Ra-in-Seattle

Four Five things:

- I took the Link Light Rail to SeaTac yesterday morning. We sat facing her luggage, but I kept turning around to watch Seattle pass us by. It felt a different world from the Seattle I know and live in. I told Merve, “It’s like me living on the east side in Melbourne and only ever going to the West side less than ten times. Perhaps five?”

- She probably didn’t understand what I was trying to say. But it was something about how each city wants to sell us a more sanitised version of itself, somewhere where the pain of its people are not realised on the surface. It’s a distance we’ve created. We don’t ever need to go to the other side.

- I remember the America I want to know and feel.

- It started raining when I emerged from the airport. Funny how we want the weather to reflect our insides. So what? It wasn’t discordant, but it didn’t feel like harmony.

- I sat backwards on the way home
her printer in my hand
watching the same scenes go by in reverse,
wishing time
would sometimes work that way.