we're in the time

We're in the time I like somewhat best.
Rain. Cool weather. Clouds. Mist. A chilly humidity (save for the Pineapple Express that swept through a few days ago).
All variations of precipitation, and the neighborhood air smells of sodden leaves and soaked, rotting bark, earthy and fecund.
You know the true PNW'ers. We turn our faces to the leaden sky, breathe deeply, and smile.

and more new construction

In other news, this charming structure is now under my care. I have a lot of waterproofing, insulating and installing to do yet, but the bones are there and I couldn't be more excited to get started.
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And, we have had rain the past few days. After a summer of prolonged heat and fires and smoke, it is most welcome. The air is fresh again. The trees breathe. And I relax into the gentle thrumming.

And yet today

And yet today.
Same photo, only much grayer.

Wet on dry

It rained today for the first time in what feels like a month.
Everyone's complaining.
Not me, I love it.
It's good staying-in-bed weather.
Even better coffee-goodbye-kisses- and walking-around-town weather.
Wet on dry is lovely.

Drip drop ya don't stop

After a fairly dry spell we've had about a day and a half of nonstop rain and it feels as though after the initial shock--crabby co-workers, interstate crashes and neighborhood power blips--it feels as though Seattle has relaxed into its damp, soggy self. Yeahhhh.
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At the farmer's market this morning my friend Pat valiantly cooked up Burmese squash curry and talked about her new cookbook. The lady at the Appel cheese stand told me if she stood in exactly this spot she wouldn't get wet. Not even a sagging rain-filled canopy could deter my favorite plum seller from Eastern Washington, a brunette Betty White who handed me samples of Japanese apples and sent me off with a pound of juicy Italian prunes. Traffic lights were out as I walked on, but cars skimmed easily by on the hissing streets.
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Honestly, it's my favorite kind of day. Mild, damp, the filtered light making everyone look like extras in a Wim Wenders movie. I sloshed up the final hill, the sidewalk carpeted with leaves too freshly-fallen to have turned to mush yet, some red-gold, others outrageously vibrant yellow, all studded with glittering rain drops.

Overheard around town redux

A rainy afternoon, and cold.
The driver of Metro Route 31 alternately leaned on the gas, then the brake, as though he wore super heavy shoes, as though they were so weighty he couldn't control their depressions.
When a new crop of riders boarded and the bus lurched away from the curb, I wasn't too surprised when a man flew past me. A bearded, tattooed fifty-something man, smelling of beer, wearing an American-flag-emblazoned leather coat and carrying a taped-up guitar case. He flew past and landed sideways on a skinny kid seated on the back bench.
Ha, the kid said, looking sheepish. As though he were the one who'd flown ten yards and smashed into a stranger's legs.
You think that's funny, huh, the guy said. He righted himself and sat next to me.
The kid opposite us also carried a guitar case, made of newish canvas, not even rain-spattered.
Whaddya playin' with, the older guy said to him.
Uh, nylon, the kid said.
What? the older guy snapped.
The kid repeated it, timidly, and the other kid--the fallee--laughed and said, Nylon strings? No, dude, what kind of guitar do you play?
The second kid's face cleared. Oh, Yamaha.
You gotta buy American, the older guy said.
It's not a very good guitar, the kid admitted. The three of them then had a nice chat about music.
The boys got off a few stops later. The older guy immediately began talking to a woman in fucschia lipstick, his companion apparently, and who I hadn't noticed in all the arrival drama. He was pissed. The other night he'd wanted to make french fries, and as he waited for the oil (the ole) to heat, the stove burner caught on fire, and when he tried to smother the fire, the towels too went up in flames.
We need to tell the landlord, the woman said, nervous.
Tell him what? We burned up the fucking kitchen? We'll fix it first. But we're not telling him nothing. Abruptly, he thwacked the page of my magazine. Watcha reading, hon?
Startled, I flipped back to the beginning of the article. It's about cards, I said. Poker. Then--embarrassed to show him it was The New Yorker--I got up and stood by the rear door of the bus. We were almost to my stop.
I passed the two on my way home. They stood, pelted by rain, in the cloud of exhaust from the departing 31, looking with longing at a mattress and frame dumped on a patch of muddy grass, clearly not deterred by its sodden, forlorn state.

Topic A around here

If you asked, I'd say I hate talking about the weather. Looking back over my posts, though, that is clearly not true.

I think what I hate is complaining about the weather. I'm a rain-loving girl, so living in Seattle suits me just fine. A damp misty day puts me in a relaxed, contemplative frame of mind, perfect for a Cheever novel and hot chocolate at Bauhaus, or an early afternoon glass of bubbles anywhere that overlooks wet, greasy twilit city streets.

In Port Angeles this weekend I spent some time considering moss. We had a particularly cold, wet winter, and many rocks and trees and bushes are furred with crazy-looking varieties of lichen and moss. Shaggy layers of moss ride up slender tree trunks like slouchy socks. Two or three kinds of moss clump along the same branch, not competing but co-existing and friendly, like guys at a neighborhood bar. Hanks of the silvery-green stuff hang in fragile bearded tufts, and in the filtered mid-afternoon light, you well understand the mythic traditions that people the woods with ancient timber deities.

Rain is the lens

Seattleites complain a lot about the rain.

I know I've mentioned this before. I guess it still surprises me. You'd think we'd be used to it, the way my Midwestern Grandma is philosophically stoic about tornadoes, and hot weather. But you'd be wrong.

I find the rain beautiful. On a long ramble last week, I saw that clouds had filtered the light to this kind of silvery haze. Raindrops acted as prisms, turning bare branches glittery, studding the graceful curve of an early tulip leaf. It was as though Liberace's tailor had just passed through my neighborhood with a Bedazzler.

A few years ago I attended a writer's workshop at Iowa University. It's a prestigious program and we were lucky enough to have Marilynne Robinson as our professor. She had gotten her MA in Seattle, and her strongest memory of her time here was that her shoes had succumbed to the cold and the damp and finally rotted. At the time it annoyed me that she focused on such an ugly detail about my fair city. As the weeks wore on, though, I realized that living in Iowa City was a deliberate choice. She loved her adopted state--its flatness and open spaces and reticent residents--for all the reasons many people, me included, might not.

So, I love Seattle for reasons other might not. Yes, rain. And that's okay.

Winter in Seattle

Seattleites are pretty unflappable when it comes to Mother Nature.

Eskimos have forty words for snow? Well, we have at least forty ways to talk about rain.

We slog through earthquakes, mudslides, 30+days of drizzle--no problem.

But snow throws us for a loop. Forecasters predicted snow yesterday and every school district in King County closed down pre-emptively. And it snowed everywhere but King County.

Today though it's been snowing. It's beautiful, but treacherous. I waited in vain for the 73 bus this afternoon, so I started walking bus stop to bus stop, and eventually walked the 40 blocks home. Others had it worse: one of my co-workers spent most of the day on Sound Transit buses.

Home, with hot chocolate and a warm dog, I turned on KING-5 and had my first real indicator of winter: Jim Forman, reporting from the bottom of an icy hill!

He's a Seattle tradition--KING-5 reporter Jim Forman, blown around by hurricane force winds, wading through two feet of water, standing on overpasses, braving the elements in his Gore-Tex and shouting into a microphone.

The calendar hasn't caught up with us yet but yup, it's winter in Seattle.

I'm only happy when it...

You'd think Seattleites would be good at driving in the rain. We're not. Traffic snarls up like knotty thread every time the drops start falling.

I don't mind the rain though. In fact, I like it. If it's warm rain, the air takes on a certain earthy heaviness. When it's cold, the mist hits your face like a spritzer. It's refreshing. It's enervating.

Seattle partied like I have never seen Tuesday night.

After the news that Obama had won, people ran and yelled and danced in the streets. It felt genuine and spontaneous.

On the bus, in coffee shops (btw, sayonara Stickman), people are still talking excitedly about Obama. There's this collective feeling of relief. As though we'd been carrying around this shoulder pack of worry, and now, for the first time in awhile, we've set it down.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a pessimist, that backpack of worry is still handily nearby and I'm sure I'll be picking it up again at some point, but for today, I'm breathing in the sodden air and I feel good.