Entry 1:

"Why on earth did you leave?" It's a question that hits me occasionally these days, due to my recent semidisappearance from the high-glare New York media whirl. Physically, I departed my Brooklyn home last September (I hope to make frequent spectral appearances in newsprint and glossy hues) to return to an older vintage home, Seattle, where I'd spent my childhood and now would have a new job and old/new life. I said goodbye to the best job I could ever get in my field—pop critic at the New York Times—and hello to the unknown, a new gig as a senior curator at the toddler-aged Experience Music Project in Seattle. Really it was the semiunknown because along with my husband, Eric, now in the education department at EMP, I'd worked on projects for the Jimi Hendrix-inspired rock museum for half a decade. Known, unknown, old, new, borrowed, blue: Returning to Seattle has been bittersweet, a life change as serious as a marriage that sometimes still feels like an affair.

The cheap and easy answer to "Why on earth?" is "For the sunsets." There were many things I cherished about New York: the fellow writers on fire with ambition and imagination, the crazy salad of strangers I'd encounter every time I took a subway, the cosmopolitan cocktails at the Fez in Noho and the bialys at Bagel Oasis in Queens. But according to my heart, the sun sets over the ocean where I live. When I have doubts about the change I've made, the quickest fix is a walk down to Golden Gardens or some other beautifully named beach at around 7:30 p.m., when twilight hits the waves. Nothing cures like that shimmer.

Still, I remain a soul divided. That's a good thing. I've never been a world traveler, but I appreciate the wide perspectives of my friends who've left pieces of their eternal selves in India, Brazil, Yemen, Paris, even as they remain sworn to their hometowns. Recently I was reminded of what remains of me in Brooklyn when a horde of my East Coast rock-crit pals (and some strays from other ports) descended for EMP's first annual Pop Music Studies Conference. With folks like Robert Christgau, Luc Sante, and Gary Giddins jabbering around the coffee urn about music, culture, and society, the conversation level got so intense, it blew the speakers in my head. There's great conversation in Seattle, too, but people here are more laid back, more prone to pursue treasured avocations than to bet it all on literary semi-immortality. That's one reason why I returned to Seattle; I felt New York's competitive brain game was endangering my sanity. Still, a little taste of that East Coast buzz renewed my cravings. I've had a few hard days adjusting to ordinary life.

This blue and grey weekend couldn't have been more ordinary, in the best sense. Saturday took me to a baby shower for my sister-in-law Cindy, where we ate cake and talked about religion and guessed the circumference of her waist. Living near my blood kin balances out Eric's and my equation. For the past decade, we've been driving distance from his wonderful clan. There's no replacing Long Island niece Emily with Northwest niece Meghan, or little bro Ethan with soon-to-be-born sister Erin, but I know I'll look back and be glad I've had young years with them all, not to mention parents, grandfolks, and cousins. Perhaps in a decade E and I will move to L.A. and uncover a whole set of lost relatives.

In the meantime, Seattle. Did I mention the thrift stores? Saturday night's hopeless attempt to eat proper Indian food (NYC, Lexington Avenue between 25^th and 30^th, I miss you!) was offset by my glorious Sunday, spent acquiring vintage togs at Buffalo Exchange, Crossroads, and Red Light, top stores all. Another way I never adjusted to New York: the fashion scene. Slender ladies all slipping into the same whatevers just mentioned in Women's Wear Daily. I'm a big girl, farmer stock, and I fit in this burg of fisherfolk and proud raggedy bohemians, digging through dusty racks of recycled print dresses instead of sucking in my gut at Bloomie's or Barney's.

The weekend concluded with me cooking up some no-hormones-no-antibiotics chops and organic sweet potatoes for Sunday dinner. Another great thing about Seattle: superior supermarkets. Still, some things remain true on both coasts. In Brooklyn we nicknamed Back to the Land, our health food grocer, Back to the Bank. Now I shop at Whole Paycheck—oops, I mean Whole Foods. America the beautiful, united in marking up the price of granola. Tomorrow I'll be reporting about work, which despite my vow to be more mellow on this coast, remains my week's main event.