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