Turn Around, Bright Eyes, Every Now And Then I Fall Apart

Entry 1    10:35 a.m.

If It's Monday Morning

Jenny woke up this morning and came to my perch on the sectional to report she feels better and has no pain.  She feels so good, in fact, that she left for acupuncture without any pain medicine with her or in her system.  This is as I expected.  The biorhythm is not confounding for me, I just wish I could help her see over the horizon so she isn't planning her death, discussing what she thinks is her impending doom at the dinner table with the kids (complete with disclaimer, "I don't plan to die for 20 or 30 years, but if I do. . .").  

Turns out that Jenny will not have chemo on the 29th, just blood work and a scan, and I would guess a visit thereafter with Doctor P.  That she, the children, and I have had the good fortune to see her survive this for nearly a year, is unexpected and a gift.  I am grateful that we have spent time in the last few days as a family with the girls both together, it seems to have buoyed all of our spirits.  We had two dinners together, back-to-back.  I don't think that has happened since school and YTN started last fall.  

I'm Full of Pride    

Pride Circa 1991

A couple nights ago my kids, both queer-identified, spent time explaining to me over dinner the difference between the Pride celebration on Capitol Hill and the Pride Celebration downtown in August.  My takeaway is that one is corporate, one isn't.  Having come of age on Capitol Hill, living, working and playing there, its a place I don't ever go anymore. I miss the days where this community was defiant, proud, quirky, fun and interesting. As a straight, mixed kid with intellectual aspirations, I loved the acceptance and embrace of all. Coming from what was then a rural and white homogenous city, Renton, it was an eye opening experience.  I had fallen in love with it when dating my high school sweetheart.  Working at the East John Safeway, living on the hill, dating almost exclusively women who lived on the hill, I spent more time there between the age of 15-28, than anywhere else in the City.  When Jenny and I went up to Cap Hill for the first time since returning from California to see a play, and stepped into a bearded tech-bro PBR-fueled Friday night at a theater near Cal Anderson, I was speechless.  The world seemed topsy-turvy.

What I loved about Seattle is largely gone, destroyed by tech and gentrification.  The vibrant LGTB community on the hill, the thriving art community when Cornish was north of Broadway, the large middle class black community in the Central District, the final throws of large Catholic families that lived in the big old homes around Volunteer Park, the massive theater and music scene, all gone, like the cheap rents and occasional open parking spaces that existed of yore.  Having lived in Greenwich Village and on the Hill, I can say that I would trade everything to get the vibrant Seattle scene back.  The Village may have been as interesting in the 1960s, when you could rent an apartment for nothing, and people lived there because they could afford to do so, but by the time I was there it was 3000 for 500 square feet. Old buildings were falling, like they have fallen more recently in Seattle, and replaced with nondescript boxes.  We can't turn the clock back, but wonder if there is anywhere in this country today that has such an amazing mix of people, arts and culture that existed through the 1980s and into the late 1990s in Seattle?