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.