a gorgeous hotel, in a grand city

'i had walked across the carpeted lobby and down a long marble corridor,
passing glassed-in phonebooths and rows of tall potted plants, and
staggered into the men's room.

my eyes were stinging. everything had grown blurry as i'd made my way
through the lobby. i moved toward the sinks and the mirrors. i could no
longer see my own hands, but in the brightness i sensed the expanse of tile
and brushed metals and knew at once that i was alone.

i was squinting, i guess. i contracted every muscle in my face. as i did
this a series of droplets came out of both eyes and stayed close to my
cheeks, traveling down them, each droplet leaving a kind of track. streaks,
i suppose. for a few brief moments i could see again. the tiles and the
metals. then again the room grew blurry.

it was then i heard a faucet running. someone was there. a man was
suggesting i was crying. crying! i doubted this–told him i seriously
doubted this. i slumped down onto my knees, holding my head in both
hands. more droplets. my head felt just like a trophy, so i held it as such."

~michael earl craig

"they always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself." ~andy warhol

i quit my job on saturday, for reasons unforgiveable. suffice to say: if you do not appreciate me, then you should not have me. i will not work for anyone who thinks of me as a dispensable android.
it has been a strange last few days of alternating sadness, indignation, giddiness and uncertainty. i am watching myself go through this process with curiosity. everything, even the constants in my life, look different. my body and mind might react exactly the same if i was paratrooping. i have leapt out into the thin air even though i'm terrified of falling. but to stay would have been far more grave of an error.

for some reason this morning, i'm finding andy warhol comforting. pop is nice when what you're looking for is something "deeply superficial." that's how warhol described himself. these are some of my other favorite things he said:

"The most exciting attractions are between two opposites that never meet.”


“Isn't life a series of images that change as they repeat themselves?”


“I think having land and not ruining it is the most beautiful art that anybody could ever want to own.”


“I always thought I'd like my own tombstone to be blank. No epitaph, and no name. Well, actually, I'd like it to say "figment."”


“I suppose I have a really loose interpretation of ''work,'' because I think that just being alive is so much work at something you don't always want to do. The machinery is always going. Even when you sleep.”


“It would be very glamorous to be reincarnated as a great big ring on Liz Taylor's finger.”


“Since people are going to be living longer and getting older, they'll just have to learn how to be babies longer.”


"I'm confused about who the news belongs to. I always have it in my head that if you name's in the news, then the news should be paying you. Because it's your news and they're taking it and selling it as their product…If people didn't give the news their news, and if everybody kept their news to themselves, the news wouldn't have any news."


yes.
yes yes yes.

cirrus and cirrocumulus in the shape of... an angelfish

from the
cloud appreciation society's "clouds that look like things" collection.


i'm a little down today, so it's good for me to look up.

over at bibliodyssey, i really liked paul's quip:

"if it looks like i know anything then the mirrors are working."





(my new masthead photo is by chieya on flickr.)

i'm too sad to tell you

so many of my friends have been sad lately, this project really resonates.

link via camilla

blue day

karen's dog, lu, succumbed to cancer in the night.
creepy party of nine last night with a grossly overrated sense of themselves conversing in grossly elevated tones. stayed three hours and no one else wanted to sit in the room near them. my station empty half the night thanks to them. relentlessly raising their glasses and toasting "here here!", "here here!". me seething under my calm exterior.
no access to our driveway for two weeks to come. jackhammers at 7 a.m for ten working days.

for medicine, i will dig in the dirt. see you tomorrow when i'm not so out of sorts.



p.s. plutarch believed that truffles were mud cooked by lightning. this is the kind of trivia that helps to lighten one's mood.

today i want a warm aquarium

i'm out of sorts today.
today i want to call my blog 'avalanche of the daily.'

the christmas season has a way of sometimes working me up into a froth, and then spooning me out, like meringue, into a heap, sad and confused.

this is the only simile i have inside of me today.