Years ago, when the Society was founded in an apartment above a bar on Polk Street, leaving the city was not an option.
The city was everything, what was not contained there I didn’t need.

It was true, until it wasn’t, and everything I came to require was prone to rot and had a name I didn’t know. Where I needed Beaux-Arts cornices, now it is the wet smell of wood, mushrooms blooming fungal details no less architectural. I still defend cities against less loving neighbors who consider them dangerous and dirty, but my relationship with the city of Seattle compels me to leave it again and again.

What does this mean for reportage of the Tenderloin Geographic Society? The missives will perhaps be more sporadic. I have a few months to determine whether the site stays or goes, and in the meantime, I commit to memory the Latin names of wildflowers and work on spotting birds of prey by the complaints of crows.
That I knew I’d have to learn the language of place was never in doubt, but somehow I forgot the rule of acquiring a new tongue: nothing means what you think it will.