Delay Delay

I wish that I had a picture to share, but I don’t.

I’m sitting in Belltown right now, on the 12th floor of an office building where I should be entering orders for my temp job, but the server has gone down and I can’t do much about it.  I’m catching up on some reading (Sir Oliver Lodge, I might be equally in love with you as with John Tyndall) and some letter writing, but I haven’t updated this in a long time, so why not use my time here.

The view from here is wonderful, and I really will bring my camera soon.  Monday it was dusk all day here, low clouds and mist, but the past two days have been bright and sunny.  Clear.  Which also translates to: cold.  This morning as I hurried down to the bus frost coated all the lawns and cars lining the street.  I think the temperature plunged below freezing last night, but that’s only a guess.

The mountains were in sharp relief, still catching the colors of sunrise, and I caught other people staring out of the bus windows with me.  There’s something about the beauty of this city that continues to captivate me. 

I’m trying to use my bus commute for more than just travel, and I’ve started to note things down without knowing how they will be used.  I have been so busy lately that I have forgotten the moments throughout the day where stillness enters.  Simply jotting down “sunlight on glass buildings, the glare against the damp road” might help.  I have to be unafraid of notating in cliché.  I can revise it later, but getting down the sketch is important. Even if I end up writing “sunset” “sunrise” and “beautiful” way too often.  In reading for book club I found I tend to notice specific categories of words/images for each author, and I have to learn to trust my own.

More about Sir Oliver Lodge (and Sir Walter Rayleigh, and Lord Kelvin, and and and) here.

The Thing About Seattle

I’m still in love with the city. And it (might be) starting to love me back. I’ve found my way into an office for two days of the week, and it’s banal and lovely.  Music on, computer on, no need to interact with humans. The commute is half the distance, the people (when I do talk to them) are friendly enough, and looking out the 12th floor windows is lovely. Better pictures will come from a better day, but for now, here is what I see in Phase 6 of Seattle: Office Temp Girl.

David: I have to say, enjoy your time right now. You’re lucky. Moving breakneck speed through school left me out of school and flailing, with out a college fund help me through the periods of questioning. Take photographs, travel, do all the things that your mind can soak in. And travel. Travel. Travel.  I love Seattle, but I would love nothing more than to be able to pick up and visit Europe for a bit, see Venice before it sinks, say hello to a dashing Scotsman living in England, wander through a castle… if you can, do it. Don’t let anything hold you back.

My City

I live in Seattle.

Although this is a statement I’ve made frequently, it is finally true.  I’ll be staying where I am, and I finally feel like I can call Seattle my home.  It only took 10 months, no big deal.

It’s funny how long everything seems to take, but how quickly time passes.  That I haven’t seen some of my dear friends in over a year seems impossible, yet that’s how it is.

But this is my city now.  The weather is starting to tip towards autumn and the grey skies are rolling back in.  I’ve lived a beautiful summer here, enjoyed the sunlight and the breezes, and now we’re headed back into darkness.  Last year I wouldn’t have imagined my life would be as it is now, but I’m truly happy.  I have loved and lost and hurt and been hurt.  I have struck out, made foolish choices, and I’m sure it’s not all over.  If everything actually stabilized, I’d be done.  I don’t want to be done.

This is my city.  Come visit.  I will show you the library, the sculpture park, the market.  We will go to the photo booth beneath the space needle, or in the bar that’s a bit of a walk from my house.  We will watch the fish swim in the locks or watch the water move in the locks, whichever happens to be happening at the time.  We will find live music and dance around and we will listen to poetry and drink wine and I will show you this place.  Come, come, come.

Wyoming

I forget how incredibly diverse landscape can be sometimes, and then I go somewhere new and am blown away.  I just got back from a trip to Laramie, Wyoming, where I was in one of my best friend’s weddings.  She grew up in Wyoming and I never really thought about what it looked like.  I think in my head it was just a version of where I was from, and I didn’t really process what it would actually be like.

Laramie has been having strange weather this summer; thunder showers once a week or so, and the land is green and colorful instead of the normal dry browns of August.  It has been a long time since I’ve seen a proper thunder shower and I’ve never seen lightning like in Wyoming.  The sky is massive- stretching just end to end forever, and streaks poured down into the ground.  I didn’t even see a strong storm, just a mild one moving through.

I don’t know that I could live in the west, but I sure could visit again.  I didn’t get to get much out of the town, but what I saw was amazing, and I’m still trying to process both the trip and the wedding.  Such a nice escape.

It’s going to be a hot night in the old town tonight

Imagine this with more sun and the land and water solid bodies.

While I know that it gets hot in other places, Seattle has been relatively mild.  Until now.  With heat in the mid to upper 90s I’m about ready to melt.  We’re keeping the windows closed througout the day and trying to keep the house cool, but there’s only so much to do.  I know it was hotter than this in California, and Jersey can get this toasty (and humid) as well, but for some reason it’s hard to keep in perspective.

Luckily, we have water here in the lovely city.  I went to Lake Washington with my housemate and his friends and we splashed around and lazed in the sun.  I don’t have any pictures of my own though, so the images are borrowed.  I think I’ll be crawling down to sleep in the basement tonight.  I just don’t function well in the heat; I’m trying to read Forrest Gander and feeling as though my brain is too small to take it in.

Weather like this reminds me of this past summer, working with my Mom at the Prop Shop.  We would have days of absolute grime and heat, moving the same couch three times over.  Luckily we worked with wonderful people, so it was bearable, but still exhausting.  I remember coming home from a day like that and almost without needing to talk deciding to stop in High Bridge, pick up gin and tonic water and making ourselves icy cold drinks with lots of lime.  I loved leaning against our kitchen chopping block, the sweating glass in my hand, relaxing with my mom.  My family means a lot to me, but I don’t tell them often enough; I just ramble about them to my friends.  I think it’s time I change that and become more active in my relationships.

First step: have my brother in town!  Mike comes in tomorrow, and I’m really excited about his visit.  I just hope the heat doesn’t take it out of me too badly.

Come Here!

I make no secret about trying to convince all of my friends to move out to Seattle.  I think it’s a lovely place, and although the days are getting shorter from here on out, the sun is still setting close to ten.  As the weather gets warmer I’m sure the twilight will be even better.

Still, I know most people won’t make it out here.  I’m realizing that my friends are putting down roots, and the dream of living in one neighborhood with everyone close by seems even more of an impossibility.  The world is so vast, and everyone has Lives happening Where they are.   Sometimes I miss when my world stretched a few blocks and I couldn’t imagine it larger.  The space between corner to corner; and all my friends lived within an easy bike ride that crossed no busy streets.

And then I talk to someone across the country, or across the ocean, and I’m glad everything has expanded.  I’m just not sure how to deal with it quite yet.

Goodbye Foxglove, I barely knew you.

Hit the point in spring where flowers begin to shift over to other flowers.  The irises are dying and curling, the tulips have long since lost their petals, and the poppies are starting to shed their showy colors.

There’s more, I’m sure.  The sun was nice today, but I spent most of it inside.  I love Seattle, I know I’ve said it, but I’m finding the city difficult at the moment, despite the beauty. Or because of it, and because of how much I love it.

The Days Off

This past weekend was beautiful, and quite a few Seattlites will be sporting pink faces thanks to the time they spent at Folklife.  I was able to go Saturday and Sunday night, and I feel for a few bands (everyone should love The Bad Mitten Orchestre) but work kept me inside most of the time.  So on my day off, of course I’m ready to walk outside and sit in the sun… but Seattle has other plans.

Despite the grey sky I walked over to Fremont, bought some fresh coffee beans, and bused it back home to turn my room into a cafe.  I love the pictures my sister keeps posting from her new local coffee shop, and I’m trying to turn my space into a more workable place.  So I made myself some coffee, used some of the home-whipped cream left over from Nan’s birthday and the lovely mug that Jessi sent me for Christmas.  I cleaned up my room, opened the windows and let the little bit of sun and the cool breeze in.

I love Seattle.  I think I’m mentioned that before.

Dace and I plan on making sushi tonight, with chalk drawing and bubbles in between.  So this isn’t a very articulate entry, meditating on anything beyond sun and joy and the little bits of things that make me happy.  Like toast made with good bread, warm coffee to drink and music I’m beginning to release myself into.

A lens too small

I took a walk this afternoon with my camera, intending to take pictures of Seattle in the spring, but in looking through what I found, it was all flowers.  I guess this is spring too, but it feels like they could be anywhere.  That isn’t how I feel about Seattle, but every time I wanted to take a picture I could only see the ugly bits that would appear in the frame- the telephone lines and the cars and the things that remind us we’re in a city.  I want to take a picture of downtown from the hill I walk down to the bus, but the glittering buildings look flat in pictures and the water of the lakes doesn’t shimmer in quite the right way. 

There is something so limiting about photography.  I think one of the reasons I tend to go towards abstract macro-lens images is because I don’t feel wide angle shots are ever wide enough.  I want the cold air, the shifting light, the clouds scudding across the horizon; all of it in a picture.  I want the contrast of spring-bright leaves catching sunlight against the grey about-to-rain sky, but I end up with one or the other most often.  

So believe me, this is a beautiful place.  Come visit and I will show you the things I see, but you’ll have to trust me.  Photography just isn’t doing it these days.

Return of the Rain

Morning arrived like a boat today.  By that I mean a gale storm.  By that I mean my windows were portholes and I could almost feel the house swaying.  I woke up sometime in the early hours to wind and pouring rain.  It’s been on and off all day and it feels stronger than most of the weather that comes through Seattle.  I don’t know why exactly- it’s been windy before, but it feels different somehow.

Maybe it’s wind and change and spring and all of it.  I’ve been in Seattle a little more than six months now.  David wrote about the Riverside grey, and it’s funny to be so grey here too, but so different.  I met someone on Thursday night who said I must have come from somewhere terrible to love Seattle so much.  He was shocked to find I spent time in Southern California, a place he must imagine is all palm trees, sunshine and blue skies.  He was from the Seattle area and went to school here for both his undergraduate and graduate degrees.  And yet he seems to hate Seattle.  So why not leave?

I met someone else on Sunday and it was refreshing to hear how much he loved visiting Seattle.  It’s a shame he was only visiting and was hopping back on a plane about a half hour after we chatted.  I would have loved to show him a bit more of the city and helped him to fall for this place as much as I have.  Do I bubble and effuse about Seattle enough?  Six months in, and the newplaceloveblur hasn’t worn off yet.  But it’s easy to pour my emotions into location.  If I couldn’t, why am I still here?