crept in on little cat's feet

The plan tonight was to go home after a quick stint at the gym and start packing (which I've been saying I'll do every night for quite a few days now). Instead it's past eleven and I'm just getting home after taking a detour from the athletic club to Capitol Hill for dinner and drinks (oops).

The result was me spending way more time than planned outside traipsing about the city this evening. In a short skirt, thin calf-length leggings, tiny ballet flats and a light jacket, I am downright amazed at how cold it is out there; I was cursing... well, I'm frankly not sure who I should have been cursing, but I was definitely cursing on the way home between busses and doors. It made me think of the Sandburg quote I mentioned above- granted it refers to fog, but the cold weather has done the same: crept in quietly when we weren't looking. A major briskness has taken over Seattle in the past two weeks. I don't even know where my cold-weather clothes are.


Leaving the Seattle Athletic Club, I detoured my usual route north through Belltown toward Queen Anne and went south through the market to catch a bus up to Capitol Hill. There is something magical, and totally different, about The Market in its off-time. And at this time, a weeknight past dark, when it's late enough to have shut down but not late enough to be still, it had the great quality that piazzas all over Italy have late in the evening... the lazy meanderings of people passing by and through, gazing about places meant to be full with people. The Market, like Campo de Fiori, the Spanish Steps, or Piazza Navona in Rome, seems, late at night, to be begging to be visited- aglow with light, open and waiting for visitors to flood back and bring it to back to life. It's like it's smiling its brightest smile to draw people in again. Lights glow above, and from the edges with people's condo and apartment homes, and restaurants. Neon signs beckon as well, both in the alleys and streets, and within the turn-of-the-century market stalls and walkways, gutted for the night down to the white walls, sterile steel counters, and nightly pressure-washed rust-brown tile floor. You don't notice the beautifully repetitive green columns and industrial pendant lights until you clear the place down to its skeleton.

As I walked under the overhangs of the food vendors lining the street (soundtrack- Fleet Foxes, Mykonos), passing beneath sign after hanging sign, the hectic, colorful nature that characterizes our views of the market at day gave way to the quiet rhythm of the place at night- rows of columns; light after hanging light; globe lights studding moulding like neverending dressing-room vanities; signs lined up like pinball gates; feet passing over cobbles.

On my way up to the market, I'd stopped to marvel at the sunset over Elliot Bay and the Olympics. Now, plugged into the moment with music and solitude, I noticed the blur around a streetlight that accompanies cold, dewey nights and I was happy despite the cold. Makes for a nice memory.