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Vulnerability, Humility, & Spontaneity

It’s usually when I’m face down on my yoga mat, in the middle of a routine, when I start thinking about my own vulnerability.  This has been happening regularly at the same point almost every time now when I finish planking.  I bring myself down to the ground feeling that good soreness.  I take a moment to absorb this moment of frailty.  My cat is usually staring at me from the edge of the balcony.  I think he must be wondering why I am leaving myself so prone being bipedal and all.  Often at this time,  I see an ant moving frantically across the concrete right in front of my eyes.  There I am feeling vulnerable while this organism a minute fraction of my size just goes about its day like any other.  

We often do not like thinking about what makes us feel vulnerable.  I cringe when I think back about events in the past where I felt dumb or humiliated.  I think I have been more actively trying to negate that feeling lately.  I am not saying that I ignore or bury that feeling of humiliation.  I try to acknowledge it to let it go.  Humiliated.  Feeling humiliated.  Feeling your sense of humility.  Being humbled.  I think I connect these Hum- words in my head even though their meaning isn’t entirely similar.  These words are all certainly related.  How often does being humiliated contribute to our sense of humility?  I use LearnersDictionary.com in my class sometimes to find good working definitions of English words.  The website defines humility as, “the quality or state of not thinking you are better than other people.”  That is a feeling that a good humiliation can certainly provide.  It is certainly humbling.

We need reminders of our own humility now more than ever.  Our experiences are shared even in this time of isolation .  I feel my sense of humility is connected to my sense of vulnerability, but it often makes me feel too vulnerable to share anything about either of these senses with others.  Lately though, it’s a different story.  Here’s a story about a time where I was feeling most vulnerable:  

I was in New Orleans about a year and a half ago.  My wife went there for a conference.  I went just to simply experience New Orleans.  This was my second time in the city.  I spent the first two nights there going out to see some live music.  Before I left Seattle for Louisiana, a friend told me that the Jazz & Gumbo Festival would be happening while I was there.  I looked up the artist list beforehand and was immediately sold on attending.  The festival happened on Saturday which was the last full day of my wife’s conference.  We had not really spent much time in town together as she was attending the conference during the day while I was going out to shows at night.  We had decided to meet up at the festival but had not really set a time or location.

I got to the festival mid afternoon.  I found myself some gumbo and some drinks.  The lineup mainly consisted of local brass bands which I can never get enough of viewing live.  Brass bands are incredibly danceable and always mean happy good times for me.  The gumbo was delicious.  The beer was flowing.  The vibe was good.  I settled in.  I saw two or three bands before my wife started trying to get a hold of me.  I told her I was still at the festival.  I wanted to still meet up at Louis Armstrong Park where the concert would be going on past dinner time.  

Right near sunset, an artist named Shamarr Allen came on the stage.  He had played in the past with Rebirth Brass Band.  They are awesome.  His set was pretty fun.  My wife called me in the middle of the set.  She was having problems getting near the park in her Uber.  If you’ve ever tried to communicate with anyone by phone at a concert, you know it is difficult.  You cannot hear much, and it is hard to get somewhere at the venue where you can hear.  She told me she was still going to try to get closer to the park.  The set continued.  Shamarr played a song about the head coach of the New Orleans Saints and some dance move this coach had done after a game.  Then he played a song about doing your “weekend dance”.

My wife called me again.  I still could not hear her, but I could tell she was frustrated.  I started moving away from the concert and slalomed my way back from the stage.  I was focused on trying to hear what my wife was saying.  I covered my open ear with my hand as I continued to walk away before one spectator motioned for me to stop and pointed towards the stage.  He said something to me that I could not make out.  Eventually it became clear what a couple people were trying to tell me by this point:  Shamarr Allen had just called me out for being on my phone.  It didn’t matter the reason.  It didn’t matter that I was trying to bring another listener to his set.   

People started pushing me back towards the band where some kind of separation in the crowd had formed right in front of the stage.  I don’t remember when I hung up on my wife, but I definitely just ended the call abruptly as things turned upside down.  I would say there were at least 1,000 people present in the audience.  By the time I got up in front of the stage, I had gathered in my head what was about to occur.  Shamarr had already been calling people up to the front of the crowd before my phone call.  He wanted to see their “weekend dances.”  As a tall pale white guy who did not bring his weekend dance to town with him beforehand, I had no plan.  I got to the opening in the crowd.  At least one person in front of me had their phone trained on me.  The band counted me down.  “1…...2…….1….2...3.”

I want to point out at this time:  I was holding at least two empty beer cans in the pockets of my hoodie while fully immersed in my weekend dance.  I cannot tell you what moves I attempted or how I illustrated my idea of what a weekend dance is or should be.  I think I just did the same dance I always do when I am at a show.  Just a gentle groove except this time many eyes were on me.  Was there a spotlight on me during this?  How long did it last?  Too long.  Definitely too long.  Eventually the moment ended.  I was freed.  I think there was (pity) applause.  I finally made my escape away from near the stage.  I held onto this weird mixture of emotions which probably led to this embattled look upon my face at this point.  I was embarrassed.  I was frustrated because how in the fuck do you get yourself into a situation like this?  I remember some guy saying to me as I stopped by a tree in a daze, “You did it man, you did it,” which is the emotional support comment equivalent of the “Hang In There” cat motivational poster.  I immediately left the concert.  That was the end for me.  I needed to find my wife, and there was no way I was simply going to just go back to a chilled out mood at that show.  I left Armstrong Park and found myself back in the French Quarter.  I passed a couple heading the same way.  One of them went, “Hey, it’s the ‘weekend dance’ guy.”  I also need to point out that the person who told me to go to this festival WAS ALSO IN NEW ORLEANS THAT WEEKEND.  Fifteen minutes before I made my debut as a public rather than private dancer, I made eye contact with this friend from across the other side of the venue.  He told me later that he had video of my performance.  I searched YouTube after this concert.  I never found myself doing whatever it is that I did that evening in front of that stage.  Sequential moves in gentle variation under the bright lights were made.  I can’t verify anything more.       

Have you ever tried to convince your partner that you hung up on them because an artist on stage at a concert you were attending called you out for being on your phone?  No?  We went to dinner in the French Quarter where I tried to persuade my wife that I hung up on her because a musician on a stage thought I was being rude.  It took most of the night to come down from the whole thing.  The whole story was preposterous.  I had no way besides my own account to verify any of it had happened.  It was an incredibly embarrassing yet liberating thing to happen to me.  

I hate hate hate hate being the center of attention.  It makes me uncomfortable in almost every setting.  I like staying humble, and an event like what I just retold does not allow for that.  This story is where all those Hum- related words intersected for me.  As awkward as that moment was, I love telling this story, and thinking about it right now reminds me of something else that has been missing so much from life in this pandemic:  spontaneity.  There has been so little of it.  Spontaneity allows for these good and bad moments.  Whether you felt comfortable in those moments or not, they allowed for growth and change.  I miss being able to just redirect my day with one simple decision.  With things opening up and summer feeling suddenly upon us, that spontaneity has returned somewhat.  It is also about noticing the small amounts of spontaneity you can add to your day.  It’s about sometimes deciding to change your plans at the last minute.  It’s about taking your day in a different direction than what you had anticipated.  It’s about recognizing those small daily decisions you make which you didn’t know you would make right up until that very instant.  We still have plenty of those moments every day, and right now it might take a little more effort to realize we are having them.  I hope to never have to think about composing any type of weekend dance ever again.  I just want to let it happen if it is supposed to happen.   

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Looking Up At The Trees

I went hiking yesterday, and it was the most intense hike I have done since I was in New Zealand over 10 years ago.  I think I lost 5 pounds just completing this haul.  Mailbox Peak was 4000 feet of elevation gain that felt never ending. This led me to stop frequently.  The good thing about being out of shape is that it allows you to really stop and smell the figurative roses.  I zoned out into my surroundings over and over again on my way up the mountain.  I stopped at one point and looked off trail and uphill to see the perfect collection of trees that you see pictured below.  On both of my hikes in the past week, I have found myself conveniently stopped at points in the forest where the trees felt like they were all walking back towards a centered focal point in my visual frame.  As I was taking my picture, a fellow hiker passed.  He said, “What do you see?”  I said, “I just like the angle of the trees.”  I found it a bit strange, that in a forest surrounded by nothing but trees, I had to tell him I saw something more than that.  If you can’t see the forest for the trees.  I keep trying to see the forest just for that.

I had not been staring so intently at the trees until quite recently.  There was a time in my twenties when I really could lose myself in my surroundings like I am doing now.   I credit the book The Overstory by Richard Powers for reminding me to stop and absorb more around me after I read it earlier this year.  I would say I was maybe a third to half of the way up the mountain when I really started to get a cramp in my left glute.  It was hurting with every step.  I paused to stretch once or twice.  This helped somewhat.  I had never attempted to alleviate an injury by briefly meditating, but I tried, and it got better.  The sound of a stream, the birds chirping, a breeze in the trees, and everything else was silence around me.  Pure magic.  I can’t explain how that worked, and I don’t want to.  My cramp wasn’t completely alleviated the rest of the way, but it was manageable.

I hiked alone yesterday.  It has its advantages and disadvantages.  You can stop whenever you want.  You are alone with the trees, your thoughts, and the silence.  It can be very comforting.  Having come back down the mountain, I’m not sure how I persevered through some of that hike.  It made me think about how I could walk 11 miles yesterday, but I cannot mentally prepare myself for a mile long run.  Running around my neighborhood, knowing that home is just back down the road, just doesn’t put me in as tenacious a mindset as does hiking.  Committing to 4000 feet up a mountain is easier after driving to the mountain and seeing the trail rise before you.  You feel compelled to complete the mission.  

While so much about the calendar seems off right now, it was calming to see nature still moving right on track.  Snow was melting at the top of the mountain.  I followed and crossed flowing streams and creeks as I ascended.  Reminders of the current state of this country and the world never seemed far from my mind though.  The peace I felt while on the mountain frequently made me think about all the unrest we see around us right now.  At points during the hike, I could see the skyscrapers in Bellevue off in the distance and would think about the ongoing protests and riots there.  Pockets of peace amidst points of unrest all across this country.  If there is a more apt theme for 2020 so far, I haven’t met it.   

Interactions with fellow hikers on the trail in current times have become interesting.  There are not as many friendly greetings.  There’s less eye contact.  I am used to the fellow camaraderie felt by hikers.  I have found myself on my most recent trips to be more encouraging to other hikers on the trail than ever before.  When I was heading back down, I was trying to give people who were heading up more hope.  I was not always so vocal while on the trail in the past.  People need that encouragement now more than ever right now.  Hell, I needed that encouragement on the mountain.  Not everyone wants to even say hello on the trail, but I find even a simple, “Hi!” often comes with the added connotation of telling your fellow hiker, “Hey, we’re all in this together.”  You see people, like myself, wearing masks on the trail when passing others, and then you see people not wearing any PPE.  Some people without masks start turning away from you to the side of the trail as you pass them.  Are they looking away to be respectful?  Are they embarrassed?  Are they humoring you?  Not sure if it’s one or all of those reasons.  

The strangest moment of the hike occurred after I passed some hikers.  I had raised my mask and kept climbing up the mountain.  I started gasping again with the climb, and I remember thinking to myself, “I can’t breathe.”  I can’t breathe.  What a triggering thing to think right now this week, in this moment, as the country goes up in flames.  How lucky I was to be able to escape everything going on around us even for a day.  

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Stillness

This halting of everything has made me want to just zone out further and further week after week.  I’m seeing hummingbirds meeting in midair 20 feet above my head when I’m walking around my neighborhood.  The trees off my balcony stand more noble than ever.  Would I have noticed any of this as easily three months ago? 

I think many of us are reestablishing our connection with nature right now.  Many of us have the time to slow down.  I feel the stillness of things much more.  While my mind has been racing these past weeks, I keep looking to find that cerebral center of serenity.  We want to find that eternal calm, but life is often defined only by moments of pure calm.  I hiked the 3500 feet up Mt. Si yesterday with a friend.  It was a slog.  When I got to the summit of the mountain, I parked my ass on the top of a rock and stared out.  I was frazzled and unfocused on my surroundings.  I told my friend that I needed some time to just zone out to try and find some sort of meditative state.  I quieted down.  I looked out at Rainier and the other side of the valley.  I listened to the relative silence.  I tried to think about nothing for a moment before I found myself piping back up again to say something to my friend.  Then I would try to get myself to shut up again.  I’d repeat this cycle again and again trying to reestablish this center.  It was easier to find that calm when I was younger.  I think I was often quieter then or maybe my mind was just quieter.

Today I went to the water and stared out across the sound at the Olympics.  I tried to get into that same mode of stillness.  I came in and out of various strains of thought.  Reset the brain.  Close your eyes.  Feel your spine settle into the breathing as you focus.  Open your eyes.  Keep your eyes locked in on the Olympic peaks across the water.  Realize how the mountains have not changed.  Realize that you have changed but you have also stayed the same.  The water keeps moving.  We go to the water to find that tranquility and that center, but it keeps pushing and pulling.  It’s the rhythm of the water’s motion that makes us think we are looking at something so immobile.  The ocean moves back and forth just like our thoughts; always trying to find its own center.  For a moment, if you stay real still, the sea finds its place. 

Song Of The Moment:  Radiohead, “The Tourist”

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Stillness even if for a moment. https://www.instagram.com/p/CAuFCC_BV9o/?igshid=18dw5xqwtrym9

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Looking In The Mirror

I tend to ignore mirrors.  I usually give myself a very quick glance on my way to work or before I head out to make sure I look presentable, but often, I stare at the sink as I wash my hands.  The other day, I really gave myself a long, hard, look in the mirror.  It was just one of those moments where I felt I needed to size myself up.  A gut check.  A moment of feeling vulnerable. I lived in that moment and went on with my day.

I have not written in this blog for years.  I missed writing.  I missed trying to sum up my experiences.  I spent a good portion of today looking back on some old posts here.  Inside, I found this continuity in my train of thought that was so comforting.  All these posts were a time capsule to myself.  It felt very vain to sit here and read through, but at the same time, I needed that reassurance.  Things like looking in the mirror and sharing some of my thoughts here make me feel socially awkward.  I was speaking to someone recently who had mentioned their own personal moment of feeling socially awkward.  In turn, I said that I think that one of the keys of life is learning to live more and more with that awkwardness.  Maybe it’s just about completely trying to give up on feeling awkward.  Okay.  Let me share a story.  This is something I drafted on here seven years ago but never posted.  This personally happened to me.  This post was called Unrelenting Dog Poop:

Went to my first house party in a long time last week.  There are certain levels of awkwardness that I am used to having in these situations.  Not knowing that the theme of the party was Mix & Match so I spent time instead getting properly dressed beforehand was an accepted level of social faux pas.  Walking out of the room where everyone was playing Flip Cup because you don't like being peer pressured into drinking games is another one that is fine by me.  Not playing Flip Cup, and then walking on the back deck while looking up at the stars so you step in a relentless pile of dog poop is not an awkwardness allowed on my list.  Spending half an hour scrubbing out your shoe in someone's sink after having a couple drinks is not my idea of partying.  Watching people try and figure out how the dogs of the house tracked so much dog poop inside is kind of amusing even though you certainly feel responsible.  Inside, you feel like the dog poop.

 I had forgotten this happened.  Oh well and so what? Thankfully I read a lot more substantial posts than this one today that made me think about how I have grown but also how I have maintained my own personal consistency.  Personal growth can be awkward.  I need to write more again.

I’ll finish this post by sharing the ending of my initial post here on this blog back in 2011(I tried using the world solipsistic, cool!):

Whatever lies ahead, let this activity of writing at least help clear the uncharted path a step.  I want to commit to the idea that writing clarifies the thoughts running around in my head even if that only finds a solipsistic result.  If you are reading this, I hope it matters for something though I am not sure if it is supposed to create a stirring discussion in this day and age of bright and shiny social media with so many thoughts and so many opinions available.  Do the words matter?

I think words still matter.  Good night.

Album That Was On In The Background While I Wrote This Post:   Wilco, Sky Blue Sky

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A Memorial Day walk in the rain and the mist https://www.instagram.com/p/CAo0jepBgnh/?igshid=1hnwh5baej7p0

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The Alphabet Convention

A lot of ideas and random trains of thought go through my brain.  For some reason, this one has been running over and over in my head the past couple days.  I'm not even sure what prompted it to get in there, but something got me thinking about the alphabet.  This idea that the alphabet occurs in the order that it appears we naturally accept, but in fact, it is a random order that we have assigned.  Then I got to thinking, did they have some kind of alphabet convention in the Mediterranean thousands of years ago to decide the order of the letters?  I picture all these old Greek or Phoenician ships meeting at some remote neutral island to hammer this all out.  Was there a "P" guy who was really trying to fight for P to begin the alphabet, and he could just not understand why Alpha had any business being where it was?  I just started seeing a room full of 26 or more men just bitching and moaning about how their letter was the rightful beginner yet how in the fuck could any of them develop more of a case than, "Well, X is obviously where to begin"?  There's some F dude just sitting quietly in the corner muttering to himself, "Will that dickhead just shut up about Q already?"  Do you think there was that much conviction when they ordered up the alphabet, or was it just one guy who had all the power?  I looked this up a little online, and it doesn't seem like there is a clear answer.

I have no problem with the order of the alphabet, but it's interesting thinking about this specific structure we have placed on a seemingly random sequence.  We accept it as immutable truth.  A equates to first and Z comes last.  This may all sound like a pointless and stupid discussion, but for whatever reason, this has been stuck in my thoughts maybe just to amuse myself, maybe at the thought of how crazy it is that humanity was able to organize language, or maybe because it's important to question and reexamine things.

All I know is I kind of want to see guys in togas cursing at each other over the thought of putting M before L.  This would probably make a good Sesame Street sketch in the vein of Avenue Q as well.  It would be a proud moment in our pupeteered history.

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Nostalgia In The Future Tense

Once again, have not written on here in a long time.  I have wanted to many times, but something stopped me.  So many nights I came home so thrilled with the idea of writing out something that had just happened to me, but the urge left me for sleep, maybe apathy, or just trying to stay busy outside of my apartment.  Frustrating.  There were some awesome trips to Victoria and Vancouver in the middle there.

I had a realization yesterday.  I was on the bus on my way downtown.  I was trying to plan my night out after the Sounders match.  Some Mexican food and a movie sounded good, and part of me felt frustrated with how it was just going to be me trying to keep busy for another night of entertaining myself.  With no two days off in a row normally, and working half the weekend as it is, I have to go out when it accommodates my own schedule which leads to a lot of independent-minded activities.  It's frustrating sometimes.  What I liked though was at this point yesterday, I realized that some time in the future, I was going to look back at this period of my life through a very much rose-colored filter. 

I have been listening to this new Grizzly Bear album relatively non-stop.  The album begins with the song 'Sleeping Ute', and, like the rest of the album, it's awesome.  The song begins with the lyric, "I dreamed a long day just wandering free."  The line stood out to me.  I was envious of that freedom, but then I remembered yesterday that that is basically what I am living now.  I should be proud of this and energized by the lack of limitation in my life.  I can move in any direction at any time.  The move can be a short distance as in a bus ride to another part of the city or me just getting up and out of town for a couple days.  I will look back at this time when I ambled and wandered my way to some sort of heading and realize there was more sensibility in my self than I could have foreseen at the time.

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I dreamed a long day just wandering free.

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I Remember

I have been adding on to this over the past two weeks or so so the chronology is a little more extended than it appears here:

"Now say you were this lady's brother and you heard some guy put his hand down her pants.  Wouldn't you feel something needed to be done?"  This is a quote from my neighbor two mornings ago at about eight in the morning.  He has cornered me about this personal issue that has befallen him, but I basically asked to be cornered.  Well, I guess I did if asking why there was a police car in his driveway the night before would be asking for it.  I just wanted a heads up on what was going on in the neighborhood.  So let me define more clearly this man's analogy.  He was asking me to step into his shoes.  In this situation, he is the brother, but what is strange is the sister in this predicament is the woman he is seeing.  I had met her previously.  The first time I had seen her was when I was moving into my apartment.  She was for some reason desperately stumbling through his front door at 8 pm on a Sunday.  The second time was when she apologized to me for being, "such a bitch," the previous night.  I had had no interaction with her the night before.  I had no clue what she was referring to which made it easier to say she had not been a problem.  I did not hear anything from next door that previous night.  Something made her catch hellfire then I guess.  It took me a while to find a way out of this conversation.  I thought I would be late to work, but what instead I discovered was a more comfortable bus ride to work.  Instead of taking the much more populated express bus downtown, I took the local, had a more comfortable ride, and got to work right on time.  Such is the way of my life right now.  I bumble along.  Things kind of go however they want, and I get some kind of rush in one form or another from this new chaotic experience.  There's no real rhythm to any of it besides the rhythm of the random.

This past month or so has been filled with all sorts of unique things.  It has taken time to grow any kind of stability.  Crafting an apartment that actually feels like home takes a lot out of you when you are working full time with split days off plus a little volunteering.  I avoided spending a lot of time in the apartment at first.  It wasn't so much about being lonely but instead it was a feeling of going stir crazy.  It did not feel comfortable.  I had half a kitchen in terms of utensils (ie.  I just rented a car to go on an IKEA run that included the purchase of pots and pans), and a box or two still blocked a clear path across the floor of my bedroom.  After strolling across Ballard last night, it became the most readily apparent moment of my brief time here for realizing that I am actually living inside the city limits of Seattle.  I spent my night walking down Ballard Ave and onward to the Locks.  Ballard Ave is a neat street.  There is a lot going on there.  All sorts of treats for a beginner foodie to explore.  There are a lot of people there just having a night out and walking around like myself.  I did not feel alone.  The weather was great, and people were happy and excited to be outside. 

There have been moments of loneliness, which is to be expected when you live alone, but I think it is about being prepared for it.  If you can see it coming, you can learn ways to avoid it.  I take myself out of the apartment on purpose.  I do not spend full days just lounging about in my bedroom.  This was the point of renting a studio.  I did not want a place so comfortable that I was too comfortable to leave it.  I want interaction with the city.  I have no where to really sit outside right at my apartment, and this is fine because there is plenty of green space in Seattle to go do something as simple as lay out and read.  I found myself last week feeling more isolated and lonely then ever, but it was comforting to be able to deal with it by walking forty five minutes to the edge of the Sound and see the sun set over the Olympic Mountains.  

There have been moments of loneliness, but there have also been moments of realization and self-awareness.  There was a homeless man who singled me out at the bus stop a few weeks ago amongst two other people there waiting.  He was wearing an old Seattle Supersonics jacket, and his spiel went something like this as I stood there listening to my iPod.  My head was facing the ground while trying to avoid eye contact:

"Keep your head up man.  Keep your head up.  What's life about anyway.......Drink? (He counts with his fingers).....Fuck?..........Eat?.......Keep your head up.  Keep your head up." 

Afterward, I looked to my fellow bus stop waiters, and we all wondered why I looked special.  Honestly though, his words of wisdom and motivation worked way better than they would have coming from any prospective motivational speaker I could envision.  If a homeless person is telling you to keep your chin up, that's worth a listen.

There have been other moments of realization coming down different avenues as is fitting to the rhythm of the random.  I remember watching three or four sets of different fireworks going off from SeaTac Airport on the 4th of July.  That was a unique vision and something I won't probably ever see again.  At other times, I have found myself wanting to dance just for the sake of dancing.  If I lose myself to the music even for just a second, that second of pure meditation, then I succeeded. This has happened to me at a bar with live music, but this has also happened to me at 8 am, my headphones on, and I'm standing downtown in Seattle waiting for my bus transfer.  Both instances have had equal importance for my meditative purposes.  

This past month and a half has been about me regaining my step.  It has been about me finding my pace and remembering how to reset that pace.  It's been a struggle at times to remember how to maintain that rate and find the reason for maintaining it, but there are often reminders, if you are paying close attention to your surroundings, which show you the most simple reasons for doing so.  I am privileged to watch the multiple species of Pacific salmon climb up out of Puget Sound and back into freshwater for spawning at the Fish Ladder at the Ballard Locks.  You walk across the locks, then down below the water's surface into a concrete chamber with a viewing window, and right there are all the salmon, pushing against the current, trying to climb up stream.  "What's the point of them doing this?" I often ask myself.  Of course there are elaborate answers for this.  The need to reproduce.  The need to survive and move forth, but no matter what you want to add to it, the reason is they need to do so just because.  I don't know what those fish are thinking or processing, but it's clear to me, they move forward because that's what their drive tells them to do.  At our most simplistic level, we are no different.  Move forward.  Keep moving onward.  We have no other choice.

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City Escape/City Immersion

Some days the city vividly reminds you of its power to be right at the confluence of uniquely random cultural happenings not possible any where else.  It's these days that remind you why you came here.  Two Saturdays ago I signed a lease to move into Seattle proper and followed that up by hopping neighborhoods to Greenlake where I witnessed an old Gaelic games competition drawing in teams from British Columbia and Washington.  All of a sudden I heard a lot of native Irishmen yelling out things like, "Come on Jerry," or "Fitz, make a name for yourself," as I stood there witnessing a sport that looked something like baseball and lacrosse combined.  The game looked ancient.  The whole thing came completely out of no where.  Later in the afternoon, I sat down at a hockey bar and watched the Stanley Cup next to a real Pole.  I called myself Polish-American when I was talking to him, but he thought I was more correctly American-Polish.  He was a loud mouth and an unforgettable character.  It's the constant motion of the city that makes these events flow from one to the next.

To say that living in the city is just these unique events though is only looking at one side of it.  Like the rest of life, it's more than the happy emotions.  It's the whole spectrum.  It's that mixture of struggle and success.  It's about finding adventure in the routine.  It's taking that same train downtown, as you always do, but this time, you do so in order to march and chant to the stadium while walking down the middle of the street yelling in an organized fashion.  It's about going from neighborhood to neighborhood to meet up with friends some days and eat terribly unhealthy food because that's what is affordable.  You want to be eating at the nicest restaurants in town, but the need to simply be social and out and about in the city talking is more important.  A lot of times it's about dealing with the commute, the crazies, and the carnival aspect of daily life here.  The random nonsensical things you see just as you carry on through your day can be trying.  Some days you just want to get home and be done with it.  Some days you just ask yourself why you ever feel like putting up with it.  The financial burden of staying in the city is overwhelming at times and especially so when you are about to move.  After all those times spent alone on the bus just trying to get back and forth from work to home, the highlight of some days can become a simple acknowledgment. It is the simple acknowledgement by a fellow city dweller who can relate to your own alienating feelings of uncertainty and anxiety.  "Amanhã, amanhã," the Brazilian woman said to me.  What comes tomorrow will come tomorrow.  Let it wait until then.  The struggles and the success.

Some days the city vividly reminds you of why you came there in the first place.  These occasions must be powerful because even if they don't happen every day, they make you think it's possible the next one could come by sooner than you think.....

[navigatinganorthwestpassage]

By all means it has felt like I have been continually getting the shit kicked out of me for the past six weeks.  Problem after complication comes along, I get knocked down, I get up again, I don't think about Chumbawamba, and then I start moving along from it.  It has been one thing after another; one change after the next.  I should be low in the gutter right now, figuratively, but something in me remains resilient.  I have worked at least 40+ hours weekly since the beginning of April with some volunteer work and a sprinkling of apartment searching on top of that.  There was a pay period where I did 110 hours.  The pay was great.  The sense of feeling owned though was not.  Work is soul crushing.  Working a job which doesn't give you personally any real sense of helping to build a greater community isn't encouraging either. 

I can't explain it.  I have spent a good amount of time pondering where my life will head next lately after all these recent obstacles, but it was never enough time to feel I had run stagnant.  I've spent enough time on the issue to remain productive and realize that question of, "What to do next?" just does not matter any more.  It's time to just head where I lead myself.  That's enough in itself.  I want to persist not subsist.  I take the bus to work.  I see the Olympics from a ridge about halfway into this trip on a sunny day.  I always think about how much I want my commute and/or job to at some point and time incorporate those mountains.  I want to take it as a challenge to get to know this city and become actively involved with it.  I want to walk away from this town some day and be able to tell people, "Yeah I lived there for a while," and say it like I mean it. 

I was so sick from Thursday to Sunday with a real bad stomach flu.  It was painful.  I laid down on the floor a lot.  I watched more TV this weekend than I had in months.  I sat still for the first time since I started working so much.  It felt good.  My favorite part of being that sick is that first really good day of recovery where you notice you have most of your strength and reserve back.  If I could bottle up that feeling I would.  I always feel ultra capable this day.  You see everything in this glowing light of possibility.  I start planning how I am going to lead my life from that day forth.  The things I need to change.  I don't do New Year's Resolutions, but post-flu ones seem more realistic. 

Today was my first day outside of my apartment and back at work.  It took me all day to feel like I was healthy again.  At the beginning of the day, the prospect of working an entire 8 hours felt pointless when all it meant was just trying to clock in, zone out while I was there, and then wake up again as I clocked out.  The day got better and better as it went along.  I fell into my old rhythms.  I ate solid food again for the first time in five days.  By the end of the day there I was, headphones on, humming and moving along to my song again while I waited for my bus home from downtown in the tunnel.....

[navigatinganorthwestpassage]

[navigatinganorthwestpassage]

Sometimes when you live in a city, or are exploring a new place for that matter, you find yourself walking down a street being pulled simply by the curiosity of where that road might take you.  At least this is something that drives me from time to time.  I have found myself doing this so many times before whether traveling or here in Seattle. Recalling this group of memories reminds me of walking down a street in Saigon as two Vietnamese men on the opposite sidewalk placed their roosters on the sidewalk to see if they would actually start cockfighting (no surprises there).  It reminds me of walking around foreign cities and ancient ruins in my sandals until my feet were sore.  It reminds me of strolls along many different lakes, rivers, ponds, and oceans to clear my head.   It's comforting when one of these wandering trips leads to purpose.  Weeks ago I started walking down this avenue in North Seattle, and I had no idea what was pulling me.  There was nothing really spectacular about this street.  It just went onward, and I wanted to keep walking down it for some unknown reason.  Yesterday, I ended up back on this street looking at an apartment.  I like when things fall into place like this.  Whatever is driving and pulling us is mysterious, but it's the only thing we have to follow.  It's your heart.  It's your intuition.

     Yesterday, I found myself atop the Space Needle.  For whatever silly reason, I felt I needed to go, and I had been waiting for a beautiful sunset.  Yesterday was that day.  The crowds were slim due to the holiday.  Children still ran around pissing off the few moms that were there.  There was the married retired couple about to embark on their once in a lifetime trip to Alaska.  There was the guy trying to take a picture of his girlfriend when she wasn't looking.  She asked him why he did that.  He said it was because he gets a better picture that way.  He looked to me for support.  I told him I agreed.  The view did not disappoint.  I don't know why I felt I needed to see this view even though I've seen it from every other angle in this city.  Maybe some silly sense of ownership as if now, after getting the local's perspective on a major tourist trap, I truly now know this city.  I was reminded yesterday of having a similar experience at another ridiculously phallic observation tower about 4 years ago.  Same shape, same ocean, but on a different continent.  Same sense of reflection and the same sense of wondering what the future will bring.  A sense of coming full circle.  It felt somehow calming.

[navigatinganorthwestpassage]

Mother's Day

A phone conversation from last week with my mother and father:

My Mom:  "...I don't know if you need to know this, but I have never been into BDS&M."

Me:  "Actually, I'm quite glad to hear that."

Dad:  [Laughing in background]

Here's to a thankfully conscience free Mother's Day!

P.S.  Another Mom conversation left with some context.

Mom:  "I never say yes the first time." 

-Conversation about how she handles contractors' estimates on home improvement services.