Luck be a lady tonight.

This blog, is going to be out of order from my posts, I still have a couple I need to finalize, but meh they are not fun, and this one is fun.

Sometimes there are things that require attention, and this time this one does.

As I pen this post, I’m sitting in a coffee shop in Seattle, one of my favorite cities on the planet. Something about this place just sinks into my skin and makes me content.

The weather here is what could accurately be called abysmal, dark, overcast, grey, and perpetually alternating between cool and warm with the waves of humidity, wet and dry — although more often wet with a slight chance of soaking wet through the perpetual drizzle.

Still somehow, this is perfect for me, it represents everything about humanity in my eyes. Deeply troubled, struggling for purpose, answers, logic, with no idea what lies just beyond the edge of the horizon. Stuck down in the midst of the perpetual turmoil of existence, thriving and seeking always seeking, knowledge, passion, source, heart, answers, always seeking.

Since my love affair began with this city, about 5 years ago on my very first visit, the universe has blessed me with an opportunity each year to return, at a slightly different time, to confirm as I have suspected, that this is a place I could call home.

This year like the others, an opportunity arose, and once again I pounced on it, in cat like form. D had a conference here she wanted to attend, and being the ever supportive big sister I am, I offered to tag along and shelter part of the bill to make certain she could enjoy herself in this trip and not have the added burden of financials to worry about.

As the conference she is attending is at the airport hilton, we are staying at that hotel, which is quite an advantage over all. It has afforded me the chance for a respite from driving, from a vehicle, while still offering the luxury of convenience travel. Its literally across the road from the airport, and the light rail, a mass transit system for the city that goes from the outlying areas into the heart of Seattle.

Today during this week long adventure into an art form I have only been exposed to through the development and career my sister has been traversing for the past few years. And I must say, its quite enjoyable to watch the camaraderie and interactions of both the known and the unknown and generally the people becoming so much more self aware, and confident. This art form is a blessing for many of those in life, this world we share, that have issues, as I did previously being comfortable in their own skin. It helps with teaching the embodiment of positive self image, and empowerment through a truly beautiful device. Its a nurturing community, where people of all shapes, sizes, and backgrounds can come together with the joint purpose of art.

Also, the beautiful men and woman make for magnificent eye candy all around the hotel, and convention center, god bless you each and every one for being so willing to showcase your bodies with such confidence for my feasting eyes. Yeah I guess this means I have some perv tendencies; there is something quite intoxicating to me in people having self confidence in their bodies, its like a drug, may I never get enough of it.

In this trip, I have set several goals. Some of them more intimate and personal, others more generic and on behalf of others. There is the goal to pick up a Seattle mug for a colleague for her collection, my collection already containing several. There are the gift cards I promised to my usually coffee hang out manager. Then there was the goal of meeting, greeting, hugging and feeding a kind soul I’ve met online that has listened to me lament my life struggles and has calmly offered a willing ear.

Today, this meeting was the goal. I popped across the street to the light rail and hopped on board to travel down to the preselected meeting place, Pioneer Square. Having requested that BK select the place for our meet up, both tasking him with selecting the restaurant, after several hashing out conversations of types of food, style of food, we both agreed on Thai – a favorite for both of us, and something with ample quality selections. Being as how this is his haunt, and I would be intruding in his work day, I requested that he pick the locale for our meeting also, hoping he would – as was the case – select a place close to the restaurant, and easily accessible by the rail.

On the rail, which was surprisingly easy both to get to, get into, purchase a ticket for, and to negotiate. As well as being surprisingly fast, it only took me about 40 minutes – about the same amount of time if I had been in a private car for the actual drive. I met an interesting lady, that chose to sit next to me on the ride.

We struck up a conversation, and talked about this that and the other thing on the ride. She asked for my feedback about a personal relationship matter, as she had been seeking an outside sounding board for her thoughts, and while I laughed at the whole interaction, I felt blessed to have shared. She was kind, she has a trip planned to visit her grand children next month, that she was quite excited to share. Her son had recently purchased her a smart phone which she was still trying to learn to utilize. We spoke about a myriad of subjects as we traveled, and there was a kindness and comforting sharing to the whole exchange. While we didn’t share names, we didn’t need to, she was “kind lady on the rail”

As I exited the rail, I got a little twisted around, but armed with my handy cell phone and my mobile google maps, I felt quite secure at my 3 block walk to the assigned meeting place. Passing by numerous coffee shops, including this one I’m sitting typing in now, I resolved to do this blog after the lunch.

Sitting in Pioneer Park, people watching and waiting, my wait for BK was not long, as I had arrived early, and sent a quick email, he immediately responded and walked over to meet me. We had exchanged pictures, so he knew what to expect, and I knew it was him. He has a smile that is contagious. A soft gentle temperament, while I can imagine him being enraged, or impassioned about things, its not his general nature, and his face shows the calm sweetness of his soul that reflects in his approach.

Having read his profile, I had already determined to ask him about one of the items he had mentioned, which ended up being a delightful learning opportunity for me. I love brain food. Those conversations, where – in my case – the technical details are so far above my head, that my brain struggles to grasp and map out the details to the roots and structures in my head that they are grounded in – (having a solid foundation in science, mathematics, programming, english, and history) – and allowing new trees of of wisdom to blossom. I love these types of conversations, and the universe has afforded me many times to meet up with fabulously intelligent individuals that are a wealth of good, fulfilling and fruitful knowledge, usually timing it serendipitously for me in such a way that I can grasp the concepts, and build upon them into other areas of development. This conversation was no exception.

While I will not go into the specifics for many reasons, not the least of which is that this content is BK’s alone, and while I feel blessed for him to have shared it with me – not only will I get the specifics incorrect, inaccurate and wrought with fallacies, I will generally likely be infringing upon his intellectual property.

I would however, like in general terms to explain the general ideology that we discussed. He explained in quite specific and detailed terms – he is quite a talker when he gets comfortable about the subject matter – the brain methodology for visualization. Basically how our eyes work with our brains to provide the images and things that we call sight. He further went into the details about the gaps in these, and how our brains fill them – this is similar to that old joke story that passes around often about if the letters in the first and last position of every word are correct, the rest can be jumbled or transposed, and the brain can still read the words completely. This works the same for vision. There are gaps in our vision, that our brain effective makes up to fill in the emptiness and provide meaning. This further expanded into a parallel conversation about psychology of superstitions, and the brains need to find patterns, to seek the patterns, and make meaning of them. In the absence of the natural or true patterns, our brains, our creative minds make them up in the form of superstition and belief. This sidetracked into many spiderwebs of conversation, learning and general idea exchange.

BK is a very kind and smart man, I also made him eat quite slow, and somehow something I said or did at some point was off-putting, I’m not entirely certain what I said, or how I had said it but his demeanor changed at one point. I made an observation, as our brains often do, and I’ll ask him about it later, when its in a little more comfortable environment – virtual, the environment where I typically talk to him about these things. Overall, the conversation was very pleasant.

I had previously commited to buying him lunch, and while he, being a true gentleman reached to pick up the tab, I snatched it back and covered the bill for us both. The place was a wonderful choice, the thai food was amazing, and I would highly recommend Ferry Noodle House as a staple choice for tasty Thai in Seattle.

After a thank you hug, we parted ways for him to return to work, and me to continue my trolling of Seattle.

Stopping on the way back to the rail at a really fun bookstore, it reminded me of Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore in San Diego; Seattle Mystery Bookshop – I found a treasure to take back and enjoy – even if I have promised to stop buying paper books, it was just too good of an opportunity to pass up. Plus I love bookstores, I love walking through them, its like visiting old friends.

Leaving the bookstore, it was time for a cup of coffee, and a Starbucks to document my tale. Low and behold I found a BK and coworker picking up a quick drink on the way back to finish out the day. Life is full of small surprises 🙂 great and wonderful, and it truly is a small small world.

Thank you Seattle for hosting me yet again, I plan to enjoy more wonderful bliss the rest of the week, and savor this warm cool wet dry weather when I return to Austin next week.