Canceled Flight and Saddam Is Dead

Some blood thirsty computer geek was waiting for the day he could design the banner for Faux news when they announced that Saddam Hussein has been hanged. If you've ever watched anything on Fox than you know what to expect from them. The media vultures have landed.

My flight out of the bible belt was canceled due to inclement weather in Texas. I heard there was the threat of tornadoes tearing our plane apart like tin foil caught in a fan blade. Now I'm stuck here with another day of suburban living ahead of me. God, i really don't like this place. You need a car to complete even the most menial of tasks. Buying food, beer or even toilet paper all require a three to four mile drive. Since back in Georgia, I've traveled more in one day than in all the days combined in Seattle.

I'm not trying to make Seattle out to be this Utopian place where all your dreams come true, I'm just not enjoying my time here in this land of distance and space.

I hope to be home tomorrow at 8:00 p.m. I miss you Seattle.

"Dont it just look so pretty,
this disappearing world."

~David Gray

A Betrayal Of Sorts

This time around conversations came out in spurts, awkward and inarticulate. I knew what I had to say and it sounded so good, before it left my head. The thoughts of a troubled mind are even more troubling when spoken. The air has a way of taking said thoughts and distorting them into something wholly different than intended. Spoken thoughts change from friend to foe the instant the tongue becomes involved. A betrayal occurs in this exchange.

Paul was right when he stated that, “no man can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.” A poison that kills what was intended and instead hijacks processed ideas and turns them into a train wreck of stupidity.

Forgive me for burdening you the reader with this post. I needed an outlet for this unnamed inner struggle and you happen to be the victim of that unfiltered process.

Maybe this picture will atone for some of the preceding bumbling. My brother and I traversed the winding roads of the North Georgia mountains to bring you this postcard picture. I know its cliché, the whole winding-road-through-the-mountains feel, and lately I have allowed myself these less than creative images. Enjoy this picture that looks like many you’ve seen before.

Shapes In The Starlight

Should I tell you of how I began pining for Seattle five minutes after my plane touched down at the busy Atlanta Hartsfield Airport, all that noise and humidity greeting me like a forgotten friend? Or maybe I could tell you of how a car ride with my dad down my favorite mountain rode brought the comfort of familiarity to a restless spirit.

No, I will tell you in a short burst of two paragraphs about the dark night, devoid of streetlight, and how it wrapped its inky blackness about my eyes with only the stars high overhead lighting the way before my rubber soled footsteps.

Two shapes, running swiftly out of the darkness and straight at me, I can hear the click of their exposed claws on the asphalt before I see their hip high heads emerge from the night. Dogs, my dogs. My heart slows down and I realize they have come to escort me back to the place I started my journey from, home. We walk back in silence, starlight illuminating the winding asphalt road that leads back to my parent’s house.

Some nights it’s good to be home.

Money Tree

There, just beneath the rhododendron plant that sits in the box outside of the church, a glint of silver caught my eye. A quarter. Growing up I was one of those kids who would be on his stomach with a stick fishing change out from underneath coke machines. Often I would find enough change underneath the machine to buy a soda from within it. Even to this day I look in newspaper change returns with the hope of finding a quarter left behind by some harried businessman too busy to stop and take back what he had put in.

The quarter was only one of 30 I found as my hands dug into the cool, moist earth beneath its rich branches. I don’t know why there were quarters buried beneath this plant but I would like to believe some child had planted a quarter there some years back. Maybe he planted the quarter after hearing his father say something like, “what do you think, money grows on trees?” in hopes that if he invested this quarter in the ground money would grow on trees, or even perhaps beneath it.

So I reaped the benefits sown by an imaginative child many years ago. I used most of the mud stained change today to feed the washer and dryer at the Laundromat. I guess you could say I took someone’s hopes and dreams and washed my clothing with them.

For those of you who have always wondered what a “money tree” looks like, wonder no more. Here is a picture of one.

Long Winded Patriot

The wind. It blew through this city last night stirring up the old ghosts and sending them somewhere else. The air seemed charged with a sense of possibility this morning as I sat at the bus stop waiting for the number 5 to take me safely across the Aurora bridge and into bowels of downtown Seattle. The city is all dressed up this time of the year, what with Christmas only a couple of short weeks away. Your usual fare of white lights and evergreen trees adorn storefront windows, and your not so usual fare of these really strange Nutcrackers can be seen on random corners throughout the city. I rode by one the other day that was a tribute to Jimmy Hendrix (apparently Hendrix grew up in the not so shiny part of this Emerald City, an area of the city once known as Skid Road). These oversized nutcrackers would look weird in any other city but because I am in Seattle it seems almost normal. This city is strange and I like that.

Here is a message for all of you back in Georgia; I am beginning to fall in love with this city. I know what your thinking, “ How can you fall in love with a city?” The reality of it is a city in itself isn’t what I’m finding I can’t live without, it’s the freedom I feel within this city that is keeping me here. I find this encampment of people and buildings located right off of the Puget Sound to be a place where I can question the country I live in without having to leave it. I have always thought my questioning nature to be a gift but because of it i have often been treated like a curse. If it is a curse than by all means let me be cursed all the more.

I am beginning to find refuge in the words of Edward Abbey when he said “a patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.”

This city is beginning to teach me what it means to be a patriot.

3 a.m.

Today I will finish my first quarter of school. I sit down with my three professors at 11:10 and for ten minutes they will ask me various questions and decide my final grade. I expect this meeting to go off without a hitch.

I don’t usually write early in the morning but I didn’t sleep well last night and I think because of that my brain processes have been thrown out of whack. At 3 a.m. god sat on the edge of my bed and listened as I told him about why I’ve been so cold towards him. I didn’t have a good excuse and I didn’t feel like I needed one so I just told him the truth. I told him i have had this tendency as of late to let my doubts and fears stack up like a pile of old clothes on the end of my bed. I said that and then tried, unsuccessfully to go back to sleep. I’m ok with god needing to speak with me, but 3 in the morning isn’t the best time for me.

Now I’m bleary eyed and irritable. Thanks god.

December Already!

Where did December come from? Last thing I remember was walking down sun drenched roads with the sound of laughter and music flitting from inside houses through open windows and doors. The smell of lavender and rosemary rose to meet me, an almost healing scent that immediately stilled the many voices rushing through my head. Somehow the last few months have slid by me and I wake to find December already underway with its cold, windy and dark days pushing me into the future without any regard to my protest for it to slow down.

School will be ending this week and two weeks after that I’ll be on a plane headed back to the South. The holidays are calling me back to where I came from. It will have been almost a year since I’ve seen Georgia and the people that live within its borders and to be honest I miss them. My mother, father, sister, brother and three dogs have been patiently awaiting my return back to the confines of all that is the South.

I will only be back for 10 days this time, that’s all I can handle. The South is a powerful place and it has a tendancy to steam roll anyone who thinks outside of what is deemed culturally acceptable. Lord willing, I will keep my mouth shut (yeah right) and ears open to hear the stories of the last year and what I have missed in my absence.