Saturday December 06, 2003: released from this peculiar geometry
People complain about my commute.
Getting from Seattle to Redmond and back is, indeed, annoying. There are exactly four routes: One north, around Lake Washington. 520, which is a floating bridge. I-90, also a floating bridge. And going south, around the southern end of the lake. Any one of these, on any given day, is hideous; and often all four of them are at once.
Basic problem: too many cars, not enough road.
I take 520 over, in large part because 520 is really, really close to my house. And I vanpool, so my choice of route isn't actually mine to make, it's the driver's. So I sit, and we chat or I'll read or nap, and we get where we're going eventually.
But, you know, for all the fact that the commute is annoying, it's the most beautiful commute I've ever had. Better, even, than Madstop to Fremont, when I was working for The Little Vendor That Could and then the Pretty Picture Conglomerate.
It's like this:
First, we slip down along the road that goes between the University and the lake. We watch the people in the cars; some of them are cellphoning, many are eating breakfast, most have coffee.
Then we get into 520, going east, into the sunrise.
The mist rises up off the lake as we wind through the arboretum; this part is always slow, so there's enough time to look at the ducks and coots bobbing among the cattails and the summertime lilypads. In the winter, mist rises up off the water. There's a few great blue herons who hunt in the shallows, and a family of ospreys for whom these are hunting grounds, especially in the summer.
Then we're out on the lake. Often, the wind is from the south, and on the south side of the bridge waves break against the floating bridge, while on the north side the water is smooth with barely a ripple. In the winter, there's not a lot of human activity out on the lake, but in the summer there are people boating, usually, no matter what time of day it is.
When the sun is rising, the lake turns to silver and gold. When it's cloudy, the sun turns the fog pearlescent, and the lake gives that light back to the sky. The sky and the lake both have their moods, and they play off of each other.
When it's dark, as it is in the winter on our way home, we can see the lights of I-90 and the white and red of the traffic going over that bridge. The water gives back those lights, as well, but otherwise is dark and often still.
We curve our way through the forest at the edge of the water, only seeming to come to civilization right before the junction with 405. And then, we zoom over strip malls and past all the accoutrements of suburbia, to finally arrive at work.
I went out tonight and did some shopping, and then crashed on the couch and watched Labyrinth. Though I've owned the DVD for a while, today was evidently the first time I'd watched it since I bought it, since I had to pry the stupid security tape off of it.
Today was productive. In large part this was because I had a big cup of coffee this morning around 9:30 and was buzzing until about 6:30 PM. I took care of mail stuff, including sending off for personalized license plates for my car and getting rid of the pile of misdelivered mail I was accumulating. Negotiations with the post office have proved to be futile, when it comes to actually getting my own mail and not getting the mail of my doppelgangers. My doppelgangers live in deepest Laurelhurst and I know far too much about their lives for, probably, anyone's comfort.
The mail is enlightening. You can tell what target demographic you're in by the kinds of mail you get. They get electronic music magazines and catalogs with things in them that I'd never want and couldn't afford anyway. She gets mail from Italy; they have two children, one of whom got a radio-controlled airplane for Christmas a few years back. I know this because it arrived on my doorstep first.
But I cleaned the house and changed the sheets, swept the front and back stoops and washed the front door and the threshold, encouraging the various creepy-crawlies that had elected to nest in the doorframe to be in their way. The front door is a magnet for spiders, since the light's on all night long and thus there are many flying insects. It's also relatively sheltered, as well, and I'm the only real predator, me and my wet paper towels.
I was mindful, of course. I reshielded the house a couple of weeks ago, and that serves to keep what I don't want out. Washing the threshold symbolically invites what I do want to come in.
I have a better idea of what those things I do want are, now.
Tonight, on the couch, I had Juniper on my lap, snuggled up in my arms and purring madly, happy as a clam. Cricket was draped over my knees, showing every evidence of actually watching the movie. (She scares me sometimes, this little cat.) Lilith was curled up in the cat bed at my feet, fast asleep.
There are moments that are just utterly perfect. That was one of them.
This week, this week...this week has been interesting.
I am PMSing like mad, and thus have been all over the map emotionally. Up, down, all around--got two pieces of lovely fan mail, one of them from someone who I used to email back and forth with for a while and then lost touch with. I was weirdly grumpy and crank-fitty on Wednesday, in part because of lack of sleep from being an idiot the night before, in part because, oddly enough, at the moment I am actually managing to have too *much* social energy and not enough to do with it.
This is a very, very strange sensation. I am eternally trying to control the amount of social contact I have because it's draining on me, and it's very odd to find myself with a surfeit of wanting to be around people. Part of it, I know, is that gaming's suspended for the holiday season. Part of it is that NRE, for me, comes packaged with the energy to supply the want. And part...well, i'd be lying if i didn't say that part of it is because there's someone currently missing from my life who I'm accustomed to giving the lion's share of my social energy.
I haven't quite figured out what to do with this energy. I should do something, I'm just not sure what. Who knows how long it'll last? I'll enjoy it while it does.
And, in the meantime, I'll sort out what to do with all this desire. (I was rereading a couple of Sandman books the other day. In that universe, I would definitely belong to one of the Endless, and I am here to tell you that it wouldn't be Delirium or Despair. Though I have spent time in both their kingdoms.)
The other night, I went and had my eyebrows done, and took advantage of the fact I was at U Village to do a little Christmas shopping. Had a most successful trip, barring the fact that I could not for the life of me remember the title or the author of one book I was looking for.
On my way back to the car, the skies opened up. I laughed, folded the top of the bag over my recent purchases, and walked with my face turned up to the sky. By the time I reached the parking garage, my hair and the front of my jeans were soaked through, and my face was dripping and I was still laughing.
what follows storm
sea-perfect, I am held
in calm water, the rain
approaching, bourne
on your wind--this front
coming in from the Sound.
I curl in clean sheets, cats
purring in puddles, and me
silent and wakeful in the center
of my own nutshell universe
and I hear your wind coming,
behind the rain that clatters
the lintels and the shingles.
I open the window.
Lean outside, hands on the sill,
turn my face to the sky
branches tickle my bare feet
as we skim, you and I and you, after
the rain and then upward through cloud
where a gibbous moon hangs
in the black quiet midnight
starry body above aching for dark body below
you are wings of flame and
you are wind that carries us and
I am the breath, the thread
between the ground and the sky
the path that lightning follows
to the fallow earth
(12.6.2003)
Getting from Seattle to Redmond and back is, indeed, annoying. There are exactly four routes: One north, around Lake Washington. 520, which is a floating bridge. I-90, also a floating bridge. And going south, around the southern end of the lake. Any one of these, on any given day, is hideous; and often all four of them are at once.
Basic problem: too many cars, not enough road.
I take 520 over, in large part because 520 is really, really close to my house. And I vanpool, so my choice of route isn't actually mine to make, it's the driver's. So I sit, and we chat or I'll read or nap, and we get where we're going eventually.
But, you know, for all the fact that the commute is annoying, it's the most beautiful commute I've ever had. Better, even, than Madstop to Fremont, when I was working for The Little Vendor That Could and then the Pretty Picture Conglomerate.
It's like this:
First, we slip down along the road that goes between the University and the lake. We watch the people in the cars; some of them are cellphoning, many are eating breakfast, most have coffee.
Then we get into 520, going east, into the sunrise.
The mist rises up off the lake as we wind through the arboretum; this part is always slow, so there's enough time to look at the ducks and coots bobbing among the cattails and the summertime lilypads. In the winter, mist rises up off the water. There's a few great blue herons who hunt in the shallows, and a family of ospreys for whom these are hunting grounds, especially in the summer.
Then we're out on the lake. Often, the wind is from the south, and on the south side of the bridge waves break against the floating bridge, while on the north side the water is smooth with barely a ripple. In the winter, there's not a lot of human activity out on the lake, but in the summer there are people boating, usually, no matter what time of day it is.
When the sun is rising, the lake turns to silver and gold. When it's cloudy, the sun turns the fog pearlescent, and the lake gives that light back to the sky. The sky and the lake both have their moods, and they play off of each other.
When it's dark, as it is in the winter on our way home, we can see the lights of I-90 and the white and red of the traffic going over that bridge. The water gives back those lights, as well, but otherwise is dark and often still.
We curve our way through the forest at the edge of the water, only seeming to come to civilization right before the junction with 405. And then, we zoom over strip malls and past all the accoutrements of suburbia, to finally arrive at work.
I went out tonight and did some shopping, and then crashed on the couch and watched Labyrinth. Though I've owned the DVD for a while, today was evidently the first time I'd watched it since I bought it, since I had to pry the stupid security tape off of it.
Today was productive. In large part this was because I had a big cup of coffee this morning around 9:30 and was buzzing until about 6:30 PM. I took care of mail stuff, including sending off for personalized license plates for my car and getting rid of the pile of misdelivered mail I was accumulating. Negotiations with the post office have proved to be futile, when it comes to actually getting my own mail and not getting the mail of my doppelgangers. My doppelgangers live in deepest Laurelhurst and I know far too much about their lives for, probably, anyone's comfort.
The mail is enlightening. You can tell what target demographic you're in by the kinds of mail you get. They get electronic music magazines and catalogs with things in them that I'd never want and couldn't afford anyway. She gets mail from Italy; they have two children, one of whom got a radio-controlled airplane for Christmas a few years back. I know this because it arrived on my doorstep first.
But I cleaned the house and changed the sheets, swept the front and back stoops and washed the front door and the threshold, encouraging the various creepy-crawlies that had elected to nest in the doorframe to be in their way. The front door is a magnet for spiders, since the light's on all night long and thus there are many flying insects. It's also relatively sheltered, as well, and I'm the only real predator, me and my wet paper towels.
I was mindful, of course. I reshielded the house a couple of weeks ago, and that serves to keep what I don't want out. Washing the threshold symbolically invites what I do want to come in.
I have a better idea of what those things I do want are, now.
Tonight, on the couch, I had Juniper on my lap, snuggled up in my arms and purring madly, happy as a clam. Cricket was draped over my knees, showing every evidence of actually watching the movie. (She scares me sometimes, this little cat.) Lilith was curled up in the cat bed at my feet, fast asleep.
There are moments that are just utterly perfect. That was one of them.
This week, this week...this week has been interesting.
I am PMSing like mad, and thus have been all over the map emotionally. Up, down, all around--got two pieces of lovely fan mail, one of them from someone who I used to email back and forth with for a while and then lost touch with. I was weirdly grumpy and crank-fitty on Wednesday, in part because of lack of sleep from being an idiot the night before, in part because, oddly enough, at the moment I am actually managing to have too *much* social energy and not enough to do with it.
This is a very, very strange sensation. I am eternally trying to control the amount of social contact I have because it's draining on me, and it's very odd to find myself with a surfeit of wanting to be around people. Part of it, I know, is that gaming's suspended for the holiday season. Part of it is that NRE, for me, comes packaged with the energy to supply the want. And part...well, i'd be lying if i didn't say that part of it is because there's someone currently missing from my life who I'm accustomed to giving the lion's share of my social energy.
I haven't quite figured out what to do with this energy. I should do something, I'm just not sure what. Who knows how long it'll last? I'll enjoy it while it does.
And, in the meantime, I'll sort out what to do with all this desire. (I was rereading a couple of Sandman books the other day. In that universe, I would definitely belong to one of the Endless, and I am here to tell you that it wouldn't be Delirium or Despair. Though I have spent time in both their kingdoms.)
The other night, I went and had my eyebrows done, and took advantage of the fact I was at U Village to do a little Christmas shopping. Had a most successful trip, barring the fact that I could not for the life of me remember the title or the author of one book I was looking for.
On my way back to the car, the skies opened up. I laughed, folded the top of the bag over my recent purchases, and walked with my face turned up to the sky. By the time I reached the parking garage, my hair and the front of my jeans were soaked through, and my face was dripping and I was still laughing.
what follows storm
sea-perfect, I am held
in calm water, the rain
approaching, bourne
on your wind--this front
coming in from the Sound.
I curl in clean sheets, cats
purring in puddles, and me
silent and wakeful in the center
of my own nutshell universe
and I hear your wind coming,
behind the rain that clatters
the lintels and the shingles.
I open the window.
Lean outside, hands on the sill,
turn my face to the sky
branches tickle my bare feet
as we skim, you and I and you, after
the rain and then upward through cloud
where a gibbous moon hangs
in the black quiet midnight
starry body above aching for dark body below
you are wings of flame and
you are wind that carries us and
I am the breath, the thread
between the ground and the sky
the path that lightning follows
to the fallow earth
(12.6.2003)
