Brian's Journey, A Seattle Morning

July 29, 2014: A Seattle Morning

This morning I was up before 0500. Had a restless night on the couch. Brian doesn't go to bed until late. I usually fall asleep sometime between 2230 and 2300. I wake up several times during the night. This morning I can feel the humidity and the latent heat. Things feel clingy. I had to take a shower this morning and shave - it helped.

As usual I went up the hill to Starbucks to get a coffee and to read, but this morning I did not stay long. I did not feel very comfortable - I felt sticky and grimy so I read for a few minutes while I finished my pound cake then left. There was a group of young vagrants males, unshaven and in dirty worn clothes hanging out in the alcove of a shop just down a little from the Starbucks, which is on the corner of 42nd and University Way. They were boisterously talking and one of them was even smoking a pot pipe. Interestingly I wasn't too nervous about walking past them. They seemed harmless enough and more interested in there verbal one-ups-man-ship conversation than in me. They greeted me and I said hello back as I passed.

The leafy bushes along the apartment walls crowd out onto the broken and jumbled sidewalk leaving little room between them and the muddy-wet gutter, full of trash: odd for a city like Seattle to have some much trash along its sidewalks. I have to duck and lean as I pass so as not to brush into them. If they are wet from rain or morning dew it could lead to a good soaking. Beneath the bushes, in their shadow and protection from the sun are mats of green moss growing onto and into the porous concrete. This neighborhood, near the University is a quiet but shabby neighborhood made up of not-so-cheap apartment buildings. There is construction on the roads everywhere.

A homeless pair sleeps on the porch of a charity house, a couple of black kids, probably 18 or older but still kids, a boy and a girl. They are there most morning this early. I have the urge but not the desire to give them some money. The boy is often awake as I walk by and we greet each other with "good mornings." I continue on, coffee in hand and purse bag swaying at my side.