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2001-03-21 || 08:39 a.m. || house in olympia || we stayed in a friend of a friend's house in olympia. it was surrounded by weeds and butterflies and the most beautiful constellations at night. the van was parked on the street and for some reason it was very important to unload everything in the middle of the night: drum set. guitar cases. becca's bass. suitcases full of casios. our backpacks and treasures. with each trip to and from the van we would lose someone to the music playing in the bedroom of the basement or the roommates upstairs or the clusters of crab grass in the backyard that were perfect to sit on while smoking, to the point where it was just me and maybe m, cursing the others and sitting in the bed of the van, listening to the street at night. there was a funny feeling to the house. the boy we knew living there had grown up in it. there were marks on the kitchen door leading to the basement stairs recording the boy's and his brother's growth. s, age 5. age 8. age 12. s, age 18, with big shoes on. we all stood and looked at it, spoke of it in whispers. there was a ghostly feeling to it, as if we had all stumbled into his memories, leaving oily fingerprints in the dust on the boxes perched in the kitchen and living room, in the basement bedroom, on the patio in the backyard. the boy's mother had recently died. his father had moved out of the house, leaving the boy to get roommates and set up camp around all of the boxes full of his parents' things. we stayed in his parents' bedroom in the basement. o, m, and i on the waterbed the first night. j and a on the make-out cot, b on the floor. surrounded by boxes and boxes. crates of records. laundry and papers and ghostly evidence that this still was his parents' room. despite our efforts to scare away the ghosts with gang of four and the white stripes and the clinking of boone's farm bottles and laughter. card games. i couldn't sleep the entire time i was there, although that could have been because of the three-to-a-waterbed situation and o's infamous snoring and the muffled love sounds coming from the cot. but much of it was the ghosts. looking up at the ceiling and seeing exactly what they used to see. lying in their bed. one night i snuck outside in my pajamas and a blanket, careful not to lock myself out, and sat in the very middle of the backyard. stars in olympia are beautiful, really. and there are so many it looks milky in places. i held onto my knees and smoked a stolen cigarette and tried to imagine the boy and his brother playing in that backyard as kids, tying the exact date to one of the hash marks on the door frame upstairs in the kitchen, lovingly measured out by their mother. guestbook || notes || archives || profile || photos || d-land |