top of page
Writer's pictureMissy La Vone

Notes from Seattle

I've been holding off on writing until a cloudy day, because I know we're owed many weeks and months' worth of bottomless grey, and journaling on days like that is a specific kind of exquisite. We've been warned again and again about winter ("just remember, it gets better!" "plan a trip somewhere warm in February!"), but early Autumn has been all sun. So here I am, trying to imagine Seattle hibernating when right now it's full of fall fervor: people in garden gloves, watering still-bright blooms and harvest goods. Men with ladders, painting and fixing and maintaining. Dogwalkers, cardio-seekers. "Not a bad view, huh?" someone said to me during my stretch-break overlooking the Olympics--there was the breeze, the sun, the crisp view from an accidental neighborhood park. A thought that recurs whenever I walk these streets: this is the home you've been longing for.


 

This is abundance: spiders like I-Spy strung from ferns with their perfect geometric webs, scattering morning light. Squirrels belly flopping under fence holes, dragging their bodies over dirt. Little Free Libraries in microwaves and waterproof boxes. Plastic dinosaurs guarding front-yard bushes, plastic skeletons hopping fences. Swings hanging in the shade of red cedars and sunset maples. Painted stones and backyard pavers. Coffee shops with open doors and oversized cookies. The roads go up and up and up. There is spiritual elevation in this neighborhood, a sense that no matter where you turn, someone or something is waiting to invite you in.

 

My first week here, I picked plump blackberries from overgrown bushes. But now they've turned sour, so I pass them, and there's a minor satisfaction and intimacy in knowing their season, in knowing what tempts and what tricks.

 

The trees are overtaking: the roots bubble underneath cracked cement and crawl under fences and I wonder if there's an urgency to fix them. Everyone here takes the rollercoaster sidewalks, and the drills keep drilling, and the cement trucks barrel up and down 39th, and society keeps building.

 

I published something: a micro-memoir of Opa the day I realized he gave up.

 

My sense of self purpose has always been creativity, writing, expressing, sharing, and connecting, but a couple years ago I took a year-long hiatus from craft writing and it felt incredible, demystifying to stop chasing. I realized during that time that I was going to be okay if I never published anything, because at the core, I would never stop writing. But over the last year, I've returned to this idea of purpose and whether anything I write or create actually "matters". I chatted with a friend today about it and he said the older he gets, the less concerned he is about proving something, validating himself in the world. "But I'm a father," he qualified, since that's how I'd brought it up: "Other women in their thirties find motherhood to be their purpose... so what's mine?" I guess it all got me thinking about the small moments during the day and how what really matters is presence: sinking into something, a moment, a conversation, a feeling. Tending to someone who is ready to receive. I see how this can be loving a child, yes, but a parent too, or a partner (cue me smothering Austin with hugs). And it can also mean loving yourself, like telling yourself a compliment you choose to believe. Connection with the self can inspire writing, art, and connection with others, but it works simultaneously, too--we learn about ourselves from the things we create, the impulses we put on paper, the parts of ourselves we break open with others' gentle prodding. So I guess ultimately the question is not "does what I create matter to anyone else" but rather "does what I create matter to me--does it calm me, center me, help me, inspire or excite me"? And if the answer is yes? Hey, that's enough.




8 views0 comments

Comentarios


bottom of page