Damon is nomad backward.

I'm moving to Seattle now. This new development has a lot to do with a guy. But the nice thing about Seattle is that there are also at least two girls there (or near enough) who I'm pretty sure I could be great friends with if I am capable of being great friends with anyone.

If I'm being honest, the really nice thing about Seattle is the guy, who is lovely in a number of ways. He has a parrot. He writes really good e-mails. His fingers are pale. He has a beard. As far as I know, he has a beard. He may have shaved it off since last night without telling me. It's like Schroedinger's cat, but without the dead (or is it?) cat. I'm moving to Seattle because I can't stand the philosophical conundrum of whether a beard can exist and not exist at the same time.

And I visited the guy last week and walked around in the rain with him after drinking whiskey (whiskey makes a lot of sense in the rain) and another time while drinking really good coffee and found that it feels a lot better to be in there than it does to be in Las Vegas.

Vegas has been a blur of boredom and anger and pancakes. What do I have against pancakes? Everything.

I know I always say this, but maybe I'll write more here (and elsewhere) now. Maybe I have something to say now that I've discovered this new fondness for beards.

Back for at least a moment

Television and work are the worst things in the world for a self-conscious writer. I haven't posted in nearly a year, because I haven't done anything in nearly a year. And I didn't do much of anything in the year before that. Except watch television and work at things that are not writing.

But a broken television is lovely, because the room is quiet and there are books on the shelf. I read some Dostoevsky; biographies of Beckett, Hemingway, Thurber, George Sand; Moby Dick (finally); Salman Rushdie; some medium-good contemporary Literature (Jeffrey Eugenides and Jhumpa Lahiri); and a couple medium-bad novels from the 60's or 70's that I got from the library bookstore for a quarter each. I just finished The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, who I always always love. What a sad beautiful book. Now I'm debating whether to read Portnoy's Complaint or Goodbye, Columbus (both also 25 cents) by Phillip Roth. I don't think I can take all the masturbation in the former, so I'll probably go for the latter.

I feel like writing, and in fact, have written some little notes, mostly about dreams I had, because I once wrote a poem based on a dream which was fairly well received in workshop, so that seemed like a good place to start. Three cheers for a creative impulse.

A year ago, I was a few days from my 30th birthday and now my 31st is coming up. I want to make everyone I know sing karaoke with me. I suppose the proximity of my birthday is part of the reason for an attempt at connection with myself and the world, but maybe this time I will sustain the attempt for more than a day. We'll see.

If anyone reads this, let me know. There's no reason why anyone might check this page after all my long absences, but just in case. Thanks.

Vegas, Barbie. Vegas

So quick update: Worked two jobs for a month or so, which was insanely exhausting, then just worked the bussing job at the fancy restaurant until the end of May. They liked me very much and would have promoted me to a regular server if I hadn't left for Las Vegas, where I am now a server at a Coco's in the suburb Henderson. The management is terrible and there's no business, so I'm still not making any money, and I'm only working 4 hours a day, 4 or 5 days a week. I'm spending my days off looking for another job. There's a library job that I'm thinking might be okay, and possible a move out of crappy restaurants, also some waitress jobs in various casinos, which made be the first step into the lucrative field of cocktail serving (those ladies make bank and many of the uniforms are only skimpy and not revealing of the upper thighs) and sort of as a lark I've got an interview Monday to be a poker game attendant at the MGM Grand, which has one of the bigger and more popular poker rooms on the Strip, which would be a first step into the world of poker dealing (those folks make bank and the outfits are, at worst, only silly and not at all revealing). Ultimately, I'm afraid I'm not fit for any real, steady job, because of ennui and other stuff, and if I am a poker dealer, I can make a lot of money for a few months and then go live in Paris for a while and then come back and deal poker more and have an endless cycle of menial labor and travel, which doesn't seem so bad, really. Plus, there's poker all over the country so I could live near my mom sometimes and maybe go back to LA one day. Whatever. There's some lovely thunderstorms in Las Vegas.

Static

Well. I'm a unit aide at the Kettle now. For a few hours a couple nights a week, I make minimum wage rather than 2.13 + tips and guess what...MY CHECK WAS SMALLER THAN IT WAS WHEN I HAD NO RESPONSIBILITY! Fuck that shit, man. I have to talk to the boss about it tonight. It's also the Tucson Gem Show (the biggest gem show in the world) and there are thousands of foreigners in town. It's been super-busy at the Kettle, so I was making more tips than I had been but this is the last weekend of it and it's back to slowness and no money, so I'm getting another job as a busser at a nicer restaurant where I'll make at least as much in tips for fewer hours plus a higher wage. I should probably give up the service industry and go work in an office but then I wouldn't have time for all the writing I'm going to do one day. I am considering the following careers: librarian, fashion designer, lawyer, art restorer. But not very seriously.

Hi David. I dedicate this drawing to you. It's called Pigbear. It's a representation of my soul.

Mastery Acheived

So, I guess I'm a master of fine arts now. I gave them my thesis after several hours of running back and forth between library, bookstore, Kinko's, and HIB. I was sick while I was doing it so I took the elevator a lot but still got out of breath. It wasn't at all exciting until I was sitting with the nice man in the archives. As he was taking my forms and checking off boxes, I got a little chill of pleasure. And then he said, "That's it. Congratulations." And I was done with UCI and I called my mom and my roommate and everybody said congratulations. That's it. I had some food in LA and got on the bus to Tucson and now I'm home and going to be a waitress with two too many degrees tonight. But maybe I'll be able to write now that I don't have to.

Anyway. If you want to see my thesis, it will be in the library later this year, I suppose. It's called Service Animals.

Also, I saw Sunyoung in the coffee room in HIB and she's a Master too. So congratulations to us all.

Sneaky trip

I'm going to be in Irvine for about 5 minutes on Tuesday to turn in my thesis. I feel very ambivalent about the whole thing. The thesis and the place and everything. I don't know. Anyway. If anyone is around the library, you might see me.

X=Christ

Did you know that? X is the Greek letter chi, and chi is the first sound in Christ. All those stupid people wanting to keep Christ in Christmas, the ones that hate Merry Xmas, don't. They don't even notice that the X is a cross. People need to be better trained in close-reading.

Here's my Christmas drawing:Alternatively, Happy Hannukah and I hope your Winter Solstice was pleasant. Go Seahawks!