but its hard, leaving. feeling so antsy yet dragging my feet...i came here to be settled for a while. and i was. i thought maybe i could keep it up, but i cant. and that makes me sad. i will miss so much about this town. i really grew up here. learned so much more than i expected. and made connections with some truly amazing people that space and time can do nothing to change. i thank you all for putting up with me, calling me out on my shit, supporting me, eating and drinking with me, sharing your lives with me. i am so intensely grateful.
write, email, call, check our website. give us your address so we can send postcards. if you have a hankering to travel someplace, hit us up, see if we are nearby or could meet you there. there is no goodbye here. and we arent leaving home, we are taking it with us.