Because a dripping fir is a thousand times more sexy than a sunburnt palm

Last night my good friend Christine shared with me a fabulous excerpt from an essay by Tom Robbins about his love for Northwest Washington. It is fabulous and sums up so many of the things that make Northwest Washington pretty much the best place to live on earth. I particularly love how he describes (so accurately) the weather, in particular the rain, that gives the NW it's irreproducible character and charm. Here, take a read:

"And it will rain a fever. And it will rain a sacrifice. And it will rain sorceries and saturnine eyes of the totem.

Rain will primitivize the cities, slowing every wheel, animating every gutter, diffusing commercial neon into smeary blooms of esoteric calligraphy. Rain will dramatize the countryside, sewing pearls into every web, winding silk around every stump, re-drawing the horizon line with a badly frayed brush dipped in tea.

And it will rain an omen. And it will rain a trance. And it will rain a seizure. And it will rain dangers and pale eggs of the beast.

Rain will pour for days unceasing. Flooding will occur. Wells will fill with drowned ants, basements with fossils. Mossy-haired lunatics will roam the dripping peninsulas. Moisture will gleam on the beak of the Raven. Ancient shamans, rained from their rest in dead tree trunks, will clack their clamshell teeth in the submerged doorways of video parlors. Rivers will swell, sloughs will ferment. Vapors will billow from the troll-infested ditches, challenging windshield wipers, disguising telephone booths. Water will stream off eaves and umbrellas. It will take on the colors of the beer signs and headlamps. It will glisten on the claws of nighttime animals.

And it will rain a screaming. And it will rain a rawness. And it will rain a disorder, and hair-raising hisses from the oldest snake in the world. Rain will hiss on the freeways. It will hiss around the prows of fishing boats. It will hiss in electrical substations, on the tips of lit cigarettes and in the trash fires of the dispossessed. Legends will wash from the desecrated burial grounds, graffiti will run down alley walls. Rain will eat the old warpaths, spill the huckleberries, cause toadstools to rise like loaves. It will make poets drunk and winos sober, and polish the horns of the slugs.

And it will rain a miracle. And it will rain a comfort. And it will rain a sense of salvation from the philistinic graspings of the world."

Fantastic, no? Click here to read the full essay.

No matter where I end up in the world, I'm pretty sure I'll never find anywhere that quite compares to the Pacific Northwest. I love where I'm from.

Back from the dead

Hi readers. I figure it's high time to resurrect this blog after six months of lifelessness. Rather than do a painstakingly long overview of six months, I will instead post six pictures accompanied by six haiku to sum up my experience.

March:

Sorry, no picture.
Camera stolen by punk kids.
Still had good times, though.

April:



Look at these winners!
Nothing like good wholesome sport
with your friends in France.

May:



Too many goodbyes
kept us at the train station.
Good thing there was beer.

June:



Wrapping up French life
is messy. Michael Scott makes
it much easier.

July:



Met lots of nice folks
while traveling through Europe.
Some got a bit fresh.

August:



The view from my room:
Mediterranean Sea.
Who lives like this? Me!


...and that about wraps up life in Europe. I almost feel as if I communicated more in those six haiku than I could have in six paragraphs. Perhaps future blog posts will show up in haiku form...

I arrived back in the states the 20th and am now just chillin', trying to craft some sort of a plan for the next step. Really just trying to take the next step. Who needs a plan, anyway?