Friday, May 11, 2007, I did one of my trips to Seattle, to the places only Seattle has. I keep a two ziplock bags with printed pages, newspaper clippings, postit notes with lists, and ads for the things I want to find and the places I want to go. One bag holds all the books and music stuff and the other holds the rest of the things and places. I add other bags, one for the photography stuff I want or need and one for computer stuff. It's my controlled chaos management, or as a taxonomist might call, being a lumper.
Anyway, instead of driving all the way around through Tacoma and up Interstate 5 to Seattle, sometimes I like to go to Bremerton and take the ferry across the Puget sound. It's a 30 minute drive and an hour ride as opposed to an hour or more drive depending on traffic. You can catch the photos I take on the rides here - see "WSF" galleries, that is until a recent trip where I was stopped and questioned.
This trip, however, after reading the newspapers, I walked around and ended up near the bow of the boat. They keep a line across the bow to keep passengers about 6 feet away, but you can stand there and feel the breeze in your face, hear the sound of the waves under the bow, watch downtown Seattle in the distance. It's fun to just stand there, close your eyes and let your other senses feel your presence. There in that space and time.
And you can just open your eyes to the whole of what's going on. The planes flying in and out of Sea-Tac Airport, the other boats and ships on the Puget Sound, and the flow of cars and people in downtown Seattle. It's about just being one of many in the whole flow of life and events in one city on the Earth. Being one of six and half billion people. Just one person. And it makes me wonder about life and why, just being one.
It's interesting to watch people on ferries. They're so absorbed in their life with family and friends, leisure and work, events and places, and everything else going on. They forget they're just one. One of many. Do they, or you for that matter, stop for a few minutes and stand there, quietly feeling the whole of the moment? Wondering why?
Well, this trip I stood there on near the bow for the moment the ferry cleared the inlet into Bremerton into the open water of the Sound directly to Seattle until the voice on the intercom announced the arrival to get people back in their cars, about 30 minutes. I got back into my van, waited, disembarked and went on with my day.
Some time you might want to just stand in your space and know you are there.
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