Seattle so far

We are thirty four thousand miles above terra firma, though I am still struggling after three decades to get a foothold. This airport this morning was full of the saddest people in the world, which is just another way of saying it was full of people. Someone I know told me to hike mount Rainer, but I doubt I will make it outside of downtown. I remember the food trucks in Portland and the silliness of the power and light district in Kansas City. A downtown area created for people who were living elsewhere.

I am going out to see some old friends, though there will be fewer of us than usual. Someone has enough sense to participate in bacchanalia every other year, someone else got a new job, and someone else got a tumor. I don't plan on developing sense anytime because I think it would dull my charm, and as I age I wonder if that's all I'll have left, nor am I getting a new job, two is enough, and I will avoid tumors if I can, though our bodies make their own decisions and become strangers to us as well.

I am going to enjoy myself, though I am already mourning their absence. With eight people the city doesn't really matter; the party is an internal force of memories, laughter, jokes, decades past and booze. The changing lights of the cities, the neon in the bars, the pretty people stalking the night are like extras in a film. Right now I wish I was flying to Nashville instead; a city where the party is always going on, a heaven for heretics, instead of having to build something myself in this strange city I'll be landing in after another hour or two.

Some people on this flight are still sleeping, heads lolled at uncomfortable angles, bodies torqued in painful ways that are now part and parcel of airline travel. Others have awoken to the uniform smell of airline coffee, turning in their seats to make chit chat with their neighbors about where they are from where they are going and who is taking care of the dog while they're away.  I hear a snippet of conversation from the girls sitting in front of me, something about drinking  to pass the time and the crushing boredom of school. I think about the job I am currently missing, working in an eighth grade classroom, remembering my own boredom in school, the smell of the tar baking in the hot California sun, twirling a pencil and staring out windows that were so impossibly high that you had to push them open with a long dowel. Who designed such a thing? Were they afraid we'd all run away?

The lady in the middle seat is giving her life story to the polite younger woman sitting in the window seat. Because sometimes all we need is someone who will listen to our inanities, and we don't realize how much we've missed it until someone is chained next to us on an airplane or a bus, and we realize that finally someone will listen to everything we've been storing up. The lady in the middle seat has a wheelchair bound mother and two very small dogs. The rest passes by me like blue smoke curling from fire in the wind. For themoment I am enjoying not being pleasant or attentive to someone I barely know. I am pleasant nearly all the time, a disposition which belies my truer disposition, which is one of slight disappointment, a feeling that the world has betrayed me, or I have betrayed the world. I think I just need to read Emerson. All is silent now though. I go through stretches like this, when I fall in love with silence and observation, stretches where I think it would be lovely to move to a cabin in the woods and watch the snow drift and the cardinals float between trees. I think to myself that I will never speak again. I will just watch the world unfold, keenly observant, recording everything like a camera with intent. But now the flight attendant has spilled cold water near the iPad and on my shorts, and I find myself saying in a pleasant voice, "Don't worry. It's just water."  As it seeps through the fabric of my shorts and coldly onto my thigh.

Hours in and I am still not hungry, after eating a bacon, egg, and cheese croissant for breakfast. I have been off and on the paleo diet of late in order to recover from a summer's worth of indulgence and also to get skinny enough that my mother will say when she sees me " you look skinny" which must give her some pleasure as it has always been the case. I don't suppose she'd take the same pleasure in letting me know I'd gotten fat.

I finished a book on this plane ride  It's the first time in weeks I've had that much sustained time to focus. Praying drunk is a set of stories that are loosely connected and often about death, sadness, and the desire for a faith that has run dry. It reminds me of an article about disappointed unbelievers, those who wish they could dredge up those feelings of belief but live instead in a kind of mournful place.

I don't read for any noble or useful purpose. In fact, I don't remember ninety five percent of what happens in any of the books that I've read. I have only vague recollections of books, like shells scattered on the shore. If you asked my why I liked something I'd say, "that's a tough question. Why don't you buy me some coffee and I'll think about it." In part because I want you and I to go get some coffee. I read then to pass time, to be moved, like in the story "Everything in Nashville is sad." In the story, the narrator's nephew has committed suicide and the family has gathered in the hills of Kentucky to mourn his passing. After the funeral, the family busies themselves fixing things on the farm to distract themselves from the fact of his passing,

"Tonight it is dark on our mountain, and we are far enough away from the city lights to see the milky plenitude. To be sure, we are hoping for a sign. The distances between stars is now calculable but what passes for mourning is harder to measure. We have photographs and folklore. We have words and hands. We can sell the cherry tree. We can fix the water pump. We can build a new dam. We can dredge a new path for the creek and make it a canal. We can shout out into the quiet of the hollow and hear our own voices echoing: ashes to ashes, dust to dust. The words came back plaintive, longing"


I am going to close my eyes soon and sleep here above the clouds. Out this thin box of a window the clouds are shaped exactly like clouds, thick and white, a runway in the sky. Let's sleep together dear reader and not in the way that's been co opted. I'm going to lie down in your lap by the window and listen carefully while you tell me about your day, running your fingers through my hair like you know I love.

The girl in the window seat opens the shade and there are islands floating in the sea. For a moment I cannot tell if the dark masses or the sea are real. Or just thick clouds rising from a stream of white. Even clouds, you see, want to be individuals.

The city appears on the water shrouded by tattered grey clouds strung on the line of the sky.

Travel is like entering a party into a cold staid room, then parting the curtains and arriving in a panoply of delights. The fruit vendors mangoes, avocados, oranges and carrots are somehow brighter than anywhere you've ever been. The buildings are made from the same material that is in your city, but here they've used it differently, actualized the brick and mortar in a way that they would never achieve in the city where you came from. The coffee tastes a bit better, and even if it's worse, still, the woman behind the counter is so much more charming than in the place you've come from. Let us go then you and I. 

The stories I tell to Sadie: Princess Pee

S: Tell me a story about Princess Pee.

(Somehow she's gotten the idea that the story of the princess and the pea is actually a story about a princess named princess pee. Naturally, her raison d'etre for existing in a story is to find a place to pee. Thus, most stories involving Princess Pee are either ended or occasionally interrupted by the strong need to find a place to relieve herself. I've done nothing to disabuse her of this notion because it's funny, which I believe is a morally defensible stance to have).
M: One day Princess Pea was waiting in her castle by the sea, and she was waiting--

S: Tell me a story about Princess Pea and Sadie.


M: Okay.(Settles into pillows)

Princess Pea and Sadie lived in a castle by the sea. It was a big castle and it was right by the sea. Princess Pea--

S: And Sadie.

M: Yes. Princess Pee and Sadie lived in the castle together. And the castle was by the sea. And they spent most of their time having tea, or talking, passing the time. Princess Pee would stand at the window and look out over the sea. She was waiting for a ship to come in. And a long time passed, and Princess Pee and Sadie went from being a very young girl to a middle aged woman. And finally, an old woman. And Princess Pee waited and waited looking out the castle window at the sea. And when she was very old the ship finally came into port. She could see its large sails billowing on the horizon, which is just another way of saying kind of waving in the wind like a kite or that silly dancing guy who is outside of a used car place. Anyhow, the ship was way out over the water and it was dazzling, and Princess Pea went down the stairs as fast as her old legs could carry her.

S: And Sadie.

M: Yes, and Sadie. And they both rushed down to meet the ship, and they were greeted by twenty men who took them aboard, and they sailed across the ocean to a land very far away, and they were very happy.

S: And they went pee.

M: Yes, and they found a place to go pee. 

Seattle

I always thought we'd see Seattle together. Walk off the plane into all that light reflecting off water looking like so much shattered glass. I thought we'd argue over whether going to the top of the space needle was kitschy or incredibly kitschy before we rode to the top and looked out over the city and felt ourselves small.

After, I always thought we'd go down to that market where they throw fish in the air. It'd be like an episode of a reality dating television show except we're not nearly as beautiful and there would be no cameras. Perhaps it wouldn't be like a show at all. Perhaps it would just be our lives.

I keep thinking.

We'd sit on a bench and argue over whether going to Starbucks in Seattle was fine because it was local. Maybe we'd argue about nationalism or why everyone always loves the backup quarterback. Even though we both know it's just like anything else in life, plain old human nature if you think about it philosophically. Most people don't.

I keep saying I thought we'd go together and hold hands on the ferry ride across to Bainbridge Island, but I'm realizing now that living this way is not living at all. We don't get to live in the past or in any sort of alternative realities. All we have is this one burning and incandescent life. I'm trying, as I get older, to try and recognize it more often. Look. Look. The world is on fire with beauty.

They say a lot of things about the act of travel, most of which I've found to be true. One of them is that the streets and rocks and waters are made more beautiful by their novelty. Though perhaps it is their transience that delights us so. If only we could move through rooms full of champagne glasses, curtains and charming strangers perhaps we'd all be in love with the world. The best thing about traveling for me is that I see the world with a distinct kind of clarity that only arises when I am alone. For a few hours, sometimes more, my brain is like a lit match. I see the swaying of branches in the breeze, hear the call of birds high overhead; I detect the silvery thread of water running through small cracks in the street; I look around at the people that don't know me, and I don't see them as strangers but as people who, in another life I might have known, shard a beer, a laugh, or a night on the town with. Travel is a doorway. Come, walk with me. 

 

Can I tell you about fourth grade?

In fourth grade I had Mrs. Carroll. I don't remember what her first name was because she probably didn't have one. She was a teacher. If it was anything, it was probably Carol. Carol, Carroll. You can't argue with that kind of simplicity. The universe tends toward it, and I'm guessing that Mrs. Carroll did as well. I changed schools in fourth grade, a year after we'd moved across town to live in a new house. Even though I spent most of my childhood there, and my mother still lives there, I have more vivid memories of the small green house with the crab apple tree that I grew up in. I've been told since that it isn't and was never green, but I remember that house as green. You can trust me though. I remember everything else as acutely as a bird remembers its migration from the prior year.

Besides, Mrs. Carroll, who smoked. The woman smoked there was no doubt about it. It was a fogiveable but strange habit for a teacher, an arbiter of right and wrong to have. She had a slightly gravelly voice and short cropped blond, probably bleached hair. I find that I've seen her in recent movies about women from the 70's. Mind you, it wasn't the 70's, but Mrs. Carroll would have, and probably did kill it in the seventies with her short blond hair and gravelly voice. I can picture her blowing cigarette smoke in some guy's face at 3 AM, the lamp light catching the smooth curve of her throat. But it wasn't ninety seventy five anymore and Mrs. Carroll had gotten old, or older. Eff it, we all get old. What a misery.

Mrs. Carroll's class wasn't particularly strict. I seem to remember we had a boy in class named Eric, though perhaps it was another year because the house wasn't green. In my memory, we had a kid named Eric, tall for his age, strapping would be the kind of word they'd have used if he grew up on a farm. He was deaf, though he wore hearing aids. I don't know if heard much. In those days kids like Eric were usually kept separate from us, and we were fascinated by his hearing aids, by his inarticulate speech. I don't remember any of us ever talking about him or making fun of him, though that wouldn't have been out of the ordinary. What I remember is watching him with a kind of dumb fascination as if he was something separate from the rest of the kids that I knew. He might as well have been from Mars.

Kids are cruel and dumb even when they don't mean to be. I have two other memories of Eric that year. In the first, he suddenly turned grey and lunged for the trash can, emptying his stomach into the small grey container. He wasn't like the rest of us who sneaked off to the nurse when we felt even the slightest tinge of stomach trouble or just wanted to stay at home for a day to watch Bob Barker peddle dish soap to people from the Midwest. School was boring then, as it probably always will be, in ways that we couldn't fathom but knew we needed to escape every now and then to maintain our sanity.

Anyhow, what I remember was staring at Eric, just after he'd thrown up, and Mrs. Carroll, if it was her, holding onto him and telling him that it was going to be okay, and the rest of us suburban white kids just staring at him and wondering what the eff he'd think up next, this stranger who couldn't speak properly. If I could go back in time, I wouldn't because I'm sure I'd make a mess of it all again.

The thing about Eric that also separated him from the rest of us fourth graders was that he could dance. And when I say dance, I mean dance, not the flailing of limbs and shimmy shakes that I use to pass time on the dance floor, nor do I mean he could win on So You Think You Can Dance. What I mean is that he was the most talented fourth grader at our elementary school at dancing. For some reason, this fact slipped all of our notice. Perhaps because we never talked to him, or perhaps because I don't remember ever dancing in the fourth grade for any reason. 

One day, for some inexplicable reason it was decided that we'd watch Eric dance. The aid who was always in the classroom was his hype man. He's really good at it, she said, and we all stared back at her mutely because what the hell else were we going to do? She could have told us that she was bringing in a clown who could make hot air balloons that flew you to the moon, and we'd have had the same tired expressions. When does this end? 

I don't remember precisely what music he danced too. I just remember his big, ungainly body, suddenly spurring into action, his feet sliding across the floor and his shoulders, dipping, his arms moving sharply out and then back to his chest. That MFer was dancing just like Michael Jackson, or at least as rough a facsimilie as it would probably ever be our pleasure to see. Mid-way through the performance I remember him grabbing his crotch, just like Michael, and we all kind of laughed. He had his eyes closed as he danced in the middle of the room, and we were all just watching this stranger killing it. 

And then one hearing aid, and then another suddenly flew off his head as he shook it, arcing over the first row of kids and coming to rest only God knows where, while we looked on in fascination. What the hell happened to Eric when he lost his hearing aids? None of us knew. He didn't seem to know either. It threw all of us, and the moment was lost. None of us had hearing aids that flew out in the middle of our dances, and we couldn't keep watching him with that same fascination that we'd had before. Or that I'd had before. I suppose I should stop using we because there's an assumption here that everyone else was as callow as I was. He kept dancing for ten or more seconds after, eyes closed, feeling, if we're honest, fully alive, and then his aid walked towards him and hugged his arms down to his sides, which I distinctly remember he fought at first, before finally lowering them. The moment was over. Thank God the moment was over. We could all go back to whatever it was we were doing in our silly little lives without having to watch someone else do the same thing with less grace because he didn't have the choice. 

My God, some people say. To be young again. I wouldn't want to be in fourth grade again. I wouldn't want to be staring at Eric for those moments after his hearing aid flew out, watching him through those lenses, which could only see him trying to grasp on to a moment that had passed and failing. 

Our first steps

The theory of evolution holds that somewhere around 4 million or so years ago we moved down from the trees and took our first steps. Though this current of thought is currently the orthodox view those of us who were there are aware of the mistake.

We were living among the clouds in those days. People were lighter back then as our lineage was still closer to that of the angels. The proximity lead to some liaisons as proximity is want to do. Occasionally, though you'd hear of it only as rumor, a love affair would start between one of us and one of the large birds that would soar past us on their way down south. Though these sorts of affairs were mere rumors we all knew them to be true. This was verifiable if you paid close enough attention to the offspring, who's bones were half-hollow and who occasionally would, mid-conversation, if the wind kicked up, begin to float away and have to ask you to hold onto a part of their leg while they finished describing what had happened during their day. And so you clutched on tightly to a calf and watched them spin yarns. Also, occasionally, if you hung around them long enough, they'd emit, without prompting, a loud caw. Or if they were one of the interesting ones they'd break into song, and then stop just as abruptly, peeling off embarrassed, while you just wanted to cup your chin in your hands and listen to them all afternoon.

I fell in love with a girl like this when I was fourteen. She had long golden hair like sheafs of sunlight hanging on the bottom of clouds. I loved her tenderly, and we had conversations that went something like this: I'd say: this morning I was running around at sunrise. I could feel the light in my hair, making particular strands of hair feel warm.

And she'd say something like: in the winter, I'll fly away.

This is all interpretive you understand as we hadn't yet invented proper language with all of the nuances to describe the way that we were living. For instance, she might have been saying: I'm going to drop down from this cloud and walk down a field clothed in snow. Or she could have been saying: the impossibility of flight is one of the saddest things in an otherwise only relatively sad world. Or maybe: it's cold. I don't miss you.

Sometimes, we'd lie on the top of the clouds, which are soft as you can probably imagine, and we'd run our hands through each other's hair and wait for the silver light of the moon. In those moments, we wouldn't talk at all. Though sometimes she'd inadvertently break into song. The songs  were saying something about the way that flowers tilt towards the light and how worms are very useful creatures but kind of slimy and not all that much to look at when you really got down to it. Or she was singing about someone she'd loved in a previous life, a doctor who moved down from the clouds and onto the land and lived by himself in a large dwelling where he read books and threw stones at anyone who approached.

You would think, given the time we'd been allotted in the clouds that our love would keep growing day by day, and I thought that it was to tell you the truth. For a while, we didn't talk. The clouds in the distance where other people lived were tinged red by the setting sun. You can see where people eventually got the idea for a thing like porphry. Like most interesting ideas, it didn't come from the ground, but from the sky.

We were sitting, on one of those lonely and lazy afternoons when she asked if I wanted to see something. She was excited, and maybe she'd said that I had to see something, or wanted to know if she had done something worth seeing, but she got up, and stood at the edge of the clouds with her arms extended. I warned her to not stand so close to the edge. We routinely lost people in just this way. She turned around and smiled back at me and asked if I remembered that day that she sang about the doctor who'd gone to live on the ground. I think. And then she let the wind take her, arms extended she soared out and away from the clouds like a bird.

I was certain that she'd eventually fall to her death, or come back. Instead she made a series of slow looping circles, moving closer and closer, to the ground. I saw her sailing above the tree tops and then arcing out over a savanna, the grasses swaying in a gentle breeze. I couldn't see that far down of course, she was a mere speck by then. And all the time, until I saw, or thought I saw her feet touch the ground, I kept thinking that she'd come back to me. That somehow or some way the wind would carry her back up into the clouds where we'd live together forever. That was the first of nine women that I loved, all of whom, in their own way, remade the world.