Stegosaurus Tales

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Attn: Seattleites
Wednesday, July 15th, I am featuring at the Seattle Poetry Slam at the Spitfire Grill at 2219 4th Avenue between Blanchard and Bell at ~8:30pm ($5 cover, 21+).

I has very exciting set planned. I'm very excited. You should come to that.

The following chapbooks will be available:

"The 'Best' of Morris Stegosaurus Volume 1: Poems I'm Sick Of"
"The 'Best' of Morris Stegosaurus Volume 2: Magnum Oops"
"I Am That Bunny"
"Your Complete Handbook to the Revolution"
"The Secret Medicine"

Each chapbook is $5-$10 sliding scale, or (preferred) trade for your chapbook, or other thing you have or do that you think is worth trading.

Further Unexpected Developments
Spent weekend in Portland.

Had a terrific amount of fun with Portlanders.

Portland seems to want me to move to Portland, very badly.

I have a hard time arguing when a city seems to be so aggressively demanding my presence.

I will probably not stay permanently. I am thinking right now just a month in Portland, then back up to Seattle. Sure, just an extended visit, right?

Right?

Ooof. I love Seattle, and I'd come here with the intention of putting down long term roots, but I've been having well-documented difficulty connecting with people here, and the Portland people appear to've embraced the hell outta me, so how can I say no to that?

I think the question of whether or not I stay in Portland will depend on how solid my Portland connections turn out to be when I am actually down there long term, rather than just for a weekend. The vast majority of my Seattle connections certainly turned out to be a damn sight more tenuous than I had imagined they would be, maybe it'll be the same down there.

Contrary-wise, all else being equal, Portland's a hell of a lot cheaper, and I do take a lot of pleasure in getting to know a new city.

Sometimes I feel like I don't really have a say in these things, I don't decide-- the universe just tells me where I'm supposed to go, and I either go willingly, or end up getting dragged along.

So, Portland, now. Huh.

I feel... weird, about this.

I get the feeling I'm gonna be spending a lot of time in Portland, but I don't think Seattle's quite done with me yet either. I feel like I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop, still.

All is basically well right at this exact moment, but I am... uneasy.

A Perfectly Cromulent Word
The dictionary equates "inclement", when speaking of weather, with "stormy". This is wrong. The dictionary is wrong. Inclement means only "unforgiving" (like, the opposite of clement). So, a period of unrelenting dry heat could certainly be referred to as "inclement weather", and a large thunderstorm following such an inclement drought could be considered the very height of clemency.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go wazzle my hoffendorfer.

"We'll Tackle the Fishermen to See What They Caught...
...stop seeking sages and seek what they sought" --

dr_spork, from "God Is a Penguin Because He's Always in Formal Wear".

I've been meditating a lot lately, or trying to, with varying results-- it's no secret that my life has been in need of a sea change for a while now, and I thought that Tibetan Buddhism might be an interesting path to explore.

Last night,

fritzywolf and I went to an orientation at the Sakya™ Monastery. It was not uninteresting, but I could not help noticing that for all his talk about "wholesome" vs. "unwholesome" behavior, the guy who ran it, Chuck Pettis, was drinking out of a Starbucks cup. Right on.

Much of what he talked about I found very promising, and consistent with my own limited experiences to date, but when he started talking about reincarnation and blue and green faced deities and prayer wheels and Buddhist magic, I have to admit I started to glaze over a little bit.

Here's the way I see it:

There's some kind of deeper, universal truth, which when I am successful at meditation manifests to me as a sort of pulse or beat to which one can attempt to be "synchronized". There are a whole range of practices through which one can become closer to or gain a better understanding of that pulse, most of which I do not even begin to comprehend. This is what I'm interested in learning.

The trouble to me appears to be that people've taken these practices and adorned them with all this fancy ornamentation in the form of stories, myths, legends, and so forth-- abstractions and personal interpretations and beliefs that may help illuminate and personalize the path to Truth, but may also get in the way-- and it's those ornamentations that constitute religion.

What I want is to set all that aside and cut straight to the source.

There's a lot of white noise in my head, and I need to learn to listen more, and better. I think I need to spend a lot of time focused on emptying myself out and just listening.

Perception
Several years ago, I was at a restaurant with a friend or roommate. I think roommate. I don't remember for sure what city I was in, but I think I was with either

boixboi or

mintybunny, in either of which cases it would've been Chicago.

The restaurant was crowded but not full-- enough people so that it was impossible to pick out specific conversations, just a dull roar of nondescript, non-specific talk.

I said to my companion that everyone in the restaurant was in fact an alien-- they were speaking gibberish to each other as a cover for our benefit, but were actually communicating with each other telepathically on a level we could not perceive.

I was of course joking, but after I'd said it, I couldn't shake the feeling that it was actually true. I began covertly glancing at people around us, and imagining that they were in fact communicating on a deeper level than I was capable of perceiving, that their human personas were just a front.

It didn't pass quickly.

Since then, I can still slip back into that headspace from time to time, under the right combination of circumstances. I try not to. It's very unsettling.

The other day, I had a similar, related idea:

What if in addition to normal verbal communication, there's a deeper telepathic level on which people communicate with other, all the time? The verbal goes on, but it's mostly just for show, but it's at this higher level that all the real communication goes on? And it's so natural to us, so second nature, that we don't even think about it, and we assume everyone is communicating up on that level? No, that's not right-- not that we even assume that everyone is on that level, we don't even think about that level-- it's much more important than the verbal level, but it's all become automatic-- we don't even notice it.

And then but what if one person isn't communicating on that level-- and he's missing out on everything that's really going on-- and but of course everyone else just assumes that he can perceive that level, because that's just what people do-- and because we never consciously think about that level, we're not even aware that this poor guy isn't keyed into it. How could we be? So he goes right on living his life on this lower level, totally unaware that he's missing out on what life is actually about, to the rest of us?

What if that guy is me? Or you?

Does that make any sense at all?

An Experiment
At some point in the not too distant future, I'll probably start selling chapbooks via the lj, and maybe also mp3s (not gonna actually burn any new copies of the CDs, though).

I may also offer for sale in addition to the generic pre-made chapbooks... custom chapbooks.

I just finished the first one, for a coworker, Nick Turner.

The way it works is like this: the regular chapbooks I typically sell for $5.00 (I'm thinking about kicking that up to $6.00).

For $10.00, I put together a unique chapbook for Nick containing a selection of poems I thought he specifically would like, including one entirely new piece. 40 pages long, including frontpiece, one blank page, and table of contents, so 37 pages of poetry. Cardstock cover, stapled. Nothing fancy.

I dunno if there'd be demand for that, but I want to go ahead and open it up to whoever's interested.

Right now, there are two other co-workers queued up, and I don't want to get backlogged more than, say, five at a time. So... for the first three people who leave a comment requesting such a chapbook, I'll throw one together. Send no money until I tell you it's done, 'cause it may be a while.

If the three spots fill up and but you're also interested, let me know, so I can gauge interest toward doing more of this in the future. If no one bites, that's cool, too; my oh-so-delicate ego will survive intact.

[Addendum, should've said: that's $10.00 plus shipping if you are not in the Seattle area.]

Clarification
With regard to the entry about Drag Me To Hell, it would appear that the rest of the world does not share My Unique Vision, so let me explain:

I am not suggesting it should've been made as an Adam Sandler movie, or even as a comedy-- I'm just saying that I think Adam Sandler playing totally straight and not for laughs as a super-creepy old lady with Evil Powers would I think be brilliant.

Does no one understand where I'm coming from? What's the matter with you people? Do you not see?

The Kind of Thing This Icon Was MADE For
I'm in training right now for a new position at work (it's a lateral transfer, and there's a bunch of us in the same boat), and there's this "training portal" we use in class. The main page has ostensibly inspirational quotes on it, right? Like, one quote each time you load the page, randomly generated from a list.

I say "ostensibly" because while many of these are actually inspirational-- and some of them are even good-- there are a couple out there that make me scratch my head a little.

Today I got one that went beyond head-scratching:

"You have come into a hard world. I know of only one easy place in it, and that is the grave.
— Henry Ward Beecher"

Seriously?

I mean, if I've been like already having a bad day, and I come in to work and get a face full of that noise, I be like to bang my head clear through the wall sometime, maybe, seriously.

Drag Me to Hell
I have not seen it and I probably won't, but based on everything I've seen, heard and read about it, I posit that it would be a better movie if the role of the fiscally irresponsible crone had been played by Adam Sandler.

A Dumbass Is Me
Maybe a week or two ago, I finally got on Facebook.

Off the long list of suggested friends, one of the many I added was a Roger Weaver, who I of course immediately recognized as

kingotho, an old friend from New York who I used to hang out with a lot, back in the day.

He sent me a message not long after-- it turns out he lives in Seattle now!

And he's friends with Seattle poet and Spankstra press impresario Chris Dusterhoff!

And they're running a poetry show together!

So he asks me to go on their show some Wednesday night, and I say "sure", and we set it up and I'm doing it Wednesday. Should be fun times.

But...

...we talked on the phone tonight to like finalize logistical details, and I asked him how long he'd been out here-- 'cause, you know, last time I'd seen him he was still living in New York-- and he said he'd been out here like 15 years.

Um.

Then I actually took a look at his facebook account, and I realized that I have no idea who this guy is, like, at all-- and that

kingotho is Roger Kenny. Riiiight.

So... does anyone out there know who Roger Weaver is? 'Cause I'll be arsed if I know.

Clearing Up A Misconception
Apparently, there was an episode of the Daily Show recently in which much was made of the distinction between a "Poetry Slam" and a "Poetry Jam", so I will clarify:

A poetry slam is a competitive poetry reading in which performers are judged on a scale of 1-10 by a panel of judges selected from the audience.

A poetry jam is when you skin a bunch of poets, cut them up into little slices, emulsify the slices, shove the emulsion into a jar with some fruit pectin and later spread it on some form of bread or toast.

If you leave the skin on, it's a poetry marmalade.

Where I'm At
Spent the weekend (which for me manifests as Tuesday and Wednesday) with

circafox and

fritzywolf, down in Tukwila. We watched Army of Darkness, borrowed from

misanthropicsob, which I had never seen before, and enjoyed. This is a big deal, because I'd also never seen Evil Dead or Evil Dead 2, until watching them recently with Ty-- when things were very good for the first, and when things were shaky and unclear for the second-- so I was afraid AoD would be, you know, sort of depressing for me to watch.

But having Circa and Fritzy around makes everything better.

I, um... I've been having a challenging time connecting with people out here, and to tell the truth, it's been pretty awful. I feel like people are acting like I've been visiting for a week, like, they're down for meeting up for lunch or a drink or something once or twice, and then that's it, I never see them again, despite my own efforts to stay connected. Especially in the wake of Ty, it's been pretty difficult to stomach. I can't shake the feeling that I've changed somehow, in a non-desirable-to-hang-out-with way, over the past few years. It wouldn't surprise me, what with the emotional pepper grinder I feel like I've been through.

But not with Circa and Fritzy-- with them, the connection is still there, and thank whatever it makes sense to thank in the context of your belief system for that; I don't know what I'd do without them, the way things are right now.

I am afraid of relying too heavily on them, and becoming a nuisance, or some such thing. But right now, I feel like I haven't got much else to hold on to.

Although it's worth mentioning that on Wednesday I did bring my A game to the slam for the first time since I've been back, and that felt pretty great, too. Two pieces which are not BRAND new, but have never really been A pieces are now totally A pieces. It's always glowyinthestomachy when a piece "graduates" like that.

And by way of the esteemed and august

monkeypudding, I has Vancouver gig in September, which should give me plenty of time to become entirely not-rustified, performance-wise.

The job itself is just fine, but the commute I am seriously beginning to worry about. I am hungry and tired all the time, and I eat and sleep amounts that by most standards would be considered plenty. I am not sure I can keep this up. I think this is another example of yon Napoleon Complex rearing its ugly-- but knowing that I may be overestimating my physical prowess is not in any way preventing that overestimation.

Pain over Ty: still plenty. I wish I didn't, but I think about him a lot. I'm beginning to think I may never find someone who really fits with me. I thought it was him, and I'm having a hard time shaking that.

My Job Is Absurd...
...in that I pretty much sit around all day doing very little of anything and goofing around with a bunch of mostly pretty entertaining and cool kids. It's pretty terrific, really.

The problem is just the ~1hr 15min bike ride over hilly terrain to and from (I could take the bus, but that'd take more like 2 hours).

About 6 miles of the 11 mile ride is on a very nice interurban trail-- which yesterday was heavily laden with other bikers, and it occurred to me that, holy shit, most of these people look at this as something to look forward to as a recreational activity on the weekends-- whereas I get to do it like every day, as a matter of course.

The boy thing still has me knotted up in a big ball of hurt-- but in at least some respects, my life is pretty neat, right now.

What Are These "Emotions" Of Which You Speak?
So... not doing too terrific right now, on the emotional front-- in re: Ty, naturally. I thought that was all behind me, but not so much, it turns out.

Right now I'm having trouble deciding whether the best course of action would be for me to cut him out of my life for a while. The argument for is that every time I hear him talking about Dade, the new guy he's seeing, in the same way he used to (very recently) talk about me, it's like a big pointy knife in the gut. The argument against is two-fold: 1) based on my experiences with Ammon and

boixboi, contrasted with the one with

mintybunny, not spending time with him might just lead to fanning the flames of my infatuation with an idealized version of him, whereas spending time with him would help keep in focus his less-than-sterling qualities and maybe help convince me that I've in fact dodged a bullet, also 2) he's a really, really good poet, and romantic interest aside, I could use more good poet friends in my life, especially outside of slam.

So, there's that.

Last night, I had several dreams about him, in which he did not actually appear-- in one, I thought it was him during the dream, but when I woke up I realized it had actually been Ammon the whole time, and in another

boixboi was there and we were talking about him (dream-

boixboi had a high opinion). In a third, I was going to meet him somewhere, but kept getting delayed, misdirected and sidetracked-- I especially remember a particularly snooty and annoying bellhop in a hotel I was trying to cut through.

There's also another local boy I'm at least tentatively interested in, but I don't feel like it would be fair to take up with him when my heart is still in such an unfortunate tizzy over Ty.

On the Litigiousness of Youth
When I was much younger, there was a sketch on Saturday Night Live parodying Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, referred to as "Teenage Ninja Mutant Tertles".

I asked my parents what a "tertle" was, like, with an "e", and one of them-- I don't remember which-- said something like "oh, that's just to make sure they don't get sued".

I took this as a literal answer to my question and for some time thereafter believed that a "tertle" was a legal term for a thing that makes sure you don't get sued.

This lead to conversations like, for example:

PERSON X: "wow, I totally scratched that guy's car; I hope I don't get sued"
ME: "Yeah, you'll have to get a good tertle".
PERSON X: "Wha...?"
ME: "You know, a tertle. So you don't get sued"
PERSON X: "Whatever, man."

The Boy
After one week of awesome awesomeness, and then about four weeks of weird weirdness and awkwardness and ambiguity, Ty and I just had a Serious Talk, the upshot of which is that he is no longer interested in any kind of romantic involvment with me, like at all, which hurts like a punch in the heart.

I'm not gonna drag everything all out in to the open, but I feel I was in several respects misled and treated cruelly and unfairly, from the very beginning, but this is what happens-- I give my trust easily, so I get hurt a lot, but I am not going to stop doing it, because I am a Fool, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

I am going to be alright, but this would be a good time for anyone in the Seattle area to offer to drink with me.

In any case, onward and upward.

In other news: I applied for a space in a really awesome co-op in Belltown, but I did not get it.

Seattle remains terrific. Wish you were here.

Things Were Bad, But Now They're Good. Maybe Things Were Never Really Bad At All.
When I don't update for a while, it usually means either a) I'm way too busy or b) I'm super depressed for a little while. In this case, it was the latter, but now things are once again looking up.

Maybe later I'll talk more about the bad (in brief: things are to say the least rocky with Ty (we are not currently seeing each other, and may not again), and I like my job but I hate the fuck out of its location, and also I feel dissociated with, disconnected from, most (but not all) of the people I believed to be my friends out here)-- but for now, here are three recent events all of which demonstrate how my life tends to work, like all the time, constantly:

1). Ammon shipped my bike to me, disassembled. I called a bike shop about having it reassembled-- they said it'd be $50.00-- when I got there, they told me $75.00. I grumbled a little, but said it was cool. Later that day, they called and told me that my bike needed a new chain and work on the breaks and gears, which'd run ~$200.00-- it smelled to me like they were trying to put one over on me, so I told them to just assemble it and leave it alone. I assumed it'd be non-functional, and I'd have to take it to another, hopefully more reputable, bike shop-- I was all stressed out and agitated over it. And but so when I go this afternoon to pick it up, it's working just fine, and they only charge me $35.00, and lo, all is well and merry.

2). I finally finished my new chapbook, "The Secret Medicine", which has been in-my-head done for several months now, but I only just got around to finalizing and printing up actual copies of, and I staple together one copy-- and then my fancy saddle stapler breaks, and I'm all grumpy about that... and then I get back to

glaucon and

arguchik's place where I'm staying for the night, and tell

glaucon that I wanted to give them a copy of the new book, but he'll have to either staple it himself, or wait until I get around to replacing it, and he says: "Dude, you left a stapler at my place like 4 years ago, and I've been holding on to it all this time because I figured you might need it some day. Here it is." To which I: *blinkity-blink*.

3). I've been couch surfing since arriving on 3/24-- rarely staying the same place more than two nights in a row, and often not knowing on any given day where I'll be sleeping the following night. It has been very stressful. Wednesday at the wild card slam, I competed, but my voice is shot to hell on account of a then incipient cold I'm still kicking around, so I do not fare well at all (I was also woefully underprepared, on account of spending lots of time putting mine and Ty's respective chapbooks together). So, knowing I'm out of it anyway (technically, I'm not quite mathed out-- a top flight performance of one of my old, polished performance pieces could've definitely scored high enough to carry me into round 3 (would've needed I think a 29.1, there'd already been a 30), but I just wasn't feeling it), I do a short piece in round two, and preface it by explaining the direness of my situation to the audience and effectively begging for couch or floors on which to crash. I get approached by Chase Evans, a kid I'd met only once very briefly when I was here in spring '05 about crashing at his place the following night. When I arrive, he asks how long I need a place for, I give a vague and noncommittal answer like, "oh, as long as you're comfortable with; I don't have any firm or definite plans yet, or anything", and he's all, "okay, open-ended for $200.00/month sound good?". Which: yes, yes it does, actually (even though the location is a bit remote, and I'm on a couch in the living room, but still).

So. There's still troubles of various breed and stripe, but it's hard to shake the eerie sensation that in spite of it all, there's some... thing, I dunno... keeping an eye out for me. Somehow, it all seems to comes together when it needs to.

I mean-- looking at each incident individually, they're nothing: 1) bike shop's gonna cheat me, but they ended up not, so at best that's me breaking even, right? 2) This is less a random happenstance than it is

glaucon just being an awesome friend. 3) Well... I don't know where the hell Chase came from. That really was kind of like reaching-into-the-well-of-chaos-y, or what have you, but still, random shit happens. But the point is: taken as a whole, it's... I don't know what it is. But it's not nothing, I don't think. It's definitely a thing.

...and now I am here.
Am in Sumner, at Ty's dad's place. We were in theory gonna move all his stuff to his new place in Bellevue, but he couldn't get in touch with his friend who's got a truck-- will be doing that tomorrow, instead.

And then, I'll be crashing all week with him at the new place, so we can commute to work together. This is a big deal, because we've spent like three non-consecutive days in each other's company, and now we're gonna get a chance to be around each other pretty much constantly for a solid week.

So far, so good-- we're both pretty quiet, pretty good at giving the other his space, and but still feeling connected to each other when there's reason to connect if that makes sense. I'm just hoping that familiarity doesn't breed disinterest, is all. In theory, I'll be back at

glaucon and

arguchik's place for Friday and Saturday night, then back down in Bellevue for the week, and so on (perhaps not always at the same place on weekends) until I get my own place.

There's talk of going to see Watchmen together tonight-- I want to see it, he doesn't particularly, but said he was willing to, but I do not want to drag him too often to things he isn't particularly interested in-- and we've already got tickets to see Sunday in the Park with George in a couple weeks, which: Ty says he doesn't like musicals, and I'm taking him to this in the hopes of proving him wrong, but also, I'm afraid of proving him right. So, maybe no Watchmen.

Since he turned 21 Thursday, this Wednesday will be his first night at the Seattle Poetry Slam. After competing this past Wednesday, I'm now leaning very strongly toward throwing down in the Wild Card Slam... just to, you know, see what happens, see if I've still gots my skillz. I feel sort of, ahaha, like a dinosaur, though.

PSA
My flist is littered with people moaning "Am I the only person who hates April Fools Day?"

So, rather than responding to each individually:

No, you're not-- you're in good company.

Hitting the Ground Running
The first time I moved to Seattle, I arrived on 4/18/2001. Straight from the airport, I went to the Seattle Poetry Slam, but as it was the Wild Card slam, I did not compete. I did compete the following week, 4/25, and won (not a big deal because it was the first week of their off season) and I remember saying from stage--

hydrozoa I think will remember this too-- something like "I just moved to Seattle a week ago, and I'm looking for a job, an apartment and a boyfriend, so anyone who's got a lead on any of those, let me know". Well... in the roughly 2 years I lived in Seattle, I never really had a solid one of any of those.

This time, after only 1 week here, I've already got an awesome boyfriend-- and as of today, what sounds like a pretty cool job, too.

Rock.

The job is with WDS Global, which does outsourced tech support for a wide range of companies, specializing in wireless technology. Effectively, I'll be doing the same kind of work I did in SLC, except with techie things instead of hotels. In addition to tech support, the company also does product development, which, also awesome and interesting. The starting pay is actually slightly higher than the pay I left behind in SLC (though, okay, the cost of living is higher out here)-- they offer slightly less paid time off, but a hell of a lot more unpaid time off, and in every other respect, comparable benefits. There's no tuition reimbursement (ostensibly "in the pipeline"), but as a counterbalance, you can get an unlimited ride annual bus pass for $66.00 (!!!).

I start Monday.

There's, of course, a downside, being that they're located in Kirkland, which is about 1.5 hours by bus from where I'm staying right now (and it takes 3 busses to get there), so I'll be looking for an apartment probably out in that area rather than in Seattle proper. Ty lives in Bellevue, not far from Kirkland-- his lease ends in August, and in theory, if all's well between us then, we're talking about moving in together. Since he drives--and also works at WDS-- it may be possible at that time for us to find a good place back up here.

Speaking of: Ty continues to be all kinds of awesome. Last night, we went to his first open mic ever, up in Ravenna (northeastish corner of Seattle), where he proceeded to rock the socks off of all the regulars with his awesome awesomeness. He turns 21 on Thursday, so next Wednesday, we'll be hitting the slam for the first time, where he'll get a chance to cut his teeth against more polished performers. I'm excited.

With regard to the slam... my resolve to not go out for the team this year is once again wavering. I figure maybe I'll compete in the wild card slam, because the whole point of it is to give carpetbaggers like me a shot at the team. It has not escaped my attention that the year I was on the Seattle team-- 2002-- was both the last year I made finals, and the last year the Seattle team made finals. So, you know. We could be good for each other. Nevertheless, I remain... unsure.