Adventure day

 Started:12/5/2023

Last week, I had the kind of day that I can only describe as a random adventure day. They don't happen often, and can't be planned or prepared for, but when they start to unfold, I must give in and let the rhythm of mystery and chaos take me, or else suffer a day of confusion and let-down.

I've learned over time that the more adventure and spontaneity is built into my day, the more memorable it will be and time seems to slow down more. When I get into too much of a routine, my days and weeks begin to blur and I can't remember what I've done or when things happened. If I do random shit (being random is def in for 2024) like follow a hunch or take a wrong exit on purpose, I always discover something new I never would've seen otherwise. Taking public transportation always seems to prime me for adventure, when I don't have a pressing timeline for what I need to do, getting on the bus or the train with a low-commitment destination in mind and seeing what happens is my favorite pastime.

This particular day was going to be a busy one that I needed to drive for, I could tell from my calendar line up when I looked at it that morning, my eyes adjusting to the bright white of my phone screen in my uber-dark basement/dungeon/bedroom/cave. First on the agenda was an 8am swim practice, this was Friday, and I had our mid-season meet that weekend. So this was my final chance to get in the water and warm up a bit before the competition the next two days. Our coach, Caitlin, prepared us really well for this meet, working us extremely hard in the pool and the gym for months, leading up to a week of easier practices to let our muscles recover so we could swim fast at George Fox. (NOTE FROM THE FUTURE: I did really good at this meet meow I was tapered so perfectly for it ugh)

The practice went well, I felt light and strong in the water, like a fancy race boat, all carbon fiber and details that have been gone over 1,000 times. I left the pool feeling refreshed as I always do, like my brain has been taken out and rinsed off and put back in my head. 

I went to class, it wasn't memorable. This was my outfit. I don't remember what was in that bag. 

Then, I took myself downtown to go to p:ear, a really cool community space for kids experiencing homelessness to do art and music, eat lunch and get warm. In one of my classes at LC, we did semester long projects in collaboration with p:ear, one group did an art project, one did a survey collecting data on what health services are accessed or needed most by the youth, and my group compiled a bunch of health and wellness resources in the greater Portland area and designed easy to read fliers that contained lots of information about how to access them. The adults who work there seem really solid and I want to get to know how they found themselves working here, and ask about what their professional paths looked like because I've recently been having epiphanies about how to intersect all my interests into one profession. Stay tuned, I'm still figuring it out (I will always be figuring it out). (ANOTHER NOTE FROM THE FUTURE: I am working with P:ear for my thesis project and for networking purposes and it's super dope).

As I was parking I mentally prepared myself to feel out of place, and nervous, and alone when I went inside. I thought about it, accepted that I would be going with the flow, and waltzed in. If put in this position, my younger self would have freaked out, going into this space without anyone by my side, not knowing what to expect and not knowing if they were even expecting me. But it worked out! I talked to Kanani, the woman who's leading the art project and worked on it with her for a while.

I did a puzzle with a little boy named Dasani (?), and his dad tricked me by pointing to the ground and helpfully letting me know I 'dropped my pocket.' Of course I looked down. And then proceeded to hear him try that line on almost everyone else in the room. It felt almost like an inauguration, our gullibility somehow uniting us. 

After I loitered there for a while, I made my way over to city hall because I thought Edie might be there. I was right! We cleaned up the wreck that the person who fucked with their setup the night before had left, and chatted. There was a Native protest happening at city hall too, I listened to a speaker read excerpts from a website called Challenging White Supremacy, I talked to them afterward and got the link so I could look at it more later. Jeff said thank you when I was leaving, I told Edie the story of when I ran into him by the pinball machines at My Father's Place, it was funny as hell and he seemed so shocked.

I called my dad on the drive to the Cupcake Girls tabling event, and kept him on the phone as I paid for parking (4.80$) and walked around the block, and, still on the phone, realized I was in fact at the right numerical address, on SE 13th street when I needed to be on NE 13th street. Such a rookie Portlander move, a bit embarrassing that my dad was my auditory witness to the whole thing.

My Parking Kitty app conveniently lacks a "refund" button, but does let you have two tabs open at a time, so when I got to the right location, running late at this point, I paid for two more hours of parking (another  4.80$) and found my way inside. I don't know what I was expecting, but it was not a sugaring and waxing studio. Simply (and cryptically) called The Portland Girl, it was a small studio used for facials and eyebrow treatments having a holiday party with snacks and arts vendors and Mariah Carey on the speakers. There was a table with information about another local nonprofit spread out, and my boss that I was supposed to be meeting there was nowhere to be found.

I made a chai latte with the keurig in the esthetician break room, and read my Sherman Alexie book in the front lobby, and waited. I sat in a green velvet shell-shaped chair, and read prose that transported me and sipped my scalding beverage. One of my favorite lines went like this hem hem: "Late one day James and I watch the sun fly across the sky like a basketball on fire and it falls down completely and lands in Benjamin Lake with a splash and shakes the ground and even wakes up Lester Falls-Apart who thought it was his father come back to slap his face again. Summer coming like a car from down the highway." Just gorgeous words strung together in the perfect way.

After a while, I realized I should check my email and see what was going on and as it turns out, my boss had emailed me like 6 hours earlier telling me they wouldn't be at the event but was sending Alyssa instead and that they thought I could handle tabling alone anyway and I was like ok chill and kept up my reading and sipping, feeling silly in my baggy jeans and skating tee in the hyper-feminine salon but leaning into the adventure of the day and just rolling with it. 

Then, the time Alyssa was supposed to show face came and went and I was like hmmm perhaps this chaotic and fun day is less chill now, but I emailed her and got no response and even tried calling her google number in her email signature and got her cheeky voicemail. I read another chapter of beloved Alexie, talked to a couple of people about The Cupcake Girls, and then overheard the manager letting a guest know that because it was their holiday party, they were offering free beauty treatments. My little ears perked up and I scurried over. The day was going so random, a free eyebrow sugaring session was perfectly insane and unexpected, such a curveball out of left field that it was full circle and felt normal. 

As I lay on the bed with hot sugar goo on my eye region, I chatted up my brow sculptors and learned that one was a long-time resident of Chicago before making the move to Portland and the other was a Portland native (or essentially one) and had done a lot of event and fundraising stuff in the past! Ha! How perfect. They had also started a Portland pirate larping group? Or something like that. A very Portlandia conversation, I felt like I was networking and also like I was meeting an elusive Portland queer elder who hadn't moved away when things started to get expensive and more ~normal~ #makeportlandweirdagain. 

When one of my brows had been snatched and my waxer was starting on my Mr. Right, I heard Alyssa's voice in the main area of the salon getting acquainted with everyone. Too bad I was super busy doing my unpaid work and getting my brows done! I eventually made my way to the front where I was supposed to be stationed and got to chatting with the people at the event, spreading the good word about the Cupcake Girls. I also got to know someone who was tabling for Rose Haven, another org in the city. They were super sweet and cool, and many months later when my dad was visiting me in January, I saw them walking down the street. I didn't say anything, but I felt super Portlandish and established then. 

When the event was drawing to a close, I texted Qwynci because she lives near there, and she came by. We walked to a grocery store nearby because she needed toilet paper (or maybe paper towels... I don't know if it matters for story telling purposes..?) and we chatted and goofed around. Then, I drove her to her house, and we talked shit for a while in the car (one of my favorite locations to talk, ever).

I then realized I was running late to a swim event, so I peeled out of there with the sound of burning rubber (jk I peeled off responsibly and safely) and then I was on my way to my next event of the day. 

All in all, I have found that these kinds of days mentally stimulate me, but sometimes it's really just too much. When I get home after having a lot of days like this in a row, I lay on my bed, unmoving except for a single finger scrolling Instagram. I'm like a zombie or a husk. I need to learn how to balance, and how to not get to the point of exhaustion. And wear my gold puffer and look good doing it. Hah! So much to do! So little time!!!

Finished: 3/5/2024

I take so long to write these but I'm glad they get written. Sometimes it takes a while to find the statue in the marble and get it out. 

XO Kate

Auditory Tastebuds

2/25/24 Law Library Overlooking The Forest

 I remember a time when listening to Sleigh Bells was too much for me. Their sound was too harsh, the vocals too fried, I didn't find it physically comfortable to listen to. It was overstimulating and I wanted to like it on some level but I couldn't do it. On a whim, I qued up their 2010 album Treats while doing homework and I am blown away by how good it sounds, I can't stay still in this armchair while I type. The sound is no longer too much, it is just enough and I love it. My body is leaning into the chaos and the frayed audio, I want to be submerged in the sound. I recently made a joking comment to a friend in my car as we listened to my current playlist "Ello" that my current music taste prefers songs that sound like they've been microwaved.

I like thinking about a musical pallet changing over time, like how little kids grow out of certain tastes and how wine isn't supposed to taste good until you're older, how adults can't stomach too much sugar and kids can't get enough. My musical appetite has shifted so much, seemingly guided by my feelings at the time, by my musical stomach (would that be my brain .. idk) 

Music often gives me physical reactions. It's not uncommon to be driving with my songs on shuffle and all of a sudden I have full-body goosebumps, or I get a lump in my throat, flooded with emotion and feeling moved by the lyrics or the sound or the thing as a whole. Some songs just make me so aware of being alive. It's good and bad, it helps me see the beauty when I haven't been, or reminds me that others have felt as shitty as I feel. 

Lean into Life by Petey literally always almost moves me to tears. Old Bone by Wet, the Jim-E Stack remix makes me feel like a woman in a cosplay way and a real way, and connected to women all around me. 400 Lux by Lorde, I don't even know what to say about this one, except if you know you know. thicc by Shygirl makes me feel like this little guy 

 

Speaking of thicc, the EP it's on, Club Shy, is so so good and everyone needs to listen to it. I really hope it gets played at the Charli XCX night I'm going to in late March, the club it's at said they'll be throwing, and I quote, "A dance party exploring the music of Charli XCX, her collaborators, producers, and related artists, as well as the hyperpop, PC Music and experimental avant garde dance / pop realms. (Think artists like Shygirl, A.G. Cook, Caroline Poloachek, Kero Kero Bonito, Lady Gaga, Sophie, Doss, Christine and the Queens, Rina Sawayama, Arca, Danny L Harle, Planet 1999, CouCou Chloe, Carly Rae Jepsen, Kelela, FKA Twigs and more!) Come to this party and we’ll love u forever (don’t make us beg for u)"

LIKE COME ONNN this shit was made for me. Also whichever gay intern suggested this event is a hero deserving of a Purple Heart. Out of that whole list of singers, the only ones I don't know of or listen to are Kero Kero Bonito, Doss, and Danny L Harle so I'll be studying up ahead of time. I am literallllly so excited. I threw a Charli x Troye party in my garage in December and it was such fun, I can't wait to experience that kind of energy in an established location. 

I am going to another concert soon, I'll be seeing Donna Missal (eeeeeek!!!) on March 13, and I'm going by myself, and I'm really excited. The other concert I've been to by myself was Grace Ives, last year. I was scared to go alone because it was 21+ and I was using my fake at the time, I hadn't bought a ticket when they went on sale because of that, but day of I saw that there were still tickets available, and that the price had dropped a ton and it felt like a sign. So I peeled myself out of bed and drove myself to the Doug Fir Lounge and walked in the second she started playing. It was so good. I could do whatever I wanted, I danced with reckless abandon and it was so amazing. 

I hope the Donna Missal show will be similar, I became obsessed with her back in high school, I saw her open for King Princess (hah!!) in San Francisco with my friend Eden and she was so captivating and way better than KP lmfao. And then we went again a while later when she was back in the city and was upset because her show was 21+ so she put on a special show for her 21- fans it was in a recording studio that was special to her and we sat on the floor and she sang to us it was honestly the gayest I've ever felt it was like me and Eden and 10 other girls it was so insane and one of the cooler experiences I've had. I'll be shaving my whole body for that concert... just in case...

Comment an artist that makes you didn't used to like, but grew on you, and I'll listen to them and tell you what I think >.<

xo 

KATE

Phoenix airport induced nostalgia

 11/23/23 

It's thanksgiving, it's a Thursday. I'm in the bedroom in my grandma's house that she's lived in since 1969 and that I've slept in countless times since 2002. My twin bed (it's not mine but I like to pretend) used to feel spacious and now my feet hang over the edge (I don't mind).

My grandma's house

As I stepped off the plane, I was absorbed into the micro climate that is the Phoenix airport. Stale and sweet, soft and sweaty, an infinity loop of air conditioner circulated breeze. It was so familiar, like slipping into a shirt you once adored and somehow it still fits.

I walked brainlessly, knees popping and muscles crackling, not looking at signs but letting myself fall into the current composed of other travelers, their bags, their children, their dogs in those carry on cages. My feet, now homing pigeons, directions embedded in their dna, guiding me down never ending halls, so straight and long and lined by rows of rectangular windows tinted to ward off the desert sun. The walkways mimic the highways in Arizona, built noble, wide and never ending, their walls converge in the impossible distance and disappear into pin pricks, a trick of the eye I learned in a drawing art class once, armed with a pencil and a ruler and empowered to create an airport terminal or never ending road. 

One robotic step in front of the next, looking out at the red brown mountains past the taxiing planes, all sharp edges and crevices, pushing up and out against flat, wide, beautiful blue dry sky. Wispy white clouds stretched across the two dimensional blue expanse like sheeps wool passed through the detangling brush enough times to start making sense of the knots but not enough that the fibers have let go of one another completely. 

Beloved orange tree, partially withered from
record breaking heat last summer 

Though I haven't been here in years, my memories were flooding back and collaging, overlaying atop one another and pulling me from the past to the present and back again. When I was on the train to the airport in Portland, I let my eyes fall into a hundred yard stare, glazing over, my vision sliding across the trees, houses, cars that we passed. If I pulled my focus back, I could look at my own reflection in the window. Relaxing again, eyes on the passing scene. Back and forth I went, using my eyes and neighboring facial muscles like the zoom and focus settings of a camera, weaving my two visions together. 

Walking onwards still, I pass by the benches my club swim team once sat on together, in matching outfits and exhausted from a weekend of competing, bags and backs pushed to the wall so we would take up as little space as possible at the outshoot of the TSA line. I wonder where my former teammates are now, I remember some of their names and next to nothing about where they ended up going after graduating from high school. My eyes and memories unfocus again as I trod, now I'm 5 years old and looking around at everyone taking their shoes off and computers out of their bags, marveling aloud at how cool it is that we all went for the same length of vacation, and how we're all going home on the same day too. The kind of little kid statement that makes my mom look down quizzically, not sure how to answer because of how ungrounded from reality my perception of reality actually is. I focus my eyes again, I know now that everyone here around me is coming and going to unique places, but I still think we are connected, are we are not bound together by any invisible strings? The idea is too much to bear.

My throat aches, my memories threaten to make my eyes spill over. I'm weaving through people standing and waiting for their traveler to come around the corner, to be reunited with them. Their blank eyes glide over me, searching for someone else, no one is here for me today. My grandma once waited for us here, standing still with hands clasped and her usual soft smile, a balloon for me and my sister in tow. We would rush to her, tumble into her arms. "Hello my dears" she would say, giving us our balloon strings, leading us to her car in the parking structure that's shaped like a giant spiral. Counting circles on our way down, we'd drive out into the bright hot light of the Arizona sun, dusty red rocks and hills stretching around us, welcoming us back to the land of mauve and beige and cactus.

This time, I force my eyes back to the present, and head to the pick up area, an adult all alone. I wait for half an hour, watching in on little glimpses of people's lives. Reunion smiles, hugs, "How was the flight?"s and "Good to see you!"s. A car pulls up, it's my Uncle Rob and my Grandma Jo. I load my things in and we're off, out into that sun. There's something about the roads here that feel so familiar and right. Wide, proud, unhurried and straight, they guide us through the desert in a sensical way. The drivers are red hot and impatient, they don't take time to savor or appreciate the pavement they roar across like I do from my backseat vantage point. Rushing and weaving like a sun devil himself is biting at their tires, I let my eyes gloss over and watch the brick patterns in the highway walls change. 

One exit ramp off one of the many sprawling interstates by my grandma's house looks like it goes straight up into the sky. It's like driving off the upturned edge at the bottom of a giant hillside slip and slide, sloping and dramatic, pulling driver and machine up into that flat blue expanse that wraps over the entirety of the world here. Eyes straining through the windshield, it's like looking up at the sky in the Truman show, or like being inside a desert themed snow globe that looks as though it has edges that make contact with the red dirt somewhere, always a bit out of sight, like a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. At the last minute, the heaven bound offramp veers left and you let out the breath you didn't realize you were holding, back to reality and merging and no longer wondering if your car will become airborne.

Me and Uncle Rob took that off ramp on the way to my cousin's house on Saturday. We talked about music we like and I told him too much about my relationship. When we got there he dropped me off and then I watched Home Alone and a Christmas episode of Jessie and a Christmas episode of Glee and then a regular episode of Glee. My cousins had never seen Glee, I told them it was inappropriate for kids but they should be fine, to show them that I don't think of them a little kids (I secretly still do, but won't let them know that).

Sarah and her boyfriend Ranger picked me up later, with plans of digging in the dirt by the train tracks (actually, really, awesome right?). He drove like he was playing GTA, the lines didn't mean much to him evidently. I did deep breathing and reminded myself to stay on his good side because he had the weed, and I intended to smoke it. Ranger, and the rest of the men in Arizona, seem to lose their sense of self preservation once behind the wheel, the state has a collective habit of running red lights, and not wearing a helmet on their motorcycles. My desire to stay alive, however, is fully intact and was screaming at me, I was holding on to that little panic handle moms hold on to when their kid learns to drive in a flagrant show of fear of bodily harm. 

Some of my rock stacks

Anyway, finally, we arrived to the tracks in one piece and Sarah took a shallow black plastic soup ladle (you know the kind) out of her pocket to begin digging. It was for an art project, she found semi soft dirt after testing various areas and after I had given her an unhelpful tip to "Look for wet dirt," to which she replied, "There's no wet soil here anywhere, Kate," to which I replied "Oh, right," (I should've known). 

She drew large humanoid figures with waving arms and legs, outstretched limbs in motion like angels taking off or gently settling down again. I made rock stacks typically created by hikers who are lost and set up her phone in different prime time lapse angles (angel angles angel angles). Ranger did a spray paint thing on a wall nearby. He used gold, and light blue I think. It was dark, it could've been dark blue, I was none the wiser.

Writing this now, back in the infamous and secularly biblical Phoenix airport, I can still smell that fresh golden paint. Which is a great segue to the GIANT GOLD PUFFER JACKET I got at Buffalo exchange on Friday, I talked Sarah and Megan through my tried and true practice of manifesting exactly what you're in search of before even setting foot inside any kind of thrifting establishment. My speech went something like: "It is a cornucopia of opportunity in there and anyone scrounging for something good will quickly get lost or misled if they don't have a clear plan and vision of their ideal loot in mind." They kind of nodded politely and that was good enough for me.

My GOLD PUFFER JACKET

On this particular venture into the land o thrift, I was in need of some black boots for going out in Berlin, a warm jacket of some sort, some going out tops and other rave-esque items. Lo and behold, I found some good tops, a GOLD PUFFER JACKET, and a giant selection of black boots that were in my size. It was like something out of a movie, the collection of treasures I came away with. 

Jaw agape and shaking from the sheer power of my manifesting prowess, I looked at the rack of boots (all in my size??) that represented one of each of the various styles of boots that I had been looking at online (read that again!), laid out in front of me, tangible and materialized from the online sphere, for cheap cheap prices. I walked away with a pair of somewhat trendy (for a an anti-trend snob me, a big deal) black calf high moto boots, and waltzed out of their like the world was my oyster. 

Head inflated beyond belief from my scores in the Buffalo, we walked (I floated) across the street to buy mini cookies and an assortment of olives and a box of meat from the Whole Foods hot lunch bar and headed back to Sarah's place to smoke weed and watch Rick and Morty (duhhhh!) Ranger let me borrow bright green gel polish, the likes of which I have in my personal collection at home. 

As I'm writing this, back in the Phoenix airport, gate D3 to be precise, I have my eyes on a fellow traveler using the same iphone charger I have in my backpack at my feet, a standard white block with a lime green cord. Twin cords, matching with my nails. It's my favorite color right now, quintessential lime green that has come to mean "GO" in our society. While lifting weights at the LA fitness this morning I saw a geriatric man wearing the dopest bright lime green Beats headphones, I immediately looked them up on electronic bay (eBay) and will be buying. 

The Phoenix airport is the gateway to my favorite place to visit; grandma's house, desert air, loved ones, evil driving habits, swim meets, and the Tempe Buffalo Exchange. 

xo, kate