The View From Here
Tue 2005-08-02 23:12:15 (in context)
- 38,003 words (if poetry, lines) long
- 59.75 hrs. revised
Eked out another 500 words, mainly about climbing around in the old gasworks and looking at the skyline across Lake Union. Spent an absurd amount of time scouring Google:Images for just that view. Found it.
First time I visited Gasworks was the summer of '94, my first summer in Seattle. I started my Freshman year a quarter early for reasons I can't quite remember now. Glad I did. Had a couple months' run-up time to get used to campus and dorm life before the autumn wave of incoming Freshmen overloaded the system. Anyway, my floor's Residential Advisor led us all on a July 4th walk down the bike path to the Park, where pretty much the entirety of north Seattle gathered to watch the fireworks going up from across the water. I don't remember the show that well, but I do remember that was also the day of my first Dove bar. Some of us helped out a vendor (again, memory here is hazy) who in turn gave us free product. That was some good.
On the other hand, I can't tell you about my first time going up the Space Needle, because it hasn't happened yet. Typical: we tend not to do the touristy things that happen where we live. Hey, I never did the Jazz Fest until this year, despite spending the first eighteen years of my life in New Orleans. I never did the river tour in Grants Pass. And I still haven't done Six Flags/Elitch Gardens here in Denver. It's almost like we don't actually experience where we're living. Or maybe we're too busy experiencing it from the inside to experience it like an outsider. A tourist might rhapsodize about the view from the top of the Space Needle, but can he tell you about a candlelit Beltane ritual held inside the gasworks?
Not that I can tell you much about that, either. Stupid disintegrating memory.