Read me the letter, baby. Do not leave out the words.

"Stories and cigarettes ruined lives of lesser girls, and I wanna know, 'cause I want you to know."

Here I sit in a Tully's coffeehouse in downtown Seattle, waiting for the Rem Koolhaas-designed library (look at the pretty picture) to open and then take a jaunt over to Eastlake to get my two laptops restored to their former glory. I'm hard as hell on these poor machines; I've got to replace a keyboard and CD/DVD drive in one and an LCD screen in another. Here's a tip from the clumsy to the clumsy: Don't set your laptop in a perilous place, and if you do and it falls? Don't grab desperately at the monitor. It will seriously screw up your day.

Since March, when I moved out of my flat, I've been hanging in places remote to the city--even when I was less than three miles from the downtown core, I pretty much stayed in the attic bedroom my friend let me occupy for the six weeks before I moved in with my parents. I was tired of the city and now I am remembering why. There are two sort of business-y, hipster-cool guys with product-smeared hair sitting over at the next table and they are talking loudly about their condos, women, cars, and how young people say they look. I'm a little nauseated by the whole thing.

Am I intolerant? Many would say yes. But those creeps don't know what they're talking about! (God, now I know his name is Joey, because he's recounting a story about how he was trying to leave a club but nobody would let him go: "C'mon, Joey! Get back here, Joey! There isn't a party without you, Joey!") I suspect that my basic problem is that I really don't like people. They annoy me. I wish they would stop talking. Their coffee orders are astoundingly self-centered. "Yes, Give me a vanilla soy no-fat double half-decaf mocha with whip, not too hot." They pay for the complicated beverage with a credit card, which doesn't go through the first two times. They get a cell phone call while waiting to sign the receipt. They talk loudly and laugh boisterously at banal corporate jokes.

Let me be a bit clearer: I hate people. Well, except for you and you and you and you--over there, in the Levis and black t-shirt, making me a drip coffee with cream. And my family. I don't hate them, I just prefer to keep our time together short and sweet. The drive-by get-together, bookended with important errands that cannot wait.

I was born in Seattle, and I know the city like the back of my hand. I drove a cab here and lived in loads of neighborhoods. Plus, I've been fired from so many temporary jobs in the last couple of years that I could sit here looking out the window and say, "Yeah, I worked in that building, and that one over there, and the Rainier Tower and to the west, I worked in the WaMu tower and then up 4th where I worked at City Hall..." and so on and so forth until the person across the table from me lapses into a coma.

I love this city, but mostly I love this city 10-15 years ago. I loved Ernie Steele's dive bar all smoky and boozy with ripped red vinyl booths, half-baked waitresses and awesome greasy breakfasts. I loved Steve's Grill, on 5th Avenue, open all night--the nice Greek lady would recommend a good meal for the middle of the night. Au revoir to the Doghouse with its grouchy-ass middle-aged waitresses and the guys from rock bands slumped in their seats, trying like they were avoiding the fans and paparazzi. I loved it when Linda's was the cool bar for beer and shooting stick. I miss Moe's. I don't like NuMo's. What this means: I also hate change, and I'm getting old.

I'm moving away from Seattle in two weeks. I'm taking a tiny cottage in a small town in Eastern Washington where the population is largely Republican and mostly in their late 40s. I will scare them with what I prefer to call my "quirkiness." I rode over there a couple of weeks ago, househunting with my mother, her friend--our real estate agent--and the friend/agent's husband. The agent is hard of hearing and she and my mom love to talk. Consequently, I sat in the front seat shouting, "She SAID..." for about nine hours on the hither and yon. Fortunately, her husband, Vernon, kept pretty much quiet, except when he was helping me to translate. Inevitably he got things wrong. I would shout "She SAID I wonder if it'll be raining over there" and the agent would ask "What did she say?" and he responded, "she says she wants to do some reading later on." Sort of like that game "telephone," only with old people.

One thing I noticed was that they had friends in common whose names were old-fashioned, like Muriel and Frank and Lucille and Myrna and Randy and Phyllis. From what I could make out, in between the shouting, Myrna has just gone through her fourth divorce, was now penniless because she let her last husband keep the house in his name, and is through with men for good this time! Frank is in a property dispute with his brother, Clayton, because of some double-dealing that I couldn't really follow since important details were left out, apparently because they had been discussed on a previous excruciating road trip. It seems Randy had a stroke and is on the mend but his daughter won't come visit him because of some indiscretion involving the daughter's babysitter, 15 years ago. Personally, I have never met anyone with these kind of soap opera highs and lows. My friends just bemoan that their mom won't accept their lesbian lover or Jubilat rejected their poetry submission yet again. Or maybe that they've been on the low-income housing waiting list for three effin years.

Hey? Have you ever been fired from a job because of frequent absences due to your nervous breakdown and been tempted to stroll into the office and say, "Hey, Lucy! How's the baby? It's been ages! Is Bill around? I'd love to touch base with him on where he is with his department! You guys looking to hire anyone?"

I have. But that's because of the nervous breakdown. One tends to think like that under certain conditions. Even so? I guess life isn't too bad if I can sit in a coffeehouse all morning, writing silly blog posts.

"It’s got me out of my head, and I don’t know what I came for..."

And nah, that's not me. It's Pete Yorn. He's tells it like it is. Or that's what I heard.

The Irish need their place, and I need a place. Everybody needs some place.

"But when the wind blows, you must schtup your anchor and go."

Haha. I hope schtup is right. Cos that's not me, that's Merz.

I got all busy today working on making my resume into something that someone might maybe notice. I also made an appointment to view a room in a shared housing situation. The Craig's List ad was quaint and the headline read "Antiquated Artist's Quarters." The rent was cheap. The fellow sounded nice, and when I described myself as a "writer," (a necessary evil in this case, as he was looking for artistes and such), he perked up.

So I worked my ass off on the resume, then took a shower and got a ride over to the neighborhood on my friend's way to her mom's joint. She asked if she could drop me at the Fremont Bridge to save time, and I said sure. But once I got about three feet onto the bridge, I remembered that I am scared crazy to walk on drawbridges. It didn't help that cycling commuters were ringing their bells behind me and expecting me to move to the side. I kept walking stiff-legged and hyperventilating. I'm always afraid I'm going to fall off bridges--the pull of the edge or something. So, when I got to the address and banged loudly on the door, I was still shook up. (The guy had instructed me to bang cos "people don't realize how deep the apartment is.")

He answered the door, loosely holding back a young black labrador whose face was pulling towards my crotch. I slipped into the door and held up my hands. I don't like when dogs jump on me. I find it inappropriate. Fortunately, he put the dog on the "sun porch"--meaning an enclosed area of clutter, wet magazines and suspect safety. I can't provide more details; I tend to let my eyes go all blurry when confronted with unpleasantness.

I knew immediately that there was no way. But even I have to show some stiff-lipped Scandinavian courtesy from time to time. The flat was really small and heated to about 85 degrees--he had an old furnace blaring in the corner. The man ("Roger") was wearing a short-sleeved top and his hair was both wispy and plastered at the same time. He had a thin frame. I think he might have been wearing women's jeans. I struggled to untangle my mp3 player and headphone cords from my bookbag strap so I could take off my coat. He made me stand for a few minutes too long. I mentioned some writer-y things and he said, "Oh, I think you might be interested in some of my dabblings..." My stomach got tight.

The common room was painted a kind of bright yellow. And there appeared to be "arty nudes" or else archive photos of maybe Lillian Gish on the walls. (Again with my self-imposed blurry vision.) We sat and talked for 15 minutes about his writing and so forth. He told me a story about his occasional fear of heights thing and I said, "it makes me nervous just hearing that." And he replied, "Yes, I know. I'm a writer. I have the power to use words to get the desired effect from my listeners. Fear, hope, warmth, nervousness... " and, erm, some other crap.

After what seemed like hours, he decided to show me around the "deep apartment." His room, which held a futon (and probably some leopard-print sheets and dirty underwear on the floor and then the second bedroom. It was completely gone to hell. "Roger" explained that he had an "interim boarder"--a woman who had rented the room sight unseen from New York--but that she was "OCD or something" and had to move hastily. She was staying currently with a friend, so he could probably arrange an early move-in for me. I had to laugh to myself at that one. Poor girl.

I won't even talk about what was passing as the bathroom.

When we were standing in the kitchen, he offered me some coffee and I asked for water for my scared-parched throat. He said some weird stuff about a story he's working on involving the ghosts of two English children and asked me some questions about the placement of quotation marks and British spelling vs. American. He had one burner of the gas stove going the whole time. I darted my eyes a lot. I was sweating.

As I was finally hoping to wind things up and get out of there, he said to me. "Well, there's one thing I always like to run past my roommates..." And then he muttered something and pointed to some photos on the refrigerator. I looked and he said, "This is me." He was pointing at some skinny pasty guy wearing no clothes. You know, like the emperor? Before I could react, he flashed a Polaroid and said, "This is my uninhibited former roommate." She was showing her breasts. And then he asked "How do you feel about a clothing optional living arrangement? Is it a deal breaker?" I said, "Yeah. That's a deal breaker." He asked, "Are you sure? I mean, have you ever... you know, considered it?" And I said, "Yeah, I'm sure, and I would have appreciated you mentioning this before I came all the way over here." He said he thought maybe once I saw the place, I might warm to it. He said, leaning casually against the refrigerator, "I am an artist's model, and I spend a lot of time at the beach. I'm not going to come home and dress up in a suit and tie if you know what I mean." I had no idea what he meant. I don't think I said anything. I'm hoping my mouth wasn't hanging open.

Next, he reached up to the top of the refrigerator, took down the brownest banana I have ever seen in my life, and unpeeled it. He said, while eating it, "I wish you would change your mind."I turned and pretty much bolted out of the kitchen, grabbed my stuff, and clawed at the door. He was all worried about the dog getting out. The dog was probably trying to escape, too.

It was raining and I was in a ridiculous spot for getting home without a car. I walked to the closest place with a phone, which luckily was a bar, then called a cab. I dunno. Alex once said that the universe knows I have a blog, and that is why it keeps offering up these opportunities. What a trade-off.

And yeah, I'm reporting him to CL. I think he should include that "optional" stuff up front.

Okay. I'm out, yo.

I hurt myself today, to see if I still feel. I focus on the pain:

"the only thing that's real."

Wow. I didn't know this song. Is it sick that I know exactly what this is about? (You probably think this song is about you, don't you?)

When I was growing up, my dad impossibly loved Johnny Cash, who I now love, myself. I'm kind of weird and old-fashioned, anyway. I loved Patsy Cline when I was, like, eight years old. So, way past and before it became fashionable, we used to drive in the car and listen to "A Boy Named Sue" and "Ring of Fire." And Merle Haggard, too. Prison ass bitches!

My dad is a good man. That photo over there of Johnny makes me think of him. He was all Elvis-y black-haired handsome as a young man. He really was. He's good looking now; just white-haired. Anyway. He hates and hated to be alone (which, incidentally, I live for). So, when I was growing up, he used to say "Hey! Do you want to go to the gas station with me?" He'd have to go there and get gas or something, I guess. Oddly, my mom was the opposite. Sometimes when I knew she was going to the mall, I would go out to the station wagon and hide. When she got to the mall and it was too late, I would jump up and say, "Hey!" Hahahaha. I am laughing now at my deviousness. I would usually get a little present as a reward. Weird.

By the way? Mr. Show is SO fucking funny. Honey? When you finally watch it? You will be all, gosh, she is so right. I really should listen to her more often!

And nah, that's not me. That's NIN via Johnny Cash.

Baby, if I could keep it together, don't you think I'd try?

"And maybe, if I could make something of this, why wouldn't I?"

When I was growing up, my mom used to make us weed her gardens. I hated it, mostly because I hated earthworms. My brother and sisters used to look for them, especially, and throw them on me. It was horrible. So, in the summer, I would try to wake up early and head to the city lake to spend the day in the water and the sun instead, avoiding my mom's crap chores and the worms. If you could get out of the house fast enough, she would be drinking Coca-Cola and smoking and talking on the telephone and would completely forget what she told you to do that day. She'd just wave with her cigarette hand as you left.

I was practically 30 when I found myself living in a garden apartment with a patch of dirt and a rose bush outside. What is crazy is that I turned into this sort of gardening fanatic. I didn't know I had it in me, and I didn't have that much earth to work with, but I spent a very little fortune making it rich with good soil and fertilizer (the beginning of my poop fetish?). I also rearranged my flowers constantly as if they were ... furniture. Not a nice thing. Poor flowers. Poor roots. They survived. (The kisses, maybe?) People would walk by and say "I love what you are doing! This is how it was in the 70s. It's so beautiful!" And it was. Every morning, I would wake up and open the door to see what the delphiniums had done while I slept. God, those flowers were so amazing -- the really delicate variation of colors, blue and violet and purple. Also, the poppies. And these crazy daisies. Little ones? I had a big tomato plant in a huge terra cotta pot. I love the smell of tomatoes ripening on a vine. And they taste so good just warm from sunlight like that. You know?

Here is where I failed as a gardener: I always wanted the flowers to be in that just exactly perfect state of perfection. I mean, there was the daily pleasure to be found in how things might be slightly different, but I still ... wanted them to stop and just be how they were at one particular moment. I guess that also explains me moving them around and such all the time. I was trying to get just the right arrangement. On an almost daily basis.

What I'm saying is, you're right. Like those flowers, I'm not containable. Leave me alone. Let me flower, burst, and fade away.

"Let's leave this thing for awhile... it's too far gone. Too far gone."

Nah, that's Sarah Harmer, not me.