Friday, July 14, 2006
The Trip
The following entries are from my recent trip across the U.S. - actually a great big lop-sided circle.
Part 1
I'm at the public library in Phoenix.
48 hours after leaving Hillsborough I arrived in Phoenix. Tennessee is very long - 450 miles, and pretty boring. Arkansas is not much better. Two of the highlights were an official green and white highway sign announcing that Checotah was the home of Carrie Underwood - American Idol, 2005, and an unprecedented number of billboards advertising painless microsurgical vasectomy reversal. (Who knew that this was such a big issue for the drivers of marauding semi's that terrorize and populate our interstate highways.) Wal-Mart was the same everywhere, (although the employees in Arkansas seem even more depressed than the ones in North Carolina...) but not a Starbucks in sight. Other minor events included a sighting of a cute but scruffy farm boy in an extremely muddy pickup, and being woken up at a rest area by three young black guys loudly arguing about what they should have told a cop with whom they had just had contact - it was unclear what they had told the officer, but two held very strong (and loud) opinions that what the third had said was foolish... Somewhere between the pungent scent of freshly fertilized fields and a number of dead armadillo sightings I realized I now hated every cd I had brought with me and never need to hear them again. There was also a town with the unfortunate name of Toad Suck. (Can you imagine! Toad Suck!) Texas in the night was ablaze with stars, and in the morning I dodged tumbleweeds, passed the law enforcement torch run, and watched a skyliner pass in front of the white half moon. Going from the land of 200 cattle per acre I was now in the land of one cow per 200 acres. Rain in Flagstaff was evaporating as it hit the blacktop, leaving that peculiar smell of ions (I think it's the ions...) and there was some lovely if sporadic shade from fluffy white clouds as I dropped three thousand feet into the valley of the sun, and arriving to 104 degree heat, dove into the pool in my clothes. And began making frozen margaritas.
I've done the one-man show once so far, for a small but receptive audience, one of whom called it propaganda for Chekhov(!)
More in a while.
Charlie
Part 2
I traded the Valley of the Sun for the Valley of the Moon, by way of Southern California – I left Phoenix and got to Joshua Tree National Monument in the middle of the night. It was cool and overcast; the stars shone between patches of cloud-dark. In the morning I crawled out of the truck to find the desert in bloom and lightning crackling to the northeast. The park was deserted by people but full of birds and noisy with birdcall, and vast with an enormous sky. I climbed rocks and thought about the un-necessariness of everything, before beginning to really want some coffee. Later I drove through huge wind farms, past Palm Springs. Enormous wind vanes turning, turning, turning, and a headwind buffeting the truck and making me afraid to be next to the ever present semis, in case the wind caused them to tip on top of me.
Newport Beach/Costa Mesa, the home of sister woman, is the opposite of the desert – there isn’t one inch untouched by man – the only saving grace is the vastness of the Pacific and the pleasant unhumid warmth. And the fact that she has a corgi – a wicked but adorable dog that lives to chew up things and carry off socks. Sister woman lives on yogurt and fruit, but fortunately has a boyfriend who eats a slightly more varied diet. Said boyfriend escapes to work as a contractor while sister woman works out, almost all day. I was not so lucky and so walked hills and went to the gym and walked the dog and ate yogurt and (not wanting to see The Real Thing at South Coast Rep) made my escape northward, suitable supplied with dried ginger, dried apricots and raw almonds. And some very tasty oatmeal-flaxseed bars that boyfriend and son had resolutely rejected.
I-5 hasn’t changed in thirty years, but my attitude to the distance is much more cavalier – I almost scoffed at the signs telling me San Francisco was a mere 290 miles. The trance-inducing unremarkableness of California’s central valley has not changed either. The traffic in the bay area is worse than ever and the empty hov lanes don’t alleviate the problem.
Arriving in Santa Rosa before dusk I sit with my friend Marla’s mother, Babs, who is hovering in the gray Bermuda triangle of Alzheimer’s, senility, and decay. Fortunately, she remembers me, but not the word for “bicycle” – and as we talk she frustratedly describes the two things on the patio as “goldfish for humans.” After the conversation lags I offer to read to her; the nearest book is The Quotable Woman. It’s a bit iffy at first, but then she starts laughing, and in the right places.
Marla puts me to work, and again, I wish I had brought tools with me. I’m actually reduced to using a vegetable peeler to take down some old offensive curtain rods before Marla manages to locate a rusty toolbox filled with the oddest assortment of mismatched screwdrivers and sockets and a hand-drill. Taking care of her mother is taxing and depressing, so we repaint Marla’s bedroom – she wants one wall yellow, and the others the palest shell pink – no problem, but it forces her to sleep in the living room with me and she snores like a water buffalo. I force her to buy a few tools and then I replace a light fixture, put on a screen door, and meditate on my father’s aphorism: “No small job ever turns out to be.”
We get out of the house as much as possible, hiking, walking, biking, and, you know me, dumpster diving. It’s a rich neighborhood and we find a couple of almost perfect chairs. One is solid oak and has no visible blemishes. We rent and watch all the episodes of Showtime’s Huff. Marla loves it. I take Babs for walks: she pushes her walker; glaciers move faster. I move ahead and freeze, pretending to be the scarecrow, waiting for Dorothy to get there. My arms tire before she does. Babs always comments on the flowers in the neighbors’ yards, even though she can’t find the right words for the colors.
Marla makes fun of my Starbucks addiction. In Target I stop at the Starbucks for a second (or third) cup, and when I’m walking out, one of the security guards approaches me and tells me I’ve had enough. Marla’s put them up to this, and threatens to stage an intervention. We go to Berkeley and see The Miser at Berkeley Rep. It’s weird, but good. The guy playing the miser is a Ray Dooley sort of actor.
I do the Chekhov show for Marla and Babs. They are mystified but seem to like it. Marla buys me a drum to play to attract crowds. It’s an idea. Get their attention. I think I need to make a sign of some kind.
We buy bedding plants and replant the back patio area where Babs sometimes sits. Soon there will be color there. I pack the truck and tell Marla my work here is done. The north wind calls.
More in a while.
Charlie
Part 3
I leave Santa Rosa at night; the road is cool and I don’t have to dodge the sun in the cab of the pickup. 101 North is familiar, despite the improvements. Hopland, Willets, and Ukiah seem deserted, and there is no traffic at all. The rest area I planned to sleep at is closed, so I drive on, singing loudly (intentional) and off-key (incidental) to stay awake. I finally pull over by an interpretive sign: Gateway to the Redwoods, rearrange the back and crawl into the sleeping bag just as it starts to rain. I’m too tired to be kept awake, but for the first time on this trip it’s cool, cold almost. I wake and it smells like forest, there’s a gentle drip from the rain, and I can hear a stream. I lay in my sleeping bag, trying to stay there as long as possible, just hearing the water. Outside the truck it is gray and green and white and I’m between trees taller than most buildings. It’s misting, and I can’t even see the tops of some of them.
Soon I’m passing Scotia/Rio Dell, and I think of the story about the men who died there – years ago, when they were cleaning the giant chipper-shredder at the lumber mill. It was so big that three men got inside it to clean it and someone turned it on – it was always rumored that it was one of their wives who did it – anyway, I never pass it without remembering the story. It fascinates me because it creeps me out.
Eureka is barely awake, so I go to Arcata for breakfast. The home of Stoner U. Ramone’s Bakery is full of “Hippies who’ve made it” – those who intended to get away from the rat race but found they needed some income-stream to afford espresso and croissants and extra virgin olive oil, and now, somehow, miraculously, can afford to lounge about with the newspaper and the java while wearing eighty-dollar shoes and clothes from the Patagonia catalogue. Wish I knew their secret. Perhaps they all raise hydroponic ganja in state-of-the-art greenhouses. Still, the coffee is good and nourishing – no amount of cream will lighten it. Back on the road it’s misting rather than raining, just enough to make using the windshield wipers a nuisance. Today the ocean has steady breakers at regular intervals, each with a regulation amount of spray and foam. The sand is flat, punctuated by dark silvery driftwood and grounded seagulls who mournfully face into the wind, occasionally wobbling sideways in the fiercer gusts.
At the visitor center in Redwoods National Park I hear this man accost the ranger, asking her where the main attractions are. (They are surrounded by 800 foot trees.) “In other National Parks we’ve been to,” he says “It’s more obvious. There’s a gateway and so on.” “It’s the trees,” the ranger tells him. “You know, Redwood National Park. We have some very nice trails,” she adds, helpfully. “You can see the tallest trees in the world.”
Oregon is more beautiful than I remembered. It’s good to go away from a place so you can be surprised when you come back. Green, clean, and cool. In Nesika Beach, where I stay, the yard is huge, and full of blooming plants, mostly daylilies, but there’s an enormous clump of honeysuckle, and birds galore. There are nervous quail in the yard, along with bold jays, bright yellow goldfinches, and a woodpecker. As well as stocking a feeder John scatters cracked corn on the grass, and supplies hummingbirds with red sugar syrup. There’s a pitcher of it in the fridge. He warns me not to drink it.
The lighthouse at Cape Blanco stands on the most windswept promontory in Oregon, but today it is relatively calm. We climb down the northeast side towards the curving bay, the trail meandering down the hillside amid buttercups at the edge of a stream. It looks bucolic but footing is slippery and treacherous. At the bottom, the tide is out and there are coral-orange and purple starfish exposed by the receding water. John watches the gulls and pelicans while I search for what might be on the beach. I find a hollow, light white tube. It isn’t wood; it’s a bird’s bone. I remember camping near here, years ago, in eighty-mile winds. My mother, angry with my father, stayed uncommunicatively in the van, while my sister and I tried to salvage the situation by cooking dinner. Even though it was only late August, the wind was bitterly cold, and we had terrible difficulty cooking Petrale sole. Today the sun is warm enough to stretch out behind a rock and nap. The sounds all change when you are close to the ground, and the sand smells like salt.
In Bandon there are folks gathered on opposite corners of the highway – on one side are mostly grizzled middle age or older men with American flags and signs that say “Support Our Troops.” Some of them are sitting in lawn chairs and many are wearing those hats that I think of as engineer-shaped. I assume that they are mostly veterans. The (small) crowd on the opposite corner is more varied – there are more women – and they have various signs: “End the War Now” and “Get US out of Iraq” and one with two arrows pointing in opposite directions, with one arrow labeled “Bush” and the other “Truth.” There is also a man(?) in a gorilla suit with a George Bush mask. Not sure what he means to convey – monkey business? I want to honk in support of both groups – I think we should support our troops and bring them home ASAP – but I end up doing neither, I just nod grimly as I drive past, probably seeming to both groups that I’m trying to ignore them. I’m sorry about that – it takes time and energy and guts to do anything in public, and it can’t be particularly rewarding to stand by the side of the road for even an hour, unsure if you’re making any impact on the drivers passing by. Perhaps there is a sense of gained camaraderie with the others. I just hope they don’t waste energy standing there hating the folks on the other side of the intersection.
Part 4
(Some of this will only make sense if you knew I was in Cyrano at PlayMakers this year. Some of it will only make sense if you saw our production. Oh, well…)
The sun is shining and I go to Ashland. Glorious weather, not too hot but bright and sunny and dry, yet the hills are still green, and far, far above the town there is snow on the mountain. At Starbucks perfectly ordinary people persist in sitting near me and talking far too loudly, about jobs and Botox, illnesses (colonic), shopping (jewelry and shoes – the jewelry – always unique, the shoes – always a bargain), and sex. Until my ears turn red or I am forced to move, while concealing both distaste and fascination. At least it’s more interesting than the inevitable conversation about which plays folks have seen, and what they saw elsewhere, and how fabulous everything the other person missed was.
I notice that many businesses in the central three-block tourist trap on Siskiyou Boulevard have changed. There is, however, a lovely display of costumes from past productions in the old store windows of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s frontage, with very classy signs, each identifying the costume, the designer, the production, and a photo of the actor wearing the costume.
The first play I see is Up, a riff on the guy who flew a lawn chair 16,000 feet above Los Angeles. (The lawn chair was attached to a bunch of helium-filled weather balloons.) The play is not a well-made play but it does a good job of raising questions about how our lives are shaped by our dreams and by the strength of our desire for our dreams. The black box theatre is small, the seats are comfortable, and there isn’t a bad seat in the house. The performances vary between very charming, respectable, and passable.
The Winters Tale that night is another matter. Hermione is rather mannered (okay, downright stagey) and Leontes reminds me of William Daniels having a bad day at the hospital. Perdita seems far more interested in her bloody ballet slippers and in jumping about while pointing her toes than in anyone else on stage. On the plus side are Mark Murphey’s Antigonus (until he gets eaten by a bear) and Greta Oglesby, a majestic black woman, as Paulina. I want to like this, but I can’t, quite. Great chunks of text fly by with scarcely an earful of meaning. The set is a little disconcerting – a permanent backdrop of trees seems out of place in all the indoor scenes; the addition of chandeliers now and then only seems more odd. The costumes are sumptuous, with only a few peculiar choices for the shepherds and shepherdesses.
The following day I do the Chekhov show a couple of times in Lithia Park, adjacent to the Shakespeare Festival. The park is a maze of paths and lawns; duck ponds, ornamental shrubs, and a stream. I set up the show, (I’ve made a sign!), and start. More people than I expect stop to watch. I’m acutely conscious of the nearness of the Shakespeare Festival, its behemoth shadow, and my own hubris; but I’m determined to give the maximum meaning to my text. In the middle of one of the shows a policewoman from the City of Ashland walks up. She watches for a minute and flips open a notebook and writes something in it. I think she’s going to interrupt me, but she just makes some notes and moves on.
Back at Starbucks I try not to contemplate the enormous gulf between free theatre and the juggernaut of the Festival. Possibly homeless people wander by; a hygiene-challenged man asks me “how many Ashlandians it takes to change a light bulb?” “How many?” I ask. “None, they just organize a protest sit-in.” I lose myself in a book of Shirley Jackson’s short stories that I’ve found at a second-hand bookstore for a dollar. They are creepy, unsettling stories about people who are always about to get an unpleasant surprise or worse. Perfect for reading in the sun.
That night I go to see the festival's production of Cyrano. “Why?” I ask myself. To see what it might be like. Compared. To ours. No good can come of this.
Wrong. Ray Dooley was better as Cyrano. More truthful. Much more truthful. (Their Cyrano sounds almost as mannered as Montfleury at the beginning!) We were smaller – this is enormous, and they clearly have the edge on us when it comes to costumes – sumptuous barely describes the costumes in the theatre scene. And they have a bigger cast working in a smaller playing space. And yet, and yet Matt Patterson was more pompously probable as Montfleury, and John Feltch had far more edge as de Guiche. Alas, their Duenna and Roxanne are better. But they have almost no swordfighting! The cadet song is a nullity! The "No Thank you" speech passes unnoticed.
The young woman sitting next to me laughs out loud and often, in a special way. My hunch grows to a confirmed conviction, when, after she has said something to me at the second intermission, I ask her if she knows someone in the cast. Of course she does; her boyfriend is playing a cadet. With no prodding she chats the intermission away, dropping names and places and roles and theatres, exuding kindness to the unchurched, the commoners, the little people.
Slowly the evening wends away and it’s getting on towards midnight when the white plume is mentioned for the last time…but I’m not on my feet when the bows are taken. I haven’t believed. But I’m warm inside, I’m all a-glow, because I know, I know, that despite all their resources and whisking on and off, and tableaux up the wazoo, Ray Dooley was closer to the real thing. And that is better. Ha! More later when I’m calmer…
Part 5
From Ashland I go to the coast where John asks for help with a couple of small jobs, painting the house and cleaning out the garage. The contents of the garage can be divided into three categories: good stuff, garbage, and “things that might come in useful one day.” His classification of items differs widely from mine, but he is somewhat surprised to discover he has a third lawnmower. I start a box marked garage sale; if it’s too good to throw away, at least someone else can pay him for the privilege of storing it.
Painting the house is a mucky job; it has to be washed and scraped and primed, each operation taking most of a day, but there’s lots of sun and wind. I steadfastly do the bits I hate – painting under the eaves, where it drips back down on you.
Between painting operations I move the sprinkler round the yard and once, when doing so, walk near the bird feeder, scattering the birds. Three tiny goldfinches, their fledged wings barely hinting yellow, hover and return to the feeder. I freeze. If I were a cat they’d be lunch by now. Barely breathing I inch closer until I am about a foot away. I stay there for two long minutes watching their tiny beaks constantly chowing down the thistle seed. Another bird calls and they scatter.
To pass the time (painting = tedious) I start to memorize T.S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock. Apart from the painting I get sucked into John’s social whirlpool. Three times folks come for casual dinner and four times he goes, me tagging along. The social intercourse hovers between banal and pleasant, the food passable, the alcohol first rate. I try to listen more than talk. One woman asks me what plays I was in this year, but doesn’t wait for an answer.
I go up the river to see Brent and Scott’s place, perhaps for the last time. They are emigrating, for no real articulable reason, to New Zealand. They live on the top of a mountain – the directions are simple – go ten miles up the river, then three miles up the mountain. They have, at various times, in the grip of various enthusiasms, considered what to do with this gorgeous but remote piece of property that has the most magnificent view of the rim of the western world. From the crest one looks down at the river winding ten miles to the sea, and you can see far beyond the shore, twenty miles or more. Hawks hang by your ears, the summer wind sighs in the pines, and the occasional grasshopper shoots out of the grass. During one of their moments of mad enthusiasm, they had Backhoe George come and further shape a natural amphitheatre on the side of the hill, just below the crest. No one has ever performed there; it’s too remote. Just before sunset I do the Chekhov show for them. Outside, competing with this ridiculous backdrop. They watch raptly, I’m almost embarrassed by the attention and applause. Afterwards, we sit on the hillside and watch the view. Then Brent gets up and sings the New Zealand national anthem. In Maori. They have to know it (but in English) for their citizenship.
Afterwards they feed me fish and salad. I hesitate but then tell Scott that my fish is still a bit raw. He apologizes profusely, almost tackles me to get my plate and then says “Should I cook the bit you spat out some more, too?”
Another day, in the afternoon, John and I go to Lobster Creek, and take a kayak. In the back of beyond there is a place to swim, where the creek widens and turns. The dirt road is dusty, and goes through forest and clearcut. A doe and a fawn stand in the road, but the fawn doesn’t seem to understand to get out of the way. It leaps in high bounces down the road in front of us, instead of clearing to one side. We follow it at a slow pace. When it feels it is far enough ahead of us, it stops and turns and watches us approach. Finally the crazy thing zooms into the air and bounds up the stumpy hillside.
The creek is icy, even though it’s officially summer. The bottom is not just visible but magnified as I float across the pool and back. Below me are fish and waterdogs (salamanders) that move their limbs in slow-motion. Above the hole is a rock garden (kayak-speak for a riffle – or where the water flows quickly over and through rocks) and I portage the kayak around that to reach the tranquil stretch above, and, really, to be able to come down through the rock garden. I wonder at the stillness, the quiet reflection of the giant alders. Floating is noiseless so I see birds; a kingfisher, a dipper, swallows. I swim, although it takes great fortitude to plunge in – I wade in until the icy water is just below my balls, and I stand there for the longest time, completely unwilling to go further. Eventually, prodded by John’s jeering, I go under, and emerge with a great shout. It’s heart-stoppingly cold. How can it be so hot in the sun and so cold in the water? A good break from house-painting.
More later.
Part 6
I leave southern Oregon late in the evening and watch the Pacific disappear bit by bit as darkness comes. The next day I hit Portland and spend half of the morning at Powell's, a gigantic bookstore (new and used) that takes up a whole city block and has numerous floors (it's weirdly split level inside.) In the afternoon I meet my friend Lori, a Reubenesque Venus with spiky blonde hair, wearing pink Capri pants. We talk endlessly while engaging in a futile quest for a jazz cd - Eddie Harris' Mighty Like a Rose. The search, however, brings us to Papa Haydn's, where we each have a fantastic "club" sandwich - smoked turkey, applewood smoked bacon, young creamy gorgonzola, avocado and tomato on toasted foccacia. This is followed by banana-chocolate pie - a crisp shortbread cookie crust, covered with a thin layer of chocolate, then bananas in a light floating creamy custard, and that topped with a thin layer of soft chocolate ganache, sprinkled with golden toasted coconut. We end up at the theatre and see a play called Theatre District, by Richard Kramer, who wrote for thirtysomething and My So-called Life. The play is very funny but doesn't answer any big questions, other than vaguely reiterating "Love the one you're with," and "The moment is Now." The acting is uniformly good, even by the 25 year-old playing the fifteen year old son.
Lori lives on five acres in Washington, with two dogs, two cats, a bird, and her in-laws (fortunately they live in a granny-unit, but their other visiting children are filling the main house...) She doesn't suffer fools gladly, but we talk in whispers because everyone is asleep. Eventually we sit outside so we can talk normally and the stars fill the sky and the breeze comes from the ocean while the hay scents the air.
In the morning I roll up my sleeping bag and head off, but not before the Boston terrier tries to jump in my truck. "Are you sure you don't want him?" she asks. "He snores and farts; it's just like having a second husband."
I cross the Columbia River at Longview and visit Michael Curry Designs. Michael Curry is a friend who makes puppets (Lion King, etc.). I've had a long-standing invite to see the shop, but this is the first time I've had the chance. I'm apprehensive of disturbing him, but he comes bounding out and greets me like an old friend and takes me around the workshops. There are two main projects at the moment - constructing a giant bat-like demon that transforms into a butterfly, for a Japanese pop group's concert tour - and constructing all the puppets for a musical version of Finding Nemo. There are about 45 employees, and we visit most of them, at each station Michael talks to the folks about their work and makes suggestions - quick, precise, helpful. He lets me work one of the Dory prototypes. Everywhere are signs of past jobs - pieces of Lion King, the Salt Lake Olympics, the Little Mermaid, Spirits, etc. He talks about the pleasure he finds in his work. Everyone there, even those struggling to find a solution to a particular mechanical challenge, seems happy to be there. It's not easy to leave.
Eventually I head north to Astoria, near the mouth of the Columbia River and I cross the huge bridge that arches steeply into the sky spanning the shipping channel, then descends to scud across the tidal flats. In a rash moment, an instantaneous choice at an intersection, I decide to go up the Olympic peninsula rather than head directly for Seattle. Ahead of me I see mountains topped with snow. In Olympic National Park I stop and walk; perhaps it was too early to leave the Pacific. I dawdle through the passes, pulling over to let others pass me, continually moved by the sight of the snowy peaks, and then by the blue of Crescent Lake. The sun must be at the perfect angle to cause the sky to reflect so luminously; not quite as blue as Crater Lake, it still flashes cobalt, turquoise, and gold.
In Port Townsend I catch the last ferry to Whidbey Island. On the ferry I go up on the top passenger deck and watch the other boats on Puget Sound. Behind us tower the Olympics, and ahead are the Cascades, the snow of each shining in the pre-dusk, the sky streaked with tangerine fading into pink and the mountains slowly turning purple; purple that grows deeper as we dock at Whidbey Island. It's easy to sleep in the truck, and the next morning I buy fresh-picked strawberries at a little stand. The roads are narrow in this world of little hay farms and the ubiquitous roadside bouquets of Shasta daisies and foxglove, dandelion and cow parsley. Again the mountain peaks are visible each side of me. Then it's off to Seattle.
More later.
Charlie
Part Seven
Seattle is a great place to watch people and Mike and Val live a block from Starbucks; not only that, the Starbucks has a view of the snow-capped Cascades, and on the way back to the house you can see the Olympics. Mike and Val have just bought the Craftsman house they’ve lived in for years – it’s small but airy, with high ceilings and some lovely hardwood flooring. No one is home when I arrive so I walk to the Rose Garden near the zoo and then down into the Freemont area. The rose garden is an explosion of color and scent that goes on and on, great drifts of bloom, and the scent of lavender, wafted by the warm air. A discrete sign warns “Weddings and other events by permit only.” I imagine the un-permitted guerilla wedding – a bride and her maids streaking in from one entrance, the groom from the other, a minister (who has been waiting, masquerading as a picnicker) suddenly throwing off his sunhat…while the getaway limousine circles the block… what nonsense! For a city there is a lot of sky and water. I find another Starbucks and window shop, mostly at things I can’t imagine ever needing – how decorated and elliptical these people are! I begin to feel my clothes are sadly simple and my ears almost as unpierced as Nature might have left them. But the coffee is excellent, the bread and butter quite good and I can sit and watch the traffic pile up as the bascule bridge lifts to allow yachts pass through.
Mike’s show is sold out that night, so he’s left me detailed directions to another play, Bust. The directions are so painstakingly precise that I feel compelled to go, even though it’s a one-woman show about prison. My trepidation is mitigated by scoring a $10 student rate, and the show turns out to be very funny – the woman plays many different characters, most of whom have ludicrous aspects. It’s a short show, and I’m home before Mike, but eventually he arrives and we catch up, we sit in the darkened kitchen while he eats minestrone soup from a bright yellow Fiestaware bowl.
After breakfast Mike is off to rehearsal and I walk about Seattle, slowly traversing Queen Anne Hill; up a forty-five degree slope for half a mile, then across the top, past the school used in 10 Things I Hate About You, and then down, down, down, toward the Space Needle and across downtown to the Seattle Public Library, a cantilevered, tilted amalgamation of blue glass. I note that the library seems filled with the usual fringe-dwellers; of course, I’m here too, so know thyself. An entirely different crowd fills Pike Market; tennis bracelets, polo shirts, sunburns, and shopping bags with handles. The heads of the flowers look hot and heavy and the produce gleams.
Richard III is a good show. The guy playing Richard knows what he’s doing, the hunchback thing is not played up too much, and the famous lines are almost, but not quite, thrown away. Live drumming keeps the action moving and the atmosphere tense. The women look splendid, Dupioni silk cut on the bias, sweeping and trailing, but some of the men look a little Star Wars-ish (something about belted tunics will never be the same). I have a few minor thoughts about things, but nothing that gets in the way of enjoying the show. Mike (Buckingham) comes to rue his friendship with Richard in a scene that shows off Richard’s nastiness. Afterwards we go out to eat a late supper – cheese fries (with blue cheese and garlic), excellent crispy Caesar salad with tiny hearts of romaine, and ravioli glistening in garlicky oil.
The next morning I finally see Val – until then our schedules just haven’t meshed – and we talk about theatre and life and houses and making things and making ends meet and then she’s off and I walk to the Starbucks with the fabulous view, for a last cup of coffee there. By the time I get back to the house Mike is awake and ready to say goodbye. Part of me hates to leave, but I’m itching to hit the road before it’s too late in the day.
I take a last look at the Olympics, across the sound, and slide down the hill heading east.
Words are inadequate to describe the emotional effect of the northwestern US landscape, especially when the various components are viewed in succession; I feel awed, humbled and glorified all at once. The arrangements of light and shadow and the verticals are not just of trees but of rocks and mountains and snow. I understand why the English, touring Europe, fell so in love with the Alps. The mountains are followed by ranchland, with huge coils of hay and very few people. Towns with nothing. No radio stations. Then no radio stations but country. NPR doesn’t seem to exist here. The results of my own completely unscientific survey: there is very little news of the war between the coasts, although I did hear a commercial garnering support for drilling “responsibly” in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
In most places there are no towns but I wonder where are the people? What are their stories? What stories do they want to hear? And what stories, new to them, would enthrall or resonate? Towns of nothing but faded signs and peeling paint, dusty storefronts and single gas pumps. To go from Seattle, where the people are legion, with a surfeit of options, to here, where the sky and the earth are the only options to the horizon, causes me to ponder the contrast. The eastern end of North Dakota is noticeably more populated than the western, and the signs of, surely not really civilization, begin – the hideously named “Kum and Go” gas stations, and a speedway advertising “The greatest show on dirt.”
In Wisconsin, a tall suicidal Canadian goose walks from the center median into the fast lane. I brake and dodge it, the car behind me swerves onto the shoulder, but in my rearview mirror I see car three score a direct hit – a fleeting puff of feathers and an unheard clump – ashes to ashes, goose egg to goose mush.
I’m desperately craving hot caffeine and am finally forced to drink vile gas station coffee, what’s worse, in a Styrofoam cup. Back on the highway I’m confronted with a bumperstickered SUV – NRA and I vote. What is this, a challenge? A threat?
Wisconsin is green and verdant, with both farmland and wood, but it’s also filled with mosquitoes, there’s a McDonalds at every exit, and unending billboards for waterslide parks, antique barns, and the Cheese Chalet.
In Milwaukee I stop to see the art museum – mainly to see the building by Santiago Calatrava. It’s not as big as I expect; nearby skyscrapers make it seem tall, but inside is like what a modern cathedral should be, and the approach, walking up to it across a bridge, makes you feel you’re in the next installment of Star Wars. http://www.mam.org/thebuilding/index.htm
In Indiana, though it’s not the Fourth of July, I see fireworks and a myriad of fireflies. The heat and humidity increase as I press south, as I move inexorably across the map, as I drive homeward.
Part 1
I'm at the public library in Phoenix.
48 hours after leaving Hillsborough I arrived in Phoenix. Tennessee is very long - 450 miles, and pretty boring. Arkansas is not much better. Two of the highlights were an official green and white highway sign announcing that Checotah was the home of Carrie Underwood - American Idol, 2005, and an unprecedented number of billboards advertising painless microsurgical vasectomy reversal. (Who knew that this was such a big issue for the drivers of marauding semi's that terrorize and populate our interstate highways.) Wal-Mart was the same everywhere, (although the employees in Arkansas seem even more depressed than the ones in North Carolina...) but not a Starbucks in sight. Other minor events included a sighting of a cute but scruffy farm boy in an extremely muddy pickup, and being woken up at a rest area by three young black guys loudly arguing about what they should have told a cop with whom they had just had contact - it was unclear what they had told the officer, but two held very strong (and loud) opinions that what the third had said was foolish... Somewhere between the pungent scent of freshly fertilized fields and a number of dead armadillo sightings I realized I now hated every cd I had brought with me and never need to hear them again. There was also a town with the unfortunate name of Toad Suck. (Can you imagine! Toad Suck!) Texas in the night was ablaze with stars, and in the morning I dodged tumbleweeds, passed the law enforcement torch run, and watched a skyliner pass in front of the white half moon. Going from the land of 200 cattle per acre I was now in the land of one cow per 200 acres. Rain in Flagstaff was evaporating as it hit the blacktop, leaving that peculiar smell of ions (I think it's the ions...) and there was some lovely if sporadic shade from fluffy white clouds as I dropped three thousand feet into the valley of the sun, and arriving to 104 degree heat, dove into the pool in my clothes. And began making frozen margaritas.
I've done the one-man show once so far, for a small but receptive audience, one of whom called it propaganda for Chekhov(!)
More in a while.
Charlie
Part 2
I traded the Valley of the Sun for the Valley of the Moon, by way of Southern California – I left Phoenix and got to Joshua Tree National Monument in the middle of the night. It was cool and overcast; the stars shone between patches of cloud-dark. In the morning I crawled out of the truck to find the desert in bloom and lightning crackling to the northeast. The park was deserted by people but full of birds and noisy with birdcall, and vast with an enormous sky. I climbed rocks and thought about the un-necessariness of everything, before beginning to really want some coffee. Later I drove through huge wind farms, past Palm Springs. Enormous wind vanes turning, turning, turning, and a headwind buffeting the truck and making me afraid to be next to the ever present semis, in case the wind caused them to tip on top of me.
Newport Beach/Costa Mesa, the home of sister woman, is the opposite of the desert – there isn’t one inch untouched by man – the only saving grace is the vastness of the Pacific and the pleasant unhumid warmth. And the fact that she has a corgi – a wicked but adorable dog that lives to chew up things and carry off socks. Sister woman lives on yogurt and fruit, but fortunately has a boyfriend who eats a slightly more varied diet. Said boyfriend escapes to work as a contractor while sister woman works out, almost all day. I was not so lucky and so walked hills and went to the gym and walked the dog and ate yogurt and (not wanting to see The Real Thing at South Coast Rep) made my escape northward, suitable supplied with dried ginger, dried apricots and raw almonds. And some very tasty oatmeal-flaxseed bars that boyfriend and son had resolutely rejected.
I-5 hasn’t changed in thirty years, but my attitude to the distance is much more cavalier – I almost scoffed at the signs telling me San Francisco was a mere 290 miles. The trance-inducing unremarkableness of California’s central valley has not changed either. The traffic in the bay area is worse than ever and the empty hov lanes don’t alleviate the problem.
Arriving in Santa Rosa before dusk I sit with my friend Marla’s mother, Babs, who is hovering in the gray Bermuda triangle of Alzheimer’s, senility, and decay. Fortunately, she remembers me, but not the word for “bicycle” – and as we talk she frustratedly describes the two things on the patio as “goldfish for humans.” After the conversation lags I offer to read to her; the nearest book is The Quotable Woman. It’s a bit iffy at first, but then she starts laughing, and in the right places.
Marla puts me to work, and again, I wish I had brought tools with me. I’m actually reduced to using a vegetable peeler to take down some old offensive curtain rods before Marla manages to locate a rusty toolbox filled with the oddest assortment of mismatched screwdrivers and sockets and a hand-drill. Taking care of her mother is taxing and depressing, so we repaint Marla’s bedroom – she wants one wall yellow, and the others the palest shell pink – no problem, but it forces her to sleep in the living room with me and she snores like a water buffalo. I force her to buy a few tools and then I replace a light fixture, put on a screen door, and meditate on my father’s aphorism: “No small job ever turns out to be.”
We get out of the house as much as possible, hiking, walking, biking, and, you know me, dumpster diving. It’s a rich neighborhood and we find a couple of almost perfect chairs. One is solid oak and has no visible blemishes. We rent and watch all the episodes of Showtime’s Huff. Marla loves it. I take Babs for walks: she pushes her walker; glaciers move faster. I move ahead and freeze, pretending to be the scarecrow, waiting for Dorothy to get there. My arms tire before she does. Babs always comments on the flowers in the neighbors’ yards, even though she can’t find the right words for the colors.
Marla makes fun of my Starbucks addiction. In Target I stop at the Starbucks for a second (or third) cup, and when I’m walking out, one of the security guards approaches me and tells me I’ve had enough. Marla’s put them up to this, and threatens to stage an intervention. We go to Berkeley and see The Miser at Berkeley Rep. It’s weird, but good. The guy playing the miser is a Ray Dooley sort of actor.
I do the Chekhov show for Marla and Babs. They are mystified but seem to like it. Marla buys me a drum to play to attract crowds. It’s an idea. Get their attention. I think I need to make a sign of some kind.
We buy bedding plants and replant the back patio area where Babs sometimes sits. Soon there will be color there. I pack the truck and tell Marla my work here is done. The north wind calls.
More in a while.
Charlie
Part 3
I leave Santa Rosa at night; the road is cool and I don’t have to dodge the sun in the cab of the pickup. 101 North is familiar, despite the improvements. Hopland, Willets, and Ukiah seem deserted, and there is no traffic at all. The rest area I planned to sleep at is closed, so I drive on, singing loudly (intentional) and off-key (incidental) to stay awake. I finally pull over by an interpretive sign: Gateway to the Redwoods, rearrange the back and crawl into the sleeping bag just as it starts to rain. I’m too tired to be kept awake, but for the first time on this trip it’s cool, cold almost. I wake and it smells like forest, there’s a gentle drip from the rain, and I can hear a stream. I lay in my sleeping bag, trying to stay there as long as possible, just hearing the water. Outside the truck it is gray and green and white and I’m between trees taller than most buildings. It’s misting, and I can’t even see the tops of some of them.
Soon I’m passing Scotia/Rio Dell, and I think of the story about the men who died there – years ago, when they were cleaning the giant chipper-shredder at the lumber mill. It was so big that three men got inside it to clean it and someone turned it on – it was always rumored that it was one of their wives who did it – anyway, I never pass it without remembering the story. It fascinates me because it creeps me out.
Eureka is barely awake, so I go to Arcata for breakfast. The home of Stoner U. Ramone’s Bakery is full of “Hippies who’ve made it” – those who intended to get away from the rat race but found they needed some income-stream to afford espresso and croissants and extra virgin olive oil, and now, somehow, miraculously, can afford to lounge about with the newspaper and the java while wearing eighty-dollar shoes and clothes from the Patagonia catalogue. Wish I knew their secret. Perhaps they all raise hydroponic ganja in state-of-the-art greenhouses. Still, the coffee is good and nourishing – no amount of cream will lighten it. Back on the road it’s misting rather than raining, just enough to make using the windshield wipers a nuisance. Today the ocean has steady breakers at regular intervals, each with a regulation amount of spray and foam. The sand is flat, punctuated by dark silvery driftwood and grounded seagulls who mournfully face into the wind, occasionally wobbling sideways in the fiercer gusts.
At the visitor center in Redwoods National Park I hear this man accost the ranger, asking her where the main attractions are. (They are surrounded by 800 foot trees.) “In other National Parks we’ve been to,” he says “It’s more obvious. There’s a gateway and so on.” “It’s the trees,” the ranger tells him. “You know, Redwood National Park. We have some very nice trails,” she adds, helpfully. “You can see the tallest trees in the world.”
Oregon is more beautiful than I remembered. It’s good to go away from a place so you can be surprised when you come back. Green, clean, and cool. In Nesika Beach, where I stay, the yard is huge, and full of blooming plants, mostly daylilies, but there’s an enormous clump of honeysuckle, and birds galore. There are nervous quail in the yard, along with bold jays, bright yellow goldfinches, and a woodpecker. As well as stocking a feeder John scatters cracked corn on the grass, and supplies hummingbirds with red sugar syrup. There’s a pitcher of it in the fridge. He warns me not to drink it.
The lighthouse at Cape Blanco stands on the most windswept promontory in Oregon, but today it is relatively calm. We climb down the northeast side towards the curving bay, the trail meandering down the hillside amid buttercups at the edge of a stream. It looks bucolic but footing is slippery and treacherous. At the bottom, the tide is out and there are coral-orange and purple starfish exposed by the receding water. John watches the gulls and pelicans while I search for what might be on the beach. I find a hollow, light white tube. It isn’t wood; it’s a bird’s bone. I remember camping near here, years ago, in eighty-mile winds. My mother, angry with my father, stayed uncommunicatively in the van, while my sister and I tried to salvage the situation by cooking dinner. Even though it was only late August, the wind was bitterly cold, and we had terrible difficulty cooking Petrale sole. Today the sun is warm enough to stretch out behind a rock and nap. The sounds all change when you are close to the ground, and the sand smells like salt.
In Bandon there are folks gathered on opposite corners of the highway – on one side are mostly grizzled middle age or older men with American flags and signs that say “Support Our Troops.” Some of them are sitting in lawn chairs and many are wearing those hats that I think of as engineer-shaped. I assume that they are mostly veterans. The (small) crowd on the opposite corner is more varied – there are more women – and they have various signs: “End the War Now” and “Get US out of Iraq” and one with two arrows pointing in opposite directions, with one arrow labeled “Bush” and the other “Truth.” There is also a man(?) in a gorilla suit with a George Bush mask. Not sure what he means to convey – monkey business? I want to honk in support of both groups – I think we should support our troops and bring them home ASAP – but I end up doing neither, I just nod grimly as I drive past, probably seeming to both groups that I’m trying to ignore them. I’m sorry about that – it takes time and energy and guts to do anything in public, and it can’t be particularly rewarding to stand by the side of the road for even an hour, unsure if you’re making any impact on the drivers passing by. Perhaps there is a sense of gained camaraderie with the others. I just hope they don’t waste energy standing there hating the folks on the other side of the intersection.
Part 4
(Some of this will only make sense if you knew I was in Cyrano at PlayMakers this year. Some of it will only make sense if you saw our production. Oh, well…)
The sun is shining and I go to Ashland. Glorious weather, not too hot but bright and sunny and dry, yet the hills are still green, and far, far above the town there is snow on the mountain. At Starbucks perfectly ordinary people persist in sitting near me and talking far too loudly, about jobs and Botox, illnesses (colonic), shopping (jewelry and shoes – the jewelry – always unique, the shoes – always a bargain), and sex. Until my ears turn red or I am forced to move, while concealing both distaste and fascination. At least it’s more interesting than the inevitable conversation about which plays folks have seen, and what they saw elsewhere, and how fabulous everything the other person missed was.
I notice that many businesses in the central three-block tourist trap on Siskiyou Boulevard have changed. There is, however, a lovely display of costumes from past productions in the old store windows of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s frontage, with very classy signs, each identifying the costume, the designer, the production, and a photo of the actor wearing the costume.
The first play I see is Up, a riff on the guy who flew a lawn chair 16,000 feet above Los Angeles. (The lawn chair was attached to a bunch of helium-filled weather balloons.) The play is not a well-made play but it does a good job of raising questions about how our lives are shaped by our dreams and by the strength of our desire for our dreams. The black box theatre is small, the seats are comfortable, and there isn’t a bad seat in the house. The performances vary between very charming, respectable, and passable.
The Winters Tale that night is another matter. Hermione is rather mannered (okay, downright stagey) and Leontes reminds me of William Daniels having a bad day at the hospital. Perdita seems far more interested in her bloody ballet slippers and in jumping about while pointing her toes than in anyone else on stage. On the plus side are Mark Murphey’s Antigonus (until he gets eaten by a bear) and Greta Oglesby, a majestic black woman, as Paulina. I want to like this, but I can’t, quite. Great chunks of text fly by with scarcely an earful of meaning. The set is a little disconcerting – a permanent backdrop of trees seems out of place in all the indoor scenes; the addition of chandeliers now and then only seems more odd. The costumes are sumptuous, with only a few peculiar choices for the shepherds and shepherdesses.
The following day I do the Chekhov show a couple of times in Lithia Park, adjacent to the Shakespeare Festival. The park is a maze of paths and lawns; duck ponds, ornamental shrubs, and a stream. I set up the show, (I’ve made a sign!), and start. More people than I expect stop to watch. I’m acutely conscious of the nearness of the Shakespeare Festival, its behemoth shadow, and my own hubris; but I’m determined to give the maximum meaning to my text. In the middle of one of the shows a policewoman from the City of Ashland walks up. She watches for a minute and flips open a notebook and writes something in it. I think she’s going to interrupt me, but she just makes some notes and moves on.
Back at Starbucks I try not to contemplate the enormous gulf between free theatre and the juggernaut of the Festival. Possibly homeless people wander by; a hygiene-challenged man asks me “how many Ashlandians it takes to change a light bulb?” “How many?” I ask. “None, they just organize a protest sit-in.” I lose myself in a book of Shirley Jackson’s short stories that I’ve found at a second-hand bookstore for a dollar. They are creepy, unsettling stories about people who are always about to get an unpleasant surprise or worse. Perfect for reading in the sun.
That night I go to see the festival's production of Cyrano. “Why?” I ask myself. To see what it might be like. Compared. To ours. No good can come of this.
Wrong. Ray Dooley was better as Cyrano. More truthful. Much more truthful. (Their Cyrano sounds almost as mannered as Montfleury at the beginning!) We were smaller – this is enormous, and they clearly have the edge on us when it comes to costumes – sumptuous barely describes the costumes in the theatre scene. And they have a bigger cast working in a smaller playing space. And yet, and yet Matt Patterson was more pompously probable as Montfleury, and John Feltch had far more edge as de Guiche. Alas, their Duenna and Roxanne are better. But they have almost no swordfighting! The cadet song is a nullity! The "No Thank you" speech passes unnoticed.
The young woman sitting next to me laughs out loud and often, in a special way. My hunch grows to a confirmed conviction, when, after she has said something to me at the second intermission, I ask her if she knows someone in the cast. Of course she does; her boyfriend is playing a cadet. With no prodding she chats the intermission away, dropping names and places and roles and theatres, exuding kindness to the unchurched, the commoners, the little people.
Slowly the evening wends away and it’s getting on towards midnight when the white plume is mentioned for the last time…but I’m not on my feet when the bows are taken. I haven’t believed. But I’m warm inside, I’m all a-glow, because I know, I know, that despite all their resources and whisking on and off, and tableaux up the wazoo, Ray Dooley was closer to the real thing. And that is better. Ha! More later when I’m calmer…
Part 5
From Ashland I go to the coast where John asks for help with a couple of small jobs, painting the house and cleaning out the garage. The contents of the garage can be divided into three categories: good stuff, garbage, and “things that might come in useful one day.” His classification of items differs widely from mine, but he is somewhat surprised to discover he has a third lawnmower. I start a box marked garage sale; if it’s too good to throw away, at least someone else can pay him for the privilege of storing it.
Painting the house is a mucky job; it has to be washed and scraped and primed, each operation taking most of a day, but there’s lots of sun and wind. I steadfastly do the bits I hate – painting under the eaves, where it drips back down on you.
Between painting operations I move the sprinkler round the yard and once, when doing so, walk near the bird feeder, scattering the birds. Three tiny goldfinches, their fledged wings barely hinting yellow, hover and return to the feeder. I freeze. If I were a cat they’d be lunch by now. Barely breathing I inch closer until I am about a foot away. I stay there for two long minutes watching their tiny beaks constantly chowing down the thistle seed. Another bird calls and they scatter.
To pass the time (painting = tedious) I start to memorize T.S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock. Apart from the painting I get sucked into John’s social whirlpool. Three times folks come for casual dinner and four times he goes, me tagging along. The social intercourse hovers between banal and pleasant, the food passable, the alcohol first rate. I try to listen more than talk. One woman asks me what plays I was in this year, but doesn’t wait for an answer.
I go up the river to see Brent and Scott’s place, perhaps for the last time. They are emigrating, for no real articulable reason, to New Zealand. They live on the top of a mountain – the directions are simple – go ten miles up the river, then three miles up the mountain. They have, at various times, in the grip of various enthusiasms, considered what to do with this gorgeous but remote piece of property that has the most magnificent view of the rim of the western world. From the crest one looks down at the river winding ten miles to the sea, and you can see far beyond the shore, twenty miles or more. Hawks hang by your ears, the summer wind sighs in the pines, and the occasional grasshopper shoots out of the grass. During one of their moments of mad enthusiasm, they had Backhoe George come and further shape a natural amphitheatre on the side of the hill, just below the crest. No one has ever performed there; it’s too remote. Just before sunset I do the Chekhov show for them. Outside, competing with this ridiculous backdrop. They watch raptly, I’m almost embarrassed by the attention and applause. Afterwards, we sit on the hillside and watch the view. Then Brent gets up and sings the New Zealand national anthem. In Maori. They have to know it (but in English) for their citizenship.
Afterwards they feed me fish and salad. I hesitate but then tell Scott that my fish is still a bit raw. He apologizes profusely, almost tackles me to get my plate and then says “Should I cook the bit you spat out some more, too?”
Another day, in the afternoon, John and I go to Lobster Creek, and take a kayak. In the back of beyond there is a place to swim, where the creek widens and turns. The dirt road is dusty, and goes through forest and clearcut. A doe and a fawn stand in the road, but the fawn doesn’t seem to understand to get out of the way. It leaps in high bounces down the road in front of us, instead of clearing to one side. We follow it at a slow pace. When it feels it is far enough ahead of us, it stops and turns and watches us approach. Finally the crazy thing zooms into the air and bounds up the stumpy hillside.
The creek is icy, even though it’s officially summer. The bottom is not just visible but magnified as I float across the pool and back. Below me are fish and waterdogs (salamanders) that move their limbs in slow-motion. Above the hole is a rock garden (kayak-speak for a riffle – or where the water flows quickly over and through rocks) and I portage the kayak around that to reach the tranquil stretch above, and, really, to be able to come down through the rock garden. I wonder at the stillness, the quiet reflection of the giant alders. Floating is noiseless so I see birds; a kingfisher, a dipper, swallows. I swim, although it takes great fortitude to plunge in – I wade in until the icy water is just below my balls, and I stand there for the longest time, completely unwilling to go further. Eventually, prodded by John’s jeering, I go under, and emerge with a great shout. It’s heart-stoppingly cold. How can it be so hot in the sun and so cold in the water? A good break from house-painting.
More later.
Part 6
I leave southern Oregon late in the evening and watch the Pacific disappear bit by bit as darkness comes. The next day I hit Portland and spend half of the morning at Powell's, a gigantic bookstore (new and used) that takes up a whole city block and has numerous floors (it's weirdly split level inside.) In the afternoon I meet my friend Lori, a Reubenesque Venus with spiky blonde hair, wearing pink Capri pants. We talk endlessly while engaging in a futile quest for a jazz cd - Eddie Harris' Mighty Like a Rose. The search, however, brings us to Papa Haydn's, where we each have a fantastic "club" sandwich - smoked turkey, applewood smoked bacon, young creamy gorgonzola, avocado and tomato on toasted foccacia. This is followed by banana-chocolate pie - a crisp shortbread cookie crust, covered with a thin layer of chocolate, then bananas in a light floating creamy custard, and that topped with a thin layer of soft chocolate ganache, sprinkled with golden toasted coconut. We end up at the theatre and see a play called Theatre District, by Richard Kramer, who wrote for thirtysomething and My So-called Life. The play is very funny but doesn't answer any big questions, other than vaguely reiterating "Love the one you're with," and "The moment is Now." The acting is uniformly good, even by the 25 year-old playing the fifteen year old son.
Lori lives on five acres in Washington, with two dogs, two cats, a bird, and her in-laws (fortunately they live in a granny-unit, but their other visiting children are filling the main house...) She doesn't suffer fools gladly, but we talk in whispers because everyone is asleep. Eventually we sit outside so we can talk normally and the stars fill the sky and the breeze comes from the ocean while the hay scents the air.
In the morning I roll up my sleeping bag and head off, but not before the Boston terrier tries to jump in my truck. "Are you sure you don't want him?" she asks. "He snores and farts; it's just like having a second husband."
I cross the Columbia River at Longview and visit Michael Curry Designs. Michael Curry is a friend who makes puppets (Lion King, etc.). I've had a long-standing invite to see the shop, but this is the first time I've had the chance. I'm apprehensive of disturbing him, but he comes bounding out and greets me like an old friend and takes me around the workshops. There are two main projects at the moment - constructing a giant bat-like demon that transforms into a butterfly, for a Japanese pop group's concert tour - and constructing all the puppets for a musical version of Finding Nemo. There are about 45 employees, and we visit most of them, at each station Michael talks to the folks about their work and makes suggestions - quick, precise, helpful. He lets me work one of the Dory prototypes. Everywhere are signs of past jobs - pieces of Lion King, the Salt Lake Olympics, the Little Mermaid, Spirits, etc. He talks about the pleasure he finds in his work. Everyone there, even those struggling to find a solution to a particular mechanical challenge, seems happy to be there. It's not easy to leave.
Eventually I head north to Astoria, near the mouth of the Columbia River and I cross the huge bridge that arches steeply into the sky spanning the shipping channel, then descends to scud across the tidal flats. In a rash moment, an instantaneous choice at an intersection, I decide to go up the Olympic peninsula rather than head directly for Seattle. Ahead of me I see mountains topped with snow. In Olympic National Park I stop and walk; perhaps it was too early to leave the Pacific. I dawdle through the passes, pulling over to let others pass me, continually moved by the sight of the snowy peaks, and then by the blue of Crescent Lake. The sun must be at the perfect angle to cause the sky to reflect so luminously; not quite as blue as Crater Lake, it still flashes cobalt, turquoise, and gold.
In Port Townsend I catch the last ferry to Whidbey Island. On the ferry I go up on the top passenger deck and watch the other boats on Puget Sound. Behind us tower the Olympics, and ahead are the Cascades, the snow of each shining in the pre-dusk, the sky streaked with tangerine fading into pink and the mountains slowly turning purple; purple that grows deeper as we dock at Whidbey Island. It's easy to sleep in the truck, and the next morning I buy fresh-picked strawberries at a little stand. The roads are narrow in this world of little hay farms and the ubiquitous roadside bouquets of Shasta daisies and foxglove, dandelion and cow parsley. Again the mountain peaks are visible each side of me. Then it's off to Seattle.
More later.
Charlie
Part Seven
Seattle is a great place to watch people and Mike and Val live a block from Starbucks; not only that, the Starbucks has a view of the snow-capped Cascades, and on the way back to the house you can see the Olympics. Mike and Val have just bought the Craftsman house they’ve lived in for years – it’s small but airy, with high ceilings and some lovely hardwood flooring. No one is home when I arrive so I walk to the Rose Garden near the zoo and then down into the Freemont area. The rose garden is an explosion of color and scent that goes on and on, great drifts of bloom, and the scent of lavender, wafted by the warm air. A discrete sign warns “Weddings and other events by permit only.” I imagine the un-permitted guerilla wedding – a bride and her maids streaking in from one entrance, the groom from the other, a minister (who has been waiting, masquerading as a picnicker) suddenly throwing off his sunhat…while the getaway limousine circles the block… what nonsense! For a city there is a lot of sky and water. I find another Starbucks and window shop, mostly at things I can’t imagine ever needing – how decorated and elliptical these people are! I begin to feel my clothes are sadly simple and my ears almost as unpierced as Nature might have left them. But the coffee is excellent, the bread and butter quite good and I can sit and watch the traffic pile up as the bascule bridge lifts to allow yachts pass through.
Mike’s show is sold out that night, so he’s left me detailed directions to another play, Bust. The directions are so painstakingly precise that I feel compelled to go, even though it’s a one-woman show about prison. My trepidation is mitigated by scoring a $10 student rate, and the show turns out to be very funny – the woman plays many different characters, most of whom have ludicrous aspects. It’s a short show, and I’m home before Mike, but eventually he arrives and we catch up, we sit in the darkened kitchen while he eats minestrone soup from a bright yellow Fiestaware bowl.
After breakfast Mike is off to rehearsal and I walk about Seattle, slowly traversing Queen Anne Hill; up a forty-five degree slope for half a mile, then across the top, past the school used in 10 Things I Hate About You, and then down, down, down, toward the Space Needle and across downtown to the Seattle Public Library, a cantilevered, tilted amalgamation of blue glass. I note that the library seems filled with the usual fringe-dwellers; of course, I’m here too, so know thyself. An entirely different crowd fills Pike Market; tennis bracelets, polo shirts, sunburns, and shopping bags with handles. The heads of the flowers look hot and heavy and the produce gleams.
Richard III is a good show. The guy playing Richard knows what he’s doing, the hunchback thing is not played up too much, and the famous lines are almost, but not quite, thrown away. Live drumming keeps the action moving and the atmosphere tense. The women look splendid, Dupioni silk cut on the bias, sweeping and trailing, but some of the men look a little Star Wars-ish (something about belted tunics will never be the same). I have a few minor thoughts about things, but nothing that gets in the way of enjoying the show. Mike (Buckingham) comes to rue his friendship with Richard in a scene that shows off Richard’s nastiness. Afterwards we go out to eat a late supper – cheese fries (with blue cheese and garlic), excellent crispy Caesar salad with tiny hearts of romaine, and ravioli glistening in garlicky oil.
The next morning I finally see Val – until then our schedules just haven’t meshed – and we talk about theatre and life and houses and making things and making ends meet and then she’s off and I walk to the Starbucks with the fabulous view, for a last cup of coffee there. By the time I get back to the house Mike is awake and ready to say goodbye. Part of me hates to leave, but I’m itching to hit the road before it’s too late in the day.
I take a last look at the Olympics, across the sound, and slide down the hill heading east.
Words are inadequate to describe the emotional effect of the northwestern US landscape, especially when the various components are viewed in succession; I feel awed, humbled and glorified all at once. The arrangements of light and shadow and the verticals are not just of trees but of rocks and mountains and snow. I understand why the English, touring Europe, fell so in love with the Alps. The mountains are followed by ranchland, with huge coils of hay and very few people. Towns with nothing. No radio stations. Then no radio stations but country. NPR doesn’t seem to exist here. The results of my own completely unscientific survey: there is very little news of the war between the coasts, although I did hear a commercial garnering support for drilling “responsibly” in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
In most places there are no towns but I wonder where are the people? What are their stories? What stories do they want to hear? And what stories, new to them, would enthrall or resonate? Towns of nothing but faded signs and peeling paint, dusty storefronts and single gas pumps. To go from Seattle, where the people are legion, with a surfeit of options, to here, where the sky and the earth are the only options to the horizon, causes me to ponder the contrast. The eastern end of North Dakota is noticeably more populated than the western, and the signs of, surely not really civilization, begin – the hideously named “Kum and Go” gas stations, and a speedway advertising “The greatest show on dirt.”
In Wisconsin, a tall suicidal Canadian goose walks from the center median into the fast lane. I brake and dodge it, the car behind me swerves onto the shoulder, but in my rearview mirror I see car three score a direct hit – a fleeting puff of feathers and an unheard clump – ashes to ashes, goose egg to goose mush.
I’m desperately craving hot caffeine and am finally forced to drink vile gas station coffee, what’s worse, in a Styrofoam cup. Back on the highway I’m confronted with a bumperstickered SUV – NRA and I vote. What is this, a challenge? A threat?
Wisconsin is green and verdant, with both farmland and wood, but it’s also filled with mosquitoes, there’s a McDonalds at every exit, and unending billboards for waterslide parks, antique barns, and the Cheese Chalet.
In Milwaukee I stop to see the art museum – mainly to see the building by Santiago Calatrava. It’s not as big as I expect; nearby skyscrapers make it seem tall, but inside is like what a modern cathedral should be, and the approach, walking up to it across a bridge, makes you feel you’re in the next installment of Star Wars. http://www.mam.org/thebuilding/index.htm
In Indiana, though it’s not the Fourth of July, I see fireworks and a myriad of fireflies. The heat and humidity increase as I press south, as I move inexorably across the map, as I drive homeward.
# posted by Charlie @ 2:43 PM 
