I take a bath in the windstorm as
huge yellow leaves and a few drops of rain
dive bomb me while my neighbor tussles with
more stuff he purchased and
goes inside.

It's Dance Sunday and I'm suiting up
amidst magnificent windstorm and
plumes of
fresh fallen leaves.

I rode around the city
singing rock and
swerving poetic concrete curbs and
wondering hysteria.

Planning, you know, World War III
Remembering how to live
Hoping deep dreams as stoplights topple over across
the smooth streets from
Bauhaus to Westlake to
Zymogenetics.

Normally at this spot of beach I organize children to dam and channel the creek as it crosses the sand into the sea. I love organizing children: managing factions, developing leadership, channeling dependable strengths, mediating conflicts. It's like a cush corporate job but with toddlers and sand.

( But today I wanted to sculpt. )

Last week, my brother (peristaltor, not metalmensch) told me about Hardwick's, a hardware store two blocks north of the University Bridge, on Roosevelt. You could call it Seattle's most central hardware store. But I call it a city treasure.



Hardwick's reminds me of the dense hardware store I knew in Brooklyn, where there's no warehouse for rent, and every inch from basement to rafters is a multi-decade cleverness at fitting the crap you need into the bizarre space you have. Hardwicks has that crap you need: Lag bolts, lightbulbs, pincers, dowels, expoxies, pails... it's all crammed in there. But there's also ( something else. )