Everything is the same and yet everything is different. That's how I feel sitting on the edge of the water in West Seattle. I've not been living here since January 2023. I've been back 5 or 6 times in the last year and a half and suddenly the buildings that were steel bones and scaffolding are complete. New shops and hotels abound across the lake in Bellevue. When was the last time I was in Bellevue? I can't remember but the new shiny hotel with a Rolls Royce out front lures me in. Ultimately its the same old city built around a shopping mall.
The skies are faintly hazy in that dreamy August way. The less dreamy reality of that haze means some idiot started a wild fire because the rules apply to everyone else but not them, because they're "careful" when starting a campfire during a campfire ban. Change all around but still the same.
I don't have time for blues night at The Spot and each time I try to swing by for a coffee on my way to the bane of my existence (my storage unit), it's closed, which is very unlike the way things were. Blues night isn't even the same crew anymore. I go to Beacon Hill and have wine on the patio with two of my girlfriends and have a lovely moment.
A week flies by, and I am once again sat in SeaTac, which is not immune to the progress and evolution around it. I am not headed home across the Atlantic, but to see my brother and my new niece who arrived 7 weeks early. I am tired. "I really must stop trying to cram so much in during these trips" I tell myself...again.
But it's hard not to when everything is changing and new things are happening.
It's strange to feel your love of place evolve and change as you witness the physicality of it also change. Not necessarily the nature, which is surely changing in a way not noticeable to the eye, but the hustle and bustle of people and human settlement. My love for Seattle remains rooted in its beauty & nearness to the water.
The air smells salty when I visit now, something I haven't noticed for well over a decade. I'm no longer acclimated, and yet Seattle still holds a tiny piece of my soul. A piece which is greatly calmed when I sit on the rocks of the shoreline in West Seattle.