"TO SOME EXTENT, SEATTLE REMAINS A FRONTIER METROPOLIS,A PLACE WHERE PEOPLE CAN EXPERIMENT WITH THEIR LIVES.HERE THEY CAN CHANGE, GROW AND MAKE THINGS HAPPEN"
My first trip to the Pacific Northwest. All I really had was a suitcase and my heart. So I took them up to Seattle and hoped it would work. At night, what you see is a city, because all you see is lights. By day, it doesn’t look like a city at all. The trees out-number the houses. And that’s completely typical of Seattle. You can’t quite tell: is it a city, is it a suburb, is the forest growing back?
To me Seattle is a feeling, a crashing grunge feeling, which can be found when you listen to the song “Nutshell” by Alice in Chain, the Seattle’s vibe I’m talking about is one of a kind and can be only found in the raspy voice of Layne Staley. There is a singularly haunting quality about him. To really understand the meaning of the song you must go to Seattle, and to truly feel Seattle, you must listen to the dirty guitar sound, strong riffs, and heavy drumming of “Nutshell” at night time, as you walk down the Union Lake, passing by dozens of houseboats and fairy-tale looking floating homes in N. Northlake; It’s you and the lights from the downtown shining quietly from a distance. Once the “naive” tourist’s attitude dies inside, the authentic city’s colors arise. At times, just like a lover, Seattle asks to be viewed from a distance, and just then, it becomes yours.
“My gift of self is raped
My privacy is raked
And yet I find
And yet I find
Repeating in my head
If I can’t be my own
I’d feel better dead”
(- Nutshell, Alice in Chain)
I THINK OF SEATTLE AS MY SECOND HOMETOWN. NO I WASN'T BORN OR RAISED THERE!BUT DURING MY STAY I REALIZED, HOME IS NOT A PLACE! IT'S A FEELING.THE FEELING THAT YOU ARE EXACTLY WHERE YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO BE!
No matter where I am, some days, all it takes is to get my headphones on and in a heartbeat I can still breath the salty air from walking the Northlake Way and hear the overwhelming sound coming from the cars driving fast on top of the tall Aurora Bridge above my head on the Burke-Gilman Trail, passing over the troll sculpture in the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle. I turn around and shining, the space needle appears before my eyes from afar, so small and yet fills my heart.
The city’s true colors reveal between September and November, when the dying summer turns into an earthy fall. I still feel it into my bones, that feeling of otherness, the lack of control, a sense of mystery as I was walking through the gigantic pillars of the Aurora Bridge.
The ice-cold steel surface, rising so majestic, so massive above my head it’s the magnificent gateway that connects Lake Union to Queen Anne and Fremont.
I’ll never forget that feeling, a feeling that I’ve held so close… that feeling of “I get it now”. That feeling when no one can find you. That feeling of being trapped. Knowing that the best part of you is being held captive by a monster that you hate.
Then all of sudden you step out of your comfort zone and break free, feeling the sensation of being alive. Everybody wants that feeling of standing on top of the world, yet they can’t ever find their center. Seattle is where I found my center. The center of my Universe.
After all it is not by chance the Fremont’s got its self-proclaimed position as the center of the universe and the need to set your watch back 5 minutes. Yes, this is how, when and why, Seattle became my City of the Rain.
I felt lucky to experience Seattle during its days of rain. It actually doesn’t rain all that much in Seattle. There’s something about the wetness that gives the place a visceral appeal. Rain makes Seattle shine, and brings out the most intense flavors of the Emerald City.
In Seattle I’d get up so early in the morning, even before the sun itself, just to talk and video-chat with my parents back in Italy. You know, Naples is 9 hours ahead of Seattle. Come to think of it, the thing that I loved about Seattle is that I was transported to another time in my life.
The ocean makes me feel really small and it makes me put my whole life into perspective…it humbles ME. No love is Like an ocean with the dizzy procession of the waves’ boundaries ….
-( Jack Spicer )
She who fights with monsters should look to it that she herself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you.
-(Beyond Good and Evil”, Aphorism 146 – 1886)
One of the things I loved doing the most though, was opening up my eyes, usually around 5.30 A.M and see from my window, a fine man walking down the street every morning, from Monday to Thursday, heading down to the N.Northlake Way. He was a diver, somebody that one day I decided to go with, finding myself as special guest at the DIT (Divers Institute of Technology). I learned about a different category of people, I learned that that a diver is not a fighting man, He is a salvage expert. If there’s something lost underwater, he will find it, if it’s sunk, he will bring it up, if it’s in the way, he will move it. A diver is nothing but the ocean itself. Everytime that guy crossed the street disappearing around the corner, a salty sea breeze would come in off the Union Lake, floating with the seagulls flying overhead, and inspiring my day. I come from a land surrounded by the energy of the sea, yet, In Seattle, the water was overwhelming and a beautifully breathtaking element to discover. I will never forget the echoes and the chilli wind coming from the Alaskan Way, resounding throughout the streets and the apartments of the University Way, Northeast Seattle, the place where I lived in 2013. I will never forget the lungs of the Union Lake.
“But I was sure of something too: it’s a lot easier to be lost than found. It’s the reason we’re always searching, and rarely discovered – so many locks, not enough keys. ”
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