It's raining in Seattle

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It is raining in seattle

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I was the only one wearing pink shorts in Seattle. Everyone else was wearing jeans and sweatshirts, the men with beards that you just knew had whole ecosystems within them like parts of the rain forest. Bears with back stories. The leaden sky spat rain. The airport in Seattle has a sign that says the light rail is available, and I picked up my bags, slung them over my shoulder and started following signs. I was accompanied by a feeling of exultation and peace that often accompanies travel, a sense that I am shaking off the dust of life to try something new. 

First however, I had to find the light rail, which, though it had signs for it every 100 yards or so, appeared to be located back in Portland. I became conscious of my bags straps digging into my shoulder, of the absurdity of all human endeavours when suddenly the ticket booth appeared, like water in a desert. I approached the ticket station with confidence. I'dbeen through Italy and spent a week in Paris. I have driven through the streets of Kansas City on my own. I have rented a car in San Antonio and found my way to Austin. I knew I could handle it. Except, like the French in any military action with the Germans, I couldn’t handle it. The machine wouldn’t take my card, I tried it three of four different ways, trying to change the angle, the card, and the speed with which I swiped it. I didn’t look behind me because I know there is probably a group of locals gathering together pitch forks and torches. I frantically pulled out my wallet and started searching for bills. A five! I was saved! I slid the bill into the machine, and it spat it back out at me just as quickly. It was old. I turned around to see roughly half of Seattle standing behind me, bags parked on the ground, staring expectantly ahead, hopeful that I’d figure out how to use the machine these kind souls. The gentleman behind me, an angel in plain clothes asked if I needed change, quickly giving me five one dollar coins that I expertly placed in and received a golden ticket into the city. 

I didn’t know precisely where I was going on the light rail, but imprecision is how Columbus came across America. On the way, the mountains appeared in the distance, wreathing the city, and the mountains themselves were wreathed in low lying clouds that clung to them like tatters of old clothes. A double ring that I thought about capturing with my camera, except my camera was an iPad mini, which I was embarrassed to be using because all the world’s a stage. So now I don’t have that picture, but I do have my dignity. I am a fool. 

On the ride, a girl struggled with her bike, trying to put it up on some sort of ingenious system that they’ve developed for just such problems on the light rail. I thought about helping her, considering whether I’d be able to, the exact mechanics of making it work, while someone else actually just helped her. I’m always thinking about helping people with bags and putting up bikes or dropping a dollar in the hate of a homeless person. I never do these things mind you, but I'm hoping Saint Peter gives credit for thinking things. I know I didn’t do many things sir, but you should have been there for all my good intentions. I believe that’s why the saying “the road to Nevada is paved with good intentions.” 

Seattle from the light rail appears to be a rather large jungle. The houses are set off from the street, with long stone steps that lead up to them, the steps covered in thick green moss. Trees are everywhere, obscuring whole city blocks. Everything is green. The trees and plants and ground are green, one suspects that if you could see the houses they would be painted green as well. I pass a community garden that goes on for an entire city block. It's basically a big ag farm disguised as a bunch of hippies just passing time growing French beans on the weekend.

Seattle, you get the sense, is the sort of city that would be swallowed whole if left alone for ten years or so, the jungle taking back its own. The place feels more contingent than other cities, a footprint left on the sand of time with the knowledge that the ocean tide will return soon. 

Travel is a way of escaping death. The early explorers of America looked for the fountain of youth, and died, or tried to discover something “new” and have it named after them, fame being its own kind of immortality. Most people you suspect, pass away in their bed. Rare is the person who passes away when they are traveling by train from Rome to Florence, by plane from Heathrow to Munich. By traveling we temporarily keep death in our rear window. Not yet, we say, just let me finish this post card I’m sending to my niece. 

The streets here are like glittering serpents, the evenings like the evenings of my long lost youth, filled with light and smoke and strangers. I’ll be home soon. For now, I’m out here on the road traveling through the streets of my youth.