The Dykings

Ask yourself, “Would twelve-year-old me think my life is awesome?” the answer’s generally yes.

12:36 am • 16 March 2012 • 751 notes

I just want to point out that A) “It’s raining in Portland” is not newsworthy and B) This is creepy.

5:29 pm • 13 March 2012 • 1 note

Miss Peach Explains Promiscuity to a Toddler

Say this yellow square block is bored. Say she’s bored because she’s always been a yellow square block and has always been knocked down with other yellow square blocks. So one day she goes to the couch where she meets some blue rectangles. The idea is to make something she hasn’t seen fall down before. When she gets her hands on her first blue rectangle, she can’t keep from examining it. She examines many and figures she’ll never tire of it. One of the rectangles strikes her as unusually blue. To you and me it might not look that different from the other blue rectangles, but she likes it so much, as if it is far superior. It might as well be far superior. She enjoys this discovery. She wants to go further across the carpet. She wants another chance to make something superior just by liking it.

—Catie Rosemurgy

3:46 pm • 13 March 2012 • 1 note

kicking the sidekick

One of the first roles I learned to play was that of the sidekick. Maybe it was natural, being a little sister, but I quickly adapted it to other situations. I always had a best friend and to me they were always the star, and I was their wacky accomplice.

I think we’re always looking for stories that we can find ourselves in, and if you can’t find the stories you make them up. I don’t remember a time where I wasn’t writing stories or poems, wandering around with a notebook or a journal, pens tucked behind my ears. I’d create these elaborate mythologies with me and my friends as characters but I never made myself the main character. The earliest one I can remember I cast myself as Granny, age 94. (I was nine.) This happened over and over again — main character, secret princess on a fated journey to defeat evil; me, grubby magicky tomboy scene-stealer. Me, side character who falls in love with another side character (who happens to be a robot).

You can argue that plenty of myself got into the main characters, but my point is I never consciously or explicitly identified with them.

One day I realized I could be the hero of my own stories — and, if I treated my life like a text, I could be the hero of my own life, and I could decide what my quest could be. The problem with this is you no longer have the safety of the margins, the safety of dependence. There’s a whole bunch of unknown in front of you and you’re the only one who can write your way through it. You’re probably going to fail sometimes, and fail publicly. That’s part of the quest.

I say all this as if I’ve solved anything which I haven’t. I am insecure about my work and terrified of not being good enough and afraid of being a human being with faults and imperfect mental health and questionable hair and maybe this is going to be a solitary journey forever and maybe I am making all the mistakes and what if what if what if. Maybe.

I don’t know. If I believe in anything, I believe that the more conscious you are, the more interesting things can get. At least I got that going for me, which is nice.

7:30 pm • 12 March 2012 • 3 notes

“My personal goal here — apart from anything else that may happen — is to express myself as clearly and honestly as I can. So in a sense love is just like writing: living in such a heightened state that accuracy and awareness are vital. And of course this can extend to everything. This risk is that these feelings’ll be ridiculed or rejected, & I think I’m understanding risk for the first time: being fully prepared to lose and accept the consequences if you gamble.”

— Chris Kraus, I Love Dick, p. 130-131

10:10 pm • 11 March 2012 • 2 notes

lady? lady* jam

Are you a ladyish person who lives in PDX and plays an instrument? Let’s make a bunch of noise together.

ladyladyjam:

lady? lady* jam

is a weekly jam for rad folks in NE Portland staring up in April. It consists of people bringing over various instruments and making sweet, sweet music together. lady? lady* jam wants to create spaces for ladies* to express themselves creatively and to foster a supportive,…

1:53 pm • 5 March 2012 • 1 note

It’s so much easier to remember how much I love this city when the sun is out.

8:58 pm • 3 March 2012

“That’s a popular notion, you know, that it is exclusively suffering that produces good work, or insightful work. I don’t think that’s the case. I think in a certain sense it’s a trigger or a lever, but I think that good work is produced in spite of suffering, and as a response, as a victory over suffering.”

— leonard cohen, here (h/t psychotherapy)

(Source: isabelthespy)

7:33 pm • 22 February 2012 • 56 notes

Today is the first day of Lent.

“I’m formerly Catholic,” I’d say to my ex, and she’d say, “You’re still Catholic. Part of it always sticks with you.” Then I would insist that maybe I was raised that way but I was different now, I was very different, I had done a lot of spiritual work and cultural deconditioning and religious studies, YOU DON’T KNOW ME, OKAY! YOU DON’T KNOW MY LIIIIIIIFE. (Yes, it is hilarious to insist this to someone you’re in love with.) And she’d say, “Okay,” in the way you have to in order to stop someone from having an identity tantrum.