Sometimes, the best thing to do on a day that’s cold and rainy, when the clouds are dark grey and hang so very close to the Earth, is to spend bit of time hanging Christmas tree lights out on the deck¹:

And then come inside where Andy’s making miso soup and there are promises of a fire in the fireplace if you want one.

1. Even Andy was pleased with the amount of light the lights gave off when turned on once it got fully dark (and he hates Christmas lights used as ambiance/lighting).  They’ll give a nicer light out there than the actual overhead light, which is more like a searchlight than anything.  One more reason to look forward to balcony season.  Plus i put them on a remote-controlled outlet plug, so i can actually turn them on from inside and across the living room.  So nice! [↩]

Happy New Year from Seattle!

One of the glorious things about Seattle is how gorgeously, deeply blue the sunset sky becomes.  The  color on this pic isn’t great (cut me some slack, it’s just a camera-phone), but gives a sense of how blue the Sound and sky get during dusk.  The light itself seems to become blue-ish until full dark sets in.  It’s utterly gorgeous.

I hope 2012 is filled with many other such saturdays as this.  We woke mid-morning, ran several errands in our neighborhood, picked up our CSA veggies at the farmers market, ate a late lunch at the bagel shop so i could order my usual dozen egg bagels, and grabbed a few CDs from Scarecrow Video.  Then it was home for a little while before we went downtown to pick up a few things at Pike Place Market, from where we then walked to our favorite bar to share a special bottle of sake with our favorite barkeep.  Home on the bus.  Andy cooked dinner, twice, in our new wok.  Now it’s up to the loft to snuggle in and end the year watching movies.

Tomorrow we get a Violet, and we’ll have (for Andy and me) roast pork & caraway sauerkraut & potato dumplings and (for Violet) mac & cheese.

Life is okay.  I miss Edward and wish we could have skipped most of summer.  But, on average, life is good.  We’re very lucky.

Somewhere along the line i attached a sort of mystical significance to travel.  Perhaps it’s because there was so little of it when i was growing up that sometimes, yes, travel was a mystical experience.  I will always love screened-in porches because i fell in love with the porch at my great-aunt’s house in New Jersey during a visit to go to the shore when i was about 5 or so.  It’s an outside space, and yet it is also inside!  You can sleep there at night without getting bitten to death by bugs!  You can enjoy a thunderstorm there without getting utterly soaked!!

So i love travel.  I get deeply cross when travel goes awry, whether cancelled outright or, most upsetting of all, when travel plans get scrambled while i am in the middle of them.  I am at my most contented when i can spend a few days in a place without expectations: waking in the same bed in a new city for a week, enjoying local restaurants, poking around the foreign streets and shops and making them mine for a little while, sitting in a park and just breathing.

But i also have an increasingly lousy memory.  Mind like a steel sieve, i say!  And while i photograph up a storm when i’m traveling, the one thing i always, always fail to do is write anything.  Thank god for the travelogue the_andy kept when we were in Dublin and the U.K. in 2009 — between his diary and my photos, it’s like having my own memories of things.

To a certain extent, i hate pausing in my travel days to write it all down.  I want to experience it all and not just reduce it down to a litany of Things Done.  I’m reminded of the lament of a fellow poet i knew at my 2nd college: I’m caught between the 2 pressures of wanting to be out living experiences, and wanting to have some quiet time to write about everything i’ve been doing.

How do i choose?  How do i balance?  How do i remember everything i’ve done, while at the same time finding a way to also record all the minute, near-invisible emotions and reactions i have to everything new i experience when traveling?  I don’t just want to remember the bones of my travel adventures, but all the connective tissues of how i’ve sensed everything, how i’ve interpreted it all, how it’s affected and changed me.

I crave the collection of data, but the songs written from those notes are just as important.

I need to find the balance between scientist and poet.  To find a way to pull the mystical out of the minutiae.

Today was one of the few genuinely spring days Seattle has had.  By my count, it’s the 2nd — possibly the 3rd.  It’s been an epically cold and rainy spring.

But today it was sunny!  It was in the 60sF, if not the 70sF!  I worked in my “garden” for about 3 hours.  While i was trimming and shifting things around, i discovered that my dwarf cherry tree had, as i said on Twitter, a “fuckton” of blossoms.  Inspired by Maru, we decided that tonight we would have “the meal of cherry blossom viewing.”

Andy grilled us a very nice dinner.  I poured us some sake (“100 poems by 100 poets,” appropriately enough for april, poetry month).  Edward stopped by for a bit of cat grass with his cherry blossom viewing.  We read some haiku — about frogs, about farts, about cherry blossoms.

We listened to some Japanese punk, as one does.

Our cherry tree may only be a dwarf, and it may live in a self-watering container i made out of feta buckets scavenged from behind a local restaurant, but it was a really, really lovely evening.

Here’s my poem for our cherry blossom viewing:

he does not love poetry
. . .but at cherry blossom viewing dinner
he reads haiku aloud
he reads from Basho
because he does not love poetry
. . .but he loves me

Andy in 'The Church'

Every day in Dublin, we’d wake around 8am or so.  Shower, dress.  Then we’d leisurely make our way down to The Church — the Dublin hostel’s cafeteria.  Yes, in an old church.

Breakfast was complimentary, unless you wanted scrambled eggs.  I never wanted eggs because the complimentary breakfast was perfect as far as i was concerned: toast (butter and jam provided), orange juice, tea (or coffee).  I think there was also dry cereal and milk because i believe that’s what Andy usually had.

I can’t eat very much food 1st thing in the day.  Morning, as you may know, is not my time.  The earlier i get up, the more physically ill i feel.  No lie: i used to have to get up at 5am every single day, and every single day i felt sick to my stomach.  Much as i love going out to brunch, i almost always have to schedule it closer to lunchtime so that i have a chance to prime my stomach with a slice of toast and a swig of OJ a few hours in advance.

So the Dublin hostel breakfast?  Perfect.

I’d start with the toast and OJ, waiting for the tea to cool a bit.  We’d peruse the guidebooks and maps, trying to come to an agreement on the plan for the day.  Once i finished my tea, we’d put on our jackets and go out into the city.

Often, when i’m starting my day with a cup of strong black tea and a slice of toast, all i can think of is Dublin.

'The Church' @ the Dublin hostel

Last year i was pretty upbeat and hopeful on New Year’s Eve.  This year?  I was coughy, congested, and tired.  I had 1 shot — of NyQuil.  Fell asleep by 11pm, didn’t even awaken at midnight when i presume there was probably a bit of noise going on in the U-District (there always is), and slept until 10am.

Had strange dreams.  Dreamt that Fergus’s big fat momma cat had more and more litters (thankfully impossible in real life).  So many grey, grey/white, and black kitties!!!

Dreamt about polishing my shoes (which i really ought to do).

Today we’ll probably watch more of the Seventh Doctor’s episodes of “Doctor Who.”

This year, New Year’s Day is just another saturday.  Well, except that the farmers market is closed: i’m kind of having withdrawal symptoms about that.