And then driving on with a
welcome sense of defeat through the verdure of Northern California
I contemplated that sensation. How it
was that defeat could be such freedom, how the substance of this particular
beauty was the grating pain of tedium heightened to the extreme. How the limits of beauty touched me, burned
in my limbs, excruciating in itself, yet bearable in the broken feeling of
continuity, of failure--it kept telling me to move forward and remember I was
breathing. How I thought of New
Orleans then and how it didn’t matter when I finally
saw the snowcap of the majestic Shasta...the mountain erupting in the
sunset. So beautiful against a backdrop
of the mighty trees. Maybe they were
redwoods, certainly oaks, but nothing new all the same, so on I drove
unsurprised through the landscape glancing at Shasta in the distance and
melting into the sequence of places that I put behind me. And through it all I smelled November
creeping under the boughs and touching the dusty valleys as darkness soaked the
lightened ways of California, and
dissolved into starlight at Wolf Creek Pass.
Oregon.
They offered free coffee to weary
drivers. Wolf Creek Pass. It was twilight of the coming evening when I
got my cup and turned down the musty sheets.
High elevation and crispy cool, the wind in the pine boughs and coyotes
in the distance pretending to be the wolves that had long since
snuffed-it. But the boughs quieted the
coyotes’ howl, the shushing boughs like rain when the wind blew and the trucks
gasped quick soft sighs in short bursts from their iron stacks. I sleep.
And I’m awake with the dawn, being extra quiet so as not to disobey the
shushing branches, van cranked up and driving north through the mist and dew of
the Northwest morning. Kids on the
roadside hold a sign, begging a ride and I drive on and watch the cows asleep
on their hooves. Uphill often and green
and misty, Oregon is a peat-moss
landscape of ancient horticulture, hitchhikers and livestock in the
dead-gray-almost-light that precedes the certainty of morning.
Oregon
is there, alive and damp. Green and
shaded and thick. One can’t explain it
briefly. I’m Davey
Crocket. I’m Lewis, or Clark. Long ride through the heavy trees, I’m
Gulliver in Brobdingnag. Tiny Tiny Tiny. I drive and
watch the roadpaint and count the miles. A phone call to sick dad at a rest area
alongside a river that hosts salmon runs (so says a wooden sign) and dad says a
lot of maybes about cancer and diabetes and getting thinner still, ever thinner. Brevity now...I pull into Portland,
find the Willamette and eat ravioli on a park bench just
digging the town. It’s a town I see, not
a real city after all. And everybody
moves slow in the misty rain.
I wander the Hawthorne
section among other wanderers in ragged clothes--the street is damp and the
storefronts fogged and streaming. Dogs
cuddle into the corners, kids cuddled beside them smoking damp cigarettes,
sacks of clothes and maybe a guitar, pile of books for a pillow. So many of them. Such a strong scent of must and cloaked
sweat, burnt weed and coffee. Coffee
everywhere, as if the town fueled itself on the stuff, kept from nodding, from
just grinding to a deathly still under of the overcast by the potent smell of
the prolific brew-shops. My shoes hit
the concrete and it feels natural somehow.
For the first time in a month I feel at home. A punk flips his board and offers a joint for
two dollars, whispered over the rattle of ball-bearings in his spinning
wheels. Thanks, I’m good. Book
shops and junk shops. I pick up a copy
of Kerouac’s, Big Sur...I’ll read by the streetlamp tonight,
the way it should be read after all. I
grab a book of Chinese character translations from the freebee bin on a whim
and get an idea for a tattoo. A tattoo
seems right here. Like it would fit in
with the mute spirit of things.
It’s all guitars and paintings
and half-bad art here in Portland. It’s drum-circles and drug culture...tired
weakened women and beat-up kids, old men too soon and the old too drained to be
ambitious. But everybody’s polite,
sweet-polite and talkative in subdued banter...I’m happy in this insular pocket
of not-quite-anywhere-in-particular. I’m
gonna move here, live here, I tell myself. It’s where I’ll fit.
Sleep it off in the van, route
five. A meal of burrito in the morning I
drive five hours to Seattle where I
find a leather love-shop with a paper flyer says tattoos available. Tattoos by Tony. That’ll do in a fine, karmic sort of
way. I make the appointment...make up a
sentence “live it all for your dreams...never lose faith.” I cruise old Chinatown
and find a shop where the old man translates, outlining the characters in
order. I tip him a fin and he’s happy
since I lie and tell him I’m an artist and will look in on him again for
calligraphy. I’m a liar, after all.