Adventure, Day 2
Today was an honest-to-god vacation day. True to form, I fit in my travel trifecta: public transit, a grocery store, and a bookstore.
I took a bus to Chinatown for lunch. I realized it was the first public transit I've taken in almost two years, since before the pandemic. It felt good to be back on a bus, watching the city roll past. Once in Chinatown, I wandered around looking for an appealing place to eat. Knowing myself, I really should have predicted the outcome: I ended up at Musashi's, the sushi place I went to last time I was on King Street. For me, an essential part of exploring is revisiting; the thrill of initial discovery isn't quite as rich as the satisfaction of deepening a connection. I have tiny little grooves of habit in almost every city I've visited multiple times, and once I sat down in Musashi's I had the pleasure of layering new memories atop old -- that's the table I sat at last time; the menu is slightly different; it's not as busy this time.
After lunch, I charted a course to my next destination, Elliott Bay Books. I caught a train from King Street Station up to Capitol Hill. Coming out of the train station, I felt all my public transit experiences intersecting, which is one of the reasons I love liminal spaces like airports and train stations. They're woods between the worlds: the end of the platform at the Capitol Hill station reminded me of a particular train station in Berlin; the looming escalator -- DC's Metro; the way people stood politely to one side of the escalator -- London's Tube; the ubiquitous tech startup advertisements -- San Francisco.
Once out of the station, awash in associations, I made my way through Cal Anderson Park to the bookstore. As I walked, a soaring bird drew my eye upwards. Too big for a hawk, too steady for a buzzard; I looked closer and realized it was a bald eagle, working lazy circles over the park. White head, white tail, broad wings. I stopped, grinning, and watched for a long moment. Eagles are assholes to be sure, territorial rascals with a mean streak, but I've always loved raptors and can't help but read the unexpected presence of bald eagles in particular as an auspicious sign. A bald eagle sat in a tree with its fledgling, a dozen feet from my Jeep, right before I left Florida; another soared over the building I now live in with my best friend on the first day I visited it.
Maybe the auspicious sign was nothing more profound than "you're about to go to a bookstore," but that would be enough because y'all, I LOVE books. Like, books are the best. Inside the bookstore I simply drifted for a while, picking up books just for the pleasure of having them in my hands. Poetry, science fiction, YA, biographies, urban planning. And the apotheosis of the written word, books about how to write books. Unfortunately, the ONE book I wanted to buy was in stock, but in a shoddy edition with disappointing typesetting and lackluster paper and sad binding. I might have debated buying it anyway, but the first page of the book was page 7. Page 7. Never in all my years...
Disappointed, I went to seek a second bookstore. Elliott Bay Books is in Capitol Hill, in one of those neighborhoods with pride flags everywhere, and rainbows painted in the crosswalks, and people of all genders walking their dogs or doing public art projects or getting tattoos. I have an eternal affection for queer neighborhoods. They always, always have good bookstores, usually several. They always have dive bars, and gay dive bars are distinctive in a way that I can't quite describe but is instantly recognizable to anyone who knows them. There's something in the musty smell of them that tells you that people have been coming here for refuge for many decades. That here, you can let your freak flag fly.
The second bookstore I was looking for turned out to be closed due to COVID, so I kept walking through rainbow-colored intersections and soon stumbled across a little coffee shop called General Porpoise. I could not do anything other than go inside. The coffee was fine, but more importantly, there was a painting of a porpoise in a general's uniform. Maybe that's what the eagle was promising me. Anyway, I sat down and had coffee and filled pages in my journal.
Then it was time for the final critical piece of my city visit, which was to go to a grocery store. I had the pleasure of finding my way there with minimal assistance from a map, since I wasn't terribly far from my hotel and had already wandered the area this morning. I got my oatmeal and apples and packaged meals so that I could get a break from eating out and then walked back to the hotel.
The evening consisted of finalizing arrangements for travel: rethinking my COVID test approach for tomorrow, charting my course to the airport via train, reviewing my checklists and travel documents, and generally maximizing the likelihood that I will actually end up in Iceland in less than 48 hours. I know that sounds exciting and you're probably disappointed not to get a blow-by-blow, but it's almost 10pm already and I have to be up stupid early to get my COVID test so I'll wrap it up.
I'll close with a link to one of my favorite recent song discoveries, the Lost Words Blessing (Robert Macfarlane will be familiar to those of you who loved Underland as much as I did). The last month or two have been full of, as my therapist says, "a lot of life," and the words of that song set a beautiful scene for my literal and metaphorical travels:
Enter the wild with care, my love
And speak the things you see
Let new names take and root and thrive and grow
