Sunset In Seattle

Finally, the sun set on Seattle’s unusually long summer today. The skies turned gray overnight, the sun appearing only in short breaks among periods of incessant rain. However, much as I may dislike the ceaseless Seattle rains, I cannot deny my love for the assuredness of the familiar, which they bring.

The rain has stopped now, as I sit in my balcony sipping hot cocoa and looking at downtown Seattle and beyond. The air is crisp and bears a freshness, which comes with the benumbing chill of fall rain. An occasional breeze wafts in with  the smell of wet earth and the sweet scent of an unknown flower. The frame of the city that I can see is at rest; drenched in the Midas touch of the setting sun. Though it looks beautifully at peace, I sense a hint of some unknown danger lurking beneath.

My view is restricted by neighboring apartment blocks on both sides, so I actually only see a single frame of a montage of the city. It looks like an artist’s unfinished canvas – perfect with all its imperfections. Dense dark gray clouds hover around the upper left corner and then disperse into patchy globs, as if an amateur painter used too much water to spread the gray across the canvas. Random streaks of clear blue sky disturb the gloomy gray. The foggy white, blurred slope of West Seattle meets the almost splotchy backdrop at the right edge. Beneath that, the familiar vermilion cranes at the dock suggest water, though I cannot see it from where I am sitting. The cranes are crisscrossed with the white lattice of the tall, pointed, arches of the Pacific Science Center.

Moving towards the center of the frame, I can see the stacked cubes of modern skyscrapers of downtown. I occasionally catch a lit window indicating the only sign of activity in this otherwise still city frame. Further down closer to me, the dirty green mass of Larry’s Market peeps through the tall thorn bushes that might have been lush green leafy trees when summer started. Closer still the dull, flat roofs of Queen Anne’s brick buildings peek through the yellow, rust, plum and various greens of leafy bursts. The sporadic glitter of a rain drop clinging tantalizingly to a fragile leaf or sunlight reflected off a building’s glazing are the only elements, which make me wince at an unusually beautiful view of Seattle.

My eyes move towards the Space Needle, which for once, due to the skewed perspective, appears to be towering over downtown Seattle. Since I cannot see its base, all I see are two concrete flanges resembling two gigantic, cheap plastic, white, salad forks holding up an equally disproportionate slice of gourd rind that has been rendered colorless, topped with a dollop of stiff white frosting. Sandwiched between the salad forks is a metal cage in which two elevators move up and down totally out of any synchrony.

Suddenly out of nowhere, an airplane glides across the canvas towards the iconic structure. I watch with a sense of anticipated doom as the aircraft approaches the concrete forks. It almost seems like a 9/11 recap that they keep showing on TV with the plane approaching either tower. I close my eyes and hold my breath in preparation for the loud crash, but seconds pass by and I hear nothing. I open my eyes only to see a beautiful city basking in the golden glory of fading sunlight.

Although at first the frame seems unchanged, I cannot feel the same about it. I know something has been disturbed if not physically at least in my perception, though I know not how. While disentangling my thoughts, I unintentionally evoke a terrifying memory that has marred this beautiful painting forever – a thin white stroke of jet trail. An otherwise innocent stroke has assumed unimaginably fearful proportions in me, casting long shadows on this exquisitely beautiful Seattle sunset. Wistfully I realized that the enchantment had been broken….. it was time to go indoors.