jim jewell

i stumbled across an old friend's blog last night. i have a habit of googling random people when i'm bored (because, you know, with two small kids and a puppy, i have lots of time to be bored). anyway, i've googled this friend before but never thought to look for his email address, or at least the last email address i had for him.

bingo. i found his blog.

the thing that struck me is that if i didn't know him, i would never read his blog. or i would read it and write him off as a pretentious, bohemian, hippy dippy Artist. with a definite capital A.

but this friend. he's synonymous with seattle for me. he was my first friend in seattle and he introduced me to sushi, gasworks park, poetry slams at the ok hotel, the pacific inn pub, ani defranco and archie mcphees. but, more importantly, he introduced me to myself (i know. gag.).

but truly, he did. i had just moved from georgia where i worked for habitat for humanity and where i had begun to question the ultra conservative religion i had aligned myself with in college. jim opened me up to a world of questioning and the search for meaning in all things. he loved poetry (and wrote some for me. i still have a poem tucked away in a volume of alan ginsberg poetry he gave me for my birthday one year). he showed me the hedonistic joy of living for myself - for the minute i was in and for not caring about what other random people thought (where are you now when i need you, jim?). he seemed to see something in me that even i didn't know was there. i'll always be grateful to him for that.

even now, 10 years later, i can't figure out what made jim want to talk to me in the first place when we met at his uncle's company (gawd. have you watched 'the office'? that's about how awful this company was. seriously. honestly. it was a horrible place to work.). i was a temp and remember showing up to the first day of work in a black skirt and a brown and black tweed blazer that probably made me look like i was 40 years old. i was quiet and conservative and everything jim wasn't. at least on the surface, i guess. a few months of hanging out made me realize that we were more alike than even we knew.

so again, the point. there isn't one. it was just nice to come across an old friend and to feel like i was spying on him by reading his blog. i don't know if i'll email him...would there be a point? we live on opposite sides of the country and have totally opposite lives (he is still in pursuit of Art and i am in pursuit of the perfect anti-aging cream for the bags under my eyes). i'm sure he'd laugh that i have two kids, a dog and a minivan and live in a neighborhood where all the houses look just like all the other houses.

he wouldn't be surprised, i'm sure, but he'd definitely laugh.