Block 5: Seattle Love Song #1

Ah, Seattle, listen to me! Once again the spirit of adventure calls to me. And it calls out in the loveliest way, the way I've been privileged to hear in half of my life's travels: a call to the chance for spiritual growth.

The good moves came from a stout heart, sailings to--not fleeings from. And these are the moves I'll record here with pride:

From Buffalo to Toronto, where I lived for nearly a decade--my own Paris of the Twenties:



I returned to the U.S. in 1979, starved for a taste of my country and the adventure of a lifetime. I hopped aboard a Greyhound bus for the city I'd dreamed of for years. No job and no contacts there, just the crazy conviction that I could survive. And survive I did for four good years in one of the world's greatest cities:



I might have stayed there forever, so great is the spell of that city. But, after a decade-long apprenticeship at writing, I'd finished a novel I knew I could sell. And I knew what I had to do if I was to sell it. Steely-eyed and lion-hearted, I decided to beat New York at its own game and go there to sell my new novel. I did just that and stayed there for the next four years:



And I might have stayed in New York, now that my writing career was in gear--the first novel picked up a major award. But a nasty divorce got the better of me and I fled for my life to:



For the first time in my life I'd moved for entirely the wrong reasons. But, alas, the list grew longer--because I'd lost my mastery of the art of travel. Because I'd forgotten that the reason to Go is to Grow, not to run from the loss of a job or a suffocating sense of disempowerment. My future travels would take me back to San Francisco...back to Atlanta...on to Portland...then to Charlotte

But Seattle, listen to me! You've returned my youth to me. Once again, I crave the magic of the new and strange. To me you contain little traces of both San Francisco and Portland. But you are entirely yourself: quietly hip, serenely funky, wonderfully--wildly--you. And I prepare to approach you in the most positive and loving way, open to your magic and rocked by your beautiful heart.

Beautiful new city, I'm coming to you soon. Till then, I dream of you: