For thanksgiving, there was a dogfight in the kitchen, and later a roundtable discussion about the war in Gaza, also Ukraine, conflicts, and how we all felt about it, and understood it. It was a warm time, everyone ultimately enjoyed each other. Except the dogs. One had to go home.
Part A
I stepped outside my front door in sync with the geese passing over. Their calls started the journey.
When I got there, a chinook wind whipped through. That means it’s white caps and waves and blasting in your face windy.
People swim here, dance by the water, walk their dogs, do downward dog, ride boat taxis.
Part B
Going to the city.
The day started calm. There was no wind. I got a call about the rutabaga blog- my friend suggested a way to cook them that everybody likes.
Swimmers paddled by towing buoys.
Fog horns blew. The fog didn’t move.
We had tea and eggs and toast and then left for the city- took a boat taxi and rode into the fog that was starting to lift. The buildings poked out as if floating in clouds.
A while later we were in a sculpture park sitting in the sun at a red table and once we sat still everything got more noticeable.
We noticed a hawk and hummingbird sitting near each other in a tree.
We made our way to Pike’s Place Market and there was fruit and fish and rings and nuts and leatherworks in between people moving through.
There was a starling making buzzing and low-fi vibrational tones on top of a yield sign by a cheese store.
In between
One night there was a silent disco.
She read aloud from the other room, facts about the octopus. They can recognize faces and squirt stuff with great accuracy.
I walked on the beach while she took a bike ride. I found a beaver stick washed up. I left it there.
When I got home I took a bath. The house was quiet. The sparrows sang and talked outside the bathroom window.
Part C
We went to the water. There is a bay and a river and a creek in most directions.
Elliot Bay and Duwamish river meet here.
Next we walked along Longfellow creek, which is the second largest spawning watershed in Seattle.
We traced the path of salmon who found something like a drain with a grate then a pipe that led under roads with big trucks and blackberries and train tracks and crosswalks and sidewalks that eventually passed through another grate into a creek.
There are coho and also pinks, maybe others too. Recently they made it this far to deposit eggs. The eggs have matured into small fish and these fish rest and grow in the only world they are aware of, a beaver pond, one just under the dam. They don’t need to go anywhere yet, they do need the safety of unmoving water, and at a depth that is just right to get slightly lost in from predators.
Later, at another part of the creek, she put on waders and said “I’ll be back in 15.”
I napped in the car, pretended I was in an old clawfoot bathtub and listened to the sounds of cottonwoods.
The day before I ate an arugula pesto cheese sandwich right after my massage. It had been in a room through an elevator and up three floors in a corridor of doors where a singing bowl had sang on my lumbar. While in this state ask me any favors and I will provide. I felt flexible.
I felt flexible like the water, like a salmon resting in a beaver pond, like a buoy on the sea, as free as a ferris wheel above the Sound. Like a sparrow singing in a bush by a window.
Seattle