Saturday, June 28, 2003
The Sunny Day Blues
These endless, perfect, beautiful, flawless, warm invigorating days are making me tired. Anyone will tell you that the reason Seattleites put up with rain for nine months out of the year is because of the sheer joy of the Emerald City in Summer, full and lush, gleaming beneath the sunlight, light breeze washing over the Sound bringing salt air and a cooling touch to the concrete maze. I agree, I walk out into a day like today and my heart fills with joy, I take the air into my lungs with the same gusto as a stoner with his lips around a bong. The beauty overwhelms and humbles me and I am the groveling suplicant, swooning at the feet of this glamourous metropolitan mistress.
But enough is enough. It's been over a week, and I feel overwhelmed and exhausted. Worse, on days like today how can I justify staying inside when such transcendence awaits just beyond my window? I feel guilty for not wanting to be in the sun, I feel like I'm wasting my life if I choose to be inside (writing a blog entry, for instance). I went canoeing yesterday, I swear to god I did... these are the heady summer days of my youth, I will not waste them... I promise, please don't smite me.
Yesterday, on said canoe, I used SPF 50 sunscreen and wore my floopy hat, and I still got a sunburn in those hard to reach places. Yet skin health is not a valid reason to miss a day like today... not when there's a Gay Festival Thingy on Capitol Hill.
I walked to the water the day before. The water was grand and I could see Mt. Ranier in the distance. I got a blister on my little toe. Yet this is not a valid excuse to stay inside... not when a day like today only comes once every five years.
Then there's the guitar strummin', beer smellin', up north White Girl blues reasons that I don't want to go out:
I got no girl. Lately I've been singing Lou Reed's "Perfect Day" to myself as I walk the shady glens of Seattle's parks. "It's such a perfect day... I'm glad I spent it with you... Ohhhhhhh, such a perfect day, you just keep me hangin' on..." My god I feel pathetic.
I got no money. Cities, for good or ill, are built around commerce; and while the parks are lovely and free, I enjoy walking the streets almost as much. But what destinations are there other than stores, or malls, or the Pike Place Market where I can pick up some fruit at a little family fruit stand, just Like Vito Corleone in the Godfather? Without money, the city is filled with mocking jesters waving temptations in your face and pelting you with free mustard packets when you cannot afford to buy their shiny wares.
I got no job. Obviously this relates to 'got no money' above; but on a more fundamental level, being unemployed during the week, when there is not a cloud in the sky and the air is fresh, makes me feel like a total flake, living off of the state while people working in McDonalds breathe in hot grease fumes and curse the tantilizing sun outside the drive thru window.
In the literary sense, my mood is at odds with the setting, which is why my shady apartment seems like the safer, and more honest place to exist right now. Happy people belong in the sun. I sing the blues, tend to my sunburn, and watch the blue sky from my window.
