6.18.00

This weekend I rented a car with the purpose of cruising neighborhoods where I might want to live. But I think I was too enamored with the idea of driving again because I didn't consider that biking through these areas would be a better way to check them out. At any rate, I got the car Saturday morning. I'd requested as-small-as-they-come but there were none of those on hand. They gifted me with an upgrade to Toyota Camry (it might've been a V6) with CD player and tape deck. Just one moment behind the wheel and I knew I wouldn't resign myself to confinement behind neighborhood streets. First I went to tea class, where finally, some of the rhythm is taking hold in me. I sat still and quiet for long periods with legs tucked beneath. At one point my legs had fallen completely asleep and felt large and obtrusive like the fat lips the dentist gives you. And when I had to move across the tatami mat to retrieve my bowl of tea, my legs from the knees down were truly dead weight. I thought of what it would be like to be paralyzed and how that dead weight would be the body in which to live for eternity. Tea ended arigato gozaimashta and then I headed for hills. Sunny and hot, just plain language to say it. I found the woods I was looking for and the crowds of Seattleites I knew would be there too. But it's not necessary to find solitude by trail-way. I was at the Snow lake trailhead that originates from Alpental. From there I found a way through the ski area, over sullen patches of snow and pernicious, unidentified brush to a piece of river kept to myself. Moisture exuded from the peaks above in wide streaks as if the mountains were crying. Only when enough had accumulated toward the valley bottom did the water organize itself into rivulets and creeks and then the river. You know I fully intended to skinny dip - to polar bear it - so warm the air was, but at one point I took off my sandals (crossed the snow in sandals walking as though on snowshoes) to wade into the river so that I might avoid the brush. In just a few steps my legs ached to the bones in cold. Only its movement keeps the river liquid. So I sat warming on rock beside the river meditating on that roar, listening to the occasional knock of stones that had been lifted free and pressed to the bottom again. And I thought much, much about being here from Korea two years now. That's almost as long as I was there. I am uncomfortable with the feeling that that place is still more salient than this more present one. It seems as though I can remember each day lived there but days here slip and fold over onto each other like a silk nightgown. I've come up with a couple of theories to explain the differentiation and I put them into the journal I keep to myself. I also recorded, just for a kind of list-keeping, each change from then to now. Remarkable transformations in these two years. They are important because of their number in a short span of time. Though, I didn't expect for it take so long, or for it to continue on. I think: It will continue on and on. Inexorable, this becoming. The perception of sameness results from constrictive habit and its mothering fear; sameness is a kind of forgetting, a failure to witness transformations. Later I did drive through a neighborhood or two. Pam and I ate dinner and then she suggested that we walk to Seattle University and visit the Chapel of St. Ignatius, which is an exquisitely haunting place of worship. It's an odd structure, curiously misplaced from some desert to our temperate climate. Every cant and color of surface maximizes light and texture. Symbols have been pared down to their essences and displayed in Japanese minimalism. Candles burned, certainly. While I was there I felt very strongly the desire to return when I could hear the sounds of people sitting and breathing. It was quite late in the evening when we stopped by and there was no one but us. It was absolutely silent but for some low hum of the building. It was again a feeling of having just missed the living, arriving just on their waning exit: It was like Myst. Sunday the weather was supposed to be beautiful but it was drizzly when I woke up. The bike ride I'd planned with Pam was soon cancelled and much of the morning was passed on the couch in bathrobe and book. The afternoon was a bit of work and errands. A really long and leisurely spell at Whole Foods. I don't know what else. Home, I guess. I cooked a large dinner with things I'd found at that grocery store. I watched Scully get duped by Cancer Man on the X-Files. And then I wrote to you before going to bed.

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