Bellingham

"Takin some time... to think

space to...figure it out

going over it all in my mind.

I think I'm due to unwind, sit back,

make peace with all that's real

just to stay sane, and take hold

of what's to come with a smile

it's been quite a while..."

~Lyrics, Dave McGraw's song: Bellingham

I <3>

When I am feeling tired and lonely in Korea, I like to listen to his tunes. I feel like I am sitting in a rainy car, driving across the I-405 bridge again. the air is dark & cold, the rain is peaceful and the tunes are slow and right on the money.

Home Home Home. Oh Bellingham! How quickly you forget me!

I was home for an ENTIRE week! a WHOLE week! and how you have changed. but you have not changed one bit. the faces are different, but the smells, the hair, the overall Bellinghammyness of this little mountainous slice of home is all the same. Your people they even say the same things in the same manner, and they think they're so original. They wear the same trends and although that's what the alt. girls of Bellingham wore--EXACTLY--no, really exactly: vintage, they call it. Forgetful, sleepy town I say. There's a new building at the University, but those kids are still spouting their academic bullshit as if they've known the world just like I did when I was 21. People still party with Hula hoops every Wednesday night and flirt and drink and toke in the alley, and they think no one's ever discovered a BB Scotch Ale; your taste buds are the first ever to discover it~you shout like you're the first ever girl to re-claim the "C" word as a feminist term, although outside the HAM, you'd never actually use it because well, frankly it's still has no practical application in real life.

But nonetheless dear Bellingham you are mine, and always I will be yours. I love your beer and your bay and the way your people talk on the streetside. I love your farmer's Market and Buy Local Attitude.

These are some highlights from my trip in Bellingham. WW University's waterfront property at Lake Whatcom. *Anita and I slipped out there and into the cool lake on a hot evening after the lights had gone down.**The park at Capital Hill in Seattle is a great place to cool your feet and the people are so colorful and diverse. Everyone is so friendly. Anita drove to Seattle and took me home to BHAM. **Seattle Youth Garden Works is a necessary stop along the way. My old non-profit workplace. the garden was STUNNING!!! and visiting Jackie and her family at their new house in Lynden. we shared dinner, banana creme pie, LOTs of small talk, a tickle fight with her middle daughter, Mari, and some rock band to tie up the night. lovely. **finally, Karen came from Toronto to Vancouver, and spent a day with me in my hometown. We called up Scott, aka "Gumby," and hit up free street music and good beers.

I saw a lot of wonderful people, Laura Brown, Shawnee Kilgore, Good old Amy, and even....Steven..... um..... there were lots of times I'd expected to be hanging out that I'd end up spending on my own, and there were times in Bellingham that I'd had to come face to face with the changes that have happened and the fact that frankly I may not be a part of any of those. It stings a little bit. It's hard to see that life moves on. I mean, of course we all know it. There's so many songs about it. but to see it and then have no way of relaying that this is also happening for me elsewhere--in a place that no one really has any way of understanding or connecting to. it's like an anomaly.

It's like when I used to go away to camp for the summer. people would tell me I was giving up a whole summer. but I never saw it that way. Camp was a part of who I was in the summer. a VITAL part of my identity, and I lived for those summers sometimes. I have few recollections of summer without camp. Spending the summer out of school, on a beach, or hanging around the mall is a foreign, foggy memory of years and years ago. but how could you know that? unless you've been there, had a similar experience. I can't figure out exactly how to best explain it, and it makes coming home tough, accepting the change--for better or worse--not being a part of it, and then to be felt as a "person on hold?" hmmmm....?