the world has turned and left me here

i like people

Today I met Brett Dean McGibbon down in Pioneer Square, where he peddles his hand-bound leather poetry journals from 18 years of accumulated motorcycle travel across the U.S., from upstate New York to Alaska and back via the American Southwest. So-so poetry, and a letdown when it comes to concreteness--I was expecting some real living rambling narratives but leafing through saw only subjectivity & inner observations. If I'm looking for substance & intellectual departures, give me Brennen instead. Not to malign; this Brett fellow was great to talk to & quite the hustler...handing out lines of poetry to all the pretty girls with a "pick a card any card approach."

One who stopped by appeared to be a regular. "Wait, I'll find you one you haven't seen," he says & digs through a hidden pile of cards. "Sometimes I find what I have to say, and sometimes what I have to say finds me," it reads. She doesn't grok it so she exchanges for another. She shares the latest news about her softball team with him: one of her players who had been throwing temper tantrums finally chucked his bat into another player's face, who got a mouthful of blood and broken teeth & is now suing tantrum man. So her season as coach appears to be over & she is feeling the heat for not preventing the incident.

Then as it turns out she is the GM for the one of my favorite sushi places right down the street--which is where I'm headed, and we talk about crossing the Asian / American cultural divide (she is half Japanese half French), and also about which dance clubs are the best in Seattle, and why the city is doing it's best to kill the club scene...which sucks enough as is.

From here I get segued into conversation with a Canadian couple down for the weekend from Vancouver...my first extended conversation with Canadians since moving up here. They're real cool & funny & the guy turns out to be an actor.

Hopping on my bike to go home, I log the first unpleasant human encounter of the day. It consists of me responding to a belligerently honking bus on my tail with the finger & a resounding "f**k you!" scream, in the middle of bustling downtown Seattle. Yeah I'm not wearing a helmet, but are you wearing a shiny badge? So shut the hell up already.