Current mood:

amused

Oh, Seattle.
I just spent a long weekend up in Seattle. It's always weird when I go up there - as a kid, I was convinced that I would move down there from Alaska. That was the nearest actual city, our entrance into civilization, and to this day the evergreens, mountains. and Sound pull at something inside of me. They say "home" in a way nothing else ever really will. It's a very atavistic response.

The overlaid response to Seattle is one of frustration. You see, Seattleites have an ingrown wariness of strangers, and are therefore often distant and passive-aggressive to such strangers. Especially strangers from California. So there's that, and then there's the - measured - pace of Seattle, which often results in it taking an unacceptably long time to get my godsdamned coffee. Both of those traits run smack up against my tendencies to be brash and open and impatient. The resulting culture shock is sometimes hilarious, but usually frustrating.

Please don't misunderstand me. I still love Seattle and her people very much. It's an awesome city. My relationship to it is very much like visiting someone I had a wicked crush on back in the day - they're still a really cool person, but now I can see why we never got together and why it never would have worked.

As my friend Whisky Pills once said, "I moved to San Francisco because it made me look normal." It is so very, very true. Bless this crazy little city I live in.