SEATTLE: A LOCAL'S GUIDE

The Seattle Space Needle, seen from the Chihuly Museum - glass flowers and blue sky.

WORDS FOR SEATTLE

waterside

lettered

downtown

espresso

illuminated

locality

tulips

intercontinental 

amicable

second-hand

hella

rain

more rain

granola

hipster

xylophone

sakura

pouring cats & dogs

thrifting

revelatory

microsoft

fishmonger 

flannel

collective

glass & iron

ethnic

market-fresh

nourishment

bongos

chilhuly

traffic

green

arrondissement

radish

eddy

modish

sleepless

drizzling

bike-lanes

The beautiful Nicole Komen!
Cherry blossoms at the University of Washington.

I love to try and snatch the right words and phrases out of the air around me, feeling them tentatively before I grab them and place them in-between their neighbours. 

If I was to describe Nicole in one word, it would be 'spirited' : she is brimming with spirit, life, enthusiasm and spark. Many of my best 'Nicole' memories contain a fragment of her distinctive and contagious laughter. Ah man, those were good times. So, of course when Nicole offered to show me around her hometown Seattle, I jumped at the opportunity!

When I travel, I make a conscious effort to engage in the new places I walk through. I try to almost diffuse into the space. This becomes much easier when I am able to talk with the local people - because it is at that junction of conversation and localised experience where I begin to belong to a space, even if for just a moment. A lucky side-effect of my art work is that I am also made constantly aware of my surroundings. Trying to capture individual moments and savor them completely will do that to a person.

As for Seattle, there were so many moments to engage in. I remember feeling fully awake when the city lights reflected on all that water, the rain on the windows of the car, and the headlights reflected in puddles and wet highways that arc'd over the rushing tides. It was calming, to watch the drops pool together on the window. I remember the way people would embrace a sunny day as if it was their last. That kind of appreciation is special. I remember the shifts in my vision; mountains to lakes to docks to thirty-story buildings to neighbourhoods. Inside, outside, coffee house, thrift shop, cherry tree. 

 

THE TRIED & TRUE

 

Chihuly Museum and Gardens

The Chittenden Locks

The Space Needle

Pike Place Market

The house boats ala Sleepless in Seattle

Kerry Park - the views of the city

CHIHULY MUSEUM & GARDENS

air . filled . glass

Chihuly Museum and gardens - the glasshouse.
Glass art flowers in the glasshouse at Chihuly Museum.
Chihuly gardens glass art.

THE SPACE NEEDLE: BEST VIEWS

spaceship . on a . stick

Vie of the Space Needle from Chihuly Museum, under the beautiful glass flowers.

- inside chihuly -

Space Needle seen from below in the Spring with cherry blossoms.

- in spring -

View of the Space Needle from Kerry Park.

- kerry park -

The Space Needle and Seattle lights skyline seen from Alki Beach at night.

- seen from alki beach -

THE CHITTENDEN LOCKS

monumental . movement . of water

Boat at The Locks, on high water, Seattle.
The Locks working gates in Seattle, WA.
Boat and reflections at The Locks, Seattle WA.
Water emptying out of The Locks, Seattle WA.

PIKE PLACE MARKETS

the hustle . & . the bustle

Pike Place Market sign in neon letters, Seattle.
Crab legs at the Pike Place Market in Seattle.
Flowers in buckets - tulips and spring flowers, Pike Place Market, Seattle.

THE WEIRD & WACKY

 

Gasworks Park

Cherry blossoms at the UW

Reading Room at UW

The view from Seattle's Public Library
(top floor)

Thrift shopping

The real life house from the movie 'Up'
sandwiched between big buildings

Jazz bars

The Compline Choir at St Mark's Cathedral
Sunday at 9:30 pm

Broadway Dance Steps

GASWORKS PARK

abandoned . iron . playground

Gasworks Park in the rain.
Playing on the abandoned machines at Gasworks Park.
Seattle city skyline seen from Gasworks Park, with a boat driving through.
Mucking around on the old machines at Gasworks Park.

CHERRY BLOSSOMS: UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON

carpet . of . petals

Seattle cherry blossoms in the spring rain, University of Washington.
Cherry blossom up close, Seattle in spring.
Cherry blossoms on a lane with benches, at the University of Washington
Cherry Blossoms at the University of Washington.

THE READING ROOM

harry . potter . library

The Reading Room library at the University of Washington.
University of Washington Reading Room. Like the library from Harry Potter.
The Reading Room, University of Washington. Windows and wooden panel detail.

THRIFT SHOP

totally . hella . cool

Awesome colourful 90's shoes at a thrift shop in Seattle.
Old records at a thrift shop in Seattle.
An old photograph of a family camping and binoculars, at a thrift shop in Seattle.

ALKI BEACH AT NIGHT

city . on the . water

Alki Beach view of Seattle skyline at night - with all the lights on the water.

OTHER AWESOME PLACES

View of a sky rise building from the Seattle Public Library - interesting windows.

Seattle Public Library

Real life 'Up' movie house, in Seattle, between two big buildings.

The real 'Up' house

Houseboats on the water, Seattle.

House Boats

The Compline Choir at St Marks, Seattle.

The Compline Choir

Chewing gum on the Market Theatre Gum Wall, Seattle.

The Gum Wall

Dance Steps on Broadway, Seattle.

Broadway Dance Steps

THE FOOD PLACES

 

The Bay Cafe - Fisherman's Terminal

Pho Big Bowl - Ballard

Theo Chocolate Factory

Wholefoods

Thai Tea - anywhere

Ivars Fish Bar

Dicks Burgers

WOW Bubble Tea - 4553 University Way

Fremont Sunday Market

Homegrown radishes at the Fremont market Seattle.
Pho Big Bowl in Ballard, Seattle.
Dick's Burgers sign in Seattle WA.
Thai Tea, in Seattle.
Roasted With Love, Seattle WA coffee beans.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens.
Stacks of buttered toast.
“It was no nominal meal that we were going to make, but a vigorous reality. The Aged prepared such a haystack of buttered toast, that I could scarcely see him over it as it simmered on an iron stand hooked on to the top-bar; while Miss Skiffins brewed such a jorum of tea, that the pig in the back premises became strongly excited, and repeatedly expressed his desire to participate in the entertainment. ”
— CHARLES DICKENS - GREAT EXPECTATIONS

About a year ago, I encountered one extraordinarily inspirational website, by the name of:

 

the girl who ate books

 

I cannot remember at which point I read the article, but I do remember that it affected me greatly. This article I speak of, written by the website's author Jessica, turned my own work on its head.

In the article, Jessica outlines her misgivings on the subject of literary criticism...

“I really struggle against what I find to be the popular practice of reducing art down to simply whether or not you enjoyed it - the notion that things have only the value that we attribute to them - they have no value of their own. ”
— JESSICA SHEARER

Now, given that a human brain will try to link new ideas with older knowledge, in order to better understand the new facts being learnt, it was not unusual for me to relate this line of thinking to my own work. It also didn't help that I had been feeling a similar malaise, having had the creeping notion that my work was too self-centered and had no real purpose. The idea began to bug me, and would not let up. So, after much pondering, philosophising, and planning, this new website was born...

Born from a wish to move away from simple descriptions of 'what I did, ate, read,' and instead to explore the unknown quality of my work; that is, the part that ascertains to life itself. In many ways, I wanted to expand my own being into the wider world by looking closely at it, in awe and appreciation.

And that is putting my thoughts on the subject in simple terms.

I neither loved, nor hated, Charles Dicken's Great Expectations. But that is beside the point.

The singularly most important thing to say about Great Expectations is that it is a funny tale. The funny parts seem all the more hilarious for being juxtaposed with the grimmest of details: a musty room, where a wedding cake decomposes, a frightening encounter with a prison escapee, and perhaps the worst of all, an unrequited love. 

This is just the kind of picture of dark humor that Dicken's was so adept at painting...

“My sister, Mrs Joe Gargery, was more than twenty years older than I, and had established a great reputation with herself and the neighbours because she had brought me up ‘by hand.’ Having at that time to find out what the expression meant, and knowing her to have a hard and heavy hand, and to be much in the habit of laying it upon her husband as well as upon me, I supposed that Joe Gargery and I were both brought up by hand.
She was not a good-looking woman, my sister; and I had a general impression that she must have made Joe Gargery marry her by hand. ”
— CHARLES DICKENS - GREAT EXPECTATIONS

Aside from offering a chuckle or a guffaw here and there, the story also offers the reader an insight into their own mind. Dickens always was a good one to describe life and our variously collected experiences of it. Love, confusion, pain, suffering, overwhelming joy, pride, willful hate. All of these are shown perfectly so that one may empathise with the characters. Perhaps that is what makes the psychotic Miss Havisham so scary; is that we may recognise part of our own mind in hers. 

At any rate, there are some brilliant descriptions of tea and toast...

Piles of buttered toast and tea - Great Expectations feast.

MOON FRISBEE

Full moon in a purple sunset over Grand Junctions flat topped mountains.


RANDOM SCIENCE FACT
 

A frisbee is thrown on the Moon.
On Earth this frisbee would generate lift as a result of its shape. On the Moon, the absence of air means it will fly like a rock, regardless of its form.


The frisbee will travel a distance of d = v^2/g
where v is velocity and g is lunar gravitational acceleration -
which is roughly six times smaller than g on Earth. 


Thus, the frisbee will travel roughly six times farther than a rock thrown on Earth. 

I could not get over how beautiful the moon looked. It hovered in a purple dreamscape, opposite the sun, and above the flat mesa tops of the cliffs. 

I was struck by the peculiar feeling of a dissociative person looking at their own reflection. The land around me was a variation of pockmarked, hillocked, and rocky strips, with small craters here and there, all scattered among flat patches of dry desert tundra grass. It was not unlike the moon there, or at least, it fit my imaginings pretty closely.

I sat a while, just thinking about the wonders of the Universe, while the others continued to play frisbee.

 

Aerobie pro frisbee.
Grand Junction CO looks like the surface of the moon.
Sitting on the dry grass.
Full moon and purple sunset in Grand Junction, Colorado.
Playing frisbee on golden grass