Seattle, you're beyond crazy, and gentrified-like-hell. What happened? A lot has changed since I lived in communal punk houses in the University District in 1978 - that was the best time for roaming your freaky Last Exit coffeehouses, Gorilla Rooms, and Cellophane record shops. I left the USA (got refugee status in Canada during the Reagan years) and forgot about you for a decade, until you infected us with grunge and Nirvana'd out, after the anti-World Trade Organization protests in '99. Is that when Starbucks and Microsoft colluded to hipsterize you? Seattle, just kidding, the twelve days of Christmas I spent on Capitol Hill and Downtown, last week, were…..well, blind as one is in the sheeting rain, I'm really not one to judge….……..
Talk about a sacrilegious Xmas town?!!!
Capitol Hill has unofficially declared itself a gender-free-zone, way-over-the-rainbow. There's no telling nobody, and why not? Posters on telephone poles inform we're on Indigenous Land, and others update the GPS co-ordinates of any Neo-Nazi within a ten-block radius. The Unicorn pub features mounted heads of deer, zebra, musk ox, moose, etc. on its walls (ugg!) yet, thank Goddess, draws the line at taxidermied unicorns…..The only landmark I recognize from my hazy past, the Comet Tavern on Pike…has, apparently, heard enough from the lyin' yap of Donald Trump……
Seattle, gratitude! The Crypts, Ononos, and Psychic TV at Chop Suey?!!! Beating the drums of war, we pop our cherries and pineal glands simultaneously, ecstatically floating in the starburst cosmopoliii. Only the ever-alluring, Genesis P' Orridge, Herself, can lead a space ritual potent enough to ignite moronic demagogues. Ho ho ho!
Even the purple heather's heathen in Streissguth Park, a hidden gem of a Master garden off 10th Avenue, past St. Mark's Cathedral, where I sit in lotus, chasing the proverbial dragon, admiring the life-work of its caretakers…..later, I visit Twice Sold Tales, seeking an obscure fairy tale, "The Happy Prince", by Oscar Wilde, a story I recall from childhood, about a statue so empathic towards the poverty-stricken individuals he observes from his perch above the city, he asks a kindly swallow to pluck out his gemstone eyes, to sell for alms to the poor. Now there's some holiday spirit!!!
Seattle, luv ya, cuz after walking the length of Broadway on Capitol Hill, past the pan-handling cynics outside Dick's Drive-in, the tango steps sculpted on the sidewalks, and the life-sized, guitar-riffing, statue of Jimi Hendrix, I come across a Farmer's Market in full swing, buying my favorite survival food, sunroots (a.k.a. Jerusalem artichokes) from a local grower, who's happy to learn they're rich in inulin…...these eclectic, organic markets transform the urban landscape, seed by shining seed…….
Seattle, your dancing artists striking a pouty pose, in the Triple Door Theater's production of The Land of the Sweets: A Burlesque Nutcracker, are nothing short of spectacular, and wear considerably less. The aforementioned author, Oscar "Aesthete of Bohemia", would've gaily showered their unveilings with lilies! Is Seattle the Big Apple of Cascadia? Comparisons abound, and I've only described a teacup of revelations, in this shimmering, water-world, metropolis, surrounded by lakes, harbors and bays, drinking in the liquid light.
Come as you are, as you were As I want you to be As a friend, as a friend As an old enemy
Take your time, hurry up The choice is yours, don't be late Take a rest as a friend As an old
Memoria, memoria Memoria, memoria
-- Nirvana
Church on Broadway, with rainbow banner inscribed "Come as you are"
