I was 23 and living in a little blue house in Wallingford with Kendra and Lisa. We were always doing fun girl things. I had this green book that I bought from Aveda about living a 'Holistic' lifestyle. I never read it through, just thumbed through it in the bath and looked at the colorful charts about color therapy and essential oils.
Lisa and I were really into Aveda at the time. I don't know where we got the money to buy Aveda things, but apparently we did because we didn't steal and we had a lot. We liked to go into the store because every time we'd get a hand massage from a gay man.
One of the home spa treatments suggested in the book was to put olive oil in your hair and then wrap a warm wet towel around your head for ten minutes. This would allow the oil to soak into your hair and leave it shiny and lustrous. I was alone in the house one day and decided to give it a go. I stood in the shower and poured olive oil onto my hair and rubbed it in with my hands. The book suggested that a good way to warm up the towel was to soak it in water and then put it in the microwave. I followed the instructions, ran the towel under the faucet, stuck it in the microwave and pressed the button with the popcorn icon.
After ten seconds the towel exploded inside the microwave. There were great big flames.
I pulled the plug and pulled out the towel. I took it outside and threw it in the trash bin where no one could find it. Then I went inside and sat on the couch for a while. I thought about the fact that I had just set fire to a towel in a microwave. Of all my many friends, I think I am the only one to have ever done that.
The olive oil took about a week to wash out of my hair.
They used to tell us in nonfiction workshops to write 'as if your parents were dead.'
This is very difficult advice for all but the totally detached. However, at least in terms of entertainment value, it is those very things that our parents would cringe to see in print- poor decisions, repeated mistakes, mating habits- that are worth writing about at all. And to approach that material with allowing it to shrink from shame, or guilt, or dread of the 7am what the hell were you referring to in that one paragraph? phone call is a valuable skill. But for the sake of the parents, with their weak hearts and the staggering ability of their imagination to conjure unlimited scenarios wherein their children take on the world and lose, some stories are truly better left untold.
Here is one of those stories.
This is my account of nearly drowning on the San Pedro river in Northern Chile.
February 2nd, 2009, the middle of the Chilean Summer. I'm traveling with the kayak school from Pucon to the Rio Fuy in Choschuenco. On Route, we stop to run the Rio San Pedro. I am a very new kayaker, but have been on a crash course ever since landing in Chile three weeks earlier. I survived the waterfall laced Palguin creek run, and barreled down the big water of the Upper Trancura with only a skirt implosion and an easy swim. The intense fear I once had for white water is gradually shedding.
It rained heavily that morning as we packed up, but we drove out of it and into blue skies and a perfect day for paddling.
We've been told that the San Pedro is the easiest river we're going to run the entire semester. The water is a bright, exquisitely clear turquoise, nearly the same warm temperature as the air. As we glide along the miles of calm water and splashy waves, the round stones and mottled sand of the river bottom are perfectly visible. We flip over on purpose and hang upside down, eyes open, taking photos underwater:
The Rio San Pedro from below. Photo by Palmer Miller
The river is over twelve miles long and slated to be dammed in the coming months. On some stretches, the current moves very quickly but the surface of the water remains smooth. The sensation is as close to flying as I'll ever get. The river branches apart and comes together again, branches apart and comes together. Little waterfalls splash down from the surrounding cliffs and send swarms of bubbles jetting to the surface.
There are two are major rapids on the San Pedro, class 4 big water and very pushy. They come one right after the other as the river narrows into a tighter channel, bends to the left against a sharp rock wall, and the water crushes into massive, chaotic wave trains. Emery and I both tense up as we approach the first of the two. 'Where do I go? Where do I go?' we ask David. Siren song of the worried kayaker.
David just laughs and teases us. This is what he did before the intimidating but harmless drops on the Palguin.'Just point to the left, there's nothing to worry about.' We bounce into the rapid. It's big and crashing, with waves so steep they throw your bow completely vertical into the air. After powering through without even a flip, we end up in a small stretch of flat, fast moving water. I'm exhilarated and careless, my heart pounding but no longer in fear. I want more of those huge waves. This river is deep water with no rocks, nothing to get stuck under, pinned against. I go into the second rapid without asking any questions, without any beta, without following anyone's line. My last thought is to turn and reassure Emery, who is still gripped.
I paddle ahead and get immediately flipped. The water is so warm and clear, I can barely tell when I'm up and when I'm under. It feels strange to be submerged and moving so fast. I roll up wobbly and get punched back down on the opposite side, up and over, over over. I can catch maybe a fragment of breath every time I come up. I realize that I'm getting totally slayed, but I'm fairly nonchalant about it. I'm not going to swim. I know I can barrel-roll the whole thing like this because the rapid flattens out into a pool at the end and there are no rocks to worry about.
I talk to myself as I'm up and under, up and under: hold on girl, tuck forward, snap up, breathe, steady. I'm smiling a little under water, knowing how the kids will tease me about running such a long rapid on my head.
I'm finally able to roll up and steady myself long enough to take a quick look around. I'm in the middle of the rapid, on the right side. Things are flying by too fast and explosive and confusing to think. I see one of my students, Nelson, paddling past me on my left. Nelson, my AP student, who is always showing up late to class, he's the only one in the class, and he's always asking me to brush his hair. I look at him for one second and he twists his face into this horrible expression and shouts NO! NO! NO!
This is when everything shifts. I can hear him above the roar of the water. NO! NO! NO! I don't even need to look to know that I'm going somewhere very bad. I turn my head to the right and the world slows down just a bit. I see that I am heading full speed into a wall of hard volcanic rock. There's no time to change direction. I slam against it, taking the entire force with my face and the outside of my right shoulder. In an instant I'm flipped upside down.
Underneath the water I'm pinned and perfectly still. The force of the current is pushing the back of my boat against the wall at a 90 degree angle to the river bottom. There's a loud bubbling like the sound of a fish tank at night, much more peaceful and deep than the smashing of waves above. I let go of my paddle and it flies away. I grasp my skirt and pull it with a concerted effort, somersault out of the boat and my face emerges onto surface. I gasp at the air and for moment I think, I'm safe now. And then I look around.
This particular spot on the river creates a rare feature known as a death eddy. The eddy is like a pocket on the side of the river surrounded by steep, sharp walls. The entrance back to the main current is as narrow as a double doorway. The turbulent water moving inside the eddy collides with the downstream current to create a barrier so strong it's impossible to swim across. If you tried, it would suck you down into a whirlpool and push you back into the eddy. The downstream side of the eddy is backed up by a an undercut rock wall. If you're not rescued and pulled out with a rope, you will eventually be swept underneath the rock and stuck.
I am not aware of the undercut yet. I'm not aware of anything because I can't figure out where I am. And I;m curious about it but strangely calm. The water is white foam, slashing and spinning. The powerful recirculation slams me against the upstream wall like a rag doll, then under, down, up, and back into the wall. I'm on spin cycle. My PFD is built with padding to protect my organs but, arms out and flailing, I take the blows with my face, hands and bare legs. Each time I get pulled under I'm feel terribly confused- I keep thinking, I'm wearing a PFD, how am I not floating? Did it stop working? I want Tino. My brain starts this mantra where is tino where is tino where is tino, round and round like a nursery rhyme.
Tino is the coach. Like me he's from New England, and he's only 20 years old. He went to New River Academy for his last year of high school and never left. I've really liked Tino since I met him, but especially so ever since he pulled me out of the Trancura. It was my first swim of the season, on a tricky but pretty harmless rapid. We'd scouted and Tino stood on the bank setting safely. I flipped in a hole, my paddle was ripped out of my hands and I pulled my skirt. The instant my head resurfaced in the nearby eddy, Tino had his hands on me and was pulling me onto the bank. It's easy go get attached to the someone after they care for you when your sick or pull you out of a spot where you're scared. I feel the same way about Dave.
But right now on this river, neither of them are with me. I am struck with the staggering loneliness of being in a place where literally no one can help me. Tino is well behind me with a group of students, surfing every play wave they find, the group I was paddling with are all down river. But Nelson- Nelson! A current of hope cuts through through my tumbling, fragmented thoughts. Nelson saw what happened, he knows where I am. But for him or Dave to rescue me, they'd have to finish the rapid, eddy out, he'd have to explain what happened, and then they'd have to hike out of the river and come look for me. It wasn't going to happen in time.
I decide I will climb out, which is just absurd. I give it a go anyway. I grab at a piece of the rock and try to drag myself out. The piece of rock comes off in my hand. You have got to be kidding me is exactly what I think. with a note of detachment, as if I was watching this from the bank, as if this was all some huge joke. This is so bad! You have to be kidding me this is so bad.
Just then I feel something bump against me and I throw my arms around it, thinking it's someone come to rescue me. It's my boat, which has only now become unpinned and resurfaced. It is bright red amongst the swirling white and the front is scratched deeply and dented from the collision with the wall. I put my arms around it and try and rest my cheek on the bow.
With my arms hugging the plastic, I notice that there is red water leaking from my hand. It takes half a second to realize there is blood in the water and it is my blood. This is so much more violent than I thought drowning would be. By all accounts drowning is a peaceful way to go, not that anyone who is alive to tell about it should be considered a credible source. But at the very least, I always thought it would be quick. Now I'm stuck here, pulling in little bits of air, circling the drain but not being held down long enough to actually die. I don't feel any panic, just a dull curiosity as to what will happen next.
And then I am then pulled under and shot deep, ripped away from my boat, and sucked against the downstream wall of the eddy. My eyes are open and I can see a dark green tunnel as the light blinks away, my hair floating in front of my face as fine as spiderwebs. I put my hands out and feel rock on all sides of me. I've finally been pulled into the undercut.
Very quickly, a voice from the deepest recesses of my brain takes control. It begins firing out instructions, urgently but calmly.
You are going to lose consciousness. You have one hour to stay alive after you lose consciousness. You will stay alive during that hour. Nelson knows where to find your body. You will remain alive and they will resuscitate you.
I feel an extreme fondness for Nelson. The loneliness of that dark tunnel is cut by his knowing where I've gone.
I am almost out of breath. Half a lungful of air lasts only a short time when you're struggling. It's different than when you're in the bathtub, and you slip under the water and see how long you can count. Behind my closed eyes I black spots appear, like pockmarks burnt into old film strips. From the moment you become a kayaker you dread this moment. But a little part of you is also very curious. I wonder if my lungs will implode, and whether that will feel like two balloons bursting. And then what?
I decide I'd rather not wait any longer. If I suck water into my lungs I can aspirate, which might hurt less. I guess the fear of pain lasts to the lasts second. I open my mouth and draw in a throatful of water. I feel very subdued about it. In a few seconds I'll be gone and my rescue will be someone else's problem.
Two seconds later, my head breaks through the surface of the water, face tipped forward like an infant at birth. By some wild luck, this undercut had an opening at the other side, and I have been sucked completely through.
The rest of the rapid crashes around me and then it's over. I am pulling myself out on an island in the middle of the river. The kids are clustered there in the eddy, and David is standing above me. He's collected my boat, paddle, and all my gear that floated down before me. Everyone starts talking at once. Only Nelson and Dave are quiet. Dave is helping me up on shore. He's staring into my eyes. He instructs, gently, 'just look at my face. Sit down. Keep looking at me.'
I feel slow and cold. The whole time I was stuck, my heart rate didn't even raise above its normal rythm. I'm alive but yet I feel so defeated for some reason. Palmer, one of my favorites, shrieks and points to my hand. The rest of the kids say 'Palmer! Don't yell! Don't upset her!'
'Oh sorry.' She says. 'I didn't mean to. Sorry sorry. It's just- your hand.'
My hand is split on the backside and it's bleeding. Then she shrieks again, her hands over her mouth, and makes these wide 'I'm Sorry!' eyes. Now she gestures towards my leg. My leg is cut from halfway up the calf to the back of my knee. It is split right through the center of my Vermont tattoo and watery blood is going everywhere. I look at it mutely. Like it's someone else's leg. I certainly don't feel any pain.
The kids are rattling off the stories of their own worst swims. I imagine their words all floating up from their mouths as long strings of capitol letters. This is how teenagers try and soothe you. They sound like geese. I want silence. I turn my head to the opposite side of the river, support my body with my arms and gag up water. I start to cry silently. The terrible loneliness I felt in the cave clings to me. David makes me focus on his face. It makes it a little better because I'm always trying to impress him and I like that he's so focused on me right now.
I cannot sit on the island forever. There are still a few wretched miles left of the river and I have to get back into my banged up boat and finish it. I keep spitting water and crying without making noise. Then I turn my head to the side and hyperventilate. Aah ha aaah ha aah. The rest of the rapids makes me feel a little angry but mostly that weird, sad, defeated feeling prevails. I feel like I am nothing.
By the time we're all gathered back at the van, trying down boats and pulling off dry tops, some of the kids are talking about what happened. Some of them aren't interested at all. 'But youre still here!' says one of them, brandishing a camera. 'Let's document that!' They take this picture:
We arrive that night in Choscuenco on the Rio Fuy. Our little hotel has a tin roof and even though I expect to have nightmares, I don't. The next day after classes we are going to run a 25 foot waterfall on the upper section. I don't really care to go. I walk downstairs with an armful of text books to do my lesson plans while everyone is gone. Then Matias, the Argentinian physics teacher who is the hairiest man I've ever seen takes me aside in the afternoon after classes. He grabs my elbow.
'You must get back in the horse, Melina,' he says.
'No,' I tell him. 'I'm not boating today.'
'Hey-hey- you are being a pussy. I know you swam. You must get back in the horse.' Matias is not a normal person. Only a few days before the San Pedro, Tracy had lost hold of her boat on the steep hike out of the Palguin. The boat bounced down the train and ricocheted over a 50 foot waterfall into a canyon of. Without a word, Matias grabbed a paddle and made a running leap over the cliff. He chased after the boat in the water, and paddled it out (it was much too small for him) through a set of serious rapids which hardly anyone runs. We picked him up in the van a few miles down the road. Since then the kids revered Matias like some sort of God, although they still hated his classes.
I know I do not need to listen to Matias. But I find myself feeling surprisingly neutral about paddling. I haven't let go of the shock yet. I run the waterfall that afternoon and it is really easy.
Palmer and I at the bottom of the drop
Later that night, I inspect my bare legs on my narrow bed in the rickety wooden hotel. I am surprised that the bruises haven't shown up. And then the next morning, they do. A deep, speckled blue and purple over my shoulders and arms and a bluish black stain on my legs, the long gash yellow and red and glossy, like tropical fruit.
Later on that day, our 2nd day in Choshuenco, we're running the middle Fuy and I don't want to go. None of the kids will leave me alone. They all cheer for me to come with them. They think they're being really nice by encouraging me. I run out of the hotel and across the town to hide from the kids. Since nobody knows where I am, the van leaves for the river without me. I slink back to the empty hotel feeling relief.
I write my friend Will an email about what happened. He's the first person I tell about the swim and for a while, the only one. Will is far away in cold, Snowy North carolina where he goes to school, but I think about him all the time. Constantly. I tell him what happened and how bad I feel about it. How I was totally fine the day after but the shock has worn off and now I feel like some sort of criminal. Selfish and shameful and scared for the rest of the trip and the countless rivers ahead, rivers that will be much more difficult. Unconcerned with punctuation and constantly tripping on the foreign keyboard, I banged out incomplete thoughts:
okay i know how dramatic that sounds, all of it. but it was so terrifying. it was such a nightmare. i know it turned out okay. I know that but....what the hell....i feel so selfish. this sport. i have such a good time but what do a lifetime´s worth of experiences on the river matter to my mom if i hadn´t come out of the cave. they would mean nothing and i cannot wrap my mind around that. i know it turned out fine and that bad swims happen. i8 just wish i didn´t know what it was like. okay gotta go. love you.
***
Looking back now, I might label that whole incident as foreshadowing. Because after that, everything went nuts.
My induction into the trend of food foam came in the form of lemony squid bubbles. At that moment I was curious as to why, at such an elegant establishment, someone had put shaving cream on top of my crab. Since then I’ve become more familiar with the growing trend of food-turned-froth, a culinary feat achieved with nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and a complicated chemical process known only by select chefs. I’ve tasted a variety of foamed food, from cucumber ‘air’, to curried froth on a poached egg, to ‘truffle bubbles’ – a delicacy I’m convinced was invented purely for the linguistic delight of ordering it aloud.
Nothing about a swath of lather on your plate will make you exclaim, “Just like mother used to make!” Or even, “Exactly what I’m in the mood for!” In fact, not much about it will remind you of food at all. It’s an entirely new category, a fusion of art, science and cuisine that I’d label ‘magical taste’ if I had any authority. So far, it’s served primarily as a topping or an amuse bouche between courses. Yet as the trend picks up steam, the list of that which can be aerated continues to grow: lamb chop, tropical fruit, herbs- it’s even rumored that one extremely exclusive restaurant offers a gin and tonic whip, served in an egg cup.
The foam trend climbs straight to the top of new-age dining, into the realm of the ethereal. Once dished out, it must be hurriedly presented to the diner before the bubbles settle. There’s something so en vogue about food that will collapse on the plate if ignored, and disappears into your mouth with satiric convenience: who has time to chew, anyway? Spooning a dab of froth off a doll-sized plate makes me feel chic, modern, one step closer to the mythical Manhattan model who subsist off cups of ginger-infused oxygen.
My squid bubbles tasted- and felt- like ocean spray. The pistachio foam with candied mint I once ordered with enthusiasm offered only the barest essence of flavor, and had me guiltily eying the chocolate mousse at the next table over. But then, that’s missing the point entirely. You don’t order foam to have something to sink your teeth into it, for its nutritional substance or rich flavor. There are no frozen pints of potato foam or chic aerosol sprays of gingered lime bubble in the supermarket. Because of their complexity and evanescence, foams are only available in certain restaurants, those interested in providing their guests with the latest fad and dressing up their entrees in haute couture. Critics have called the trend ‘pretentious’, but I applaud there being a food that’s half material, half experience, the way train travel used to be.
What are your thoughts about this kitchen chemistry? Has your tuna tar tare or crème brûlée ever been served with a beret of bubbles? Do you think there is any substance to be found within this trend, or is it just, well….fluff?
A really, really terrible trend in this blog. I spend forever writing and perfecting a post. Then when I switch it from HTML and publish it, I lose a section. I'm not sure if the ineptitude is on my end or blogger's end, but either way the last post lost a huge piece of it. I'm really sorry that it ended up being so incomplete. What a big pain in the ass. Here's the piece that was missing. It might help explain the title of the last post. I'll try really hard not to let this happen again.
Ian Parks played first, a Seattle musician who relocated to LA. He brought with him a pose of good natured folks who, by 10:00 in the evening, had completely given up the idea of the cup and were all clinging to nearly empty wine bottles by their neck and hand-rolling cigarettes in my bedroom. Ian is a stunning musician who plays with a ton of heart. My favorite song that he played was preferenced, as many good folk songs are, by the story that inspired it. This particular story was about a girl who Ian fell in love with to no avail- she played for the other team. "Well," Ian concluded heartily, "that didn't stop me from writing a love song about her!" The cheer that rose from the audience after this made me very happy. It made me think about everybody in the room, everybody in my life, who is currently flailing and struggling with the Love- not as an idea but as an actuality. How many of us try and try and try, even when love is not requited, and wonder what the hell it is we're doing. But the truth is, no matter what we're doing, if the intent is out of love, than it can't be wrong. Because the love songs we're writing will only truly be reciprocated once. And there's joy in the writing.
I'd like to officially thank my sister Anna and brother in law Brooks for seriously compromising- if not destroying outright- my ability to write. You see, it's much easier to write when you're not so happy. Take, for example, the book that taught me the most about the technique and passion that one can throw into language. Wasted was written by a woman named Marya Hornbacher; she was an anorexic and bulimic manic depressive Mid Westerner and her life was total shit. But my goodness could she string words together.
The time when I was 22 year old and I lost my mind over a break up, yeesh, I wrote like a banshee on the down side of an Ecstasy binge! That's when I started Then The Radio Died, which is still some of my favorite stuff. I was schlepping around in my bedroom, searching for a rock to crawl under, thinking: woe to me, but at least I got my radio. I've always loved the radio. And as I had that thought, literally as the words passed through my brain, the radio died. Snapped off with a little, self-satisfied pop!
Oh, life, come on-really? You're going to take my radio?
Funny thing is- I'm sitting in my living room right now and I see about 8 different radios. I've collected them ever since I suppose. Dad keeps giving me radios for Christmas and I will take them, eyes gleaming, fingers groping at their dials and antennae, and I'll exhale thankkkk youuuuu and closet them away just in case.
So back to the point. Towards the end of the summer I was living alone in Vermont and settling into weird solidarity with the local flora and fauna. Poetry was starting to make a great deal of sense to me. The hazy sweet summer was a mockery of life's cold realities, and the turning tang of autumn on the wind was just further proof that everything eventually dies. That's when Anna and Brooks graciously insisted that I move back to Seattle, where if I wanted to be mopey at least I'd have an entire population sect to keep me company, and I could wear tight pants and drink tiny mournful cups of espresso. With a full understanding of my limited freelance/no-lance income, they welcomed me into their home. Where I live today.
They share their dog. They share their food. They share their bath tub. And with these three things accounted for, I've got nothing left to complain about. But when you're all strung out on gratefulness and social fulfillment, it's hard to write a post that doesn't slide down your throat like cool-whip.
If I really work at it, I can conjure a bit of my old flavor of lightning strike induced muteness and buried infant macabre (hey- give me a break, I payed 5 years of college tuition to learn how to talk about my writing, if not actually write) but just as I'm stirring it into some context, Brooks will wander in and say would you like some of my enchilada pie I whipped up from the the family cook book? Or the sister bursts in the door (not historically a family of knockers, she's always bursting through doors) and says Who wants to do a TARGET CHRISTMAS LIGHTS RUN?
(Allow me to interject that while this is well and good, it is the cultural and moral obligation of older siblings to systematically wear away at the youthful, hopeful exterior of the lessers, slash younger, sibling, and my sister has done a fair amount of this. You should have heard the railing she gave me yesterday as I tried to read aloud from my new book of teach yourself chakra healing. Her reception of this proffered enlightenment consisted primarily of running the blender through the important parts and then lecturing me about hard scientific discoveries and their betterment of the human race. Not of a spiritual mind, that sister. And this is undeniably a good thing. Without her there is a good chance I'd float away in my own self-inflated thoughts and my balloon would burst over that Atlantic.)
Anyway, if in the past two months my sister and her husband has kept me far away from the darker recesses of my creativity, then I would call this weekend the zenith of their sabotage. They filled the house way past capacity with music, beer, and nearly every person I love in the entire city. So I'm sorry if this post reads like a cherry flavored gusher.( And here's hoping that my friend Jace doesn't read this, because we once made this pact that if our writing ever sucked to the point that it could be published in Chicken Soup for the Soul, we'd tie one another to the railroad tracks. But Jace moved to Phoenix and became a fregan and has probably lost the will to live by now.)
Saturday night, we had a house concert.
And while I didn't perform per se, I do think I was the true star of the evening because I was in charge of the snacks. Somewhat in charge of the snacks. And man, where they ever a hit!
Anna had a concert at the EMP on Saturday morning, so Brooks and I cleaned the entire house and cooked. Here's a little subtle marketing of my own project that I left in the bathroom:
And here's Brooks, trying to dismantle the table to make room for more chairs. Not a staged photo, promise. He didn't even know I was in the room.
Ian Parks played first, a Seattle musician who relocated to LA. He brought with him a pose of good matured folks who, by 10:00 in the evening, had completely given up the idea of the cup and were all clinging to nearly empty wine bottles by their neck and hand-rolling cigarettes in my bedroom. Ian is a stunning musician that plays with a ton of heart. My favorite song that he played was preference, as many good folk songs are, by the story that inspired it. This particular story was about a girl who Ian fell in love with to no avail- she played for the other team. "Well," Ian concluded heartily, "that didn't stop me from writing a love song about her!" The cheer that rose from the audience after this made me very happy. It made me think about everybody in the room, everybody in my life, who is currently flailing and struggling with the Love- not as an idea but as an actuality. How many of us try and try and try, even when love is not requited, and wonder what the hell it is we're doing. But the truth is, no matter what we're doing, if the intent is out of love, than it can't be wrong. Because the love songs we're writing will only truly be reciprocated once. And there's joy in the writing.
Sorry bout it. But that's what I think.
Then Anna Coogan and Brooks Miner took the narrow slab of living room we called the stage. And good Lord. They killed it. Their rendition of The Wreck of the Edmond Fitzgerald, with Ian up with them playing Mandolin brought the house down, (in a sorrowful maritime tragic kind of way.) If you closed your eyes you'd be transported from an overcrowded home in Lake city and into the The Cathedral of the Maritme Sailors in Detroit, with the bell ringing 29 time for each sailor who lost his life on the Edmond Fitzgerald. Damn, what a song. The King of sea shanties. (And The Mary Ellen Carter is the queen.)
Anna has this precisely tuned voice and she can do absolute wonders with it. Brooks has these musical seizures at the piano. Together, it's unbelievable. And I'm unbelievably proud of them.
I want to thank everyone who came out last night, made the trip all the way North to join us.You guys made this a perfect evening. Raise a glass to the gathering of neighbors and friends for a night of music and food. May there be many, many more this winter. Cause when it rains for 5 months straight, you gotta do something to fight back
I love travelling and I miss Chile and the school every day. But having so many people you love in the same city? I'm not sure if there's anything better.
Get excited for this week, because it is The Week of Extreme Movement, designed to balance out the Weekend of Absurd Comforts which just passed. Unfortunately, for now I cannot write anything further about the weekend, because I'm just a mess of love right now and it would read as too intolerably buoyant. I'll give it a try tomorrow when I have a chance of tempering it with a good, strong shot of reality. We shall see.
Here's a preview from the house concert, my favorite couch on the planet:
I just got back from one of the most socially intense and spiritually challenging moments of the human experience: Friday 5pm Whole Foods run. (And with that one sentence, I just outed myself to all my dirt bagging kayaking friends that I have- albeit temporarily- passed over to the yuppified dark side. Which is true, I suppose, for now. What can I say? I love a good corporately wholesome food shopping experience, I do, and Fayetteville West Virginia, with its stunning selection of whitewater but desolate selection of produce, could just never provide.)
Whole foods at rush hour. If you're not prepared, you could end up limping out with $200 lost and nothing gained, having retained only the emotional capability to bus home and crawl into a shell until the next equinox. But if you're ready and you've psyched yourself up for it, then welcome to the most cheerful place on the planet. It's bright and crowded and manic and just plain off-of-the-hook! They've just got to be force feeding their employees a potent mix of caffeinated sugar water, the stuff you might feed to psychotic hummingbirds. (I ought to try that solution in the mornings and maybe I'd have a fighting chance of being alive before noon. I could peck it out of a long red tube.)
Safely at home now, I am suffering a whiplash of regret for choosing the 'winterberry wheat salad' from the hot bar when all I wanted was the friggin macaroni and cheese. Which would have been the same price. I don't even know who I am anymore!! We all live with the consequence of our choices, I suppose. Either way, tonight marks the finale of a mercurial week that alternated between this:
And this:
Similarly, my bio-atmospheric mimicking response, something I invented myself, had me alternating between gloom and joy on a daily basis. Evening X: shades drawn in a dark bedroom, head under the covers, hungry but without the wherewithal to walk down the hall to the kitchen. Evening Y: running around the city like the mad hatter, eating everything in sight and hoisting myself to the drafty roof of the climbing gym and back down a million times.
I do believe a little grounding would be a good thing for me.
Some good news of the week, which helped to counter-act the loss of the stupid writing grant that I didn't really want anyway, is that Lisa has agreed to remove a little ultimate-friz out of her schedule in order to fit in a little more time with me, in this place, doing this, and I get to teach her!
(To the boys at the climbing gym & the weekday crowd at The Noble Fir, you're welcome. But you owe me one.)
The new restaurant of the week is: Anchovies and Olives on First Hill. Really good unless you don't like anchovies or olives. Or sea food, because that's all there is. I don't eat any of those things, but the bread was great! The ambiance, fantastic. The wine? Affordable, during their 'Power Hour'. (Who needs happy when you have power, am I right?)
Thanks Lis and Miranda....where to next week? Can I suggest the Latona Pub? Even though I've been there a thousand times? Yeah?
Annnnnd with that, we're settling in. Nearly everyone I know is sticking around for at least a piece, if not the duration, of the weekend. The house is full of lights, music but, sadly, little 'action'. He. He. Sorry. The house is full of lights, music and FOOD in preparation for tomorrow's concert.
If I don't see you tomorrow, then have a wonderful relaxing weekend. Actually....no. If I don't see you tomorrow, I hope you grow blisters as a result of not seeing The Sister live. Or scales. Or gills! If you do grow gills, tell me how that goes for you, it would be so useful don't you think?
Dear Seattle readers- this SaturdayAnna Coogan is giving a house concert at my (our) house in Lake City. There will be drinks, food and the rare opportunity to see Anna play in a small venue. I've know I've said before how incredible she is, but every time I hear her sing my heart stops beating for just a minute. She's insanely talented and the emotion in her songs might tilt you off kilter for a week or so. I've usually found this to be a good thing.
Come celebrate the end of autumn, the beginning of winter, and everything that we love about this season and this city. It will be nice and warm and there will be wine and good beer and good company. The evening commences at 7, and Anna will play second after Seattle musician Ian Parks. The music will go into the evening, stop by whenever you'd like.
You are so very welcome to come! Write me an email or leave a comment and I'll let you know how to get to my house. And you know what? Anna's been practicing a lot of the sea shanties of our childhood lately, which are my favorite things ever. Not just favorite songs. Favorite things ever.
Last night I dreamt that all my teeth were falling out. And then I'd wake up and realize it was a dream, but that was a dream as well and my teeth would fall out in that dream and I'd wake up again. Finally I did wake up, for real, and I was chanting What is it? What is it? What is it?
Believe it or not, this is a reoccurring thing for me.My guess is that it's something leftover from a freak thumbs-up incident I was involved with in first grade. I was running through the playground on Clarendon street in Boston, shouting as I ran, my mouth a perfect O. At that moment exactly, Emily Lieberman was offering someone a show of support in the form of a thumbs up, arm fully extended. And would you believe it, her thumb was positioned so perfectly that as I ran past, it went right into my mouth and then pop! sprang out as I kept running. I stopped, bent over, knowing something was wrong but not quite sure what. And then I spit a mouthful of teeth into my little hand. Although they hadn't been lose, somehow her thumb had pried them straight out.
I've since had an understandable aversion to the thumbs up, preferring instead the relatively harmless 'A-OK' sign. But I gained something from that moment. Three feet tall in the playground and drooling blood onto my shirt, I had the sudden realization that if this moment hadn't made me cry, than nothing would. I decided, right then and there, that I would never, ever, under any circumstances, cry in school. And I didn't! Not until high school and Reed Cooley kissed Veronika Cameron-Glinkenhouse the night before she was kicked out for having 'relations' with some playboat boy (who never got punished and now lives in Portland and commits check fraud). I was in my third and final year of high school when that happened, and I went into my car and cried for the life of agony and torment that the universe had so obviously singled me out for. But I'm not sure that counts. It was a boarding school, so the rules of what really counted as school proper were sort of gray.
Actually, the rules regarding what constituted school was really a gray area in every element of that school.
Life is so absurd. But overall it's pretty charming, wouldn't you say? Unbelievably quirky and unpredictable and unstable and weird. Not a lot of sense to be made, but you get used to that. Still, there are so many things to do and see and touch and look at. Especially right here.
Someone told me lately, "Your writing used to be a whole lot funnier." And I said, "That's because I used to be a whole lot more miserable."
It's a trade off, I suppose. I've been this walking vessel of cheerfulness lately and I'm not entirely sure why, although I have a vague suspicion that it has to do with my friends and their gopher-like ability to pop up all over the place. Friends with boundless creativity and imagination and intelligence, friends that eat and run and drink and climb and read and study and trip on the sidewalk. I love seeing the calendar black with ink, and showing up alone at the climbing gym after a useless day at work and having three, four, five, six people show up and climb with me.
Having friends around is not a small things. I spent the last two years exploring foreign places, counting in my head the number of fingers and toes I would trade just to have one meal with an old friend. And now, on any given evening, there are like 100 to choose from. And I don't have to perform any amputations.
But you know, I'm not completely happy. I mean, who is. Even in a city brimming with people you love and adore and fight with and cook with, there are still the makings of frustration and loneliness. There is the frustration of wanting to kiss someone but they don't even know your name and you can't figure out how to tell them. Then there are the people who are wanting to kiss you, and you are not wanting to receive a kiss from them, and what do you do about that. There are rainy days like yesterday, and commuting through the dark to eat dinner alone at your messy coffee table. And the distance between boys and girls continues to be phenomenally large, almost irrevocably so, even though we're all adults now and should know by this point how do deal with each other.
But either way, if you can at least remain curious, it's worth waking up to see just what will happen that day.
I have a friend in Boston, who traveled with me in high school, who is waiting to feel better about his heart. He did what many of us have done before, and he gave it away to some girl who put her spike heal through it. He sounds exhausted when he asks me, "When does it get better?"
I've asked that question before. After the land masses tremble and break violently inside of you and the well loved atlas of your life shifts forever. You resist it for as long as you can, stand with one foot on each continent as they go sliding away from one another, until your choice is to either let go or split in half. Might as well not let yourself get broken just yet. I promise that your life will become familiar to you again.
I have no idea how I got here, but I told myself I'd sit down and write whatever came to mind and here I am. To the people who might feel like their teeth are falling out or their interest in the world is evaporating- I know it's tough now, but things will change. Things will change because change and death and taxes are guaranteed. Sometimes you're up sometimes you're down, you know? You don't have to be happy all the time, and you won't be. Imagine if you were- you'd have very little perspective, very little empathy. And there is a great need for these things in the world.
In fact, everything you're learning as you break up or break down, especially what you're learning as you recover, these are things the world desperately needs.
I've found through my own experimentation that if you need to, you can actually prove to yourself that you will come to life again. It involves becoming very cold. Put on running shoes and go outside, and stay out there until you are wet and freezing. I mean don't just stand there, run around. Have a good time. When you can't take it any more, go inside and strip off your wet clothes. Get in a hot shower or stand by the fire, put on a warm sweatshirt and feel the rush of blood as it courses through your body. That is the feeling you need to hold on to. Life returning to places of you where you thought you'd be numb forever.
Will took a plane to India and some time ago he crossed over to Nepal. Nobody heard from him for the first month and we all thought he'd drowned and in my dreams I'd confuse Will with Ben, there had been an accident, someone had fallen and someone had drowned, and I'd wake up confused and start crying at the thought of Will being dead. Then I got a terse, three line email saying he was still kicking and the paddling was rad. And what was there to say in return? Nothing. I'm glad you're alive. I love you and I want you to keep your head above water, but I don't miss you any more. Not like I used to.
Monday morning. I was a finalist for the Trazzler Northwest Writing Grant but I lost it. But then again, in one hour I have another interview, for something completely different. What is your morning right now? Have you lost or have you won? Chances are you'll try again, no matter what. Chances are we'll all survive.
Why do we even bother with the rest of the day? Raven days, the color of ash, wind storms on the street corners and wet leaves swirling around in circles. The day feels quiet and restless, uneasy, you work on your projects and put the kettle on five times before you remember to actually pour the tea. But when the light is finally gone, a slow drain- the city bursts into life. Capitol Hill was built to keep the heart of the city beating during the rain season.
People are running around First Hill with wicked umbrellas, dashing high heals through puddles, every streetlight or tail light explodes into diamonds on the street. Cafe Presse is hidden in a wall somewhere, and they serve a killer hot chocolate, the kind you might spend your whole life searching for. It's served with a little iceberg of whipped cream, on a separate plate, that you eat with a spoon.
It's Saturday night and we get the coveted corner table. Hours of wine and chocolate and whispering and yelling and telling stories about ghosts. It's just so beautiful here, life seems almost unreal- built out of glass and steam and raindrops. Why would we be anything but enraptured in a place like this?
Is it crazy that I am so happy right now?
(Wouldn't it be crazy not to be?)
The dad comes downstairs. The dad works too hard in his upstairs office. The dad is brilliant. He is a genius. He sees me sitting cross legged at the table, typing. "Hello kid," he says, filling the electric kettle with water. In the time it takes for the tea to boil and steep, the dad will make one lap around the butcher block table. He will rip open the package of crackers that's sitting there and eat three. He'll turn the radio on and off. And then he'll say, "Kid, if there's one thing I teach you before I die, it's this." And then he'll pause, gazing out the window.
"What's that, dad?" I'll ask, knowing what he's going to say.
"Kid, you can't let the bastards get you down."
Sometimes he'll stop there. Other times he'll add, with a sort-of laugh, "Because, kid, there are a lot of bastards out there." And he'll take his black tea and shuffle back up the stairs to his office. This is the anthem of my childhood.
The dad
This past Tuesday, us democrats didn't do so great in the election. To put it mildly. My trio of states- Vermont, Massachusetts and Washington, remained steadily blue (here's hoping for Patty Murray, it's looking good!). But pretty much the rest of the country was handed over to the greedy, the ignorant, the evil, the inconsiderate, the lying, the misleading, and the misled.
As the news was piped out over the radio Tuesday night, I was sitting on the living room floor, stitching together some photos that I took with my good friend Ava last Sunday. We took a photo stroll through Wallingford on the most heavenly warm blue day. We brought the dogs. I was planning on writing up a post about something benign, some pleasant ode to neighborhoods, friendship, dogs, coffee. Contentment in general. But I lost my concentration, actually I almost lost my dinner, as I watched the red tide seep across the map. I flicked idly through the photos and felt this wave of revulsion sweep through my stomach.
Two days before the election and what was I doing. I wasn't canvassing or making phone calls or running around doing something to help the democratic cause. I wasn't doing any of that. My cousin Tracy, who lives in Boston, who I admire so incredibly much, works full time as a lawyer. And she's a wife and has a new apartment and is always running to Washington DC for work. She's insanely busy and she still finds time to work for the left.
At her wedding last summer- rainy, perfect- her husband Todd gave a little speech about the reasons he loved her. He told a story about how Tracy was working for Obama before the 2008 election, going from door to door in a remote, conservative New Hampshire town. Tracy's car broke down, in the rain, in the middle of nowhere. It took hours for her to get it fixed. By then it was late, and dark. At this point of the story, Todd looked down at his bride with this look of pride and said, "And guys- you know what she did? She got back in the car and she kept on going, house to house. It didn't even occur to her to stop for the night."
Hey, Tracy? Cousin? I love you.
But me? I didn't do anything this time around. "Too busy," is what I said to myself, "The job, writing, money, you know, figuring myself out. Too busy." I'm not too busy. I had this idea that I'd perfect myself first- get local and healthy and use public transportation and bring a reusable coffee mug anywhere- and then I'd do something. But I spent so much damn time at whole foods deliberating what to put into the recycle vs. what to put in the compost that I never looked up, looked beyond myself, and said holy shit. We're losing. I ought to do something.
The disappointment I felt towards myself grew and grew that night until, sleepless in bed, the horrible thought occurred to me. Have I let my family down? My family is political and smart and hard working. And I feel as if I run around and laugh a lot. I don't do enough. The thought fell Thunk! Out of my brain and down into my stomach. I do not do enough. I vote, I give money to VPR. I talk a lot. But I don't do enough.
Even the next morning, after I chilled out and took a shower, I couldn't bring myself to post the nice images of our photo walk. The first post after a bad election just can't be little images of nice little distractions. Can it?
And then I thought of the dad. Playing me Phil Oches records as a kid. The dad, teaching me to walk the razor thin line between cynicism, hope, fight acceptance, and work. You can't let the bastards get you down, kid. Because there are a lot of bastards out there And now there are even more. And they're in charge. Of the House at least.
I thought about my home in Vermont, White River Junction, which is part of a national movement. It's a 'transition town,' where people have decided they really don't have a say in what happens in government, good or bad, and they're tired of waiting. They can't do anything to lower the cost of fuel, so in winter they walk door to door and ask people if they need help with their heating. If they do, they bring them wood. They try and keep their money within their communities knowing that when the communities go, Vermont goes, too.
***
I remember the dad in the kitchen, we're always in the kitchen, pulling the cork out of a bottle of wine. I'm 16 years old and about to go to abroad for the semester with my weird little boarding school. The dad says, "Kid, I could not care less how well you learn algebra. But it's the most important thing in the world for you to travel, and see that there is a world outside of Vermont."
"I agree, dad!" I'm bouncing off the walls.
The dad is serious. "Kid, there is this attitude in the US that everyone else is bad and we need to be afraid. That attitude is wrong, kid. You need to understand that."
To the mom and dad, I'm not scared. I'm sick and tired of ignorance-fueled decision making and hate-backed policy just as you are. I'm glad you raised me to lift my head up and pay attention. But I don't live in fear of other people. I love this country, I love the world and being alive in it. This election sucked. But I won't let the assholes get me down, not if you don't.
I also know that I'm not doing enough. So I'm going to start. I'm going to start here.
I shall now quote one of my favorite writers, Mike Schur (pictured above), on the lamentable outcome of the 2010 Election: "I can't wait to see what brand new, innovative, difference-making ideas this batch of fresh-faced Washington officials has cooked up for us!"
Something about a puddle. What was it? I mentioned it briefly in the last post.... slick cement, my face at ankle level, a fancy dress -tags carefully hidden in the back- soaking up the rainwater running down the sidewalk. Now what was that . . .
Right! Now I remember. It was the tail end of Restaurant week and I was leaving the Steelehead Diner in downtown Seattle, having just shared a liquid dinner with Rainn Wilson and his friends. Three running steps away from the Diner, on the way to the theater, the steep hill and the rain and all the wine and excitement reached a crescendo and darn it if I didn't just lose my footing and end up in a heap right there on the shiny pavement. A very beautiful older woman stopped right in front of me, mouthed "are you alright?" and I responded, very politely and full of exuberance, "Yesyesyes thank you I'm great- I'm perfect!"
But let me back up a bit.
As I sometimes/very often like to mention here, I'm a writer for a project called Soul Pancake (The Place to Chew on Life's Big Questions!) which is the brainchild of Rainn Wilson. But not many people have heard of Soul Pancake. A lot of people don't even know who Rainn is, even in Seattle where he's from. But everybody has heard of his alter ego, Dwight Schrute, and I've gotten used to seeing the merest glint of recognition in the eyes of that who I'm speaking to turn to full on excitement when I mention that crazy paperselling beat farming motha:
Rainn is an absolutely brilliant comedic actor and a really good guy. And he stars in the show that I'd give my eyeballs to write for. So naturally, when I heard that he was coming into town for a performance, I was determined as I've ever been to meet him in person. And whatdoyaknow, I got to have dinner with him! Although, I didn't really eat anything. At all. Maybe a carrot stick. Nerves, you know.
Dinner was held in the back room of the Steelehead Diner across the street from Pike Place Market. It was a very small room and it was very black, very dark, very Hollywood. I was running late, surprise surprise, careening on leather boots through downtown, herds of people everywhere, light rain, and I almost got run over by an SUV that smashed right through a pedestrian light. Like- I really almost got hit. This made me angry and so when a man approached me about a lighter, and then about a cigarette, and then about the cash in my wallet, I turned around and yelled so loud at him to go away that he actually did.
A few minutes later I squeaked to a stop right before the Diner, composed myself, and glided inside. The performers had not arrived yet but the wine sure had. I gulped back a glass like it was water and threw back the second like it was a shot of Patron. Then I very politely asked for another glass and the bemused waiter obliged. By the time the performers showed up, any social anxiety I had about dining with celebrities had more or less been drowned.
Rainn walked in, the last to arrive, to a smattering of applause. He had his mother in tow, his gorgeous wife by his side and their little boy, Walter, between them. The rest of the performers were dressed in black with leather jackets; a few had a girl hanging off the bend in their elbows like an elaborate handbag. I'm an equal opportunity observer and fairly assumed that the girls were part of the show, but they weren't. Although the entire evening was a benefit to the Mona Foundation which services women and children, there was not a single girl (or child) in the whole shebang. The lovely girls in black who laughed a lot were pure decoration, so it seemed, for the somewhat surly performers gathered in the little dark room.
Here's a funny thing about when celebrities mingle with civilians, and I didn't even think about this before. The civilians are there strictly to have access to the celebrities and nobody bothers to pretend otherwise. They regard one another with narrowed eyes, throw around looks of hostile boredom and competition. I, a civilian, was the victim of many such looks and if I hadn't been on my best behavior I would have snarled at them. But there was a big difference between myself and the other ten or so people of no interest: I went alone. I had a seat at dinner, tickets to the show, and a VIP bracelet for the after party and I was all by meself. By choice. Basically, I was climbing my social Everest. My choices were 1. sit very quietly in the corner and chew like a rabbit on cut vegetables or 2. come up with some seriously class 5 small talk.
Rainn and Holiday both chewed gum like machines, and they seemed a little worn out, but they were completely kind. Holiday was s-t-u-n-n-i-n-g-l-y gorgeous and had this smile like a Christmas tree. I spoke with her for a while, sitting by the wall with our legs crossed. We talked about writing, my website, her work. Holiday studied fiction writing at UW just like myself; we even had a few of the same professors (including the notable and moustached David Bosworth.) Then Rainn sat down next to her with two plates of food, handed one to her, and began asking me questions about the writing I do for SP. (Lucky for me, Rainn is currently in a Soul Pancake Frenzy, because the book was about to be released.)
Real Rainn was not much like Dwight at all. Minus the severe middle part on his head, the pocket protector and the manic eyes, Rainn was just an a regular, good looking dude. I'd been terrified I might slip up and call him Dwight, but that fear was nothing. Here he was, Rainn- the Seattalite, the husband, the guy who obviously works really hard, one eye always roaming the room to check on Walter. Rainn who smelled like the most incredible cologne there ever was. Apparently people are always asking him how similar his own personality is to that of Mr.Schrute's, assuming from his magnificent portrayal in The Office that they've just got to be the same weirdo. And he always tells them, "No, NBC did not go and hire a beat farmer paper salesman for this role. I actually do act."
I figured talking to him about my own writing and this blog and my features on the Pancake might feel surreal and that I'd choke on the hoursderves (how in H do you spell that word??) and spit wine on his wife, but I didn't. It was really easy. Of course, I do have a little celebrity experience of my own. Once, at LAX, I stood behind Brittany Spears (pre K-Fed) on an escalator. (Because I know you're wondering: her hair looked just awful, poor thing, dried out and died to straw.) Between Rainn's naturally easy demeanor, white wine and the latest SP news and stories, starstruckness melted easily into real and lively conversation.
I spent the rest of dinner with Craig Robinson and the girl he brought with him, who by the way he kept trying to feed. She'd pick something off her plate and he'd take it out of her hand and then put it in her mouth. I drank a lot of wine during this time. Craig speaks in exactly the same manner as his character, Daryl. While perusing the buffet, he held up a red thing on a piece of toast and said, "wuz thiz now?" And I said, "I think that's an alcohol soaked cherry on a piece of beef," I only knew cause a waitress had just told me. He looked up, nodded his head very calmly. "Yeah. Yeah- Lina knows whats up." Then we went and sat down and talked more and got into a gleeful a debate about what year facebook started. Then the next thing I remember is that I needed to be at the theater for the show to start.
But I was officially drunk by now, happy as a clam, which is not an elegant thing to be at 7:30pm. But nothing, absolutely nothing could have bothered me in that moment. I flew down the hallway and outside, breathing in the heavy, wet air, beaming up at the brilliant pink Pike Place sign, smiling at everyone. I felt very Manhattan, running from one event to the other in a cut velvet dress, not bothering to put on a jacket or wait for traffic lights to turn.
That's when the heal of my boot slipped and I did a face plant into the sidewalk. I remember rolling over, peeling my cheek of the ground. I was looking up at the sky and seeing people walk by and thinking my gosh what a nice night. Someone tried to help me but I announced that I was in perfect condition, thankyouverymuch. Good to go. I remember the city lights bouncing around me as I got up and kept running- it was imperative to run- all the way up the street, through the throngs of people, and into the Theater.
Seated in the front, I watched the stage slide from side as I tilted my head to the left and right. Why did I do that, drink four glasses of wine and eat nothing but one carrot stick, I'd begin and think, but then the thought would melt into the warm fuzz that was my brain. And then the show started.
The gorgeous, gilded Paramount theater was packed, 3,000 people and not a single chair open. The dress attire ranged from fancy gowns to hipster jeans to Dunder Mifflin t-shirts. And how they managed to pack so much talent onto one stage is something I still can't wrap my mind around. Rainn introduced the bands and the performers and the grateful but fierce founder of the Mona Foundation. He read a few jokes off a pile of index cards he held out in front of him, and then the music started.
And you know what- I can't write about music! Oliver Sacks can, but I can't. So I'm going to turn this post interactive and you can see for yourself just how good this show was. Andy Grammer, who was one of most talkative guys at the dinner, was the first to sing. This is the song I remember loving the most out of his set, one I wanted to soak up into my skin and then expunge later for my sister, who works so hard, and worries so much:
Hey, you'll turn out fine, you know you're going to turn out fine. But you gotta keep your head up, and you gotta let your hair down....
Then Craig Robinson took the stage and 1,500 women in the audience just about took their panties off. Now I don't use that phrase lightly, but I do use it accurately. Craig sits at his keyboard and effortlessly pulls out songs that everyone sings, immediately, upon hearing the first measure. And while we're singing, we're all singing, he just throws in a few "take your panties off...." into the chorus, and by that time it just sounds like a good idea.
Just two week ago I stood in front of a packed theater, albeit a much smaller one, and I made a very intentional decision. It was my job to give away 25 pairs of expedition style X-officio underwear as part of the Climbing Film Festival Charity Auction. And I could either take the easy road and muddle through the "expedition style wickaway thermal underwear...." thing, or I could get the audience going by saying the P word. I chose the latter. Do you remember? Maybe you were there. "Alright everybody, next big winner gets some panties!" The audience winced and writhed but eventually laughed. Craig is onto something here with this Take Your Panties off thing..... People claim to really hate that word but they can't help but get wild when someone shouts, sings, flings it into a crowd!
All of a sudden, Craig stopped dead on his keyboard, raised his hands, the pandemonium gave way to silence. "Ohh...yeah....you all white people- I know what you want to hear," and he started playing the beloved chords to this song.
And we just freaked out. Just as we in the audience had worked ourselves into a lather- just as I thought panties were literally going to rain down upon the stage...Craig brought Rainn back onto the stage and switched to banging out the notes of....
We couldn't stand it, we couldn't take it anymore! We flew to our feet, all 3,000 of us, and proceeded to go nuts! It was amazing! It made me want to go home and write and pick up the banjo and smash a guitar and wake up the neighborhood! It was....awesome.
The After Party was packed full, elbow to elbow, with funky lighting and food everywhere. Rainn and Holiday entered but they couldn't get two feet without someone throwing their arm around them and thrusting a camera into a stranger's hand. By this hour in the night, sober and starving, I made quick work of all the free food that's available at after parties. There were truffle salt french fries and hamburgers, latte carts, an open bar (which I avoided) and a sea of cupcakes which I swam through, the destroying angel of the chocolate mini with whipped pistachio frosting. I did a lot of people watching and stalking of the waiters who darted about, their trays hoisted above our heads. I got to talk to Holiday again and tell Craig just what I thought of his show. And Craig goes, "Well, Li-na, where we going after this? What part of town is happening?" And I said, "Capitol hill, it's where all the gay bars are, and he said "But Lina, I want to see ladies."
So there you have it a nearly thorough description of almost all my night in the world of pop celebrity.
But what does it all mean. It's just one night, after all. The next day, I returned the dress. And I put on a ski hat and went and sat at the coffee shop, opened my lap top. Dreamt again of writing scripts, writing a novel, writing in an actual writer's room. And that's what I've been doing ever since that wild night, writing and thinking, keeping my head up, letting my hair down.
(Now go buy Soul Pancake book, you'll love it. These guys do, but then again what to do they know, they're just ([The] Office workers).
Restaurant week is over. From its humble beginnings in a charming Victorian house in Queen Anne to its farcical finale downtown with me, alone, sprawled across the wet sidewalk at Pike Place market in a 200 dollar dress, assuring a nice looking, concerned older woman that not only was I okay, I was 'PERFECT!'
The week swam by, illuminated by the glow of candlelight in darkly lit dining rooms, flavored by cardamon and truffle salt, and filled with thin stemmed wine glasses, menus, waiters, musicians, a dozen different creme-fraiches, small square plates with little stacks of meat, rum soaked cherries atop a ruffle of beef on toast, (lots of things presented on toast,) running through streets, catching buses, barely coherent street maps, television actors and the stomach flu.
Now that it's over, I feel as if one of us has been conquered. Either restaurant week or myself, I'm not entirely sure. Although I can say, with some amount of certainty, that restaurant week is over and gone, and I am still standing. There were times over these past seven gastronomically challenging and spiritually stretching days where I wasn't sure that this would be the outcome.
Monday.
Trouble Begins
Queen Anne is a mysterious place. Perched high on top of a very steep hill above Seattle center, it's a neighborhood that you never 'just find yourself near.' Although once you do find yourself there as I did on Monday night (late, and running) it's just delightful.
Queen Anne is famous for having two 1'st streets right next to each other. Side by side. Meaning you can make arrangements to meet someone, say, your friend Little Ben, on 1st street in Queen Anne, and then stand there shouting into your mobile phone: "Yes, I AM here..NO YOU'RE NOT because I AM HERE AND I DON'T SEE YOU!" As somewhere in a downtown sky scraper, a maniacal city planner is laughing.
Despite having only a vague idea of the restaurant's whereabouts, despite my lack of smart phone, despite having circled the circumference of kid's outdoor soccer game four times before landing a parking spot, I arrived at Emmer&Rye only 15 minutes late. Lisa and Miranda, who are never late, who manage to work full time jobs, coach full time teams, and play on a professional ultimate team, were already there. Because they have smart phones.
Emmer&Rye is a little Victorian house with three small dining rooms of polished, cherry wood tables. Our 25 dollar restaurant week special included appetizers, entrees, and desserts. We elected to get one of everything on the appetizers list and share them. Things started to go wrong immediately, when they all arrived at once and the beet salad was arbitrarily placed in front of me. "Sharing" in Miranda and Lisa's world, it turns out, means passing the tiny plates in a circle, eating one bite of each, and then returning the plate to the original owner. Not the every-man-for-himself feeding frenzy that I had in mind. Afterward we all sampled, I had about two bites of lettuce left on my plate while Lisa had a whole bowl of soup and Miranda had an entire plate of potatoes.
I felt a stab of concern. I'm not an overly crazy eater, it's just that when I'm hungry, I'm really hungry. None of this, 'hey- want to split one appetizer and one entree?' things certain friends and even a waifish exboyfriend have suggested. No, I do not want to split an amount of food that's intended to feed one. Or, okay, fine- but only if you guarantee we can go out to another restaurant right after this and finish what we started.
But I managed to cool my jets. Fancy restaurants worldwide pride themselves on serving mere specs of food ("fancy bites" I've termed them), but somehow between all the courses and the amuse-bouches that the waiter brings out between meals, you managed to walk away full.
My entree was very, very small indeed. Delicious. Some sort of cracked wheat cake with some wilted something or other for garnish. It was gone in a few bites. I compensated by drinking lots of wine and looking around, wild eyed, at the entrees of the other diners in the room. Believe it or not, every single table in the place was inhabited by three young women.Why, it must be restaurant week.
When dessert appeared on our table, I was shocked. The first 2/3 of the meal had been these tiny little bites. And now here we were served three completely normal sized desserts that stood out like those two regular sized children of the midgets in "Little People, Big World." Salted Carmel brownies, butterscotch pot-de-creme in it's little boat with an oatmeal cookie raft stuck in the middle, and ginger cake with a garnish of seasonal fruit coolie. And here I was, armed with a fork, and still famished. I threw caution to the wind and went to town. This was a mistake which would cast a pall over the rest of restaurant week.
After dinner, I went alone to Kerry Park where there is a view of Seattle that will make you really want to be the recipient of an on-sight marriage proposal.
Later that night after I had gone to sleep, I woke up from terrible dreams. Cannibal dreams. I pulled myself out of bed and padded down the hall to the bathroom where I drank hand fulls of water from the faucet, wondering where I had gone wrong. You expect these sort of dreams, they are a natural companion to the homeostasis desecration and sensory overload of Restaurant Week. But never this early in the game!
I chalked it up to the giant desserts, and the amount of sugar spinning through my bloodstream. In the past few weeks I'd barely eaten any sugar or butter, as a preparation.
Either way, I figured, I'd feel better in the morning. Sleep it off, girl. Sleep it off.
Tuesday.
Perfect Friendship
I remember being at an Indian restaurant in Ballard. I remember that Jake was with me and was telling me about Jupiter. The tika masala arrived but it was not masala at all, just some sweet, redish sauce over lumps of chicken. I tried to send it back but the heavyset woman insisted that this was impossible. I picked at my rice instead. As Jake told me stories of teaching astronomy to prison inmates, I decided that if I had to choose one person to be stuck with in a Chilean mine for 67 days, just one person, it would no doubt be Jake. We both drank cup after cup of chai which was constantly being refilled for us after two sips. As a result, I couldn't fall asleep till 3am. Instead I sat in the bath tub drinking sparkling water, and then got out and dried off and emailed Jake about how much I loved him. He wrote me back:
"Chymistry, for example, has its philosopher's stone, geometry its quadrature of the circle, astronomy its longitude; and mechanics their perpetual motion. [...] morality has its chimera too, and that is disinterested, perfect friendship." - de Fontenelle, 1683
Wednesday.
Back on track.
You have to wait at least half an hour to get a table at Carta de Oaxaca, your back against the brick wall on the dark streets of Ballard Avenue, avoiding eye contract with the homeless people who will ask to pet your puppy, if you've brought your dog along, and then pick her up in a manner that's very bad for a long-backed dog.
Tres Modern and lit by countless glowing portraits of Mexican men and white cotton puff flowers against a bright blue background, Carta is all action and no leisure. Once you're seated, you are packed in so tightly at a communal table and one must be constantly vigilante that one does not put one's elbow into the neighbor's taco plate.
Tonight's dinner guest was Chris Forsberg, we call him Fozz. Fozz and I coached not one but two high school ultimate teams to not one but two national championships. Something I'm going to brag about till my overzealous eating habits finally do me in. Just in the last few years, Fozz had become a fixture at my Vermont home during the Christmas holiday. I do not know how that happened, but we're all glad it did. Especially my father. Fozz is a bio-statistician who knows all about structural equation modeling, and my dad is all about the structural equation models. Both my parents think he's just a dream and always wonder in the morning, "That bottle of rum that Fozz bought? Wasn't it full yesterday? How many hot toddies did you two...drink?" And I'll look at the nearly empty bottle and say, completely truthfully, "I had one. Actually, I had half of one."
Yes oh yes Fozz brings the good time. But I still wasn't feeling very good. I looked around the room at the other diners and said mournfully, "Here I am on the third day of restaurant week and I haven't been feeling very well at all. I can probably order the meatball soup and that's it." I hung my head.
What Fozz said next changed the course not only of the entire meal, but also the next day's lunch.
"Lina," he said, "Sometimes, it's okay to order two entrees. Just order the soup for now, and whatever else you want, see what happens, and you can always eat it tomorrow."
An hour and a half later, we celebrated another victory at The Fir Tree.
Thursday.
Unbearable Speed.
There appears to be a negative correlation between the hipness of a restaurant and the amount of illumination inside. The Local Vine- way trendy, ultra organic, uber local, on the fringe of both capitol hill and down town, was practically a mine shaft. Dressed in a grey dress with black leggings, my body disappeared in the dark and for the entire evening I was just a head, constantly intaking food and wine, floating above a table of gleaming silver wear and scores of wineglasses.
The girls at the table were impeccably dressed, white-bright smiles and flat ironed smoothed hair glowed in the pearly lights of white candles. A surprise happy birthday party for Brittany Jacobs. Although, all of us were late because the parking on capitol hill is, well, it almost isn't. At all. When Natalie brought Brittany inside and was led to a long, set out table with nobody there. "Surprise," she had said, giving a limp gesture to the empty table. "Happy...birthday...." Until one by one we arrived, yanked back chairs, swept hair out of our face, and said, "sorry, sorry, parking. parking."
The tiny plates fancy bites were killer. We ate mini deep dish macaroni and cheese with curled apple strings, lollipops of lamb, chantrelle bruchetta. Bottles of wine would appear on the table and then disappear and be replaced by more. The beautiful waitress, dressed all in black, melted into the background and all we could see were her white hands, appearing like a magician or a mime to fill our glasses again and again. We had entered Restaurant Week Warp Speed.
At some point in the evening a bucket of truffle popcorn was set before me and I completely lost my cool. Truffle popcorn is light, crispy, infused with that indescribable element of truffle oil, and can be eaten by the fist full. I demolished it, destroyed it, annihilated it, inhaled it. I became protective of it, turned away from the other girls. At some point during this- this vision- a young man appeared, dropped his phone number next to me, smiled graciously, and walked away. Too enraptured to be surprised, I watched him leave and thought, I've done it. My life has officially achieved lift.
On and on and on. Eating and drinking. Flushed faces leaned in closer to tell stories of increasingly theatrical value. Climbing trips were planned, dance lessons scheduled into notebooks, and improv classes discussed. Wine brings a warm, drowsy feeling to the entire body and I could have fallen asleep there, cheek resting against the bottom of the empty popcorn bucket, where trace elements of truffle salt still lingered.
After I payed my portion of the alarming tab, I stepped outside onto the wet sidewalk and jumped into an incredibly expensive blue car. Britta, my college ultimate coach, raised her eyebrows at me. "Hey, kiddo," she said. "You like it? It's new." We took off down first hill towards down town. Besides my father, Britta is the only one in the world who gets away with calling me Kiddo. And even though she always drives, I don't think I've ridden with her in the same car twice.
The Palace Kitchen, open late. Britta, a self proclaimed vampire during the winter months, is a regular here. She knows the menu by heart, told the waiter to bring us 'just whatever you think we'll like.'
I tried to chew on a piece of bread dipped in olive oil and discovered that, once swallowed, it had no place to land. I croaked something about having absolutely no room left. Britta eyed me the same way that she did when we were 14-14 against Stanford in the semi-finals of regionals. "I GOT NOTHING LEFT COACH!" I'd say. And she'd say, "LIKE HELL YOU DON'T! FIND IT! FIND IT NOW'
A silver cauldron of lavender fondue was placed in front of me. And somehow, like an animal, I found the strength to attack.
Friday.
It happened.
I do not remember Friday.
Saturday.
Rainn Likely
Restaurant week reached its terminal stages and I ate dinner with Rainn Wilson. He chewed gum very deliberately. Saturday will be its very own post.
It was the week that almost killed me. So much to write about, so many photos- and then Blogger goes and tells me I have to purchase more photo space. What the what? Well, I did it- and it will take a few more hours until I can upload more photos. So check back in a few- okay? Thanks!
This post was recognized as BlogHer Voice of the Week in March of 2010. Check out the review here.
On my first full day of magical thinking, I ate my power animal.
To paraphrase Ira Glass, each year in my life I choose a theme, and bring you a variety of stories related to that theme. At twenty two I vowed to make better decisions and become prettier. Twenty three was the year of chance & whitewater. Twenty four was the year of positive thinking. Yesterday, my birthday, I decided that twenty five is going to be my year of magical thinking.
This is the year to blur the lines between what is fiction and nonfiction, what is possible and impossible. Magical thinking is like positive thinking in HD, Native American spirituality blended with American pop psychology. I am going to see the power, the potential, and the meaning in all things. Life will be luminous, studded with the unexpected, rich in omens, visions, unexpected wisdom. Dreams are going to carry a lot more weight in my everyday decisions. Sounds radical? You bet.
And though I haven't exactly hammered out the details, I know that accidentally eating my Power Animal is not a promising start.
My friend Teo had an extra ticket to a bajillion course dinner at Twin Farms, an exclusive five star hotel hidden in the woods of Barnard. Hidden. I've been roaming this area my entire life and I have never found it. People like Oprah Winfrey and Bill Gates and Nicole Kidman stay there so no one can find them. I told Teo he could not have chosen a better dining companion for the occasion: I am devastatingly talented at small talk, and I adore fine foods. Little towers of beef with sprigs of parsley. Entire entrees stuffed inside a single endive. All vegetables proceeded with the word 'baby'. Baby lettuce. Baby bokchoy.
And so, on my first day as a magical thinker, I was led down a walkway of tiny white lights and seated in front of a small herd of wineglasses and an extended family of forks. I was all tights and lipsticks and good posture, playing it cool, friendly but aloof. That is, until I read that the evening would commence with something called 'Lemony Squid Bubbles', and my head almost blew off my body in delight. I was doing it- I was living out my year of magical thinking! Yesterday, I lived in a world where lemony squid bubbles did not exist. Today, they were being served to me over the pink body of a crab, in a dining room whose walls had once been darkened by the shadow of Oprah Winfrey.
That's the difference between plain old 'positive thinking' and 'magical thinking'.
In case you are wondering, the lemony squid bubbles looked and tasted like citrus shaving cream, with a little hint of the ocean. And they were only the beginning. As the evening swept by, the terrifying and mystical little plates kept coming and coming, and I CHARGED. No matter that I don't eat veal and I have never tasted sea food: tonight, whatever was put before me, was put into my mouth. I used the correct fork, I sipped the correctly paired wine, I enjoyed amiable conversation with the elegant people at my table. In the whirlwind, I stopped consulting the menu before each plate. I ate with blind courage.
Somewhere between the salmon parfait and the quail eggs, two little red, round cutlets of meat were served. And this is when the evening took a turn for the macabre.
My power animal was established at the age of three, when I established a profound relationship with ducks. Ducks are my friends, my (former) pets, my connection to the animal world. Ducks are sacred. I share many, many a fine quality with that particular waterfowl. From certain angles, I even look like a duck. And never, ever, under any circumstance, would I eat a duck.
As a little girl, I could never have imagined that, some twenty years later, one would be served to me medium rare, disguised under a little beret of Creme Fresh. Never could I have imagined that I would chew and nod and say 'good steak' and someone would say 'that's not steak.' That I would pause, fork to mouth, and say, 'well, what is it?'
OH GOD. My first day of dabbling with spirituality, and I eat my power animal.
All night long, I had been swapping stories of positive thinking with the beautiful woman next to me. As the evening dwindled down and the coffee was poured, I confided to her my big mistake. She understood the gravity of the situation, as I knew she would.
'You ATE your POWER ANIMAL?' She asked, drawing back. 'Even I requested that they serve me that plate without the duck! Just the greens.'
I held my head in my hands. 'I didn't know,' was all I could say. 'I didn't know.'
My spirits were lifted when the final of three desserts was served, and the dining room was filled with strange little explosive sounds, like a bevy of keyboards being tapped at the same time. My mouth tickled. "What the-" said Teo, leaning his ear towards his plate. "Are these pop rocks?" Our thin slices of bitter chocolate, dabbed with jam and dusted with peanut butter powder, had been served with a side of chocolate pop rocks.
Somehow, this brought me back down to earth. Yes, I may have digested and enjoyed the duck. But there I was, sitting in one of the most exclusive hotels in the the US, being served lemony squid bubbles and chocolate pop rocks. It was certainly nothing I could have predicted for my first day of my 25th year, and if nothing else, my year was looking to be a very intriguing one.
My final thoughts on this night is that I may need to find a new power animal. Although I doubt any species in the animal kingdom will offer itself up, given my record.
This post is for Anna, who is on tour. She's currently in the East Coast and she's been gone such a long, long time that you can almost see the floor in our living room. I hate it. Where are the piles of papers, promotional posters, guitars cases, sound system devices, wires and empty boxes of almond jello? What is this neat stack of clean dishes doing on the kitchen counter? Away with it! I want my sister back.
Check out the tour dates by visiting her website here. Upcoming cities/states include new York, Chicago, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Milwaukee and all over California. If you live in or near any of those places, go see her live and person. She is extraordinarily.
Now I'm going to frank and upfront with you. This post is little more than pure, unadulterated corgi-in-fall porn. There are certain states in the South that don't even allow this sort of thing because it's too hardcore. But I put it up in the name of Anna Coogan, who misses her dog when she is out for weeks at a time on the road, playing music night after night after night.
Ladies and gentlemen of the Jury, this is Juno:
Juno is Hometeam's sister. Hometeam is back kicking it on corgi ranch in Vermont, because the landlord won't allow two dogs in his house. The pain and loneliness, the guilt and most of all the cold, loveless, cuddle-free nights this has brought to my life has been my cross to bear. But Hometeam is alive and well, after all, and for now, I have Juno, who I have been known to referee to as "a poor man's hometeam." She does not have a slavish attachment to me, she would not swim across a raging Ottawa river just to be close to me, she does not follow me for room to room and she is not nearly as flirtatious as my freak eared love dog.
But Juno is still a fine, fine dog. And I love her a lot.
So....remember a few posts ago when I made a really terrible simile about sunlight in Seattle? I believe I compared it to a rugged man with a serious commitment problem (of which, in my life, there have been about...no. I'm not going to tell you.) Well, allow me to stretch that simile to within an inch of its life (and yours):
I had a date with that rugged man yesterday. I dressed very carefully in my most provocative Patagonia, and took Juno to discovery park. There, in an empty field besides the ferry studded Puget Sound, I gave myself over to him. Willingly. Shamelessly. It was....warm. (Please, family members, I'm stalking about sunlight. I know you're all scientists and you won't understand figurative language. I'm not really saying I gave it up in a public park yesterday.)
And today he's gone, just like he promised. And the rain is back. For how long? Who can say. But it was worth it. I regret nothing.
I'm a Vermonter- gosh, have I mentioned that before? I grew up in the land of blue and gold Octobers. The universe was created for there to be fall in New England. Being now a resident of Seattle, I crave leaf crunch, wood smoke, cider and sharp blue skies just as much as I crave wit, sarcasm, cheddar and people who don't drive like pussies. The city tries to celebrate the season, mostly by shoving a pumpkin latte in my face every time I turn the corner, but it just can't live up to the authenticity of the Northeast. Northwest farmed pumpkins have nothing on Vermont's wild, free range, cruelty free pumpkins. And the frenetic displays of purple Halloween lights slathered all over doorsteps in my neighborhood are merely an attempt at covering up the giant pit of despair created in the lives of the Seattlites by the lack of a real, bonafide, mucus-freezing winter. In New England, negative temperatures, foot after foot of snow and endless, thundering ice storms slam headlong into the long sweet days of humid summers, creating this lovely point break called Fall. Where there is no stunningly cold winter, there is no real fall. All no amount of gingerbread syrups and pumpkin spice whatevers could make up for that. Just sayin'.
But, there are some pretty damn beautiful days. And truth be told, the best of the VT foliage is gone, dead, and turning into worms. Or something like that. The trees are nothing but rattling bones and people are starting to really dread the six months of freezing bleak that's just around the corner.
For now, I'm here, it's late October and it's still warm. And I can drive myself any time (sort of) to Discovery Park, where, if you're very creative and slightly forgiving, you can pretend that you're back home in the Green Mountains. Just for a few hours.
The next time a beautiful day texts me for a booty call, I'm going right back to that field, bringing a stack of People Magazines (go ahead, judge away) and some chicken wings. If I can remember how to get there. Jesus, it's no wonder why nobody goes to Discovery- it's like a maze, all bridges and one-ways, and one wrong turn sends you shooting off into downtown with no way to turn around. Hey! This sounds like another metaphor. It's not, I promise.
