When I came to Seattle in my 20s it felt like anything was possible. We drove from Philadelphia with all our possessions, my girlfriend and our books, jade plants, my two cats Pokey and Sherman. Passing through the last leg of our journey, a tunnel just east of the city, a mural above the freeway said Portal to the Pacific. I knew I’d found my new home.

Soon single and on my own I imagined a new life for myself. I was drawn to the grit of city living and romanticized it, I longed to be a part of something more real, like the writers I admired I craved a kind of hard life so I could understand true human desperation. I took risks and made bad choices, all so I could explore the bounds of who I was and could be. And now I was middle-aged, decidedly suburban, pining for those old times and writing about it on my blog. Coming upon a group of homeless people in hoodies with plastic bags, broken glass and trash strewn about, French fries mashed into the pavement with ants and crows picking the remains, a balled-up pair of sweatpants someone shat themselves in, twisted inside out. Ten dollar smoothies and açaí bowls, sushi bars, cocktail lounges with names like Life on Mars. Axe throwing. Prohibition-era style bars where you need a code to enter and then all the drinks are from the 1920s, but with 2020s pricing. The Internet lounge on Broadway, once in a tiny urban mall, is now Korean-inspired burgers, a smoke shop, and nail lounge. When the apocalypse comes that will be all that remains: smoke shops and nail lounges.

I walk the main thoroughfare across Capitol Hill and turn up the road we used to live on, my girlfriend Shana and I, a brick building called The Dublin. The tiling by the mail boxes is the same, and there’s the end unit on the top floor where we used to live, almost 30 years ago. A whisper of the ghosts of us sitting on the wooden floor reading by our plants and cats…but the blinds are drawn.

From the upper neighborhoods you can see the Olympic mountains in the distance, a couple hundred miles off and snow capped. And I imagine myself there where it is unchanged, and think how little any of this, even me, matters. On the north end of Broadway a CD store that used to be there and how I’d spend my Saturdays when I was single walking these streets, making a new purchase, stopping at a bar for a pint, lazing the day away. They are all now condos and yoga studios, high-end smoothie bars. An organic waxing and lash studio. Places you can get your glasses or phone fixed in one hour, guaranteed. Body piercing, a bar called the Bait Shop with a large fish stenciled on the glass. Poke bars, distilleries, dispensaries, e-bikes and scooters for rent by the hour, mannequins in the windows with six-pack abs in just their skivvies looking stern. And then the occasional person slumped in a corner somewhere.

The cannabis shop is open at 8 on a Sunday morning, the church across the street looks vacant. Soundless electric cars drifting by, Uber and Lyft drivers. “Grab n’ Go booze & food.” Cold-pressed juice, plant-based soft serve. Sex toys, people sitting on plastic crates drawing signs. Vape, drop-off laundry, a place that just says Bar. Plastic pest control bait stations. Everywhere pigeons, sea gulls, crows, picking at the puke. How the ivy has overgrown these old brick apartment buildings and the graffiti has done the same to the boarded-up dry cleaners across the street. The sign says Yes, we’re open but clearly they’re not. All the cruel ironies of capitalism and our diseased humanity. Me coming here like it’s an amusement park. And life’s infinite possibilities for some. Pocketing my wristwatch for fear I’ll be mugged, thinking I’m nothing like these people, not at all.

Categories: prose, writing

Tags: Creative Nonfiction, pacific northwest