I look for online content to fortify my fears and fragile opinions. Anything that prolongs my avoidance of the truth will keep my house of cards intact.
As Mark Twain said, “Often the surest way to convey misinformation is to tell the strict truth.”
Saturday
We drive through the U District on our way to the mall. The economy has not recovered after the pandemic when vape shops, psychics, and massage parlors rent short-lease storefronts. The gated University Village's manicured grounds and chain stores provide shop therapy and a filtered reality. I’m into linen these days. How kinky.
Qdoba is boarded, tagged, and wheat-pasted with concert posters. Pearl Jam is still touring?
The genius is in knowing when to stop.
Misty rain darkens the asphalt. A street fair is happening on the Ave. - cops, canopies, candles, kettle corn.
We pass the Neptune Theater with its digital marquee illuminating the drabness. I hope it continues to be a connection to Seattle’s past and future. I am seeing Duster at the Neptune in the fall.
Duster, a late 90s space rock band, took a 19-year hiatus between albums, returning in 2019 with the eponymous Duster album. They are even more relevant and sonically exciting today than in their early days before the breach. The drift has let creativity gestate to fecundity.
It’s inspiring. I’ve been in touch with a guitarist friend from D.C.; we’ve been discussing working on some new songs. Our band, The Shelleys, briefly played the NYC indie clubs in the mid-90s. Egos and self-sabotage got in the way.
The UW pillars are relics of collegiate well-roundedness. Today, you can major in yourself and minor in your #selfie. Be you at You W.
Sunday
We installed a sun sail on our roof to reduce the risk of melanomas (so Jewish). In the Anthropocene, skin cancer is a big deal. Eventually, we will go underground when the earth's surface is too hot for human habitation, but we assume we are exceptional. As John Green says in The Anthropocene Reviewed:
Humans are not the protagonists of this planet's story. If there is a main character, it is life itself, which makes of earth and starlight something more than earth and starlight. But in the age of the Anthropocene, humans tend to believe, despite all available evidence, that the world is here for our benefit.
The sky and clouds over Phinney Ridge do their thang.