Puzzles

How to make a puzzle

It was a Friday, which meant that we were both tired and that what we really wanted to do was fight with another about who had had the longer week. Not everything we desire is healthy though. So we spent the evening making a puzzle. The puzzle was of an unnamed city in Europe. For a while we talked about the architecture and speculated upon the possible locations: Greece, Italy, Slovenia, Moscow, Berlin. We didn't really know much about different types of architecture, but we also didn't like admitting that we didn't know things, so we'd pepper our conversation with "Doric column or Tudor style." 

If you're putting together a puzzle it's always important to start with the border. Those pieces are the easiest to find. I remembered this from my childhood when I used to frequently put together puzzles. I stopped for a long time until we came up with this idea to stop fighting on Friday nights. It was our third week working on puzzles. It was my night to choose the music. I preferred upbeat things, but I put on some Chopin because I thought it was more in keeping wit the atmosphere of puzzling, which is maybe or maybe not a word that is used to describe puzzling. Since I don't actually know whether it is or not I could describe my interaction with the word as puzzling. 

The border on the left side was comprised of grey slate stone that made up part of a large house that extended beyond the frame. The right side of the puzzle included bits of a river disappearing into the distance and a purple flower,  maybe wisteria, climbing along an old wall that ran parallel to the river.

I didn't understand why they'd put a stone wall in front of the river, maybe to protect people, but they result was that they'd obscured a portion of the view of the river, and the ripples, and the light playing on the water. What they were doing with this wall could also be described as puzzling. 

She went to the kitchen, opened a bottle of Merlot and asked what was playing. "Something by Chopin," I said, and she asked why. I told her it was in keeping with the act of constructing a puzzle and drinking wine. "Says who?" she asked. And I could tell she kind of wanted to fight because it was a Friday, and we were both so bone weary and tired in ways that we couldn't begin to describe. Really, we wanted to tear a hole in the seam of the universe to describe exactly how shitty we were feeling, but we were listening to a beautiful piano piece that sounded a bit like rain, or spring, or maybe just a very well played piano piece. 

"You can change it if you want," I said. And she bent, and I looked at the firm outline of her butt against the thin fabric of her skirt. What would the evening bring? I had a pice of Wisteria that looked like it was going to connect rather beautifully with a piece of old stone wall. In truth, though the conceit has already worn through, everything is puzzling. 

A drinking tour of Bainbridge island

We have no plan of what to do once we're on Bainbridge Island. As they say though, the best laid plans of Mice and Men go awry. Or something. I often only remember the first part of historical phrases and trail off after using the first part of them, or discover after searching the internet what they actually mean. For instance, the other day I said, "if wishes were horses" and then trailed off, and the person to whom I was saying it, said, "What?" Which was a perfectly reasonable response because I wasn't sure what it would mean for us if wishes were horses either.

There were bikes for rent, but we hadn't planned on biking, and so we followed the crush of people moving off the ferry in the vague direction of downtown. At the street corner we made wry observations about a sign, making an older couple out for a quiet day laugh. How sweet that we improved their day just a bit as opposed to making it worse. On our left was a swath of green plants labeled as native habitat. "This is precisely the sort of trail that I'd walk on if S was here" I told my friends as we walked down the Main Street.

Bainbridge Island has some good offerings for wine, boutique stores for pets and jewelry, stationery and books. After we walk the length of the main drag someone says they need to go to the bathroom. Bainbridge looks upscale in almost every way, so naturally we wind up wandering into a Mexican restaurant with Regan era red carpet and a few lazy overhead fans swatting at flies. The bar has two older gentleman at it who look like they drink as a past time and one other table is populated by men with long beards and wind burned faces. Someone buys a round of shots, and we drink.

I wander into the dingy bathroom but can't find the light, so I start peeing in the dark. I'm doing just fine, but the lack of light leads another bar patron to think the bathroom is unlocked, and he wanders in. "The light is here," he says, flipping it on, so we can pee more companionably. He asks where we're from, and I tell him we're just visiting for a day, taking in the sights. He's one of the guys who looks 100 percent like he works on a boat. We talk for a bit as we're both peeing, which is a natural break from male tendencies, but I figure it's okay since it's clearly his island. He recommends a certain restaurant down the way if we're just stopping in. He asks if I want directions, and I say yes, and he gives me some vague collection of stops and turns that is characteristic of a person who never has to accurately give directions and would probably have made a fine navigator searching for the Orient. "You'll reach Harpo's first," he says. "Keep going. You don't want that one."

As we turn and face each other I notice that his right eye is split open, and a large black bulbous circle rises out of his cheekbone, dark as a storm cloud. He has a big beard too, but I realize in looking at his deep set blue eyes that he's younger than I thought, probably in his mid-twenties, though he gives off the feeling of being someone for whom age and time are kind of unimportant factors. As we're finishing our drinks I here him telling the lone waitress that he'd been punched the night before. The last time I was punched was in the third grade.

When we leave, I suggest that we head to the restaurant that the local recommended. Even if he did love fist fights. I trusted his judgment on where to get a good meal and nice ambiance. At the bottom of the road is Harpo's. Inside, a lonely person drinks in a large empty room. The waitress and bar tender are talking to pass the time. I want to take this opportunity to point out to my friends how unerringly right the local was, and how smart I was for trusting him. I always enjoy reminding people when I'm right about something and deserve credit. And I also enjoy reminding people when they are wrong about something and especially when they are wrong about something that I am right about. What I have never enjoyed is admitting when I am wrong. When I am wrong I will say something like, "Well, it could be worse." Or, "At least we didn't die from toxic oysters." What I will not say, sometimes for hours or even days is, "I effed up. I was wrong." As if a large part of my soul was wrapped up in being right about which restaurant we should go too, or whether a trail or cereal that I've chosen is good or not.

We take a short trek along their shore path, winding across a newly built deck that winds across the bay like a hose uncoiled across a vast stretch of green lawn. We pass a sign that warns people against eating the oysters taken from the harbor, apparently they're toxic. The scent of the water is fetid, but the harbor is full of small docks and a countless number of sailboats, white sails catching the light on a bit of water, catching that same light, and refracting bits of it back like an endless piece of glass. We pass small rock sculptures of men pulling chains, of airplanes, and of dinosaurs looking pleasantly up at us like cows.

A photo posted by Andrew (@bertainaapb) on Sep 9, 2014 at 7:40pm PDT

Eventually we wind up wandering over to the Harbour Public House, which is a part of the trail that we're on. On the walk up we pass fresh blackberries growing wild, and I reach up to squeeze one between my fingers gently before eating it. The taste is muted, not the explosion that I remember from my youth, when we'd gather blackberries from our neighbors vine, which grew over the fence in late summer. Everything in childhood is sweeter though, or perhaps just memory. Those particular blackberries are irretrievable.

I'd recommend the Harbour Public House the next time you head over to Bainbridge Island, which will probably be never. We stood at the bar and grabbed a round of drinks before being seated. I got a blackberry based drink that the waitress smiled at me when I ordered. I looked around and saw the drink advertised on the chalkboard next to a stick figure drawing of a mother dropping her kids off at school in a van. It was sweet and powerfully alcoholic. I'd make a good soccer mom. Everyone's food in the place looks fantastic, giant portions of meat and potatoes would have left me mouth watering if not for the fact that we'd just eaten.

We sat outside, where certain of the wooden tables have had their middle hollowed out to make room for a small fireplace that burns during the meal. It is a seductively charming place. In the distance is the harbor and the boats, but we're removed a bit from the smell, and to our right the trail continues on, an avenue of trees that lead down to the water. While we wait for our appetizers and drinks I step outside and walk back down to the blackberry bush while I call S. The sun is unattenuated and brilliant. I look up in the window of the restaurant at a couple, who, finishing their drinks, are looking down at me plucking blackberries from someone's yard. The husband makes eye contact with me and gives me the thumbs up. The two of them look at each other and laugh. Oh, to bring pleasure to others.

By the time I get back most of the Poutine has been eaten, which makes me sad because it is french fries, gravy, cheese and bacon, all parts of the healthy plate initiative. And if it's one thing I always worry about on trips, it's what I'm eating and how I'll look when I get back. Or I don't worry about that at all and only regret things after they've happened.

Obligatory men go on vacation together and take pictures at brunch photo

A photo posted by Andrew (@bertainaapb) on Sep 9, 2014 at 7:44pm PDT

In the distance, we hear the tolling of the ferry calling everyone to board soon. It's too far to go back, so we decide to do a wine tasting instead. We throw ourselves back through the same streets though they are familiar now, and by their familiarity removed a bit of their charm. Rather, the charm or pleasure now is the feeling of being together that is growing up between the four of us. Of being the four people who went on this guy's trip that so many other people bailed out on for one reason or another. And sitting outside while enjoying a good drink, and unhealthy food, while the sun washes the boats and the harbor clean in the distance, it is not easy to imagine not wanting to be exactly where we are. Soon we'll be back into our lives, back into our phones, on a schedule to get summer or meet with someone, but for a moment, or an hour or two, I loved being on an island.

The winery was full, and the large, curly-haired, middle-aged waitress, who reminded me of an old teacher, was loudly telling everyone in the place that it'd be a while before she got to a tasting. We sat at a table, four bar stools pushed together around a cork barrel. A waiter, or the owner shows up and talks us out of the tasting. We get three caraffes of wine instead, briefly debating the finer points of Tempranillo, Syrah, Pinot Grigio, and Merlot before making our choice. It is at moments like this that I know that my friends must live extravagant lines on the other 362 days of the year that I don't see them. Days in which they learn to discuss the finer points of a Tempranillo or the low profile goodness of a Pinot Noir. Who the hell are these people? I'm possibly also wondering that and feeling good-natured because I washed the afternoon down with three glasses of wine.

In this pleasant state we ambled back down towards the ferry. Not quite walking in a perfectly straight line, but not stumbling either. Just in a pleasant enough mood to stop for a moment by the heritage trail and look at the flowers, or to take a picture of the sign that we saw when we first arrived. Ah, for the pleasure of such afternoons. The bees, if you looked closely enough at them as they swung between the stamen and pistils of flowers, the bees were drunk too.

Seattle from the ferry

Seattle from the ferry

A photo posted by Andrew (@bertainaapb) on Sep 9, 2014 at 7:37pm PDT

Eventually, after trials and tribulations worthy of a Homeric epic, we reached the ferry terminal. If I'm to use previous guy's trips as a barometer for what this journey meant, it's pretty much the equivalent of a man walking on the face of the moon. And yet, there we were, standing down by the sound at the bottom of the world's largest ramp. The ramp to the ferry terminal was at roughly an 80 degree angle. We thought about getting a Sherpa or a cab to take us to the top but trudged onward next to families going home, balloons in their hands and smiles on their faces.

Naturally we just missed the ferry to Bainbridge Island and have an hour to kill in the ferry terminal. The ferry terminal is kind of like a run down arcade, a shoddy red carpet propels you towards the ticket counter, and the rest of the room, which technically should look nice because of its view out onto the water, isn't all that nice because the windows are uniformly dirty, which gives the water a grey and washed out look.

The majority of the trip is spent trying to charge iPhones. We have a number of conversations about why the phones won't charge in our house, ranging from complaints at the VRBO owner trying to skimp money, to higher minded speculations about possible legislation passed by the progressive people of Seattle to limit electricity. My friend comes back from taking dramamine and sits down at the bar. I order something with bitters, and several different kinds of alcohol. On the board it looks like the sort of drink that you'd get drunk on without even noticing, but the drinks are only passable. Though the bar tender is friendly and allows my friend to charge his iPhone while we sit in this strange ferry terminal, a place between places, like Calvino might have described in a very boring version of Invisible Cities.

Eventually our ship comes in, and we don our sailor's outfits and get aboard the ship. Mid way through our walk on the shore I proclaimed to my friend T that I wasn't going to take any more pictures of the ferris wheel. "I've shot it from nearly every angle. I'm going to have dreams for decades after about that particular ferris wheel. I'm done."

I took 10000 photos of this ferris wheel

A photo posted by Andrew (@bertainaapb) on Sep 9, 2014 at 7:43pm PDT

As soon as the ship, which is a generous term, it's more like a giant four decker island that just happens to locomote. It has all the choppiness and sway and movement of  a sidewalk, leaves port it becomes clear looking out on the contrails lying behind us that I'm going to need to take a picture of the ferris wheel, which is now illuminated in purple. And, as my friend M points out, I can take a picture of the Seattle Space Needle through the spokes of the ferris wheel. And, after completing that task, he points out that I can take a picture of the ferris wheel when the boat gets far enough out that will make it appear to be a single line as opposed to a dimensional wheel. I could take a whole class on taking pictures of this Ferris wheel. My friend gives me crap for taking pictures of the Ferris wheel, but I can't let him steal the moment that we're having together, this wheel and I. The real Space Needle and point of reference in Seattle.

The sound

A photo posted by Andrew (@bertainaapb) on Sep 9, 2014 at 7:39pm PDT

When I returned, a friend of mine asked what my favorite part of the trip was, and I told her that it was this particular moment, the four of us standing on the deck of a large boat, the wind brisk but mild, the water a beautiful sheet of glass. The moment was rich in aesthetic beauty--some long lost memory of human ancestry, taking in the view from above, and, because we were there, because there wasn't anywhere else that we could possibly be, we talked in the way that old friends talk about things present, things past, and things future.

On the way back, my friend tells a story about a recent wedding. Apparently a drunk person, hoping to have a good time, threw himself off the boat and had to be rescued, a feat which cost him 40,000 dollars, so I suppose I erred above when I said that we could not be anywhere else. We could have been flying towards the water, feeling the rush of the air and the gut punch of the water, waiting on someone to save us and charge us money for the favor.

I've never considered jumping off a ship. Largely because I'm afraid of heights, danger, water, and have also sharks, all of which strike me as very reasonable fears. Though if someone else were to ask me if they should be afraid of the water or sharks I'd assure them that sharks almost never attack humans, which makes the water safe, and as long as you're standing on a perfectly good and sound structure or only jumping from say, a high dive, heights are fine as well. If that person asked me then to jump in the water I'd say fine, but I'd be worried about the sharks and maybe get out after fifteen minutes or so and sit on the hot sand, skin cooking, thinking about how lucky I was that I wasn't eaten by sharks.Though I'd wave to everyone else out on the water, swimming around and admiring a colony of seals, assuring them with my wave that they were fine out there despite all the sharks, which are unlikely to bother them anyway, though I suspect they are likely to bother me.

The water is almost purple the blue is so deep. We walk the length of the boat and stand out front where the wind is at gale force. I'd read somewhere that I could see the mountains on this boat ride, but in the distance are clouds, which make the mountains only an imaginary place on this journey, a place holder in my mind, like an image of God as yet unrealized, though I've seen mountains. For a while, we talk about Olympic National Park, just how far away it is. Someone checks the Google map and figures out that we're four ferry rides away from freedom. We agree that we're likely to die in the elements, even in September, but it would go down in the lore of the guy's trips. The other four guys, the survivors, would always secretly regret not wandering off course and ending up in the wilderness roasting each other for sustenance.

In the headiness of the trip, we discuss future trips. We say that maybe we should do two separate guy's trips, four people in one place and four people in another. Then, when that gets to be too much, four separate guy's trips with two people on each trip. And finally, when all else has worn thin, we'll travel to eight distinct cities, and text each other from across the country to say how things are going. In this way, perhaps we'd finally make it to Memphis, to New Orleans, to Athens and beyond. The most common joke though is that we're still splitting things eight ways. No matter what we talk about, food, lodging, a ferry ride, eventually someone says, "Well, it is cheaper because we're still splitting things 8 ways." It's the one joke that you miss when you're not on the guy's trip, and it's the one that is constantly made at your expense. "I'll send you the bill." Some day I'm going to send some of my friends a bill for five thousand dollars, though I'll probably wait until a funeral because I dislike confrontation.

The ship takes half an hour to cross from one shore to another. The girl on the bench told me to go to Vashon Island rather than Bainbridge, but I don't trust her. I'm glad that we're here on this tiny island, walking off a ship amongst strangers, not really sure what we're doing, or what we'll do, but sure that we're here for a reason, temporarily stranded on the rim of a large blue glass.

Seattle on the way to a ferry

I am in seattle

A photo posted by Andrew (@bertainaapb) on Sep 9, 2014 at 2:04pm PDT

We stop at a street sign to allow her to move on to another group of people, but she starts looking at random signs and working her way back towards us. We've made our first real friend We wish we were invisible. Eventually, as in the way of most people who are a few nickels short of a sixpence, she leaves us alone to walk in peace, the sun in our face and the wind at our backs, a veritable Irish blessing of a morning.

We walk past coffee shops, awnings still wet with morning dew. People live in this city; but they are not us. In town, after numerous complaints from my friends about the distance between places, (I try to point out how far it is to Mars but no one is listening) we arrive back at the hustle and bustle of flowers and fish and chocolate flavored pasta that is Pike’s. We’re splitting up to get a lunch of our choosing before wandering back to the park that I’d sat in the previous day. I wish I had a picnic blanket for us, but I don’t.

The salmon laid out, eyes as wide open as death as you could ever imagine, are still laid out on long pebbles of white ice--the dry pasta that tastes like chocolate still crunches in a way that is quite strange. I’m not quite tired of Pike’s, but I am overwhelmed. What should I buy? It’s the question that any capitalist consumer has to ask themselves when faced with a deluge of available information.

Do I want a piece of cheesecake? If yes? Which one? If no? Why not? Am I on a diet? Am I trying to save money? Am I wondering if the piece of cheesecake is going to add up to the Platonic ideal of cheesecake that I have in my mind? Should I be eating dessert in the afternoon? And so on…
..

In case you couldn’t tell, I bought some cheesecake for lunch. It was a cappuccino chocolate piece of cheesecake that retailed for 4.50 cents. A bit expensive, but dark, rich, moist, and heavenly. Before I chose what to get I did that strange thing that my father, and everyone’s father has once embarrassingly done in a restaurant where you ask the server which item they like best, temporarily passing over my will in a way that I wouldn’t if I was driving, or kissing, or doing just about anything under the sun, but here I say, tell me what I want to eat. She says the cappuccino cheesecake is her favorite, and I trust that it will be my favorite as well.

When I get to the park, no one is there. I stand next to the trash can and exchange texts with S so that the rest of the people in the park, who are also enjoying the view, or smoking cigarettes, or marijuana, do not judge me. As if those people do not have anything better to do with their time than to look at me and say, “Why is that man eating cheesecake alone?” The universe, of which this park is just a microcosm, probably doesn’t care much about me, and it certainly doesn’t care about the sandwich that I’m eating at a beautiful park in Seattle on this fine September day. In the distance, I see a ferriss wheel that I should be taking pictures of. My friends arrive, and we watch a person using the selfie extension that allows you to take authentic type selfies from a distance, thus giving the allusion that perhaps you had a friend along with you, riding on a horse, or sitting atop a statue, taking a picture of you from a place just above you in the sky.

Everyone else gets various kinds of sea food soup, which looks amazing. My sandwich is passable, which is always the case. Life is basically a retelling over and over again of Alexander and The Terrible Horrible No good very bad day.

After lunch, we walk down by the harbor towards the ferry station. My friend T, who I’ve known since fifth grade, mentions that he needs to take some Dramamine or he might be in trouble. Do I know any of these people at all? Perhaps I just think I know them because so many years are gathering behind us like sheaths of corn on a husking floor. Now would be a good time to meditate on friendship. What exactly is friendship? Is it a series of years that pile up behind you? Is it the things you have in common or the things you once held in common? The people I'm friends with now I'd like to believe are my friends due to something that can't be quantified in words exactly, like complexity of the human brain. And yet, the chief factor in any of the friendships that I've ever had in my life is the relatively mundane fact of proximity. Human beings, which includes me, are social animals who desire connections and meaningful relations with people. And so I often befriend people who I spend time with. Years ago, these people that I'm on this trip with spent a series of mornings in dull classrooms, afternoons on basketball courts, and early evenings playing video games, basketball, or talking about people we'd like to be sleeping with, though this wasn't in the realm of possibility for me. But then, I suppose friendship works a bit like looking out from the summit of a mountain. From the summit, it suddenly becomes clear that you have a come a very long way, a fact which is partially or completely obscured on the climb.

I am actually worried for my friend. In part because it now makes me worried that I might feel sick as well, and I don’t enjoy feeling sick. I don’t imagine other people do either, but I especially do not enjoy feeling sick, which separates me from other people who probably only mostly enjoy not being sick. If other people felt like I did when I felt motion sick they probably would never ride the metro, or get on a boat, or off the couch, though I only occasionally feel sick and do all of those things, which is probably a credit to my fortitude more than anything else, though I’m probably wrong about all that because I am often wrong about things like the weather, the viability of a socialist regime, and belief in the American populace's idea to vote after their own interests.

Seattle Day 2

We sleep until 8:30. The morning is as quiet as can be. I've gotten a solid 6.5 hours of sleep, which is more than I usually get on any of the guy's trips. People are still sleeping in various angles of repose all over the house, the sunlight filtering down into the living room where a friend I've known since kindergarten is still sleeping on the couch.

My friend who I usually share a bed with isn't here, which is probably why we got to sleep until 8. Most trips he has trouble sleeping in, which is mostly true for the rest of us, excluding T who sleeps like a bear hibernating. My friend J though, who is busy feeling miserable in CA wakes up early, surveys the scene for a few moments, generally says, and I know this because we share a bed, "oh shit," which is a fine elocution given the general state of affairs, then he walks, often without donning his clothes. He sleeps in his underwear. And he shouts at the top of his lungs, "Wooo." And then. "Woo. Good morning fellas. I feel like shi-." And the rest of the house is roused from sleep and someone offers someone else a beer and everyone says no, though by nine am you'll usually see someone cracking one open, and we all laugh at their stupidity and then someone else follows suit.

The plus side to only having four of us on the first half of the trip is that I like to have agendas on trips. I'm not type A, so the agenda is a hazy artistic sketch of an afternoon, think pointalist painting, but it still includes plans to see various parts of a city. These plans are usually only half carried out, or derailed by having to get 8 bodies to move instead of four. An object in motion tends to stay in motion and an object at rest generally refuses to shower and always has to drink another beer before doing anything else.

We always talk about getting breakfast on these trips. buying some eggs to fry up, maybe some bacon. However, the fridge is empty, which is somewhat of a plus because it causes us to get out the door faster. My friend T, who sleeps like a bear, has spent most of the night fast asleep on the carpet, face down, so that when he rises he carries parts of it on his face. I am jealous of his penchant for sleeping like a child, though not so jealous of his ability to play video games. King Hippo is not that hard.

The agenda calls for us to walk to Pike's Market and then take a ferry ride to Bainbridge Island. The day is planned as if I was here with S as opposed to my three guy friends, but somehow we're able to make it out the door. And, to my great surprise, I even convince them to walk the 1.5 miles to Pike's. Of course, by this time my feet hurt as well, and I secretly wish one of them would have pushed harder for a cab. On the walk down from Capitol Hill you can see down into the city, the grey of the skyscrapers hovering in the foreground of a landscape of water.

Along the way we're adopted by a middle aged woman who starts telling us about the park we're standing next to. "That's crack park," she says. "They call it that because everyone there does crack. It's sad," she says, shaking her head. And my friend T and I shake our heads as well lamenting the goings on at crack park, which are new to us but equally as troubling. We cross the street and she talks to us more about the ills of crack, and I want to get her breakdown of the epidemic that hit DC in the 90's because I'm a generous person though my friend T, who is also nice, does start to wonder if she didn't spend a week or so in "crack park" herself.

We stop at a street sign to allow her to move on to another group of people, but she starts looking at random signs and working her way back towards us. We've made our first real friend We wish we were invisible. 

The 1st night in Seattle

After I brushed off the feeling of shame and failure that accompanies not having an eagle tattooed across my shoulder blades, I walked down ghost alley. Ghost alley is an artistic haven for people who enjoy expressing themselves through the use of, well, used gum. I'm not sure who started the trend, but I'd say their work is on the order of what Michelangelo did with the Sistine Chapel. I take a few pictures of the gum because everyone is taking a few pictures of the gum. It's like that bit from White Noise by DeLillo where he talks about the most photographed barn in the state.

And as we all took photos together I was briefly missing the idea of alleys that I'd grown up with, people scared to go through them, the smell of fresh urine and old clothes. Seeing every tourist and their grandparent strolling through this alley as if it was a haven is enough to make me question the utility of alleys. Luckily the alley we stayed next to in Nashville a few years prior was far more respectable, with a couple of hanging plants and two nudey bars that appeared to be 24-7 type establishments, though why exactly you'd want to see someone naked at 4 AM is far beyond me. I don't want to see anything at 4 AM. If I'm awake at 4 AM I am deeply, deeply confused about the state of the world and also probably angry and hungry.

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After taking in the splendor of the wall I program the directions into my iPad and begin walking towards the house. And yes, I do start out by walking in the wrong direction because that's the only way I know how to walk. The streets are sun splashed, the buildings cast shadows on my side of the street, many of them have the feeling of old bank vaults waiting to be unlocked. I've been warned by S that our funds are a bit tight and that these trips may become an every other year type of event, so I'm trying to scrimp and save where I can. I buy the fancy chocolate drink because she's not the Gestapo, but I do decide to walk the 1.8 miles to the place we're staying with my luggage in tow. It's the sort of decision that you can feel good about for about three blocks. After three blocks you start thinking about getting a second job grading essays for the SAT or something else that will allow you, on future visits God willing, to hail a cab and drive the 1.8 miles up to the house, which turns out to be on about a 90 percent grade with only a few attractions along the way lie a tent city and a park that a person tells us the following day is dubbed, "Crack park." Not presumably because of the fault lines.

 The city is pretty and the air is brisk. Halfway up, when I'm pausing to see if I'm having a heart attack, I look back at the city, the stadiums, the piercing blue water and almost feel okay about my decision to walk. On the phone with Steph I let out an audible groan, and she temporarily panics and asks if I'm okay. I'm not, but I think I'll live, so I soldier on. This must have been what it felt like to travel the Seattle Trail, the lesser known Oregon Trail knock off.

Finally, after climbing Everest, if Everest were slightly higher, I get to our neighborhood and look for refuge in the house we've rented. As I'm standing on the doorstep, listening to people rustling around inside, imagining they're doing some last minute tidying up, rolling bath towels into swans and making sure we all have shampoo and conditioner, it occurs to me that I should probably check and see if I have the right house. I find a good place to sit, which means the sidewalk in front of the people's house and scroll through my e-mails. A woman walks out of the house and gets in her car and drives away.

My intuition turns out to be a good one as I learn from my e-mail that I was about to knock on a stranger's door and ask them when their house would be available for me to sleep in. I'm sure they'd have obliged as I'm a friendly enough person, but perhaps I'd have started to wear out my welcome when I asked if I could take a nap in one of their bedrooms. "Do you like spooning I just want to be warm?

Fortunately, I never got to find out whether this kind family of five would have taken me into their home, fed and clothed me for the weekend in Seattle. I hope you can tell that what I meant by fortunately was unfortunately. I walk a few blocks up past houses filled with trees as green as emeralds and mossy front porch steps until I reach something that looks like a condo that you might rent out on weekends to people who visit Seattle while day drinking. We've been provided no code to get in, so I just start trying random numbers. I quickly learn that the code is not 1, 2, 3, 4 or 4, 3, 2, 1. Clearly these people think harder than I do about codes. Suddenly, like a fairy in a Disney cartoon, a man appears next door, and I explain my plight to him. He seems unfazed and looks at me, appraising me like a fox looking at a hen.

I tell him that my friend Nate has rented the house, and he claims at first to not know anything, though after a few moments of watching me sit on the front porch he takes some pity and admits to being a part owner of the building. He still won't let me in. "I can't find any record of Nate in here," he says.

(I'm hoping this is right or I've just been bilked out of money by my friends, three of whom aren't coming and a fourth form whom I've just received an e-mail saying that he's come down with a cold and might be staying away as well).

Luckily, my two friends appear on the horizon. They are also carrying their bags, and he asks if we're all homeless people looking for a place to sleep. About the time that I find an e-mail with his name attached to it, he decides to let us in the house, though he warns us not to party too much, or smoke, or have fun. 

As in every house we stay in, we walk around and say that the place is really nice. My friends are pretty good-natured people, a fact that I'm appreciative of. Or maybe they just really appreciate nice decor. It could be both. We may have all missed our calling to be real estate agents or interior designers. To me, the place lacks a bit of character, but at least I get to sleep in a bed by myself for once. Granted it took a friend getting a tumor to make it happen, but I'm just saying I had a bit more room to splay out.

Upstairs, like any sane adult, I get out the Nintendo and put in Jackal. I've put in Jackal and brought a Nintendo because I'm sad that it's not 1988, and I think everyone else is as well, and it's all I can do, to assuage the sadness that it's not 1988. After a while, we go to get booze. This is also a standard operating procedure for these trips. When you only see people once a year, it can be awkward, so we usually attempt to diffuse that awkwardness through libations. And by libations I mean beer and Fireball.The local corner store only has beer and wine. I"m ready to call the trip off and just catch a flight home, but my friends convince me that it will still be okay. I suspect that they are wrong.

We drink and play video games. The best part about playing the video games is laughing at your friends when they eff up. "He just died against a little soldier, hah! That soldier can't even shoot."  Really. Nothing is better. Every time I die I say something about how the emulator is making it hard to move, and my friends laugh at me for blaming the emulator for my poor performance because even though my friends are good-natured, they are also jerks who don't recognize a flaw in an emulator. And if you, like them don't know what an emulator is, just know that it's the sort of thing that can really put a dent in your video game playing skills by temporarily slowing the action down and not responding to your cat quick fingers when they evade a bullet on the control pad.

Eventually, the fourth friend arrives, hauling a back pack upstairs, a freshly minted ER doctor, who I am expecting to buy my plane tickets to these guy trips once he and his new wife get settled. I try to corner him as soon as possible to talk about the chronic bursitis in my knee because I can tell that he misses work. I do this to anyone I know who has some vague medical knowledge. I corner people for astrology readings to see if they can tell me what the future looks like for my right knee. "Will there be tendonitis?" People love it, and show their love by briefly engaging in conversation before asking where the alcohol is. As far as I can tell, he, like me, wishes he was still working.  I can tell that he misses work because when we're playing video games right afterward he's on the phone, doing work and rolling his eyes and saying he wished that his phone would stop working.

From there we head down towards 12th street, past a few eateries that look too fancy. By too fancy I mean that they had candles or waiters were wearing white shirts tucked into black pants. As we've gotten older we've had more trouble mustering up the energy that it takes to do things like shave and not wear hooded sweatshirts. Thus, we wind up in a German brewery that looks like they won't kick us out for looking homeless. The restaurant is roughly the size of a football stadium. They have a full bocce ball court in the middle of the bar and roughly 70 televisions.

I'm sure the place is great, but I was exhausted from changing coasts and sleeping five or so hours, so I try and take a nap on the table while my friends order beers the length of my arms. We order a pizza with some fancy German toppings and a soup. Someone else orders something German. The food is uniformly good, and we share it around like we're on an intimate date with tapas. You have got to try this soup, we say and pass it around the table making appropriate noises of enjoyment and talking about how good the soup and the pizza and the pile of German meat and pasta really is. 

I can't remember what we talked about, something about sports, or families, or weddings, or near death experiences. Mainly we talked about how damn good the food was. In the evening, we sat around the house and drank beers and wine. My friend's phone died, which meant he could temporarily stop trying to save people's lives or buy a house and focus on Mike Tyson's Punch Out. The thing that turns out to be funnier than watching your friend get shot by a little guy in Jackal is to watch them get knocked out because they don't know how to block the Tiger Punch.  As soon as my doctor friends starts playing he mentions the poor emulation. He's a good guy.

Someone says they heard that there are good bars in the Capitol Hill neighborhood on 12th street, so we set off into the night. I suspect that they heard that mainly because it was close. Some other people have arrived upstairs, they're Canadian and loud, and much drunker than any of us, and they invite us out to a bar, and we say, "maybe we'll see you there," even though we'll never see them again in our lives. Canadians are friendly people.

The streets are packed and my friend, who eats roughly seven meals a day is eying a cupcake spot for the trip home. He eats at least three to four times on these nights that we stay out late. I suspect that he's going to die by the time he's fifty, but damn if he isn't going to enjoy some great ice cream and cuban sandwiches before he gets there.

We have a drink at a bar and then move on. We are engaged in what is called bar hopping, though it's less intentional than a reflection of something like boredom. We're on a never ending search for something better. Even when we find the right thing we move on fairly quickly. It's like a metaphor for life, or unhappiness, or grass always being greener, or bars always being only okay instead of the best bar in the history of the world, which exists somewhere, if you just keep searching you might find it.

As we walk along 12th, getting further downhill without really noticing, because: downhill, we notice a corner bar with a dilapidated wooden fence around the outside and a neon green pony perched on the top. "Let's go there," my friend says, which makes me think he may be blind as it looks about as divey as divey can get.  One of my friends opens the door, which has an ADA compliant walk, and I see the neon signs for various beers on a dimly lit hallway, and I decide to stay outside because I have visions of wandering into a biker bar and getting beaten to death with a tire iron for not being in the right gear. We turn around and walk back to the street corner. Someone checks the yelp review to see if it was the most dangerous bar in Seattle. "The Pony is a gay bar." Well, we would have done fine there.

We wander down the street farther just like stupid water, until we find a place called Sam's. The bar is lined with windows, and a single television set plays a game, some game. At some point one of my friends points out that we're four of about seven guys in the bar. And I start looking around the room at all these people having a wonderful evening, who all happen to be women, which is probably not an accident. As I'm gazing around the room doing a gender identification game one of the women
catches me looking around the bar and walks up to introduce herself. "I saw you looking," she says, "so I figured you might as well get to know my name." She extends her hand, and I want to tell her all about heteronormativity and the obnoxiousness of the male gaze. I shake her hand instead and mumble my name. At that point I'm ready to leave. In my rush, I slide an empty glass across the table and it catches on some moisture and slides clean across the table and onto the floor. Someone from another table shouts, "It didn't break," and I feel like I've finally found a friend.

Whenever we're all out together we're operating on different schemas. On the one hand, I enjoy music and dancing. On the other hand, other people don't. As such, we wander around until we find a bar where we can play games. The place has big pool tables, ski ball, and a miniature shuffle board table, which has always struck me as a perfect kind of belligerently drunk but flirtatious thing to do at a bar. I've never played, and it shows as my partner and I lose three consecutive games, though it was mostly his fault. There is no emulator to blame, except alcohol, which is not an emulator, but a beverage.

From there we hit the cold Seattle streets in search of street food. There is a giant polish hot dog eaten. There is a large cuban sandwich with french fries and two pork tacos. I'm sure we ate somewhere else as well and maybe even chased the night at another bar or two, but sometimes you need to know when you're beat. We walk uphill past the cupcake shop and see them putting the chairs on top of the tables. Maybe tomorrow night will be better.

What if I went to Seattle, and it was funnier

I stepped back down the cobblestones, through the corridor of shops wreathed in purple flowers and went into Ghost Alley in search of a fancy coffee drink. I'm searching for fancy coffee for the same reason that Cortes was searching for gold because I deserve it. I'm a visitor here, which means I deserve the best, am really, when you get right down to it, entitled to it. Or at least an idea of what the best what might be, some sort of approximation, like staring at a jar of candy corn and getting within 200 of being correct.

The lady in the espresso shop has a boatload of tattoos. People with tattoos, let me just be honest, scare me a bit. Scare is not really the right word. What I mean to say is that people with tattoos make me feel as though I should get tattoos as well, or stop being so square, but then I'm standing there thinking about how I just thought of the word square and how that makes me even more square and now I have to order some coffee.

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I've scoped out the board ahead of time and identified a drink called the Lizzie Borden that is a mix of chocolate and raspberry, which sounds just heavenly. At the register, I panic, and say, "You have a drink called the Lizzie Borden on your menu" rather than just saying, "I'll take the Lizzie Borden." I suppose on the grounds that she might have found it strange if I just said I'll take the Lizzie Borden and she'd say something like, "We sell coffee here you tourist, now get a tattoo." Luckily she confirmed that the sign out front was for her coffee shop, and she set about making the drink while I stood there with my backpack and iPad mini camera wondering where I could buy a fanny pack and a t-shirt to match with my friends.

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The drink, as I'd suspected, is a little piece of heaven. It costs four dollars because real estate in heaven isn't cheap. I drink it, and then I take a picture of it because I think that's a thing people do on vacation. The picture is crude, and I'm not sure it looks like anything more than coffee. I wish she hadn't stiffed me by giving it to me in a plastic cup. Vacation photos should include large pictures of ornate cappucinos. And yes, it tastes amazing, but presentation matters tattoo lady! She seems unfazed as she's chatting with the guy next to me with glasses, corduroy pants, and his legs crossed in the way of a French philosopher.

After a while I reconnect to the internet to see if anyone is liking my pictures. I try to show the lady how I put her picture up on Instagram, but she's talking about a war overseas. For a while, I stare at the cobblestones and the tourists wandering through the alley like insane bits of water, traveling uphill. And then I get up and join them. I'm here to tour after all. Fancy drinks be damned!

(For the record 2 of my friends on the trip have tattoos and I'm fine with them. Well, I'm fine with them in so far as the body is a temple that they've desecrated kind of fine with them. However, when I see someone with a certain amount of tattoos I can't shake the feeling that when they see me I appear to them as a pasty white bulls eye who should have tattoos everywhere. Either that or as a square. I took a picture of her shop with my eye iPad like a boss and called it a day). 

Seattle after the rain

I walked off the metro and looked for an exit, detouring to make sure I'd gone out the assigned one. And then I was out on the street without anyone ever checking my ticket. The thing about Seattle is that all the travel is free. Or maybe they check tickets periodically like in Europe. Given my rudimentary understanding of economics I'd say that they probably just offer the service for free.

It's no longer raining in Seattle, and I pick a direction and start walking confidently. Because I lack a good sense of direction I try and walk confidently. I find that by doing that you can usually convince people that you know where you're going even if you walk confidently past them on five separate occasions because you can't figure out what street you're on. They're just standing on the wall thinking, "man, that guy walks confidently."

I pass a bunch of coffee shops who's names I don't remember. Strangely, I never wound up getting coffee in Seattle, and I also didn't listen to anything by Nirvana. I also didn't visit the Space Needle. Basically, I didn't actually go to Seattle. As I walk down 2nd street signs for the water start appearing off to my left, and suddenly there it is: the Pacific, up north it's a dark blue dipped in silver. It's gorgeous. I'd take a picture if I wasn't walking around with an iPad for a camera.

A block later I wander onto Pike Street and turn and there it is as well. Despite my inherently bad sense of direction I've pretty much managed the whole journey without anything going wrong. Feeling intensely good, I decide to take a picture of the market. I take seven pictures of the entrance to Pike's Market. I keep trying to get some flowers from the flower shop in the picture as well. I briefly wonder if the flower girls at the shop are annoyed at me for framing their flowers in pictures without actually trying to buy them, but then I realize that they can go to hell because I'm busy taking a nice picture and there zinnias and daffodils or whatever flowers I'm looking at are making it better.

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I walk through the market with the eyes of a tourist. The flower displays inside are ornate and catch my eye in a way that seems to use every part of my visual field. If you focus on something, anything, for long enough it can become beautiful. The flowers are an aesthetic marvel on their own, and like the sirens in Ulysses they actually call out to you, and it is hard not to look into the panoply of red, orange, purple, yellow and gold and not see that they were crafted for just such an experience. And for one of the first times I understand a story I heard years ago about an old woman saying that she preferred that her son bring her flowers rather than a loaf of bread despite her hunger because she says, "You can't live without beauty." And of course you can live without beauty. We all do it all the time, but perhaps the sentiment is right, or maybe I just like being alone, truly alone. This fact is of course simultaneously untrue as I'm rapidly trying to post these photos to Instagram and then checking to see if anyone has liked them, if anyone is validating my individual experience of Seattle, which undercuts it in a way. Or maybe it doesn't. I suppose it's just one of those human experiences that has been fundamentally changed by technology. I'm here, look with me, rather than trying to remember the details in a journal, or recounting them in bed to someone when you are returned home. Perhaps that's why so many details of the trip are hazy. Because they are unnecessary. I can go on the internet right now and get an exact shot of all the things at Pike's that I considered unique, the chocolate flavored pasta, the fish that would have been flying through the air, except none of us were buying fish; we were all walking around with cameras taking pictures of the dead bass, displayed with their mouths open, their gills exposed, looking out at nothing, their bodies stretched across pebbles of ice, their faces captured in a thousand photos.

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I leave the market and walk out onto the street. The street is lined with shops as well, artisan chocolate makers, cinnamon pastry specialty shops, a wine bar. The street is lined with planters and purple flowers hang down over the awnings that line the street creating a kind of double walkway above us, which is wreathed in flowers. The eye is pleased by such symmetries. I pass a shop with hand made biscuits, the original Starbucks, and keep walking. On my left I spot a park. Like every park in America it's mostly populated by homeless people who are not walking around Seattle with their back packs on and enjoying the brisk breeze, drained of the humidity that still clings to the air back east.

The homeless people go largely unremarked in most cities, either because we don't want to see them or they don't want to be seen. They are, by and large, easy to ignore. Even if they come by and ask you for a dollar, and you say, "Sorry, not right now," and then go buy a four dollar piece of cheesecake the feeling of guilt is only temporary. What am I supposed to do in a moment's time? Save the world. Certainly not.

In the distance the sound is still piercing blue reminiscent of the eyes of a husky and a girl I used to know when I was much younger, on whom I had a crush and who, as far as I can remember, never learned my name. Those memories can't be trusted though. Her eyes, I'm nearly certain now that I think of it, were green, or at least not that blue. They say that even touching a memory changes its composition. She had brown eyes. No she didn't.

The sun is alternatively blazing down in the way of places with clear air, or being hidden by thick blocks of puffy clouds that aren't threatening rain. The guy next me on the bench is smoking a cigar, and I'm scrolling through the nineteen pictures I took of the Ferris Wheel that's out on the cusp of the sound. I took a picture with an open window framing it. I took a picture of it from the edge of a pier. I took a picture of it from the ground, using the railing to hold the iPad steady.

I check the internet, attempt to figure out Instagram and take a picture of my lunch spot. None of the pictures do it the remote bit of justice. I can't figure out how to crop out the street below, and the water and light look more distant than they really are. The overall experience is one of peace and beauty, which I decide I'll just have to experience as it happens.

For some reason the guy next to me strikes up a conversation. We talk about what we're doing. How we both just wandered through Pike's. He's here to meet up with his family, but he's smoking a cigar first, and sitting on this very long bench looking out over the water. I think he probably wants to talk about the opening passage in Melville, how bodies of water soothe the soul, but the girl next to me asks if I have a pen.

If someone asks you for a pen they have to explain why they are asking for it. I tell her I'm from DC, and she says she used to go to school at American University. I've sat down on the world's strangest bench. We find out that we were on campus at the same time that year and talk briefly about the coffee shop. She's working for a tech company in San Francisco now, and she starts to recommend things to me that I should see in Seattle. She gives me three important things to do and after a while I write them down, and she quizzes me on what I write down and seems satisfied. She's a confident person, who feels free to tell me what I should do for a few days in Seattle. We talk for a while about New Orleans where she transferred after leaving American. She says I should visit with my friends that it's the most fun place on earth. I'm not going to New Orleans, and I'm not going to any of the places that she's mentioned in the last few minutes, but I'm feeling good about Seattle because the first two people I sat down next to on a bench became my friends.

I get a call from my friend, I and walk back down the street. He and I have been friends since we were put in the same class in fifth grade, and I used him to get my math homework done. We're old now, but we've got a history and seeing his name on my phone brings a surge of pleasure. "This guy! Really?" Eventually we'll get the chance to reflect back on our childhood, two decades ago, when we used to play baseball out in the street and football in the back yard. Right now we're trying to plan to meet up in this city, which is awash in sunlight right now, and sparklingly clear after the rain.

It's raining in Seattle

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It is raining in seattle

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I was the only one wearing pink shorts in Seattle. Everyone else was wearing jeans and sweatshirts, the men with beards that you just knew had whole ecosystems within them like parts of the rain forest. Bears with back stories. The leaden sky spat rain. The airport in Seattle has a sign that says the light rail is available, and I picked up my bags, slung them over my shoulder and started following signs. I was accompanied by a feeling of exultation and peace that often accompanies travel, a sense that I am shaking off the dust of life to try something new. 

First however, I had to find the light rail, which, though it had signs for it every 100 yards or so, appeared to be located back in Portland. I became conscious of my bags straps digging into my shoulder, of the absurdity of all human endeavours when suddenly the ticket booth appeared, like water in a desert. I approached the ticket station with confidence. I'dbeen through Italy and spent a week in Paris. I have driven through the streets of Kansas City on my own. I have rented a car in San Antonio and found my way to Austin. I knew I could handle it. Except, like the French in any military action with the Germans, I couldn’t handle it. The machine wouldn’t take my card, I tried it three of four different ways, trying to change the angle, the card, and the speed with which I swiped it. I didn’t look behind me because I know there is probably a group of locals gathering together pitch forks and torches. I frantically pulled out my wallet and started searching for bills. A five! I was saved! I slid the bill into the machine, and it spat it back out at me just as quickly. It was old. I turned around to see roughly half of Seattle standing behind me, bags parked on the ground, staring expectantly ahead, hopeful that I’d figure out how to use the machine these kind souls. The gentleman behind me, an angel in plain clothes asked if I needed change, quickly giving me five one dollar coins that I expertly placed in and received a golden ticket into the city. 

I didn’t know precisely where I was going on the light rail, but imprecision is how Columbus came across America. On the way, the mountains appeared in the distance, wreathing the city, and the mountains themselves were wreathed in low lying clouds that clung to them like tatters of old clothes. A double ring that I thought about capturing with my camera, except my camera was an iPad mini, which I was embarrassed to be using because all the world’s a stage. So now I don’t have that picture, but I do have my dignity. I am a fool. 

On the ride, a girl struggled with her bike, trying to put it up on some sort of ingenious system that they’ve developed for just such problems on the light rail. I thought about helping her, considering whether I’d be able to, the exact mechanics of making it work, while someone else actually just helped her. I’m always thinking about helping people with bags and putting up bikes or dropping a dollar in the hate of a homeless person. I never do these things mind you, but I'm hoping Saint Peter gives credit for thinking things. I know I didn’t do many things sir, but you should have been there for all my good intentions. I believe that’s why the saying “the road to Nevada is paved with good intentions.” 

Seattle from the light rail appears to be a rather large jungle. The houses are set off from the street, with long stone steps that lead up to them, the steps covered in thick green moss. Trees are everywhere, obscuring whole city blocks. Everything is green. The trees and plants and ground are green, one suspects that if you could see the houses they would be painted green as well. I pass a community garden that goes on for an entire city block. It's basically a big ag farm disguised as a bunch of hippies just passing time growing French beans on the weekend.

Seattle, you get the sense, is the sort of city that would be swallowed whole if left alone for ten years or so, the jungle taking back its own. The place feels more contingent than other cities, a footprint left on the sand of time with the knowledge that the ocean tide will return soon. 

Travel is a way of escaping death. The early explorers of America looked for the fountain of youth, and died, or tried to discover something “new” and have it named after them, fame being its own kind of immortality. Most people you suspect, pass away in their bed. Rare is the person who passes away when they are traveling by train from Rome to Florence, by plane from Heathrow to Munich. By traveling we temporarily keep death in our rear window. Not yet, we say, just let me finish this post card I’m sending to my niece. 

The streets here are like glittering serpents, the evenings like the evenings of my long lost youth, filled with light and smoke and strangers. I’ll be home soon. For now, I’m out here on the road traveling through the streets of my youth.