this is for tasha (the last three harrowing days)

There was a mass exodus from Olympia when I left. I almost didn't make it out of town before the snowstorm. I had slept in late so I didn't have time to pack. I shoved dirty socks and multiple comic books into my backpack and headed into the white with two hard boiled eggs in my pockets. For nutrients and for warmth.

I was lucky enough to catch up with Jonah and Danielle on the last bus to leave before the storm hit. They greeted me from the back of the bus, full of panicked Greeners, promising to watch Twin Peaks on a laptop during our trip up. It was all very harrowing. There had been multiple bus accidents in the last day and the weather was only getting worse. It took three and a half hours to get to Seattle, but I was with two of my favorite people so it was a cozy trip.

Once in Seattle it took us a half an hour to go less than ten city blocks up a steep hill in a packed bus. I had decided to stay at Jonah's house in North Capital Hill because the snow was coming down hard. Danielle made vegetable stew as we shivered in Jonah's unheated house. We listened to Smash and I daydreamed about growing up in Seattle during the grunge era, and how much 90s rock nostalgia still deeply resonated with me. We danced to Patsy Cline and the Pixies before a group of us (three girls, a boy, and a dog) piled on Jonah's bed, the only heated room in a house. His space heater was all we had, aside from each other, and his power kept going out.

At Anna's suggestion we watched "Legend of the Seeker", a new fantasy melodrama that was hilarious. Wearing hats and vests and scarves, we drank whisky and cocoa until we could no longer feel the cold. I hate to admit how much I love cheesy fantasy, but aside from bad acting and corny special fx, this show was awesome.

The next morning we headed down 15th in search of breakfast. Most everything was closed so we went to the Canterbury Pub. Service was shitty and the place was packed. Snow was still coming down hard. I met a man at Liberty Spirits with a 1940s Spacegirl tattoo, the kind of girl I want my film to be about. He is an illustrator and he had designed it himself, I recorded him on my palmcorder as he told the story.

I couldn't stop filming everything, the snow was just so unexpected and deep for Seattle. Anna and I got to sled down a city street on Capital Hill. As we approached intersections we shouted, "Are there cars!? Are there cars!?" It took us an hour to get to the U-District by bus after that. Buses hadn't been running the night before and all the taxi lines were busy.

We met two men at Pagliacci's. I had been filming Anna and proclaiming "Everything in our lives is beautiful and relevant! Let me film you drink that Root Beer!" and we asked if we could film them next. They invited for drinks at Finn MacCool's and then suggested we sled down to U Village on cardboard before the liquor store closed in a half hour. They never made it.

But Tom, Ryuta, and I pretended that this was the end of the world. A nuclear winter the media was hiding from us. We fantasized about our survival as we ate bree and pesto pasta and brownies. When Anna returned from the adventure we watched The Shining. She had never seen it before and gets really scared during movies. When in one final scene the mirror reveals that "redrum" spells "murder" backwards, she freaked out! It was hilarious because it hadn't really occurred to her how obvious that message was.

The next morning, which brings us up to today, Ryuta woke me up early to build a snowman in the yard before he had to go to the airport. It was really fun. I then walked him to the bus stop in cowboy boots, sweatpants, and unkempt hair.

So, snow in Seattle has made it a lot easier to fraternize with strangers and to do whatever you want. In the chaos there is community and whisky, and reality will be suspended until the snow melts.