Dead Letter Department #98

weather report

This time it’s an actual weather report: today is grey & rainy, light but steady enough that when I went out to have coffee in the backyard this morning, my glasses were immediately dappled with drops, & my shirt is still damp while I write this to you. It feels like a pleasant respite, after weeks of bright sun & blue skies, & also excellent timing for the the plants I put in the ground this weekend: a small but cheerful white hydrangea, to replace the one that died in the freeze last year, a rosemary in the bed I’ve been gradually planting over since I finally took the (invasive) butterfly bush down, & several ferns, to fill in a damp, shady bed that has mostly been used by the neighbor’s cats for naps & sneaking up on each other.

The rosemary in particular is insurance—there’s a huge one against the back fence, but it leans a little further out from underneath the tree that shadows it every year, & I worry that one of these seasons it’ll outpace its own roots & start to fade. I’ve been trying to get others established, so I can still smell that sharp piney fragrance & watch the bees crowd around when it flowers.

As far as internal weather, let’s call it mixed: there’s a certain amount of existential spiraling re: elections & war, which I honestly feel silly writing about, because I haven’t got anything remotely fresh to say. Are you fluctuating between despair & hope, with the despair doing its best to shriek about how any hope is misguided to the point of insanity? Well, that makes all of us, pretty much, or at least everyone I talk to on a regular basis.

I did my primary ballot, thankfully mail-in here in Washington, which means I sat down with a giant pile of mailed flyers & the voter’s guide & my phone to look up endorsements & thought about political positions that are usually completely obscure to me. I do read candidate statements—not all of them, because I don’t have five hours to spend, but if I’m debating between candidates & my usual endorsement sources (the Riveters Collective, local tribes, unions, Planned Parenthood) are not coming through, they can be quite helpful. There’s always at least one utterly unhinged one, since the candidates or their campaigns write their own statements, & one I wish I could vote for due to their sheer ballsiness in running for office, even if they’re not a sensible way to cast the vote.

Sometime today I’ll go shove my ballot into the big metal box downtown & then do my best to not hold my breath until November, which is approaching with obscene rapidity.

I got to the beach early on Sunday, doing my best to avoid the birders, who arrive in large, silent packs with long lens cameras during the entire warm season, and as I rounded the corner for my usual walk, I found a tent parked right up against the tangle of blackberry hedges, with a little propane tank sitting outside, and various towels and blankets distributed over the driftwood. I gave them a wide berth, since there didn’t seem to be anyone stirring yet, & the packs of children & dogs a little later in the morning would be providing an unavoidable alarm bell soon enough. I’ve never seen anyone camping there before, & they’d clearly arrived in the dark, or would have seen how close to the footpath they’d put themselves.

There are various camps in my neighborhood too, down the western spur of my street, where the houses peter out into scraggly woods, a couple of regulars in the park, one guy who circulates right around the closest grocery store who I was worried the construction was going to displace, but he seems to have kept hold. I think about the obscenity of that a lot, when I see the new luxury apartments going up just a few blocks away, or the giant blocks of empty commercial real estate underneath the boxy new condos. Cascadia Daily reported on a family that bought an old gas station out in Ferndale to make a communal home of their own since anything like an ordinary home was so wildly out of their budget, even with multiple working adults to contribute.

My block alone has at least three ADU projects happening right now, & at least two of them are older homeowners building for their adult children, who would otherwise be adrift in the impossible rental market, with no hope of ever owning. I live in an ADU upstairs from my mom myself, & my apartment is tiny to the point of absurdity, but stable in a way that I could not have achieved otherwise. This means, of course, that people like me whose parents can help with economic stability get a better chance at it, even as it diminishes, and those who don’t are left to founder.

one good thing

There’s a scrap of a beach at the end of Cornwall, tucked between industrial zones and an old landfill which is eventually destined to become a park, although I can’t at the moment remember how many years from now that’s supposed to be. Right now it’s just a spit of ragged looking land, capped with enormous white plastic sheeting over the dumpsites, at the end of what used to be one of the major spots for car campers. There’s also a big yellow building, immaculately painted, standing proud between the railroad and the curve of water, right on the tracks. I’ve always wondered about it—it seems like a setting for something interesting, though I’ve never been quite able to put my finger on what, & the time I stopped to read the mailboxes of the businesses, they all seemed ordinary enough. As they should, if there are secrets behind the walls, I suppose.

When I was there this past weekend, taking a break & picking up some of the abundant sea glass (privilege of being a former dump site—the most sea glass I’ve ever seen in one place), there was a guy in a hi-vis vest scooping up trash, who turned out to be the owner of the big yellow building, who comes out & picks garbage up off the beach adjacent to his property, describing it as his “sphere of influence.” I keep thinking about that phrase, ever since he said it, and the way he was diligently improving the public beach, because it fell within his sphere.

The trash he gathered in this case included an entire outfit, including shoes, draped over one of the enormous driftwood logs, but the guy with the vest assured us it had been there for a week, and the owner was unlikely to return. I couldn’t help but imagine someone arriving at the shoreline, being seized with the sudden impulse to peel off and swim out into the distance, having frequently been possessed of just such an urge myself.

Thank you for reading these dead letters. If you’re able to subscribe, you can find that information here, & I always appreciate when you share one you’ve liked with friend. I’ll write you again soon, and in the meantime, if you do set off into the sea unexpectedly, I hope someone is waiting for you with shoes & a towel when you strike land again.