traveling, upstate New York late summer 2010

naps and terrible coffee

I have been cranked out as a Seattle-ite at last,
I notice it most when I travel
it always takes getting away to see where you are
I see myself all the time now
call times and show times and opening nights and radio shows and new acts are nice, important,
exhale
it's just the more I do this life, live this life
I know I want more
that there is so much more, and the stress I have carried like a grey cartoon scribble above my head is useless

breathing plane air, ordering terrible 10 dollar room service coffee, having a busted pedicure, loosing my laminate, not knowing what town or hotel room I am in, tucking myself into a new bed of strait-jacket sheets every night, daytime wake-up calls to get my drag on.


Pregnant ladies in summer sandals at the airport in the south.
A full airplane applauding for the soldiers on board just home from war.
Children wearing matching shirts, a religious summer camp logo.
Grandparents standing as close as they can, watching their grandchildren go through security, they keep waving, the babies just learning to wave, they stand there forever.

Looking for gay people, lots of places I travel to I feel very alone.
People stare at me, its the pink hair, the pink tattoos, everyone assumes I am about 18 years old.

When I was a kid waitresses always asked if I wanted a kids menu, a booster seat, like my 2 younger sisters, 5  & 7 years younger than me. I would be pissed, almost 13, almost 15 years old and given three waxey crayons and a paper menu.

I see families in the airports, on the New Jersey shore, dining in Casino Buffets and it feels so out of reach.
It's usually a ginormous turn off, copious amounts of consumerism, small town America deep fried in it's own sloth and ignorance, usually I shudder and pray for the arty ones, the little queer kids and hope they are safe and find community and a place to breathe.
Other times I am jealous, of families.
How I feel unable and cut off from that life: gays over here. straights over there.
outcasts alone forever in bars, online dating and pride parades,
and the main stream- they are down in the books with legit lives and legit laws, they make babies and have showers- with stupid games and get pastel crap, have weddings and toast with engraved champagne glasses. Buy homes, train for marathons, go to the cabin for holiday, keep a spare key in a frog by the door.

I know that no one ever "gets it"
you do it till you die

try try
try
harder

a million bright lights and faces staring at me
 watching me hit with stage lights, inside music and behind the third wall

sweat running down my back, lips stuck to my teeth in an open smile shape

making culture I tell myself

I have millions of ideas to give birth to, that's what I began saying as a teenager
too much work to do in this life

This morning in the other hotel I watched some reality thing about a girl who didn't know she was pregnant till she was giving birth and saw the babies head and ear.

I am 27 now, there is a bunch of this world I have not yet explored.
I tend to feel super alone when I travel, but perhaps this is the state that is most realistic for my generation, my culture, demographic.
The modern way.  

Sometimes I see strangers and I want to just love them, I want to crawl inside their lives
 I want to roll around in it, I want my hair to smell like them.
I feel like there are millions of people living inside me, sleeping still,
I could start over and create a new life, scrap this project

get a new sketch book

try again

become a baby
learning how to wave.