Seattle

I always thought we'd see Seattle together. Walk off the plane into all that light reflecting off water looking like so much shattered glass. I thought we'd argue over whether going to the top of the space needle was kitschy or incredibly kitschy before we rode to the top and looked out over the city and felt ourselves small.

After, I always thought we'd go down to that market where they throw fish in the air. It'd be like an episode of a reality dating television show except we're not nearly as beautiful and there would be no cameras. Perhaps it wouldn't be like a show at all. Perhaps it would just be our lives.

I keep thinking.

We'd sit on a bench and argue over whether going to Starbucks in Seattle was fine because it was local. Maybe we'd argue about nationalism or why everyone always loves the backup quarterback. Even though we both know it's just like anything else in life, plain old human nature if you think about it philosophically. Most people don't.

I keep saying I thought we'd go together and hold hands on the ferry ride across to Bainbridge Island, but I'm realizing now that living this way is not living at all. We don't get to live in the past or in any sort of alternative realities. All we have is this one burning and incandescent life. I'm trying, as I get older, to try and recognize it more often. Look. Look. The world is on fire with beauty.

They say a lot of things about the act of travel, most of which I've found to be true. One of them is that the streets and rocks and waters are made more beautiful by their novelty. Though perhaps it is their transience that delights us so. If only we could move through rooms full of champagne glasses, curtains and charming strangers perhaps we'd all be in love with the world. The best thing about traveling for me is that I see the world with a distinct kind of clarity that only arises when I am alone. For a few hours, sometimes more, my brain is like a lit match. I see the swaying of branches in the breeze, hear the call of birds high overhead; I detect the silvery thread of water running through small cracks in the street; I look around at the people that don't know me, and I don't see them as strangers but as people who, in another life I might have known, shard a beer, a laugh, or a night on the town with. Travel is a doorway. Come, walk with me.