Subdued a long way from the Excitement

Horse that stands on the site of the Buffalo, Holly Street, Bellingham WA

These days, I overdo it by going out approx. once a month, by my lonesome, to some dive karaoke bar. All it takes is having precisely three drinks and a sip or two from someone else's, and I am done for, regretting the trip out and cursing myself and I find myself wondering why I didn't just stay home and sing in the shower.

Some part of myself tries to convince me that I can be 17 still at times. I wrestle with my current age on Saturday nights. Apart from that I am completely fine with it.

I wonder at what point, does longing for and missing your home become insanity, or just a sign of unbalance. I talk to a couple people- implants to Tulsa you might say, like myself, that ... like it here. It mustn't be normal for one to so apply themselves mentally to a city/place. No one really knows the depth upon which I sit and force myself to envision Bellingham so that I almost become... "there". Faux-astral-projection, if you will.

At work,-in my "sensory dep chamber" as I like to call it (I wear headphones, safety glasses, thick gloves, and have loud noises around me and don't talk, so the dull and low hum of the machinery around me becomes lulling and drowns out everything, becoming white noise, eventually leading to almost complete "silence", within myself. There, I move up up and out. Mentally cross the 2316 miles between here and there. Envisioning the blessed North Cascades, jutting peaking and then sloping around Whatcom County- it's winter coat. I can see Lost Lake, Fragrance Lake Trail, Alger Mountain, the Oyster dome and  it's singular beauty. Float closer, through Fairhaven, (no stops, they never liked a pink-haired girl much anyhow), down the hill, down to those streets I walked so many times, in so many different moods.
Happy, jubilant, strung out, miserable, beaten, wistful, nostalgic, hopeful, desperate. The cracks in the pavement of North Forest, State Street, they know the soles of my shoes. They know the arch of my feet. They know it's the only place I'll get off my lazy ass and take a walk "just because".  It's almost like I won't walk here in Tulsa out of some strange undecided silent protest.

I love winding myself walking up the hills, dreaming of cooking huge meals for all of my friends, their friends, their children in the big old-time kitchens of yore, that peek out of beautiful heavy curtains and drapes as I walk by them. Art seems to hug every wall and every corner in the streets and homes of the people in Bellingham. I remember a painting that hung in a friend's house of mine, I can't remember whose exactly. It was a whimsical mermaid, with turquoise hair that hung over the fireplace, if I recall correctly. My friend's grandmother was the one that painted it.

I mentally explore all of the alleys I ever tumbled down, skipped down, even shot up in, on the darker days. Every little piece of graffiti, every little rock and stray flower. Even dumpsters- I was fond of sitting on or in dumpsters in my youth, I have no reason to know why, but I did.

Sitting drinking a local beer in the store that was once BLUE MOON VINTAGE CLOTHING 

Every lettered-street, every driveway from the Fountain district up to Sehome and York district, over to Whatcom Falls, even slummin' it in the Alabama Hill and Roosevelt district at times. And catch me in a sunny enough mood, well hell, maybe I would make the venture to be out and about in Happy Valley and Fairhaven.

I have never found time to whine about anything in Bellingham. Only to be away from it. Far be it a curse to "have to return" to that wonderful wonderful city. Jewel of the Pacific Northwest. My Don Juan-de-Fuca.
Any place is magical that's indigenous trees are the same that once a year people dress up and worship for a holiday.

Red House. Yellow House. Green House. Blue House=  Up where Holly and Ellis meet at the beginning of Lakeway. Where you can always find VHS pornos in the ditch= either behind the Aloha Motel on Samish, or, well, I guess down behind the Cornwall Corner store, too. BIGGEST bag of groceries you ever did see= BGO. Plus there, you can see anti-abortion picketers (clearly Lyndenites) across the road from spanging junkies, otherwise known as my good friends.

I always seemed to float above opinion or curve around it when alas, and I was, the heroin queen-bee whore of the Ham. Somehow, I was watching. Yes oh yes, I was watching and I didn't miss a single beautiful beat that that city threw me. I found endless glory and awe even strung out. Down and out. Not that I ever would wanna go back, of course not. I'm just saying-  I didn't stop loving people, the people there especially, they could call me all sortsa names- I just wanted to hug them and tell them we shared the same mystical Bellingham sky and it's ocean air, and if we were buried up in Bayview Cemetery, well who knows one day we could be crumbling back into the beautiful dirt that once was the beginning of Woburn street?
Every stranger I met there didn't stay one for long. And I dug them all.

I get to go back for 11 days, in 138 days. And I can't wait.

I love you, Bellingham. I will not stop writing about you. Or visiting you, mentally or otherwise.

Horse standing on what used to be the Guide Meridian (now Old Guide)