suzette’s kitch-en window

I walked up to Suzette’s, a bus trailer turned restaurant, whose makeshift kitchen window serves as the only evidence of its operation.

Off the alberta street’s beaten path, I politely asked the beats poet reading, green peace supporting, Portland loving, aspiring cook in her aspiring late twenties, for one of my favorite’s, the quiche loraine avec sa salade verte. This loraine, however, had guyere, quite foreign to my quiche-loving palette.
I made lavender lemonade at chelsey’s birthday, just days after returning from paris. I had never tried anyone else’s. Suzzette’s had it on the menu.

The décor inside the tiny building, just adjacent to the kitchen, warrants a story itself. It is as perfectly kitch as one would find in the days of the movement’s renaissance, circa berlin 1860. My mood of excitement was seemingly caught in the crossfire between the dueling avant gardes and kitches of clement greenberg’s theorizing.
Wooden tables (of course, no two the same) and eclectic groupings of ‘thrift store find’ seating, furnished the floors and cushioned the bums of the hungry brunchers. Local art, typewriters and kids books, like the ones I was once happy to receive from my scholastic magazine order, pillowed the hollows of any undecorated space. Matching was definitely not on the menu.

Mason jars filled with day-old gerberas added a colored perfume to the air. My lorraine was a bit luke-warm, however, but good conversation with a close friend more than made up for its lack of steam. And the lemonade did quite the dirty trick on my susceptible somber wits, too.

hit the road, jack

i was already running late for my morning shift. five am comes early when you’ve spent only three hours sleeping, and especially when all three of those were spent lying down on the unfamilarity of someone else’s couch. throwing any hopes of rapid awakeness behind, i ran to my car parked on 10th and e. lynn. but the san diego zoo, god bless america bumper stickered mpv was nowhere to be found. squinting my groggy eyes to make out the sign that hung just above my once parked car, i read ‘no parking 4-6pm’. damn it. i had parked it there between 4-6pm. lucky for me, though, metro’s number 49 arrived to swoop me away and drop me off just five minutes late to work. at my 10am break, i walked over to sit down on the concrete slabs they call steps in front of the picturesque westlake center to make my phone call. mom, ‘i’m sorry, but your car has been towed.’ after hanging up my tears and my short-lived shame, i heard a full-bodied rendition of my favorite hymn being played on the sax by that one jesus music man guy (insert further character development here). it almost brought me right to the welcome mat of the pearly white gates. the lyricless melody of ‘it is well with my soul’ cradled the ill-timed distress, as i sat there with the sun warming my face.

reading now vi

untitled journal entry Afe589

it ended with no formal ending; no curtain call to the cast of brief memories; no rolled spool after final exposure. i just wish i had had a voice like that which the bostonians and their tea parties willed. taxation without representation has taken its toll as was evident in my reaction–mature tears and childish fucks being sung over bethoven’s pathetique. the potential left never to be realized pained me more than the present yet less than the violent misrepresentations of the past. but i adore that life is not perfect–like you. i will learn to stop trying to change it and correct it all the time and learn rather to accept its uncertainties and billowing mysteries. i will learn to love it with even greater sincerity.

stories to be told

Titles to entries yet to be recorded. Found list in book, written on an old train schedule.

1. Dad to Pamplona, Spain for the First International Hemingway look-alike contest.
2. A lesson well-learned, “L’enfer est pave de bonnes intentions.” Merci Madame Catherine.
3. La France me manquera – list of things i will miss about paris.
4. Listening to Mae on the old ipod list – falling in love all over again/countering conumerist culture.
5. Finishing A Moveable Feast at Les Deux Magots with a chilled pinot noir et some pigeons.
6. Petillault family : descriptions of each one.
7. My conversation with frenchman ‘fred’, mondern-day nomad, while on the streets in Montpellier. The story of his found
contentment.
8. The Olive Man. Low expectations. Crazy guy but the best/cheapest fresh provencal olives one will ever taste.
9. In Seattle again. work. research. living. wa-wondering. The best is yet to come.

i want to be an early riser

“An old friend of mine being lately come to town, I went to see him on Tuesday last, about eight o’clock in the evening, with a design to sit with him an hour or two, and talk over old stoires; but upon inquiry after him, I found he was gone to bed. The next morning, as soon as I was dressed and had despatched a little business I came again to my friend’s house about eleven o’clock with a design to renew my visit; but upon asking for him, his servant told me he was just sat down to dinner. In short, I found that my old-fashioned friend religiously adhered to the example of his forefathers and observed the same hours that had been kept in the family ever since the Conquest. It is very plain that the night was much longer formerly in this island than it is at present. By the night, I mean that portion of time which nature has thrown into darkness, and which the wisdom of mankind had formerly dedicated to rest and silence…Modern statesmen are concerting schemes, and engaged in the depth of politics, at the time when their forefathers were laid down quiet to rest and had nothing in their heads but dreams.” Richard Steele, Thursday, December 14, 1710.

i want me a concertina : melodica

my euro finds

reading right now v

reading now iv