This is my first day back from nearly a year sabbatical. I moved back to Oklahoma after living in Seattle for 12 years.
Seattle is a great city and has many great amenities...
I lived one block from the awesome dreadlocks grocery store with it's abundant array of vegan items. All cool music venues were within a mile from my place; and speaking of music great bands were/are weekly. My fav shows were Damian Marley and Hank Williams III.
Work was 2 miles away. The bus was always interesting.
People's sense of style offered non-ending daily entertainment. The guy with the brilliantly dyed hair and beard and "aunt bee" hat and stylishly dowdly dresses was a stand out. The speakeasys were fun and sometimes scary. Like the time I kind of noticed the dancing mob vibrating to the incredible DJ show had transformed into very hairy muscular leather gay guys with one standout with neck veins protruding as he stuck his tongue deeply into the mouth of another hairy man.
The pastries were addictive. The dye-black hair, tatted and pierced up always stylely girls were exciting. Guys also were a great eyeful with rockabilly dudes, modern Syd Vicicious looks from head to toe and lots of studs, white rastas, hip hop Nikes, and lots of handsome Morrissey styled chaps.
Many of the policewomen were super hot.
The tattoo shops are probably the best in the US. My pin-up artist is noted as one of the top five pin-up tattoo artists in the nation. Check out www.apocalypsetattoo.com, Benjamin.
Though not a personal interest, but marijuana by law is the lowest priority for the Seattle police. Drug enforcement leans toward treatment rather than blind incarceration. The city and Puget sound is very liberal.
Seattleites --love-- to protest. Anti-Bush, save the sea turtles, kill the corporations and more dance together in an ocean-like swirl.
Bicycles and pedestirians rule. Cars fight for limited parking.
The Seattle International Film Festival, snow-capped mountains, azure bay sparkling in the sunshine when the sunshine is around, delightful Edinburgh overcast skies make coffee and pasteries and beer delightful.
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Actually Oklahoma City is not terrible or Hee Hawed out.
The music scene as I have thus experienced it is actually more exciting than Seattle. I'm not sure if there's a name for it, but the teenage scream bands with amazing bass lines and energetic to say the least guitar riffs are spine-tingling-exciting. Perhaps it's hit Seattle now, but the youth have also adopted a supa-cool 1960s retro look. Guys with Keith Richards haircuts; girls with LuLu haircuts, if you've seen "To Sir With Love." Brilliantly striped or polka dotted or otherwise adorned mini-dresses on the girls modernized by a nice array of tattoos and piercings and oh so sweet dark mascara and cherry red lips. So bichen!
The downside is Oklahoma City is not a pedestrian city. You must have a car unlike Seattle... e.g. the nearest grocery store is over two miles away. I'm fortunate to have a coffee shop nearby, but in the rest of the city they are typically a drive.
For me the most fearful downside is as in Seattle where ever you find a tavern, which is nearly every block, in Oklahoma City you find a church. It's kind of like a theme park of doom. I'm not keen on ice-cream-social-lizing in the State of Topeka for an eternal life packed with "christians" where earthly demons of sex and much literature and art and music are a thing of the blessed past and the present is simply a rocket ship to heaven. I still believe spirituality is simply this moment and mother earth is my chosen monument of God.
Oklahoma City is a preservation of the wild west or microcosm of curent events. My second week here I was shot at from 3 feet by two young men wearing Crips banadas pulled up over their noses like frontier days bank robbers. They never bellowed 'give me your money' or 'stand and deliver.' All I remember was get on the ground. So I absent-mindly turned around and BOOM the first shot wizzed by my head and two more shots echoed out as I pulled a pretty decent roadrunner away.
Another necessity of having a car here is it's actually your protection. Or as I cynically first thought a way to symbolize were are in oil country and not to consume is heresy.
Coming from 12 years in Seattle I swore I would not get a car, but it turns out pedestrians, particulary late night pedestrians, are often risking their well being. In my crack-plagued neighborhood I have resigned to not going out past sunset... at least until I get a tank. I wish I could get an early eighties cadillac but they use to much petrol.
Actually being Ruppenzeled up in my apartment has been a blessing. I now don't feel like I'm missing any action and enjoy being alone with my cat. Jake is such a great companion. A large part of this peaceful feeling is I believe for the first time in my existence I am not yearning for a relationship from casual to especially long-term.
It's a great feeling coming from where I used to be when I believed a relationship was the foundation of being. I also can have hairstyles that others say are not fetching and wear any clothes I want. I think I'm just in love with myself.
Seattle is a great city and has many great amenities...
I lived one block from the awesome dreadlocks grocery store with it's abundant array of vegan items. All cool music venues were within a mile from my place; and speaking of music great bands were/are weekly. My fav shows were Damian Marley and Hank Williams III.
Work was 2 miles away. The bus was always interesting.
People's sense of style offered non-ending daily entertainment. The guy with the brilliantly dyed hair and beard and "aunt bee" hat and stylishly dowdly dresses was a stand out. The speakeasys were fun and sometimes scary. Like the time I kind of noticed the dancing mob vibrating to the incredible DJ show had transformed into very hairy muscular leather gay guys with one standout with neck veins protruding as he stuck his tongue deeply into the mouth of another hairy man.
The pastries were addictive. The dye-black hair, tatted and pierced up always stylely girls were exciting. Guys also were a great eyeful with rockabilly dudes, modern Syd Vicicious looks from head to toe and lots of studs, white rastas, hip hop Nikes, and lots of handsome Morrissey styled chaps.
Many of the policewomen were super hot.
The tattoo shops are probably the best in the US. My pin-up artist is noted as one of the top five pin-up tattoo artists in the nation. Check out www.apocalypsetattoo.com, Benjamin.
Though not a personal interest, but marijuana by law is the lowest priority for the Seattle police. Drug enforcement leans toward treatment rather than blind incarceration. The city and Puget sound is very liberal.
Seattleites --love-- to protest. Anti-Bush, save the sea turtles, kill the corporations and more dance together in an ocean-like swirl.
Bicycles and pedestirians rule. Cars fight for limited parking.
The Seattle International Film Festival, snow-capped mountains, azure bay sparkling in the sunshine when the sunshine is around, delightful Edinburgh overcast skies make coffee and pasteries and beer delightful.
**************************************************************************************************************************
Actually Oklahoma City is not terrible or Hee Hawed out.
The music scene as I have thus experienced it is actually more exciting than Seattle. I'm not sure if there's a name for it, but the teenage scream bands with amazing bass lines and energetic to say the least guitar riffs are spine-tingling-exciting. Perhaps it's hit Seattle now, but the youth have also adopted a supa-cool 1960s retro look. Guys with Keith Richards haircuts; girls with LuLu haircuts, if you've seen "To Sir With Love." Brilliantly striped or polka dotted or otherwise adorned mini-dresses on the girls modernized by a nice array of tattoos and piercings and oh so sweet dark mascara and cherry red lips. So bichen!
The downside is Oklahoma City is not a pedestrian city. You must have a car unlike Seattle... e.g. the nearest grocery store is over two miles away. I'm fortunate to have a coffee shop nearby, but in the rest of the city they are typically a drive.
For me the most fearful downside is as in Seattle where ever you find a tavern, which is nearly every block, in Oklahoma City you find a church. It's kind of like a theme park of doom. I'm not keen on ice-cream-social-lizing in the State of Topeka for an eternal life packed with "christians" where earthly demons of sex and much literature and art and music are a thing of the blessed past and the present is simply a rocket ship to heaven. I still believe spirituality is simply this moment and mother earth is my chosen monument of God.
Oklahoma City is a preservation of the wild west or microcosm of curent events. My second week here I was shot at from 3 feet by two young men wearing Crips banadas pulled up over their noses like frontier days bank robbers. They never bellowed 'give me your money' or 'stand and deliver.' All I remember was get on the ground. So I absent-mindly turned around and BOOM the first shot wizzed by my head and two more shots echoed out as I pulled a pretty decent roadrunner away.
Another necessity of having a car here is it's actually your protection. Or as I cynically first thought a way to symbolize were are in oil country and not to consume is heresy.
Coming from 12 years in Seattle I swore I would not get a car, but it turns out pedestrians, particulary late night pedestrians, are often risking their well being. In my crack-plagued neighborhood I have resigned to not going out past sunset... at least until I get a tank. I wish I could get an early eighties cadillac but they use to much petrol.
Actually being Ruppenzeled up in my apartment has been a blessing. I now don't feel like I'm missing any action and enjoy being alone with my cat. Jake is such a great companion. A large part of this peaceful feeling is I believe for the first time in my existence I am not yearning for a relationship from casual to especially long-term.
It's a great feeling coming from where I used to be when I believed a relationship was the foundation of being. I also can have hairstyles that others say are not fetching and wear any clothes I want. I think I'm just in love with myself.
glad you are back.
e