Seattle

Seattle Photo-1924

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Seattle climate: Pacific Marine. Around late September to early October, the switch flips and the High pressure ridge no longer holds. The sunny, temperate summer (July 4th–September 20th) is gone, Jack. A few bigger storms move in (more wind and relatively more rain). In come the clouds, and the drizzle, and because we’re at 48 degrees north latitude, the darkness.

As for snow, there’s plenty of moisture around, but getting the moisture AND the cold air together is tough. The cold air dams behind the Cascades and up high and in Eastern Washington. Sometimes it drains through the Fraser River valley and spills over Seattle. You might not get any snow for a winter or two, or you might get 1-2 weeks of below freezing temps, and 2-24 inches of snow on the ground before it melts with the next rain. Lots of variability.

Dress in layers with moisture protection. The difference between the rare sun on your skin and walking through a damp, chill fog could be 15-20 degrees. Expect low light, and sunrise as you go to work and sunset before you leave.

Join a club…and get some good exercise. Wait for late April or May to start seeing real sunny days again.

Seattle Photo & A Poem By Donald Justice

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Men At Forty

Men at forty
Learn to close softly
The doors to rooms they will not be
Coming back to.

At rest on a stair landing,
They feel it moving
Beneath them now like the deck of a ship,
Though the swell is gentle.

And deep in mirrors
They rediscover
The face of the boy as he practices tying
His father’s tie there in secret

And the face of the father,
Still warm with the mystery of lather.
They are more fathers than sons themselves now.
Something is filling them, something

That is like the twilight sound
Of the crickets, immense,
Filling the woods at the foot of the slope
Behind their mortgaged houses.

–Donald Justice

Seattle Photo-For The Birds

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I’m just aiming to increase the average photo I’m taking. Maybe during this process you get a sense of the place.

Thanks for stopping by.

***One day a few photos might be ‘wall-worthy.’ You’re in line at a restaurant (aspiring chain) bathroom and your eyes focus for 3-5 seconds on one of the photos framed in front of you.

Immortality!

Seattle Photo & A Poem By Elizabeth Bishop-For Commerce Or Contemplation

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Large Bad Picture

Remembering the Strait of Belle Isle or 
some northerly harbor of Labrador, 
before he became a schoolteacher 
a great-uncle painted a big picture. 

Receding for miles on either side 
into a flushed, still sky 
are overhanging pale blue cliffs 
hundreds of feet high, 

their bases fretted by little arches, 
the entrances to caves 
running in along the level of a bay 
masked by perfect waves. 

On the middle of that quiet floor 
sits a fleet of small black ships, 
square-rigged, sails furled, motionless, 
their spars like burnt match-sticks. 

And high above them, over the tall cliffs’ 
semi-translucent ranks, 
are scribbled hundreds of fine black birds 
hanging in n’s in banks. 

One can hear their crying, crying, 
the only sound there is 
except for occasional sizhine 
as a large aquatic animal breathes. 

In the pink light 
the small red sun goes rolling, rolling, 
round and round and round at the same height 
in perpetual sunset, comprehensive, consoling, 

while the ships consider it. 
Apparently they have reached their destination. 
It would be hard to say what brought them there, 
commerce or contemplation.

–Elizabeth Bishop

Seattle Photo-Garbage Man In The Market & A Poem By Seamus Heaney-You Get The Idea

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Digging

Between my finger and my thumb   
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

Under my window, a clean rasping sound   
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:   
My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds   
Bends low, comes up twenty years away   
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills   
Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft   
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked,
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade.   
Just like his old man.

My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner’s bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I’ll dig with it.

–Seamus Heaney

Seattle Photo-Choose Your Own Adventure

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Here’s my postmodern blurb (probably not preposterous enough):

‘The use of language and symbols is a potentially unique feature of human beings. Embedded within our perceptual apparatus are modes of engagement, in constant interface with the Natural World, informing our actions towards both knowable and unknowable (E)nds.’