Talkeetna

Haunted Foliage

Foraker, Hunter, McKinley

Alaska Dandelions

Sometimes when a bird and a plant love each other very much...

Sometimes when a dragon and a fly love each other very much...

In the neighborhood I lived in in San Francisco, people would throw trash in the mailbox.  It was eventually removed. 

As long as I gaze on Waterloo Sunset I am in paradise

Balance Always Only

Overthinking doesn't cancel out thoughtlessness.

Just So We're Clear

Craptacular doesn't mean spectacularly crappy; it means crappily spectacular.

Drunk Notes

Girl I Came to the Bar with: I'm so drunk.

Me [jealous]: Really?  I'm not drunk at ALL.

Girl: Really?  We should do another shot of tequila then.

Me: Yeah!

Repeat this conversation until I have had four shots of tequila and still don't "feel drunk"

Basketball Fishing

I cast a fishing rod for the first time today.  At dusk, on a balcony, in the rain.  Aimed for the basketball hoop across the gravel road.  I'd been sitting there for awhile, near the two guys who invented Basketball-Fishing, reading a book of poems my friend sent me, glancing up every time I heard the whir of the line.  Then finally one of them made it.  We all laughed, delighted.  Then finally I said, "All right, let me try."  I didn't make it into the hoop but I got damn close.  

I gave the fishing pole back and watched as one of them got the hook stuck in the wooden beam above our heads.  He bit it, broke it, retied it, and was about to cast again when an old man who works in maintenance, whose room we were in front of, opened his door and came outside, also holding a fishing pole.  

The two guys scattered.  One shut the music off and disappeared into his room, another took the fishing pole downstairs to the common room.  Zoom, gone.  I sat there with my poetry book wondering if the old man had gotten them in trouble for playing this game before.  But the old man - he held a fishing pole too.  I watched him cast it off the balcony same as we'd been doing, only he didn't cast it across the road, but off to one side.  He looked over his shoulder at me.  "Gotta make sure this is working right."  

"You should aim for the basketball hoop," I offered.  He ignored me.

Fotos

Me and Susan

I've walked down these stairs barefoot... it hurt.

Bulgarian Translation

The Roadhouse

Here is how it is easiest to concentrate: in a roomful of people talking, without music.

Starbucks & Co are no good for it.  I have more than once asked a coffee shop employee if they'd mind turning the music down.  Usually they mind, and turn it down an imperceptible eighth of a notch to appease me.  I am not appeased.

A train is perfect.  No music, people talking, plus the regular rhythm of the tracks clacking.  And trains are comfortable. 

In Talkeetna, the Roadhouse is perfect.  It's the only eatery in town that does not play music, and there's a perfect din of people talking, and there are only a few large tables instead of a bunch of small ones, so the people talking are often talking to strangers, fellow travelers, so when one phrase or sentence leaps above the din like a fish it's usually unusual.

"Why'd you move to Alaska?"
"My mom got a wild hair up her ass.  I was fourteen."

Lasagna, burnt coffee, essays by Katherine Anne Porter: perfect morning.  Morning that is not a morning because I've been awake since midnight: maybe the best mismatch of internal and external clock. 

South Carolingians on vacay

Why yes, that is the Mexican Flag

The Roadhouse was built between 1914 and 1917

Excerpts from The Seamstress and the Wind

We'd nicknamed her "the pigeon," because of her nose and eyes; my mother was an expert at finding animal resemblances.

Talkeetna Wearing Thin

Yesterday I fell asleep at 1:30pm and woke up at midnight tonight.  Then I went to town with some people and saw a reggae band play at the brewery.  The room smelled like B.O.  I ordered an IPA. 

Then we went to the Fairview and I did not let myself get talked into doing a shot of salmon-flavored vodka.  (Those who did said it tasted like ham.  Their breath afterward smelled like ham.)  I drank a duck fart, howevs.  (Kahlua, Bailey's, Crown Royal.)  Then I ate a hot dog.  Everyone was standing around talking.  Conversations like wet matches.  I had woken up only two hours before so I didn't feel like getting drunk.  If I had gotten drunk I probably would have forced someone to tell me about their childhood, and then I wouldn't have been bored anymore. 

But imagine you woke up at 8:00am and by ten you drank a pint of beer, did a shot and ate a hot dog.  Why would you do all that in the morning?  Because you're an alcoholic.  Or in a rock band.  I'm neither.

So I went home.

If there is any good reason why I should not be chowing down gummy vitamins as if they are gummy bears, I do not know it. 

Playing

In Seward, my sister and I were standing near a playground while we waited for something.  We observed a boy and a girl whacking the low branches of a pine tree with tennis rackets.  Not saying anything, just hitting the tree as hard as they could. 

Then we saw a little girl grab a little boy by the arm and say, "You'll be my prisoner now!"  Another boy trotted up and said, "I'll save you!" and the prisoner said to him, through clenched teeth, "No.  I want to."

A Hospital for Money, or Something?

I don't care how many skylights they put in... I don't care if there's an ice skating rink, bowling alley, movie theater... I don't care if I'm people-watching in an MSG trance... I don't care if I found jeans and sunglasses... the mall ultimately always depresses me.

Delineation as Precursor to Change

"I don't know why I did it.  But today I can recognize that events back then were part of a life-long pattern in which thinking and doing have either come together or failed to come together - I think, I reach a conclusion, I turn the conclusion into a decision, and then I discover that acting on the decision is something else entirely, and that doing so may proceed from the decision, but then again it may not.  Often enough in my life I have done things I had not decided to do.  Something - whatever that may be - goes into action; "it" goes to the woman I don't want to see anymore, "it" makes the remark to the boss that costs me my head, "it" keeps on smoking although I have decided to quit, and then quits smoking just when I've accepted the fact that I'm a smoker and always will be.  I don't mean to say that thinking and reaching decisions have no influence on behavior.  But behavior does not merely enact whatever has already been thought through and decided.  It has its own sources, and is my behavior, quite independently, just as my thoughts are my thoughts, and my decisions my decisions."

--from The Reader, Bernhard Schlink

Moonlighting

Snide decal

We Hear It From the People of This Town

Next seasonal job I'm not working front desk.  I'll preach a little gospel, sell a couple bottles of Dr. Good.

Conversations

"My sister won't eat salad with me, she refuses to, because she says I stab the lettuce too hard and it bugs her."

We laugh and she mimes stabbing at an angle, little jabs.

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Overheard at the Roadhouse:

"I just want to show Abby the picture of the bachelor auction they have every year."

"They all have the clap," I don't say.  I take a giant bite of my lasagna instead.  They do, though.  The feds gave this town money to treat everyone for it for free because everyone sleeps with everyone in this tiny town and a bunch of them got it.

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Someone playing shuffleboard says, "So close!"

Someone else says, "So close and yet so far."

A woman laughs insincerely. 

What is that from?  Why do people always say it?