________  ________  ________
   2018-08-25                                   /        \/        \/    /   \
                                               /       __/         /_       _/
   I  was  talking with Danielle  last night  /        _/         /         /
about this and that, funny  memories and our  \_______/_\___/____/\___/____/_
plans for the future, those kinds of things.    /        \/        \/    /   \
We got  on  to reminiscing  about our recent   /        _/         /_       _/
trips and I brought up the idea that I think  /-        /        _/         /
a  memory of our last time in Washington got  \________/\________/\___/____/
filed wrong.

   I mentioned it in passing back in May[1] but when we were driving home from
the  Barcade in  Alki, drunk and high and bewildered by the GPS directions, we
got stopped by  a train somewhere in Seattle's  industrial  district.  Let  me
flesh out the drive in more detail.

   We were heading from Alki to Capitol Hill to drop off a friend and then out
to Kent. The GPS got us  on to the bridge fine but then took us down  into the
industrial district,  I think (sober) that the GPS was trying to tell us where
to get off  the bridge but we kept taking the next exit rather than the one it
was indicating so it was then directing us back on to the bridge.  Regardless,
we  ended up  somewhere  down  in  the industrial district, driving around and
turned up a  street between warehouses, vaguely in the direction of the onramp
to the bridge and crossing lights started sounding and we stopped for a train.
The train rolled past, slowing down and then came to a stop in front of us.

   We waited a little while but eventually it clicked that it wasn't moving so
we turned around and carried on our ridiculous journey.

   We ended up back on the bridge and made it to Capitol Hill. Capitol Hill is
one of my most  favorite  places in Seattle, if you're in the Seattle area and
want to know what inner-city Melbourne is like then check out Capitol Hill, it
really reminds me of suburbs like Fitzroy and Collingwood.

   It  seems  reasonably  safe at night  too,  I  dunno.  America  has  a  bad
reputation of being unsafe and I'm sure it is  more dangerous in  general than
Australia is but I don't  really feel like it's as bad as people make it seem.
TV and movies exaggerate things and then get taken literally, I suppose.

   The  rest of the drive was pretty uneventful, so back  to my initial point;
the whole  memory  of that drive  and in particular being stopped by the train
feel like they're  stored wrong  in my memory. It's  almost  like  they're the
wrong  temperature or color, it's hard to  describe.  The  whole  thing should
register as  exhaustion and  frustration and stress.  I remember how I felt at
the time, it was funny because of the chemicals in me but  I  vividly remember
the negative feelings spiking through  but now, when I think back on the night
none of that is there, I remember remembering feeling  that way but if I think
on the memory softly I remember it  with the same kind of resonance as, say, a
lazy evening in the gardens or a quiet morning walk on the beach.

   Something happened (yeah, I know) when the memory  was  forming that tinted
it  with such a  curious feeling  of warmth and safety  and significance, it's
really strange.

   It leaves me  wondering if that's how I experienced it  or if something got
lost in translation between intoxicated brain and sober brain.

   It  leaves me wondering if this feeling of  comfort,  of  rolling  with the
punches  rather than freaking  out and  shutting down in a weird, out-of-your-
control situation is how people without anxiety experience the world.

   It leaves me feeling a bit jealous.


[1] gopher://baud.baby/0/phlog/fs20180507.txt



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