Finding Poetry

People often compare Seattle to Portland, and, depending where you are, assert that one is the “better version” of the other. Portlanders, while allowing that Seattle still has that rad northwest flavor, claim that Seattle is too big, too sprawling, too corporate. Seattle is a version of Portland that has “sold out.” Seattleites, contrarily, contend that Portland just doesn’t have as much to offer as Seattle; Portland is what Seattle would look like if Seattleites suddenly stopped applying themselves to anything worthwhile and just sat around getting stoned all the time.

I’d like to say that I have some meaningful social insight on the subject, but my first impression of Seattle was much more mundane; fucking traffic, and fucking hills.

It’s funny how we often have such grandiose, almost theatrical expectations of new experiences; we imagine driving around a bend in the road, and then suddenly the Seattle skyline emerges, as if rising right out of the Sound, with Mt. Rainier towering majestically in the distance. Then of course we imagine that this profound visage will provoke some illuminating revelation, something to pen down for all to read.

In reality such events are far less literary. We cave to the impulses of our emotions: shouting at an aggressive drive who cuts you off, thinking about how you haven’t peed in four hours, nervous about getting off at the right exit. But we shouldn’t be disappointed by these moments –It is to be expected that they fall short of our hopes. This is because we are looking for poetry in the wrong places.

I think the real poetry sits not in an image of a skyline or a mountain, but in human interactions. The moments we share with random people – a server at a restaurant, a crossing guard, or someone we sit next to on the metro. I’m fascinated by the idea that two strangers – compilations of thousands of different experiences and millions of chemical reactions – can intersect paths just for an instant to share a common experience, and then careen off at different angles with completely disparate interpretations of that joint experience. What might be a meaningful human connection for me (and maybe my only one that day), could have been an awkward and forced conversation for you, one that you engaged in only because I was obviously lonely. Alternatively, you might be thinking, “Wow, I just met a great guy,” while I’m walking away saying “Geez, what an asshole.” To me, this is where true poetry lies – the beauty, tragedy, and irony in human interactions and human stories.

Queen Anne – a neighborhood in Seattle – has a reputation for being “uppity,” I’m told. It is home to Seattle’s wealthy residents, who sit up on Queen Anne hill and look down upon Seattle City Center and downtown. The houses are certainly beautiful, as is the view from Kerry Park on top of the hill – the postcard image of Seattle’s cityscape with the Space Needle in the foreground and the Puget Sound off to the left. Interestingly, though, there is a pocket on Mercer Street that has a hipster feel to it – with a used book store and record exchange.

The book store, appropriately titled “Twice Sold Tales,” is run by a woman in her mid-fifties named Jamie. Jamie squints up from behind her spectacles as my friends and I enter the store, greeting us chirpily. A grey cat sits in a bed on top of the first bookshelf – Sam is his name, Jamie tells me, and he’d be happier to see me if I had a treat in my hand. I start to browse the fiction section while my friend Paul heads over to sci-fi. Embarrassingly, Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons catches my eye as a potential book for the plane to Honduras – after all, The Da Vinci Code got me through a few weeks of teaching – when I look back toward the door and notice something peculiar. Jamie is holding a book in her hand, but I can see that she’s clearly not reading. Her eyes keep darting up from the book to watch the customers as they browse the shelves. What is she looking for? Does she think someone might steal?

As I round the corner to check on Paul, I see a second cat strutting forward from behind a bookshelf – this one is black, beautiful, and very friendly. He nudges my leg and circles me several times, letting me scratch his head and coo nonsense at him.

“Do you have cats?” Jamie startles me. Suddenly she is somehow standing right next to me. I stammer, no, I don’t have any cats, but my ex-girlfriend had a cat that I’m very fond of.

“That’s a shame,” she says. Thinking that she is referring to the fact that I’m no longer with my girlfriend, I start to thank her for her sympathy, but she quickly interrupts me.

“No, I meant I’m sorry that she kept the cat. When I broke up with my partner 8 years ago he kept all three cats, and I had picked them out and raised them from when they were kittens.” I express my sympathies, unsure of the correct response in this situation. Undeterred, she starts advising me on picking out a cat of my own. “If you ever get a cat, you should go to a rescue shelter and ask for a Manx,” she says. “Manx are the absolute friendliest. Yes go to a shelter and pick out a Manx – but be sure to be ask for a rumpy, not a stumpy.” (are those scientific distinctions?)

“Or a Siamese,” she continues. “Also very friendly, but they can be very loud. Oh, the Decibals! You could hear it ten blocks away! Oh,” she pauses. “I didn’t mean to go on like that – you don’t mind my going on like that, do you?” I assure her that her advice is most welcome, and repeat it to make sure I got it right (rumpy, not stumpy, right?).

Jamie returns to her desk, and Paul and I consult about a few last selections. We proceed to the checkout counter – I smile at Jamie as I present her with my unimaginative choices: Angels and Demons and The Hunt for Red October. Upon seeing the latter, Jamie becomes very excited. She’s sort of a “sub-buff”, she tells me. She describes how this was Clancy’s first – and in her opinion, best – book, and that he wrote it based on a series of classified conversations he’d had with CIA personnel (I don’t know if this is true or not).

She proceeds to cite the technical accuracy of the novel, based on Admiral Rickover – wait, you don’t know who Admiral Rickover is, she asks me. I don’t. Apparently, as a child, Admiral Rickover had a visionary idea that led to the invention of nuclear submarines. If not for this incredible man, we apparently would not have had nuclear submarines, and may not even have had nuclear power as we do today – no one would have, except for the Russians, she tells me.

I thank Jamie for her enlightening tale and she scribbles Admiral Rickover’s name on a piece of paper to ensure I’ll look him up when I get a chance.

She is a fascinating woman, a self proclaimed “buff” on virtually any topic you can think of (she told Paul she was a buff of some sort as well), and yet there is a self-doubting urgency to her conversations, as if she desperately needs to talk to you to convince herself that she exists, or to convince herself that her existence is worthwhile. There is a loneliness in her speech, the kind that easily echoes down a vacant hallway, searching futilely for someone to hear it. Now I know what she was looking for while she was pretending to read – she was just looking for company.