I spent the entire day grading and then headed west, to Ballard, where my cousin Julia and her husband Joel live.
Julia is my cousin. We don’t see each other too often, and we didn’t see much of each other growing up. Nevertheless, I don’t think I connect with anyone I know quite as immediately as I do with Julia.
Julia and I share a lot—the same enthusiastic intensity, the ease with a story, emotional awareness, a degree of intensity. We are close in age, grew up in the same New York/Brooklyn culture, and our fathers were very much alike, for good and for ill. Our link is more than that. I find it a little uncanny. I have to fall back on that old mystification, genetics, to explain it.
Joel shares the same intensity but with perhaps greater clarity and purpose than either Julia or I, who both tend to refocus quickly on a new thing.
It’s honestly fun having a conversation with them!
Julia is tremendously visual. Photography, design, even the placement of objects come naturally and gracefully and artistically to her. Julia and Joel built the most fantastic house overlooking the Puget Sound. Fitting someone with a supreme visual sense, it is truly gorgeous.
Within it, Julia has amassed a visual of archive of the family, displayed on the walls. There is art everywhere, but the most striking art, for me, is her photography collections—collages of family history rendered with an exquisite eye.
The featured image on the top of this page is of my great grandfather, William, after whom I am named.
The evening was fantastic. A night of storytelling. The longest night of the year. It ended with a walk down to the beach presided over by a full moon.
I am off to bed. Tomorrow is back to the highway.
Onwards!
Onwards! 