11.13.09
Field Trip
Thursday, 10:25 am
Marion street footbridge off the ferry, walking amidst a gaggle of schoolchildren on an excursion to the big city. We pass a panhandler, one of the regulars. He puts his plastic cup to the side and calls out, “Stay in school, kids. And do your homework! … You don’t want to end up like me.”
His eyes sparkle with a smile that the children see and return. The sun comes out just then, brilliant and bold, and my eyes sting with sudden tears.
10.30.09
Discourse Communities, or Drama on the Bus
Having just sat through a lecture on rhetoric theory and discourse communities, I got a first-hand immersion in at least 3 different discourse communities bumping up against each other on the 72 bus from the U district to downtown yesterday.
U-District, 3:45 pm
The bus is full, packed tighter than usual. I move in line further and further toward the back of the bus, where a pack of hispanic teen-aged girls is giggling maniacally. Loud sighs from riders around me signal their frustration with the girls’ noise level. They go on, oblivious or maybe defiant. I stand with one hand on the rail, keeping my balance, keeping my eyes on the city streaming past the window.
A young black man to my left suddenly shouts at them to shut up and they respond with racial taunts. The man lets everyone know that he’s a pimp from Vegas who’s done time and he won’t put up with this s—.
Ahead a few feet, a young white man with long hair pulled into a ponytail turns around and identifies himself as a Rastafarian from Tacoma. A few muffled laughs, a guffaw, some disparaging snorting rises from the riders around him. He says he knows when it’s time to chill out. “Settle down, little brother,” he tells the black man.
The pimp yells, “I’m not your m—f—ing brother. I’m black! You’re white, man.”
The Rastafarian smiles and says, “Yeah, but I’m also half Sasquatch. You learn anything in prison, little brother? Like how to modulate your voice in public. You need to mod-u-late your voice, man.”
“I’m a g-damned n—! I ain’t gonna lower my f—ing voice. I’m a snap some necks on this f—ing bus and not give a f—. That’s what I’ll do.”
The girls in the back of the bus start in again on their sing-song chant about charcoal. The black man roars for them to shut up and I move a step away from him, careful to be casual. I’m an accidental player on this stage with no desire for spoken lines.
The white Rastaman reaches in his jacket pocket and pulls out a gun.
“This is a Captain Hook squirt gun,” he says as the bus erupts with tension into small screams and roaring laughter. He lectures the pimp on how he only uses a water gun, how he doesn’t kill. He’s still going strong when the black man throws up his hands, says he’s had enough, and steps off the bus at Convention Place Center. The Rasta exits also. The bus driver, miles away at the front of the bus, drives on.
09.29.09
Exit
Overheard at 12:30 pm, bus 74
Guy in mid-20’s or so (suddenly very loud): What’s 4 plus 6?
Girl also in mid-20’s (matching him in volume): I dunno! 23?
Guy: Nah, girl. Four plus six.
Girl: 11?
Guy: No! It’s 10.
Me (looking out window in increasing despair): ?? Performance art? Two hapless souls navigating life with less than a full deck? I step over a used condom and exit the bus at Pioneer Square. The gusts have whipped themselves into a storm during my ride, and I button my coat as I walk north.
08.01.09
An afternoon in Seattle
Yesterday it was B and A plus 5, with our 3 kiddos and 2 friends along for the outing. The Seattle Aquarium and Pike Place Market were bustling, just bursting and jostling with music and color and interesting people and starfish and placards. A woman rolling her own cigarette. A new octopus slowly opening its huge eye. A tap dancer. Rainbow sherbet falling off the cone. Harbor seals ducking playfully under the water and surfacing to look at you again.
S. and her friend looking back at Bainbridge.
I could watch the jellyfish forever. Can I get a picture that does them justice? Nope.
Parrot in Pike Place. Never know what you’re going to see.
06.28.09
Proud Wearer of a Human Rights Campaign Cap
That’s me.
This morning our whole family marched in the Seattle Pride Parade with the Group Health contingent. Equality is something both B. and I feel strongly about, and it was a very positive experience for everyone in the family.
The kids carried balloons along with the other kids marching in our group, and S. wore a visor from K’s old softball team, Sisters. As we walked, a parade observer called out to my girls, “Thank you, little sisters!”
Thanks to Group Health for sponsoring the parade and for being a progressive and humane force for good.
06.20.09
A new trick
I took the first day of a two-day scooter training course today; it was a little nerve-wracking and a lot of fun. Males outnumbered the females four to one in the class, and the oldest person taking the course is 84. 84!!! I hope I’m still learning new tricks when I’m in my 80’s.
The course is held in Seattle and Kent through the Evergreen Safety Council–I’ll soon have a motorcycle endorsement on my driver’s license. No telling how soon I’ll have a scooter, but I’m keen on the Fly Il Bello.
05.09.09
Sunday in the Park with George
So the story of the tortured artist is old hat, right? The tale of an obsessive genius who isn’t clever, isn’t witty, isn’t warm is not a compelling one. I bought tickets to the show because I love Georges Seurat, love the delicacy of his pointillist paintings. The irony with this show is that it paints the characters with broad strokes, making everyone–even George–a flat caricature.
Really impressive artistic effects? Yes.
Painfully dreary? Yes.
We left at intermission and I felt so free I skipped and ran and cavorted in the nighttime streets of Seattle, my lovely city.
04.23.09
Delicate but tenacious
The rain yesterday couldn’t dampen the beauty of UW’s cherry trees:
Wet cherry blossom petals stick to your shoes like crazy. I found petals still stuck tenaciously even after walking a couple of miles through Seattle, and they made me smile.
04.18.09
Mariza in Seattle
Last night we took K. to Benaroya Hall for her birthday present, seeing Fado singer Mariza in concert. I have never been so mesmerized, thrilled, moved, inspired, and completely in awe of a performer in my life.
From the moment she walked out on stage (tall, willowy, graceful, lithe), the audience responded to her with an eruption of applause and cheers that delighted me–clearly we were in company with a packed house of Fado and Mariza aficionados.
Although she was self-deprecating about her command of English, she was quite fluent throughout the show and endearing from the beginning, saying in her deliberate way, “Thank you for inviting us. Thank you for receiving us.” She struck me as being uncommonly gracious. That in combination with her dramatic, passionate performance makes for a riveting stage presence. She makes masterful use of pauses, letting all sound and movement slowly die away, waiting, and coming back with an electrifying sound. Her range and timbre are the vocal essence of what it is to feel and to be human. And the sheer power of her voice (at one point, with microphone behind her back, she sang out to the back of the hall, over the applause) is simply amazing.
A riot of wonder
“The campus is a riot of wonderful natural life” –Theodore Roethke, on UW (p. 105 On Sacred Ground by Nicholas O’Connell)
Yesterday afternoon at UW I found a magical scene: the quad was in full bloom with Yoshino cherry blossoms (2 weeks late, or just on time for me) and alive with students aware of the beauty around them. I laid down on my back in a sunny patch of grass and let the petals drift onto my face, my hands, my legs.
The windows of the music building were open and the sound of a rehearsing choir floated by on the odd breeze; to my left, soft chords from a guitar and frisbees crossed the air.
So many students had cameras and I wished I had mine too (if the blossoms will wait until Wednesday, I’ll be back to capture the scene)–but the experience was fully, robustly, 3-dimensional. I’ve rarely been struck by such a sense of beauty and possibility and life.
