Greetings from Underwater

I packed all the books and Tarot decks in my bedroom on Friday, which took up most of my day, apart from some reading at lunch (acai and The Bookstore Below). In the late afternoon we walked to the beach, saw the eagles, and enjoyed the 60-degree weather -- we have daffodils and plum blossoms blooming along the park path! 

My evening involved more packing, a shower, leftover Indian food, uploading a month's worth of animal photos, and the Milan Olympics opening ceremonies plus some of the team skating competition. Now we're watching the season finale of Ponies, which has been excellent. Here's the octopus we met at the Seattle Aquarium:

Poem for Friday and Sharks and Rays

Painting a Room 

By Katia Kapovich 

Here on a March day in ‘89

I blanch the ceiling and walls with bluish lime.

Drop cloths and old newspapers hide

the hardwood floors. All my furniture has been sold,

or given away to bohemian friends.

There is nothing to eat but bread and wine.

An immigration visa in my pocket, I paint

the small apartment where I’ve lived for ten years.

Taking a break around 4 p.m.,

I sit on the last chair in the empty kitchen,

smoke a cigarette and wipe my tears

with the sleeve of my old pullover.

I am free from regrets but not from pain.

Ten years of fears, unrequited loves, odd jobs,

of night phone calls. Now they’ve disconnected the line.

I drop the ashes in the sink, pour turpentine

into a jar, stirring with a spatula. My heart throbs

in my right palm when I pick up the brush again.

For ten years the window’s turquoise square

has held my eyes in its simple frame.

Now, face to face with the darkening sky,

what more can I say to the glass but thanks

for being transparent, seamless, wide

and stretching perspective across the size

of the visible.

Then I wash the brushes and turn off the light.

This is my last night before moving abroad.

I lie down on the floor, a rolled-up coat

under my head. This is the last night.

Freedom smells of a freshly painted room,

of wooden floors swept with a willow broom,

and of stale raisin bread.

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We told everyone on social media today that we're moving to Worcester, Massachusetts next month, which we didn't want to do until we were sure everything would happen on schedule -- younger son and his wife closing on their new house since we're buying their old one, moving company signed, boxes obtained, work transfer approved, lease bought out. So of course tonight, after a day of packing (and after hours on a Friday), our Wells Fargo banker wrote to warn us that they haven't been able to resolve some assessment fee that's charged to everyone in the neighborhood, and it's in no way clear to me how a HOA fee under $100 that was always scheduled through 2027 is such a problem. 

Besides the packing and lots of necessary emails, we walked to the beach in weather so nice that I don't want to brag about it because everyone I know on the east coast north of South Carolina is about to get slammed with snow. We caught up with my parents on Google Meet, ate leftover food from Cactus for dinner while watching Mel Brooks: The 99 Year Old Man with Cheryl, and now we're watching more Lower Decks ("I, Excretus" with its "Naked Time" and "Spectre of the Gun" references is hilarious; this show definitely improves as it goes along). Here are some photos from last weekend of sharks and rays at the Seattle Aquarium, whose facade is reflected in the guitarfish photo:

Greetings from the Piers

Because it's a holiday weekend, Paul only had to work half a day on Friday, so in the late morning we drove downtown, parked at Pike Place's garage, and walked to the Seattle Great Wheel, which we'd never ridden before in more than a decade of regular visits and three years of living in the area. It was a spectacular clear day, so we had beautiful views of the volcanoes and the Olympic range. Then we walked into Miner's Landing to eat tomato bisque and cheese sandwiches at the Alaskan Sourdough Bakery, plus to look at all the tourist sights in the building. 

After lunch, we walked to the Seattle Aquarium, where we visited all the animals -- lots of fish; a very active octopus; touch tanks of local shellfish; seals and otters; puffins, oystercatchers, and shore birds; sharks and rays; and lots of amazing things. We walked back to the garage through Pike Place, stopping to drink local cider, eat local cherries, and look at lots of crafts, blown glass, food and flower stalls, the Alabaster Owl, and the line at the Original Starbucks. When we got home, we ate pasta for dinner and are now caught up on The Pitt and Fallout! Our day as tourists:

Greetings from Point Defiance

Paul had Juneteenth off, so we headed out early to the Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium, driving through Tacoma and along Commencement Bay in gorgeous weather. It turned out we hadn't left early enough to get into the zoo parking lots, but we parked on one of the streets nearby, ate a picnic we brought at one of the tables, and saw lots of animals -- puffins and penguins (including babies!), sharks and eels, walruses and otters, wrestling polar bears, hungry monkeys, sleepy tigers, red wolves, musk oxen, even a sea turtle. We haven't been to this zoo since 2016 with older son, so that was a lovely afternoon. 

 

When we came home, we watched the Orioles win, ate our leftover Thai food from the weekend for dinner, and I had chat with several of my Thursday night fangirl regulars. Now we're watching some more of the new season of Grantchester, which gets better the second half of the season -- more focus on Cathy and Sylvia, some attention to Alphy's background, a good storyline about Geordie and his son and less Leonard whining he's the only one who's ever felt ostracized when he's surrounded by people with a wide range of prejudices, family crises, disabilities, and private miseries. There are a lot of guilty women this season.

Poem for Thursday and Ocean Pavilion

Song Of The Sea 

By Rainer Maria Rilke 

Translated by Albert Ernest Flemming 

Timeless sea breezes,

sea-wind of the night:

you come for no one;

if someone should wake,

he must be prepared

how to survive you.

Timeless sea breezes,

that for aeons have

blown ancient rocks,

you are purest space

coming from afar…

Oh, how a fruit-bearing

fig tree feels your coming

high up in the moonlight.

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It finally feels like spring here, nearly 70 degrees on Thursday! I did a lot of scanning in the morning (old and new paperwork both), then we had acai bowls for lunch and walked to the lake where the eagles remain active and the ducklings were munching in the wetlands. We ate pizza before my Thursday chat group. 

I avoided the news all day. After seeing a few episodes of Star Wars: Rebels with Cheryl, still a delight, we watched the penultimate episode this season of the excellent Hacks, which started out funny and turned into a surprising, great dramatic shift. Some of the animals in the new ocean pavilion at the Seattle Aquarium:

Lyrics for Thursday and Beth Nielsen Chapman

Seven Shades Of Blue 

By Beth Nielsen Chapman 

I want to hold you now

And listen to you breathe

It's like the ocean sound

Whispering through the trees

In the hollow of your shoulder

There's a tide pool of my tears

Where the waves came crashing over

And the shoreline disappears.

Baby close your eyes

Fly back there with me

Where the phosphor shines

Green flashlights from the sea

Our nets were full of soft shells

And our hearts were free from toil

And we made love on the kitchen table

Till the water reached a boil.

We hold it all for a little while, don't we...

Kiss the dice, taste the rain

Like little knives upon our tongue

We can do no wrong when the lights come on

And the music plays

And we take the stage like we own the place

As if time were cheap and the night forever young.

So let 'em turn my soul

Seven shades of blue

And with the ocean's roll

I will wave to you

And the birds will sing my laughter

And the whales will steal my song

And I'll be ok forever after

And the world will get along.

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Very quickly, just back from seeing Beth Nielsen Chapman at the Triple Door downtown -- something I've wanted to do since I first heard her sing "Seven Shades of Blue" on Dawson's Creek, which led me to "Sand and Water" and then the rest of her albums. 

We went downtown in the afternoon after Paul finished work for the day, got rolls at the Alaskan Sourdough Bakery, visited the Seattle Aquarium Ocean Pavilion, got Indian food for dinner at Spice King, then went to the Triple Door, where we shared chocolate mousse and enjoyed lots of music! I even got her to autograph a couple of her custom cards and bought a necklace from one of her musicians. More tomorrow!

Poem for Friday and Aquarium Birds

From The Shore 

By Carl Sandburg 

A lone gray bird,

Dim-dipping, far-flying,

Alone in the shadows and grandeur's and tumults

Of night and the sea

And the stars and storms.

Out over the darkness it wavers and hovers,

Out into the gloom it swings and batters,

Out into the wind and the rain and the vast,

Out into the pit of a great black world,

Where fogs are at battle, sky-driven, sea-blown,

Love of mist and rapture of flight,

Glories of chance and hazards of death

On its eager and palpitant wings.

Out into the deep of the great dark world,

Beyond the long borders where foam and drift

Of the sundering waves are lost and gone

On the tides that plunge and rear and crumble.

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The last day of February here felt like spring, though it's supposed to get cold again by Monday. So I spent as much of it outdoors as possible, enjoying the birds I could see from the deck (mallards, mergansers, red-winged birds, hummingbirds, a heron high in a tree), and seeing more ducks, some geese, and a pair of eagles at the beach at Idylwood, where I also did three Pokemon raids for the Road to Unova event. 

We watched some spring training Seattle Mariners baseball, had vegan spare ribs for dinner, and saw the two-part stressful and sad House season four finale before The Way Home's penultimate episode for the season, in which, as so often in soap operas, people make dumb decisions in the name of protecting other people. Here are some of the residents in the Pier 60 open-air Birds and Shores exhibit at the Seattle Aquarium: