Seattle

A lot of you probably have spent more time in Seattle than I have so this might not be as interesting or new to you as it is to me. There's the one woman in the morning who stumbles with straight knees up to the bus stop on 19th and Thomas. Her thoughts run into each other, dealing with anything from her qualms with heroine to her dissatisfaction with Tom Cruise and Mariah Carey, and then seamlessly to her mom's friend Michelle who used to drive around with a large man in her blue Toyota that, apparently, neither this woman nor Michelle knew very well. I don't get anymore details before she segues beautifully into some of her past medical history that I think, because of confidentiality issues, I shouldn't repeat. Some mornings she's already beaten me to the stop and is sleeping curled up under the awning in her faded but not ragged black sweatpants and an oversized blue hooded jacket. I don't mind so much about the bench because she's there again in the evening, ranting, symbolically wrapping up my day as I pass on the opposite side of the street, walking back from Seattle Biomedical, twenty-five blocks west. People are already asking me about Safeway locations in the Capitol Hill area and I know of two to which I can direct them: 15th and E John, or 23rd and Madison. I prefer 23rd and Madison.