16 August, 2001 ~ 10ish AM, Pacific Standard Time
Flight # 7264, Sea-Tac Airport to Washington Dulles airport
37,000 feet
Diane ~
I'm watching the clouds halfheartedly. We're probably over Wyoming somewhere. I haven't much interest now in staring out the window. I've not been anticipating this flight, and certainly the Dulles airport is not any sort of ideal destination. Neither is Binghamton.
I'm listening to Stereolab's album, "Peng," on repeat. If the flight is four hours, I'll have to hear "Peng" three more times before touchdown. In Seattle, I found a CD lying on the ground called "Rachel's Handwriting LP," which is instrumental and quite lovely. Inside the CD booklet are pictures of a landscape from an airplane, and the quote "it all seemed like handwriting when seen from above...." Naturally, it would make a good choice for flight music, but I've decided against it. Rachel's cellos hold a touch of bitterness, and so do I, and I'm trying to let Stereolab and clouds dispel it.
I wrote to Cécile, as I flew into Washington state, "I think I will recognize Washington from the air. It's strange, this surreal brown-and-green map below me. I keep half-expecting to see large black lines denoting state borders, black names -- Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska -- carved into the earth. I almost feel as though each state should be assigned a different pastel color, like in atlases. I look on the United States map provided by United Airlines, trying to guess which mountain ranges are which, which rivers are which... But I'm going to put the map away soon, because I will know Washington. It will have a different hue to it. It will have an aura, and I will feel it. 'A landscape in a minor key,' Tom Robbins calls it."
I saw, on the evening I arrived in Washington, heaven. I'm pretty sure I've never seen anything more beautiful; not even Lake Mead by sunrise in the Nevada desert.
The sunset in the west is more real than the sunset in the east. It lowers its head into the Puget Sound, extinguishes itself with sleepy majesty, and one ISN'T necessarily forced to believe the sun will rise in the morning. In the east, we know the sun has a few time zones to traverse before it's actually night in America. We have those contented hours of leeway in which to meditate on our desperately blind belief that the sun is still shining somewhere, and someone -- someone on the same large patch of brown and green -- is still viewing it. By the time the sun has left Seattle, Binghamtonians are sleepily watching David Letterman, our own heads nodding, and we have nothing left to fear. The west coast hasn't got those extra hours; it is forced to watch its daylight disappear into water. The west coast is more aware; not to say they are less optimistic, but probably less IGNORANT. They have more to fear, and less inclination to bother with fear. It's got something to do with the sunset.
My plane dropped below the top layer of clouds, heading confidently toward the next layer. And in that moment -- grey above me and whitish grey below me, wisps of watery tissue all around me -- my plane flew directly into what my grandmother charmingly calls a "grace hole": streaks of sunlight exploding through cloud coverage. The sun was all around me, the clouds were castles, the light was god and goddess, at once stark and subdued. It was the heaven of religious pictures, the face of Jesus, of the Buddha, of the Goddess, of their castles. In a rare moment of religious epiphany, I believed whole-heartedly in a Creator, maybe several, and sensed that, 3,000 miles from home, I was not alone, never would be. And that was Washington, my first glimpse. A minor key indeed, but a beautiful one.
The sun takes a bath before it sleeps. I sit here on this plane recalling the gentle purple and orange melting of the Seattle sun. I imagine it resting, a ball of warm and blissful rock, among mermen. I see Ian in my mind, floating fearlessly in a Washington lake, his black hair -- flecked with faded sunset pink -- flooding smoothly against his shoulders. He is a gentle and fiery merman, basking in and guarding the sleeping area of the sun. Mount Rainier, a living, breathing, conscious geological force if I have ever seen one, watches with solid stoicism over mermen and their celestial charge.
The East Coast is oblivious to all of this. But I've seen now, I understand the procedures and processes; I believe in the unswerving loyalties of the Pacific Coast sun-babysitters. I'm leaving now, and I'm changed forever, I think. A little bit of minor-key, cello-like bitterness is rising in my throat though, plugging my ears. Here I go again, back to Eastern blindness.
06 August 2001 ~ 8.43 PM, Eastern Standard Time
Flight # 219 ~ Somewhere near western Nebraska or eastern Wyoming
33,000 feet
[written on a United Airlines napkin]
Jason ~
...Just passed the part of the country where stuff starts to get interesting again after a lot of horrendous midwest. This has to be brief; I'm listening to Stereolab ["Mars Audiac Quintet"] and I'm starting to think in French. Altitude sickness, anyone?
Love,
Carolyn*
06 August 2001 ~ 10PM, Pacific Standard Time
Ian's house
Seward Park-ish area of Seattle, WA
Diane ~
I made it. Am very, very tired. It was very, very good to hug Ian and Bronwyn again. Bronwyn, always one of the most beautiful people I've ever met, has become even more beautiful in the past two years. An awkward feeling, a twinge of jealousy and a vastly affectionate respect.
I think it's probably pretty beautiful here. Haven't seen much though. The sun set pretty quickly and I'm too exhausted to really look around or anything. Tomorrow.
07 August 2001 ~ 9.30 AM
Somewhere on the southwest shore of Lake Washington
Seattle, WA
Armed with camera, notebook, and Tom Robbins novel ("Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates"), I've set out on an adventure. I suppose I'm sort of jet-lagged, because I woke around 6.30, enthusiastically ready to find something to do. Am supposed to call Bronwyn later, so she can show me the sights, but at 6.30 in the morning, I didn't want to wake her. Ian's gone off to work, but before he left, he gave me a tip: "the lake is three blocks from here." The LAKE? Funny; from the house I couldn't see any damned lake.
Come to realize, I couldn't see the lake because it matches the sky... I'm sitting here, dipping my feet into Lake Washington, which is chilly and filled with little baby whitecaps. A man with a boat said, "I don't know if I should go out today; it seems pretty rough." Didn't seem too rough to ME...
Encountered a woman standing on the sidewalk, staring dreamily across the water. She appeared to be in some sort of trance. I ventured to ask if everything was okay; being the sort of person who is ALWAYS too willing to talk to the schizos and psychotics of the Binghamtonian persuasion, I guess I wanted to make sure I hadn't lost my touch... Anyway, the trance-woman said, "I'm waiting for The Tountain to come out..." I smiled, probably a little patronizingly, and said something to the effect of, "hm, how nice!" Well, sure as HELL, I just looked back behind me, and The Mountain came out. What the hell does that mean? It means that twenty minutes ago, there was no mountain there, just a sort of hazy, yellowish post-sunrise sky. And now, I am looking across the water at The Mountain. I'll be damned. There's this enormous ROCK sticking out of the earth. Mount Rainier. The volcano pictured on Brian's calender at his house. Holy SHIT, I never expected it to look so... real?
Am not sure where I'm going, but I've walked a mile or two around the lake so far, and I might as well put my shoes back on, get my feet out of the water, and keep going. See what I can see. Worse comes to worse, Ian and Bronwyn informed me of what bus to take to get home again.
Oh, and you know... This isn't how I pictured Seattle at ALL. I pictured it as much less forgiving. I pictured it as the inside of a grey cathedral, sort of dark and ancient and harsh. Sort of solitary, kind of gothy, filled with echoes and invisible vampire-people in long black capes. Rather, it's brightly sunny, warm, and intensely alive.
[Note: Upon returning to Binghamton, I asked Taze where his house had been in Seattle. I knew it was directly on Lake Washington, having seen a couple of pictures, but really had no idea where on Lake Washington, which is not, by any means, a puddle... He gave me a pretty vivid description of it, and my mouth dropped nearly off my face... I'd walked DIRECTLY past it that day, my first day out; I had in fact taken a picture of some flowers in THAT yard. I'd stopped and peered at that house for several minutes. It gave off a good vibe... Weird? It gets weirder...]
07 August 2001 ~ 11.05 AM, PST
A dock, waiting for the Bainbridge Island ferry
Seattle, WA
Dear Jason ~
There's an eerie sense of karmic activity going on right now. I suspect the Forces That Be have spread psychic scent-trails around Seattle so that I might follow them to exactly the right places. It's the only explanation I can think of. Probably, my brain is reacting to some subconscious honey-and-blackberry smell, leading me around by cosmic nasal stimuli... Though, so far, I've found Seattle to smell like nothing so much as coffee, asphalt, and faint salt-water...
I caught a bus somewhere between the Mount Baker neighborhood and the Leschi ("Lesh-Eye") neighborhood of Seattle. I'm not sure WHY I had the guts to get on a bus of unknown destination, because in, say, Manhattan, I wouldn't have ventured any further than one or two blocks, for fear of getting lost. Hell, it took me until I was seventeen to explore Binghamton with any real confidence, and I've NEVER gotten on a bus ANYWHERE, EVER before, without knowing EXACTLY where it was going. I haven't got a map, I haven't got a clear picture of Seattle's layout, I just decided to drift. Of course, still being slightly neurotic about getting lost, I did write down the names of the streets the bus drove down, in case of complete disorientation. East Alder, East Yesler, Yesler...
Once downtown, I began to recognize things. From the window of the bus, I saw the Columbia Tower; Ian sent me a photograph he'd taken of it, and I've been carrying it around with me for months. I took it as a sign to get off the bus immediately, which I did.
After a year of hearing Taze complain about Binghamtonian coffee as it so unfavorably compares to Seattle's, I had to find a café that seemed appropriately classy. The first one I came across was Ancient Grounds, a "coffeehouse and art gallery of natural history," as the free postcards so quaintly read. Sure as HELL, one of the totem poles from the Kiana Lodge -- known better as the interior of the Twin Peaks Great Northern Hotel -- was there: the one with the whale's tail on top. A piece of art I've seen so many damned times it may as well have been sitting in my living room for the past several years. Not only THAT, but the proprietor of the place claims to have helped acquire the totem poles and things FOR the Kiana. They're permanent fixtures there, apparently, not just props for the TV show. Naturally quite excited, in a way only a super-caffeinated Peaks Freak can be, I asked the guy how to get to Bainbridge Island, where the Kiana is. (That is, it's on Bainbridge Island, in a town called Poulsbo, on a road called Sandy Hook, at least according to the information online that I printed and brought along with me... Doesn't sound TOO difficult, I suppose, except my internal map of this area is still AWFULLY hazy, and I AM easily disoriented...) The coffeehouse owner was obviously very excited to talk about it. So here I am, now seated comfortably on the very front deck of the Bainbridge Island ferry. The motors are running, but we haven't left shore yet. Wait, now we have. "The lonesome foghorn blows..." [--Pete Martell, "Twin Peaks."] Yes, and it blows directly into my ear. Gahd this is exciting! More later!
07 August 2001 ~ 12.05 PM, PST
Bus #90
Bainbridge Island, WA
J. ~
On the bus to Poulsbo, not paying the slightest attention to how to get back to my friends' house. Or back to Seattle, for that matter. I'm on a mission. A fucking MISSION, I say. The Poulsbo ("pulls-bo") bus driver said he goes "within a half mile" of the Lodge. Oh! And of course, this is also the place where Laura's body was washed up on "the rocky beach, completely naked and wrapped in plastic..." At this point, I'm so ecstatic, I'm jealous of myself. If ONLY you were here. "Wish you were here" postcards and the small collection of napkins I've obtained for you don't hold a candle to my desire to have you here with me right now. I'm excited, but I'm also feeling mildly guilty, thinking of you, writing this to you. You deserve to be here every bit as much as I do, probably more so. You, who saw Twin Peaks when it was originally broadcast, you who can correct my slight Peaksian misquotes, you who ate Cherry Garcia ice cream and coffee with me as we watched the pilot episode in your apartment, you who seem to have such a profound sense of timing, and you who took as much solace in those videos as I... You, who got me hooked every bit as much as that theme song... Letters seem inadequate right now, almost offensive, as though in describing these scenes, I'm boasting that I'm here and you're not, which is certainly not the intention. Rather, I feel this is the only way I have right now of having you HERE, of SHOWING this to you. You're here, in this place, at this time. This is my gift to you, with much love and with inexpressible gratitude.
And think! All this and a cup of coffee for under ten bucks! ("Diane, that's $9.85 for two bus rides, a ferry, an americano with cream, a blackberry-peach muffin, and a whole lot of nice people who've talked to me...") More soon...
07 August 2001 ~ 1.07 PM, PST
Kiana Lodge
Bainbridge Island, WA
Am sitting on a couch in front of a fireplace. I don't believe this is Benjamin Horne's special fireplace, but it's kind of difficult to tell, as there are fireplaces everywhere here... I've sneaked into the building at the encouragement of Eric, the gardener at the Kiana. The exterior of this building was used as the Martell residence, and is of course, the area where Laura's body was found directly outside. It's strange; from the TV show, I always thought she washed up on the shore of a lake, but the body of water outside is part of the Puget Sound. (A "sound," if I haven't mentioned yet, is the aesthetically correct word for "bay," so far as I can tell...) Nevertheless, I picked up a couple of pebbles from the "rocky beach." I also had Eric-the-gardener take a picture of me standing in front of the majestically familiar chunk of driftwood. Upon hearing THAT request, he had a couple of questions:
"Are you one of those 'Twin Peaks' people?"
"Uh... yeah..."
"Are you with the tour group or whatever? I thought that wasn't until next weekend..."
"No, I decided to do it myself. I think it'll be more of a thrill to find the stuff without the benefit of a guided tour. It's kind of amazing I found this place from directions posted on the internet in 1992..."
"And where are you from, Carolyn? Or is it Caroline?"
"Carolyn. I'm from Binghamton, New York."
"And you're staying in Seattle? And you FOUND this place on your own? People who've lived here all their LIVES can't find this place!"
So, for all my troubles with frequent disorientation, and considering that this IS my first day out in Washington, I've done a DAMN good job of getting around. It's GOT to be fate.
Weird; there really are animal heads hung on all the walls. It's BEAUTIFUL here. Breath-taking. And it looks quite a bit like I imagined it, although the layout is completely different. Oh, yes, and it smells SO nice here. Like salt-water and wood. I am absolutely speechlessly impressed. I had to hold back tears while I was standing outside looking at the water. So familiar. Sort of like a very vivid case of déjà vu. Like attending a dream.
I have to get out of here in case someone catches me and asks what I'm doing here...
07 August 2001 ~ mid-afternoon, PST
The ferry
Puget Sound
Taze ~
I took a picture of those seagulls you kept talking about that follow the ferries. I also met a guy named George who's been talking with me for about an hour about peyote and sweat-lodges and things. Neat. I concede; you have MUCH to be proud of with regard to your hometown. That might sound vaguely sarcastic, but it's not meant as such. It's beautiful here. It smells good here. People are interesting. People are interesting and talkative. I concede; I'm even more impressed than I thought I'd be...
Peyote George, as he shall be presently known for purposes of record-keeping, assisted me in finding my way to the Pike Place Market, a quaint farmer's market along the lines of Boston's Quincy Market, only with more fruits and veggies than restaurant-type stuff... Well-fed, and deliriously exhausted, I taught myself the intricacies of the Seattle bus system (which are NOT so intricate), and returned to Ian's house, probably with blackberry juice all over my face... Needless to say, upon hearing of my day's trek, Ian and Bronwyn were fairly impressed...
08 August 2001 ~ 3.45 PM, PST
La Taqueria, with Bronwyn
Olympia, WA
[written on a napkin]
Jason ~
I've heard testimony that menudo is ishy. I'm skipping that adventure for now... *smile* Love, Carolyn
09 August 2001 ~ 1.03 PM, PST
The porch, Ian's house
Somewhere in or close to Seward Park, Seattle, WA
Diane ~
Went to Olympia today with Bronwyn to check out the Evergreen State College. I've already applied there; I knew several months ago that I was in love with western Washington, and this was THE school in western Washington that met all my criteria. Even disregarding its location, it appealed to me above and beyond most of the other schools I looked at. The college itself is, as depicted in its brochures, beautiful: nestled in trees, as the name suggests; quiet and calm and... pulling... Every mass exerts a force of attraction on every other mass; so far as I recall, that's called gravity. At Evergreen, I could almost FEEL particles sticking to me, could almost feel them trying to join together, to form some object dense enough to bring me closer to them, to hold me... An unusual feeling, having particles communicate with oneself. Not, all things considered, an unpleasant feeling, but frustrating in a way... The way long-distance love is frustrating. I belong with you, but I just can't do it yet... Not yet... A few months left... Count the days with me...
Talked with an admissions counselor named Corey about my transcripts and what I've got to do to get myself into the school. Shouldn't be too hard; I've got a lot of planning to do, but I'm getting used to this kind of bureaucratic crap, solving problems that I've previously been too unmotivated to bother with.
More importantly than the college thing, I made peace with my friend.
Bronwyn and I are eerily alike in many ways. I'm not sure if she really sees that. I'm not sure how to tell her what I see in her, how I feel about her. As I wrote to you a couple of years ago, Bronwyn is above and beyond THE most beautiful girl-woman I've ever laid eyes upon, physically speaking. She has beautiful eyes, a little reminiscent of Jason's. She's thin and unflashy, but ultra-feminine, about my height and weight, and -- pardon me for this, but the one and only person I cannot help but imagine posing for black and white nude photographs. The sort of figure I'd probably go out of my way to peek at in a locker room. Bronwyn's is a vaguely tragic aura, but she's got guts, an extraordinarily rare combination. She's a princess who can't find the crown on her head, but who knows damn well it's around here someplace. I can see -- literally, with my eyes -- her capacity to love, and I can feel twisting knots of yearning in her, yearnings for all sorts of improvements to her world. She's got small, sweet hands, delicately shaped but probably well-used. I would like to hold one of those hands and say to her, "I think you're beautiful."
Naturally, of course, I cannot do that. I confess; even in the ultra-liberal setting of Seattle, I'm not comfortable enough with my own sexuality to discuss, face to face, an affection for a girl, no matter how platonic it may or may not be. Besides, there is a painfully closed door between Bronwyn and me. The guts that once afforded her the luxury of bolding telling her boyfriend, "look, I'm a bitch, I'm using you, and it's over between us"; the guts that once afforded ME the luxury of assuming a sexy, bitchy, Nicole Kidman-esque pose in order to throw my housemates out, are the same guts that compromise the externalizing of many things sentimental, emotional, uninhibited and honest. I think I'm maybe a little more closed-off than she is, a little more paranoid of letting myself be known... But certainly, I recognize the reluctant aloofness in her. Maybe I should have brought a bottle of Bully Hill Goat wine; THAT always seems to bring out the tidal waves of little dramatics.
But back to Olympia. We sat side by side, she eating a plate of vegetarian vomitus, I eating a plate of rolled-up carnivorous vomitus. I stared at the girl behind the counter, obliviously sweeping. She stared at the decor on the walls. This was the awkwardness of a friendship emerging from beneath the untended-for-two-years rubble of New Mexican igneous rocks. A Radioheadish tension. This was also the tension of two people trying to pretend they don't know what they have in common.
I broke the tension. Sort of. I said, "Can I ask you sort of a serious question?" I said it liltingly, the voice Ian is so irked by: "you make it seem like things don't really bother you..." But what other choice did I have? To Bronwyn's credit, she didn't cringe outwardly. I'm telling you, the girl has guts.
"Is this a really bad time for me to be here?" I asked. "I mean..." (When you end a thought with, "I mean..." there is less seriousness to the query, less harshness; the other person isn't put on the spot quite so obviously.) Bronwyn drew in a slow breath, and I knew I had to continue or risk the all-powerful demon of silence taking over the conversation. "I mean, I know you and Ian are sort of... together... or not-together... Or something... I'm not even sure what's going on, but I know there's a lot of... of tension... And I guess I just wanted to make sure I'm not making things worse?"
Her expression was almost genuine. Mine, I'm sure, was not. We didn't look at each other. She assured me that the tension was no fault of mine, that my presence in Seattle was not to blame for her and Ian's problems. And she said, "Ian told me--" (And those three words froze me; I underwent a bout of terror similar to that which I'd felt when my mom found my journal and began to confess she'd read a few pages... The WHAT DO YOU KNOW syndrome. The sickened weakness of an adrenaline overload.) "Ian told me that... stuff happened... in Binghamton..."
Walls came down. Not all of them, of course, but I could easily imagine the ceramic cow-skull on the wall of La Taqueria crumbling to the floor and smashing as a result of the seismic vibrations of relief and fear... I had nightmares about this, for gahd's sake. I'd dreamed of Bronwyn, clad in a long white gown, shooting herself in the head in a dark alley and screaming, "you killed me." I'd coated myself in invisible plaster; I'd made a point of not making eye contact with Ian when Bronwyn was in the room. I guess I hadn't really understood exactly WHY I'd allowed so much guilt to pool up on Bronwyn's behalf. It wasn't, after all, the first time I'd played the role of The Other Woman. I never cared this much about it. I NEVER felt any sympathy for the Significant Other, and the compulsion to hide had never really occurred to me, except with Bronwyn. WHY did I have this phobia of hurting her?
In the midst of the confessional earthquake, the answer struck me like a brick dropping off Starbucks' corporate headquarters. Bronwyn, with her pretty green eyes and her tragic "fuck-you" style of confronting the world, is NOT the clingy, whiny, unstable bimbo that I might have secretly wished she was. She is nothing of the kind. And there we were, both dignified and a little sad, with the ghost of a tall, brown-eyed boy seated squarely between us; but neither of us loved him more than the other. There was an undeniable mutual jealousy, but no more than a drop or two of resentment. She loved him every bit as much as I, genuinely. She was not stupid, she was not ugly, she was not pitiful in any way. She was, in fact, a lot like me. In that moment, I felt I knew Bronwyn very, very well. I could so easily recall how I'd caught her, a few years back, staring at Ian with a look of longing in her eyes. I knew. I always knew. I don't know if she'd ever caught me in that silly state; I recall kind of wishing that she would, and I'd even gone so far as to ask her, "if I was to tell Ian I like him a lot, do you think he'd end up breaking my heart?" She'd said, "no, he isn't that sort of person." I'd asked, "and would it bother you? I know you're pretty close..." She'd said, "No, it wouldn't bother me. We're just good friends. I think you should go for it." I should have known better. I DID know better. And I DIDN'T go for it. I was too chickenshit. She went for it. She was the one with the guts. But once, we'd been in the same boat. We'd fallen for the same person at the same time; we'd probably both lost a good amount of brain cells and overloaded a lot of nerve endings over him. We had every reason in the world to feel competitive, but I felt a strong sense of sisterhood with Bronwyn, and there was no reason for hatred. There was room only for sympathy.
She said, "I guess... I feel a little like I've had to be in competition with you, but..."
"But I don't want that." I said, steadily, genuinely; for the first time ever, being completely open with my friend.
A brief, but infinite pause. Then I said, "I've felt the same way about you. A lot. But I don't want to compete. And I don't want you to feel that way about me. There's no reason for that." We smiled at each other. We smiled to ourselves. The conversation was over, and we could return to our taco-things and small talk. I can't speak for her thoughts, but I know that as I sipped my soda and picked at some beans, I was thinking of Ian, was reliving the intensity of our nervous first kiss. I was trying to recall his expression as I drunkenly told him, at the confluence of the Chenango and Susquehanna Rivers, that I loved him. I was hearing my This Mortal Coil CD playing as I'd fallen asleep with my arms around him. I was trying to psychically give all of this to Bronwyn, some form of explanation, a sort of proof that I'd never wanted to hurt her, that I'd simply been overwhelmed by the intensity of the sweet boy who'd been marinating in my thoughts for so long...
I don't want you to feel that way about me... I didn't, I honestly didn't. That wasn't bull. I didn't want Bronwyn to feel threatened. I didn't want to feel threatened. I wanted to start over, just the two of us, no boys involved, and see if we couldn't make some sort of nice little friendship. But then again... there was a tiny little twinge of glee: you were jealous of ME? Bronwyn: the pretty one, the educated one, the sociable one, the one with the guts... She thought she needed to compete with ME? It was touching. Baffling, but touching.
We drove back to Seattle in relative silence, except for Björk on the CD-player. I first discovered Björk around the time I met Ian and Bronwyn. We both sang aloud, she a little louder than me. I wish I want to stay here. I wish this be enough. I wish I only loved you. I wish simplicity. Used to play that song on repeat at college. I was absolutely convinced that Björk was my guardian angel or something. Unaware that everybody ELSE thought the same thing, of course... Did Bronwyn ever pass my room while I had Björk on, while Björk and I were sharing an intimate moment of drums and lust and wishing we had guts?
I wish I'd only look, and didn't have to touch... I wish I'd only smell this, and didn't have to taste... How can I ignore? This is sex without touching. I'm going to explore. I'm only into this to enjoy... Oh, Bronwyn, if only I could possibly tell you everything that's been on my mind for the past three years... Not just the thoughts, but the emotions... If only I could explain everything to you, if only I could stop using the word "drama" and actually SHOW it to you... One more horrendous habit I picked up from Jason: never show the effect of the drama, never really explain it, just announce that it's there, and everything will be fine. While Björk is wishing for simplicity, I'm wishing I could tell you that I consider you one of the best girl-friends I've ever had in my whole life. Simplicity, indeed.
Wine without guilt.
Am writing this outside, by moonlight, accompanied by a Jones Green Apple Soda. Am very tired. More later.
09 August 2001 ~ 2.20 PM, PST
Boren Ave. and Fairview Ave. ~ The Timberline Tavern
Downtown Seattle
Jason ~
So here I am, sitting on the steps of the building used for the interior shots of The Roadhouse in "Twin Peaks." The place doesn't open for another three hours, so I haven't actually seen whether or not it actually looks anything like The Roadhouse. The windows are painted black, and while it is sort of a neat building if you stand here looking at it, I'm kind of disappointed that I can't see the INTERIOR. Oh well. Close enough for now, I guess. Now, perhaps, on to the Space Needle or something.
Had chai at the Cherry Street Coffeehouse this morning, on (you guessed it!) Cherry Street, between 1st and 2nd, I think. There's a story behind the Cherry Street Coffeehouse... At Christmas, I expended all my creative energy on finding Taze THE perfect gift. Since he was always bitching about the low quality of Binghamtonian java, I elected to import some genuine Seattle coffee (I know, I know, it all comes from South America anyway, but he would hear none of it), pair it up with a new coffeemaker, and put a cute bow on it. He'd told me the name of his favorite coffeehouse, a place called B&O Espresso, and I trusted that he'd forget he'd ever told me anything about it, which he did. I looked up the place on Yahoo, found a phone number, and ended up calling the Cherry Street Coffeehouse by mistake. For SOME reason, the Cherry Street guy didn't correct me. Anyway, I had them ship me a pound of beans, and oddly enough, it WAS better than anything Binghamtonian that I'd ever had, although I lied to the Java Joe's crew and told them they're unbeatable.
Anyway, I found the Cherry Street place, where I spent about an hour reading a newspaper called "The Stranger." (I also spent a few minutes composing a postcard to Java Joe's... Maybe some sort of guilt thing...) Have you ever read The Stranger? Paste a name-tag on my shirt that says "Carolyn: ignorant small-town girl," but I was shocked and delighted by The Stranger. Imagine, if you can, a town so liberal that it lines its streets with free-paper stands filled with news about indie-rock, advice columns about weird sex, and personal ads such as this one: Pumper's Group: Looking for men and women into cock-pumping Let's have a group pump! Must be disease free. Box 5041 Not that I've never seen papers like this, but never outside of dimly-lit bars. Or porn shops. It's about damned time somebody brought this sort of journalism out onto the streets, and let people read it in broad daylight, in coffeehouses, without blushing. Imagine the fits that Binghamton's religious-right would pitch! If only they could see me now.
Am wondering if maybe the Timberline Tavern is a gay bar. It's got rainbow flags hanging above the door. Funny: I asked about twelve million people how to get here, and nobody blinked an eye. Imagine if I was walking around in Binghamton and asked "how do I get to Chances?" of everyone I saw! I'd probably get beat up. Or worse.
After leaving Cherry Street, I took a nice long ride on the #11 bus, all over fucking creation, looking for this place. It was a nice ride, actually, although I have no idea where I was. My set of directions was really specific on how to get to the Kiana Lodge (although they didn't mention it takes you all day to GET there...), but kind of vague about getting to the Timberline. I guess I COULD have purchased a map of Seattle, but that seems like an admission of defeat. Come to think of it, I'm not entirely sure I know where I am NOW. Am now going to get up, and wander until I locate something tall, so I can figure out where the fuck I am.
09 August 2001 ~ 3.15 PM, PST
Space Needle Observation Deck, 520 feet up
Seattle
Jason ~
Okay, I made it up to the top. It's awfully pretty up here, and less intimidating than the Sears Tower in Chicago. Too bad about all the dumb tourists around. I mean, I'm one too, but at least I don't have a screaming baby hanging off me. Actually, come to think of it, I'm NOT a stupid tourist. I came here armed with a great deal of information. I can stand here and point to the Puget Sound, and to Lake Washington, and to Mount Baker (a cruddy little thing in the distance, although in the right weather, it's probably beautiful), and Mount Rainier. I know that the Columbia Tower is the tallest building in the city, and that Mount Rainier is 14,000 feet high, give or take a few hundred... Amazing, some of the dumb questions the tourists come up with. Is that a lake? Is it going to rain here, because I heard it rains a lot here? Where's downtown? As of right now, I no longer consider myself a tourist. Okay, as of twenty minutes from now, after I've purchased my obligatory Space Needle keychain in the gift shop, I no longer consider myself a tourist.
09 August 2001 ~ 4.55 PM, PST
The bus (#39)
Seattle
J. ~
Seattle busses are freaking FANTASTIC. You can practically ride all the way to the East Coast on them, if you wish (argh; WHY would anybody wish?), for just a buck-fifty. They just drive and drive and drive forever. And every time I've felt like taking one, it's been there, waiting for me.
Received a somewhat-nasty email from Taze this morning. Oh, not that he said anything I didn't deserve, and if *I* had been the one sending nasty emails to me, I would have added a few more nasty things, and thrown in a virtual punch to the gut. What DID upset me though, was his terrible sense of timing. I'm on vacation! I'm supposed to be relaxing! I'm supposed to be gleefully singing "the hills are alive with the sound of music!" while standing atop the Space Needle. I'm supposed to be making friends with loonies and hippies and Nader-supporters! I've been trying all day to get this whole email business out of my head, but it hasn't been easy. If ONLY I could have left Binghamton behind completely! All of it! What if I'd arrived here, completely naked! No luggage. No baggage! No memory! It would have been nicer, I think. It would have been nice if Taze had saved his complaints until later, too. Yesterday, I thought briefly, I think I'm ready to deal with Taze, to lay things out on the table, to hug and make up and apologize and maybe accuse a little bit... I really planned on going home and addressing all the stupid little things. But he couldn't wait another few days. That angers me in a way. Though I must repeat: he didn't say ANYTHING that was unjustified.
Ian plans to take me to a show tonight: a band called 764-HERO. They got their name from road-signs advising people to call 764-HERO to turn in violators of Seattle's traffic lane laws. "Yes! You too can be a hero! Turn in somebody for driving in the carpool lane when they're not supposed to!" How heroic. Anyway, the band didn't sound too bad on the record Ian played me this morning, so this could be cool...
Have to go; have to watch for my stop...
09 August 2001 ~ 11.25 PM, PST
Graceland -- a bar/club type place
Seattle
Jason ~
The headlining band isn't onstage yet, so I'm sitting here zoning out and drinking a beer called Olympia (aw!) in a cute little Orangina-like bottle. It's not too bad. Fortunate, because I hate most beer. I think the cute bottle is making it taste better.
Noticed a poster a few minutes ago advertising an upcoming act: "Julie Cruise (of Twin Peaks soundtrack fame), August 21." Fucking HELL. I'm leaving on the 16th. This is SO unfair. At least we know she's still alive after all this time, though, even though they spelled her name wrong. One of my favorite bands in the whole world is going to be playing here at the end of the month: a band called Low. General world-wide consensus is that Seattle's music scene is second-to-none. I don't know about 764-HERO yet, and neither Low nor Julee Cruise has roots here, as far as I know, but STILL...
Ian and his best friend Matt are sitting next to me and looking at me strangely for scribbling in a notebook while at a show, so it's back to beer and daydreaming now...
10 August 2001 ~ 3.51 PM, PST
A bus stop at 126th St. S.
Somewhere between the Skyway district of Seattle, and Renton, WA
Dear Jaymi ~
It took me several hours of grueling uphill travel, but I finally made it up here.
I woke up this morning with a plan. I needed to find your house. You know the feeling you get sometimes, that something's guiding you? The feeling that the timing is perfect? That there's someplace you need to be, something you need to do, and you've just got to do it, no matter how foolish it is? I woke up with that feeling. I was going to find your house. Didn't matter if you were home or not, though I was greatly hoping you were. But if not, there was something I had to accomplish anyway.
I broke down and bought a map in Rainier Beach. I was going to try SO hard while I was here, not to be a stupid tourist, not to be poking my nose into maps. I'm here for reasons. I'm here to SEE certain things; some of them, I've planned, and other, I think, could not possibly be planned. I thought I'd be more likely to run across some of the unplanned things if I was looking AROUND me instead of into a Rand McNally masterpiece. But I guess I needed that map. There's no way I would have gotten here otherwise.
I met a man on the way up here, a lost-looking gentleman who'd taken a walk into the hills and was a little disoriented. His name was Matthew, and we talked for maybe half an hour. Before we parted ways, he said a prayer for me. I didn't have the heart to tell him about you, your self-proclaimed Wiccan tendencies, the velvet skirt you were wearing when I first saw you, the vampire stuff, and the quasi-evil grin that so frequently adorned your eyes... I let him say his prayer, and I listened intently. After all, I've never heard of prayers doing any damage, really.
I made it all the way up the hill, playing Tori Amos' "Little Earthquakes" on repeat on my discman.
My friends are always accusing me of living in the past. The ones who know me best, that is. I'm frequently caught reminiscing about you, about Java Kids, about hoards of people I've loved and lost. I've been told hundreds of times, "get over it." I'm told, "let things go." I'm told to allow for evolution. I'm told to move on. I'm told that if I don't move on, I'll never be happy, I'll never be on the lookout for new experiences. To some extent, I know it's valid advice, but some things, I've never been able leave behind.
The last time I saw you, you were typing away at a computer, half-ignoring me. I'd had enough wine that night to kill somebody twice my size, and I can't even recall what I said to you. I remember a lot of background noise, a lot of dishes clanging, some music playing on the stereo... I remember you were wearing a cute hat... I remember hugging you, maybe spouting off some nonsense about Madonna, or dead people, or Meggin's K-Y Jelly-and-New-York-Times sculpture. And I don't remember anything else. That was THE last time I saw you. How am I supposed to consider that to be the END? Such a vague, undramatic ending to such an intense friendship... You were gone the next morning, and I was clutching my head and listening forlornly to Portishead CDs, unaware that you'd literally disappeared into the night. No goodbye, no announcement that that was it. Just a quiet departure.
THIS was supposed to be the end? We became friends over a June bonfire. We sang love songs together. We walked through dark streets at three in the morning for a cup of coffee at Paul's Diner. You told me stories that scared the shit out of me for weeks on end. You held my hand through my first broken heart. We broke into Sarah's house together. I kissed you without ever having to touch you. We swam naked in the reservoir. You gave me little bits of silver-colored rocks you'd found in a parking lot and told me they were for luck. You made promises to me that you'd always love me, that you'd always do whatever you could for me. I loved you, dammit, and I never cared what anybody said about that. To this day, I won't listen to a negative word anybody says about you, no matter how true it is. I loved you, regardless of the lies you told people, and the money you owe people, and the whispered rumors about your mental state. I never accepted that you, and everything, just ceased to exist, ceased to have any significance, the morning I awoke, slightly hung-over, to find you gone. That WASN'T the end. I will NEVER accept that that was the end.
I came up here today to prove that things don't just cease to exist. I came here to prove that when people go, they end up somewhere. I came here because of the Susquehanna River; because I've never really known where it goes, and I assume it goes someplace, but I've never been able to silence the weak voice of doubt that insists it just simply falls off the edge of the world and bursts into particles. I came here to find out what happens to things that are no longer present; to pinpoint the realm into which people go when they've allegedly ended. I came here to let go a little. I came here to know that, if I let go of you, if I let you end, you still are.
They say Binghamton captures people, that there's a Curse: you get stuck there, you always go back. I used to believe that, but I'm not so sure anymore. So many people have made it out. A few of them -- many of my favorites -- have not returned. There are rumored sightings: our meager way of proving to ourselves, as those who DO feel trapped here, that we're not the only ones unfortunate enough to have no alternative outside our town, no feasible way to start anew in another location. And a few of us DO get stuck, resign ourselves, reluctantly settle in for a long, overcast nap. We get houses, we get families, we pretend we're in love, we pretend we give a shit, we smile at the neighbors we see every damned day, because it's a choice between smiling or dying. I wanted to believe there ARE alternatives. I wanted to hold out hope for another alternative for myself. I wanted to be a witness to another human being who's overcome the Curse.
I found your house today with relative ease. I found a hiccup of joy in my throat when I saw your street. I very nearly screamed when I realized that the house directly in front of me was yours. Even with the stupid map, I almost didn't believe I'd ever find it. Road after road, turn after turn, and that ENDLESS hill -- just seemed like some demonic attempt at destroying my certainty about this being the Right Time...
A middle-aged shirtless man opened the door when I rang the bell. He didn't seem inclined to talk, just advised me to bang on your window, but not to be surprised if you didn't answer. He said, "those kids sleep like the dead." He said, "I don't even know if they're here now, because nobody made the coffee this morning." He said, "Sometimes they just take off and I don't see them for a day or two."
It was all I needed to hear; those small tidbits that so accurately described you, what I remember of you... Your coffee habit, your disappearing acts... And of course, the "sleeping like the dead," your nocturnal instinct... That was what I came here for. For those tiny, insignificant words that proved to me that there IS life after Binghamton. More importantly, that you didn't fall off the edge of the world and become nothing more than memories and particles...
I can let go now, I think. Not stop caring, not stop thinking of you as a friend... But I can stop obsessively reminiscing; I no longer need to take responsibility for keeping you alive. You ARE alive, and evidently, your essence hasn't changed much.
As Jason would say, "nothing ever really does end." Now -- NOW -- I believe him. Now, I know nothing ends, and I can let things evolve, without neurosis, without the terror of some mysterious void that swallows and annihilates friends during the night while I might be sleeping off six glasses of wine. I just needed to be sure of you.
I left a bag of Java Joe's coffee with your housemate, Eric. I hope it gets to you. A little bit of proof for you, that the place you came from has not ceased to exist, that your history is not gone. I know some of it hasn't been pleasant for you. But Java Joe's coffee, I know, will be a reminder of good things. I hope you recognize it as an expression of affection instead of a nagging tug from your past. I admire your nomadic spirit; I do not try to suppress it. This was merely a token to let you know that I haven't ended either.
I'm sitting here at this bus stop now, and I feel more secure than I have in a very long time, despite the fact that I don't know where this bus is going to take me. A sort of revelatory thunderhead has opened up and dumped a downpour of understanding on me. I still wish I could have seen you, talked to you, hugged you, held your hand, looked into your eyes and asked, "so... what've you been up to?" I still have the feeling that you and I have things to accomplish together; that you'll remain significant to my life for a long time to come, despite whatever distance might lie between us. Maybe I'll get the opportunity to see you before I leave the West Coast. Maybe not. I will see you again, someday, somewhere. I have no doubt. I am at peace right now, really. And if I wish very much that you would have been home today, it's maybe only because I've forgotten exactly what color your eyes are...
Love Always...
~Carolyn*
10 August 2001 ~ late afternoon
A bus (#39)
Seattle
[written on a Seattle's Best Coffee napkin]
Jason ~
Rode a bus (#106) today that went underground. Got a frozen tea-and-juice-thing at a Seattle's Best downtown, but didn't stay long. Corporate coffeehouses make me feel dirty, and not in a good way. Located Jaymi's house today. That's a tale for a bigger napkin though... PS -- Guess who owns a Julee Cruise poster now?
11 August 2001 ~ 3.20 PM, PST
Taco Del Mar, 1st and Union
Downtown Seattle
[written on a napkin]
Jason ~
Fish tacos are the specialty here, but I once saw a fish taco up close in San Diego and it didn't smell too good. Am sticking to vanilla soda and REAL tacos (aka, beef).
11 August 2001 ~ late afternoon
Matt's house, somewhere near the Space Needle
Seattle
Diane ~
I'm really trying very hard not to be grumpy and bitchy, but it's REALLY sort of difficult right now. I guess there's always got to be that one cranky time during any vacation; like, for instance, the day at Disneyland when the hurricanes hit and I nearly went homicidal from being hot and wet and in the company of millions of hot, wet, cranky tourists. Today is sort of the equivelent of that day, and I'm trying very hard not to let it get to me...
Ian and Bronwyn and I came here last night for a little birthday party for Matt, which was nice, although I was pretty tired from my walk up that hill, and I didn't feel like being sociable... Ian and I slept on the floor in Matt's living room, and today's agenda included showing Matt's brother and sister around town. This wouldn't have been a bad thing, really, except Matt's sister and I just have NOT hit it off. She seems so terribly insecure; she's been nagging her brothers all day and this morning, she refused to go outside -- to the fucking GAS STATION -- without applying 45 minutes' worth of makeup. Dude. I've gone to the gas station in my NIGHTGOWN before. What's the deal with putting on makeup for gas station clerks? Please!
Don't get me wrong; we have done a lot of cool stuff today. We all went down to this little beach-area on the Puget Sound, and we poked around in a little shop full of weird musical instruments. We went to a neat little place called Ye Olde Curiousity Shoppe, a cramped gift shop and museum type thing full of ancient coins, shrunken heads (no shit!), mummies, and a two-headed baby pig preserved in formaldehyde. We had a good lunch (WHY are there taco places on every corner in this city? No wonder Ian's so obsessed with tacos!), we went to the Pike Place Market again, we sat down on a nice patch of grass under a nice tree and enjoyed the sunshine, we rode a streetcar... It all would have been really great if we'd been travelling with more hearty companions. Matt's sister complained several times that her feet hurt (obviously, she's not the sort who'd climb up Jaymi's hill on a whim...), and I kept feeling a very negative energy from her, as if she was trying not to be miserable. Or maybe she was trying to be MORE miserable so that somebody would pay attention to her. I'm not sure, exactly. Plus, she's been making comments all day -- and all of last night, too -- about how much younger we all are than her. Insecure much, big sis? I dunno. She bugs me.
I've had such a great time exploring on my own. It's very rare that I've gotten a chance to do things my own way, on my own timing, without worrying about anyone else. With four other people around, it's a little more difficult to have a good time, I guess, even though Ian and Matt seem pretty hearty and aren't the sort of people who need to stop at bathrooms at ALL the wrong moments, or need to curl their hair for an hour (which is what Big Sis is doing right now...). It's just so much easier when you're exploring for one.
One neat thing did happen today -- just thrilled me in a stupid way I guess... Our little posse was walking up a street when a tour bus passed us. It was full of older people and was called "Duck Tours" or something. As it passed us, the tour guide announced on his bullhorn, "And out the left side, you'll see some Seattle natives... Careful, don't feed them!" Then -- fucking WEIRD!!! -- all the old people grinned out their windows and blew little whistles at us that sounded like ducks quacking. Seattle natives? I grinned. None of us WAS actually a native, as Ian and Matt grew up in Idaho, and I think the siblings grew up in California, but it still made me feel warm and cozy... A native? Me? It was just a little comment made by a passing motorist, and gahd knows I know enough to ignore most of THOSE, but this one sort of touched me, assured me that I belong here somehow, that I fit in with the "natives."
Anyway, in a little while, we're heading off to Ian's house. Matt's girlfriend, Kathleen, has planned this huge surprise party for him, complete with a bunch of Matt's friends from his and Ian's hometown in Idaho. Matt is supposed to think he had his party last night, that the surprise was having his brother and sister in town and going out for dinner. Speaking of Big Sis, she keeps poking her head out of the bathroom and asking if her hair looks okay, so I'd better hide this notebook. Gahd knows I have NO intention of causing ANY drama in Seattle; I'll be facing enough of that when I return to Binghamton. I'm just going to cheer myself the hell up so that I can have a good time at the party tonight.
11 August 2001 ~ Night
Ian's house
Seattle
Diane...
I'm standing in the middle of a teeter-totter, sort of halfway in between feeling REALLY low and REALLY high.
I want to go out and socialize, meet all of Matt and Ian's friends from Idaho, make some new friends maybe, have another drink, and spend the night laughing and screwing around. On the other hand, I feel like disappearing into a little hole.
Parties have always been a little difficult for me. I'm always shy until I have a drink or two, and then I either have a lot of fun, or get even more shy and sit in a corner moping. I'm trying VERY hard not to mope. I keep telling myself it's NOT so hard to meet new people, and it's not so hard to just walk up to somebody and introduce myself. I'm an expert at stupid small-talk. It seems fake, but I'm good at it. This is a great opportunity for me to make some new friends! So get your silly ass out there, Carolyn, and fucking talk to people!
Easier said than done.
I've had exactly one glass of wine, and one sip of somebody's screwdriver. I'm obviously not sober anymore, and I'm feeling quite awkward about Ian's presence. Am just thinking about the last time he saw me drunk. Maybe I'm imagining it, but there seems to be so much tension between us. Diane, I confessed too much to him in Binghamton. I got too drunk and couldn't shut up. I fell too hard, too fast. I loved him too much. I didn't think before I kissed him. I overstepped some boundaries. I'll never be able to look at him, ever again, with the innocence of "just friends."
I no longer have any idea how to relate to him. I'm drunk enough so that I cannot possibly deny I have feelings for him, but I'm sober enough to be neurotic that those feelings are showing. I've become kind of scared of being drunk. The last time, I got drunk quite purposefully, thinking, gee, I really ought to take this opportunity to completely lower my inhibitions and tell Ian that I love him... I don't know what I was thinking. Why didn't I think about what would happen a few months later when I found myself here, with him, with all his friends around, with Brownyn here? Was I thinking that he'd forget everything? That I would forget everything? He's done a pretty good job of pretending nothing significant really happened, which is undoubtedly a good thing, as it's none of anybod else's busines, and nobody would benefit from any more information than they already have... But it still sort of hurts, even though it shouldn't.
Last night, Kathleen (who is NOT the Goddess of Tact), asked me (quietly, to her credit), "do you feel weird being around Bronwyn after what happened with you and Ian?" I felt like grabbing her, hauling her off to someplace a little more private than Matt's roof (where we were watching a meteor shower), and just pouring everything out. I suppose it was wise of me not to have done that. I don't really know Kathleen, and I don't know how trustworthy she is, or how much I could really confide. I sort of hung my head and said, "a little." Kathleen said, "Please don't worry about it... Bronwyn likes you a lot. Everybody's happy you're here." I wonder how Kathleen came by her information. I wonder how much information she's come by. It doesn't matter, I guess.
It's not Bronwyn I feel weird about. I mean, yes, that too, a little, but... Now what about Ian? Two months ago, I slept with my arms around him. I just opened up the floodgates, let out three years of dammed-up feelings, and to hell with the consequences. I wanted to know, for sure, if I was in love with him. I wanted to know what would happen if I did all the things I'd been secretly thinking about when we were in Santa Fe. Now I know, and there's no way I can NOT know. It's pretty clear that sleeping with my arms around Ian tonight would be quite inappropriate, but I can't help sort of thinking about it, and it's not like I wouldn't be completely willing. It's that willingness that's bothering me. I've already probably made a complete jackass of myself to somebody who's been a wonderful friend for a very long time. Thanks to a glass of wine and a sip of screwdriver, I feel like I'm living out that dream of standing naked in a high school corridor, in front of my biggest crush and all his friends. Here you go, Sand Point High School: Carolyn Rauscher, exposed before you, in love with your classmate and the bearer of Binghamtonian-style drama at your party. THIS is why I'd like to crawl into a little hole for the remainder of this party. I obviously haven't got much self-control when I'm drunk, but I don't think I'm stupid enough to make any MORE of an ass of myself... I'd like to just be very, very quiet, and hope nobody notices me.
But you know, Diane, I'm not willing to be a wallflower tonight. I'd regret it once I'm back in Binghamton, and I'm not willing to be a hostess to any more regrets. I'm going to the kitchen now, and I'm going to pour another glass of wine. I'm going to sip it very slowly, and I'm going to join the rest of the crowd in the backyard. I'm going to find one or two people who seem interesting, and I'm going to start babbling about David Lynch in order to break some ice. I'm going to hope for the best. And maybe I'll just pretend not to notice Ian. Hopefully, he'll be preoccupied with his friends, and not notice me either.
12 August 2001 ~ 8.40 AM, PST
Ian's house
Seattle
Diane ~
Am smoking a Marlboro Light that was accidentally doused with Hooch last night. Who's got the hooch, baby? Who's got the only sweetest thing in the world? Mm-mm. Nevermind. Yuck.
The party last night ended up being pretty cool, despite way too much insecurity on my part. As always, I used David Lynch as a conversation-starter, which worked surprisingly well. Nearly everybody at the party had known each other in high school, but I managed to find two girls, Monica and Jenn, who were also sort of out of the loop, and the three of us spent the better part of the evening drunkenly chatting (read: "probably shouting") about music, school, and drugs. And J.D. Salinger, with whom I am regrettably not well-acquainted. It was pleasant to actually socialize, and I did overcome most of the Ian-related stress. How could I not, when Monica and I were having a gleeful debate about whether or not West Coast weed is more potent than East Coast weed? (She says it is. I say it isn't, because all weed comes from Santa Fe anyway...) I must say, it was SO refreshing to spend time with people my own age, who were neither Long-Islanders, nor gutterpunks... The two of them were well-read -- being our age, reading something for enjoyment other than Anne Rice constitutes being well-read, but we actually had movies and books in common to talk about, which isn't something I've encountered much in Binghamton unless I'm talking to freaky middle-aged people at Lost Dog -- and they were interesting, AND they were actually interested in me as well, something else I've rarely encountered in Binghamton. I told them about Boston, they told me about the euphoric effects of purposely overdosing on Robitussin. We giggled a lot, we drank a lot, we ate a lot of M&M's, and if that's not a good party, I don't know what is.
As the party died down, some people left, others squirmed into tents and sleeping bags in the backyard. I almost had the opportunity to get nervous about Ian again, but Bronwyn, that goddess, took seriously some comment I'd made about going swimming, and the two of us grabbed towels and headed down the road to the lake.
You'd think the lake would be cold in the middle of the night, but it was warm enough to swim in comfortably. The two of us hadn't bothered with swimming suits, so we dropped our clothes on the shore, and just walked right in. I have to confess, I did sneak a peek at Bronwyn before she managed to submerge herself. That's okay, isn't it? Girls can peek at other girls naked, out of curiousity, right? It's okay to be a little nosy and maybe make a comparison or two, right? Okay, I have no idea if that's normal or not, but I'm going to soothe myself by assuming she peeked at me too. And why wouldn't we have? After all, a couple days ago, we managed to admit we were a little jealous of each other, and I can think of NO better reason for being a little voyeuristic than a bit of unresentful competitiveness between friends.
Bronwyn is beautiful. I mean it; she's beautiful in a completely natural way. There's nothing false about her. She's just genuinely gorgeous. She was round in all the right places, and flat in all the right places, and utterly feminine without any fussiness. I can think of no one more suitably shaped to be a model. I haven't been self-conscious about my appearance in a long, long time, but if I was going to be, seeing Bronwyn, ankle-deep in Lake Washington under a half-moon, completely naked... Yeah. Of course, I WAS a little self-conscious, and of course I had to make a few comparisons, and maybe I WAS thinking just a tiny bit about Ian, but I swear to gahd I'd never admit that to anybody but you...
Anyway... Moving on...
So we waded out until we couldn't reach the bottom with our feet anymore, and we swam a little, kicking at "lakeweed," as Bronwyn called it, which is this soft, sticky grassy stuff that chokes itself around your feet and gives you memories of grade-B horror movies in which gross things come up from beneath the lake, grab your feet, and pull you under...
Regardless of lakeweed and horror movies, and feeling a tiny bit weird about being naked with Bronwyn, it was a BEAUTIFUL night and a beautiful lake, the sort that songs are written about.
Much like my Rivers I think, Lake Washington has a consciousness: a Gemini consciousness of choppy little white waves and navy blue baths. I could FEEL its consciousness the way one can feel people's thoughts by looking into their eyes. I got the impression that Lake Washington was very much alive, pondering its inhabitants and observing us with the help of the spiky evergreens surrounding it. I felt watched, but not uncomfortable.
That is, until a car drove past a few times and then pulled up at the side of the road. Bronwyn was first out of the water and into her clothes, but I followed pretty quickly. We did linger there for a few minutes, chatting about messy relationships -- she dropped a name or two, and I dropped a name or two, but we avoided Ian's name like it had Ebola -- but the car, which didn't turn its headlights off, freaked us out a bit, so we left. On the way back, we picked a few blackberries, but that was the end of the party and the end of the evening, really... I made an attempt at sitting on the porch and writing a little bit, but no words would come out: a result of residual alcohol in my brain, probably. So I sneaked back into the house, stepping over a few sleeping people in the living room, and let Tom Robbins rock me to sleep.
You know, after several years of letting Tom Robbins rock me to sleep, here I am in his place: blackberries and spiky trees and freaky people... I guess now I know where the merriment of his words comes from. I'm here, inside that energy, and I could spend the rest of my life letting this place work its magic on my pen...
Am going to go inside now... People are beginning to wake up, and I'm going to go socialize and hopefully reserve a place in someone's plans for the day...
12 August 2001 ~ about 3 PM, PST
Lake Tapps
near Auburn, WA
Hey Taze...
I'm so, so, SO glad my mother isn't here right now...
12 August 2001 ~ 9.25 PM, PST
Ian's living room
Seattle
I can feel every cell in my body right now, doing some sort of little dance... I imagine the way I felt after emerging from the waters of Lake Tapps is the way some people feel after emerging from the waters of Lourdes: Clean. Purified. Healed. I swear, on everything sacred, I had a weird birthmark this morning on my right arm, and that when I got out of the water today, it was gone. I swear, a few days ago, I was still feeling the after-effects of mono, and that I couldn't be more awake, alert, or healthy than I am now.
They got me to jump off a ten-foot bridge -- Bronwyn, Rebecca, Sky, and Ian did -- into the opaque whitish water of Lake Tapps. The water looked like someone had dropped millions of gallons of paste into it, but the others assured me that this was a glacial lake, that the weird color was due to glacier deposits: silt and minerals and things. Well, all right, fine. So I tested the water, which was warm, and watched a couple of little kids jump off the bridge before doing it myself. I did it though: I really did it. Got a lot of water in my nose and panicked for a second or two, but I did it and came up smiling.
It was in a state of mild euphoria that I watched Ian and Sky do flips off the bridge. Ian, of course, was as graceful as an autumn leaf falling from a tree; I say this with mild sarcasm because Ian seems to be graceful and self-assured at damn near everything he does: a veritable Ferris Bueller, really. I suppose I looked like a stereotypical schoolgirl with a crush as I leaned over the side of the bridge to watch him swimming.
It was a sight with a soundtrack... THIS was the cool, floating texture of the love songs I put on Ian's mix tape... I'd put "Song to the Siren" on that tape, and I could almost hear it ringing through my head: ethereal and watery and candescent...
On the floating, shapeless oceans
I did all my best to smile
til your singing eyes and fingers
drew me loving into your eyes.
And you sang "Sail to me, sail to me;
Let me enfold you."
Here I am, here I am waiting to hold you.
Did I dream you dreamed about me?
Were you here when I was full sail?
Now my foolish boat is leaning, broken love lost on your rocks.
For you sang, "Touch me not, touch me not, come back tomorrow."
Oh my heart, oh my heart shies from the sorrow.
I'm as puzzled as a newborn child.
I'm as riddled as the tide.
Should I stand amid the breakers?
Or shall I lie with death my bride?
Hear me sing: "Swim to me, swim to me, let me enfold you."
"Here I am. Here I am, waiting to hold you."
For a minute or two, everybody else sort of sank into the background as I watched Ian. His hair flowed like lava down his back: sunlit obsidian. He just seemed to belong there in the water, and I half-believed he'd grown fins. How appropriate, how very appropriate it would be if Ian were a merman, and I were a little girl wading ankle-deep in lakes and rivers forever, collecting pebbles and shells, never quite able to venture further... It wasn't the depth of the lake that separated us, though. It was the calm confidence in Ian's eyes, the completeness of his certainty that he wasn't going to drown, that he wasn't going to get hit by a speedboat, that he was Ian and the weather was beautiful and who gave a shit about anything else? I loved him and hated him all at once; loved him for being so alive and warm, and hated him for being so, so far away... It wasn't cockiness in his smile, but a sort of void, a purity: the absence of fear; the absence of neurotic "what if" fantasies; the simple, childish, nomadic tendency to heed some mysterious Adventure Instinct. This was the boy for whom whims were made; he seemed to know just exactly what he was, and the exact extent of what he could do without causing much damage to anybody. And there he was, beautiful and full, his body obscured by the silty waters, smiling and drifting toward the rocky edge, about a thousand miles away from small, paranoid, land-bound Carolyn, ecstatic because she'd actually jumped ten feet off a bridge, plugging her nose.
But I let myself gaze at him for a few minutes anyway. I didn't let our eyes meet, just pretended I was on a ship and scanning the horizon of an opaque ocean, ignorant of the lovely, finless sea-creature below me... I couldn't quite look at Ian directly, wasn't sure if I'd ever look at him directly again. In MY town, in my little apartment, on the embankment of my Rivers, I'd had more courage... In my place, I know how deep the water is, and I know it's not safe to jump from the bridges... In my place, I know my limitations, even if I don't know my potentials; and here, here where I can't see the bottom of the lake, I'm nervous, not ready to take on the dangers of doing flips off a bridge, or yelling "you're beautiful!" at the boy in the water. Here I am vulnerable, and I don't really belong here completely. Maybe for awhile, maybe forever, I belong ankle-deep in some vast body of water, staring out at everything and wondering what marvels live at the bottom, while my friend somersaults in to find out...
As my happy group of companions headed off to explore another part of the lake, we ran into a girl (whose name I didn't catch) that Sky knew. She saw the "Vote Nader" button on my bookbag, and shot me a gleeful grin. It seems the entirety of the state of Washington has some vehemently liberal political stances, judging by the number of people who've slapped me five upon seeing that button. (In Binghamton, the number of people who've HEARD of Ralph Nader is pretty damned low, so I suspect only one or two pro-Nader votes came from Broome County in the last election...) But this girl had something else to say: "Hey, have you ever read anything by Tom Robbins?"
"Yeah...?"
"Did you read 'Still Life With Woodpecker'? With the girl who was in love with Ralph Nader?"
"I've got it memorized," I replied radiantly, trying to recall a passage or two and coming up with only one line: Her hair was as straight and red as ironed ketchup. Perhaps I wasn't so far removed from my home after all... Maybe New York is a safe little box, full of safe, predictable people. But maybe Washington is just a bigger box, not a vast, scary place full of dangers and rejections and mysteries. Maybe New York is my limitations, and Washington is my potentials. Maybe I could belong here. Maybe I already do. And after all, Tom Robbins was born and raised an East-Coaster [although I still believe he was raised by highly intelligent wolves]. Such a small comment: a book summary in miniature and a random association. But it spoke volumes, and I imagine that when I go back to Binghamton, I'm going to recall that tiny conversation on repeat until I can call the Pacific Northwest "home."
My friends, barely pausing to let me catch my breath after the merry chat with this stranger, journeyed onward to another part of the lake. "I have a friend who lives over in that house," said Sky, pointing ALL the way across the water. "The one with the roof over the... thing there? Want to swim over there and say hi?"
I guess I was feeling renewed. If I could jump off a bridge and come up breathing, if I could wordlessly convince a stranger I was worthy of Robbinsian comparisons, I could surely swim across a lake. Still, it was a FUCKING long way... Even Ian was hesitant: "I haven't gone swimming for three years," he said, "until today." [Three years without swimming, with all of this water around? I will never, ever understand what the hell makes Ian tick...] But he accepted the challenge, and for me, it was swim or get left there. Peer pressure, really, is nothing like it is in the anti-drug commercials. Nobody says, "what are you, a chicken?" And in real life, there's no option for stupid retorts like, "I'm not a chicken, you're a turkey." You simply go along with things you're not sure you can handle, or you get left there to soak in your own loser-dom: ankle-deep, always merely ankle-deep. It's not that your peers think less of you; it's that you're left to your own thoughts, and you think less of yourself. So I walked into the water, assuring myself that I could doubtlessly swim to the center of the lake, where a bright orange buoy marked the middle. I could cling to that if I needed to. I could tread water if I needed to.
And: "I can save you if you can't make it," Bronwyn promised. She'd said something about being a lifeguard. So there just wasn't any other choice. Somehow, drowning seemed like a better alternative than standing there.
I made it halfway. I clung to the buoy. I was filled with an understanding of what it's like to drown. It's NOT the sudden cramping up of muscles. It's not exhausted arms and legs. It is the pressure on your chest, the struggle to expand and contract your lungs in the density of a foreign element. It's when you come to the primal realization that your lungs are AIR, and the substance you're in is WATER, and the water becomes an enemy. You panic, you gasp, you freak out, you fight; and the water recognizes an offensive attack. It puts up a defense, and you sink. Clinging to the buoy, I knew I couldn't make it to the other side. And of course, since the buoy was in the smack middle of the lake, I couldn't make it BACK, either. There just simply wasn't enough air in me. I considered waving to Bronwyn for help. I considered trying to flag down a passing speedboat. My friends wouldn't look down on me for not being able to swim the whole distance. But I decided against it anyway; I decided I WAS going to make it, even if I didn't think I could. The trick was NOT, I told myself, to paddle as hard as possible. The trick was simply to establish a rapport with the lake.
I floated there for awhile, psyching myself out. It's not that I'm stronger than the lake, but it's not stronger than me, either... I AM the lake, and the lake is me... I'm made out of air, and it's made out of water, and it will let me float on top of it for awhile if I want... I will not fight. I will not panic. I will think happy thoughts. I will think about coffee and cherry pie. I will not speak or call out or hum; I'll conserve all my air so that I can float...
Three-quarters of the way across, my whole body failed me. The lungs were the first to go, and then, terrified, my limbs threatened to begin thrashing wildly. That would have been the end; I would have sunk like a volcanic bomb. I whispered one final encouragement to myself: "You can't die, Carolyn; you haven't had the Cherry Pie yet." I spoke it aloud, so that the lake would hear it too. I guess the lake believed in the importance of the Cherry Pie, and it let me go. We didn't fight each other, and it let me drift, inch by inch, toward the shore. Fifteen or twenty feet from the dock where my friends were sitting, I heard Ian's voice: "yay! you made it!" At that point, just a few feet from him, I ALMOST sank. He'd interrupted my Cherry Pie meditation; his voice was the signal that I didn't have to force myself full of dissociated tranquility anymore. I could hear my ears ringing loudly, and my arms and legs went into hysterical overdrive. I grasped the ladder to get out of the water, and my hand slipped, and I fell back in, submerging my mouth and nose, but saving my eyes -- and, holy gahd, my glasses.
I stood there for a minute, dripping and recovering, and thinking of my mother, who would absolutely fucking kill me if she could see me, shaking a little, looking around at the dock with no small amount of relieved disorientation. She'd tell me, "that's how I almost drowned, thinking I could swim farther than I could, and I would have died if my boyfriend hadn't seen me go under and pulled me out..." Exhausted and ready to crumple up in a little heap, I managed to hold myself erect, just to prove -- to myself as much as everybody else -- that I was, indeed, alive... And as my little group walked back to the shore we'd come from, around part of the lake, I walked with them. Having survived the swim, I figured I might as well force myself to keep moving. And when we got back to the bridge, I jumped off it again, this time without asking Bronwyn to hold my hand.
And now, all is well. My skin feels very, very clean, maybe more so than it ever has. My body feels so healthy, so enriched... Must have been the minerals in the weird-colored water. I'm a little warm, but not sweaty or sticky, just... gahd-damn, I've just never, ever been so aware of the way I fill out my body, never really thought much about it at all. Maybe this is just what it's like to be profoundly aware of being alive.
So, yeah, I'm alive, and I'm sitting in the living room, and Bronwyn and Ian and I rented two videos this evening, (from a very, very neat video store called Scarecrow Video), which we're about to watch: one called "Blood Wedding," and the "Twin Peaks" pilot episode video... Tuesday is our planned expedition to North Bend... I couldn't be more excited... Ian's seen the series before -- he's been boasting that he was old enough to stay up and watch it on network TV the first time around -- but Bronwyn's a "Twin Peaks" virgin. Gahd, I hope this thrills them as much as it thrills me... This part of the world is so full of adventures, and I'm determined to find them and share them with my friends. Seems like a more appropriate gift than mix-tapes and emails...
13 August 2001 ~ noonish, PST
B&O Espresso, E. Olive and Belmont
Seattle
Jason ~
Took me a gahd-awful long time to get here, because the woman on the phone told me "Olive and Belmont," instead of "EAST Olive and Belmont," which actually DOES make a difference... With some shame, I had to dig out the map I bought for the expedition to Jaymi's house. Sitting on the corner of Olive and Belmont, glaring at my map, two guys asked if I was lost. I told them I was looking for B&O Espresso, and they advised me to give up the search and go to Starbucks, because they'd never heard of B&O. I bet those guys didn't vote for Nader, either. Oh well.
Anyway, here I am, and I don't know if I've ever had a better sandwich, or a better americano in my entire life. Some sort of blackened chicken on foccacia bread. And a cup of espresso-water as dense as a black diamond. I have died and gone to coffeehouse heaven. It's no wonder this was Taze's favorite Seattle coffeehouse.
My favorite Edward Hopper painting, Automat, is hanging near the door. Well, a print of it is. It's the one of the girl in green sitting in the window of a café. That painting always reminded me of Sharkey's: of me sitting in the window of Sharkey's, staring listlessly at the tabletop and writing the occasional ten-page letter to Ian... I think B&O could easily become MY favorite Seattlite coffeehouse, simply by virtue of that picture on the wall. To say nothing, of course, of the freaking chicken. Heaven, I say.
[A few minutes later]
Whoa. Two sips of that americano and I can't even think rationally anymore. Jesus. I wonder how the hell they DO that! Signing off and heading up to Broadway, Seattle's gay/lesbian/freak district, to check stuff out... I'll let you know if I find anything else neat...
~Carolyn*
13 August 2001 ~ 4.30 PM, PST
Westlake Mall Balcony, 5th Ave. and Pine
downtown Seattle
Diane ~
I guess today I'm just taking it easy... My muscles are incredibly sore from my swim yesterday, although I'm not going to just sit home and whine... So I went to Taze's coffeehouse, B&O Espresso, where I bought him a half-pound of coffee. And then I decided to wander around Broadway for a little while to look for a souvenir or two for my mom and Penny... It's a good day to chill out and buy stupid crap for the Binghamton gang, anyway. I bought three little rainbow bumper stickers for my mom and Penny; they're shaped like dogs. How appropriate. And have I mentioned how ridiculously gay-friendly Seattle is? I think I could go out of my way to TRY to get gay-bashed, and I'd fail...
I sat for awhile at the Seattle Community College (I THINK it was the Seattle Community College; all the schools in the area seem to have the same name: Washington University, University of Washington, Seattle College, Seattle Community College, University of Seattle... You see my point...) on Broadway, atop this funky metal sculpture. A good vantage point from which to watch little freaky kids wander by. Oddly, somebody had left a CD sitting on the sculpture, simply called "Rachel's Handwriting." It's an absolutely beautiful CD, and I've been listening to it for several hours on repeat in my discman. It's sort of spare, minimal, with little bits of jazz and rock in it, and it's terribly melancholy. One song in particular sounds an awful lot like a rip-off of Angelo Badalamenti's "Laura's Theme," so you have to know I'm in love with it...
I emailed Jaymi a day or two ago, asking him where we ought to meet. I said, "You name a place, and I'll find it, I promise." He said, "The Westlake Mall Balcony, but I'm not sure of my schedule, so I can't give you a time and date..." So I emailed back and said, "All right then. Monday. Between four and five. I'll be there."
I DID find the Westlake Mall -- not without walking into Nordstrom's and making an ass of myself by asking "where's the balcony?" but at least I found it... So I'm here, and I will wait until five. Jaymi's not going to show up. I'm not going to get to see him before I leave; I know this already. But I have to wait, or I'll regret it when I get home. If I leave now, at 4.30, he'll show up in five minutes; I have no doubt of that. At least if I stay and he DOESN'T show, I'll have the security of knowing I was where I was supposed to be...
Am watching some kids play hacky-sack down below... The balcony is on the third floor, the top floor of the mall, right outside from the food court. I bought two little bottles of "Mt. Saint Helen's Ash" for Joseph and John at a gift store inside. Who KNOWS if it's really Mount Saint Helen's ash. It's probably just weird dirt. But they'll appreciate it anyway.
Jaymi's not going to show. But I'm staying here 'til five. Going to turn my CD back on, going to open my Tom Robbins book, going to read a few chapters, and am going to intermittently watch the hacky-sack kids... Am going to pretend I'm a native Seattlite: laid-back, a little melancholy, and fairly unconcerned with anything except how Mr. Robbins is portraying my city, and whether or not Ralphie Nader will run for president in 2008. "Native." Heh!
13 August 2001 ~ sometime between 9 and midnight, PST
Ian's living room
Seattle
[Note: okay, I SWEAR I tried to keep notes and things about all of my experiences in Washington, but for some reasons that will presently become obvious, I could not record much of this particular experience, and this part of the journal is being written solely from memory. Or something sort of like memory... This is as close to accurate as I can POSSIBLY get it... ~CJR* 09 September 2001]
I SHOULD have listened to Monica and Jenn when they told me "Western wacky weed" is more potent than its Eastern cousin. What the HELL made me think they were just expressing some sort of local pride?
Am not sure what time it is, or how much time has elapsed, but a little while ago (or maybe several hours ago), Bronwyn brought out a nice little box of "drugs" and a bong. I was fairly hesitant anyway, because pot does freak me out a little bit, but... peer pressure, you know. It's not like Bronwyn and Ian called me a chicken, and it's not like I called them a turkey, but it's join in or get left out. It's become VERY clear to me in the past few hours [minutes?] that I'm a terribly insecure person in general. For this entire trip, I've been obsessed with fitting in, with being a "real" Seattlite, a native or whatever, part of the group. In doing so, I've probably just alienated myself further, but I've been going along with EVERYTHING. Gahd, Diane, I just need to get some GUTS.
I'd never used a bong before, and they had to show me how to work it. I still couldn't get it right and ended up gulping down a lot of air, but by my third try, I managed to inhale some smoke, which I held onto for a good ten seconds ["seconds"... there's that time thing again...], before choking it all back out. I recall Ian saying, "There you go!" or "That was a real one!" or something like that, and that's about as far as my coherency level went.
I recall somebody putting on a video of some of Björk's music videos. I recall hearing "Jóga" playing, and thinking that I'd put that song on Ian's mix-tape of love songs... Couldn't decide whether to be embarrassed, to shoot him a grin, or to pretend I wasn't thinking a thing about love songs and mix-tapes... Am not really sure which option I chose, either, which is scaring me more than a little bit.
Am not sure what's on TV now. It's no longer the Björk thing anymore. A bunch of people cursing I think, and I'm pretty sure Quentin Tarantino is in it. I can't see the TV anymore; I've gone mostly blind except for things very, very close up, and I have to really concentrate in order to see those things.
Quentin Tarantino is yelling at me. It's scaring me. Please stop yelling at me. I'm sorry.
I'm very, very afraid right now. My lungs are burning; I remember this feeling from the very first time I got stoned. THAT time, I'd had FOUR bowls. This was ONE hit. Jesus Christ.
I hope I'm actually sitting in this chair right now. I hope I'm not wandering around in traffic someplace. I hope I haven't wandered down to Lake Washington to take a swim. I hope I'm actually sitting right here. I can't see Ian or Bronwyn anymore, although I think they're still here. Oh gahd, what if I'm trying to swim in the lake, and what if I drown? What if I'm not really in this chair? What if I left the chair hours ago? What if I'm dead? What if I'm drowning and I only THINK I'm in this chair?
I looked up from the TV just now and saw Bronwyn, so I guess I'm still in the living room. I'd like to go over to her and tell her, "listen, I can't handle this; I'm way, way too stoned and I'm basically freaking out, and I need somebody to hug me and tell me it's okay. I need somebody to keep an eye on me, maybe just hold my hand for a little while, because I keep feeling like I'm going to accidentally wander outside and get lost and end up in the lake..." Realistically, I can't do that. I think Bronwyn and Ian must be a little stoned too -- they've GOT to be, considering they had a LOT more than me -- but I feel so stupid admitting I can't handle this.
They're probably laughing at me anyway.
I wonder why they hate me so much?
I have to hide now. I can't let them see me. If they see me, they'll know how fucked up I am. I'm just not going to speak anymore tonight; I'm just going to shut my mouth and pretend I don't see them. If they say anything to me, I'll pretend to be engrossed in watching the TV. Where the hell IS the TV anyway? Bad idea. I can only imagine myself staring fixedly at the TV, and gahd knows, it's probably not even ON anymore... So they turn around to look at me and they see me staring at a TV which might not even be ON, and of COURSE they're going to know I'm freaking out and I can't handle myself. They're going to laugh at me. They're going to hurt me the second they find out I'm this vulnerable.
How the hell do I get them not to pay any attention to me? I've got to hide. If only I could make myself invisible...
I'm going to pretend to be completely preoccupied, so that if I'm not really invisible, and they do see me, and they DO talk to me, I'll be able to pretend I just didn't hear what they were saying...
I could pick up my book and pretend to be reading -- I couldn't POSSIBLY read right now, but I could hold the book in my lap... No, that's not exactly socially appropriate. I think the TV IS on, after all, and it might seem odd for me to be "reading" while the TV's on... I've got it. I'm going to write a letter. A little atypical for anybody else, but they'd expect it from me... A perfect disguise. They'll never notice me now. Perfect.
I'm writing, and the words are coming out on the paper, and I'm quite sure I've even maintained decent grammar and spelling, but I have absolutely NO idea what the words ARE. Of more concern than the words at the moment are the COLORS... The marks I've made on my paper are there, and although I can't read them, I can understand them anyway... They're presenting themselves to me now, actually coming off the page and introducing themselves, not as LANGUAGE, but as COLOR, and as TEXTURE. The words are pink now, now pastel blue... They're embossed now; they have tiny pastel layers, structures within themselves. It's amazing, because I still can't SEE anything around me, and I'm pretty sure the weed has blinded me, at least temporarily, but I CAN see the colors, and I can feel their textures...
I learned somewhere, maybe some science class in high school, that LIGHT is both a wave and a particle. I'm aware right now that most people, myself included, experience light only as a wave. But in my altered state, I am experiencing light -- and color -- as both a wave AND a particle... I really should just sit back and enjoy the show that this fucked-up little journey is providing; I can hear half a dozen people telling me to chill out and just let it flow, just wait it out and see what happens... I'm sort of TRYING to relax, I think, and I DO rationally know that Bronwyn and Ian are NOT trying to kill me, but... Oh, shit, I can't relax. The second I relax is going to be the second I walk out the door and get lost somewhere downtown...
Am I on the highway now? What is this, Rainier Ave? Oh Jesus I hope I'm not really here on the highway...
I've given up trying to write a letter, but I'm holding the notebook anyway, just in case I start to freak or something and need something to clutch... The words are just words again; I still can't read them, but they're not layered and colored anymore... Gahd damn, I hope Ian didn't see that happen... If he did, he's surely going to know I made it happen. Oh hell, why does it matter anyway? Gahd knows I've made enough of an ass of myself to him...
I find comfort only in the fact that Ian and Bronwyn might also be stoned. I recall that a few hours ago [a few seconds ago?], Bronwyn looked at the TV and said, "wow, this is really cool when you're stoned..." Ian replied, "I bet..." So obviously, I'm not the only one who's a little altered.
You know, that Björk video, "Jóga," was mostly pictures of Iceland... Ian said something about Iceland once... Maybe in an email... Maybe that night on my porch when he told me about Amsterdam... Something about a yurt in Iceland... Or maybe it was a yurt on Venus... I wish I could remember what it was. It made me really happy. Doesn't matter now. It's ALL over now. Am not sure WHAT is over, but it's over, and I'd like to disappear right now and make everybody just a little happier... I've caused enough trouble. Gahd, how much I'd hate me if I was Ian and Bronwyn.
Don't panic now, just keep breathing... And don't keep looking at your watch... Just keep breathing, and even if it seems like no time is passing, it is passing, and eventually, this will wear off and you'll be fine again... Unless, of course, the pot has triggered some latent genetic tendency toward schizophrenia... Didn't somebody tell me once that if you have tendencies toward any mental illness, smoking weed will bring it out? Oh shit, what if this never, ever ends...
The television is definitely on. Some people are kicking each other on whatever video is playing. And... oh my gahd, I can't believe this, but I recognize the song that's playing on the soundtrack: it's the same song Jon Baier was playing the very first time I got stoned. What the hell's the name of this band? Something with a "P." Come on, THINK, Carolyn... At this point, if you think hard enough, you'll be able to recite the entire "P" section of Record Town. Portishead? No. Porno for Pyros? No. Well, maybe... That's close anyway.
In any case, I remember that Jon Baier played the CD that has this song on it, the first time I was stoned. I remember sort of flipping out then, too... Remember, I invented a whole video for this song? There was a man all dressed in black, maybe he had a cape on, and he was beating the hell out of somebody with a chain. I remember there was a lot of greys and browns in that video in my head... It all took place out in this forest, and this woman in brown was tied to a chain-link fence, and the man in black was beating her with a chain... I remember the sound of the chain hitting the fence.
Prodigy, that's the name of the band. Jaymi used to make a face that looked exactly like one of the guys in the band. And they had a centipede in one of their videos.
Please stop hitting me. Please stop. I'm sorry.
The centipede is in the TV. I don't think we're really watching a Prodigy video. I think we're watching something else that has a Prodigy song on the soundtrack, but the centipede is on TV anyway. Go away, centipede. Please go away.
I think Ian just looked at me. Gahd, I hope I didn't make a noise or something. Am I crying? Oh gahd, I think I'm crying... Stop it, Carolyn, just stop it...
Come to think of it, I'd better check up on my bodily functions. I've been forgetting to think about what my body is doing. Am I drooling? Oh shit, I think I'm drooling. And what if I've WET myself? Jesus, I've GOT to get to the bathroom RIGHT now in case I have to pee. I'm not sure I could remember to hold it if I DID have to...
All right, concentrate Carolyn. You're going to stand up, and you're going to walk to the bathroom. Concentrate, and try to remember what you're doing so that you don't accidentally walk out the door and go outside. If you go outside, you'll never, ever find your way back... Bathroom, okay?
Okay, I'm standing up... Walk a straight line now, and don't speak or they're going to know you're fucked up and they're going to know you were the one who summoned the centipede and they're going to yell at you... Keep going... Almost there...
Shit, how long have I been IN this bathroom? Have I been lost in here? Oh, this is WAY worse than I thought... Okay, it's time to go back now. Take it slow, but not too slow. Act nice and normal.
Oh wow, I just had a really great idea. I'll pretend to be ASLEEP. They'll never notice me if I pretend to fall asleep. Now do this nice and easy, don't just slump over and pretend to snore. Don't make any noise, don't make any sudden movements. Just slowly lay your head against the chair and close your eyes... Nice and slow.
Maybe soon I'll fall asleep for real, and all of this will go away. I hope I wake up tomorrow. I hope I don't die. I hope I don't sleepwalk. Oh shit, I hope they've locked the doors so I can't get out and fall into the lake...
14 August 2001 ~ morning, PST
Ian's kitchen
Seattle
"Hey Ian? I don't know if I did anything really stupid last night, but I guess I really freaked out..."
"You did?"
"Yeah... Something about Quentin Tarantino arguing with me. And the centipede from the Prodigy video. And... I thought you and Bronwyn were going to kill me. Was there a Prodigy video on TV last night?"
"Whoa... I guess you did freak out a little... If it makes you feel any better, Bronwyn and I were not trying to kill you."
"Yeah... I guess I kind of know that now."
"And um... Prodigy? Oh, I put the 'Charlie's Angels' video in... There's a Prodigy song on the soundtrack..."
"Oh. I guess that would account for the people kicking each other?"
"Yeah, maybe."
He's looking at me like I'm kind of dumb, like I'm making all of this up. I'm having a really hard time believing I completely tripped out and nobody noticed. I'm also having a really tough time believing that Ian and Bronwyn were just mildly affected, while I was battling centipedes and touring Venus -- or was it Iceland? Holy shit, are you telling me I completely bugged out and you didn't even notice? You didn't once consider that I was silently freaking out? You didn't freak out? What the hell was in that stuff, and why did I go psychotic while you were fine???
I guess I've learned a couple of things from this experience. Number one, I cannot handle drugs. Not even weed. Not even one hit. This is absolutely it; I'm not going to do this again, ever. I don't know what the hell's wrong with me that I would have had a "bad trip" on marijuana, that evidently didn't affect the other two in any unpleasant way, but it happened and I'm NOT going to let it happen again. Ever. I can't handle drugs. There's got to be something weird about my body chemistry, or maybe I'm missing my THC receptors in my brain, or maybe I've got too many of them or something... Regardless, what happened last night is not going to happen again.
Number two... I wonder why it was such a bad experience for me? They say the experiences you have while on ANY drug is just an intensified view of what's already on your mind. Thus, if you feel paranoid, you've been paranoid all along but haven't noticed it without chemical enhancement. Or if you feel euphoric, you've been euphoric; you just needed something to help you realize it. That theory scares me a little bit; is that REALLY what's going on in my mind? Am I really so terribly self-conscious? Am I honestly afraid of two people I consider dear friends? Okay, so the thing with the words in my notebook was weird, and I have no idea why I was thinking about Quentin Tarantino, but am I genuinely that lacking in the self-confidence department that I'm afraid of being seen by my friends? What the hell am I afraid of? Why would I believe they hate me? What's going on in my subconscious that would make me feel so guilty and ashamed of myself? Holy shit, I thought they were going to kill me, and I think I believed I deserved it...
Maybe I'm just not as stable as I thought I was... Oh, this is no good...
It's unbelievable, the neurosis festering inside me... It's as if I was just given an opportunity to examine the tense little crevices of my mind, and Diane, I just didn't like what I saw: somebody so obsessed with the idea of being fearless and gutsy, that I'm terrified of being afraid. Pretty counterproductive, really. A bunch of existential questions about my whole identity have arisen: who the hell am I, who the hell have I THOUGHT I am, what am I trying to be, and have I been going about it in all the wrong ways? I've not been myself. I've been trying to prove I'm proud of myself, that I know who I am, and I just don't think that's so anymore. I have no idea what I'm doing in the world. I have no idea how to relate to my friends and my peers. I don't have guts. Not even the beginnings of guts. I'm terrified, afraid of fucking everything. Last night, I encountered a few dozen traits I despise in other people, and they're in me... I could see this ego, this triumphant, bitchy, invincible pride, protecting a small, weak, frightened child. I could see the shakiness in my voice. I feel so, so fake.
I get the impression that Ian has known all along just how nervous he makes me, how I've been covering up the inhibitions with excuses and alcohol whenever he's around... "You make it seem like nothing bothers you," he said to me once, with a degree of disdain. I'd almost shot back, "Yes, well, YOU make it seem like nothing bothers you, either," but I held that in. I'm looking back on every sentence spoken between the two of us, and I'm ashamed. So many things I've wanted to say, so many questions I've wanted to ask, and I haven't done so. Or I've done so with a brevity, a callousness; I've asked my questions and stated my statements from behind a bundling board. Candy-coated words, coal-coated eyes: a smiley-sticker covered security-envelope containing all sorts of desires and insanities written on little black slips of paper... How misleading. How ugly. What a joke. I wonder if Bronwyn too has the insight to notice that the perkiness and rambunctious enthusiasm extend only a few layers deep.
Layers. The "layered" words I saw; the vastness of their colors. If the neurotic centipede visions and the deluded need for invisibility were limitative, the textural pastel letters that leapt out of my notebook must have been metaphorical depths and heights of possibility. But I'm getting too analytical now.
I'll wait for another time to catalogue and analyze what happened last night. After all, today Bronwyn and Ian are taking me to see North Bend! The town of "Twin Peaks"! More than ten years I've been waiting to see if the town matches the glorious soundtrack written for it, and there's not a chance I'm going to allow ANY chemical substances, (or the effects thereof, OR any personal psycho-analytic tendencies) to come between this town and myself. I'll see it with awe or disappointment, but I'll see it without allowing last night to hinder my sight.
I just hope Ian and Bronwyn aren't going to take me out there and push me into the waterfall.
(Kidding... Really I am...)
Ian's going to work now, but leaving early to join in the adventure...
14 August 2001 ~ 11.55 AM, PST
Espresso Roma Café on "The Ave" (University Way) and 43rd
Seattle
[written on a napkin]
Jason ~
For all your "liquid culture" needs, as the slogan proclaims... Am here with Bronwyn and some friend she's run into. Odd how in a "big city" one still accidentally runs into acquaintances on a regular basis. Due to some incidences last night (again, a tale for a larger napkin), I'm indulging in Tazo Refresh tea instead of anything caffeinated. Provided there's no major disaster, the next napkin will be from a certain special diner we both know and love...
~Carolyn*
14 August 2001 ~ sometime between 2 and 3 PM, PST
Bronwyn's truck
En route to North Bend, WA
A warm, sunny day... How EVER did they get this place to look so mysteriously dreary? There are no lingering traces of blue-greyness; I never imagined that television could portray things with such dank inaccuracy. Camera tricks? Poor technology? A season of cold clamminess that August isn't hinting at? Even with the "Fire Walk With Me" soundtrack in Bronwyn's CD-player, there's no hint of suspense, of murder, of sweet, dead little junkie Laura Palmer. It's simply a beautiful day's drive...
Of course, I know it was just a TV show, but the intensity of it couldn't have come from a few creative minds and a couple of cameras, could it? I think that's what I'm looking for: the intensity more than the specific places. The distinct mood of ambiguity: dreamy evil. From here, there's none of that, and I'm already mentally praising the visions and miraculous techniques that must have gone into transforming this place into "Twin Peaks." Perhaps, though, the town itself holds more of Lynch's darkness than this highway does... We shall see...
"Afraid? AFRAID? I'm not afraid! I can hardly WAIT!" --Bobby Briggs, "Twin Peaks."
14 August 2001 ~ 4.05 PM, PST
Sitting on a rock near the base of Snoqualmie Falls
Snoqualmie, WA
Jason ~
I made it.
Love always,
~Carolyn*
[Note: Within about twenty minutes, I slipped while following Ian and Bronwyn along the rocky edges of the Snoqualmie River, falling in a very awkward position, half in the water, half smashed against a rock... I wasn't hurt very badly -- a pretty brown bruise on my left knee -- but I did manage to get a good portion of my jeans soaked. My watch was also drenched, and ceased to work for the next four days. Miraculously, I saved my camera from certain death, but my notebook was not so fortunate, and this was the very last written entry, as the paper was mostly soaked... As shitty as the experience sounds, I'm quite grateful, because being wet and clammy anyway gave me an excuse to wade into the water, fully clothed, as I tried to follow my friends to the other side...]
14 August 2001 ~ afternoon
North Bend, WA