Traveling. Writing.
Inspiration in the Age of Internet
“Look! Is that Snow?”
An elderly lady asked this at the corner of Madison and Boren. It wasn’t — and we all knew she knew. It was just that it fell much like and appeared to be snow. Nevermind that it was 70 degrees and couldn’t possibly be snow. The mind is easy to fool, and the only feeling this could evoke was a mystical disquiet. The street conversation — between strangers; one of the beautiful things about city life — veered towards what it really was: ash. Someone named the fire complex from where it came and we parted ways at the behest of a walk signal.
It was, if you hadn’t heard, the first time that ash had fallen on the city of Seattle since Mt. St. Helens exploded. Indeed, a local I talked to earlier in the year, who had lived here for decades, couldn’t even remember when smoke had filled the air. Under the stare of a red-sun and its end of times red light, I walked back home. I was preparing myself for a trup to the Orcas with my better half, so as to…
