Category: Before

I sat on the floor, running my eyes across the titles in John’s big CD collection, arranged in alphabetical order. I stopped when I noticed a sequence of five CDs that were sitting in the same order in my alphabetically arranged collection, four blocks away.

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In the shade outside a coffee shop (a coffee shop that I wouldn’t be able to locate on a map), sipping chai, picking chocolate chips out of my scone, chatting with Ingrid’s coworkers. A pair of pigeons competed for crumbs, boldly brushing up against my hands several times. Twenty feet away, a man with a happy round face sat hunched over a typewriter, back to the sidewalk, confidently typing away with index fingers. Each time he reached the right edge of his paper (leaving no margins), he swiped the carriage return back to the left and let out a loud belch.

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Ingrid and I peaked into the windows of the little house that she’d just committed to buying the night before.

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We dug holes in Leah’s yard, sifting out rusted chunks of another generation’s garden tools. We planted trees and sad little tomato plants.

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I picked up The Turn-Ons Viewmaster package that Ingrid worked on . . . Uh, I didn’t have much cash on me, so I had to borrow the money for it . . . Actually, Ingrid kind of borrowed the money for me.

While walking around today I came across a group of four year olds yelling into a wide grated manhole cover. There were three or four women standing in a half-circle behind them, smiling – the kids’ pre-school teachers I assume. I could hear one of the kids crying, but I couldn’t pick out right away which one it was. I tried to piece together what was happening, but got a little disoriented when I noticed that the crying wasn’t coming from any of the yelling kids. I panicked for a disoriented moment, imagining a kid had somehow gotten down there. Were the other kids heckling him?

It all cleared up a second later, when I got a little closer. The kids were hollering into the pit under the sidewalk, listening to their voices echo back up at them. The source of the crying was a little boy who I hadn’t seen before, standing with one of the adults crying about the noise.

I was reminded of the acrylic-cutters and the likely oft repeated, “Enjoy your acrylic,” comment last week while buying shorts and a t-shirt at Nordstrom Rack. (Or as I once heard it called in the elevator of an office building where I worked, The Rack. As in, “The Rack is getting a new shipment on Wednesday.”)

The line at The Rack‘s checkout was beginning to pile up. A middle-aged man wearing a suit and a nametag that said “Store Manager” dodged his way through his young employees to open another cash register.

A couple of minutes later, he finished the transaction with his first customer and a woman came up beside him offering to take his place behind the register.

“Oh no,” the manager bellowed while I walked over and set my purchases down in front of him, “Open up another cash register. We need to get these people out the door.” And, more to me than to his employee, he added, “Unlike us, they don’t have to hang out inside on a nice day like this.”

For his benefit, I carefully showed the appropriate level of bemusement on my face.

We finished our transaction and he passed the bag of clothes to me. With a huge smile on his face and no hint of irony in his voice this time, he said, “Enjoy.”

I walked out trying to figure out if I would enjoy my shorts as much as the store manager seemed to hope.

When I left my apartment this morning, I did two things simultaneously. I closed my door and realized that I didn’t have my keys with me. I do that a few times a year.

When I did this at an apartment I lived in six or seven years ago, I’d wait for my neighbor to come home and he’d let me crawl out his kitchen window onto a nice broad ledge. I’d climb over to my apartment and crawl in through my window. My roommate Joe and I reciprocated, providing the same service to our neighbor on several ocassions. I always locked myself out when Joe was out of town, so I couldn’t just wait for him to come home.

One of the last times I locked myself out at that apartment, my windows were latched in such a way that I couldn’t pry them open. I had locked my first floor entrance, which opened onto a stairway that led to my apartment door. The main apartment door remained unlocked. After some hemming and hawing I just put a rock through the window pane next to the doorknob on my first-floor entrance. My neighbor had apparently had to make a similar choice at some point in the past, since my door now match the neighbor’s.

When Joe and I moved out of that apartment, I shopped around for a window pane to replace the one I’d broken. I was told that it was some type of safety glass and that it would be expensive to replace. The window shop suggested that I get a plastic panel at Eagle Hardware instead.

I took the number 7 bus all the way from Broadway to Eagle on Rainier Avenue. I read the measurements that I’d written down in my sketch book to the guy at Eagle. He cut a small panel for me and, as I left his work area, he said dryly, “Enjoy your acrylic.”

Later, when I went to work on the window, I found that I’d mis-measured. The panel was a quarter of an inch too big on each side.

I made the trip back to Eagle and had the panel recut. The guy who did the work was not the same person I’d dealt with before. But when I left he made the same joke, “Enjoy your acrylic.”

I’m walking up from the waterfront late Sunday evening. I pass a man, he’s moving at a shuffling pace, blinking at everything with wide eyes, smiling openly.

He stops me, “Excuse me. Are you from here?”

“Yes.”

“Are those all homes?” He points up at two 15-floor box-shaped towers, the Harbor Steps buildings.

“Yes. They’re all apartments.”

He nods his head, letting it sink in. “This is the first time I’ve been here.”

We both cross the street and head up the steps.

“Where are you from?”

“Albuquerque, New Mexico,” he answers.

“What brings you here?”

“I’m a truck driver,” he tells me. He is turning his head in every direction, soaking in data overload. “Is there a mall around here? Can you give me directions?”

I point him to Westlake Center.

“I was hoping to go out tonight, but I’m worried about getting lost. I’ll squeeze in what I can though.” He stops on the sidewalk, waiting for the light.

For a moment I entertain the idea of inviting him somewhere for a drink, but figure he’ll find his way better without me. I turn up the street and wave, “Enjoy yourself.”

The light turns green. He steps carefully into the crosswalk, seeing things I can’t.

Robert called earlier, frustrated about his slow progress at reading lessons, hungry and broke, and feeling lonesome. I told him I could meet him in the park and give him some money for a burger, but that I couldn’t visit with him.

Robert was standing at the corner watching my door when I went out a little later. I walked over with a ten-dollar bill in my pocket and talked to him for a minute. I gave him the ten-dollar bill, aware that to outside appearances this looked like a drug deal, and returned his hug.

Now I’m sitting here feeling a little lonely myself, waiting for Ingrid’s phone call, and trying to write about Robert. But I’m not getting anything down, not even a basic description of our conversation over coffee this morning. And I’m realizing that I felt lonelier talking to Robert than I did as soon as we parted.

Maybe part of that is sympathy for Robert – he has pretty much nothing and nobody. But more than feeling sympathy, I think I just feel empty when I see him. I see that the gap between what he can provide for himself and what he needs will always be wider than what anyone will be able to give him. No matter how his situation improves, he will always need exactly as much emotional support from me as he needs now.

I feel emptier each time I see him now. I try to separate Robert from the rest of my life, but sometimes it seeps in. And now I feel like I need to push him farther into the background of my life and move on.

Seattle’s two daily papers printed the same AP photos on their front pages and their sports pages today.

The foliage rising up from the sudden drop-off beside the one-lane dead-end gravel road. The car, its trunk open, leaning over the ledge at a forty-five degree angle, no tires touching the ground. The driver standing in the road, stunned. The hikers, hopeful Samaritans, verifying that their cell phones are also getting no signal.

The five-lane freeway on a busy night. The car stalled in the center lane. The cars screeching to a stop behind it. The drivers taking a breath and accelerating back into traffic at the first opening. The driver and passenger in the stalled car, eyes wide with panic, visible to the other cars for a moment as they whip past, sitting ducks.

The small hand on my watch sweeps around the watchface at twice the speed of the Earth’s rotation.

There’s a tiny window cut out of the watchface; it’s only a few millimeters across. It’s next to the “3” printed on the watchface. The numbers one through thirty-one are printed next to the outside edge of a wheel that turns behind the window. The numbers are just large enough for one of them to be seen through the window. The wheel remains stationary (relative to the rest of the watch) throughout most of the day. At the beginning of the last hour of the day it begins to turn. It continues to turn until the next number is completely visible through the window, at the end of the first of hour of the following day.

The number in the window corresponds to the day of the month. It goes out of sync five times a year, on the first day of each month that follows a month with fewer than thirty-one days. At some point, during the first few days after the number in the window goes out of sync, I’ll pull out the little knob on the side of the watch and reset the number in the window. I used to reset the number in the window by setting the watch forward twenty-four hours (eighty-six hours on March 1, 2001). But while resetting the watch on May 1, 2002, I discovered that if I only pulled the knob out half as far as it would go, I could set the number in the window without affecting the movement of the watch hands.

I also adjust the watch when I move between time zones. This is usually done on airplanes. I’m always careful to feign casualness, while at the same time making it clear to my seatmates what I’m doing. As if I was saying, “I have to do this so often that it’s second nature.” I think they usually see through my facade though.

I flew to Phoenix last spring. Arizona doesn’t adjust for daylight savings time, so Seattle time and Phoenix time where in sync and I didn’t adjust my watch. Daylight savings time ended while I was in Phoenix; so I only adjusted my watch on the flight back to Seattle.

Photos from the Orcas Island trip.

Exploring the tide-pool, we found some very interesting creatures as well some creatures that we were happy to leave to the sea.

(Most of) The stunning 360 view from the top of “Mt.” Constitution.

Also, click through the horizon photos for June 24 – June 27.