Text Posts

Poems for our "bureau" reporter in Santa Fe, whose stories I'm always left waiting for when I'm laying out:

Sitting at my desk
wondering if you're still alive
unmoved either way.

Four stories at noon
two out, two new by midday;
none ever find me.

He's slaving away
Interviewing, contacting;
AP filed at 5.

A blank page, staring
waiting to be filled with news ...
Angry Birds high score!

The downside of biking to work is I have to interact with people. To wit:

Our HEROINE is biking to work, since she lives like six blocks away and gas is well north of $3 in New Mexico. After a minutes-long coast (it's mostly downhill), she arrives at work and begins to lock up his bike.

FRIGHTENING BLOND WOMAN, who was lurking behind the building, comes around the corner talking loudly on her cell phone.

FBW: I don't know, I don't have the money.

Our HEROINE is doing her best not to listen, as it doesn't sound like a fun conversation to be dropping eaves on. Due to the volume the conversation is conducted at, however, she has no choice.

FBW: I don't have the money to file papers! If I have to go see a lawyer, I'm gonna go bankrupt.

At this point, our HEROINE realizes she's overhearing a discussion about divorce. Though the woman is glib, it's difficult to tell if she's joking or not. Her face is strained, even when smiling, giving it an almost movie-like quality - as if, at any moment, you'd expect her to pitch forward with an arrow sticking out of the back of her head.

FBW: Well if you're just going to die, I won't have to worry about it. I'll just be a widow, no problem.

Our HEROINE finally manages to work the lock, clicks it into place, and fairly runs into the building.

See, you can give me the environmental, physical and financial benefits of the bike versus the car all you want, but at least when I'm in my car I don't have to deal with the insanity of others. It's not like I'm deficient in that category myself.

Yesterday was Moving Day; as is tradition, that means today is "Not Moving Day," owing to the soreness from yesterday.

Moving is supposed to bring about an onslaught of different emotions: a twinge of nostalgia at leaving the place you've called home, sadness at altering/losing the different interpersonal relationships you've developed at said location, and excitement or trepidation at thought of what's to come.

I don't know that exhaustion can rightly be counted as an emotion, but the depth to which I feel it now seems to indicate it should at least be in the running.

After the third or fourth major geographical upheaval in 12 months (with a few minor phase shifts as well), moving just doesn't have the same impact anymore. Sleeping for the first time under a new roof felt just as comfortable as sleeping under the old one, which is to say "not very" because I never really "settled in" to the old apartment in the proper sense. Despite living there for eight months, the overly spacious two-bedroom apartment treated me more as a guest in a motel room than a permanent occupant.

Sure, I have some memories. The hideously overweight 40-some-year-old creepster who lived on the ground floor and sat outside his apartment 80 percent of the time, whiling away the days smoking, eating peaches or painting his fingernails a flamboyant hunter orange. That wouldn't have been so bad were it not for his completely obvious leering at women half his age or whenever he'd get in the mood to go shirtless.

Or consider the Albertson's grocery cart in the parking lot that mysteriously disappeared and reappeared on no set schedule, without rhyme or reason. Nothing says class like an Albertson's grocery cart.

Obviously, it wasn't all bad. Friends came over, drinks were drunk (and drunks kept drinking), movies were watched, great books were read and many a sleep was slept. But none of this served to dispel the ever-present air of transiency.

I'm now in Spokane, more specifically Browne's Addition, working at a job that seems pretty damn perfect for me (more on that later). The hope is to keep this apartment for quite some time, to break the moving cycle. At least long enough so that the next time I have to move, it actually means something again.

I realize that former Gonzaga basketball player Josh Heytvelt was trying to give a heartfelt interview and express his remorse over being arrested for possession of 'shrooms, but there's a reason why athletes usually have people talk for them. This quote is why:

Heytvelt was ordered to do 240 hours of community service. He did more than 300, working primarily with terminally ill children at a Ronald McDonald House. "That really made me think that those kids aren't choosing to have cancer. They're given that," Heytvelt said. "I realized I had made some really bad choices and that really made me think about every choice I made from then on out."

Two questions: Did Heytvelt previously think those children had chosen to have cancer, and who did he think gave it to them?