I miss the old days of the internet when I felt more drawn to confessions, telling everyone what was happening in my life or writing poetry about my crushes or heartaches. Now I feel like my head is stuck underwater, so anything I say inevitably becomes distorted by the sound.

Either due to my own age or the age we live in, I’m drawn more to my privacy now. I enjoy being left alone and having a room of my own. Although summer is about to start I feel like I’m entering my own version of a winter season, and feel the need to rest and settle down before asserting myself in ways I have in the past.

For now, I’m focusing all of my energy on falling in love with Tacoma. The street art full of dragons and marine life cradled my entry into port. The Pantages Theater, though demolished in Salt Lake, shines proudly just down on Broadway. There is always new life growing here. The steep hills, rainy weather, plant overgrowth and industrial waste all stimulate me and I feel like writing again. The kind of writing I used to pour out before it became my job, anyway.

I’m revisiting a story I wrote once about Dan after I finally finished reading 2666, 6 months after he died—but it’s more than just a story about Dan, of course. There will most certainly be a part about seaweed and the changing tides. But there might even be a part in it about the note I left in the box at the café on Opera Alley, digging through the trash for a sticker, or mourning the dead rhododendron in the front yard. Just to satisfy my urge to confess, but without revealing too much, clearly.

Sometimes I’ll send video messages to my friends from different places in the city. I attempt to show them mundane moments of my life to make them feel like they’re here with me. Smoking a cigarette at Browns Point Lighthouse. Following ducks from the pond at Wright Park. Bursts from my phone of the rainbow over the Ruston waterfront. The moment I found a portal at the old Dickman’s Mill. Reading the plaques out loud at the Chinese Reconciliation Park after lunch as the trains traverse behind me.

Every time I finish sending and put my phone away, I take a breath in of the strong marine air and know they’ll never see this place the way I see it (or smell it). Tacoma feels like it’s my own purple clam shell I picked up when no one was looking that I keep on the side of my bed now. It doesn’t matter to anyone else, but it offers beauty to me that only I care about.

At times I feel like I am starting to sink into the place I will be for the rest of my life. I don’t feel like resisting, for once. My spirit was so restless before that it feels foreign and almost embarrassing to even entertain that sort of thought now. And yet, this feeling becomes relentless when I catch a glimpse of the sound or see the pollution emitting from the industry in Commencement Bay. The neon glow might be tinting my glasses but there’s nothing I want to change, not even the toxic fumes that spit outside the entry to my apartment when the laundry machines are running.

I’m taking the pressure off of myself to feel the need to produce anything in regards to Boo Forever. I’m not planning on releasing anything else this year. I may stop teaching yoga entirely. I’m not sure what next iteration this project will have after this “winter” season passes—and I don’t even want to pretend to predict how long it will be or if it will ever pass. (I may even be entering a chaotic era.)

For now, I just want to be and be let be. I’m taking deep breaths, in and out, and rearranging the priorities I had before moving. I’m reading myths instead of watching TV. I’m losing track of time. I’m pulling from the well of erotic power and letting my sensations take over. I’m happy this way.

street art depicting a dragon and mantis about to combat some deep sea creatures and squid like thing