Shorthand for Nothing

I have been in Seattle since Tuesday. I came to watch the final shows of Harvey Danger, the band which has long been, without a doubt or question (unlike so many other things), my favorite. Both shows were excellent, and more than excellent, in a way that words can only express inadequately. Or my words, anyway. This is usually something I never do: express freely, truly, and without reservation that something is good, really, legitimately good. I am doing it now. It alone is more than worth the flight, the time, even the frustration and the fears.

I don’t have the time now to explain how much Harvey Danger has meant to me over the years. I know I tried once before, when the band announced the breakup. It was inadequate then and it would be now. Anyway, where would I begin? No, there are things which are better left underground.

The shows had many moments both happy and sad, funny and emotional. They lasted forever, or might as well have, until at the end there was nothing but that sense that it was really complete, it was really over, that there was nothing more that could or should be added. At the final show especially, there was that sense of finality.

There’s a lot I want to say: how glad I was that Evan Sult was there, and perhaps more specifically that Sleepy Kitty was opening; how fun it was to see him and John Roderick and Evan Mosher and other guests on stage, especially towards the end; how perfect the final song was, and indeed the final part of the set. I can’t say it right, so perhaps it’s best to leave it unsaid, at least mostly.

I was fortunate indeed to live so close to such a remarkable band for so long. Some of my best memories are of Harvey Danger shows, or of acquiring Harvey Danger albums. This truly is the end of an era, and the timing is appropriate: days before I move to college for real this time, in a city which is still new to me. Even now I find myself looking for symbols and meanings to hold on to.

To the band, I have little left to say except thank you. You will be dearly missed, and you can add me to the list of strangers who have been touched by your music. I hope you had as much fun with it as I did, but at any rate let me express honestly and without reservations that you have been nothing short of wonderful and I wish you all the very best.

And one final thought: there was nothing quite so appropriate as finally hearing Sean sing the word “love” in The Same As Being In Love. That made me smile. There was nothing left incomplete.

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Summer always reminds me that I prefer the winter. Of course, I prefer the springtime and the autumn even more, each for its own reasons, but I never feel as if I get used to the heat so much as I feel that it just goes away eventually. The humidity over here does not make things easier.

That said, this summer continues the long tradition of Seattle being afflicted with freakish weather while I am away. Heatocalypse ’09! Who knew? You see, I bear a good weather curse. Everywhere I go the weather is tamer than usual, nicer than usual, not as bad as expected. Meanwhile, wherever I used to be is plagued with storms and death from the skies. I am being spared the possibility of a freakish death in the weather, no doubt for some other grim fate.

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Safely in Seattle. It was a longer day than I’d planned (a flight got bumped earlier due to weather that didn’t happen in Chicago), but it was successful all around. I finished reading Neverwhere, landed a few minutes early, and jumped on a Metro bus up to SoDo, where I saw a vaguely familiar landmark and decided I’d walk into town. I wandered my way to the Hurricane Cafe for a bowl of chili, and finally took the 26 back to Cydonia, which will serve as my base of operations in the meanwhile.

The flight to Seattle featured the most beautiful sunset over the mountains I have ever seen, which came right after I started feeling incredibly restless and worrying about everything and nothing. It was calming. Oh, and apparently it’s my birthday tomorrow. You should do something about that.

(Meanwhile: over 200 unread items on Google Reader.)

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Today I’m flying to Seattle for a week for my birthday (which is the 15th). I have been gone since September, and I’ve definitely missed it. It’s the first city I really consider my home, and in many ways it still is. It’s where I get my identity. I’m looking forward to spending my birthday in my old haunts, drinking coffee in a city where coffee is a lifestyle, acting like I’ve been here the whole time.

I’m not regretting moving to Boston by any stretch of the imagination. The people here are wonderful, and I feel like if there is a place I will do well, it’s here. But it’s not home. I still feel like I’m visiting. I’m learning the tangle of streets and the public transit systems fairly well, I know the lingo, but, as a man on the streets of Seattle once told me, this place is like Mecca. It’s a city of travelers. Brilliant people, people with bright futures–but a home to none of them. We aren’t from this city.

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The New Year is one of the few holidays I really enjoy simply on its own merits. Something about it connects with me–I’ve written about it at length in the past and have no intention of repeating all of that here. But it is a fine time for reflection. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: 2008 in review.

I started 2008 in Seattle, working the New Year’s Eve shift at an Italian restaurant. I was looking forward to a number of things–my birthday, landmark concerts later in the year–but I was starting to sense that my time in the Emerald City was running to its close. I’d lost focus, if I ever had it to begin with. It’s still the first city I can really call home, but something was missing.

The election injected some spirit into me. I hadn’t seen so many people in my demographic get excited about politics ever. John Kerry was a lackluster candidate, and we were too young to really care about or even really understand the 2000 election. Barack Obama was exciting. I started following the primaries, reading political blogs, visiting polling sites, talking about political news–and I had always been the apolitical “eh, I will start voting when they give me a candidate I like” type.

As summer came, a friend of mine moved from Ellensburg to Boston. I became increasingly aimless. Then he suggested I should move also, and the more I thought about it the less reason I could think of to stay. I’d even written a story about it–someone moving off to Boston and flying back for a visit. I’d move and try to find work. It would be a change of scenery. It would get me on track, though as always I never really made plans.

We flew east in my dad’s small plane. He dropped me off with my half sister and her family in New Hampshire, who drove me down to Boston and left me at my new house. I spent some time settling in, exploring, getting used to the area. Then, some time towards the beginning of October, things got weird. It is hard to really describe why it was weird, but the crowd I started hanging out with was filled with awesome people, who are fully in support of awesome things of any variety. Crazy ideas became more than ideas–they became possible. They became a reality.

As much as I missed Seattle, I knew the people here were a unique combination, and I was fortunate indeed to have found them.

I was also closer to my half-sister, who I never saw much when I was living in Washington. I spent Thanksgiving with her family, and met her half-brother for the first time. I really feel that my life has generally expanded. It’s been an interesting experiment, and I’m not going to hesitate to say it’s been a successful one, in ways I couldn’t have imagined before.

Finally, a look into what 2009 will hold. I am not generally given to making resolutions about self-improvement. Nothing about my health or being more confident or anything like that. But I do like projects. In the year of 2008, I tried to write a poem every day–this got derailed after a month, due largely to my contracting deathplagues in early February. (By the way, if you want to read them, I do not mind emailing them to people. Help me pick out the good ones!)

This year I am going to give myself a slightly easier project. I intend to write a blog post every day. 2009 will be the year of the blog. I will frequently do so on Dreamers Often Lie, and I will do so on here. You can obviously expect less politics. And when I finally put my website online, I’ll do a lot of my writing on there. I’ve got plans for the new year, and they are, as is appropriate, secret plans.

These are the plans that aren’t secret. I’m visiting Seattle again this month. I’m applying to transfer to colleges and finish up my bachelor’s in polisci. I’m still looking for work. I’m excited for 2009. I have focus, direction, and motivation. This will be my year.

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