fight this

Trekking all over Seattle finds me a tofu corn dog and Chipotle I couldn’t pass up, poetry on the streets sold on scraps and rapped from corners. The city becomes more familiar with every touching down, every bus shuttle kickoff at the base of the Space Needle, asking peace officers for pointings in right directions and aware of my walking patterns in front of them.

When in another Rome and roam traffic wandering, I wonder, before questions of architecture, education, nightlife, civic participation, I want to know please tell me, kindly city, do people jaywalk your streets freely?

I try to do what Roamins do.

I met my friend Eden at a show. All the kids were sitting down, and when the screamo band on the ticket took the stage that wasn’t a stage just the space where they played, they had to ask everyone to stand up. Begrudgingly the crowd obeyed. Eden and I, both recent Minneapolis transplants, busted moves and shook our bones in spastic contortions in the little space allowed by the standing slumped still.

So this is Seattle Rock City. So much for when in Rome.

I got fierce music muscles in a sharp body memory.

I am so glad I am not too cool for anything.

On the first bus I take in Minneapolis, two middle-aged women, strangers, one white, the other black and commandeering a disability scooter, discuss the merits of and gaps to mend in a 2008 Clinton-Obama presidential ticket.

I’m home.

I took the bus to Roberts’ Shoe Store at Lake and Chicago, the only place in North America, according to independent observation, that carries my monochrome low-top Converse All-Star quintessential megh-style shoes.

The first hard, never-ending Vancouver rains destroyed my old ones—a sunk-in rotten mud stink that never left. I am not vegan but I don’t wear death, so I’ve been wearing too-small plastic Payless loafers that have been mangling my ankles for the past month, topped off by miscalculations in transportations and 15 blocks of walking here, 20 over there. Le sigh and I’m fine, I am all right.

I’m happy to be home, if home is here, if home is anywhere, it’s inside me sounds too easy, I will fight this a little longer. I’m in Fargo now, with Fargo feelings and my dad’s grumpy cat soliciting love. All the plans for me, I assent to every.one.

My presence is the present. The gift and the now.

Hard to believe Vancouver is still happening, hard to believe I’ll return, that I left, that I came back, that I’m here at all, centerless but not without the ground I walk and walk and walk until my ankles break off “I lost the feeling in my thoughts” isn’t true but falls out. I will investigate but not interrogate. I no longer will anything wrong.

Some fun at Nic’s.

Funnin’ my 15-year-old brother.

A heart so light it becomes a glow in the more to come, the Merry Christmas anyway, and happy another new year, another closure and continuance, excuses and remembrance, shout songs and broken instruments, quiver-warm hellos and suspended goodbyes.