So last night Andy and I were coming home from dinner when I noticed a cupcake on the railing of my apartment steps. It was exactly the size and shape of a real homemade cupcake, with fluffy pink frosting and a little flag stuck in it.
A nicer, better person might have been curious but minded her own darn business and left the item alone. I've left boxes or bags on my front steps when going up to retrieve my coat or cell phone before, so maybe someone stopped mid-cupcake to go get their scarf or something. Or maybe someone had left it as a little birthday surprise for a resident. The fact is, I had no business picking up what looked like somebody else's pastry.
But I'm a jerk, so I totally picked up the cupcake to examine it. It was heavy like stone, and clearly not made out of sugar, spice, or anything particularly nice on the digestive tract. In it, I saw a little flag that said "You deserve a treat!" And I have to be honest, in my head, I was like "Yeah, I do! Where's the cake?!" On the back of the flag, it said Cakespy.com.
I happen to be a prior fan of Cakespy.com, the cupcake website with the cute little pink watercolor cupcake artwork which I've loved since before I moved to Seattle. I particularly enjoy their Queen Anne Cake Walk Guide and whenever Cyndi finally comes to see me I plan to take her on the Seattle Donut Tour. Although disappointed about the whole not-being-edible thing, I was right pleased to have found the adorable little cake. I'm jerk enough to inspect the frosted goodies of strangers, but I know better than to disturb public art, so I took a few photos of the sweet and then left it where I found it.
I went upstairs to check the website, and sure enough, there was a post featuring my own front door. They are running a little experimental Cupcake Street Art Installation by depositing plaster cupcakes with uplifting messages in neighborhoods in Seattle, and my apartment just happened to be a lucky recipient.
When I came home today I was sad to see that the cupcake was gone. I intended to move it to a new place, take a photo, and leave a comment on Cakespy. But hopefully someone out there has their Deserved Treat sitting on a desk or table and making them happy.
In LA I often felt like the art was yelling at me, competing for my attention and preaching a political message, but I like street art that serves merely to amuse and add whimsy. I like not knowing the exact intent of the work because it leave me free to make up my own meaning. I sometimes miss seeing the little Berds hanging at busy Los Angeles intersections.
Perhaps because of tighter geography, street art in Seattle comes knocking on my door much more often, and when it does, it's usually just to say some like
"Hello there..."
"Aren't people so wonderfully creative?"
"Isn't the world a strange...."
... funny place?"
"Isn't life full of the most exciting possibilities?
"And you know what? You deserve a treat!"
Jan 22, 2009
Sweets on the Streets
Jun 15, 2008
Back to Blogging
It has been such a long long time since I've blogged. I've thought about blogging at least once or twice a week, usually as I'm climbing the stairs to my apartment after a long drive back from Redmond. But once I open the door to my home and find BSG dvds to watch, fun new recipes to try, and a cute boy to cuddle on the couch, all my ambitions disperse. So it goes.
May was also a pretty insane month, as we:
Adopted a new vacuum
Visited family & friends in LA
Went to New York for the Stationery Show
Hosted Kim & Emily for the weekend
Recorded a hit single with the Seattle Six.
A lot has been going on.
I was recently reading through my old blog from my college years, and it's insane how much I would put out there in public all my thoughts and feelings about *everything.* I was a steady blogger from 2001 to 2005, averaging 15 posts a month at least. And in the early years I didn't have a digital camera, so it was all words. Sometimes I would post results of internet quizzes like "which Harry Potter character are you?" (Remus Lupin), but mostly it was just a daily recital of my innermost thoughts.
And it seems like I had more personality back then. I guess by that I just mean that I put more tang and pizazz into things. I was oh, tremendously emo, and everything moved me, everything had such great significance. I think I thought that if I didn't blog it, reflect on it, and really glean from each experience its deeper meaning on my walk through life, I would fail to understand or grow. I would be at a standstill.
I don't still have that mentality, but some of that must dwell in the far corners of my brain, otherwise I wouldn't still be here, blog blog blogging. I feel more content now to just move through my life and hold onto whatever my body and mind choose to hold onto. But the world of blogs and the blogging community has changed so much from what it was like in 2008. What is the ultimate function of a blog now to me?
This blog, Bendytime, was initially conceived as a way for both Andy and myself to keep in touch with family and friends in both Minnesota and California. But a blog cannot possibly perform that function. The only way to do that is to put phone to ear, pen to paper, butt to airplane seat. So where does that leave us? With a document of our lives that we are too busy to update.
I don't really know what I am getting at here.
It is a beautiful Sunday night here in Seattle. Today we changed my license plates from California to Washington, and part of me was sad, but part of me was resigned to it. If I plan to live as many different places and travel as much as I hope to, little things like changing license plates will have to become commonplace. Another step: hopefully getting our passports soon.
Andy is cutting his hair in the bathroom sink and I am preparing a big pile of tshirts and totebags that I plan to silkscreen for friends. I stayed up till 3m drawing up a Space Needle birdhouse, and if all goes well, my nearest and dearest will be getting homemade presents from me for my birthday.
Today in Los Angeles, my brother graduated from college and I was not there. But I think he knows I'm proud of him. And graduating from college is not really biggest milestone or accomplishment he will ever achieve. The ones that will make an impact will be–or already have been–quiet and solitary. Most likely he wouldn't even notice until much later, and then look back and go "oh yes. that was a big moment. something changed."
And it was Father's Day too. I bought my dad a card at Bartell's, and I noticed how many of the cards said things like "Even though you don't say a lot, you've done so much for me" or "Although you're a man of few words..." or "The way you tell me you love me is in actions not in words." Is that really a reality for fathers? Not talking? Enough that the writers at Hallmark have found a dozen different ways to say basically the same thing? Or is it that the kind of kids who buy their dads beige and brown Hallmark cards with long-copy and photos of fish and golf carts on them are the kinds of kids who don't know their fathers very well. I have a Hallmark campaign in my portfolio where the tagline is "Feelings are complex. Cards are simple." The Father's Day cards I read made me want to revise it to "Feelings are scary. Cards are safe."
But more than anything, it makes me sad for families and children everywhere. At least in my family, the sentiment is true. Since moving to Seattle, I've found it impossible to talk to my Dad, while my relationship with my Mom has gotten much better. I called for Father's Day and we spoke for barely 3 minutes. I don't know if it's because he's mad that I moved, or worried about me, or just that he's so emotional about it he can't even talk. But the point moreso is that I don't know. Because he won't tell me. And I don't even know why he won't tell me. If he would even just tell me why he won't tell me, I wouldn't ask any more questions.
My life would be much better if my Dad had a blog. Or a Facebook.
And otherwise, life parades onward. Speaking of parades, the summer solstice parade in Freemont this weekend promises naked people galore, I am looking forward to posting photos on my Flickr. Not to be missed!
Mar 4, 2008
I Like the Lichen
I guess looking at lichen is really a solitary pasttime anyways, and here in the Pacific Northwest there is even more of it to look at. I dunno if these qualify as lichen or moss or both. But they're pretty!
Mar 3, 2008
Out & About
Feb 23, 2008
Feb 3, 2008
Just listen to the music of the traffic in the city
I have a new job! Or rather a new freelance assignment. It will last through the first week of March and pays me enough to keep me in all the $1 Starbucks coffee my little heart desires. Best yet, it is at a design firm whose work I have long admired and I am learning a great deal from some really talented creative people. I was unemployed in Seattle for a total of 5 days, for which I feel very fortunate. Of course when the assignment ends I might have weeks and weeks of unemployment, but for right now it is helping me adjust and meet new people.
Parking downtown costs about $16/day, so I have been riding the bus to work. It's a short 15 minute ride and costs about $1.50 each way. I think the experience of taking the bus makes me feel like a real grown up in a real city, but I suspect the novelty will wear off soon. It is comfortable to come home and make a little dinner for me and my roommate, chat with a few friends, and close out the evening with the Colbert Report. I feel all domesticated. But it's only been a week.
Weekends have been spent adventuring in such places as the landmark Seattle Central Library and the giant retail city of Tukwila. Poor Tukwila seems to exist purely as a location on the outskirts of metropolitan Seattle where cityfolks can drive a short distance to the giant Ikea, Ross, Bed Bath & Beyond, Best Buy, Guitar Center and Westfield Shoppingtown, a shoppingtown within a shoppingtown. It's as though the city of Seattle has taken the garish landscaping that embodies the suburban strip mall and swept it under the carpet that is Tukwila. That way the neighborhoods of Belltown, Magnolia, Fremont, Queen Anne and Pioneer Square can stay as charming as their names might imply.
The best thing so far really has been our location within Lower Queen Anne and down the street from the Seattle Center. This is my first experience of living in the heart of a metropolitan area. I enjoy hearing the shouts of drunk people down the street. It's sort of similar to the feeling of being all cozy inside when it's raining outside, which I've also been enjoying a lot. We are like a 5 minute walk from two grocery stores, a really good thai food place, the local indie movie theater, a used book store, a pottery studio, a record store, the Key Area, Seattle International Film Festival Theater, the Seattle Repertory Theatre, the Experience Music Project, some crazy looking big top circus dinner theater place called Teatro ZinZanni and a bunch of bars and restaurants. It reminds me of visiting friends at Berkeley in that everything is walking distance and I am excited to go out and try it all.
The only drawback is that with so much to do, it's been difficult to find time to blog...
Jan 26, 2008
Thank Goodness for Valtrex
We live in the Herpes Triangle, according to a recent article in the Seattle Weekly. Which means that things are prone to mysteriously disappear and then later reappear in the form of a watery blister on your mucous membranes.
The best thing about that article is how it barely seems to qualify as news. Maybe it's my out-of-townerness, but to me it seems like a waste of newsprint (and a waste of newsprint is a tough thing to achieve because it's pretty much the worst paper ever) to detail the adventures of the local bar-hoppers, even to go all undercover and pretend to be single in order to gather research. To push the fact you're not actually single, just playing one in your column, as though being single was an experience as foreign to you as being say, a gay porcupine or an erudite journalist. And to present the results of your exposé in such a boring manner. The North High North Wind staff, on its worst most self-indulgent day wrote fake letters to the editor that were more hard-hitting.
Anyway. We do see a fair amount of drunken mumblers and slutty high-heeled tumblers in our neighborhood. A few months ago we heard a bunch of frat boys crossing the street and looked out the window just in time to see one fellow take out his penis and wave it around. Assumedly this is how the herpes is spread in Lower Queen Anne, so a good raincoat provides protection from more than just the rain.
Part of me wants to get down there and join in the party, because I've never lived in such close proximity to an actual bona fide party. Courtney often touted the benefits of living walking distance to bars and clubs, so that the toilet you collapse into will likely be your own and you'll never have to call that guy with the tiny motorcycle to save you from a DUI. But we've got our old-married-couple bedroom slippers on and instead we're opting to stay in and make cookies on a Friday night. Strawberry cheesecake cookies.
And nothing on our mucous membranes but sweet sweet mucous.
Jan 25, 2008
The road goes ever on and on...
...down from the door where it began
I think moving from Los Angeles to Seattle was the most emotionally draining and logistically daunting thing I've ever had to do in my life thus far. And although I say Los Angeles, most people know I actually mean Torrance, California, city of my childhood, playground of my youth, and the house that I grew up in.
I prepared for a full year, even so much that I went through and quit my old job and got a new job in order to make more money and gain experience that would allow me to start my career in a better place in the new city. I put everyone through what Emily termed "the Longest Goodbye Ever" and exploited my imminent departure as a way to get anything from free meals, to wild adventures in the city, to my choice of songs in Rock Band. And I almost got a lap dance.
But with all that preparation, I still found myself overwhelmed when the time came. The actual physical move went better than I had anticipated and cost less than I had budgeted. But I was not emotionally braced for the reality of leaving everyone and everything I know behind and running off into the great unknown. It was a strange thing to hug my family and friends goodbye and then get onto a freeway that I had driven on every day, and somehow end up in a different life. It was very Lord of the Rings-ie:
[Bilbo] used often to say there was only one Road; that it was like a great river: its springs were at every doorstep, and every path was its tributary. "It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door," he used to say. "You step into the Road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to."
So yeah. The first night in the hotel in Redding I cried at the sight of the marshmallow roses my mom had given us, at the snowglobe Jean made me, at every little thing. A lot of the time I wondered to myself if I was making a huge mistake. Most of the time I just tried to allow my mind to float in space and not feel, because feeling was painful. And it was easy to do this because the landscape was beautiful: snowcapped mountains, silvery lakes, and a lot of roadside adult stores in Oregon for some reason. It was a nice drive, but it hurt like hell. Even at this moment it's just easier for me not to think about it. Talking through it a few days later with Andy, it seemed like a dream, and I think for a long time, the journey between point A & B, or rather CA & WA, will remain a numb blur.
I do remember we had a lot of coffee and beef jerky.
And now I am here, in Seattle! It is an exciting new place, and I think if I had to choose a city to start a grand new adventure I could not have found a better place than Seattle. Or a better navigator/tent buddy/Samwise than Andyroo. He's the cheese to my macaroni, as the saying goes. I miss my friends and my family, but in that I am fortunate also, for they have all been enthusiastic and supportive and they all know that I will still be there for them, just a phone call or text message away.
Into the caverns of tomorrow with just our flashlights and our love
We must plunge, we must plunge, we must plunge.
Jan 3, 2008
Photo blogging because I'm lazy
I think in the beginning here it's gonna be a lot of photos of stuff and crap. I've spent basically the whole day designing the header for our blog, I'm feeling tired and my wacom pen feels like lead. So here are whatever photos I have lying around on my desktop:
An old picture from 4th of July in Venice. Before we discovered the magic of the "heeeey" photo.
The view of Lower Queen Anne from our living room window.
A tail of two cities: Long distance animal cracker love.
Some of my most favorite LA people on a random night out
A portrait of Ben and Beth; Hey, I didn't know we were supposed to be trying to look cool.
The second place winner for the annual family Christmas card. My brothers are so adorable!
Jan 1, 2008
2008 is here
