Online Western Journal

[cenacle]

January 28, 2005
11:26 a.m.
Seattle, WA

in the old Spiritplants forums, i posted a series of online travel journals, which covered a period of several years...those journals now appear to be lost with the rest of the SPF archives...as a gesture to our new site here, i am going to inaugurate a new journal here...i haven't been traveling much, and so i'm turning the theme to living out on the american west coast...i wanted to live out here for many many years, coming originally from the other side of the continent...the first time i came out here to live, it didn't work out very well, but in april of last year, about when i turned 40, i came out again and so far doing better...i have a home with my girlfriend, and work, and we had the pleasure of going to burning man last august in nevada...but there's more here than i have yet found, what brought me here by years-long wishes, i don't know yet...i wish to know...

[cenacle]

February 2, 2005
12:15 p.m.
Seattle, WA

jobhunting is truly a frustrating affair...i've been bookselling for many months now, eager to move back into my field of work, editing, but though i send out many resumes every week i rarely get replies...i have the graduate degrees and the many years of work experience, but that only shows how hard it is to get good work no matter how qualified one is...i keep trying, no matter what, resume after resume...this note a complaint but also to reassure those trying too that it is not you, it is a fucked up economy where even good people wanting to do good work are frustrated and stuck...don't give up...a break will occur...the job i have now isn't much but it keeps me and my beloved going, as does her not-much job...don't give up...

[cenacle]

February 6, 2005
1:29 p.m.
Seattle, WA

KD is back at her family's home in the midwest, getting an operation on her knee, gone for about a week more...strange to suddenly be without her company, christmas was expected, this just came up...she was in an accident some years ago, and her knee has bothered her since...went out on her at work, we were all day at an emergency room, and now she's going to where she can get the operation done, covered by insurance...

one's shared space with someone else always bears the mark of that person...our home is pretty small, a studio they call it, heh...

so off into the city journeying to find what may be out there to be found...wondering if anything can ever be understood, if people are not only strangers to all the other creatures on the planet but as profoundly to each other...does shared culture and language mask a fundamental chasm that cannot be crossed? rhetorical junk...eh...

[cenacle]

February 15, 2005
4:35 p.m.
Seattle, WA

my beloved KD will be back tomorrow afternoon, her knee surgery went well, though she is in the pained time of recovery still...i will be glad to have her back, i've missed her very much...

today an email from the univ of washington regarding an editor's job there...so i dug up newspaper articles i wrote last year, and resume, and wrote out a cover letter, and mailing the whole thing today...keep knocking at the door til someone happens by to answer it...

also researching arts grants funding...must be some way to turn what i love to do, writing/edting, into full time paid work...the jobs just aren't out there too much, so one has to figure where the money is, and chase it...i'm going to do it straight up though...somewhere there is a situation just needing me, and i am trying to find it...

[cenacle]

February 24, 2005
11:26 p.m.
Seattle, WA

lately my memories turn more and more to my winter 2002-2003 living in a rooming house in portland, oregon, chasing after a romantic dream that came to little but pain and humility...yet my mind has opened me up to other things occurring in that time...how i'd finally moved out west as i'd dreamed of for years...how for awhile i was keeping my life afloat without any nearby support, living in a very pretty and interesting city, it was hard days, i spent most of them jobhunting or working low paying jobs...yet the night came and i was deep in books, music, my notebooks...something good going on then i've only now begun to consider since the pain of the romance has much faded...it's like i'm meeting myself then, the one i didn't know i was...strange, but inspiring in ways still mostly not understood...

[cenacle]

March 11, 2005
12:02 p.m.
Seattle, WA

i got a call the other night from a local tech college, needed a part time english instructor in a hurry, had one bail on them, so i gamely went the distance to see them, and was bandied about among oh-so-busy academics and paperwork...end result was a strange little call promising to keep my info on hand and that i should call them in may...yah...jobhunting in such a morally debilitating thing...then there is this meeting at the bookstore i work at...mandatory, but none of the bosses were saying what it was for...speculation among the grunts was it had to do with big construction across the street and our store shutting down as part of that...i'll know in about two hours...to go from feeling i was going to get a decent job to now i may not even have the crap one KD and i have been in part living on all these months...what a world...

[cenacle]

March 12, 2005
7:26 p.m.
Seattle, WA

the bookstore i work at, been at for nearly 10 months, is closing, not because it's not making great gobs of money but because the store rent is too high...everyone is losing his or her job...as of july...shock, rage, helplessness...nearing a day later and still not recovering or OK...four months to get a new job, but indeed that long and no longer...i've been laid off three times in the past four years...it never gets to be usual or fair, or even comprehensible...

[judih]

four months...hmmm, burning man time.
who knows what the universe has in store
don't despair.
forge on

[cenacle]

March 24, 2005
10:02 a.m.
Seattle, WA

a job i've been chasing all week still stands undecided, and i feel very frustrated about it...i want to write here floridly about it but more i just don't want to think about it at all...i hope that when the decision is made it will be based on most qualifications, but fear that the person chosen will most resemble the persons choosing...

some lesson in this but i don't know what it is...except maybe to keep one's groove calm until actual reason to be excited...i let myself get very very hopeful because i needed to believe that something good was about to happen...

back to the mines...i know not else to do...

[cenacle]

April 10, 2005
9:31 a.m.
Seattle, WA

the past few weeks have been fanatically devoted to jobhunting...and so near to success...but three possibilities fell through...frustrating beyond belief to have to sweet talk strangers who can, with a smile and a nod, decide yea come on or nay good luck with your future endeavors...and then get coffee and forget you exist...hard not to give into this frustration and yet i put things in perspective almost as a desperate act...some lack health, safe home, loved ones, any kind of job...someone is always suffering more right now...this brings comfort and anger that it should be so...what is it about humans that we can turn toward or away from our fellows with such seeming ease? i don't know...so, anyway, a few days of anger and feeling low and monday jump in again with the smile and the servitude...hire me, i'll lick it, hire me i'll kiss it, hire me, i'll make you feel good and tall and glad...just fucking hire me...

um, still angry, i suppose
 :twisted:

[cenacle]

April 23, 2005
Sureshot Cafe
University District
Seattle, WA

i scored work, scored work, scored work! doing editing, money at last something decent after a year of retail's slave pennies...it starts monday, and today is my last at bookstore...i am wearing my bright crimson leaved last day at bookstore shirt hehe...brand new...

feeling a year into being back here like it's working, like i'm doing right by KD and my art, like maybe i am not going to fuck it up this time...

seattle is cool if one is into the art thing and it starts to work...i was wondering if i would ever get that far...beginning to

[cenacle]

april 29, 2005
7:40 a.m.
seattle, washington

finishing up week a new job, editing work at a large website located in the Seattle area...it's going well, this dip back into the corporate world...people are polite if not friendly, and i'm more self-assured as a person to keep focussed on why i am there, which is not to make buddies, but to do the work and earn money toward what KD and i are wanting...art, more art, life of art, love made of art...

yesterday was my birthday, it was a good one from the beginning, i walked out of the bathroom and there was KD with this beautiful collage she had made for me, pictures of us and colored-in photos and free-drawn pics and sparkly bits...i was stunned, what a beautiful surprise...i was happy all day at work, happy that night as we sat at my favorite punk dive coffeehouse...love gestates happiness when it's good

how to bloom good fortune long and share it wide...such is the underlying task of these days...

[senorsalvia]

Great to hear all id lookin so bright Ray.....  Happy B-day BTW --senorsal

[judih]

Happy Yesterday Birthday, Ray.

i knew April 28th was famous in my memory.

 may the year be embarrassingly full of joy and good experience.

judih

[JRL]

Happy Birthday Ray, mine passed too with a bit of optimism shining through the clouds on a country going in the crapper.

Well nothing left to do but smoke smoke smile.

As always, I fiddle while Rome burns.

                              Your buddy,
                                   Joe

Thank you and leave it on