People saying pardon, finally reaching starbucks to 1. Find no line! 2. Hear a guy order a vanilla latte: 6 pumps of vanilla and only 1 shot of esspresso.

Funny things about tradeshows: following the starbucks coffee cups to coffee.

it is the space where the tectonic plates are moving, and the gravitational pull has shifted and everything i used to know about how our words flowed back and forth has been shifted through the dirt and the soil down into the core, it is there, but unattainable.

Then there is the fact that I am looking at the stars differently. I used to strain to see the faintest, stare steady so that in any instant i will not miss a thing and now instead I let them wash over me and consume me. I take comfort in their quiet chaos, the reminder.

Settling can happen by particle. It can happen while pushing the back of your teeth with your tongue, your eyes narrowing, and momentarily deciding not tonight, not this moment. And something inside you burrows down from the tip of your tongue, busy shaping the back of your teeth like the ocean turning shards into sea glass, down through the front of your throat, cast straight through your sternum, and out through the curve of your back, there is relief and there is lack.

and the drilling of your teeth feels like nothing but the blast of cold air penetrates your spine.

We learn to be cold and have hard edges.
There are not always gentle arcs carrying us in waves.

Moments to not forget:
They seem trite when written down.
They are a moment for the bottom of your stomach.
The moment of forcing yourself to turn internal
In an attempt, a successful attempt to let every pore of your skin wiggling
and reach out
and vibrate towards that light.
it may be your only chance.

I need constant, verbal reassurance.

WEEKEND NOTES:

• Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt
• Matt Connors
• Night Shift
• Saturday Brunch
• electric blue nails

how do you begin to write about settling--about your arms feeling heavy, as if they could sink out of their sockets if they just dangled there long enough in idleness. the sickening feeling of literally just spending a day to spend it, to fill it with repetitive tasks of cleaning, and straightening, and justifying not getting out of bed. The satisfaction of a having no fear for money or security, just the slow grinding of dragging your calloused feet through the sand, or maybe even better the grinding it into the concrete slowly wearing down the calluses. It is work that is constant and uneventful and painfully mundane. There is a glint of fear that one day you will shed that last bit of dead skin and reach something pink and tender and go too far. sometimes this desire to keep grinding can only be counteracted by standing on your head.

a difference

There is no urgency here, I felt, a week a go; only routine, the practice of subways and the complete  lack of control to arrive anywhere faster. This city dictates your speed and impresses on you a stillness, a deep breath in the hollowed moments of transit.
and then
The smell in seattle is lovely and the passing of time feels natural, not demarcated by train timetables or event schedules but coffees. There are plum trees and sideboard houses but I still do not think I could live there: it is too light and there is nothing to push against, to lean your weight into, it is gliding.