Gasworks Park In September

The gray sky ceiling hangs low, bright enough to force squinting as I watch a V of geese pass up and over the lake.  I’ve found a nearly perfect groove between two lumpy patches of yellowed grass on the side of a hill.  Lake Union dotted with boats stretches out in front of me, the skyscrapers of downtown hung with patchy fog across the water.  At the base of my hill there’s a flat grassy space now full of people in black tights, fine-tuning choreography for some musical.  Their stereo plays a scratchy old French recording, the mademoiselle pining for her lost love in a tremulous soprano as dancers practice their cartwheels.

When the number is finished the performers give themselves a round of applause and there is much pattings-on-the-back. They begin the publicity portion of their practice session, dancers ambling up the hill, shooting mysterious faces to other park-goers.  A girl blows me a kiss and approaches, stepping forward with toes pointed, both dancing and walking.  She holds a stack of cards advertising the name and date of her play.  She asks me if I already have one. At that very moment I am chewing three water-crackers.  I smile sheepishly with my mouth full and make a guttural noise between gooey chunks of wheat.  She doesn’t understand my answer, and hands me one anyway before briskly dancing away.  These days I’m mostly beyond embarrassment.

Life constantly creates strange pairings.  In a public place full of people; like the park, street, or the bus, stopping for a minute to observe all the things happening at the same time is immensely rewarding. 

On the hill above me a father is explaining the science behind draw- bridges to his two identical blonde sons.  An escaped white balloon with a bell tied to its end drifts by me, just too far away to reach, up towards a gray blimp matching the sky bearing the logo of a local credit union as a young couple on a blanket rub their bare feet together and a sullen, heavyset woman walks by with her old floppy beagle and a swarm of black and white starlings are frightened from their fence by a passing boat shaped like a silver bullet that must have cost a fortune and here I am lying on a hill 2,724 miles away from my home and family considering the abstracts of purpose, illness, and what I should cook for my dinner.  What makes all this happen exactly as it does?

On the other side of the hill there are wedding photos in the works.  A tall man in a tuxedo kisses a woman in a shiny white and gold dress.  Three young people in jeans and sweatshirts circle them, snapping pictures on professional looking cameras with long lenses.  Other members of the wedding party mill about on the lawn. Several hold empty champagne glasses and don’t know what to do with them. 

A trail leads past the main pavilion with its playfully colorful and useless industrial pipes and out into the woods.  A single willow tree down by the water is surrounded by a square of chain link fence.  A sign from the city parks department say the spot is consistently high in tar. They are conducting a study to find out why. There are signs all over the park advising citizens to avoid swimming and by no means to eat any fish or shellfish caught from the lake.  Due to contaminants, the water is off limits. Back at the apartment, three or four days worth of greasy dishes are waiting for me.  These facts don’t seem to be overly related, but my brain thinks they are.

 The trail follows the shore past the quarantined tree, smaller paths branching off into the underbrush, leading to the backdoors of houseboats that look barely mobile and hardly sea-worthy. Further into the trees I am confronted by a huge rooster in the path blocking my way.  My annual viewing of roosters is pretty low, but here alone in the shady woods without proper context, this rooster looks fucking huge.  His feathers are a mix of black, brown and green, and the fleshy blobble at the top of his head is bright crimson. 

          He pecks at the dirt, scratching at it intermittently with his thick yellow legs.  I’m not close enough yet for him to care about me.  Is he the pet rooster of one of the house-boat-people? He doesn’t have a collar on. Would a pet rooster have a collar? The identity of this rooster is obviously unknowable, and I slowly approach him for reasons also unknowable.  He turns now to face me.  He scratches the dirt with aggressive purpose, like a bull soon to gore a fancy Spaniard.  A low, rumbling cluck, sounding more like a dog than a chicken finally warns me off.  I back away slowly and once he is convinced I’m not a threat, goes back to his mindless pecking.  I come across the strangest things when I’m by myself.

I’m sitting now on a flight of cement steps down by the water, notebook folded over my knee, feeling proud of myself for actually putting my thoughts down on paper.  Not writing makes me feel guilty, like I’m wasting all that money I’m still spending on college.  Writing about an angry chicken definitely counts as using my degree. 

On the platform above me an immigrant family is enjoying themselves.  There are a handful of adults leaning up against the railing, looking out towards the city as all the lights start to come on, having a heated debate in their native language.  Based on the color of their skin, the way the women are dressed, and the way their language sounds, they are probably Somalis, maybe Ethiopians I don’t know. There are quite a few East Africans in the city, there’s even a non-profit called Somali Community Services Coalition devoted just to serving their population here, maybe they’ll give me a job next year. Cross your fingers. 

The adults are speaking entirely Somali, but as the children run around and splash in the puddles I hear the occasional English word. As a completely useless mono-linguist I’m always impressed by people who can flow interchangeably and effortlessly between two or more languages.  These kids have two completely separate ways of relating to their existence, of describing everything they see and know. 

I wonder if they were born here or immigrated along with their parents? I am terrible at guessing children’s age but I’d say all three of them are between ten at the oldest and five at the youngest.  Maybe they need both languages to sort and make sense of their two vastly different lives, their family’s home across the ocean in Africa and now this strange new place.  I can only imagine what Seattle is like for someone from Somalia or Ethiopia, like being relocated to Saturn.  Their parents only have one way to express and understand their lives, one that I’m sure has large gaps in its understanding of a place so far from its origin.  They will look to their children to find the keys for unlocking this society unless they pick up English very quickly.  But then again, what do I know, maybe they love it here and are getting on fine, their fellow Somalis that came before them guiding them slowly and carefully to build for themselves a new life vastly better than the one they had before.  I will never know, because I can’t and won’t ask them, because they are strangers in the park.

   The light above the clouds seeps away and more and more people drift out of the park.  The sun is vaguely visible now hovering just above the Olympic Mountains way off west. I’ve been here almost a year and still have no handle on the weather, it shifts and moves amorphously, of its own accord. What I can tell is there won’t be a sunset tonight. I’ve lingered here long after most people have gone home for dinner. I see the brilliant pink and purple sunsets when I’m driving, when they are mostly hidden behind trees and buildings and hills, but when I come to the park and wait they hide from me. You can’t plan for them, they are only willing to surprise you.