On Seattle, train songs, and wordnature porn.

Seattle, seattle, what a lovely effing place.

People are noticeably passive, I will say.  But there' s authenticity to it.

The Oh Sees, local Seattle band.  I find their sound pretty fun.  (photo: http://sexbeatlondon.com/2010/04/15/sxsw/)

Here's a Seattle experience so far (hopefully more to come):

At Citizen coffee in Lower Queen Anne, real people that work in there--honest.  The cook in the back was pissed because it was so hot and didn't want to be in the kitchen--and she expressed that authentically--something I wouldn't see in an LA cafe where smiles = tips and a chance at a toothpaste commercial or voice-over in the very least (right).  Especially for an attractive woman, (at least I found her rather attractive).

Every restaurant and place of vending I went to, there seemed to be no outward physical obligation to feel a certain way in order to send some message to customers.  That's REAL service.  Acting as a present, authentic human being is necessary in order to treat people as such****

(* this assumes the majority of people in big cities give two shits about treating people like human beings)

That message is unnecessary--and would have been irrelevant to the moment.  At least to how she was authentically feeling--so why is that so masked so often?  Of course, it is possible that the passivity acts as another mask--merely a different expression of the same intention as the robot smile, which of course is influenced by environment/context.

Only tunneled into Kurt Cobain, 90s grunge, or _____ (whatever) instead of the T-mobile chick or happily rich n' malnourished poster-girl or ______ (insert other images, public identities assumed for the day/week/year/present moment). 

There's no use in complaining about people being too passive or too happy or too ____ (fake happy, outgoing, etc) but there is use in examining it.  Moods and flavors of communication happen to be contagious sometimes, and it helps to reign in the ol' Brainerangs (mental pests) every once in a while, right?

Side note: I love how friendly people are in Southern California--happy people, seemingly, but that's different for everyone so who the hell am I to say?! 

Kurt Cobain fetishes?  Absolutely, me included.  Grunge 90s, rain, coffee, trucks with "fweedom" signs on it, dreads, rolling green hills -- count me in.

Although I have a feeling if I spent a lot of time there the environment would affect me just as it has the people that live there.  While there's nothing wrong with keeping to oneself and being emotionally present and passionate (we all go in waves, anyway, a natural phenomena called being alive), that's not entirely comfortable for me in a sense.  I like to reach out to people and strangers, it's just part of my curious cat syndrome, my search for external approval, and depending on how seclusive I'm being from the world around me.

We have the right to crawl into our caves, definitely--and I will, it comes to that sometimes if I don't stop and reconsider my breath on a regular basis.

The little escapes that are so necessary sometimes seek to remind us of our insignificance--our littleness--and the transitory state of everything.

Every city has as song.  And my dear friend that lives in Seattle remarked the song of the trains in the valley that his back porch overlooks.  (The porch overlooks a neighboring hillside of houses with haunted teeny diamond windows and the like and the bay, industrial ports, Tacoma, San Juan islands--fuck, maybe even pieces of Canada).

The train songs, I heard them the morning I crashed on Paul's* (is it okay to say your name if you read this? , lemme know) couch.  A whistle with leaves and ships' horns and water.  Seldom cars on windy roads and the overbearing leaf-drums in trees from the wind.

The postcard unfolded itself like a damn hologram--and I thought of a conversation I had with another dear friend* on a balcony in downtown Los Angeles (same name question above, if you ever read this).  The extreme sensory pleasure I received from all these elements unknown to me in colors so fresh it seemed fucking edited (by ___ jeebus m christ myself?  Allah? Yahweh? FSM? Our own software? V-chips brought to you by Time Warner Cable and Coca Cola? ) gave me the spark that holy shit, THIS is IT.  This is the ultimate fucking lump of art, source of joy, source of connectedness... _____ .

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Insert anything that brings out ultimate joy in you, whatever joy that may be, hell, maybe it's eating babies--not that that is encouraged, but still, be curious and aware about whatever brings you ultimate joy, right?

The exquisite weavings of how the elements all manage to get by--earth, water, air, fire (and any others, I mention 4 for brevity).

The train song accompanies the horns of the ships, the wind leaf drums, and the crows perched on white triangles with square windows, and the evergreens, the pink sunset reflection, and the sunlight sparks on the surface of the water.  All of it.  Can teach us how to get by.  How to live just doing what we do.

The sunlight on the water doesn't move with the waves; rather, the light is a mere spark, barely a firework, more like a teeny strobe.

Nature's hypnosis for people who like to stare at things and go into trance.  :)  A joyous one, at that. 

From which I receive the same high as I do from reading Kurt Cobain's journal and letters between him and Courtney Love.  :)



Indulgently reposted:

"Courtney,

When I say I love you, I am not ashamed, nor will anyone ever ever come close to intimidating, persuading, etc me into thinking otherwise.


I wear you on my sleeve. I spread out wide open with the wing span of a peacock, yet all too often with the attention span of a bullet to the head.

I think its pathetic that the entire world looks upon a person with patience and a calm demeanor as the desired model citizen, yet there’s something to be said about the ability to explain ones self with a toned down, tune deaf tone.

And I will say it: I am what they call the boy who is slow. How I metamorphosised from hyperactive to cement is for the lack of a better knife to the throat hu, annoying, aggrevating, confusing as dense as cement.

Cement holds no other mineral. You can’t even find fools gold in it. Its strictly man made and youve taught me it’s ok to be a man and in the classic mans world

I parade you around proudly like the ring on my finger which also holds no mineral.

Love Kurt"

(copy and pasted from http://heatherfink.blogspot.com/2009/12/love-letter-from-kurt-cobain-to.html)