by Sucharita Ray

Created on: August 16, 2009   Last Updated: August 18, 2009

Finally, the sun set on Seattle's unusually long summer today. The skies turned gray overnight, the sun appearing only in minuscule breaks in between periods of incessant rain. However, much as I may dislike the ceaseless Seattle rains, I cannot deny my love for its assuredness of the familiar,which they bring.

The rain has stopped now, as I sit in my balcony sipping hot cocoa and looking at downtown Seattle and beyond. The air is crisp and bears a freshness, which comes with the benumbing chill of fall rain. An occasional breeze wafts with it the smell of wet earth mixed with the sweet scent of an unknown flower.The frame of the city that I can see is at rest; drenched in the Midas touch of the setting sun.Though it looks beautifully at peace, I sense a hint of some unknown danger lurking beneath.

My view is restricted by neighboring apartment blocks on both sides, so I actually only see a single frame of a montage of the city. It looks like an artist's unfinished canvass - perfect with all its imperfections. Dense dark gray clouds hover around the upper left corner and then disperse into patchy globs, as if an amateur painter used too much water to spread the gray across the canvass. Random streaks of clear blue sky disturb the gloomy gray. The foggy white, blurred slope of West Seattle meets the almost splotchy backdrop at the right edge. Beneath that, the familiar vermilion cranes at the dock suggest water, though I cannot see it from where I am sitting. The cranes are crisscrossed with the white white lattice of the tall, pointed, white arches of the Pacific Science Center.

Moving towards the center of the frame, I can see the stacked cubes of modernistic skyscrapers of downtown. I occasionally catch a lit window indicating the only sign of activity in this otherwise still city frame. Further down closer to me, the dirty green mass of Larry's Market peeps through the tall thorn bushes that might have been lush green leafy trees when summer started. Closer still the dull, flat roofs of Queen Anne's brick buildings peek through the yellow, rust, plum and various greens of leafy bursts. The sporadic glitter of a rain drop clinging tantalizingly to a fragile leaf or sunlight reflected off a building's glazing are the only elements, which make me wince at an unusually beautiful view of Seattle.

However, despite the busyness of the rest of the canvass, my eyes move towards the Space Needle, which for once, due to the skewed perspective, appears to be towering

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