Talk About the Weather
Feb. 21st, 2005 06:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
butterflydreamingFirst, one of these. (From ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
wendybarron) countdown meme
The calendar says it's February, but today was February in Seattle. In the sunshine, it was warm enough that I could get away with wearing a cotton shirt and a knee-length denim skirt.
It was too nice of a day not to go for a walk. Anyway, the cats were driving me crazy. I had to reschedule my massage with Julie because I've got that same cold that's been going around, albeit with mild symptoms, so I had a whole afternoon on a gorgeous day, and muscles that needed stretching. My original plan was just to walk down to Lowman Beach and back, but instead, I decided to just keep walking along Beach Drive toward Alki. By the time I got home, I had been out for a little over three hours, and had walked completely around West Seattle.
It just seemed so easy to keep going. There was a sweet, light breeze that carried the softness of apple blossom petals, without the glacial kiss of winter wind. The sky was a dreamy, cloudless blue, as faded as old blue jeans along the horizon, but a pooled cerulean in its high center. The first part of my walk was all downhill, and then it flattened out to the winding sway of Beach Drive, where the sidewalk was lumpy with tree root broken areas and patches; the joggers and bicycles stayed on the bike path. As I walked along, I could peak into the fenced properties of the houses along the shore. They had a beautiful mystery -- jasmine growing along the wall; steep, uneven chains of stairs; long driveways that curved out of the line of sight. There is an eclectic architecture to beach houses. In a car, passing them quickly, they seem remarkable in their ugliness and bad taste. Walking gives time to see each of them like a single picture on a page, and allows their individual quirkiness to charm. There was a brick house, as rectangular as a shoe box, with portholes for windows. Another had columns, and long, sloping roofs. They hid their appeal behind ranks of trees, and fences made of iron shaped like branches, or the trimmed wippy branches of the cherry trees in the yard, or cement studded with sea glass and sunbleached, broken shells.
I saw a pair of bald eagles flying at roof height, among the trees of a hillside. They flew like any bird, heedless of the humans that idealize them, unburdened by their symbolism. The white feathers of tail and head were bright in the light of midday, and the yellow of taloned feet flashed as one dipped to land upon a sturdy cedar branch.
I thought about how much perpective changes at the slower pace of walking. I noted the kayaks on the water, the floating flotsam, puddles along the street that rippled in the omnipresent breeze. The rhythm of my pace, as it usually does, sounded out phrases of poetry... naturally, I had left the house without pen or paper. After the previously daunting walk up Admiral hill, which was less steep on foot than it appeared to be while driving, I was able to hastily scribble what I had been carefully carrying in my mind, held like seawater between my hands (eager to leak away between my fingers), on a paper bag with a borrowed pen.
On the last part of my walk, along the slightly downward sloap of the arterial street that would return me home, I stopped at the Post Office for stamps (the main counter closed for the holiday, but the lobby open) after a detour to Hotwire for a latte. The tiny interior was crowded and hot, but the day was perfect for sitting in their little courtyard. I read a bit of the book that I had been carrying around through the whole afternoon, and realized, when a character's death actually made me sad, that John Dunning had succeeded in something for which I strive. I still shake my head at the avocado simile that he uses in the second book, but as a storyteller, he impresses me greatly.
I caught the last of the day, as it slipped into dusk, inadequately from my window. I should have gone out to the walkway, where I can see an unbroken panoramic of the Olympic Mountains across the Sound. I image that the sun was a blinding disk of orange fire, again, making the water reflect back a metallic glow, that the mountains took on a watercolor purple, that the first stars came out like a hushed giggle. I've watched a lot of sunsets, leaning on the painted railing, craning over the parking lot to look for the presence of the moon.
wendybarron) countdown memeThe calendar says it's February, but today was February in Seattle. In the sunshine, it was warm enough that I could get away with wearing a cotton shirt and a knee-length denim skirt.
It was too nice of a day not to go for a walk. Anyway, the cats were driving me crazy. I had to reschedule my massage with Julie because I've got that same cold that's been going around, albeit with mild symptoms, so I had a whole afternoon on a gorgeous day, and muscles that needed stretching. My original plan was just to walk down to Lowman Beach and back, but instead, I decided to just keep walking along Beach Drive toward Alki. By the time I got home, I had been out for a little over three hours, and had walked completely around West Seattle.
It just seemed so easy to keep going. There was a sweet, light breeze that carried the softness of apple blossom petals, without the glacial kiss of winter wind. The sky was a dreamy, cloudless blue, as faded as old blue jeans along the horizon, but a pooled cerulean in its high center. The first part of my walk was all downhill, and then it flattened out to the winding sway of Beach Drive, where the sidewalk was lumpy with tree root broken areas and patches; the joggers and bicycles stayed on the bike path. As I walked along, I could peak into the fenced properties of the houses along the shore. They had a beautiful mystery -- jasmine growing along the wall; steep, uneven chains of stairs; long driveways that curved out of the line of sight. There is an eclectic architecture to beach houses. In a car, passing them quickly, they seem remarkable in their ugliness and bad taste. Walking gives time to see each of them like a single picture on a page, and allows their individual quirkiness to charm. There was a brick house, as rectangular as a shoe box, with portholes for windows. Another had columns, and long, sloping roofs. They hid their appeal behind ranks of trees, and fences made of iron shaped like branches, or the trimmed wippy branches of the cherry trees in the yard, or cement studded with sea glass and sunbleached, broken shells.
I saw a pair of bald eagles flying at roof height, among the trees of a hillside. They flew like any bird, heedless of the humans that idealize them, unburdened by their symbolism. The white feathers of tail and head were bright in the light of midday, and the yellow of taloned feet flashed as one dipped to land upon a sturdy cedar branch.
I thought about how much perpective changes at the slower pace of walking. I noted the kayaks on the water, the floating flotsam, puddles along the street that rippled in the omnipresent breeze. The rhythm of my pace, as it usually does, sounded out phrases of poetry... naturally, I had left the house without pen or paper. After the previously daunting walk up Admiral hill, which was less steep on foot than it appeared to be while driving, I was able to hastily scribble what I had been carefully carrying in my mind, held like seawater between my hands (eager to leak away between my fingers), on a paper bag with a borrowed pen.
On the last part of my walk, along the slightly downward sloap of the arterial street that would return me home, I stopped at the Post Office for stamps (the main counter closed for the holiday, but the lobby open) after a detour to Hotwire for a latte. The tiny interior was crowded and hot, but the day was perfect for sitting in their little courtyard. I read a bit of the book that I had been carrying around through the whole afternoon, and realized, when a character's death actually made me sad, that John Dunning had succeeded in something for which I strive. I still shake my head at the avocado simile that he uses in the second book, but as a storyteller, he impresses me greatly.
I caught the last of the day, as it slipped into dusk, inadequately from my window. I should have gone out to the walkway, where I can see an unbroken panoramic of the Olympic Mountains across the Sound. I image that the sun was a blinding disk of orange fire, again, making the water reflect back a metallic glow, that the mountains took on a watercolor purple, that the first stars came out like a hushed giggle. I've watched a lot of sunsets, leaning on the painted railing, craning over the parking lot to look for the presence of the moon.
