Sunday, April 5, 2009

fine, I'll post something

I was downtown today.  it's the best weather I've seen since I've been here.  (my weather widget says it's 68 degrees, and fifty has become warm to me.)  for the first time, I had to take my jacket off up here because I was too warm, and I walked around in a T-shirt.  it felt great.  the sky is uncharacteristically clear; I can see across the Puget Sound to the Olympic Mountains to the west and all the way to Mt. Rainier to the east.  I decided to take a bus up Pike St to wherever it would take me.  The number 10 brought me up Pike to Capitol Hill then north on 15th, I believe it was.  after a couple blocks everything became residential with the exception of a drug store, so I got off and went for a walk.

a quiet street invited me down, so I obliged.  every house was raised off the ground by a high foundation and had a porch, and every house had a different front fence.  some were high and obscured my view of the houses, but most were short and in some way see-through.  some chain-link, some picket, some hedge.  the sidewalk was old concrete, darkened by moisture and moss and years.  between the sidewalk and the street was a strip of soil and lawn and cherry trees beginning to blossom in wonderful pink and white.  this strip was broken regularly by more old concrete bridging the street to the driveways.

I felt that if I lived there I would never be in a hurry again.  that street kept things in perspective.  at that moment there was no need to walk any faster than necessary.  the only valid reason to walk was to keep from standing still, but if that's what I had wanted it would have been fine too.

I crossed a small intersection.  a guy about twenty with his lip pierced and hair dyed black, but not a douchebag, was sitting and smoking on a ledge in front of the house on the corner, his one leg resting on the other knee.  he was talking quietly with a girl sitting cross-legged at the very corner of the sidewalk.  I looked at her, then him, and I asked, "How's it going?"  he asked the same.  I kept walking.

next house down there was a generic-looking guy sitting on his porch playing an acoustic guitar.  he was in his thirties, and he wore some cheap, nondescript sunglasses.  he was playing something cool that made me wish I could do the same.  a few more houses down there was another guy doing the same in his front, behind a taller fence so I couldn't see.  

even when I got back towards Pike and started passing more businesses, just seeing the type of people on the street made me realize that I should live on Capitol Hill.  it's the more artsy part of Seattle.  like Hillcrest is to San Diego.  and yes, it is also the gay part of town, but I've heard that it's much less gay now than it used to be.  now only about half the bars here are gay bars.

I'm in Tully's (coffee shop) using the free Wi-Fi.  I have this tendency to get sick of things or situations for no real reason, which is what's currently happening.  I want to close up my MacBook and take the number 10 back to downtown and then the 125 back home to West Seattle and sit in my room.  and I'm sick of this post and don't want to click "publish" because I just keep talking without saying anything.

3 comments:

]3rian said...

this post pisses me off

gamgee said...

ah haaa ha ha ha ha... "but not a douchebag..." ha. yes brian, i get the same problem. i become sick of something when it is not yet finished, and then finishing whatever it was seems so redundant but i feel obliged to do it anyway.
i pictured what you wrote. it would be cool if what i pictured was really how it was. you should take a picture of the street.

]3rian said...

shit I should have! I didn't think about it at the time, but I could have pulled out my lovely MacBook, opened it up, and snapped a pic of the street. (that's the only picture-taking device I have, unfortunately.)