Seasons!

Seattle, Skin, Songwriting, Space, Safe Spaces, Safeco Field, Sports

May, on average, is my third favorite month of the year. Some years it ranks higher, some years lower, usually top three, along with February and June. May/June is really more like one long month to me, and it’s own mini-season with summer fakeouts, unpredictable rain, and occasional heatwaves like the one we’re experiencing right now.

We open the month with the always-lively International Workers’ Day. Then, May the Fourth is important because it’s my mom’s birthday, which always coincides with followers of all Star Wars denominations celebrating their heritage online.

Among the many Official Month badges May has earned, I acknowledge and celebrate two: Asian American Pacific Islander Native Hawaiian (AAPINH) Heritage Month and Mental Health Month. Happy Jewish American Heritage month to all Jewish Americans, and to those celebrating Older Americans Month, I’ll be joining you soon.

The Brown folk of The North have begun shedding their winter pallor. The grills are being cleaned and re-seasoned. Hoodies and shorts on deck because you might see the weather of two distinct seasons in one afternoon.

On the whole, it’s getting warmer and the sun is setting later. Today it sets at 8:39 p.m., sticking around an extra minute or two each day until it peaks at 9:11 p.m. on the Summer Solstice, where it starts its slow, then sudden, descent to a 4 p.m. Winter Solstice sunset. Then the month ends with Memorial Day Weekend, which is best spent somewhere outside the city, avoiding everyone coming from elsewhere to visit.

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Sports is sporting heavy this month: baseball and soccer in full swing, NBA Playoffs underway, and our second-year NHL expansion team is making a playoff run, facing elimination tonight.

Last season, the Mariners made it back to the MLB Playoffs after 21 years—a dubious stretch mostly memorable for its futility, and Felix Hernandez. This photo is from the 2011 season, the first season after longtime announcer Dave Niehaus’ passing. He’d be thrilled to see the team competitive again.

I went to my first game of this Mariners season last Friday at T-Mobile Park, which I still catch myself calling Safeco Field. Same park, different name, drastically different colors. Hot pink LED lights aside, it’s still Safeco to me. The House That Griffey Built, Then Left, Then Came Back To. Saying T-Mobile Park out loud feels like I’m being forced to participate in some kind of Mandela Effect.

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Seasonality is the central theme to the four-EP project I’m currently in the middle of. It started in 2019 with Tagsibol and Tag-init, and the next two, Taglagas and Tag-lamig, planned for 2020, got lost in the sauce. Each of the four EPs are named for the Tagalog word analogous to the four seasons experienced in the Northern Hemisphere. They were meant to be transitional projects, themed around transitions, ultimately landing not only during the biggest transition of my life, but alongside a global one.

Seasons have conquered us more than we’ve conquered it. Its hegemony dominates our existence more than any state or culture. Hunting and gathering, agriculture, annual rituals and holidays, war, fashion lines, TV shows, sports, cuffing: all seasonally driven. We’ve even shorthand-ed it to “szn” to save time when referencing it:

One season evolves into another, then ultimately back into a previous version of itself. A rhythmic fractal, a pattern that repeats (inside a pattern that repeats). Space observers have gathered more data on exoplanets throughout our galaxy and discovered that most planets have weather conditions that are extreme to our biological makeup. The chemistry of our planet’s seasons is looking more and more like a One of One type situation. On a cosmic scale, seasons are our local language, how we interpret the passing of time, marking what has changed and what has returned.

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