Seattle

Bodies /  by Akira Ohiso

We walk through the zoo with a full day of sun. Lots of children are on school break. Muslim families enjoyed a day out after Ramadan. Tourists wear gear with the word “Seattle” on everything. Diversity is a wonderful concept, except when people talk to each other. An armed security guard conspicuously wanders through the Sahara.

Many exhibits are devoid of animals; some are cared for by staff, and others are out of sight, sleeping or hiding from noisy humans. I have always found zoos depressing, even with conservation missions and outcomes. We jostle for glimpses of nearly extinct species seemingly bored and deprived of stimulation; a toucan stares at painted greenery on a wall, a monkey hangs on the Truman Show netted limits of their rubber jungle, and birds sit on branches closer to the crosshatched sky.

My kids are engaged, and the exhibits spark curiosity. They are doing something analog, which gives me so much joy. “I have almost 10,000 steps, and it’s still only early afternoon.”

As Jonathan Haidt said in his new book The Anxious Generation, “Screens lead us to forget that our physical bodies matter.”

Today, we feel our bodies.

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☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️ /  by Akira Ohiso

Another Kennedy running for president feels like I went into a time machine with no hot tub - Zabruder, Sirhan Sirhan, Cuban missiles, Marilyn Monroe and Chappaquiddick. I was fed images of an American narrative by an apparatus peppered through Saturday morning cartoons, school assemblies, parades and the omnipresent TV.

James Earl Ray assassinated MLK on this day in 1964.

Weather app: A cloud emoji marks every hour of the day. Moisture is granular—gray and slate-colored garages blend into the cloud emojis—the light fools string lights on timers.

I adjust to my growing kids and new relationships with them. I look forward to spring break so the family can spend time together. Often, adults give kids structure, but frequently, my kids provide me with structure.

January Is This /  by Akira Ohiso

January is over. During “the Monday of months,” as F. Scott Fitzgerald once opined, Seattleites vacation to colonized climes, unlike Si’ahl, where land acknowledgments before Zoom meetings absolve. White supremacy often masquerades as white allyship.

Weather talk perpetuates a first-month narrative rife with doom: seasonal affective disorder, rain, cold, darkness, and post-holiday anti-climax. Our selfish minds do all we can to control nature and, similarly, ourselves. Instead of feeling January, we deny it. And in that denial, we repudiate ourselves.

January is a jaundice-lit municipal tunnel from December to spring. In Zombie Island, Roni Horn says, “Roads lack dedication.” She alludes to the road as a denier of place, expedient, a destroyer of the present moment. January is this.

Skimmers /  by Akira Ohiso

A group of high school teens go to a local eatery in Seattle. When it’s time to pay, several teens give their debit cards to the waiter. They pay and leave. Forty minutes later, a charge from Chihuahua, Mexico shows up on one of the teen’s bank app for $8. Fortunately, there is under $50 in the account. The card is declined many times as the scammer attempts to make large purchases.

According to KIRO, 70% of skimmer fraud happens in 5 states: New York, Pennsylvania, Florida, California, and, yes, Washington. The reason is that these states don’t equip EBT (Electronic Benefits Transfer) cards with smart chip technology, which is more expensive, but more challenging for thieves to clone. Most victims are lower income and access government SNAP benefits via EBT cards at gas stations, convenience stores, and ATMs in crime-prone areas.

‘Tis The Season /  by Akira Ohiso

On the bus, a woman wearing a UW hoodie laughs to herself. Passengers avoid eye contact. A car blares its horn. She says, “So much for Sunday driving.” It’s Monday.

We bring Amazon deliveries we did not order to a return site at Whole Foods. We tell them it's a brushing scam. An Amazon staff says, “It’s that time of the year.”

At 8 am, an unhoused man runs from an alley with a blanket around him. He is startled and yells, “That big bitch scared the life out of me.”

🐉 Here Be Dragons /  by Akira Ohiso

Ballard Industrial Zone, Seattle

A man in the produce aisle of Fred Meyers picks apples furtively. He then screams SKANSA! A minute later, he screams MICROSOFT!

I walk to Ballard Blocks along 14th Ave. A young girl, waiting for her school bus, says “Hello” and waves at me with a tiny plastic hand protruding from her shirt sleeve. I laugh and say, “Good one.”

A dragon sculpture guards an old house clinging to a different century and country. Security cam disclaimer offers backup.

Heart Monitor /  by Akira Ohiso

I found this wheat-pasted poster on a metal electrical pole in Greenwood next to an apartment building with ground-level vanancies and a tent encampment blocking a sidewalk. Commercial mixed-use real estate promised activation, foot traffic, business, and convenience.

The shopping district is a lacuna.

The black-and-white image reads HEART MONITOR. The decaying building and glitch esthetic look totalitarian. There is no information, link, or QR code to direct the passing viewer.

The poster is on SDOT metal. It has a short shelf life. There is a war for real estate on poles - the ruins of rusted staples and ripped paper corners preserved with packing tape.

I looked up the name on Spotify. There is a song called “Metaphor”. The copyright for the music says “2022 harvardbookclub.”

I google “harvardbookclub,” and find a website with the same name. The website features a creative named Yung Durr from Koreatown, Los Angeles. The marketing is urban, DIY with slick web design.

Yung Durr also has YouTube and SoundCloud channels featuring many videos and music projects with minimal clicks, sometimes in the single digits.

The democratization of creative tools and the hegemony of the algorithmic mob feed an abusive cycle of digital self-worth, hate, and violence. Today, the violence is present but quiet. The streets offer respite from the internet.

Finding this artist first in the physical world (flyer on a telephone pole) and then digitally (Spotify, Youtube) is called “phygital convergence” -the tactile and digital worlds intersecting in a hybrid reality.

Young saplings dead outside new townhouses. Wooden tree stakes support brittle limbs like stockades