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A short description of the present circumstances of my life My room is the southern wing of the house and there are windows on three sides: east, south, and west. I am two blocks from the waterfront and it often smells like the ocean here. When it's not smelling like the ocean it's smelling either very fresh (which is delicious) or faintly like a pulp mill. The light in my room in the late afternoon is lovely, there's no other word for it, and for once I'm not using it sarcastically. It's really lovely. My alarm goes off around 7 and it's freezing outside of my nice bed and I hide under the covers for a few minutes and then I get up, get dressed, eat breakfast, and step out the door. It's been terrifically cold in the mornings, I breathe out like a sweaty steaming horse. I walk two blocks up a hill to the bus stop; it's near this little downtowny thing that's in the middle of all these neighborhoods. The express bus gets there, I don't know, quarter to eight, and if I get that bus I'm at my desk in the city by quarter after. I live in Ballard now, a Scandinavian place, full of white people. I used to live by Rainier Avenue South, sort of near the international district, and sort of near Colman School, Seattle's first black school. People up here, on the bus, if they know each other they either pretend they don't know each other or they say hi and maybe talk quietly for a minute before lapsing into silence. (Yeah, "lapsing into silence", I just wrote that, someone needs to smack me.) Down there, on the buses to Rainier, people would yell at each other, everyone knew each other, everyone would sit together. If I get the 5:06 bus after work I get home around 5:45 or something. If I miss that I get home much later. It's been a sunny winter, where's the rain? That's all for now. My room is lovely, my bed is comfortable, I'm going to it right now.
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