This morning when I walked outside, there was a drunken dwarf sleeping on my doorstep. This person was so far gone into homelessness or substance abuse or the combination, I couldn't tell if they were a man or a woman. The pavement around them was dotted with the pattern of saliva that means someone has been trying to throw up or trying to avoid it. But a thoughtful person had laid a package of peanut butter crackers between the miniature puddles.
I am not thoughtful. I shook my head and stepped over them.
Suburban Olympia, WA has gotten too strange for me, so I am relocating to urban Seattle. Not just because of the dwarf problem.
I'm going through one of those weird times astrology loves taking credit for, where some skeleton key combination of planets has aligned and created a gravity that acts on me alone, pulling me in directions I would not have anticipated, putting unexpected things, opportunities, and bums in my path.
It's only been a few weeks since I got serious about moving, but here I am. I have a job pretty much in hand, an apartment all but settled on. Of course, nothing is packed, but there's no way I was going to do that until the very last minute, anyway. Although... I guess this is the very last minute.
Next weekend I may be immersed in boxes and U-Haul logos. It's time to say goodbye to weird, insular Oly. To the clubs and coffeeshops and bars where I came of age. To the big beautiful building my world used to revolve around, when it housed Sunday Night Eighties Night. To the toasted everything bagel with cream cheese and tomato, please, that I lived on throughout my last two years of college. To the memories of my first real love, my first real job, and my first real understanding of myself.
To the homeless dwarves.