New eyes on Seattle

“Jet Kiss” a sculpture by Mike Ross at the Capital Hill metro station I’ve just returned from a week or work in Seattle. As I get older I am noticing how exhausting it is to be socializing a lot, and this week was full on BE VERY PRESENT WITH PEOPLE energy followed by a need to spend time alone in reflection and restoration. I slept deeply every night I was there. Sometimes when I do this work I find myself at a hotel on the outskirts of town, confined to the vast expanse of car-forward infrastructure that we are cursed with in North America. It makes wandering exhausting, let alone dangerous, and so one just camps in the hotel room or at a nearby franchise bar or coffee shop, pretending to experience human community in a mall owned by private equity. But in Seattle two things worked against this. First, it is summer, which in this part pf the world means you go outside regardless because warm sunny and dry days are the exception, not the norm. And second I was ensconced in the U…