Seattle. University District. Near ___ Coffee shop, which, sources unanimously claim, is the best in the city. (I don't drink coffee, and it's too hot inside, and my infant nephew needs someone to keep him asleep by walking while my relatives indulge their taste for bitterness - so the drizzling outside is perfect). Measuring the block length up and down, I collect flirting peeks of the bright and varying establishments into an impression of a children center, a nail salon, a bicycle store (with an entrance to a violin shop splitting its space), a crafts class for adults (the women are painting china, wearing clinical masks; what paint is so toxic? those are not oils, nor are they airbrushing).
It has poured all morning, and the flaking brick colored metal chairs outside the shop have gathered fat amoebas of drops on the handles and the seats. One chair houses a dry basketball. A narrow sidewalk across, a large white dog (mixed breed?) waits tied to a lamppost. It's fur is wet and it's patience is is absurd and it makes me colder. I zip up my pretty sweater snugly around my neck, and after momentary indecision dive under the protruding roof, consistently rocking the baby. I stick my nose into the glass of the wall-sizes windows, cover the gray day light with chilled fingers, and peer inside. Are they coming out soon?
No. They are snug and busy cupping enormous cups of black steaming contents. A little ways to the left, a man with a beardless face and long white wispy hair smiles at me; he's holding a Chihuahua; the dog looks entirely out of place with his old worn sweats and blue windbreaker. A table away sits a local university student; he looks at me over the bridge of his nose and doesn't smile. I un-stick my forehead from the misting up glass and begin another round down the block.
The universe passes in a breath and yellow as yolk autumn explodes at the heartbeat the street flowing into the park. This is something I really love about Seattle; cramped houses, shops, school buildings under the overcast sky and then blast! your eyes are overwhelmed with height and age and grandeur of the forests, the character of the trunks, the variety of needles and shapes and pine smells. In October especially, the natural fractals burst your eyes with such vivid yellows and reds and greens, all intensified by rain and heightened by whatever sunlight seeps through the gray (in fact, against the gray, the colors are truer), that it is difficult not to plant your soul by this beauty, to watch it be and pass with it.
The baby will grow up here. He is sleeping now, but soon will consume everything that is Seattle, make it his own in such a manner that only a foreigner will be able to tell. Hm. A traveler is a child in the readiness to soak up newness; everything is interesting.
I am ready to continue our walk, to see the local open market, to learn the landscape that defines the people here; and it seems the coffee has ended. As I pass the stroller to adoring grandparents and parents who are suddenly allowed to feel like teenagers again, two men come out of the coffee shop, one a little after the other.
The older man with the Chihuahua under his arm crosses the sidewalk, past the white collared dog, and plants himself into a tiny old car with peeling blue paint; he's still smiling at me, his potato nose and longish white hair still looking at odds with the rest of him. I can't help but reciprocate, and with pleasure still smoothing my face watch the student swing towards our group, reclaim the basketball from the wetness of the red seats, untie the now excited pet from the lamppost and strut away on athletic calves. Shorts in such weather? Jeez. And still no smile.
The old man's car and the boy pull away down the street separately, yet side by side; a contrast, yet quite the same, dogs and all.
It has poured all morning, and the flaking brick colored metal chairs outside the shop have gathered fat amoebas of drops on the handles and the seats. One chair houses a dry basketball. A narrow sidewalk across, a large white dog (mixed breed?) waits tied to a lamppost. It's fur is wet and it's patience is is absurd and it makes me colder. I zip up my pretty sweater snugly around my neck, and after momentary indecision dive under the protruding roof, consistently rocking the baby. I stick my nose into the glass of the wall-sizes windows, cover the gray day light with chilled fingers, and peer inside. Are they coming out soon?
No. They are snug and busy cupping enormous cups of black steaming contents. A little ways to the left, a man with a beardless face and long white wispy hair smiles at me; he's holding a Chihuahua; the dog looks entirely out of place with his old worn sweats and blue windbreaker. A table away sits a local university student; he looks at me over the bridge of his nose and doesn't smile. I un-stick my forehead from the misting up glass and begin another round down the block.
The universe passes in a breath and yellow as yolk autumn explodes at the heartbeat the street flowing into the park. This is something I really love about Seattle; cramped houses, shops, school buildings under the overcast sky and then blast! your eyes are overwhelmed with height and age and grandeur of the forests, the character of the trunks, the variety of needles and shapes and pine smells. In October especially, the natural fractals burst your eyes with such vivid yellows and reds and greens, all intensified by rain and heightened by whatever sunlight seeps through the gray (in fact, against the gray, the colors are truer), that it is difficult not to plant your soul by this beauty, to watch it be and pass with it.
The baby will grow up here. He is sleeping now, but soon will consume everything that is Seattle, make it his own in such a manner that only a foreigner will be able to tell. Hm. A traveler is a child in the readiness to soak up newness; everything is interesting.
I am ready to continue our walk, to see the local open market, to learn the landscape that defines the people here; and it seems the coffee has ended. As I pass the stroller to adoring grandparents and parents who are suddenly allowed to feel like teenagers again, two men come out of the coffee shop, one a little after the other.
The older man with the Chihuahua under his arm crosses the sidewalk, past the white collared dog, and plants himself into a tiny old car with peeling blue paint; he's still smiling at me, his potato nose and longish white hair still looking at odds with the rest of him. I can't help but reciprocate, and with pleasure still smoothing my face watch the student swing towards our group, reclaim the basketball from the wetness of the red seats, untie the now excited pet from the lamppost and strut away on athletic calves. Shorts in such weather? Jeez. And still no smile.
The old man's car and the boy pull away down the street separately, yet side by side; a contrast, yet quite the same, dogs and all.
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