seattle, november 18th

Heyo!

So today we went to see Sunray Kelley, an honest to good ness wizard on top of a mountain. We squeezed apples into cider with him, and he showed us some of his magic, in the form of houses which he has built. Here is one of them now.

he planted the apple trees four years ago, and he is incredibly clever. Once a long time ago I intruded on one of my father's friends, an artist, while he was in his studio. My father's friend was reclined all the way back in an old chair, staring at the ceiling, smoking blue smoke from a pipe, 100% lost in his thought. I backed out without saying anything. I still remember thinking "that's an artist" as a kid.

Anyways, Sunray reminded me of him. Another house, that doesn't have any good photos of it online, stopped me solid and spun me around, a towering ramshackle house four stories high. The best representation of it I can give you is this, which isn't quite it:

a bottle of cider to anyone who remembers that house (the quote should help).

Well, we left there loaded with bags of apples and bottles of oh lord that's good stuff. Now to Portland.

I don't want you to think our last time in Portland was completely taken up by singing at riot police, though that happened. The first and last thing we did was stay at the house of City Repair, a beautiful reworked house in Sellwood Village, SE Portland. This is the epicentre of a lot of serious community-building stuff, but also just a great place to be. Me and Bryce ended up staying there four days, as David and Katherine went to San Francisco and Nate to California. We learnt many skills, such as brewing ginger beer,

and I traded my little red accordion, Madeleine, for a big calico accordion called Lola's Junk. more on this later, perhaps. Suffice it to say after two years of playing accordion and constantly being asked if I can play this song, I now am able to. But that also means I'll be learning this one.

we're going back thru Portland, anyhow. Right now I'm in Seattle at my splendid cousin's house, and it's very warm and dry, and this motivates me to make a list, because what nicer thing could there be to sum up a lot of things.

Places we've slept in the last 5 nights:

Wednesday: side of the road outside Sunray's place in Leslee, on Mount Vernon, Washington

Tuesday: Portland, City Repair's house

Monday: The same. Hm. well actually me and Bryce slept on the floor there for quite a few nights. So we owe them some chores. But here's a list of what's been in my pockets recently.

1. date pits

2. carrot tops

3. american money

4. some discarded metal pieces for craft

5. a flashlight

as we came to Sunray's it started to snow. I hear down in California it's hot. They say California used to be an island that collided with the continental states. we'll see.

Commando Friday tomorrow morning! HA!