The Missing Skyline/Capitol Hill/Wed April 25/10:50 am: Officer Deisi reports: While working uniformed patrol, a complainant contacted me about a possible theft that occurred on April 4, 2007. He stated that he had left one of his photographs in a storage room located on Minor Avenue North, and when he returned later that day, it was gone. No suspect info was provided. The photo was approximately 8×10 and was a color image of the Seattle skyline.” It is reports like this that make my day and night. An enforcer of the law is stopped to do what? Take a report of a picture that was not only stolen a while ago but is a generic image of Seattle’s skyline. We can expect to see in it the Space Needle, the Columbia Center, the Union Square towers, and all the other boxes of glass reflecting the remaining light of the sun setting on a cloudless day. And to make a small matter even smaller, the picture is just 8×10 inches—nothing more than an oversized postcard. For this most common of items, one that would have quickly escaped the prison of a normal memory, one that shouldn’t have been stored but junked the moment it was removed from a desk or wall—it’s not even a picture of a dead mother, a lost childhood, a lover one still has feelings for; nor is it the skyline of another city—Rome, Cape Town, Hong Kong, Manhattan. For this absolutely worthless object, an armed public servant was stopped in the middle of work and forced to write a report. The common picture now has the value of a stolen picture.
A Secret System of Things/Lake City/Sat April 28/3:44 pm: Officer Hanson reports: “Unknown suspect(s) dumped a large quantity of garbage into a Dumpster that the complainant/victim (C/V) has in the driveway of a recently remodeled house. There were also several newer appliances dumped inside the house’s carport, but it’s unknown if this occurred at the same time, or was done by the same suspect(s). This is a list of the items: one GE refrigerator (stainless, bottom freezer), two GE dishwashers, three GE ranges, and four GE microwaves.” If these items are functional (and most likely they are), then it’s incorrect to categorize them as “garbage.” Obviously, the C/V did not see this “dumping” the way most of us would have seen it: as a gift from the gods.
But this report brings up an old cosmic puzzle: Why is it often the case that those who have everything they would ever want attract to their wealth things they don’t need, that have no value for them, that are junk to their rich eyes; whereas those who have none of the things they want have little or no luck attracting to their poverty these terribly needed things? The C/V in the report has no desire for the valuable appliances (A whole, modern stainless refrigerator! Two fucking dishwashers!), and yet these generally expensive items appeared on his property and not on yours. Obviously, to need something badly is to put a curse on it. A need sends a bad vibe across the invisible web that links things to things. 
