Boxes labeled "made from recycled corrugated paper"

Moving the bookcase made me realize how dirty my carpet really is. Why do apartment complexes use white carpet? Idiots.

Things I still have to move: one skirt, two pairs of slacks, my tee shirts, pillows, blender, spices, chopsticks, frying pans & matching pots, makeup, flat iron, toothbrush, razor.

Things I wish I could take with me: boy & cat.

Things I'm not looking forward to upon moving: sleeping in my old bed. 3 Dogs barking. Being so far away from Seattle. Still having to work & having to get up even earlier to do it. Missing said boy & said cat.

Things I'm looking forward to upon moving: sleeping in my old bedroom. Playing with 3 dogs. Home Internet Access. Spending time with my mom. Getting rid of more things, and thereby purging myself of my past. Riding my bicycle to the train. Reading on the train. Sleeping on the train. Being able to see friends that live in my home town that I never get to see now. The knowledge that it is temporary. The knowledge that it is an intercolary chapter bringing me ever closer to Boise and therefore my future. The fact that I was able to use the term intercolary which only ever makes me think of the hateful Grapes of Wrath and in effect the teacher who told me I should go into business because I am organized and assertive.

CLICK HERE FOR THE IRONY OF ALL IRONIES

Two Lonely Travellers

Every morning I get up, brush my teeth, put on my clothes, kiss my boyfriend goodbye, and walk to the bus stop. Most of the time there's a woman there. With her daughter.

The first time I saw her I thought she was familiar. I stared, probably in a way that made her uncomfortable, but I couldn't pin why I recognized her.

My first day in Greece I walked off the plane and onto a bus that was to take me to the ferry port in Athens. I met a woman who was also flying in from Seattle. She used to live in Greece. She knew her way around. She was waiting for the same ferry. I was 19 and she was older. In her late 20's. She walked with confidence and spoke to shop clerks and cafe servers in Greek. Yasu. Te Kaneis? Thelo Nescafe. But all of this was unfamiliar then. We spent less than a day together. A lot of it on the ferry. She got off an island before me.

Today, for the first time, I asked her. Have you ever been to Greece? She nearly fell over. Nearly dropped her daughter. Yes. She said yes. Then she remembered me too.

listen to me read

Avalanche Poem at I-Outlaw alongside Charles Bernstein, Shanna Compton, and others...

alice blue six

...has arrived at last!

Tapes & Tapes & Tapes

I am, at this moment, listening to a cassette walkman. I am listening to a mix tape my friend Chelka, from freshman year of college, made for me. It has things like Weezer, Jets to Brazil, the Anniversary, Juliana Theory, Ani DiFranco, Nada Surf, Five for Fighting/Dashboard Confessional and Eliott Smith, among others.

I used to take this music very seriously. Man this music is funny. It makes me wanna dance, but silly. I miss mix tapes. I have an ipod that I almost never use. An ipod is the ultimate mix tape, but, somehow loses some of the flavor. That snowy ambiance. I also brought the mix tape my friend Amanda Rediske made me my freshman year in high school (well, technically junior high...). She made me a series of 3 'Amber's Crazy Mixes' mix tapes. They include things like David Bowie, Jimmy Buffet, Blondie, The Doobie Brothers, Alvin and the Chipmunks (singing their famous rendition of Michael's Beat It), among others.

The Mix Tape is a lost art. I used to spend days making a perfect mix tape for a friend. Days, making sure it included certain artists, certain songs, that there was good flow, and not too much air space at the end, not a second wasted. And I loved getting mix tapes. I mean, mix cds are good. They are. But they're so easy. Hop on I Tunes, drag and drop. You can test every variation before burning it. No need for planning. You can make a perfect mix. But man, a good mix tape is special. A rare breed. A labor of love.

The internet, computers. Everything is so easily accessible. Information. Publishing, to the point where it seems there's no need to be selective, to where you can be criticized for being selective b/c it's so easy to put something out there then why not put it all out there? Music, writing, movies...whatever. Art becomes populous.

I should have been born earlier, I think. I'm coming to that conclusion. I listen to older music now, when I bother listening to music, things like Otis Redding and Al Green. Led Zeppelin and Jefferson Airplane (not starship...) As new as I get these days is Prince.

Packing up my cds yesterday for the move I was pulling out stuff I hadn't listened to for years. I havent' bought a cd in probably a year (the last new cd being Fiona Apple's Extraordinary Machine, which was fantastic). I was pulling out stuff that brought me to other times, Modest Mouse, Iron & Wine, Death Cab for Cutie, Jude, and all of them related to a specific time. I don't think I can listen to these albums for anything more than reminiscing, they're so specific. Modest Mouse relates to a specific summer. To Fish Tale brewery, and bbqs, and playing leap frog on the steps outside a bank on a rainy day: a certain group of people. Iron & Wine came from my old roomie Vance. Death Cab was Eric. We saw them at Sasquatch together. Music seems to roll in phases and relate to specific memories.

I'm rambling...

Music makes everything roll out, come forward, want to be touched.

I missed certain songs and didn't know it. Maybe it was just the time.

Dreams & other missives

I dreamed about moving to Boise. In my dream I was going to look at a house that had a room available. An interview to see how I would fit. When I arrived, one of the people that already lived there was my ex-roomie Vance. This is what we said to each other, "So...you moved to Boise, huh?" and later, "How've you been?" Somebody I didn't know slept on a bed in the living room. It was warm and sunny and he had folded laundry spread over the mattress and brushed it aside to crawl under the covers. The kitchen was clean and there were stone tiles.



I've been hearing from a lot of old friends lately. It's been nice. Mostly. The people are people I want to see again and that makes it good. When I go home, to Puyallup, to visit my parents, I always look furtively around public places to make sure I don't see anybody I know. So that I can duck and run if I do. So I don't have to have one more meaningless, mindless conversation about people we used to know and what they're doing now. Can't we all just wait for the high school reunion? Vote on the msot successful. Feel like we didn't quite succeed, that we're not good enough. Try to shed that last 5 pounds before we face our past. Make sure our teeth our whiter and our job shinier and our spouses some embodiment of perfection. The internet is wierd, especially with things like myspace and facebook, etc. You can always spy on your friends and demons. You never really have to lose touch.

It's good and bad. I've reconnected with mixed results. My best from from kindergarten who I hadn't talked to since the fourth grade is quite suddenly a close friend. It was like meeting my puerto korican twin. One old friend invited me to brunch but never showed, me sitting in some skeezy diner sipping a bloody mary by myself, football and pull-tabs in the background. Mixed results. Sometimes you really do want to lose touch.

I was Lucy Liu's body-double.

COCONUT POWERED CARS!

Homework

To my faithful readers. I need saving. Work is dull and I am running out of ways to entertain myself. Everybody should send an email to nelson.amber@hotmail.com. In this email should be an interesting fact or something funny or a poem or short story. Some of it may even make it into this here blog. You could be straight famous.

Go. Now. Entertain.

Pretty!!!

I have discovered the joy of picture blogging. Pictures are fun. This is a supernova. The universe is pretty.

Are we dead yet?

My dream ride.

Funny Picture of Funny Man

Just found this picture. Makes me want to go home and watch Robin Williams: Live on Broadway. "I want to dress like a giant sperm. Shove an ice skate up my ass. And go balls first down an ice shute. Yes. That would be fun."

i'm getting free luggage! i'm getting free luggage!

it's good to have friends that can get you free stuff. too bad i don't travel so often.

Oh lord...

won't you buy me a mercedes benz. my friends all drive porsches, i must make amends. worked hard all my lifetime, no help from my friends. so lord, won't you buy me a mercedes benz.

school etc

I am almost registered for my classes. I'm very excited for two of them, nervous about one, and completely ambivalent about another.

I am going to shop for a bicycle on craigs list. I need a good bicycle for riding around town b/c I have decided to start riding a bicycle & limit my driving as much as possible. I want a basket on my bicycle. And maybe a horn & tassles. And little mirrors so I can see behind me. My bicycle will hopefully be brown. Or green.

May is a month of sadness. It will be sad and sad slowly.