Seattle | 2004
A selection from a series of handwritten letters that were drafted and posted to random strangers.
Nothing but a regular Thursday. I can reach out to the glass before me, with my eyes closed, and know the precise moment my fingers will touch hardness. I know this space well. Bauhaus. Meaning ‘home of construction” in German. A coffee shop on Melrose and Pine. The coastal horizon is soft and tender with pillowy clouds of pink, violet, grey, and beige. Every man should take the time to admire a sunset once in a while. Regardless of place. I am willing to bet that the sunset on the coasts of Antarctica are just as spectacular the ones on the coasts of France, or Sweden, or Taiwan.
Outside the window, there is a couple in love sitting before me, sharing a muffin, and drinking coffee. I watch them casually as I work. I am somewhat of a voyeur, because I dream up characters for story through the observation of life. I see them kiss and touch each other softly, but I notice that are both somewhat timid with each other in their demeanor. I wonder how long they have known each other.
The woman’s lips are coy, and hold a kind of secretive smile. Her eyebrows are trimmed thin, and raise and lift in a playfully devilish manner. Her face and cheeks are round, one part boyish, one part childish, but there are creases of laughter throughout her face that reveal her true age. She is sitting at an angle from her man, legs crossed, with her body set back away from him. A kind of forced distance, hidden as relaxation. I get the impression that she is still guarded around him.
The man I can not see. His body is directly in front of me. Facing away. He sits comfortably, but to much so. The way a man sits when he wants a woman to think he is confident, when really he is not.
The couple fit beautifully into my night. Sunset. Lovers. Coffee and words. Bjork’s Homogenic album is playing through the speakers. The world is telling me goodnight.
My coffee went cold long ago. I have been in this seat to long. My blood must be more brown now, than red.
I have been working on my book that I wrote last year, throughout my travels in Europe. Italian women in England, sleep found on benches in bookstores in Paris, the constant smell of dog shit in the air along the street of Berlin. Rewriting this book has been so sweet. I’m loosing myself in the words and the memories. I long so much to return. I was so much the bohemian then. Writing all day, drinking at night. Engaging in conversation with strangers as friends, finding loves, losing loves, everything was rich like German chocolate.
I still carry that all with me now. The lust for life, as Iggy would say. But the asphalt of Seattle streets, are no match for Parisian cobblestone. Europe was where I learn to see with my eyes, dance with my heart, and breathe deep the breath that could very well be my last.
I will leave you with this. I am loosing myself in thought and memory, and fear my prose will soon fall into mumbles and rambling. So with this, I bid you goodnight.
