2009 in Pictures
JANUARY
After eight months of relentless house-hunting, McCall and I find the perfect place to live in Northeast. We spend most days listening to records, smoking cloves, and making art in the freezing (but already beloved) living room. Baby Possum comes home to live with us. She's so tiny you can hold her in one hand.
FEBRUARY
I'm taking queer studies, human sexualities, and fiction writing this term. I discover it only takes ten to fifteen minutes to walk to Emerson house, so I find myself cruising up and down Alberta all the time. We meet Bren and Bryce! And start hanging out with them a lot.
MARCH
McCall, Emily, Liz and I take a road trip to San Francisco. It's always blunt o'clock. We get to know Ashley and Josh while playing Apples to Apples in sunny parks, taking Polaroids and near-tripping on medicinal brownies. We wander the city aimlessly and I vow to move there one of these days.
APRIL
McCall adopts Maude. It gets warm and we start going to the bluffs, sipping giant mimosas from mason jars. I watch people walk by on Alberta from Tiger and Brogan's front steps, rollies and tallboys in hand.
MAY
I do NOT remember this month. But I'm sure all I could think about was summer.
JUNE
Summer is so delicious, even if it isn't warm in June. Mid-month is the final f.e.y show in the forest, and one of the most memorable nights of the year. We perch around the giant pit carved into the earth, sharing this secret epic night with people who suddenly didn't feel like strangers anymore, watching musicians be real people and joke and tip over in their chairs drunk and dying of laughter, and strum out beautiful music, loud underneath so many layers of silent hanging moss and evergreen branches. My summertime insomnia starts. I'm pissed I can't go to Superfest because it's at Rotture, with all stairs.
JULY
Bonfires! Fireworks! Forty Fridays! Staying up exceedingly late all the time! On the fourth of July we watch the sky fill with explosions and roast marshmallows and sausages. We become fast friends with Alex and Mary, see Sonic Youth on the hottest, stickiest day of the year, run around the gayborhood drunk late at night, and I get a tattoo of my childhood cat, Peri. I fucking love July.
by mccall
AUGUST
This month I learn to really trust my friends and let them tie me to Emily's back in a sheet so I can get down the treacherous, rocky path to the river. The first time we go is probably the best day of the summer. The Washougal is perfect. It seems like I'm always eating burritos.
SEPTEMBER
Grace comes to visit for a couple weeks. We have cemetery picnics and go to the bluffs. Toward the end of the month, we drive down to San Francisco with Emily and Mo. We get to crash with Ashley again, and hang out with her and Josh around the Mission. McCall, Grace and I leave SF for LA to take Grace back to school. This entails an impossibly long drive, smoking weed with the owner of Interscope's superfine (but seveventeen-year-old) daughter, and a delirious drive up the winding mountains of Idyllwild. We hung out in San Francisco for another couple days before making the longest car ride back of all time, including an accidental six-hour detour winding around the death hills of the redwood forest. When we got back I saw CocoRosie for the first time, and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs for the second time. Then school started on the 29th.
by mccall
by montana
by grace
OCTOBER
I'm taking social psychology, queer literature, and hip-hop films. I realize how much I love whiskey. And Nutella. My rattail is really long. McCall and I go see Why? at the Wonder, which was so awesome, especially after being so into them all year. Persi dies, curled up on his favorite bench in the front yard. He lived a good seventeen years, and I'm sure he knows he was loved. On the 27th I turn 22. It's just a Tuesday. I skipped school and made art, had dinner with family, and then smoked blunts with McCall, Mo, Bren, and Bryce. My birthday wish last year came true: Here I am in my NE home, wood floors and all.
by mccall
NOVEMBER
School really sucks, especially when you wait until the end of the term to do *everything*. But, I make some pretty rad final projects and pull good grades. McCall and I get sucked into Dexter. I get into collaging again, and take my parents out for my Dad's birthday dinner. They have Thanksgiving at their house, which is nice, but it's sad being there and not seeing Persi.
DECEMBER
I get my first impulsive tattoo, a pencil on my forearm: Art in my bones. Christmas, though insane and over-the-top as ever, is nice. It's good to be reminded of the love my family has for me, because sometimes I forget.
2009, thanks for being SO much better than 2008. But I'm pretty sure 2010 will be even better.