JUST CALL ME THRIFTY

The last time I was in Chicago, I went to Unique Thrift Store on Halstead and 18th and bought two skirts. I paid two dollars for the one and only seventy cents for the other, because it was half off Tuesday!! Isn't that ridiculous? Recently, while in San Francisco I bought a tee shirt from the Goodwill on Height Street for three dollars. I got it because it is exactly the same color as the Golden Gate Bridge, which actually isn't so much golden as it is a sort of orange vermilion.

GREEN SPACE

I went to an old neighborhood bakery-cum-coffee shop this afternoon, across the street from a community garden plot I rented two years rolling. Here, I watched the fruits of my labor - errrrr more accurately, the vegetables of my labor, grow from tiny, passive seeds to smack talkin,’ booty shakin,’ rubber neckin,’ I’mon kick yo azzzz Zucchini Giants. I remember the first spring how I was so desperate to have something grow, I had even watered the weeds. By the time the carrots were ready, I was a cold, calculating crab grass puller. You should have seen my technique. I use to go there after dinner and stay until I couldn’t see my own hands through the dark.

And now the lot is empty, the plots are leveled, and there is a ‘for sale’ sign pinned in the ground. I suppose it was bound to happen. Garden spots like that don’t generate the kind of green that matters.

NOT TODAY

All school work will not be completed today.
All internal conflicts will not be resolved today.
All of life's mysteries will not be revealed today.
All emotional quandaries will not dissolve today.
All the words in the dictionary will not be memorized today.

Physical perfection will not be achieved today.
Intellectual excellence will not be accomplished today.
Total enlightenment will not be attained today.

So sit down. Pick up the book of short stories by Anton Chekhov, the one your best friend gave you for no particular reason. Read the one titled, The Princess. Glance up every so often to admire the sun and the soft silouette of leaves on the stripped bed sheets.

MASOCHISTS' TOOLBOX

Thursday afternoon, RS unwittingly gave me a tool. I already own one, but this one was new to me because it was from him. I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening cutting my ugly flesh with it.

ROADTRIP

Seattle > Vancouver > Seattle > Anacortes > Seattle > Mount Rainier > Longview > Portland > Tillamook > Lincoln City > Newport > Florence > Reedsport > Northbend > Gold Beach > Brookings > Crescent City > Redwood National Park > Orick > Arcata > Eureka > Lost Beach > Fort Bragg > Mendocino > San Francisco > Vallejo > Arbuckle > Willows > Orland > Red Bluff > Corning > Redding > Dunsmuir > Yreka > Ashland > Medford > Canyonville > Myrtle Creek > Roseburg > Sutherlin > Cottage Grove > Eugene > Salem > Portland > Seattle