Nature vs. Nature

Winters in LA unravel in a surprised flux.  Big gray rain comes in windy, sharp flashes for an evening or a day, then the sun swoops up from the dregs and speaks its power for hours- till the sky dries from white to blue.  The other day, I came home from dinner to find a single layer of hail waiting for me atop of all raised surfaces- the hood of my neighbor’s tan SUV carpeted in cold, irregular pearls.  Made me think of January 12th, 2001, my 13th birthday & the day of my Bar Mitzvah, when it hailed like I hadn’t seen here before or since.  I remember the news reports that afternoon- camera crews at my middle school filming tiny, slumped, smiling attempts at hailmen, then filming dudes in the surrounding suburbs on snowboards getting yanked down the street by pick-up trucks from the end of a rope.
I wanted to believe it was a sign, an omen- my world telling of the heavy elements around me and above me coming to a strange fruition- but what isn’t nowadays?  I expect frogs next, just like in Magnolia.
Just like I expect edgy, caffeine addicted crows to start crowding trees and telephone wires outside of cafes until they just HAVE to have a sip.  Just like I expect the seasons to flip and mix like four eggs in a hamster ball.  Because, now, I don’t need any symbol-savvy atmospheric conditions.
The war is weird enough as it is.

What the Space Contains

Seattle is full of changes.  I woke up early this morning and took a bus out to Bellvue.  It was grey, but dry, when I left.  Glancing out of the window during my interview the skies were pouring buckets.  By the time I was finished only residual water blew around in the gusty air.  As I waited at the bus stop it began to hail.  When I got into the U District it was sunny and scrubbed clean.

I like that Seattle seems a place of fresh starts.  The rain comes and the winds blow and everything is washed clean.  Crossing over the lake today I watched the water; one side relatively calm, the other choppy and white-tipped waves.  There is probably a very good and sound scientific reason for this, something about the bridge and the air currents, but it seems fitting even without knowing how the disparity is caused.  Of course one side is violent, the other barely ruffled.  This place is nothing if not bi-polar.  It makes me think of something Nicelle told me– LA is a place people go when they’ve run out of options.  LA snags them before they reach the ocean.  It’s a last-chance place; make it here or you won’t make it.  Seattle doesn’t have the desperation of LA, but for me it feels similar.  I don’t feel as destitute as I would have in LA, surrounded by opulence and poverty, shimmering neon lights and broken glass, smog and jacaranda blossoms.  And I don’t feel hopeless here, but there there is something about the edge that seems similar.  One place is close to Mexico, one is close to Canada, and both are pushed far to the West Coast.  Seattle seems the safer place by far, and I am carving my niche here, slowly.  

A friend said it usually takes him at least two years to establish himself in a city.  When I groaned and begged him to take it back he did, but it’d been said and I suspect it’s truthful.  It will take a while.  There isn’t a way to skip past this, but already I’m getting better at figuring out what bus routes get me back and I’m getting comfortable walking into places on my own.  I’d love to be sharing this place with someone, but I think it’s a good thing I’m not.  It is so easy to triangulate my self-perception against those around me.  It’s one of the comments I received most about my thesis: this is a story about a narrator who isn’t actually there.  Everyone else is, but there is just a space where the body of the speaker actually resides.  An emptiness. 

I’m working on figuring out that what that space contains.  It isn’t a negative or empty place.  It’s just uncertain.  It was missing from my work because I didn’t know.  I still don’t, but I’m working on it.